I Like You Just Fine When You're Not Around (27 page)

Tig stroked Clementine's head. “I did time with the colic version of her. I know. She was merciless.”

“No. Let me say this. I wanted to stop her. Put my hand over her mouth.” Wendy coughed again.

Tenderly, Tig said, “Wen, I know. I should have always known. I just couldn't see past my anger at you. I really need to work on that. I'm only a therapist when I'm working. I'm terrible in my life.”

Wendy tried to take a deep breath and gasped a great gob of air that sounded like what pain would sound like if it could speak.

“You're not alone. I brushed up on postpartum depression. I developed a hypothesis of my own: New moms are in over-achieving mode. They want to do it all right—parenting, partnering, preparing for every possible danger. They assume when something isn't going well, it's their fault, and if they just try harder—sleep less, dig in—all will go well. I think the unspeakable thoughts that vault into the brain are a way of getting our attention. As if the sane part of the brain is hitting you with the next best thing to a two-by-four. The thought is so terrible you can see it for what it is. Not right. Sick. Before that, moms think they have to be Martha Stewart and make a fondant-covered caterpillar cake for the baby's first-month birthday and color-code the nursery—which is its own sickness, no offense, Martha.”

“So you think my brain was firing off warnings, and I wasn't paying attention until it fired off the mother of all warnings?”

“It's an idea. A shot over the bow with the roots in low serotonin reuptake”

Straightening Clementine's collar, Wendy said, “I should have listened to you. But to be honest, I was sick to death of listening to you.”

“I'm sick of listening to me.”

A car accelerated up the hill outside the house. Thatcher walked to the front window, her nails snipping at the hardwood floor.

“I boxed up the rest of Mom's things and brought some of them to the basement. The rest I took to Goodwill. But I found something you need to see.”

In the living room, Wendy slid a small, unadorned cedar box off the mantel and handed it to Tig. “It was wrapped up in a box of dresses you probably never had a reason to unpack. Apparently, Mom had a romance some time after Dad died. And it wasn't fly-by-night.”

Tig's eyes narrowed. “I've been wondering. Do you remember her ever talking about it?”

“Never, but wait till you see what's in there.”

Tig cracked the lid open and peered inside the box. At the top of a small pile of papers lay a photograph of three people. Hallie Monahan—timeless in her khaki shorts and bare feet. A simple white sleeveless shirt and shoulder-length chestnut hair completed the vision. Her hand was extended, once and forever giving orders, orchestrating in the middle of the music. It was the mother of Tig's memories, the mother whose soft hands comforted her at night and whose voice whispered aspirations at the end of a challenging day:
You're smart and beautiful. You have it all
.

On the back of the photograph, the year 1971 was written in their mother's hand. Tig said, “That's the year before Dad died. I wonder if he took the picture.”

“Look at who else is in the photo.”

“Who are the other two?”

Clementine fussed, a soft sounding percolator of hunger. Wendy opened her shirt. “Keep looking.”

To the side, the space of a missing person away from her mother, stood a couple. The woman had a sunny head of frizzy curls, a seventies perm gone bad, and high-waisted short shorts. She laughed into the camera, oblivious to the man next to her, who was clearly enthralled with Hallie's antics. He had a full head of hair and an athlete's body.

“Who are they?” Tig said, then jerked up her head, eyes wide. “Dr. Jenson! And that must be his wife. He told me they used to spend time together.” She looked closely at the photograph again. “I don't know if I'm more surprised by the young and handsome Dr. Jenson, or the look of adoration on the face of the young and handsome Dr. Jenson.”

“Yeah,” Wendy nodded.

“Mom was pretty.” Tig placed the photograph aside and picked up an envelope, heavy with something bulky inside. She found, wrapped in a piece of unlined notepaper, several wingnuts strung together with a piece of twine. Penned in the now familiar hand from the poem behind the painting were the words
I'm nuts about you
. Tig looked at her sister and raised her eyebrows.

Another envelope contained her father's obituary, and Wendy said, “The day Mom turned to steel.”

