The Marriage Intervention (17 page)

“What could Paul do to show you the attention you want?” Dr. Strasser said.
 

“Something,” Josie said. “Anything.”
 

“Be specific.”
 

“He could ask how my day was,” she said.
 

“I do ask how her day was!” Paul said, pointing at her. “Every time I walk in the door.”
 

“While looking at your phone. He doesn’t even make eye contact with me! He doesn’t even care how my day was. He just asks by rote.”
 

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Dr. Strasser said. “Do you see the breakdown here, you guys? Paul believes he is meeting your needs by asking how your day was. However, Josie doesn’t feel like you’re genuinely interested because you aren’t looking at her. Sound about right?”
 

Josie nodded. Out the corner of her eye, she could see Paul nodding, too.

Four more minutes.
 

Dr. Strasser forced them to go through an exercise. They had to turn their chairs toward each other, look into each other’s eyes, and tell each other what they needed more of.
 

Paul went first. Apparently, he needed Josie to be more understanding and supportive. He needed her to hug him more (Josie almost scoffed at this, since it was on Summer and Delaney’s list of The Rules for The Marriage Intervention). He needed to hear her say she appreciated him working so hard for them.
 

Three more minutes. She could blurt it out now, before telling Paul what she needed more of.
 

“I need attention. I need to feel like I take priority over your work. That’s it.”
 

Dr. Strasser nodded.

“Now I’d like each of you to explain precisely what the other could do to give you what you need.”
 

“Look, before we finish this exercise, there’s something I have to say.”
 

***

She hadn’t told them right away. She finally worked up the courage to spill her guts and Dr. Strasser stopped her. He made them finish the exercise first.
 

By the time they were done, the session was over.
 

But she wasn’t off the hook. Paul’s detective skills never rested unless he was looking for the ketchup in the fridge. His ears perked up when she tried to interrupt that final exercise. She could see it in his expression, in the way his lips pressed together and his eyes narrowed.
 

He wouldn’t forget about it, and he wouldn’t just let it go.
 

So when they walked out to the parking lot together, after she explained how she wished he could stay home when he got a call-out and he explained how he wished she wouldn’t ask him to stay home when he got a call-out (and how do you rectify that? she wondered), he stopped her before she could get into her car.
 

“What were you going to say, before?” he asked.

“Before what?”
 

“You know. Before we finished our session with two completely contradictory requests.”
 

He smiled at her and for a moment, she felt an uptick in her heart rate, just as she had when they first met, every time they made eye contact.
 

Maybe that’s why I miss the eye contact so much. I miss feeling like this. Shit. Maybe Dr. Strasser’s onto something
.
 

She grinned back.
 

“It’s nothing,” she said. “We can talk about it at our session next week.”
 

“No,” he said. “We can’t. What was it? I could tell you were nervous. It must be important.”
 

It’s now or never.
 

“It’s about something that happened before we got together.” She cleared her throat.
 

She always could read him, too, and she saw the knowledge roll into his eyes exactly the way a monsoon storm rolled into town on a summer day. Ominous, threatening, and eventually exploding.
 

***

“You had a thing with Scott Smith.”
 

Paul was a good cop. So good, in fact, that his supervisors had already begun grooming him for a sergeant detective position. Just a few weeks ago, he completed a training on interview and interrogation. He loved it. Came home raving about it. He may be a good cop, but Josie saw him mentally slip into the bad cop interrogator role the instant he announced his revelation.
 

When Josie didn’t answer, Paul leaned against the driver’s door of her car and crossed his arms. She wasn’t going anywhere. Neither was he.

“So. Tell me about it.”
 

Josie felt the blood whirring through her body, whooshing in her ears.
 

Why am I so nervous? It’s over.
 

She licked her lips, shifted her weight from her right foot to her left.

“There’s not too much to tell, really,” she said. “We met several weeks before school started that year, and ended things on the first day of school.”
 

Never mind the fact that I broke down and cried at recess and after school every day for a week.
 

“Why did you end things?”
 

“He was my supervisor.”

“So?” He didn’t give her time to answer. “Why are you so nervous?”
 

“What? I’m not.”
 

“You keep licking your lips.”
 

Josie pressed her lips together.
 

“See? It’s a nervous habit,” he said. “So why are you nervous? You still have a thing for this guy, or what?”

“Fine,” she said. “I
am
nervous! I’m nervous, Paul, because you’re
interrogating
me. I’ve known all along that if you knew Scott and I had a fling, you’d hate that I was seeing him every day. You’d ask me about it all the time, you’d want to know why I wore a certain skirt or certain shoes.”
 

He seemed to consider that for a moment, and then he nodded.

“Probably. You’re right. I would do those things. But what am I supposed to think now, after you spent an afternoon having drinks with the asshole, discussing extracurriculars? It all seems very suspicious. Especially when it was your idea to work on our marriage. Or whatever. You know what? I’m calling bullshit. You’re probably using this marriage counseling thing as a decoy so you can keep rubbing elbows, or whichever body parts, with Scott.”

“Absolutely not!” Josie said. “I just went to have drinks with Scott because he asked me to. Excuse me if I’m susceptible to actual attention from a man, since I get absolutely none from you.”
 

“Oh, don’t you dare turn this around on me. This is so completely your fault.”
 

“My fault? My fault? Now we’re placing blame? What is my fault, exactly, Paul?”
 

“It’s your fault this marriage is where it is right now. You’ve obviously got one foot in the grave, here, and one foot in Scott Smith’s office. And you have since we got together. We were doomed from the start.”

