So Much for My Happy Ending

by Kyra Davis

  “Are you kidding me?” Allie’s eyes widened in horror. “Who does that?”

  “Wait a minute.” Caleb absently tapped his finger against his glass. “Why does this sound familiar to me?”

  I sighed. “You’re thinking of last season’s story line on One Life to Live. Sam had led everyone to believe he was an only child from this upper-crust, pedigree family when he was really the son of some mafia guy. He had a brother, a sister—you name it, he had it.”

  Caleb snapped his fingers in recognition. “That’s it! Wait, Tad isn’t mafia, is he? Because that would be good grounds for divorce, too.”

  “No, he’s not mafia. He’s just crazy.”

  Allie smiled. “Aren’t we all?”

  “Well, if I wasn’t before I’m definitely getting there now,” I retorted. “But this is different. He says he feels like there’s a dark force inside him that’s struggling to get out. He’s going to see a psychiatrist and hopefully the shrink will be able to tell us something, but I’ll bet the family gene pool he’s bipolar.”

  Both Allie and Caleb were frozen in place, clutching their drinks as they struggled to come up with a response.

  Their silence forced me to contemplate what I had just said. “Oh, God,” I whispered. “Oh, God, how am I going to handle this?” I folded my arms onto the table and let my head fall on top of them. Obviously, crying into my champagne was not the way to go.

  I felt Caleb’s hand pet my hair. “Okay, why don’t you start from the tippy-top.”

  “Yeah,” Allie added, “because I am completely lost.”

  I told them everything. Except of course for the scene in the kitchen in which he grabbed me and I “fell” to the ground.

  “What do I do?” I asked when I had finished my account. “What’s the right thing to do?”

  Caleb and Allie both quickly looked away. They didn’t have any answers. The things I was describing happened to guests on The Ricki Lake Show all the time but they didn’t happened to people like us. We were too normal. Or at least I used to think we were.

  Caleb pulled himself together first. “You’re doing the right thing,” he said with an assurance that I knew he didn’t feel. “You’re going to call a psychiatrist tomorrow and you’re going to be supportive of him.” He paused as if to weigh his own words. “And then…then you’re going to apply to that summer language program at Cal.”

  “Are you crazy?” I let out a humorless laugh. “I can’t go to Cal now. I can’t afford it.”

  Caleb held my gaze for a full thirty seconds before saying, “My treat.”

  I gasped, then looked at Allie to see if she had heard what I had. She straightened up in her chair and quickly finished off her glass of Cristal. “I’ll chip in, too.”

  Caleb held up his hand in protest. “No, no, this one’s on me,” he said. “No offense, ladies, but I make a lot more than both of you and I have a lot more saved.”

  “Caleb, that’s so sweet,” I said, fresh tears springing to my eyes. “But you know I can’t accept. It’s too much.”

  “You have a birthday coming up, right? Consider it an early birthday gift.”

  “Um, the tuition for that summer session is three thousand dollars.”

  “Okay, so consider it an early Hanukkah gift. What would that come out to…three hundred and seventy-five dollars for each of the eight nights.”

  Allie shook her head in disbelief. “That beats the hell out of chocolate gelt.”

  I smiled dismissively and split the rest of the champagne between our glasses. “I really appreciate the offer, Caleb, but it really doesn’t make sense for me to enroll right now. I don’t know what’s going on with my finances or my marriage—any aspect of my life. So for me to invest a lot of your money into a language program on the off chance that I’m going to be able to pursue a doctorate any time within the next decade is just irresponsible and stupid.”

  Caleb rolled his eyes. “Oh, God forbid we do anything that could be perceived as irresponsible or stupid. We should always take the safe route, right, April?” He leaned over the table so that it was difficult for me to avoid his eyes. “We should always take the road more traveled. Isn’t that right? We should marry the nice guy with a good income, take the job that offers us a steady income, even though we hate it, and we should always give up our dreams for the sake of practicality. After all, that is the philosophy that got you where you are today, right?”

