by Tina Welling
Erik looks up at Dr. Whitely. “She’s always done that—that’s not different. But this other stuff: appears to experience spiritual awakening, an obsession to create—that’s Suzannah right there. Panic attacks…I haven’t seen that. But she gets wound up, you know? Goes around smiling at nothing. This fellow said van Gogh had it, maybe Poe.” Erik turns his envelope. “Dostoevsky,” Erik says in his English lecture tone. “That’s the author of The Brothers Karamazov.” He lowers his envelope. “That’s all I could write down.”
“She smiles a lot and has orgasms now?” Dr. Whitely asks.
“Every time,” Erik says. He looks relieved to have this off his chest and into the hands of a professional.
“That right, Suzannah?” the therapist asks me.
“Yes.”
Dr. Whitely says, “So you’re happy, Suzannah? Love your beadwork? Feel enlivened?”
“All yeses,” I answer dully. I feel betrayed by Erik and glare at him. How am I going to avoid the medication Dr. Whitely will prescribe for me?
Dr. Whitely says, “Congratulations, Suzannah.”
I sit up straighter. I feel normal again, like the kids on the swing set just asked me to play. I smile. Erik leans back into his corner of the sofa, putting distance between us.
“Suzannah, let’s hear a little history about your marriage to Erik. Start from the beginning.” Dr. Whitely rests against his blue swivel chair and makes a steeple with his forefingers.
I tie on my tap shoes and begin, voice shaky from nervousness. I don’t want to blow the congratulations I just received, even if, in part, it was for having orgasms.
“Beckett was a two-year-old at my wedding to his father.” I clear my throat. “My marriage to Erik, I mean. He insisted I carry him in my arms to the altar.”
“Erik?” Dr. Whitely asks with a grin on his face.
He and I laugh. Erik is looking at the shelves of books across the room; he’s aching to pick up something to read, I can tell. I laugh again at the picture of me carrying Erik to the altar. Dr. Whitely might learn he is more perceptive than he thinks.
“First Erik hired you as a babysitter, right?” he asks.
“Right. When summer came and school let out, I stretched my duties to include housekeeping and cooking.” The laughing has relaxed me. “And my hours to include shared meals and rented movies. Erik taught at the University of Cincinnati. That fall I enrolled in classes there, scheduling them all for mornings when the neighbor, Mrs. Dobson, could cover for me. Even so I attended a good share of them toting Beckett along in a backpack.”
Where were my parents? I wonder now. They had begun to travel a lot, joined Clovernook Country Club and the Cincinnati Club, played bridge, and went to parties. Went to parties a lot. Good girl Suzannah maintained an A average and a steady babysitting job. What did they have to worry about? Yet all the while I was seducing a thirty-five-year-old man. My senior year in high school, I was voted prom queen and didn’t even have a date until Erik provided one of his teaching assistants as an escort.
“Did you resent shouldering the responsibility of Erik’s baby?”
“Oh, no. At the time I thought it was exciting. I juggled illicit sex with a professor and fishing baby toys out of the toilet.” I forget Erik is present. He feels so removed, way over there at the end of the sofa, staring across the room.
“I wrote term papers with Beckett teething on my pencils. Erik and I married during the semester break in my sophomore year. After that, it was just fishing baby toys out of the toilet.”
Without warning, a shocking thought strikes. Was Erik surprised I stayed around so long? What if he just married his babysitter intending she would get sick of the situation about the time his son entered full days at school? The idea pulls my jaw down.
“What is it, Suzannah?”
“Well, I don’t know. It’s just that…What if I forced this long-term marriage on Erik? What if my hanging on upset Erik worse than his first wife’s sudden departure? Maybe that’s what Erik never got over, what induced his depression—not Beckett’s mother, Delinda, abandoning him and their son as I’ve always thought—but me staying on for years and years. Cheery, earnest, determined to make that marriage work.” I have totally forgotten Erik is here. I look in shock at Dr. Whitely, as if he has the answer.
“First, no one other than Erik is responsible for his feelings. Not you, not Delena.”