Tig read from the clipping. “‘Dan (Danny) Monahan passed away September 9, 1972, at the age of forty-three. Loving husband and best friend to Hallie Monahan. Devoted father and adoring fan of Wendy Monahan. Memorial service Saturday,' etcetera. Leave it to Mom, this obit was the business end of sorrow.”

“Who's this other obituary?”

“That's Dr. Jenson's wife. Judy Werner Jenson. It was several years after Dad, but she was ultimately about the same age as Dad when she died.”

Tig scanned the newspaper clipping. “I knew they didn't have children. It says here she lost a battle with breast cancer. Man, she was young when she died.”

“They must have been good friends.”

“Tig. Wake up. It wasn't the woman Mom was friends with. It was Dr. Jenson. Think about it. Look at the picture. Why do you think he visits her, has her in his nursing home?”

Tig's hand dropped to her lap. “What?”

Wendy raised her eyes to the ceiling. “For Christ's sake. How can you not see it? He still looks at her the same way as he does in the photograph.”

Tig examined the small, yellowed picture in her hand. It did seem like there was an invisible arrow connecting Dr. Jenson's gaze to her mother. “So you think he's still in love with her?”

“You've seen them together. He doesn't treat her like a typical patient. He let you practically move in with a dog and a baby. Didn't you ever think that was way above the duty of a nursing home?”

“She's gotta be fifteen years older than him and there's no way she remembers him back then or now.”

“Phil is ten years older than I am. Besides, five years or fifteen years—it all evens out after fifty. I've been thinking about it. It probably started as a young man's crush on his brother's best friend's wife.”

“It's beginning to feel very stalker-ish, don't you think?”

“It depends on whether you reference everything through the looking glass of Nora Ephron or the
National Enquirer
.”

“Look what else is in that box.”

Tig touched a smooth, round river stone, black and silky. She held it in her hand, smoothed her thumb against it. She placed the stone on top of the obituaries, and pulled out a small wooden heart fashioned from a light, porous wood. There was a green, gold, and blue enamel world globe the size of a marble, and a tiny red basket filled with the brown, dried petals of a hydrangea plant, resembling tiny paper hearts. Last, Tig pulled out a craft-store robin's egg, the color of her mother's eyes. “This is like a magpie's treasure chest.”

There were two last things in the chest. One was a note that said,
I can't wait to say I told you so
. The other was a ticket from a theater in Chicago.
A Little Night Music
, 1972. Tig fingered the ticket, softened from years of remembering, examining, and stroking. Instead of replacing the small rectangle, Tig put it aside. “He must have meant a lot to Mom if she kept all this stuff. I'm going to talk to him about this tomorrow. Why didn't we know about him? Or why didn't he mention this to us?”

“I don't know. The more I learn about Mom, the more I learn about me. You're the expert, Tig. Is there such a thing as emotional genetics? Because none of us seem to be very good at relationships.”

Tig started to protest, then said, “I'm really good at them when I'm alone. When I'm alone I know just what to do.”

Tig woke slowly, stretching her legs. Before opening her eyes she listened to the quiet, white noise of the house. The hum of the refrigerator, the neighbor's wind chimes wandering around in the quiet breeze, and the total lack of requests from the world. She smiled, and as soon as she acknowledged that this solitary thing was good, the phone rang. She turned on her side, dropped her arm over the bed, and ran her fingers through Thatcher's silky fur. The phone rang again and Tig reached for it.

Jean Harmeyer spoke. “Tig, I've got you an appointment with Carolyn Hammer.”

“Who?”

“Did I wake you? It's nine-thirty.”

“Jet lag. Who is Carolyn Hammer?”

“The woman whose husband killed himself, remember? The one you want so badly to speak to, against all better judgment.”

“Okay, when and where?”

“Get your game on, girl. Our lawyers aren't going to let you in the door unless you're in top form.”

“I'm not going if the lawyers are going to be there. It's a conversation I want. Not a negotiation or argument. We can't be real if the lawyers are putting our conversation through a legal strainer and separating all the humanity out.”