  My face heated up and I tightened my grip around my glass stem. “I don’t want to throw your money away,” I whispered.

  “And I don’t want you to throw your life away. When I get home I’m going online to get you an application. You’re going to Berkeley this summer and that’s final.”

  When I got home that night I felt an odd sense of relief. Caleb had given one aspect of my life some unexpected clarity—attaining a Ph.D. I would still have to find a part-time job, but that was doable. I’d need to learn French…but of all the things I had on my plate that one seemed the easiest to accomplish.

  The rest of my life was another story. The next morning after Tad went to work I called Kaiser Medical Center and asked to be connected to the psychiatric department. The earliest appointment I was able to schedule was three weeks away. And those three weeks turned into some of the most difficult of my life. I didn’t know what to say to Tad so I avoided saying anything at all. Every morning when he woke up to go to work I pretended to be sleeping late. Then I would spend my days filling out job applications and contacting temp agencies. Then I would pray that Tad would work into the evening hours, which he almost always did. When we did speak it was strained. I would ask him how his day went. It was always fine. He never gave me any details, and I was too afraid to ask for any. Tad was falling asleep in front of the television with increasing frequency and when that happened he almost never made it to the bed, which was a major relief. Why would I want to share my bed with a stranger?

  My mother called a few times. She never caught me at home and I never listened to her messages. I knew I needed to talk to her, but I couldn’t deal with her drama just then. I could barely deal with my own.

  The day I drove Tad to his appointment was beyond awful. I sat behind the wheel of the Z3 that I had yet to sell despite the ad I placed in the paper. Tad sat beside me staring glumly into space.

  I glanced over at him. He looked so forlorn. So totally despondent. I reached out and gave his knee an awkward pat. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know, this is the first step to making everything better.”

  Tad didn’t say anything. I pressed my lips together and turned on the radio.

  We drove in silence as Beck explained to the world that he was a loser who needed to be killed. The song faded out as we approached Kaiser.

  It seemed that the psychiatric department was located in the most remote corner of the building, which would have worked in favor of those patients who wished to be discreet, provided they knew where they were going. Tad and I were not so well-informed. Instead, we were forced to expose the reason for our visit to a handful of strangers as we repeatedly asked directions.

  Finally, we found the right lobby and I announced our presence one more time to the receptionist.

  The woman behind the desk smiled warmly at me. “Has he been here before?”

  I glanced nervously at Tad. He was standing right next to me. “No, um, this is our first time.”

  “How about other Kaiser departments? Has he been to this facility before for any reason?”

  Tad was glaring at her now but the woman didn’t seem to notice. I shifted my weight from foot to foot and tried to wait for Tad to answer the question for himself, but the pause went on for too long and I couldn’t stop myself from answering. “No, he’s never—” I stopped myself remembering all the things that I had not known until recently. I looked up at him questioningly. “Have you been here before?”

  “No.”

  The woman seemed
not to hear him and was still watching me with an expectant smile while she waited for me to repeat his answer.

  God, this was uncomfortable.

  She gave me the forms, I handed them to him, he filled them out. She asked me for his card, he gave it to me, I gave it to her and so on. It was absolutely horrible. He was a psychiatric patient, not a child. I would complain. Or at least I’d add it to my three-page list of customer-complaint letters that I planned to write sometime in the next few years.

  Eventually, we sat down in the sparsely populated institutional-looking waiting room. I took note of the other individuals in the room. There was a woman in the far corner who was about a hundred-plus pounds overweight. She had a magazine in her hand, but it kept falling into what might be considered her lap as she sporadically dozed off. Across from us was a middle-aged man with thinning hair who was biting his fingernails and looking around the room anxiously.

  “I don’t belong here,” I heard Tad whisper. I didn’t answer for fear I might be forced to agree with him. But if he didn’t belong here where did he belong? Where did the people that were marginally crazy get help? Were there support groups for that?

