“Oh,” Kylie said, “but what if I can’t? What if I have a reaction?”
Dr. Indigo’s attention returned to me and Matt. “This is not without risks. I know you’re aware of what those are.”
My mind flashed to the ballpark, to Kylie lying in my arms, face swollen and lips blue.
“We’re extremely careful,” Dr. Indigo continued, looking at me directly. “We monitor for a reaction for hours, in office. You will continue the therapy at home, but I will pay close attention, and Kylie will continue to see me for complementary therapies.”
“Like what?” Matt asked.
“Guided meditation, acupuncture, hypnosis, aromatherapy. I believe they help boost success rates.”
I could almost feel Matt’s skepticism flood the room when he responded, “And what is the success rate?”
“It’s variable, but generally very high,” Dr. Indigo said. “I can give you some literature.”
“I don’t know if I’m satisfied with that answer.” Matt crossed his arms over his chest. “So there is no guarantee, but there is a risk of a reaction, perhaps severe.”
“That is true,” Dr. Indigo agreed. “But I think you need to look at the bigger picture. Kylie would be undergoing therapy that hundreds of families are eager to begin. Given Kylie’s other autoimmune issues, I think her case will be an important part of my research.”
Matt smirked. “So, it’s important to you.”
“What about the DNA test?” I asked. “Did it tell you anything important?”
“Kylie is susceptible to a number of autoimmune disorders,” she said. “That is very clear.”
Matt and I shared a guilty glance. We’d passed along these sucky genes to our daughter.
“Just because she’s susceptible doesn’t mean she’s destined to suffer from them,” Dr. Indigo explained. “Lifestyle always comes into play. Also, the more knowledge we have, the earlier the diagnosis, and the better and more effective the treatment.
“I have a theory,” she continued, “however unproven. If we can get Kylie’s immune system to address one problem properly with the desensitization therapy, there’s a chance she might overcome some of the other issues, or her long-term prognosis can be improved. It’s just a theory, but if the end result is just that she will not have an anaphylactic reaction to peanuts, I’d consider that a win. A big win.”
“She’s a guinea pig,” Matt said. “This isn’t based on science.”
“Exposure theory is clearly based on science,” Dr. Indigo countered, though she seemed unperturbed by Matt’s skepticism. “My other theories are just that, but I operate a bit outside the norm. Ally knew that when she walked in the door.”
“It’s a risk,” Matt repeated. “She could have a serious reaction.”
“I’m very careful,” Dr. Indigo assured him. “There is a process.”
“It’s expensive,” Matt pushed.
“I want to do this,” Kylie interjected. “I want to calm the dog.”
“What dog are you talking about?” Matt said. “We don’t even have a dog.”
“I’ll explain later,” I told him, wanting to address what I felt were more important issues. “Could we start right away? Could we get . . . financial aid?”
“Yes to the first, no to the second,” Dr. Indigo said, but she did look apologetic. “Perhaps a slight discount could be worked out, but it’s simply not our policy.”
“You said we might get a Groupon,” Kylie said.
“I did,” Dr. Indigo responded. “But even if I created one, I need you to understand this is a significant financial investment.”
“We need to talk about this,” Matt said, looking at me. “Privately. As a family.”
I nodded, not wanting to correct him. Were we? A family?
“Imagine if Kylie could go into a restaurant and order without scouring the menu,” Dr. Indigo said. “Playdates, school functions, summer camp—so many of the day-to-day activities you’ve had to monitor with a vigilance most people can’t imagine. With this therapy, it’s possible you could live without constant fear.”
I could barely imagine it. The fear was too great, too all encompassing. “If Kylie could eat without worrying about every bite? Now, that would be something.”
“I need a fee schedule,” Matt said. “And a breakdown of costs.”
“We can supply that,” Dr. Indigo said. “But when you look at it, think about this, and what it would mean for your daughter if we’re successful. It could change all of your lives. Permanently.”
