But those thoughts made him uncomfortable, and he concentrated instead on Chloe’s slim foot in its elegant shoe, tapping out a syncopated rhythm on the carpet. So she was agitated also. Good.
Pat said, “In the time we have remaining,” and Jack and Chloe came close to exchanging glances. They hadn’t been aware of time, but in fact the session was close to over. Pat said they would concentrate on putting things back together now, giving them a road map, a plan, positive steps they could take. She didn’t want them or anyone else walking out her door still in crisis. The word alarmed Jack. But maybe this was what a crisis was, what it felt like, and you never knew until you put a name on it.
Pat said, “Chloe, I’m going to recommend doing an alcohol assessment. We can handle that at a separate appointment. You shouldn’t look on it as an accusation or a judgment or a threat. It’s just a way of getting more information.”
Chloe nodded. It would have been hard for her to do anything else. Not agreeing would make her look resistant and uncooperative, in other words, a lot like an alcoholic. But he knew, because he knew Chloe, that it was killing her not to argue back.
“And Jack, let’s see if we can’t get beyond the fear. The future is always an unknown. But you don’t have to dread it.”
His turn to nod. He wondered again what he must look like to Pat. A man in crisis, trying desperately not to be.
“What I’d like you both to do is tell me about a time when you felt something strongly positive about each other. A high-water mark. A happy memory.”
Chloe said, “I had bronchitis last winter and Jack always got my prescriptions and fussed over me and took care of me. I was so sick. My lungs were like sandpaper. One night it was really bad, I could hardly breathe, and he didn’t want to scare me, so he acted like he was kidding around, he said, ‘You ever wonder how long it takes them to get an ambulance out when you call? Want to give it a shot, see how good they are?’ I mean, I talked him out of the ambulance, we drove to the emergency room, but he was really …”
They did look at each other then, smiled, looked away, as if it was more embarrassing, more personal, to share good times than bad.
“Jack?”
“The first time I ever saw Chloe, she was sitting in a classroom wearing these crazy ripped-up jeans with black lace stockings underneath. And she got into a big fight with the professor and I kept thinking she was going to cry, but she didn’t, she just kept slugging it out with him, and when class was over she walked out of there like a queen and I wrote bad poetry about her for weeks.”
“You did not.” Chloe smiling.
“Yup. Really bad.”
“You should have seen Jack when he was a college kid,” Chloe told Pat. “He was a babe. Those big blue eyes, and that California-guy long hair, and he was just so ready to grow up and stop being shy.”
Jack allowed the two of them to give him fond, appraising looks. He didn’t think he’d been a babe. He didn’t even think he’d been shy.
Things seemed to be winding down. Pleasantries. Reminiscences. Jack supposed it had gone pretty well. He felt sluggish, he’d hoarded his energy to get through the session, and now he had none left. Nothing too bad had happened. The wheels hadn’t come off. He’d said alcoholic but maybe that had to be said. Pat could talk to Chloe about drinking, or not drinking. He liked that better than the idea of her going to AA meetings, which would be populated by attractive, dissolute men who would get Chloe to feel sorry for them and invite her out for coffee, the better to feed her some line about how much the two of them had in common, mutual suffering of the sort her pain-in-the-ass husband could never understand, while he, Jack, would have to trail them to the coffee shop, lurk outside in the parking lot, confront the sorry mother-fucker and punch him out, get arrested, sued, go on probation, and wind up back in Pat’s office for court-ordered counseling.
Pat said, “I want to make clear, these sessions aren’t necessarily about fixing or saving your marriage.”
Jack hadn’t expected that, and from her suddenly rigid posture, neither had Chloe. Pat said, “Don’t worry, I’m not making a diagnosis here. It’s what I say to all my clients. Counseling is about deciding what it is you want, both separately and as a couple. So that’s going to be part of your homework. Determining goals, and identifying the behaviors that keep you from achieving them. Sorting out what would make you happy. No, don’t tell me. Think about it for the next time.”