“Don't knock lawyers, Tig. My lawyer, Loraine, got Newman into a therapist and he's having a heyday examining his inner prickishness.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. Loraine has a formula. Start with a conversation only the dog can hear. She hits the money octave, the reality-speak of a good old-fashioned Wisconsin divorce where it's all formula and percent of income. Country club membership loss follows a discussion of living accommodations. This usually scares the young girl-slash-love interest off. Then what you're left with is a lonely man who can't find the dry cleaner's bag and believes he is living in a third-world country—a.k.a., the duplex. That, my dear, is the scientific formula of how to get a man to therapy.”

“Is he becoming a more sensitive male?”

“You know what they say. You can force a man into therapy, but you can't make him think. So, it's time for phase two.”

“Do I dare ask?”

“Phase two is when he realizes that his fifty-percent custody in reality means what it's always meant: he sees the kids less than ten percent of the time. With work, golf, and beers after a hard day, he's only ever been there about ten percent of their lives, but since the math is being done by lawyers and not his wife, he finally sees it. That scenario has ‘why me' written all over it. So, he pitches that tale of woe out to a counselor with a catcher's mitt especially designed to lasso dysfunction and voilà! Introspection.”

“Okay, but Jean, a lawyer in this situation is only going to mess it up. I want to talk to Carolyn Hammer alone. Figure out how I could have done better by her. I need this for me.” Tig paused, then added, “If you do this for me, I'll send you an e-mail with my proposal for a new show.” It was quiet on the line. Jean breathed audibly. A spray of sunlight pointed out the dustiest corners in the bedroom like a spiteful mother-in-law.

“Her number is in the phone book. You didn't hear it from me. Carolyn Hammer—remember.”

The phone went dead.

• • •

Carolyn Hammer agreed to meet at a downtown coffee bar. Tig, with the perfect posture of a first-chair flutist, sat at a corner table, an iced coffee sweating anxiously in her hand, the warm sun shining in on the lacquered table. For fifteen minutes, her head bobbed up every time the bell on the door signaled the entrance of a patron. She shook her head and talked herself out of looking again, making a very taxing game of it until another five minutes passed. She checked her watch again.

“Are you Dr. Monahan?” A woman stood above Tig, the sun dusting her blond hair.

“Carolyn?” Tig stood and sent her chair tipping backward, pulling the light coffee-shop table out of line.

“I don't have much time. My friend is watching Missy, my daughter.” Carolyn Hammer wore jeans, a white peasant blouse, several large silver rings on her fingers, and casual elegance around her shoulders like a shawl. Tig hadn't expected this woman. She had expected someone more childlike, naive. Either much younger or much older; someone needing permission to say ‘stop,' to hold someone accountable. Tig marveled at her prejudices, even after all those years of counseling. The elegant, educated, and brilliant had just as many relationship problems as the high school dropout and, if she were honest with herself, sometimes the dropouts had less.

“Thank you for coming.” Tig tried a jittery smile.

Carolyn dropped a large, exotically colored fabric bag on the floor. “No. I wanted to. There isn't a soul I can talk to about this,” Carolyn said, whispering, “Not a soul.”

If Tig had seen this woman at the grocery store or in front of her in the line for a movie, she would have admired her style and obvious ability to have it all. Poise, genes, and a good hairdresser. She would have pictured the woman at her home filled with refined eco-friendly woods and hemp carpeting, muted sage paint in her foyer, global art on the walls. Her friends would hold their stemless wine glasses with nonchalance and breeding. Her child would have no chocolate smeared on the bridge of her nose, and would wear tastefully mismatched polka dots and stripes. The television version of the perfect modern life. Even after working as a therapist for years, Tig was still human and susceptible to the façades, the masks people wore to hide their true selves.

Carolyn inhaled sharply and placed her hands flat on the table. “Here's what you don't know. My husband didn't kill himself because he couldn't see prostitutes anymore; at least, not technically. He accidentally killed himself.”

“Accidentally?”

“I'm sure that you, as a counselor, have heard of erotic asphyxiation. I found him in the garage. He had this leather slipknot thing around his neck and his pants around his ankles. He couldn't get it loose, and it killed him.”