by Cronk, LN
I nodded.
“Why then?” he asked. “Why do you think you first experienced feelings of love for her then?”
I thought about how I’d felt when I’d been sitting there next to her on that stone wall.
“I’m not sure,” I said.
“Was that the first time you cared about her?”
“I guess so.”
“How did you feel about her before then?”
“Ummm . . . ambivalent?” I shrugged. “Either that or annoyed.”
He smiled. “Annoyed?”
“You know,” I said, shrugging again. “I thought she was one of those shallow, self-absorbed girls who always worried about their hair and makeup and stuff.”
“So hearing her talk to you about losing her brother and her dad made her seem more worthy of being someone you could care about?”
“Maybe,” I said, “but I think I really liked the fact that she was telling me something that she’d never told anyone else before. I think I liked the fact that she trusted me.”
“And you broke up when you found out that she hadn’t trusted you enough to tell you that she thought she might be pregnant?”
I nodded at him.
“How were things after you got back together?”
“Great,” I said. “I was never happier.”
“Until when?”
“Until she moved up here.”
“Did you two fight about it?”
“No,” I said. “I told her that it was fine. I supported her.”
“Was that really how you felt about it?”
“No,” I said. “Not really.”
“Then why didn’t you tell her how you really felt?”
“Because I was trying to be supportive!”
“You can support someone and still be honest with them about how you’re feeling,” he pointed out.
“So I was supposed to tell her I didn’t want her to go but that I’d support her no matter what?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe she felt like you didn’t really care if she went.”
“She knew I cared,” I said. “She knew how much I loved her.”
“When did you test positive for Huntington’s?” Dr. Oransky asked.
“February I guess,” I said, shrugging.
“Right after Charlotte moved here.”
“Yeah,” I nodded.
“About the same time the two of you started drifting apart?”
“Yeah,” I said slowly, thinking about it. “It was right after I found out that she started acting different.”
“Charlotte has some pretty elaborate methods of protecting herself from being hurt,” he said. “Maybe the reason she started acting differently is because she knew you were keeping something from her. She just didn’t have a clue what.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No way. I didn’t act any different after I found out. There’s no way she knew I was keeping something from her.”
He smiled.
“Ever wonder how she happened to get those pictures of you and Rhiannon?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, slowly. “I’ve always wondered about that.”
“Because she called you one day to see if you wanted to have lunch with her and you told her you were at the gym.”
I looked at him and didn’t say anything.
“Were you really at the gym?”
“No,” I said quietly.
“Were you with Rhiannon?”
“I was having lunch with her,” I nodded.
“Charlotte told me she knew you were lying,” he said. “She said she could hear it in your voice.”
I stared at him.
“So she looked around and found your gym bag was still at the apartment and then she pulled up the GPS coordinates on your phone or the car or something and saw where you really were. She had someone follow you the next day.”
I stared at him some more.
“So I think that it’s very possible that after you were tested she sensed that you were keeping something from her. You even went and got a vasectomy without talking to her about it first. She probably feared the worst and started putting up protective barriers.”
“So that’s why she started something up with Elias?” I asked hotly. “She thought I was having an affair or something and she wanted to hurt me before I had the chance to hurt her?”
“I can’t talk to you about Elias,” Dr. Oransky said.
“Why not? You said she gave you permission to talk to me about everything!”
“Not Elias,” he said, shaking his head. “She specifically said I was not allowed to tell you anything she tells me about Elias.”
“I don’t know how you think Charlotte and I are going to be able to work things out if we don’t talk about Elias!” I cried, looking at him in disbelief. “I knew as soon as I met him that something was up between the two of them and now they’re living together! How are we supposed to work things out if we don’t talk about that!?”
“I don’t know,” he responded evenly, “how do you think you and Charlotte are going to be able to work things out if you don’t tell her that you tested positive for Huntington’s?”
I had figured, that by the third week of counseling, that Dr. Oransky would probably want to start seeing the two of us together . . . but he didn’t.
“Not yet,” he said when I asked him about it. “I think both of you have got a lot of individual stuff to work out first.”
“But we only have ’til Thanksgiving,” I worried.
“Trust me,” he answered. “The two of you aren’t ready to be in the same room yet.”
“Charlotte shared something very interesting with me at our last session,” Dr. Oransky said.
“What’s that?”
“Well,” he said, “I’ve been trying to get both of you to remember why you fell in love with each other so you can begin to experience those same feelings again . . .”
I nodded at him.
“And do you know what she told me?”
I shook my head.
“She told me that she believed God wanted you two to be together.”
“She did?”
“Uh-huh,” he replied. “She said that when she was younger, she believed that God told her the two of you were going to get married.”