Jack tried to look as if he was settling in for some serious, protracted thought. But he already knew what he wanted. To go back to that classroom and see Chloe all over again for the first time. And then to travel step by step through all the events of their life together, but this time to be better, kinder, wiser, stronger. It wasn’t anything he could tell Pat, hell, it wasn’t even possible. But it was his heart’s truth.
Chloe said, “Umm, if it’s all right to ask, how long do you think we’ll have to keep coming? I mean, how messed up are we?”
She laughed, but it came out sad. Jack watched her folding and refolding her hands, gathering them up into a smaller and smaller bundle. What would Chloe say, what would make her happy? He didn’t know. It was a lonely feeling.
Pat said, “That’s not one of those clinical terms I like to use, messed up. But you want to know what I think, okay. I see two very intelligent, very verbal people. Which makes my job both easier and harder. Easier because we can discuss things with a high degree of complexity and comprehension. Harder because people like yourselves—young, attractive, bright, healthy, prosperous—tend to think they shouldn’t have any serious problems. It’s unfair, it’s calamitous. It’s not. It’s just life. Sometimes it catches up to you.”
Jack wondered if this was meant to be a comforting thought. He didn’t find it so. Some voice he could no longer remember, saying the same thing about Chloe, how she always expected things to work out perfectly …
Pat was letting that one sink in. Jack was beginning to recognize a pattern or technique in the way she spoke, something subtle but measured, designed to get people to listen. She was good at this. She already knew things about them that they didn’t themselves. Jack imagined coming back to Pat on his own, or maybe just running into her on the street or somewhere, asking her privately and urgently what she thought of him and Chloe, how messed up were they? But she was speaking again.
“As for appointments, I ask people to commit to a six-week period. Of course it can be extended, and of course I can’t drag you here if you decide not to come. But that’s my recommendation.”
It was the end of June. Fourth of July was coming, and after that the heart of summer. Before Labor Day this might all be over. They could get some kind of diploma, be certified a functioning, happy marriage.
There was some awkwardness involved in getting themselves up and out of there. They didn’t want to look too relieved, or as if they were fleeing, although they were. They shook hands with Pat, thanked her, made another appointment for next week, turned their back on the indirect lighting and soothing pastel walls and hardwood flooring and all the apparatus of expensive professional intervention. They stepped out of the well-kept doorway into the long summer evening’s last sunlight. They didn’t speak until they reached the car.
Chloe said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but boy I’d love a drink right now.”
“I can definitely understand that.”
“Not that I would.”
“I know you wouldn’t.”
“I’m glad you said that. I’d hate to have to run right back inside and tell her we couldn’t get out of the damned parking lot without another talking-to.”
There was a Mexican restaurant they liked in Oak Park, an old-fashioned family place that displayed, without irony, sombreros and paper flowers and piñatas and retablos and holy candles, all the artifacts that in other restaurants now were meant as inside jokes. Jack and Chloe ordered a pitcher of iced tea and fajitas. Their usual was a pitcher of margaritas. The waiter b
rought the tea and poured out two glasses and they watched the condensation form and bead on their surfaces. A simple, predictable, observable phenomenon involving water vapor and temperature. Jack thought this must be what the world looked like to scientists. A rational place where the laws of physics and thermodynamics kept order. It was probably too late to decide to be a scientist.
The last time they’d been here was a few months ago, before the move to the city. They’d finished two pitchers of margaritas and giggled lewdly at each other through dinner. As soon as they got in the car, they’d put their hands on each other and Chloe had hiked her skirt up and rolled down her underpants and they might have done it right there in the parking lot if another car hadn’t pulled into the lot, its radio blaring an old Beatles song, one of the silly ones, We all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine, and it was too absurd, he couldn’t keep his erection going. It was just as well. They could have hurt themselves trying or gotten stuck or some other idiocy. Instead they laughed themselves sick and somehow they managed to drive home, where they’d done it up right.
