How We Love

by Michael Ryan Webb

  Of course, that voice had nothing to offer in the way of assuaging my guilt for my drunken tryst the night before. Even if he forgave me for leaving, he'd never forgive me for that, I thought. But I knew that wasn't true. Mark was always the more selfless and empathetic half of our relationship.

  If I was completely honest with myself, I knew that I had been a bad husband over the last year. I loved him as much as I was humanly capable of doing. But for some reason my instinct had been not to stand by him and work through our issues, but to run as fast as I could. I fought that instinct as long as I could, yet I found myself looking in on what used to be my life – a life I'd blown up because I had the emotional maturity of a goldfish.

  I started to drive forward, my mind made up to knock on the door and beg Mark to take me back. But I had been so focused on my own thoughts that I'd again forgotten to take in what was happening around me. I had pulled out in front of a small truck that hadn't had a stop sign and as such hadn't slowed. Luckily the woman driving was quick-footed and slammed on her brakes just in time to stop within inches of my door.

  I quickly pulled over at the beginning of the block, fully expecting her to come up and give me the dressing down I deserved. But she just drove off. I closed my eyes and sobbed, every emotion I'd been forcing down all day erupting at once. My chest tightened and I could barely breathe.

  I couldn’t for the life of me fathom what was wrong with me that I had made such utterly shit-poor choices. I cried for every single stupid thing I'd done in the past 48 hours. But more than anything else, I cried because I had just come to the realization that I didn't deserve Mark anymore, and maybe I never did.

  I turned the radio to an innocuous talk show to try to drown out my thoughts. I opened my eyes and tried to take deep breaths. I was only three houses down from Mark's, and as I tried to steady myself, I could have sworn that I saw the blinds in one of the bedroom windows draw back slightly.

  I panicked and sped away back toward the university. I rushed up to my office and sat underneath my desk, hoping and praying that everyone had gone for the day. But karma works fast and within minutes, I heard someone knock on and then open the door. I quickly wiped my eyes and stood up, trying my best to pretend I was just picking up something I'd dropped.

  Wes pushed his way in and casually sat down on the corner of my desk as if it were something he did regularly – it wasn't. He had a look in his eyes and a smirk on his face that were very clearly trouble. I needed to nip whatever this was in the bud. I stepped back as far away from him as I could in the small room before I began speaking.

  "Look, Wes, we should talk about last night," I started.

  "Why talk when we could do much more fun things with our mouths," he said, in what I can only assume was supposed to be a "sexy" voice, but sounded far from it.

  "See, that's exactly the problem," I said. "I can't be your, um, whatever it is you think you want me to be. What happened between us was a fluke. It shouldn't have happened the first time, and there most definitely cannot be a second time."

  "So, what? You got all the use out of me that you wanted and now I'm just yesterday's plaything like your husband?" He demanded, his voice rising sharply.

  "Whoa, watch it," I snapped. "We were drunk, we made a mistake. It's over. There's no reason we can't just go back to having a normal professional relationship. In fact, there's no other option. And it was not about using you. If anything you used me. I was hammered and upset, and you were looking for the first bed you could jump into."

  "How did I not realize until now that you're such a stupid bitch?" he shot back, stomping toward the door.

  "Yeah, well you've got the stupid part right because I always knew you were an irritating child and I was still dumb enough to sleep with you," I retorted.

  Well, it was ugly, but at least it's over, I thought. I'd planned to try to work out my lesson plans once I calmed down, but I decided I'd had more than enough excitement for one day. I emailed my new students and let them know we'd be skipping the next day's classes in order to accommodate the instructor change, and hurried to my car, not looking up more than necessary for fear of seeing Wes again.

  Still lacking cable or internet, I tried to pass the time back at my apartment by reading, but couldn't focus. I dug a bottle of whiskey out of a kitchen box and started drinking, not even bothering with a glass. I took another drink each time I started to think about Mark, or work, or Wes, and soon I was buzzed enough to know I would drift to sleep easily. I crawled into bed fully dressed and cried myself to sleep.

  The next morning, I again resolved to do better, but I only half-heartedly believed that was even possible. The urge to stay home and wallow in self-pity was much stronger than it had been the day before. But I forced myself to get up and get to work.

  My normal classes went well and the students seemed to be at least moderately interested in the assignments. I knew that would only last another week or so, but it felt good at least momentarily to be back in my element in one aspect of my life.

  After my final class of the day, I headed to my office and found Lauren waiting outside. I had been relieved to see her in her writing class, and impressed that she'd come having already completed the previous day's assignment that she'd missed.

  As I got closer to where she was waiting, however, I realized that something was wrong. Her eyes were red and her face around them slightly swollen . She'd clearly been crying. I didn't want to make her start up again so I decided to try and ignore it.

  "Hi. Lauren, right?" I asked.

  She nodded and whispered, "Yeah. Do you think I could talk to you about something?"

  "Sure, come on in," I said opening my office door and gesturing to a chair. We sat, but she remained looking down, fingers fidgeting with the sleeves of her sweater, leg tapping on the leg of her chair. I tried to break the ice.