  I sighed and studied the gray carpeting under my feet. This had to be the right place. I had spent a good fifteen minutes on the phone with the psychiatrist who would be seeing him. It took some doing to arrange that phone conversation, but I thought that it was important the man who would be analyzing Tad talk to me first, particularly since Tad had told me that he didn’t want me in the room during the appointment. If the psychiatrist just talked to Tad and Tad didn’t feel like telling the whole truth, where would that leave us? The doctor would believe him (everyone believed Tad when they first met him) and we would be back to square one. I couldn’t go back to square one. At least this way the psychiatrist would be able to ask him about specific events and that would make evasion difficult. Of course, Tad could choose to out and out lie, in which case we were screwed.

  “Tad Showers?” A man called his name from the doorway. Tad stood up and the man made eye contact with him and nodded in greeting. He looked friendly and kind. That was good; the receptionist hadn’t been representative of the rest of the staff. Tad looked so scared. I smiled at him for the first time in ages. I didn’t want him to be scared. I just wanted us both to be okay.

  He gave me a curt nod and then disappeared through a swinging door.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The car ride home from the appointment was excruciating. I wanted to ask so many questions, but it felt wrong to immediately begin an interrogation. For some bizarre reason I had assumed that Tad would volunteer some information on his own. But that was a stupid assumption. If nothing else, the experiences of the last few months should have taught me that Tad didn’t volunteer unpleasant information.

  I sighed as I put the stick in Neutral at a red light. I eyed Tad without turning my head in his direction. He was staring fixedly at the road in front of us. I had to ask. “Tad, what did the doctor say?”

  “He thinks I’m bipolar.”

  My heart sunk. It shouldn’t have—we had predicted the diagnosis—but to hear that a licensed professional of the medical community agreed with our diagnosis scared the shit out of me. If you’re scared, think of how Tad must be feeling right now. It was probably the most empathetic comment my little voice had ever made. The light changed and I pushed the car into gear. “So now what?” My voice was barely above a whisper.

  Tad shook his head. “He wants to put me on medication.”

  I glanced at him before quickly returning my eyes to the road. By his tone one would have thought the doctor had recommended he take a daily swim in a pool full of leeches. “Um, isn’t that a good thing? I mean, if you can fix it with a pill…”

  “I don’t want to take pills. I don’t need to be drugged up, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to take lithium.”

  My eyes widened. “Did he say you needed to be on lithium? Did you ask about Lamictal?”

  “He said he wanted to try Depekote first.”

  “Oh…” I slowed to allow a car to change lanes in front of me. “Do you have anything against Depekote?”

  From the corner of my eye I could see the tightening of his jaw. “I don’t need meds.”

  That was it. With a jerk of the wheel I made a frighteningly sharp turn onto a side street and screeched to a stop in front of a fire hydrant. I took off my seat belt so that I could better angle my body in his direction. “Listen, I know you’re sick. You have a chemical imbalance that affects your behavior. I can accept that. I can even forgive you for all the shit that you’ve pulled up to this point, but only if you’re willing to try to get better. So here’s your last chance. Come clean with me about all the lies that you’ve told me and follow your doctor’s orders, or get out of my life.”

  “Don’t talk to me like that!”

  I wanted to smack him, but then I saw his eyes moistening. I turned away and stared out the window as the cars rushed by us. What was wrong with me? Had I really thought that yelling at a man who had just been diagnosed with a mental illness was going to be helpful? My mind went back to my miscarriage. Tad had been there for me when I needed him and I wanted to be there for him now. But he had to meet me halfway.

  “I’m…sorry,” I said. “I don’t mean to be bitchy. But I need you to understand that I’m at the end of my rope.” I turned back to him and tried to gauge the effect my words were having on him. “Try the medication. If it’s awful, we’ll try something else. Promise you’ll at least try it.”