Good old drunk sex. Say what you would, it had its charms. And now there would be no more of it. Jack imagined Chloe was thinking of that time also, but she only raised her glass and drank and said, “This is good. I was really thirsty.”
Jack drank also. “Yeah, it is good.” He supposed it was, for iced tea. He told himself, severely, not to sulk. “So what did you think of her?”
“Oh, she’s okay. I guess I’m a little disappointed she didn’t have us do anything less, you know, obvious.”
“Obvious?” Jack repeated, stalling. Nothing that happened had seemed obvious to him.
“You know, saying everything was about drinking. I really think that’s a cop-out.”
“Well …” He wanted to sound judicious, neither argumentative nor overly quick to agree. “I don’t think it was just that. Anyway, it was only a first appointment. Getting our feet wet.”
Chloe shrugged, seemed to lose interest. “At least something’s getting wet. God, relax. I’m not going to drink but I have to be able to talk about it without you jumping out of your skin.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re always sorry. It gets annoying.”
“Double double sorry sorry.” He raised his glass, saluted her.
“What are you—”
The waiter came by, set down a new basket of chips, and she was obliged to stop talking. “What?” Jack asked, when she didn’t resume.
“Skip it.”
“Come on, Chloe.”
“What are you so afraid of? It drives me crazy when you do that, look at me like a damned whipped dog, you don’t even realize it, do you? Just tell me what I’m doing that makes you like that.”
“You didn’t do anything. Or I mean we’ve both done things wrong over time, that’s not the point. I guess I’m afraid …” The glass in front of him showed the imprint of his hand on its moist surface. Molecules, temperature, humidity: once you understood such things, the world might explain itself to you. But what if the glass were to turn green, its contents bubble and fizz and explode in your face? “I’m afraid you’ll realize it’s all been some kind of fluke or mistake, you ending up with me. That you made a bad decision.”
The waiter returned, set their plates down with a flourish just as Chloe was saying, Honestly. Again she had to pause. Jack thought he understood why people had such conversations in public places. You needed interruptions and distractions so you could hear yourself both before and after you spoke. Chloe said, “That is so ridiculous.”
Jack murmured that he was glad to hear it. Chloe said, “Honey. Look at me, please. Are you crying? Jack?”
He shook his head. His eyes and nose were thick with tears. He saw everything through their prism. It mortified him, he concentrated on keeping his face rigid so the tears would not spill over. Chloe reached across the table but he waved her hand away. “Just give me a minute.”
“Honey, don’t—”
He motioned for her to stop. If he just sat there, moment by moment, he thought he could get through it. And he did. He was spared having to mop his eyes or excuse himself to the rest room. It wasn’t crying, it was simply condensation. But he could not have been more wretched, even as he went through the motions of recovering himself, shrugging and saying, I don’t know what got into me there.
They settled down to their dinner. The food, as always, was excellent. Jack made a point of eating with good appetite. Chloe began a conversation about something that had happened at work, some minor event, minor complaint that was easy for Jack to sympathize with, impersonate disapproval or understanding, as called for, and then Chloe stopped speaking and he said, “I want to tell you …”
Chloe leaned forward encouragingly, although he could also read dread in her face, wondering what was to come next. For all her bright talk and the seeming confidence of her beauty, there had always been something skittish and frightened about her that might do damage without meaning to, and there was a limit to what he might expect of her, and he had known that from the first. He said, “Nobody is ever going to love you like I do. Whatever happens.”
“I know that.”
Then it was as if nothing else remained to be said, and they finished their meal without distress, and drove home. Jack was thinking that it was possible they could be happy, this new, sadder happiness that would be based on knowledge rather than hopeful ignorance. It was coming to terms, it was life catching up with you. People lived like that. Got on with it. As he should and would. But he was trying to remember if Pat Rubin had said “drink” or “drank.”