  "I thought your first two writing assignments were great, Lauren. I think you have a tremendous amount of potential." She didn’t respond, she just nodded.

  "So did you have a question about the next assignment?" I asked, trying to avoid whatever emotional conflict she was clearly dealing with unless she herself brought it up. "I could maybe find a sample from last semester for you to look at."

  She took a deep breath, finally looked up and said, "I'm pregnant."

  I set the pen I'd been holding down on my desk and froze. Why could she possibly be coming to me with this? I thought. Is this some kind of karmic joke?

  "Oh. Um... How far along are you?" I asked.

  "About 11 weeks," she said sheepishly. "I knew I was late, but I was so stressed I just assumed it was just that, because that's happened to me before."

  I was not in the right headspace or at all qualified to be giving advice to a pregnant student. But what choice did I have with her sitting there across from me?

  "I know, we don't really know each other and I've missed half of your class days so far," she continued. "But I don't know anyone here yet, and since I kind of spilled my guts to you in that paper, I figure you know enough about me already that I've got nothing to lose coming to you. I just... I was wondering if you might know where I could go to get some help."

  "Well, that really depends on what kind of help you need," I said. "Are you planning to keep the baby?"

  "My mother would probably make me tattoo 'whore' on my forehead if I had an abortion and she ever found out," she responded flatly.

  "Well, you shouldn't have a child just because it's what someone else wants," I said. "You're an adult. It's your body, and you have the right to choose what happens to it."

  "So I've heard," she said with a sly smile on her face. After a small pause to dig a pack of gum out of her bag, offer me a piece, and take one for herself, she continued, "Look, I might be kind of a dick for this, and even more of one for lying about it upfront, but I overheard some people in class this morning whispering about how you were getting a divorce because of a failed adoption – so... I was hoping
you might be able to refer me to an agency?"

  I felt like somebody had just punched me square in the chest. I hadn't told anyone about that part of what had happened between Mark and me yet. It had been by far the most painful part of the entire preceding year for me. I had done my best to block it out, desperate not to remember how much it hurt. I scrambled to think who could possibly have found out and spread this information.

  Wes. I must have let it slip when I was drunk. Now he's using it to get back at me for rejecting him, I realized. I could kill him.

  I did my best to not dwell on that in the moment. There was someone there who needed my help. I could at least try to give it.

  "Oh," I said, still reeling. "Sure. Just a sec, I'll write down the information for the place we used - well, tried to use."

  "Look, I'm really sorry if that's still a sore subject. Like I said, I feel like a real dick for doing this to you, but I don't know anybody else here. Google was surprisingly not a whole lot of help," she said.

  My hands shook as I wrote down the name of the agency that Mark and I had used to try to adopt a child less than a year before. I slid it slowly across the desk, trying to keep my breath even.

  "I'm really sorry, but you're saving my ass here," she said. "Thank you."

  She picked the slip of paper up off of the desk, and just took off, no regard at all for how what she'd done affected me. What a fucking nightmare of a week, I thought as I staggered out of my office and to my car.

  I dropped by Sofia's on the way home. I walked in to find her laughing at the bar with another older woman. She hopped around the other side of the bar when I approached.

  "Don't think I've ever seen you in here twice in one week, blue eyes," she said. "What'll it be?"

  "Got a new life back there you can spare?" I joked.

  "Well darlin' I'd offer to pour you something stronger'n you are, but by the looks of you I think an empty glass might do the trick," she quipped back. "Rough day?"

  "More like year," I said, dropping onto a bar stool.

  She rummaged around and pulled a brand new bottle of whiskey from beneath the counter.

  "Tell you what mijo, take this. Go on home, and get you some rest. This one's on me," she said, sliding the bottle across to me.

  "No, Sofia I can't take this," I protested.

  "I don't wanna hear it," she said smiling and shaking her head. "Go on."

  I didn’t have the energy to argue any harder. So I took the bottle and made my way home. When I got there, I collapsed on the sofa and opened the bottle, before realizing I had forgotten to get a glass. I started to get up, thought about the events of the day, and sat back down and took as big a drink as I could handle. I set the bottle down a few times. But then I'd think about the adoption again, and as I'd eventually realize much too late, no amount of alcohol could numb that pain.

  Chapter Four | Mark

  You left the oven on, the house is going to burn down and Adam will die inside, the voice in my head insisted as I reached for the door handle.

  No, I told myself. Adam doesn't live here anymore, and I didn't use the oven today. I'm going out today. I can do this.

  Over the previous month, I'd continued my sessions with Dr. Rodriguez twice a week and started the new medication she'd prescribed. Though I still struggled with my OCD symptoms, I'd been making slow progress. Three weeks into my therapy with her, I'd finally left my house for the first time. I'd only made it a few yards down the block before I'd had to turn around.

  I'd convinced myself that people were watching me, judging me, and I wasn't ready to think about that. Of course, the reality was that the chances that anyone cared what I was doing were very, very slim. But that's just how mental illness goes. It doesn't have to make sense or be anywhere near accurate for your brain to decide that something is true.