There was no guided meditation after our discussion. Instead, Dr. Indigo took Kylie into a closet-like space for acupuncture. The thought of getting needles stuck into random body parts would freak out most ten-year-olds, but Kylie simply shrugged when Dr. Indigo suggested it, and asked if she could listen to music during the process.
“Of course,” Dr. Indigo said. “As long as it’s my music.”
“Great,” Kylie said, but she dutifully followed the doctor into the treatment room.
Which left Matt and me sitting next to each other in the silent office.
“Kylie likes her,” Matt said, sounding surprised. “Does the woman ever crack a joke?”
“Maybe once. But it was about hemp seeds and omega-3 fatty acids.”
“Must have been hilarious.”
“Yeah, I nearly peed my pants.”
I relaxed a little. Banter was good. Banter meant Matt was relaxed and possibly open to Dr. Indigo’s program.
I turned slightly, facing him. It was strange to see this new, put together Matt. He wore khakis again, and a soft-blue button-down shirt. I saw the faint outline of a stain, probably coffee, on the front, a splotch right over his heart. A reminder of the man he was when we were together. I resisted the urge to put my hand over the stain, to protect it from fading. “What do you think?” I said softly. “I’ve already done a lot of reading about this therapy. It was one of the reasons I came here. It can work. It definitely has for some people.”
“I’m worried, Ally. What if it makes things worse? What if she has an anaphylactic reaction and the EpiPen fails to do its job? This is a risk. A serious one.”
“Every day of our lives is a risk. Kylie could misread a label one day. She could kiss a boy who just ate a peanut butter sandwich.”
Matt smiled faintly. “I don’t want her kissing any boys until she’s thirty.”
“Good luck with that.”
“I just want . . . It’s just that I want to . . .”
I recognized that all-encompassing want. It gave ache to Matt’s voice, the anguish that coated every decision like a protective film. Every day we woke up to the same thought—How do we keep bad things from happening to Kylie?
“This is a way of being proactive,” I said. “I trust Dr. Indigo.”
“Ally, the risk isn’t the only thing stopping me up. Between the two of us, we have very little savings. Who knows if I’ll even have a pension in retirement, given the state of Illinois and its massive financial shenanigans? I have a feeling we’re talking a lot of money for a therapy that might not even work.”
“But it might. More than might. It probably will.”
“Where are we going to get the money? Our insurance is not going to cover this.”
“We’ll find a way.”
Matt didn’t say anything after that, but a strange sort of tension filled the space between us. Before, we’d argue about this, battering each other with this point and that point, a tug-of-war that didn’t end until one of us, tired or just too sad, gave up. It seemed we’d gotten past the point of bothering to fight. My heart froze. Did this mean he really went his way and I went mine?
“So, I’ll try to find the money on my own,” I said.
“I’ll help where I can, but it won’t be much. I’m going to spend most of my efforts trying to keep both of us from ending up in the poor house, unable to help Kylie at all.”
That was as close to a win as I was going to
get, so I stopped talking and entertained myself with Dr. Indigo’s odd collection of toys. I was just zoning out while playing with a sand garden when Matt said, “I heard you’re running for school board. Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“Are you worried I’m going to give your girlfriend some competition?”
Matt squirmed. “She’s not my girlfriend. I know this isn’t . . . easy. But, hey, you’ve been a lot of things, but you’ve never been bitchy—why start now? Cassie’s nice. That’s all she is at this point. A nice woman I might spend some time with.”
“Cassie has a Doberman. Didn’t you notice?”
“I’m a long way off from introducing her to Kylie. And we’re not even sure she’s allergic. One step at a time.”
This did not console me. A long way off still meant he intended to do it someday.
“I think you’d like Cassie more if you talked to her,” Matt said.
Something told me this was far from the truth. “I’ll talk to her at the debate.”
