by Kris Radish
Leah can’t help mentioning that she’s sad about Jane and her husband. She confidentially told the director about everything that happened at the last session, and she admits that she’s worried about Jane.
The director reassures her that Dr. Bayer will handle Jane, and that the best thing she can do now is send her some positive energy and continue to move forward herself.
“Do you think she’ll be okay?”
“That’s up to Jane.”
The director’s phone rings then, and she mouths that it’s Dr. Bayer. It’s a quick call, as Dr. Bayer doesn’t want to bother anyone but needs Leah to know that she must check her emails because she has sent some instructions for next week’s meeting.
The two women talk for another thirty minutes, outline what Leah must still accomplish before she can find a place to live, and what her children will also need.
While Leah washes the cups she and the director have just used, Dr. Bayer is trying for the second day in a row to get in touch with Jane. She has left a series of phone messages, emailed her, and is now starting to worry that Jane will slip into that horrid place of self-destructive anger that has been her cradle for most likely her entire life.
Jane has received each and every one of the messages and can’t believe Dr. Bayer is so damn worried about her. In a gesture of politeness, she finally decides to text her—hoping the doctor has figured out how to use that part of her cellphone—and lets her know that she’s fine, got the messages, and yes, she will check her damn emails, not to worry.
The truth is, Jane is devastated. She should have stayed in class and answered Kit’s questions. It’s clear to her that those women, even Grace, care about her. But she was absolutely crushed by Derrick.
At least Derrick’s missing body is temporary. She’s certain of it. She’s certain of it because it’s impossible for her to imagine what in God’s name she would do if he did leave her permanently. It’s true that their life, in and out of the bedroom, has been about as lovely as a severe case of the latest version of the flu virus. She knows she’s been an ass, but it’s also true that she has a lot to worry about and sometimes, well, sometimes even if you’re in anger class it’s hard to stay on track.
Derrick left her a note. A note! The lousy coward! He said he needed time to think. He said he understood that her anger wasn’t something that hatched the day she beat up the broker and that it wouldn’t evaporate overnight but—and the but was a pretty large conjuction—he wasn’t sure he could handle it anymore. He said the arrow-in-the-foot night pushed him over the edge. But did he mention whom he was seeing for lunch? Why he was lying to his assistant?
Handle it? What’s so hard about a nice, clean house and the little woman waiting for him, and hasn’t she been trying? Hasn’t she been going to the damn class and cutting back on the wine and trying to think positive and apologizing over and over because she can’t give him the child he so desperately wants?
She has been changing, and loving her new self. Why can’t he see who she is?
Jane has been walking back and forth from the exquisitely decorated living room into the kitchen as if it’s a racetrack. She has barely eaten during the past two days, and she really has been trying not to drink the wine from her dwindling collection or the pricey vodka she has stashed in the freezer.
She hasn’t left the house since last Tuesday night, when she raced from the women’s shelter, absolutely fuming about Kit saying she looks familiar, and because she told them about Derrick. As if she hasn’t shared enough.
And where is Derrick? He was kind enough to let her know that there was money in the checking account. He told her he would be in touch after he had some time to think, which he also suggested might be a good thing for her to do. Jane is absolutely not the kind of woman, no matter how angry, to show up where he works.
Truth be told, Jane doesn’t know what to do. She wants to scream. She wants to drink one bottle of wine after another. She wants to get into her car and drive around until she finds Derrick. She wants to tell Kit to mind her own fucking business. She wants all the pieces of her life to fit back together the way they did before everything became shattered. She wants to open the door and fall into Derrick’s arms and ask for forgiveness.
Jane stops in the middle of the living room as if she has hit a brick wall. She absolutely aches. Even her heart aches, and she has never thought of a heart as actually aching before. At first she thinks that it’s because she’s so hungry and thirsty. How long has it been since she even showered?
She walks into the powder room off the kitchen and bends over the sink to look at herself. Her makeup is caked on her eyes as if a three-year-old applied it. Mascara has run down both cheeks. It looks as if she has aged five years in the past few days. Her hair is a tangled mess and somehow, in the past forty-eight hours, she managed to lose one of her earrings. Oh, Jane!
She decides to shower and put on fresh clothes. That will help. That will make her feel better for sure, and she runs up the steps and into the long walk-in closet that leads to the bathroom, where she notices that Derrick hasn’t taken just a few suits out of the closet but almost all of them.
Jane stops as if she has been frozen in place. Then she pulls out the cedar-lined drawers and sees that all Derrick’s socks and underwear are gone. Every single piece has been taken. There are no flashy boxers that he loves to wear, no dark socks for work, no white ankle socks for the gym. Two shirts are left hanging in the closet, all the sweaters are gone; even his favorite bathrobe, the old green cotton one—“Soft and still talkin’ to me,” as he loved to say—that he once threatened to wear to work have all disappeared.
Oh, Derrick!
Jane never makes it into the shower. She sits down in the middle of the closet after grabbing the two shirts that were left hanging like lonely soldiers guarding all that empty space. She curls on her side and wraps the shirts around her face. There is a hint of Derrick’s cologne, musky and rich, on one of the shirts, and when she smells his scent her heart is whipped into a frenzy that brings tears to her eyes.
