Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

by Lori Gottlieb

  “‘Honestly, Myron,’” she continues from the legal pad, “‘at first I didn’t know why I slapped you. I thought it was because I was angry that you’d been dating that woman, who was, quite frankly, so beneath you. But more important, I couldn’t understand why we had been acting like a couple for months—why you would allow me to misperceive the situation in this way only to dispose of me. I know that you’ve since offered your reasons. You were afraid to start something romantic with me because if it turned out badly, you would lose our friendship. You were afraid that if it didn’t work out, we would feel awkward living in the same building—as if it weren’t tremendously awkward seeing you with that woman, whose cackle I could hear two floors up, even with my television on.’”

  Rita looks up at me, raises her eyebrows in a question, and I shake my head. She strikes something out.

  “‘But now, Myron,’” Rita goes on, “‘you say you want to take that risk. You say that I am worth that risk. And when you said that in the parking lot, I had to run because, believe it or not, I felt sorry for you. I felt sorry for you because you have no idea what kind of risk you’d be taking by getting involved with me. It wouldn’t be fair to let you take that risk without telling you who I really am.’”

  A tear rolls down Rita’s face, then another, and she reaches for a side pocket in her artist’s portfolio, where she’s stuffed a bunch of tissues. As always, a box of tissues sits within arm’s reach, and it still makes me crazy that she won’t just take the tissues. She cries for a few moments, stuffs the used tissues into the pocket of the portfolio, then looks back at the pad.

  “‘You think you know my past,’” she reads. “‘My marriages, the names and ages of my children, and the cities they live in, and that I don’t see them much. Well, much wasn’t accurate. I should have said that I don’t see them at all. Why? Because they hate me.’”

  Rita chokes up, then composes herself and goes on.

  “‘What you don’t know, Myron—what even my second and third husbands didn’t fully know—is that their father, my first husband, Richard, drank. And when he drank, he hurt our children, my children—sometimes with words, sometimes with his hands. He would hurt them in ways I can’t get myself to write here. Back then I would scream at him to stop, pleading, and he would yell back at me, and if he was very drunk, he’d hurt me too, and I didn’t want the children to see that, so I would stop. You know what I did instead? I would go in the other room. Did you read that, Myron? My husband would be hurting my children and I would go in the other room! And I would think, about my husband, You are ruining them forever, hurting them beyond repair, and I would know that I was ruining them too, and I would cry and do nothing.’”

  Rita is crying so hard now she can no longer speak. She’s crying into her hands, and when she calms down, she unzips the portfolio’s pocket, pulls out the soiled tissues, wipes her face, licks her finger, and turns the page on the pad.

  “‘Why didn’t I report it to the police, you may wonder. Why didn’t I leave and take the children with me? At the time, I told myself that there would be no way to survive, to take care of the children and get a decent job with no college degree. Every day, I would look at the want ads in the newspaper and think, I could be a waitress or a secretary or a bookkeeper, but could I make the hours and the pay work? Who would pick up the kids from school? Make them dinner? I never called to find out, because the truth is—and you have to hear this, Myron—the truth is that I didn’t want to find out. That’s right: I didn’t want to.’”

  Rita looks at me as if to say, See? See what a monster I am? This part is new to me too. She holds up a finger—a signal for me to wait for her to collect herself—then reads on.

  “‘I had felt so alone as a child—and this is no excuse, just an explanation—that the idea of being alone with four kids and working eight hours each day at a dead-end job, well, I just couldn’t bear it. I’d seen what happened to other divorcées, the ways they were ostracized, like lepers, and I thought, No, thank you. I imagined I would have no adults to talk to, and that, perhaps even worse, I’d lose my one salvation. I’d have neither the time nor the resources to paint, and I worried that under these circumstances, taken together, I would be tempted to kill myself. I justified my staying by reasoning that if the children had a depressed mother, that would be better than a dead mother. But here’s another truth, Myron: I didn’t want to lose Richard.’”

