Who Makes Up These Rules, Anyway?

by Stevi Mittman

  Things fall into place with a thud. That’s what took Rio so long to get home on Tuesday night, when he said that he had to stop by his mother’s on the way. Married twelve years and he still brings his troubles to her. A man doesn’t share that sort of stuff with his wife, according to Rio. A man protects his wife, provides for her. He doesn’t burden her with his worries. Not about sex and not about money.

  A wholly different set of rules, you see. The Rules according to Rio Gallo.

  CHAPTER 17

  Dr. Benjamin is waiting for me when I get to her office. As I am getting out of the Expedition (every time I say that I feel like I am on safari), I see that she is bending her miniblinds and watching the parking lot. This allows her to see me (a) drop my purse, (b) pick up my purse and drop my book, and (c) drop my handbag as I reach down to pick up my book, which is, it turns out, not my book at all, but Harry Freaking Potter!

  I can’t even look at her as I hurry through the door she is holding open and plop into the unnaturally cold beige leather chair. I blow my bangs off my forehead, or try to, but despite the AC in the car, they are pasted there by the hot weather.

  “Hot out,” I say, trying to compose myself.

  She says nothing, but pours me a tall glass of cold water from the carafe on her desk. She is in waiting mode, anxious to discuss what couldn’t wait for our usual Tuesday appointment.

  “So you know, I assume, that your husband called me yesterday. He says he is very worried about you.”

  Yeah. “Munchkin Syndrome by Proxy,” I say with a grimace.

  “Münchhausen by Proxy?” she asks, apparently thrown off kilter. She fingers the brain model on her desk, tracing a crevice with her finger.

  “Whatever. The one where you make your kid sick.”

  “Do you mean to say that you think your husband is—”

  My diagnosis is off. Only I know what I mean. What else is new?

  “Maybe what I mean is self-fulfilling prophesy. That’s what my friends keep saying. The thing is, Rio is so afraid that I’m going crazy that he’s making me crazy.”

  “How so?”

  I don’t know. “Forget I said anything. It was a wayward thought, after all.”

  She suggests that wayward or not, we run with it, insisting that I wouldn’t have brought it up unless it was truly bothering me. And anything bothering me is worth discussing. What a concept! Imagine if husbands felt that way? Dr. Phil would be off the air!

  Screwing up my courage because I’m not sure I want to know the answer, I ask her if she thinks I could be paranoid.

  She is supposed to say ‘Do you?’ We both know the drill. We’ve run it before. Only this time she simply says, “No,” looking at me as if she wants to know if that will put an end to it.

  “Why not?” I ask. “I mean, how can you tell?”

  She looks at me as if to ask if we really have to play this game. “Okay, do you?” she asks with so little interest I’m not sure I’m supposed to answer.

  I have valid reasons. Like suspecting that Bobbie and Rio are having an affair behind my back. I suspect everyone of everything. Even the guy at the Dairy Barn. “I drove through there—you know I have this milk problem—and he asks me what the heck I’ve done with the six gallons of milk he swears I got the day before, which must have been a very busy day.” I take a breath and forge ahead. “Okay, same day. I go to the new dry cleaners to pick up Dana’s rug. Only the guy says he put it in my car for me the day before, which I’m sure never happened. And he winks at me! I go off the deep end, ranting and raving and making a general idiot of myself telling him how the rug matches all the colors in the pillows in Dana’s room, and then I come home and, of course, it’s in Dana’s room.”

  Dr. Benjamin nods and waits for me to go on, which I do without taking a breath.

  “And so, by now I’m a deranged lunatic, a paranoid deranged lunatic, and I decide that Rio is tricking me somehow. So instead of asking him if he picked it up, which would have been a neat trick since he worked late on Tuesday, I call back the cleaners and inquire about the car he put it in, you know, like it doesn’t really matter, and I’m thinking they’ll say it was a Corvette, and all the while my heart is racing and I’m thinking ‘I’ve got him now.’”