While Jane is sobbing into her husband’s shirt sleeve, Kit is desperately trying to get up off the floor, where she has been doing a series of downward dogs as instructed by a yoga video she found under her daughter’s abandoned twin bed.
She was trying to recapture the ignored house inch by inch and had been vacuuming the tiny rug in her daughter’s room when the tape all but leapt into her hand.
Relaxation. Control. The simplicity of the your inner thoughts.
Who writes this shit, she thinks, bending, and then rising with a laugh, because even that simple movement made her feel as if she were about to spring a leak. Tight hamstrings, tight leg muscles, tight hips, tight everything. When was the last time something physical beyond hauling out the garbage happened around here?
Peter works out all the time. The fire-department rules have gotten intense since three overweight firefighters lost their jobs. Those porkers couldn’t have saved a baby from a burning house, let alone a woman or a man who weighed more than a poodle.
Kit knows she is small enough to have squeezed through the thin rules all these years but she also knows that doesn’t mean she’s in shape. She dropped the vacuum cleaner right where she was standing and walked down the hall to her bedroom.
Before Kit popped the video into the DVD player, she thought about the television being in the master bedroom. Every magazine article she has ever read about reviving a marriage, every smart woman she knows, every romance expert, has said, “Get the damn television out of the bedroom.” Kit now thinks maybe there is something to that advice.
It’s so easy to switch on the TV instead of your libido. It’s so easy to lie in bed like a zombie wrapped in the same blue-flowered flannel sheets you’ve been using every winter for the past seven years. It’s so easy to think about your husband’s great thighs, and the way he touches you in the curve of your hip, and then puts his lips right there as if you’v
e just handed him a road map. But not so easy to get to the remote control when the show is just getting to the good part.
Before Kit turned on the television, she spun around to look at the bed. She thought about Peter in a way she hadn’t thought about him in a very long time. He was gentle and never yelled. He stood by her when she got into trouble. He was a fantastic father, even if he never understood their daughter’s adolescent mood swings. He always walked away when Kit started one of her periodic, and apparently quite regular, verbal outbursts. He always backed her up when she talked about what assholes her brothers were and how much she tried to please her father but never could.
All these years, she thought, he has loved me.
And I have been selfish. Absolutely selfish.
This realization soared though Kit as if someone had launched a Frisbee from inside her left leg. She could actually feel something rotating through her until whatever in the hell it was reached her heart, which began to pound wildly. Then it pushed through her throat and moved into her head until she could feel the sting of tears behind her eyes.
Oh, Peter!
That is when Kit pushed in the tape and focused on the yoga and breathing and forgiving herself and hoping against hope that it wasn’t too late and that she could make it up to Peter and then their daughter, and maybe, just maybe, one by one, her brothers. And that jewelry box? Kit can’t go there yet. She just can’t. Maybe one brother every year, surely not all at once, and surely not one brother at all, because this has been a long time coming. A lifetime. But for now the closet must stay closed.
When the tape ended, she was dripping wet and absolutely astonished. She was also amazingly relaxed after exerting so much physical energy, and her heart was still keeping pace with her breathing—slow and easy. Go figure!
Now, by the time Kit manages to struggle to her feet, having obtained a new level of bliss in her usually chaotic emotional underworld, she has also given birth to so many new ideas she feels as if her feet may not touch the ground.
First she takes the yoga video from the DVD player, kisses it, and sets it on the dresser next to the television. Then she unplugs the TV, somehow manages to lift it, and slowly carries it downstairs and into the kitchen, where she sets it on the table.
It’s an old television, but it works, and maybe she’ll lug it to the car and take it over to the women’s shelter. There are other things to do first. The DVD player goes next. Then she takes all the bedding off the bed, throws everything in the washer, and decides, as she turns on the washing machine, that she’s going to give away all the bedding too.
When she finishes, Kit heads back downstairs, where she sits at the kitchen table, sipping a huge glass of water, and writes out a list of everything she’s going to buy to turn the master bedroom into a love shack.
She laughs out loud as she begins writing. Turning Kit Ferranti into a love machine isn’t going to be as easy as buying new sheets, candles, a CD player, and whatever else she can think of on the way to the store.
Before she leaves, Kit decides to check her email. She’s been having some absolutely lively and wonderful exchanges with Grace, who told her last night that she also remembers seeing the billboards with Jane’s face plastered all over them.
While her laptop cranks up, Dr. Bayer is struggling to compose an email that must be sent to all four of her Tuesday-night women as soon as possible.
Her throat feels as if it’s been exposed to a major dust storm. Why this is so hard is beyond her—except deep down Dr. Bayer knows why it’s so hard. It’s because she doesn’t want any of these women to fail. It’s because this could be the last rung of her professional ladder. It’s because she’s been experimenting and she has to prove herself or … or, well, what?
Dr. Bayer shakes her head and tries to dislodge all her doubts. It’s now or never, Olivia.