“She thought that God told her we were going to get married?” I repeated.
He nodded.
“And so,” I said slowly, “she responded to that by sleeping with every guy she ever dated and then finally getting pregnant?”
He was quiet.
“Why would she do that?” I asked, angrily. “If she thought that the two of us were supposed to get married, why would she do that to me?”
Dr. Oransky studied me for a moment.
“I don’t think she was doing it to you,” he answered.
I looked at him carefully.
“She was doing it to God?” I finally asked.
“I think that’s the real heart of the matter,” he said quietly.
Charlotte’s relationship with God.
“Do you have any idea,” he went on, “how closely tied up Charlotte’s feelings about you and about God are?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that when Charlotte was a little girl, she lost her father and her brother. It’s natural for anyone to wonder why God would do something like that, but when it happens to someone at that age . . .
“A huge part of the reason that Charlotte has such low self-esteem is because ever since she was a little girl she’s been operating under the delusion that God doesn’t love her or can’t love her or won’t love her – however you want to look at it. If she’s felt unworthy of everyone else’s love, it’s nothing compared to how she feels about God.
“When you came along,” Dr. Oransky said, “she finally started allowing herself to believe that maybe she wasn’t worthless after all. If someone like you could see the value in her . . . then maybe there was s
omething worthwhile in her after all.”
“Someone like me?”
“In her eyes you were the perfect example of the kind of guy she would never be worthy of. She viewed you as honorable and moral and compassionate and full of integrity – the type of person she was sure would never be interested in her.”
Virtuous.
“But, lo and behold,” he went on, “she flirted with you and you took the bait. She couldn’t believe it. She kept waiting for you to come to your senses and break it off with her, but you never did. It took a long time for her to actually get to the point where she believed that you really loved her and that you weren’t going to just cast her aside after a certain amount of time.
“And,” he went on, “at some point, I believe, she almost began equating you with God.”
“What do you mean?” I asked again.
“When she believes that you love her, she believes that God loves her,” he said simply.
I didn’t say anything and he went on.
“And when she feels that you’ve abandoned her or that you don’t love her . . .”
He didn’t finish his sentence.
“She shouldn’t feel that way,” I protested.
“Of course she shouldn’t.”
“Charlotte needs to develop a relationship with God that doesn’t have anything to do with me!” I cried. “She needs to know that He loves her and cares for her no matter what I do!”
“I know,” Dr. Oransky nodded. “But I think there’s a good chance that God’s going to bring her to that point through you.”
“Through me?”
“Yes,” he said. “I don’t think Charlotte’s going to feel that God loves her until she feels that you love her.”
He paused for a moment.
“And I don’t think she’s going to feel that you love her . . .” he finally said, looking at me carefully, “until you love her.”
~ ~ ~
I HAD ALREADY been praying for that . . . that I would be able to love Charlotte again . . . to really love her. Dr. Oransky said I needed to have faith that it would happen and so I did the best that I could. I must have been making some progress (and I guess that Charlotte must have been too), because finally he told me that the two of us were ready to meet together.
“I think you should know that I don’t open my sessions with Charlotte by praying with her,” he said.
“You don’t?”
“Uh-huh,” he said, shaking his head. “I asked her if she wanted to at our first meeting and she was very resistant to the whole idea.”
I rolled my eyes.
“It’s very important that she’s comfortable at our meetings.”
“So you don’t pray,” I said, “just because it makes Charlotte uncomfortable.”
“I didn’t say that I don’t pray . . . I just said that I don’t pray out loud with her.”
“Isn’t that hypocritical?” I asked him.
“I don’t think so,” he said, shaking his head. “We’re not supposed to do anything that causes someone to stumble and if I insist on praying with Charlotte, it’s just going to drive her away.”
“I guess.”
“And you’re going to have to be careful, too,” he said.
I looked at him.
“I know you want God to be at the center of your marriage,” he said, “but that’s the last thing she needs to be hearing from you at this point. She’s about as far away from God right now as she’s ever been in her entire life. She needs to know that it doesn’t matter to you.”
“But it does matter!”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Your love for her can’t be conditional.”
I didn’t say anything.
“She might spend the next fifty or sixty years wrestling with God,” he went on. “Your job is to stay by her side and pray for her and show her Christ’s love. That’s it. Period.”
He looked at me intently.
“Can you do that?” he asked.
I nodded.
“You do your job,” he said, “and God’ll take care of the rest.”
~ ~ ~
AFTER OUR FIRST meeting got underway, Dr. Oransky invited Charlotte to begin.
She didn’t waste any time.
“I want to know exactly how it happened,” she said. “I want to know why you kissed her.”