  The wind leaves my sails and I hunch my shoulders and wonder why she has to crank the air-conditioning up so high that I need a sweater in July.

  “Of course, the fact that Rio wouldn’t do that to me doesn’t even compute at this point, you know? Because I’m so sure it’s not me. Which of course it must have been, because the cleaner says he put the rug into a Ford Expedition.”

  “Well,” Dr. Benjamin starts to say, but I wave her effort away.

  “It gets worse,” I admit. “He says he put it right next to a zillion gallons of milk and a half dozen of Alyssa’s Lil Bratz. Of course, he doesn’t call them Alyssa’s…

  “And then I thought the kids were pulling some stunts, like the plastic stuff for camp?” She nods to show that she remembers the toothbrush holders. “Only these things keep happening even though they’re away. Like when I called to change my nail appointment and apparently I already had. And it keeps happening, over and over again, and I keep thinking it’s someone else, and it keeps turning out to be me.

  “And Rio thinks I—” I start, and then stop myself when she raises a warning finger.

  “Do you think?”

  I admit I don’t know what to think, and she shuts my folder, leans back and asks, “Are you ready to talk about the aspirins now?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake! Rio told you, too? Why didn’t he just take out an ad in Newsday? Get it on the six o’clock news? It was nothing. I had a headache and I went into the kitchen to take some aspirin. I took out the bottle, a glass—you know. And then the phone rang. It was Rio, saying that he was almost home, did I want him to stop for anything. So I said I was taking some aspirin for a headache and I asked him to stop for milk, which as you know I seem incapable of keeping in my house for some reason that I can’t explain.”

  “And that made you upset, thinking about the problem with the milk, and you took some aspirins. How many?” she asks.

  “No, I wasn’t upset. And I’m not done. So, then he asks me to check to see if he left his keys to the shed on the dresser in the bedroom. See, he went to that stupid paintball store and he keeps the stuff in the shed all locked up, and…well, anyway, I went upstairs and then the doorbell rang and there was postage due on a letter from Canada. It seems that Rio has some sort of stupid idea about going hunting in Saskatchewan or something, and then I thought I saw the mouse that Rio saw the other day and—”

  “I thought you told me you were having trouble with your memory.” She has opened my folder and is scribbling as fast as she can.

  “And as long as I had the mailman at the door—” I say, reaching across the desk and tapping the folder indicating she should get down every word “—I thought I could give him the letters for the kids. And then Rio came in, and my head was pounding like crazy and I took three aspirin, but then I looked at the stuff on the counter and the truth is, I couldn’t remember if I took some already or not.

  “And I thought I might have taken two doses.” I fold my arms. “And that’s the aspirin saga. And why he got so upset and acted like I was suicidal, I can’t tell you.”

  She stares at me, waiting for me to cough up some other details. Like maybe she wants to know about David, but I don’t know that I’m really ready to talk about that.

  “And the deer?” she asks.

  Violated. It is the only word I can think of to describe how I feel. I get up and walk over to the window, adjusting the blinds until I can see into the parking lot. I don’t really expect to see Rio out there, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was. I don’t think I’d even be surprised if when I peered out, I found him peering in. Must be more paranoia because it’s as if Rio is storing up damaging evidence against me. I mean the deer thing was a long time ago. Why
bring it up now?

  Tonelessly, I tell Dr. Benjamin about Bambi, and say I’d do it again, given the chance. Then I amend my statement so she’ll understand that I mean I’d save the thing, not hit it, again.

  “If I had hit a deer with my kids in the car when they were young, I’d have moved heaven and earth to save it,” the doctor says.

  I’m grateful for the admission, because Dr. Benjamin’s respect matters to me more than I want to admit. It would be different, I think, if she were a man. Then I could think that she doesn’t understand, can’t know how I feel, would feel differently if she’d borne children. The fact that she’s a woman means I can’t get off the hook so easily, and it means that if she can do it, I ought to be able to, as well. I wish I knew exactly what it is.