“That’s not true!”
 

Josie heard her voice approaching the shrill wail of a siren, and took a deep breath to calm herself.
 

“That’s not true,” she said again. “It was over with me and Scott before I even met you.”
 

“If it was, you wouldn’t have been so nervous to talk to me about it. You wouldn’t have hidden it all this time.”
 

She had nothing to say to that.
 

“You have nothing to say to that, do you?” Paul said.
 

“Ugh.” She rubbed a hand over her forehead.
 

Paul stepped aside so she could get into her car.
 

“I guess we’re done here,” he said. “And you’re on your own with Dr. Strasser from now on. I don’t want to waste my time.”
 

Josie felt as if the wind had been taken out of her sails. She blamed life, her husband and Scott.
 

Once Paul moved away from her car, he got into his own and drove away. He probably planned to get in some target practice while she was at the gym with Summer and Delaney. They were supposed to meet at home for dinner in a couple of hours, but now she had no idea whether he’d show up.
 

With country music blasting, Josie pulled out of Dr. Strasser’s parking lot and drove toward the gym, even though it was the absolute last place she wanted to go.

Everything Paul said was true. Since that first time she met Scott, he had a hold over her. There was just something about him. There was always that question in the back of her mind: “Is he my soul mate?”
 

It was foolish of her to deny it.
 

She hit a red light and pounded her fist on the steering wheel, then turned up the music.
 

Despite the fact that she’d always had Scott in the back of her mind, she chose Paul. Didn’t that mean something?

Or did it mean nothing, since Scott had been the one to end their relationship? Would she have continued dating him if he hadn’t ended it?
 

At the intersection of Highway Twenty-Three and Pinecone Road, where Delaney had met Jake, Josie should have turned right to meet the girls. She turned left instead. She knew she’d pay for it later, when Summer and Delaney held her accountable, or whatever they were calling it these days, but for now she relished the thinking time. She needed it.
 

***

Old Copper Mine Highway wound up into the mountains that stood guard around Juniper, twisting and curving, forcing Josie to drive like she imagined a race car driver would.
 

She pulled off at a lookout point, from which she could see the velvety green of the pine trees unrolling below her.
 

Nothing but quiet out here.

Yes, Josie would love a little more attention from Paul. She would love a little more eye contact. She would love to feel like a priority. She wanted him to choose her over his work for once, to act like it was a possibility rather than just slipping into that default position.

“Ugh,” Josie said when she realized she was actually crying.

But he
was
a great husband in so many ways. He did dishes, laundry, even ironing. He did everything she asked. He was sensitive. To her moods, to her needs in bed, to what she wanted for dinner and whether she wanted to cook.
 

What was wrong with her? Really, he had just the one tiny flaw. And really, didn’t it show his dedication and commitment to work? At least he wasn’t a deadbeat.
 

Her phone buzzed. A text. She sighed and ignored it. She knew it was Summer or Delaney. Probably both of them, calling her out for not showing up at the gym. It buzzed again and she took it out of her pocket. Sure enough, she had one text from each of her friends, asking where she was. Feeling lonely and in need of their company even though she knew she risked a good chastising, she told them. They pulled up fifteen minutes later. Delaney’s short pigtails had little curls springing out of them, and sweat spread over the back of Summer’s t-shirt.
 

“Have a good workout?” Josie asked.
 

“Oh my gosh, have you been crying?” Delaney wanted to know.

Josie rubbed a knuckle under her nose. “Yeah.”
 

“What’s going on?” Summer said.
 

Summer and Delaney sat down, one on either side of her, and within a moment, she was wrapped in their arms, her body relaxing like warm caramel. Josie explained the fallout from her confession during their session with Dr. Strasser, and her friends remained silent for a few moments when she finished. Summer went back to her car to get a tissue and came back with a wadded up piece of toilet paper, shrugging.
 

“Not sure if this has been used or not, but it doesn’t feel crunchy.”
 

Josie laughed and wiped her eyes and nose.
 

“So, we were talking on the way over here,” Delaney said.
 

“And?” Josie said.
 

“And we agree that you’re not following The Rules of The Marriage Intervention.”
 

Wait,” Josie said. “So you’re telling me this, right here, is an intervention for The Marriage Intervention?”
 

Delaney and Summer looked at each other, shrugged, then looked back at Josie and nodded.
 

“You’ve got to follow The Rules,” Summer said. “We put them in place for your own good. I cannot believe you were late for your romantic evening with Paul. Especially when you were having drinks with your ex-lover! You have to put as much into your marriage as you say you want to.”
 

Not for the first time, Josie felt like a teenager whose mother caught her drinking cheap white zin in her bedroom after lights out.
 

“I know you’re right,” Josie said. “It’s just that I’m afraid it’s not going to work. All this
trying
with Paul. It seems like he’s checked out. And when it fails, I’ll feel so
stupid
.”

“I know,” Delaney said. “Summer’s been through that with Derek, right, Summer?”
 

“I have,” Summer said. “I understand. But even when he seems like he’s at a standstill,
especially
when he seems like he’s at a standstill, you have to keep trying. That’s the only way a marriage can work.”
 

***

If the conversation had ended with Summer giving her some solid marriage advice, Josie would have driven home feeling somewhat bolstered.
 

But after the girls sat in silence for a few moments, the brilliant watercolor sunset fading to a dusky rose, Summer cleared her throat.
 

“Not to change the subject,” she said, “but we have something to tell you.”