In fact they ended up canceling their appointment with Pat. They had forgotten about Chloe’s parents. The parents regularly issued invitations to their St. Louis home, and whenever possible Jack or sometimes Chloe or sometimes both cited work, the necessity of work, and stayed away. Now they were coming to Chicago. Oh boy, said Jack, Oh boy, said Chloe. Mr. and Mrs. Chase’s marriage could best be described as loud. “They’re too much,” Chloe said. “Too much emotion and mess and melodrama. And they get the biggest kick out of themselves, that’s almost the worst part. They think they’re a stitch.”
Jack was glad that Chloe complained about them. It meant he didn’t have to. At their wedding reception, his new father-in-law danced with all the pretty girls. He announced that he’d paid for everything and was entitled to have some fun. In retaliation, Jack’s new mother-in-law locked herself in the bridal limousine. Chloe and her sister and aunts trooped back and forth between the banquet hall and the parking lot, trying to placate and intercede. Finally Mr. Chase himself went outside to shout his bullying apologies through the closed windows. “Let me in, Allison, what, you think I’m going to run off with some nymph in her teens? You should be so lucky.” Eventually he was granted entrance. The two of them emerged sometime later to dance a truly alarming tango of reconciliation. The wedding pictures showed the still-handsome Mr. and Mrs. Chase smiling, glazed with post-argument, married lust.
Now they were going to be in town for an extended weekend. They were staying at the Omni, where they could shop expensively on Michigan Avenue. Jack and Chloe had arranged a lot of exhausting sight-seeing. They would visit Navy Pier and the Shedd Aquarium and a Cubs game. They would lunch and dine and brunch. They’d take a tour of Chloe’s office and gaze at the edifices of power and commerce. Mr. Chase had made his money in high-end real estate. He would have opinions about downtown’s vacancy rates, about development and overbuilding and square footage. Mrs. Chase would have opinions about Mr. Chase. No one would be left guessing as to what they were. There were times when they were fine, amusing even, with their banter and sniping and theatrics. And they seemed to like Jack, in the middling, resigned way you could like a son-in-law. Mrs. Chase had Chloe’s blue blue eyes, or rather, Chloe had hers. It was disconcerting to see them in that older, carefully maintained face. Mr. Chase had a full head of silver hair and the
good looks of the fraternity president he had once been. He was gradually losing his hearing, but since he seldom listened to other people anyway, he remained cheerful about it. Jack found it easier to imagine them as Chloe’s older, disreputable cousins than as her parents.
Jack and Chloe cleaned their apartment like fury. They bought flowers and throw cushions and new towels. “It really looks good,” said Jack, surveying the finished result.
“It better.” Chloe had been scrubbing out the kitchen cupboards, wearing shorts and an old Northwestern T-shirt. She looked grimy but fetching, like some warped Playboy feature, Girls of the Big Ten Get Dirty. Chloe’s mother was not the sort who inspected kitchen cupboards, but Chloe knocking herself out was always part of the drill.
“No, I meant, this has turned into a nice place. You’ve made it something nice. Like Mrs. Palermo said. It’s always the woman who makes the house a home.”
“Mrs. who?”
“The old lady’s daughter. I told you, she complimented the place up and down.”
“I don’t remember.” Chloe brushed her hands on her shirt and took a swipe at the windowsill with a sponge. Jack bent and kissed the back of her neck, but Chloe wasn’t having any of it. Waiting for her parents’ arrival always made her irritable, although once they were actually on the premises, she’d relax and enjoy them, in a fond, exasperated fashion. But the parents weren’t due for another twenty-four hours, and she was still distracted. Jack wanted her to see, in the splendid cleanliness and order of the apartment, in its pretty furnishings and well-loved objects, that they had accomplished something fine. He wanted her to take pride in it, take heart from it. Not that nice furniture or any of the rest of it was enough to validate a marriage, but it counted for something. He wanted Chloe to understand that. He wanted the rooms to be more eloquent than he was.
City Boy Page 16