Oh, boy.
“Ummm, okay,” I said, glancing at Dr. Oransky. He nodded at me reassuringly. “Well, I ran into her at the library – just total coincidence. We started talking and then . . .”
“Then what?”
“Then I went back to the library because I wanted to see her again.”
“And?”
“And you already know everything, Charlotte!” I told her. “I met her there a few times, one thing led to another and I kissed her one time and that’s it! End of story.”
“Why did you kiss her?” Charlotte asked.
“I don’t know!” I said, exasperated.
“Did you want to sleep with her?”
“No! I wasn’t thinking about anything like that at all!”
“Then why did you kiss her?”
I glanced at Dr. Oransky for help.
“Why don’t you go back a little further?” he suggested. “Before you ran into Rhiannon at the library?”
“Fine,” I agreed, but I wasn’t going back as far as he had in mind.
“Things started going downhill after you left State,” I told her. “I missed you a lot and I . . . I was really lonely. I didn’t have anyone to talk to. And then – every weekend – I was driving up to see you and I wasn’t going to church or Sunday school or the Sunday evening program . . .”
“And that was all my fault,” she said, crossing her arms.
“What? No! That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not trying to blame you for anything. You asked me what happened and I’m just trying to tell you.”
“So why don’t you let him explain?” Dr. Oransky suggested gently.
“Fine,” Charlotte muttered. She kept her arms crossed.
“So, anyway,” I went on, “for whatever reason, I started drifting further and further away from God. I didn’t realize it was happening at the time, but it was. And my relationship with God used to be the most important thing in my life.”
Dr. Oransky had said that it would be okay if I talked about my relationship with God, but that I had to leave Charlotte out of it completely.
“And then I had to observe this patient who had Huntington’s,” I told her. “It was bad. Really bad. Seeing him bothered me a lot.”
“You didn’t tell me that,” she said quietly.
“No,” I agreed. “I didn’t. I should have, but I didn’t.”
“Keep going,” she said.
“So, I was upset about that and I’d been letting myself drift away from God, and then when I got up here you already had all these friends and you were busy all the time–”
She opened her mouth and started to say something, but I held my hand up to stop her.
“I’m NOT saying it’s your fault,” I reminded her. “I’m just telling you what happened.”
She snapped her mouth shut and kept listening.
“By the time Rhiannon and I ran into each other in the library that day, I was bored. I was lonely. I was unhappy. I was worried.”
“You should have talked to me about it,” Charlotte said.
“Yes,” I agreed. “I should have, but instead . . .”
“What?”
“I talked to Rhiannon.”
Charlotte’s eyes flashed in anger, but I went on.
“And it felt really good to talk to somebody about everything and she prayed with me and that felt even better.”
I glanced at Dr. Oransky and he nodded for me to keep talking.
“Talking with her and praying with her felt so good that I made sure I ran into her again. And before long I was really looking forward to seeing her and . . .”
&n
bsp; “And?”
“And I was thinking about her more than I should have.”
“You fell in love with her,” Charlotte stated.
“No,” I said, emphatically.
She looked at me skeptically.
“You kissed her,” she reminded me.
“Yes,” I nodded, “but I didn’t fall in love with her. I loved that I wasn’t feeling lonely or sad when I was around her, but I didn’t love her.”
She still didn’t look convinced.
“But,” I finally admitted, “at the time . . . I didn’t really know what I was feeling.”
“So you thought you loved her,” Charlotte accused angrily. “That’s a whole lot better. You only thought you loved her.”
“I wasn’t doing a whole lot of thinking,” I said, trying not to sound angry, too. “I was reacting and I made some poor decisions and I made a mistake and it won’t happen again.”
“And how do I know that?”
“Because David’s holding me accountable every day,” I told her.
She looked taken aback.
“David?” she asked quietly.
“Yes,” I nodded. “I need someone to talk with and I need to know that someone’s praying for me, but I never should have made Rhiannon that person. I should have made you that person and one day I’d like for it to be you, but right now it’s Dave. I call him every day and I tell him what’s going on and if I don’t call him he calls me. Every day he makes sure I’m doing what I need to be doing . . . and I haven’t felt like kissing him yet.”
I gave her a little smile. She didn’t bother returning it.
“Anyway,” I said. “That’s what happened. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did. Now that I know why it happened I know how to make sure nothing like that ever happens again.”
“Do you have anything to say to Jordan?” Dr. Oransky asked Charlotte after she’d had a moment to think about what I’d said.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. I couldn’t read anything on her face.
“Is it my turn now?” I asked Dr. Oransky.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I just told her everything that happened on my end. Now I want to ask her something.”