Dear Kit, Grace, Jane, and Leah,
First of all, I want you all to know how proud I am of your progress. Our last session was a small taste of a miracle for me, and I am hoping you feel the same way. I am also hoping that when you finish reading this email you will not drive over here and do bodily harm to me. That would cause you to fail the class.
We have two class sessions left, if everything goes well. The final class, the week before Thanksgiving, will be a wrap-up, a graduation party of sorts, and one last chance to make sure everything is going okay in your lives.
But that leaves next week.
Prepare yourselves.
Next week you will be spending the night in jail. It’s not a jail that is still in use but the old county jail that has been renovated over on Harley Avenue. There are six cells. There is a bathroom in each cell. You will be allowed to bring something to drink. No food is allowed. You must bring your journals.
When we first started this journey, we talked about what you all have to lose if you do not pass this class, if you continued to live your life always on the brink of anger, if you couldn’t see that life is a fabulous gift—almost a game, like the wild hunt for yourselves I have been sending you on.
I’d love to be able to send you to a spa, away from all the distractions of life, but I hope you know by now that those distractions are fuel that can propel you to so many new places. You have all come very close to losing everything. My hope is that you will think of this next adventure as time to meditate and grow. This could be one of the most important events of your life. Bring those drawings—I want you to look at them all night long.
You know how to reach me if you have any questions. I suggest that everyone get a ride—parking is horrid on that street—and I will bring everyone home in the morning. Leah, I will pick you up at 6:45 p.m. next Tuesday evening.
Everyone else, please arrive at 7 p.m. The address is 34 S. Harley Avenue. I will be waiting by the door.
Sincerely,
Dr. Bayer
Olivia hits the send button, stands up, and waits for her phone to ring.
The emails are delivered and read within the hour by everyone but Jane. Jane is sleeping in the walk-in closet, covered by two hand-stitched dress shirts she once gave to her husband for his birthday.
It will be two days before she turns on her computer. And even then Dr. Bayer doesn’t receive one call or email message from any of the members of her Tuesday-night class.
She takes this as a good sign, and she can’t wait to take them down the last stretch of this very interesting road.
44
Sunday Night Serenades
Phyllis is so angry she’s thinking of going to bed early. She knows it’s the end of the week, and usually about this time of the day she can smell meat cooking. There’s a big red pot on the counter, and Olivia puts meat in there right after they get up in the morning.
The first time this happened, Phyllis was beyond excited. The piece of meat was huge! She sat in front of the counter as if she were watching a movie and waited, and waited, and waited. She later learned that when the meat goes in that pot it takes a long time to come out of it.
During the past several years, Phyllis has figured out how to get a piece of the meat that goes in the red thing. She absolutely never begs. Phyllis learned this the hard way. Once she even tried to stand on her skinny and very short hind legs, the way she had seen the dogs at the park jump around, but she just fell right over with a very large thud. She made the horrid mistake of barking once and she ended up locked—locked, mind you—in the bedroom.
Finally she decided to be calm about the whole thing. Phyllis would simply lie under the table when Olivia started to eat and this is when she learned how to smile. What actually happened is that she was trying so hard not to bark, because the smell of the meat was driving her insane, it was forcing her jaws to twitch.
Olivia noticed. Alleluia!
“Oh, Phyllis, look at you!” Olivia exclaimed with her voice shimmering in that sweet way that made Phyllis realize she was about to hit the jackpot.
It was beef that night. Phylli
s can remember it as if it were yesterday, but today is a total bust. She knew she was in trouble when the doorbell rang and Olivia came back into the kitchen with a brown bag filled with little white cartons.
This was not just unusual; it was totally unacceptable. Phyllis watches for a few minutes while Olivia unpacks the bag. Whatever is in there isn’t something Phyllis can wrap her saliva glands around. Thoroughly disgusted and disappointed, Phyllis finally plops down on her bed next to Olivia’s chair.
“What’s a matter, girl? Don’t you like Chinese food?” Olivia says, laughing. “Don’t worry. I ordered a little pork. If you stop pouting, you may get a piece.”
Phyllis totally ignores Olivia, who then ignores Phyllis. Olivia fills a plate, heats up some water for her tea, and then walks over to her chair.
This, Phyllis knows, is also almost unheard-of around their house. Olivia almost always eats at the table. Something is going on again.
“Well, girl, Sunday dinner tonight isn’t what it usually is,” Olivia explains. “I’m tired. Really, really tired.”
During the past few months, the nights have seemed longer. Even with Phyllis jumping like a wild bean when she greets her every evening, the house has never felt this empty, quiet, and huge.
Olivia has never been one to forgo sleep, but her co-workers have noticed that she looks exhausted most mornings when she comes into the office. She hasn’t been sleeping well, and when she does sleep it’s as if her brain got plugged into a running movie. She knows there are dozens of worlds inside her lively mind, but must they all collide and dance at once? Every night? She has stumbled toward the coffeemaker every morning this entire week, and Thursday morning she went back to bed for an hour and was almost late for her first appointment.