Twenty Four Weeks - Episode 12 - "Twenty Three" (PG)
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rubbing the back of my neck.
“How do you feel about that?”
“Okay, I guess. I mean, that’s what she wants, and I want her to be happy.”
“But you’re not finding it easy.”
“No. I was about ready to start making love to her again. I think I’ve sorted the things that have been stopping me, and then she drops this on me.”
“But you understand the reason.”
“Oh, sure. I even agree with what she says. That doesn’t make it easy.”
Grant says nothing for a moment, looks at me carefully. I imagine that he’s weighing me up now, taking stock of me, trying to make sense of the insensible.
“Just a moment,” he says finally, going to his overstocked bookshelf. He returns with a paperback, hands it to me. It’s plain covered, simple.
“New seeds of contemplation,” I read with a frown.
“When you first came here I thought of passing that on to you because you were alone, and I thought it might have given you some perspective. But after we talked I saw that you weren’t ready to hear what it has to say.”
“And I am now?”
“Perhaps. If you look at it with an open mind. You’re going to have a little more alone time for a while, and it’s easy to see that as being a step backwards, but if approached correctly it can be a real opportunity to learn and grow.”
I read the back. “You’re not trying to turn me into a monk, are you?”
Grant laughs. “Goodness, no. But there’s nothing wrong with living a simpler and more contemplative life. The real trick is making that work in your own very complex and fast-paced world.” He points to the book in my hand. “See what you think. I know it’s helped me. I want you to remember this truth, Judd: even when you are alone, you are not lonely. There are people who love you. Quinn loves you. Mary and I love you. Start from that place and you can learn from your time alone, no matter where you are. Shall we?”
He leads me outside, onto the porch where the women are waiting. “For this week,” he says then, “I want you to go back to your stories about your future. See if you want to add to it or change it.”
“And see why it’s changed from when you wrote it earlier,” Mary adds. “That’s important.”
“Are we reading them out next week?” Quinn asks them.
“Not yet,” Grant says. “Soon.”
In the next episode of Twenty Four Weeks…
Wade makes some changes to the show... Quinn gets a check-up... Judd talks about his affair with Penny...
It seems that people ringing in are after something other than Wade abusing them. We’re not sure what that is yet, but it isn’t him telling them they’re wrong or to ‘man up’. I suspect he’s beginning to think that his definition of the expression might just be a little inaccurate. Now he’s dishing out advice, and what he’s saying doesn’t seem too far off the truth. And when the caller says something mind-bogglingly stupid, he tells them that too. It’s honest, sometimes brutally honest, and real and I can’t help feeling a little proud of him.
Unfortunately, my pride and Wade’s honesty can’t help us.
“The way I see it,” Stewart says, with us in his office, sitting down, looking like we’re about to be on the street with a sign around our necks saying ‘will do radio for food’, “you have two choices.”
…
I take her for her check up after work. She’s almost six months in and doing well. I guess there is another cloud looming in the distance that we’re not talking about. Maybe it’s something that we’re not ready to face. I know I’m not, and I don’t expect that Quinn is any stronger than I am. Unfortunately Quinn obstetrician is not afraid to ask the questions we are.
“And your first pregnancy,” Dr Heigel says, reading through Quinn’s notes, “ended at eight months - a still birth.”
…
Quinn is crying again. I hold her hand as she explains how she feels about my sleeping with Penny. She knows that she has no right to feel this way, she says, that she had done worse over the last year, but it still hurts.
“I think of him in bed with another woman and I can’t breathe,” she sobs. “We were supposed to be together forever and I was sleeping with Wade and he slept with her. I just get so sad thinking about it.”
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