  Tad nodded. “I’ll try it.”

  “One more thing…” My voice wavered, my next request could result in confessions that I didn’t really want to hear. “I meant it when I said you needed to come clean. Are there more secrets?”

  Tad shook his head but did not meet my eyes.

  “Are you sure? Right now I’m offering you a ‘get out of jail free’ card. Tell me what you’ve kept from me, lied about or whatever, and I will forgive you. We’ll work through it. But, Tad, if I find out later on my own, things will get ugly.”

  He turned toward me and his eyes met mine. “No more secrets. I’m not going to do anything that could cost me you.”

  I felt my shoulders relax. I hadn’t even realized that I had been holding them in an elevated position. I refastened my seat belt and pulled back onto the street. I could breathe now. Tad loved me; he was going to get help for his illness. Everything was going to be okay.

  But that horrible little voice inside of me had a different take on the situation. All Tad did was tell you what you wanted to hear.

  I tried to cuddle up with Tad and watch The Wedding Singer, which was playing on Comedy Central. It felt like a normal-couple kind of thing to do, but I hated it. Not the movie, but the feeling of being close to Tad. He was busy laughing along with Adam and Drew and he threw me an occasional loving look. But there was something forced about his laugh, and something desperate about his looks of love. Nothing was right, which was why I got panicky when he changed position and started sucking on my neck.

  I felt his teeth gently graze my ear as his hands began to explore the rest of me. I knew all his moves and had given most of them Olympic 6.0 scores or at the very least 5.6’s. But that night the only desire he was drawing out of me was the desire to flee to my room and barricade the door…again.

  Tad’s hand moved under my shirt and over my bra. I sucked in a sharp breath. Okay, I could do this. He was my husband, I was his wife, we were supposed to want each other. I could do this.

  I closed my eyes and tried to enjoy the sensation as he gently pinched my nipple.

  The image of Jeremiah popped into my head. He was onstage, sweaty, sexy, but there was no audience…only me. It was his hands I felt against my breast, it was his mouth on my neck, his erection pressing against my upper thigh….

  “I can’t do this.” I pushed Tad away and jumped off the couch.

  The shock on Tad’s face looked alm
ost comical. Almost.

  “I…I don’t understand,” he stammered.

  “Today was just…draining. Would it be okay if we just held each other tonight?”

  “But…” Tad was sitting up now. I noticed that the bulge in his pants had deflated. “You were enjoying yourself, I could tell.”

  What was I supposed to say? Sorry, hon, but the only way I can deal with your touching me is if I pretend I’m with your old workout buddy, Jeremiah. I swallowed hard. “It’s not that I wasn’t enjoying myself, I’m just so tired and—”

  The doorbell rang and I nearly fell to my knees and thanked the Lord for the last-minute reprieve.

  Tad glanced at the wall clock before getting up and straightening his shirt. “Nine o’clock, kind of late for Jehovah’s Witnesses, isn’t it?”

  I smiled and shrugged. Maybe it was a band of robbers and they were going to take everything, including the bed and the couch! Then I wouldn’t have to have sex with my husband for weeks!

  I waited in the living room as Tad went to see who the late-night caller was.

  “Sean,” I heard him say, “I thought you were in San Diego.”

  “I just got back tonight. What’s this shit I hear about there not being enough money to pay the partners this month?”

  A chill crept up my spine. I had spoken to Sean on several occasions but I had never heard him use this tone before, and I had a horrible feeling that his words were indicative of another Tad-made disaster.

  “Well, as I explained to Eric, the funds are a little tight this month with—”

  “Last month we were rolling in it and this month things are so tight that I don’t get to bring home a paycheck? What happened to the money, Tad?”

  “It’s not my fault that you spent half the company’s expense fund on wining and dining the guys at UMW,” Tad snarled. “They’re not even a big account and you spent—”

  “This isn’t about UMW, and you know it. This is about the mismanagement of funds, Tad.”