“Delinda.” That’s another thing. I was never regarded as Beckett’s real mother. Always Delinda was expected back. I was just the caretaker day by day. Delinda was the real mother. Will we have time for this problem, too?
Dr. Whitely says, “Erik, just jump in here anytime. We’d like to hear from you.”
“That’s Suzannah. So busy being the good person, she never stops to find out if anybody wants her help or not.”
I sound like the joke about the Boy Scout who forces the elderly lady into being helped across the wrong street. A lump forms in my throat. All those years…all that effort. But, really, isn’t it just like me to inflict a good marriage on a reluctant husband? And I accuse Erik of shielding himself with obtuseness.
“So is that what you’re saying?” Dr. Whitely asks Erik. “You didn’t want her help?”
“I was glad to have it.”
“And now?”
Erik shrugs. “I guess so.”
Dr. Whitely scoots his swivel chair over to Erik’s end of the sofa. “Erik, I think I can help you understand what’s going on here. Shall we meet next week? Just you and me?”
Erik is no dummy. As soon as we leave the office, he pronounces Whitely a quack. I don’t agree but keep quiet. My emotions wrestle over whether to soar with relief for my own mental health or sink into worry about Erik’s. Most of all I want to flop on the car seat and sob for loving a man so indifferent to me and to life itself.
In the month since our appointment with Dr. Whitely, I have accrued a hefty debt to the therapist. Every day I meet an imagined appointment with him and discuss my concerns. I tell him about Erik’s flatness, and Dr. Whitely leans away from his blue cushioned chair, runs his fingers through his sparse silver crew cut, and informs me that Erik is indeed clinically depressed, that Erik should attend to this matter and not take it out on the marriage. He says my mother has a bigger problem than depression and to prepare for the long haul. Beckett must be set straight about my role in his life and honor me as his mother. My dad could use a hobby and a lot of exercise to balance his hyperactive mind. And I should stop living everybody else’s life and muster the courage to live my own.
Beads are a nice start, but, really, get a grip on it. Go to the movies, hike at Van Buren Lake, make new friends. I would, I tell Dr. Whitely, but Erik doesn’t want to. Do you hear yourself? Grow up. Forget about that guy. Stop blaming him for your own fears. It’s not his fault you haven’t lived your life. This weekend, take yourself out, Dr. Whitely says. It’s a dare.
If I paid eighty-five dollars an hour for each imagined appointment this month, I’d owe Dr. Whitely more than two thousand five hundred dollars. An imagination is a thrifty thing.
Saturday night I accept the dare. I go to the movies alone, then carry it one step further and stop at Dietche’s for a chocolate ice-cream soda afterward. I’d like to hide behind sunglasses or a book. I keep my eyes cast downward and scrape off the crystals forming on the vanilla ice-cream scoops with my spoon and eat them. Sipping through the straw, I brave a look around. Nobody is snickering or pointing fingers at the lone lady dating herself. I relax.
It’s a relief, enjoying my own good spirits, instead of parrying Erik’s disapproval for the movie or the people around us or the food we’re eating. I never realized what a great date I was. Next Saturday, dinner before the movie. If things work out, I’ll shop for a promise ring. I smile at my joke and make a little noise sipping the last of my soda.
As for Erik, I fear his one pleasure in our marriage—that of being the authority figure, the senior partner with
the most votes—has been undercut by Dr. Whitely’s suggestion of a follow-up meeting with him alone. Erik’s withholding of his affection used to mean—to both of us—that he was in charge of our togetherness. Now it appears to be understood—by both of us—that it means he is not entirely in charge of himself. Erik continues to refuse responsibility for this, so in his way, he is still in charge of our togetherness. Because I may not continue to live with him under those circumstances.
Though life has improved with my imaginary appointments with Dr. Whitely and my dress-up dates with myself, each morning as my consciousness awakens, I feel anger rise. By the time I’m brushing my teeth, I am livid. Sometimes the anger is directed at my mother for getting sick right when I was going to refuse to carry her end of our relationship any longer. Sometimes the anger is directed toward my father for succeeding at last in gaining control over my mother’s entire life. Sometimes the anger is directed toward Erik innocently yawning, as if the yawn symbolizes his entire aspect of life.