  A dark sound emerges from Rita, and then tears. She wipes her eyes with the dirty tissues.

  “‘Richard—I hated him, yes, but I also loved him or, rather, the version of him when he wasn’t drinking. He was brilliant and witty, and as strange as this sounds, I knew I would miss his companionship. Besides, I would worry about the kids spending time alone with Richard, given his drinking and his temper, so I would have fought to keep them with me all the time, and with him being at work every day, often going to late dinners, he would have agreed. And the thought of him getting off easy like that made me horribly resentful.’”

  Rita licks her finger to turn the page again, but the paper sticks and it takes several attempts before she extricates the single sheet from the rest.

  “‘Once, when I was very courageous, I told him I was leaving. I meant it, Myron, it wasn’t an empty threat. I resolved that I was done. So I told him, and Richard just looked at me, stunned at first, I think. But then a smile formed on his face, the most evil smile I had ever seen, and he said, slowly, deliberately, in a voice that I can only describe as a growl, “If you leave, you will have nothing. The kids will have nothing. So, be my guest, Rita. Leave!” And then he started laughing, and there was venom in his laugh, and I knew right then it was a silly idea. I knew I would stay. But in order to stay, to live with the situation, I told myself all kinds of lies. I told myself it would stop. That Richard would stop drinking. And sometimes he would, at least for a while. But then I’d find his hiding places, bottles peeking out from behind his law books on the shelf in the den or rolled up in blankets on the top of the kids’ closets, and we’d be back in hell.

  “‘I imagine what you’re thinking right now—that I’m making excuses. That I’m playing the victim. It’s all true. But I’ve also thought a lot about how a person can be one thing and another thing, both at the same time. I’ve thought about how much I loved my children despite what I let happen to them, and how Richard, believe it or not, loved them too. I’ve thought about how he could hurt them and hurt me and also love us and laugh with us and help the kids with their schoolwork and coach their Little League games and give them thoughtful advice when they had disagreements with their friends. I’ve thought about how Richard would say he would change, and how much he wanted to change, and how he still wouldn’t change, at least not for long, and how despite all of this, none of what he said was ever a lie.

  “‘When I finally left, Richard cried. I’d never seen him cry before. He begged me to stay. But I saw my children, now teenagers or about to be, getting into drugs and harming themselves, wanting to die like me. My son almost overdosed, and a switch flipped, and I said, Enough. Nothing—not poverty, not giving up my art, not the fear of being alone for the rest of my life—nothing could stop me from taking the kids and leaving. The morning of the evening I told Richard I was leaving, I withdrew money from our bank account, applied for a job, and rented a two-bedroom apartment, one room for me and my daughter, the other for the boys, and we left.

  “‘But it was too late. The kids were a mess. They hated me, and, strangely, they wanted to be back with Richard. Once we left, Richard was on his best behavior, and he provided for them financially. He would show up at my daughter’s college and take her and her friends out for fancy meals. And the kids soon remembered him differently—especially the youngest, who missed playing ball with him. The youngest would beg to stay with him. And I would feel guilty for leaving. I would doubt myself. Had it been the right decision?’”

  Rita stops. “Hold on,” she says to m
e, “I lost my place.” She turns some pages, then picks up again.

  “‘Anyway, Myron,’” she reads, “‘eventually my children cut me out of their lives entirely. By the time of my second divorce, they said they had no respect for me. They kept in touch with Richard periodically, and he would send them money, but when he died, his new wife somehow got all the money, and the children were angry. Just livid! And suddenly they remembered more clearly what he had done to them, but they weren’t enraged just at him—they were still enraged at me for letting it happen. They blocked me out, and the only time I heard from them was when they were in trouble. My daughter was in an abusive relationship and needed money to leave, but she wouldn’t give me any details. Just send the money, she said, so I did. I sent her money to rent an apartment and buy food. And, of course, she didn’t leave, and far as I know, she’s still with that man. Then my son needed money for rehab but wouldn’t let me visit.’”