  “I keep seeing that deer in my dreams, and Alyssa is crying and I wake up with my heart pounding….” I tell her. I don’t mention the other things that wake me up in the night because I am too embarrassed.

  “That I can help with,” she says, pulling out her prescription pad with the kind of smile that says she wants to be on my team. “Mild sleeping pills.”

  My team has been decimated by players that have either been put on the disabled list or fouled out. It feels good to have a substitute with all the right moves.

  “Any other odd instances since last week?” she asks. “Any high drama?”

  “Well, Rio’s making sure that nothing too terrible is going wrong,” I say.

  “He’s very solicitous,” Dr. Benjamin responds.

  “Overbearing.” The word pops out of my mouth before I even realize it.

  “What makes you say so?”

  “Actually, Bobbie, my neighbor, says so. She seems to think that all his coddling is making things worse. Like I told you about how he bought me this Palm Pilot to keep track of things that I want to remember? So he keeps telling me to put this or that in it, calls me from the office to tell me things and asks if I’ve put them in my Palm, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world to do, which it isn’t, especially if you have long nails. And I get all crazy about whether I put each stupid thing down in addition to whether I did it. Some things I put in after I’ve done them and then check them off. And Bobbie keeps saying that if I don’t drive myself crazy, Rio’ll do it. But Bobbie’s going through a hard time and—” I stop myself, almost sucking in the last of my words.

  “And?”

  “Oh. I thought you’d tell me not to talk about Bobbie because I’m supposed to talk about me.”

  “You think Bobbie might be a little jealous of the attention that your husband is paying you?” She makes a note on her pad.

  “What did you write?” I ask.

  She looks at me and considers a minute. Then those little Botox beggars near her eyes crinkle. “Get milk,” she says.

  I can’t help laughing. I lean forward but she shifts so that I can’t see the yellow pad.

  “Bobbie’s jealousy,” she reminds me. “Does it bother you?”

  “You mean is that yet another thing I feel guilty about? That my husband is there and hers isn’t? That I’ve got money and she’s got to be having financial trouble with Mike gone? That my life is perfect and I have no right to be coming apart at the seams?”

  “Is that something you need a ‘right to do’?”

  “I have no problems. I mean, other than that I’m losing my mind. I have a husband. I have children. They’re happy kids, healthy kids….”

  “So you feel that there is some sort of fairness doctrine operating here? That emotional and mental health is somehow an earned capacity?” She seems amused by the notion.

  “More like the other way,” I admit. “That if everything is all right—”

  “You mean that if, for example, a mother were to accidentally be responsible for the death of her child, she would have a right to a breakdown, and to subsequent breakdowns?”

  She is referring to my mother. The facts seem to speak for themselves.

  “And that a woman who seemingly has everything going for her has no right to a breakdown. Have I got that right? That you only are allowed to experience difficulties if you—”

  “Yes.”

  “You aren’t serious.”

  “Well,” I hedge, not wanting to disappoint her. “I really don’t think that I have a right to complain about anything. Which makes me all the more irritated that this is happening to me. I should be fine. My life is fine.”

  “Is it?” The line between her eyebrows deepens. She really could use some collagen or something.

  I don’t know what to tell her. I’m still trying to work up to the fact that Rio kept from me David’s coming home, but it’s such a Pandora’s box that if I lift the lid, even a little, who knows what will come flying out?

  “What’s bothering you the most at this moment?” she asks.

  “Well, you know, the pool thing is getting to me a little.”

  “The pool thing?” she asks.

  Of course I’ve mentioned it to her, haven’t I? I’m sure I have. “The in-ground pool we’re getting?”

  She was leaning back slightly in her chair, and now she comes forward with such force that she looks as if she’s part of a catapult act in the circus.

  “I didn’t tell you?” I ask as innocently as I can, as if it is merely some detail I’ve left out, not something I’ve agonized over. “Rio got me a pool for my birthday.”