Most mornings I lean against the kitchen counter and shove toast past a throat constricted with the words I’ve failed to speak to any of them.
By the time I head for work this morning, travel mug of coffee on the dashboard, I remember when Mom greeted me one afternoon as I came home from the eighth grade with a question harder than any I’d been challenged with at school that day. “I’m thinking of leaving your father. Should I?” I wanted to say, “Are there any Oreos left?” I’d carried one goal on the bus ride home: Pour milk, dunk cookies. Talk of her decision went on for weeks. Maybe she’d find a job, move to a new town. Maybe she’d stay, have a baby. In the end she took golf lessons. She was never strong enough to leave him and save herself. Even I saw that.
Perhaps that’s what I did to save myself, left Dad for a premature marriage to Erik. And though my situation has assumed a different disguise, perhaps I have inherited my mother’s same choice: Give my life to my husband or leave him in order to save it.
five
Spring break finally arrives. Erik and I plan to stay home for Beckett, but at the last minute Beck’s ride falls through and he decides to hop a bus to visit Delinda in California. I try getting Erik to talk about a last-minute getaway.
“Let’s do something wonderful together.” I circle his waist with my arms.
Erik leans his upper body on me, inert as a drowning man weighing down his rescuer. Rain drums on the rooftop like bored fingers.
“Let’s go somewhere.”
Erik shrugs, begins to move away.
If he turns on the television or opens a newspaper, I may scream and never stop. I taste the scream in my mouth. A corroded metal flavor coats my tongue, as if I’ve eaten leftover tomatoes refrigerated in their can too long.
I grab his shoulder to halt him.
Abruptly, I slam my flattened palm against the hallway wall. “You’re off to work.” I slam the wall again. “You’re home.” I slam once more and cry, “I can’t tell the difference.”
Tears braid down my face. Sobs stretch my mouth open wide. The inner lining must be flashing red with distress signals, like a baby bird’s in a plea: Feed me, feed me.
Erik looks calm and reasonable, his eyes brown and glassy, his mouth fixed into a vague smile. I am staring at a mask. Behind the mask Erik is emotionally comatose. This is what scaring someone out of his wits looks like.
I press my lips and muffle my sounds. I pat Erik on the shoulder. “Well,” I begin, knowing instinctively that he needs the emergency first aid of ordinary words and simple actions, “why don’t you go pick up a pizza for dinner?” My voice is half sob. My chest convulses with the control I force on myself.
“What kind should I get?”
I can’t bear the weight of this question and leave for the bathroom without answering. When I hear his car pull away, my tears flow hot and thick. Knowledge travels through my body, rather than my head: I must leave now.
Is this true?
When Erik pulls into the drive, my blue bead case is already stashed in the car and I am lugging two plastic lawn bags full of clothes out the door. We pass on the sidewalk; he is carrying the pizza. He doesn’t ask what I’m carrying. For once it’s to my advantage that he has so little curiosity, because how am I going to explain? I just want out. I close the car door and return inside the house. Erik opens the pizza box on the coffee table.
The pizza smells funny. I lean over to take a look. I shoot my eyes to Erik.
“You got the Hawaiian?”
“Something different.”
“You ordered this pizza deliberately, knowing that I would hate it.”
Now I am ranting.
“So now you’re going to take a pineapple pizza personally?”
“No. You take it personally. Take the whole pineapple pizza personally. Because it is the reason that I am leaving you and not coming back.”
“You can pick the pineapple off.”
“You pick the pineapple off.” I sling my purse over my shoulder and grab a big suitcase loaded with books. Outside on the stoop, I nearly fall down the three concrete steps when the books all shift to one side and the suitcase heads off without me. I lurch my way down the sidewalk to the car, the suitcase banging against my leg. With the last of my breath, I say, “Pick the pineapple off and stick it—”
“Don’t get crude,” Erik says from the stoop in his most arrogant, reprimanding tone. “There are neighbors, you know.” His chin juts toward a man digging weeds next door.