“You can’t fault me for trying to move on,” he added quietly. “I feel like I’m spinning my wheels. I teach all day, and then I tutor in the evenings when I’m not monitoring the Poli-Sci Club or doing my part in some faculty subcommittee. I take care of Kylie when I have her. I stand at the kitchen counter eating Cheerios for dinner when Kylie’s with you, sometimes because I don’t have time for anything else, and sometimes because it’s just too lonely to sit at the table by myself. Sometimes I sleep in my clothes because I’m too tired or too depressed to change. I ran out of toothpaste the other day, and I’ve been brushing my teeth with mouthwash because I can’t find a freaking minute to go to Target. I’m trying to find a small bit of life for myself in this scenario, Al. You’ve got to understand that.”
I was familiar with those feelings. All of them.
The question I always asked myself was, Did we have a right to feel them? We chose to separate. Sometimes, I could see my mom’s point—with no infidelity, no abuse, no drug or alcohol issues, why wouldn’t we try to work it out?
The fights all blended together at this point. Matt decided he didn’t want more children; I did. He talked about moving out of state; I wanted to stay put. We argued about Kylie’s medicine, her sleep, her activities . . .
All that came from worry, I know. If that was the source of our unhappiness, I could have dealt with it. But it wasn’t.
It was the money argument that finally sent me packing. All couples argue about money when there isn’t enough of it, and we were no different. Matt’s teaching job sucked up all his time and energy. He worked hard to make himself invaluable to the school—coaching softball, volunteering to head committees and a variety of student clubs, and teaching summer school during what should have been his time to recharge. I’d decided it was up to me. I’d hit the upper limit with what I could make as a stylist, so the only answer was to find a new job, one that paid more money. The problem was, I didn’t have a college degree.
It was time I got one. I’d jumped into the college search, researching local schools that offered programs for people who needed flexible schedules. I could be a paralegal, I thought, my brain whirring with excitement. Or I could go into marketing and public relations. Or . . . I could get into nutrition. I’d already learned so much about reading labels from Kylie’s allergy.
“You’re going about this impulsively,” Matt had said when I shared my findings. “Take some time to think about this.”
Later, he said it was too expensive, and we couldn’t take on a student loan. He wondered how we would manage Kylie’s care if I returned to school. “I don’t think this makes the most sense,” he said when I got my first acceptance letter. “I’m sorry, but at our age it just doesn’t.”
I heard all those things, and I knew what he said was grounded in some truths I didn’t want to admit. But those truths were mild rumblings in my ear, drowned out by the alarm that shrieked loud and clear—Matt didn’t think I could do it. He didn’t believe in me.
And if I stayed with him, I’d have to stop believing in me too.
Which is why I didn’t reach for Matt when he ran through his list of stressors. Part of me wanted to touch him, to make a physical connection to communicate the emotional one. But, part of me just didn’t.
He was struggling to gain traction in his new life, but I was too. Pursuing a relationship with Micki, running for a position on the school board, even jokingly putting myself on Cupidworks—these were all ways to make me feel like a full person, to somehow sketch out the missing part. Matt and I had blown a few holes in our personalities when we let our relationship explode, and we were each desperately trying to fill them in.
“I do understand your need to date someone,” I said softly. “What I’m having a hard time with is accepting it. We were together for ten years. It’s hard to picture you with another woman in my imagination, so I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like when I’m forced to witness it in person.”
Matt’s hand rested on mine for only a second. “You’ve always had a hard time accepting when life dishes out something you find unfair. I’ve got to admit, though, that’s one of the things I admire about you most.”
Admiration. It seemed like a weak kind of compliment. I needed more from him, so I asked, “Do you still like me as a person? After all we’ve said to each other?”
“Just because a relationship changes doesn’t mean a person does,” he said. “We aren’t the same people we were when we were together, but we’re still us.”
“Is that an answer?”
He laughed. “Yeah. It means I still like you. I’ll always like you, Ally.”