  Rita glances at the clock. “I’m getting to the end,” she says. I nod.

  “‘I lied to you about something else, Myron. I said that I couldn’t be your bridge partner because I wouldn’t be very good, but I used to be an excellent bridge player. I declined your offer because I imagined it would put me in a situation where I’d have to tell you what I’m telling you now—that we’d travel to a tournament in a city where one of my children lives and you would ask why we weren’t visiting them, and I would make something up, say they were out of town, or ill, or what have you, but that wouldn’t work every time. You would get suspicious, and sooner or later, I knew, you would put the pieces together and realize that something had gone dreadfully wrong. You would say to yourself, Aha! This woman I’m dating is not at all as she seems! ’”

  Rita’s voice quivers and then breaks as she tries to get this last part out.

  “‘So that’s me, Myron,’” she reads, so quietly I can barely hear her. “‘That’s the person you kissed in the parking lot at the Y.’”

  As Rita looks down at the letter, I’m floored by how clearly she’s spelled out the contradictions of her history. When she first came to me, she mentioned that I made her think of her daughter, whom she missed terribly. She said that her daughter had at one point talked about wanting to become a psychologist and had volunteered to work in a treatment center but then got sidetracked by her volatile relationship.

  What I didn’t tell Rita was that she, in some ways, reminded me of my mother. Not that my mother’s adult life looked anything like Rita’s—my parents have had a long, stable, and loving marriage, and my father is the kindest possible husband. It’s that both Rita and my mother came from difficult and lonely childhoods. In my mother’s case, her father died when she was just nine years old, and though her mother did her best to raise her and her sister, who was eight years older, my mother suffered. And her suffering affected the way she interacted with her own children.

  So, like Rita’s children, I went through a period where I shut my mom out. And while that had long passed, as I sit with Rita and hear her story, I have the urge to cry—not for my pain, but for my mother’s. As much as I’ve thought about my relationship with my mother over the years, I’ve never considered her experience in exactly the way I am now. I have the fantasy that all adults should be given the opportunity to hear parents—not their own—rip themselves open, become completely vulnerable, and give their versions of events, because in seeing this, you can’t help but come to a newfound understanding of your own parents’ lives, whatever the situation.

  While Rita read her letter, I wasn’t just listening to her words; I was also observing her body, seeing how at times, it would crumple in on itself, how sometimes her hands would tremble and her lips would become pinched and her leg would shake and her voice would quaver, how she’d shift her weight when she paused. I’m watching her body now too, and sad as she seems, her body appears, if not at peace, the most relaxed I’ve seen it. She leans back on the couch, recovering from the exertion of the reading.

  And then something astounding happens.

  She reaches over to the tissue box on my side table and pulls one out. A clean, fresh tissue! She opens it up, blows her nose, then takes another from the box and blows her nose again. It’s all I can do not to break into applause.

  “So,” she asks, “do you think I should send this?”

  I picture Myron reading Rita’s letter. I wonder how he’ll respond as a father and grandfather, as somebody who was married to Myrna, likely a very different kind of mother to their now happily grown children. Will he accept who Rita is, all of her? Or will this information be too much, something he can’t get past?

  “Rita,” I say, “that’s a decision only you can make. But I’m curious—is this a letter for Myron or for your children?”

  Rita pauses for a second, looks at the ceiling. Then she looks back at me, nods, but says nothing, because we each know the answer is Both.

  52

  Mothers

  “So,” I’m telling Wendell, “we get back from a late dinner with friends and I ask Zach to take his shower, but he wants to play, and I tell him we can’t because it’s a school night. And then he has this complete overreaction and whines, ‘You’re so mean! You’re the meanest!’—which isn’t like him at all—but also this anger just boils up inside me.