Loudly, I say, “And stick the pineapple up your ass.”
CRY WOLF
APRIL 3-9
Ravens are laying their first eggs, elk are moving higher as snow recedes. Moose are congregating in the open to feed on bitterbrush twigs and leaves. Ground squirrels are emerging from hibernation to be preyed on by red-tailed hawks are building large stick nests. The earliest nesting canada geese are laying eggs.
For Everything There Is a Season
—Frank C. Craighead, Jr.
six
Some might say Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is no place to plant a woman independent for the first time in her late thirties. That as with thin-skinned tomatoes, the ruggedness of this mountain valley would nip any new growth. But it’s the one place I believe I can thrive.
Two hours ago, I signed papers making me the owner of this small cabin. I look at my new home and feel so thrilled I could gnaw on a porch pillar. I look closer; the base of the left pillar looks as though some woodland creature has beaten me to it. I give the post a gentle push. I don’t think the roof will cave in anytime soon, but the supports are sadly deteriorated. The front step sags on one side. I prop it with a flat-topped stone and stand back to admire my first home improvement.
A comedienne I once heard said she wanted a man in her life, just not in her house. I feel the opposite just now: I sure don’t want a man in my life, but I’d feel more secure if I could install one in my house, because propping boards with a handy stone is the outer limit of my renovating skills. As I circle my small cabin, hands caressing the old stained logs, I realize more will be demanded of me.
I am a woman alone. I should buy health insurance, begin a pension plan, a savings account, prepare for the day the roof needs replacing or even a few of those shingles. But if I hurry back into town, I can get to Mountain House before they close. I know how to shop, my reasoning goes, and if I begin with a success there, perhaps others will follow.
I climb back into my Subaru and look at my new home framed by the windshield. Part of my plan is to fill my life so full that its demands will guide me through this transition, but I may have taken on too much. The logs need rechinking, the yard is overgrown with sagebrush, and the junk inside that old shed might be propping up the shed’s walls.
I turn the ignition and shift into reverse. As if I’m a puppet whose strings are too short, my movements are stiff and jerky. I feel slightly estranged from myself. In less than a week, I’ve become single, jobless, a Westerner. Yet a
subdued excitement spins up my spine at these same thoughts. This valley, these mountains choke me with their beauty. I’ve become a resident of paradise. I’m not the only happy person in my vicinity. People smile here when it isn’t even payday.
I twist my head around and back out of my dirt drive. I can’t escape the fact that I’m also a woman who’s turned away from the role of caring for her aging parents—not that they would have allowed that caring, but it’s the tradition for unmarried daughters. Perhaps I should have moved to Florida. I shift into drive, step on the gas. Why do I befriend misery so easily and suspect happiness? Like a Visa card credit limit, I have inflicted a happiness limit on myself—this much and no more.
Suddenly an immense dark creature steps from the trees, head and foreleg reaching out first. I brake, and my wheels slide on gravel. As if she were birthed from the willows, she stands awkwardly at the end of the narrow road, all legs and long, comical face. I meet my first neighbor, and it’s a moose. We stare at each other in greeting. A brimming sense of vitality and pleasure in my aliveness pushes at my edges.
In town I purchase a mattress and down comforter at full price, to be delivered in three days. My budget gasps from shock, and I head for the Pamida Discount Store. There, I find an unfinished jelly cupboard for ninety-nine dollars. This is where I belong. A broom, a bucket, mop, and sponges. I buy an oil lamp and a dozen first-of-the-season geranium plants for a dollar each. Tomorrow, Saturday, I’ll hit the yard sales.
I’ve saved a special treat for myself and now I collect. I look for a parking spot around the town square and go to the Valley Bookstore. I didn’t want to contact Tessa without having a place to live, didn’t want her to feel responsible for me as if I were some stray cat.
When I push through the store’s door she spots me. “Hey, Ohio.” She sets a stack of books on the counter and comes around to greet me.