“Absolutely,” Hillary says.
“Not necessarily,” Mike says at the same time.
“Exactly,” I say. “It’s not clear. And you know why it’s not clear? Because this kind of thing NEVER HAPPENS! When has something like this ever happened?”
Hillary pours me some tea.
“I once had two people come to me individually for therapy right after they’d separated,” Mike says. “They had different last names and listed different addresses because of the separation, so I didn’t know they were married until the second session with each of them, when I realized I was hearing the same stories from different sides. Their mutual friend, who was a former patient, gave both of them my name. I had to refer them out.”
“Yeah,” I say, “but this isn’t two patients with a conflict of interest. My therapist is mixed up in this. What are the odds of that?”
I notice Hillary looking away. “What?” I say.
“Nothing.”
Mike looks at her. She blushes. “Spill it,” he says.
Hillary sighs. “Okay. About twenty years ago, when I was first starting out, I was seeing a young guy for depression. I felt like we were making progress, but then the therapy seemed to stall. I thought he wasn’t ready to move forward, but really I just didn’t have enough experience and was too green to know the difference. Anyway, he left, and about a year later, I ran into him at my therapist’s.”
Mike grins. “Your patient left you for your own therapist?”
Hillary nods. “The funny thing is, in therapy, I talked about how stuck I was with this patient and how helpless I felt when he left. I’m sure the patient later told my therapist about his inept former therapist and used my name at some point. My therapist had to have put two and two together.”
I think about this in relation to the Wendell situation. “But your therapist never said anything?”
“Never,” Hillary says. “So one day I brought it up. But of course she can’t say that she sees this guy, so we kept the conversation focused on how I deal with the insecurities of being a new therapist. Pfft. My feelings? Whatever. I was just dying to know how their therapy was going and what she did differently with him that worked better.”
“You’ll never know,” I say.
Hillary shakes her head. “I’ll never know.”
“We’re like vaults,” Mike says. “You can’t break us.”
Hillary turns to me. “So, are you going to tell your therapist?”
“Should I?”
They both shrug. Mike glances at the clock, tosses his trash into the can. Hillary and I take our last sips of tea. It’s time for our next sessions. One by one, the green lights on the kitchen’s master panel go on, and we file out to retrieve our patients from the waiting room.
22
Jail
“Hmm,” Wendell says after I make my book confession well into our session. It’s taken me a while to get up the courage to tell him.
For two weeks I’ve moved over to position B planning to confess all, but once we’re face-to-face, catty-corner on the couches, I stall. I talk about my son’s teacher (pregnant), my dad’s health (poor), a dream (freaky), chocolate (a tangent, I’ll admit), my emerging forehead wrinkles (not a tangent, surprisingly), and the meaning of life (mine). Wendell tries to focus me, but I’m skating so quickly from one thing to the next that I outmaneuver him. Or so I think.
Out of the blue, Wendell yawns. It’s a fake yawn, a strategic one, a big, dramatic, gaping yawn. It’s a yawn that says, Until you tell me what’s really on your mind, you’ll stay stuck exactly where you are. Then he sits back and studies me.
“I have something to tell you,” I say.
He looks at me like No shit.
And out comes the entire story in one fell swoop.
“Hmm,” he says again. “So you don’t want to write this book.”
I nod.
“And if you don’t turn in the book, there will be serious financial and professional repercussions?”
“Right.” I shrug as if to say, See how screwed I am? “If I’d just done the parenting book,” I say, “I wouldn’t be in this situation.” It’s the refrain I’ve been repeating to myself daily—sometimes hourly—for the past few years.
Wendell does his shrug-smile-wait routine.
“I know.” I sigh. “I made a colossal, irrevocable mistake.” I feel the panic well up again.
“That’s not what I’m thinking,” he says.
“Then, what?”
He starts singing. “‘Half my life is over, oh yeah. Half my life has passed me by.’”
I roll my eyes, but he keeps going. It’s a bluesy tune and I’m trying to place it. Etta James? B. B. King?
“‘I wish I could go back, change the past. Have more years, to get it right . . .’”
And then I realize it’s not a famous song. It’s Wendell Bronson, impromptu lyricist. His lyrics are awful, but he surprises me with his strong, resonant voice.
The song goes on, and he’s getting really into it. Tapping his feet. Snapping his fingers. If we were out in the world, I’d think he was a nerdy guy in a cardigan, but in here, it’s his confidence and spontaneity that strike me, his willingness to be fully himself, entirely unconcerned that he’ll come across as foolish or unprofessional. I can’t imagine doing this in front of my patients.
“‘’Cause half my life is o-o-o-o-over.’” He arrives at the finale, complete with jazz hands.
Wendell stops singing and looks at me seriously. I want to tell him that he’s being annoying, that he’s trivializing what is realistically and practically an anxiety-provoking problem. But before I can say that, I feel a heavy sadness descend, seemingly out of nowhere. His tune is going through my head.
“It’s like that Mary Oliver poem,” I say to Wendell. “‘What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?’ I thought I knew what I planned to do, but now everything has changed. I was going to be with Boyfriend. I was going to write what mattered to me. I never expected—”
“—to be in this situation.” Wendell gives me a look. Here we go again. We’re like an old married couple by now, finishing each other’s sentences.
But then Wendell is silent, and it doesn’t seem like the intentional kind of silence I’m used to. It occurs to me that maybe Wendell is stumped, the way I sometimes get stumped in sessions when my patients are stuck and I get stuck too. He’s tried yawning and singing and redirecting me and asking important questions. But still, I’m back to where I usually go—the saga of my losses.
“I was just thinking about what you want in here,” he says. “How do you think I can help you?”
I’m thrown by his question. I don’t know if he’s enlisting my help as a fellow therapist or asking me as his patient. Either way, I’m not sure; what do I want from therapy?
“I don’t know,” I say, but as soon as I say it, I’m scared. Maybe Wendell can’t help me. Maybe nothing can. Maybe I just have to learn to live with my choices.