  “So I say something petty like, ‘Oh, really? Well, maybe next time I shouldn’t take you and your friends out to dinner, if I’m so mean.’ Like I’m five years old! And he says, ‘Fine!’ and slams his door—he’s never slammed his door before—and gets in the shower and I go to my computer planning to answer emails but instead I’m having a conversation in my head about whether I really am mean. How could I have responded that way? I’m the adult, after all.

  “And then all of a sudden I remember a frustrating phone conversation I’d had with my mother that morning and it clicks. I’m not angry with Zach. I’m angry with my mom. It was classic displacement.”

  Wendell smiles as if to say, Displacement’s a bitch, isn’t it? We all use defense mechanisms to deal with anxiety, frustration, or unacceptable impulses, but what’s fascinating about them is that we aren’t aware of them in the moment. A familiar example is denial—a smoker might cling to the belief that his shortness of breath is due to the hot weather and not his cigarettes. Another person might use rationalization (justifying something shameful)—saying after he’s rejected for a job that he never really wanted the job in the first place. In reaction formation, unacceptable feelings or impulses are expressed as their opposite, as when a person who dislikes her neighbor goes out of her way to befriend her or when an evangelical Christian man who’s attracted to men makes homophobic slurs.

  Some defense mechanisms are considered primitive and others mature. In the latter group is sublimation, when a person turns a potentially harmful impulse into something less harmful (a man with aggressive impulses takes up boxing) or even constructive (a person with the urge to cut people becomes a surgeon who saves lives).

  Displacement (shifting a feeling toward one person onto a safer alternative) is considered a neurotic defense, neither primitive nor mature. A person who was yelled at by her boss but could get fired if she yelled back might come home and yell at her dog. Or a woman who felt angry at her mother after a phone conversation might displace that anger onto her son.

  I tell Wendell that when I went to apologize to Zach after his shower, I discovered that he, too, was displacing his anger onto me—some kids at recess had kicked Zach and his friends off the basketball courts. When the yard teacher said that everyone could play, the boys wouldn’t pass the ball to Zach or his friends, and apparently some “mean” things were said. Zach was furious with those boys, but it was safer to be furious at his mom who wanted him to take a shower.

  “The irony of the story,” I continue, “is that we both launched our anger at the wrong target.”

  From time to time, Wendell and I have discussed the ways parental relationships evolve in midl
ife as people shift from blaming their parents to taking full responsibility for their lives. It’s what Wendell calls “the changing of the guard.” Whereas in their younger years, people often come to therapy to understand why their parents won’t act in ways they wish, later on, people come to figure out how to manage what is. And so my question about my mother has gone from “Why can’t she change?” to “Why can’t I?” How is it, I ask Wendell, that even in my forties, I can be affected so deeply by a phone call from my mother?

  I’m not asking for an actual answer. Wendell doesn’t need to tell me that people regress; that you might astonish yourself with how far you’ve come, only to slip back into your old roles.

  “It’s like the eggs,” I say, and he nods in recognition. I once told Wendell that Mike, my colleague, had said a while back that when we feel fragile, we’re like raw eggs—we crack open and splatter if dropped. But when we develop more resilience, we’re like hard-boiled eggs—we might get dinged up if dropped, but we won’t crack completely and spill all over the place. Over the years, I’ve gone from being a raw egg to a hard-boiled egg with my mother, but sometimes the raw egg in me emerges.

  I tell Wendell that later that night my mom apologized and we worked it out. Before that, though, I’d gotten caught up in our old routine—her wanting me to do something the way she wanted it done, me wanting to do it the way I wanted. And perhaps Zach perceives me the same way, trying to control him by getting him to do things the way I want too—all in the name of love, of wanting the best for our children. As much as I claim to be dramatically different from my mother, there are times when I’m eerily similar.

  Now, talking about my phone conversation, I don’t bother telling Wendell what my mom said or what I said because I know that’s not the point. He won’t position me as victim and my mom as aggressor. Years ago I might have deconstructed our pas de deux, trying to garner sympathy for my predicament: Can’t you see? Isn’t she difficult? But now I find his more clear-eyed approach comforting.