Kylie came in then, flushed but calm. She threw her arms around my neck, much to Dr. Indigo’s surprise.
“What’s that for?” I asked.
“Because you’re smiling,” she said.
Later that night, after dropping Matt off, helping Kylie with her homework, and putting her to bed, I sat on my mom’s bench with a notebook.
Shopping List for Kylie’s Exposure Therapy
Money
I needed lots of it. Thousands of dollars.
I wrote down: More work hours.
That’s it. That’s all I had.
Matt wasn’t going to help much. I couldn’t ask my mom. Heather was just as broke as I was. No bank would ever give me a loan—on paper I was a financial zero. I tried to expand my thought process. I tried to come up with a way.
After a moment, I added a line to the shopping list.
Find a way to calm the dog.
CHAPTER 12
“You have to answer him!”
Kylie practically climbed on Heather’s lap to get a better view of her laptop. The three of us lounged in the back of The Not-So-Blushing-Bride, judging the men who’d contacted Heather via Cupidworks. Radha gave her opinion as she lugged dresses in the back for Bernie, who’d decided today was the absolute deadline for choosing a dress.
Ignoring the guilt buzzing in my ears, I’d impulsively called Micki and told her we’d come by on Sunday to help organize the shop. It hadn’t quite recovered from the fashion show, and its usual state of disarray had turned into a state of emergency. She told us to make ourselves comfortable until closing time, then we could clean up without inconveniencing any customers.
I liked the women who came into Micki’s shop. A bridal shop should always be a happy place, but Micki’s took that up a notch. The brides who walked in the door were older—some were marrying late, some were on husband number two (or three, or four), some had been divorced, others were widowed. All had two things in common—appreciation for finding love at a challenging age and hope for the future. Micki celebrated their hope and added an element of fun—I’d yet to see a woman leave the shop who wasn’t smiling.
“This dress is atrocious!” came Bernie’s voice from the changing room.
Okay, except one.
But even Bernie had high hopes for her big day. I laughed to my
self as Heather brought up photos of Bachelor Number One.
Heather jabbed her finger at the screen. “Look at this one. Think he ate a lemon before taking this picture?”
“Whole lotta nope,” Kylie said. “Give him to another lady. Someone who doesn’t look nice. They can be mean together on their first date.”
“Next,” Heather said. She ran through a few more, nixing them because they looked like they had severe halitosis, still lived in their mother’s basement, or had the gleam of a serial killer in their smiles.
“What about that one?” Micki stopped short on her way to the changing room to relieve Radha and leaned over Heather’s shoulder. “He looks promising.”
Heather went quiet, a rare occurrence. “Nope. He looks like someone I used to know.”
“Once you get to my age, everyone looks like someone you used to know. And what does it matter anyway?” Micki pointed to the screen. “Scroll back. That one. He looks like he’d get out of bed at two o’clock in the morning to change your tire.”
Heather clicked. “Nah . . . too . . . earnest looking. And he’s bald. I’m a hair stylist. Not gonna work.”
“He likes bowling,” Kylie said. “I think that’s good. You could have bowling dates. Can I come?”
“We can find out where they’re going to be and spy on them,” I said, turning the laptop toward me. The man—broad shouldered and wearing a plaid button-down shirt, smiled directly at the camera, no sunglasses, no attitude, no defenses. If a picture could really tell a story, this one said nice from beginning to end. “He lives in Willow Falls, right here.”
Heather glanced around nervously, as though he might actually be in the shop.
“His name is Mel,” Micki said, musing. “Sounds familiar. I’m sure someone I know knows him. We don’t have six degrees of separation in Willow Falls. We have two or three, tops.”
“That means his full name is Melvin,” Heather said, her voice flat. “Awesome.”
Micki clucked her tongue, which I’d never actually heard someone do in real life. “Stop being so judgy-judgy. Mel is a perfectly fine name. St. Mel is the patron saint of single people. Isn’t that a hoot?”
The Other Family Page 14