  “He did,” Dr. Benjamin says, nodding as she tries to take this new information in.

  “Well, the kids wanted one, and Rio did, too, and his brother-in-law works for the company and he loses jobs very quickly so it seemed like a good idea, while he had the job, and maybe to help him keep the job, too, if we ordered a pool.”

  She waits for me to finish while I loft out there in the wind, untethered, pretending that the pool is no big deal.

  “So they started digging the other day. Big hole. Huge hole. Looks like the foundation for a new Wal-Mart.”

  The doctor is unnervingly quiet, which only makes me feel all the more strongly the need to fill up the dead air around us.

  “It’s going to be organically shaped, black inside instead of blue, so it doesn’t look like a pool, but more like a pond, which is good so that it doesn’t really remind me of anything. Not that it would bother me. I mean if it looked like another pool.”

  “By that you mean the one in which your baby brother drowned,” she says. “I mean, why mince words if it doesn’t bother you, right?”

  I am too busy swallowing and trying to sit up straight in my chair to answer her.

  She flips open my folder to check on something and then reminds me that my birthday was several weeks ago.

  “Well, that was why I thought I’d mentioned it,” I say, but her grimace says she isn’t buying it.

  “Well, I don’t see why my husband and kids shouldn’t have what they want just because of something that happened years ago to someone they never even knew,” I add.

  “Someone they never knew? Funny, but I thought when we discussed your brother’s death we were very clear on the fact that it happened to you—that the tragedy of losing a baby brother belonged to you as well as losing a son belonged to your mother.”

  When I say nothing, she continues.

  “You remember that discussion? It seems to me that it’s a matter of convenience, suddenly, whether the tragedy is yours or not. Is that the case?”

  “Convenience?” I shout at her. “That’s a terrible thing to say! Like I’m using it as some excuse. Well, this proves I’m not, doesn’t it? If I used Markie as an excuse, we wouldn’t be having the pool put in, now would we?”

  “Why are ‘we’ having the pool put in, Teddi? The real reason?” Damn those eyes of hers, that can peel off layers of my soul and pin them to the wall.

  “Rio wants—”

  “And what about what Teddi wants?” she says before I can finish. I tell her as much. “Are you telling me you want this pool? Was that what yo
u were about to say?”

  “I’m not opposed to it.” No one, except those members of my family who want the pool desperately, would even pretend to believe me. “I mean, there are four of them and one of me. It hardly seems fair that I should impose my will on the whole family because of something that happened over thirty years ago.”

  She is writing furiously in my file. After a moment she looks up. “I want to be sure I have this right. Now our feelings are subject to majority rule? I thought it was a merit-based system last time. Now we vote on how Teddi can feel and what is supposed to bother her after how long. Tell me, would their votes change if it happened last year? Is there some cutoff?”

  It is not the way she is making it sound. It isn’t like my family has ever said I shouldn’t be bothered by what happened to my brother. “This really has less to do with them than it does to do with me.”

  “How so?” she asks.

  “Well, I want to be over it, to wipe that fear, and all the others, away. To take charge of my life and not let the past, or my mother, or my fear of repeating her life, rule my own.”

  “Nice speech,” she tells me, asking whether or not I buy it. “I should be over it,” I say adamantly.

  “If I could remove one word from the English language, or at least forbid the uttering of it in this office, it would be should.”

  “Well, a pool will prove that I am over it.” I hope, I add silently.

  “And the fact that you’re trembling means…?”

  I don’t answer her. What can I say? That I am scared to death and never should have agreed to the pool in the first place? That the challenge is too great? That, as Bobbie says, I’ve set the bar too high?

  “The fact of the matter is that some things are never gotten over. Yours is not some irrational fear based on what might happen. It is a memory rooted very soundly in what did happen. And if you want to work on getting over it, we will do that. The pool itself concerns me less than your refusal to see that you have a right to the security that comes with knowing you have prevented a possible calamity by simply not having a pool in your yard.”