  When I'd safely made it back inside, I'd reached for my phone to call Adam. I'd been able to force myself to give him space up to that point, but I so badly wanted to share that small victory with him. My heart still ached for him every single day. As much as I needed to heal for myself, I was also doing it because I wanted him back.

  Ultimately, I'd decided it wasn’t fair to either of us to open that door until I had better progress to report. So, I'd gone out every day since, walking a bit further each time. Even though I was just walking, I was exerting so much mental effort just to quiet the voice in my head telling me to be afraid that I'd feel exhausted as if I'd done an extreme workout by the time I got home each time. It would almost be funny, if it wasn't so devastatingly embarrassing.

  Even so, I kept pushing myself. Each day brought a little more resilience and fewer OCD symptoms. I genuinely felt like I was well on my way to recovery - which brings me to the day in question.

  My old law school friend Kate had contacted me to try to schedule lunch together after I'd called her the day Adam left. I had told her that we'd split, but not much else. I was far too embarrassed to admit to my powerful, successful friend that I'd been locked in a battle with my own mind and was losing.

  I'd put her off a few times, feeling terrible about lying, but vowing to come clean when I finally saw her in person. I'd finally worked up my radius outside of the house to include a place where we could meet for lunch.

  So that's where I was headed on this particular day. To satiate my OCD and stop the images of Adam burning in the house from playing on a loop in my head, I checked the oven knob and opened and closed the door to check for heat seven times before finally leaving the house.

  I hadn't yet conquered my mental hang-ups that surrounded driving, so I walked the mile down the road to The Blue Moose Diner. I'd never actually been inside before, but the name was interesting and what I could see through the large display windows seemed cute and cozy. Upon entering, I was greeted by warm colors and soft, peaceful music and lighting, confirming my ideas of the place.

  Kate was already waiting at a table when I arrived – punctual as always. She wore the same short haircut she'd had the entire time I'd known her – Kate was the type of person who figured out what she liked and stuck to it – and an expensive looking suit. She stood and greeted me with a firm, but brief hug when I approached. We ordered our drinks and then she looked me dead in the eye and cut right to the chase.

  "So, what happened with Adam?" she asked.

  "Wow, no small talk at all, huh?" I replied.

  "Time is money, my friend," she said, not a trace of anything but sincerity in her tone.

  My mind was filled with images of Adam leaving, getting hurt, and worse. I counted my fingers to compose myself before I took a deep breath and began.

  1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10....

  "Huh, well, I guess you know my dad died. That was really hard on me, of course. I sort of fell apart." I paused, trying to gauge her reaction. She was listening intently, but seemed to be reserving her reaction for when I finished. So I continued, "But I didn't tell you before that we were also trying to adopt and it didn't work out."

  "Oh, my god," she interjected. "I'm so sorry. Sounds like a really rough year. What happened with the adoption?"

  "We waited a long time and a woman from L.A. finally picked us. She was due the week after my dad died and we had to fly out to wait for the baby the day after the funeral. But I was just not doing a good job of keeping it together," I said.

  "Of course you weren't," she said. "You must have been all over the place, emotionally."

  "Mostly I was just grieving," I said. "Adam was so excited and happy about the baby. I wanted to be too but the mother could see that my heart wasn't in it. It scared her off. Adam didn't speak to me for days after we got home."

  "But he knew you'd just lost your father. How could he blame you?" she whispered, aghast.

  "The woman basically did that for him. She made it very clear that were it only Adam, she'd have still gone through with the adoption, but that she was afraid I couldn't be there for the baby at that time," I explai
ned. "And she wasn't wrong. The last year has been really hard. Adam and I fought a lot after that, culminating in me telling him that I didn't even want to adopt anymore. That wasn't true, of course. I was just hurting. I fell into a really deep depression and started having severe OCD symptoms to the point that I stopped working."

  "Wait, OCD?" she interjected. "Isn't that just being a neat freak? You should just get a better assistant who will clean for you so you can get back to work. Your career isn't going to wait for you."

  "It's a little more complicated than that," I said. "It's, for me at least, been a pretty difficult mental illness to manage."

  Good luck trying to explain yourself without sounding like a giant baby, the voice in my head chimed in for the first time since I left the house.

  1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10. I began counting my fingers

  "My doctor told me it varies from person to person," I continued. "For me personally it manifests in violent mental images that I can't get out of my mind no matter how hard I try to distract myself, unless I practice certain behaviors that trick my mind into calming down. And if I don't, I have panic attacks and I feel like I'm going to die. "

  "Oh, okay. I get it. So, like there's this beautiful mural across town," she said. "And it's really far out of my way, but sometimes I'll go that far just to see this mural on my way home because it's relaxing. I mean, we all probably have our little things but we can't just drop everything. Maybe you just need to take up yoga or something. Do some meditating between clients – that kind of thing."

  Told you you'd sound like a giant baby. She doesn't think it's anything serious at all, the voice mocked.

  "Well, I'm not a doctor, but I wouldn't say that driving by a mural is the same thing," I said, the frustration evident in my voice. "I mean, I fear for my life if I don't engage in my behaviors and the mental images are disturbing, horrifying things that I wouldn't wish on anyone. But sure, I'll do yoga. That'll solve everything."