Listen to the Marriage

by John Jay Osborn

  Gretchen nodded. She saw something. Sandy read it in her face.

  “I could have called him on my cell phone and then walked in,” Gretchen said.

  “You could have said you happened to be in the neighborhood,” Sandy added.

  “Come on,” Gretchen said. But she grinned. “So, you said you were on the side of the marriage. What exactly does that mean? Do you mean you favor marriage as a social good?”

  “Oh no,” Sandy said. “I have no idea about that. I’m talking specifically about your marriage. The particular idiosyncratic marriage that you and Steve put together.”

  Sandy looked around the room, then back at Gretchen.

  “I see the marriage as independent of either of you. You guys built this entity, this marriage. You put a lot of work into it. Houses, children. I speak for this entity you created. Because neither of you is going to.”

  “Steve trashed our marriage,” Gretchen said.

  And yet you’re here, Sandy thought.

  “Yes, he did, but the marriage is still here,” Sandy said. “Can you sense it?”

  Gretchen looked at Sandy with a look that implied: This marriage counselor is crazy.

  “Don’t you feel it?” Sandy asked.

  “No, actually I don’t,” Gretchen said. “I guess I’ve just been hurt too much.”

  You don’t feel it? Sandy thought. You feel it so much you were ready to divorce Steve. The marriage is so powerful that you want to kill Steve for hurting it. You have been hurt so much because the marriage was so important.

  “Can I ask something that is probably really dumb?” Gretchen said.

  “There is no dumb,” Sandy said. “Ask me anything.”

  “There are three Scandinavian armchairs in here. But there is a fourth chair,” Gretchen said. “And it’s sort of a Victorian chair covered in green linen. An old-fashioned chair. Why this fourth chair?”

  “You’re on a roll,” Sandy said. “You tell me.”

  “Well, the couple wouldn’t sit in that chair. So, if I follow your logic, that chair, the green one, is the chair for the marriage,” Gretchen said. Her eyes opened wide. She stared at Sandy. Who was this woman? “But that’s crazy. That couldn’t possibly be true, could it?”

  “Yes, I keep that chair in the office to remind me that I speak for the marriage. That is the marriage’s chair,” Sandy said. “You see, the marriage can’t speak for itself.”

  Gretchen stared at the green chair, as if there were something, someone, sitting in it.

  Then Gretchen looked away from the chair, at the window and then back at Sandy.

  “Sandy, you are sounding delusional,” Gretchen said.

  “Am I?” Sandy said. “Next time, when you and Steve are sitting here together with me, see if you can feel your marriage sitting here with us. Just humor me and try. Okay?”

  “I don’t even know how I would do that,” Gretchen said.

  “Look at the chair. Try to see the marriage, feel how it’s feeling, even how it’s looking,” Sandy said. “It may sound crazy, but you need some new ideas. The old ones didn’t work that well, did they?”

  Gretchen was looking back at the green chair.

  “No,” Gretchen said slowly. “No, they didn’t.”

  “So try something new, something you think is delusional,” Sandy said. “Have a conversation with your marriage.”

  “You said it doesn’t talk,” Gretchen said.

  “Not out loud,” Sandy said. “But if you listen closely enough, you’ll hear it.”

  “You’re going to tell me what my nonexistent marriage is saying from a chair it isn’t in?” Gretchen said. And yet, despite this cynical remark, she was, in fact, smiling.

  Sandy smiled in return.

  “Not quite, Gretchen. I’m not going to tell you what your marriage is saying,” Sandy said. “You’re going to tell me what your marriage is saying. I’m just going to teach you to listen to it.”

  20.

  “There is a black Mercedes AMG C63 sitting in your parking lot, Sandy,” Steve said when they were all seated.

  “Yes, there is,” Sandy said. “It’s mine.”

  “You’re kidding me,” Steve said.

  “I can’t have a nice car?” Sandy said.

  “You traded in your Prius?”

  “I got the Mercedes from my mother,” Sandy said. “I’ll have a plaque made, like the one on the building. Actually I may get rid of it. We’ll see. Hey, it’s kind of fun, but I wouldn’t be driving it, except my Prius is getting its checkup. Do you miss your Mercedes?”

  “No,” Steve said. “When I saw yours, I thought it was mine, come back to haunt me, like a demon from the underworld.”

  “I can relate to that,” Sandy said. “Gretchen, I lived with my dad during high school. Steve knows about it. My mom would stalk me in her C63. I would hear the booming engine and run for it, a demon chasing me all over the city.”

  “When I saw the car, I thought Steve had relapsed, but then I saw his Subaru,” Gretchen said.

  “Have you relapsed, Steve?” Sandy asked. “I want you to look at Gretchen and tell me what you see.”

  “Like what we did before?” Steve asked. Sandy nodded.

  Steve looked at Gretchen, and she looked back at him. He looked off and then back at her.

  “Okay, I see a woman in her mid-thirties, very beautiful, blond hair, blue eyes, she is dressed professionally, has almost no jewelry on, just small gold circle earrings, a white blouse, a dark blue fitted skirt, and black low shoes, flats,” Steve said. “All in all, as I said, she looks competent, in control.”

  “Let’s take this a little further,” Sandy said. “Why don’t you just look at Gretchen for a couple of minutes.”

  “I’m not sure I like being objectified,” Gretchen said. “More simply, I don’t think I like being stared at.”

  “I invite you to stare at Steve while he stares at you,” Sandy said. “I’m going to ask you about Steve.”

  Gretchen shrugged. It was noncommittal. She wasn’t necessarily buying into this exercise. But she looked at Steve and went along with it.

  A few minutes went by.

  “Okay, I’m trying to look deeper,” Steve said. “So Gretchen is wearing a white blouse with no jewelry. But that white blouse, I happen to know, came from Paris, because Gretchen bought it there. And when you look at it, it has a high collar that is kind of…”

  He paused, still looking at Gretchen, trying to find the right words.

  “So, it’s got a bit of France when they had musketeers and big boots, and wore swords. It’s really simple, but the sleeves have four buttons on the cuffs, and the collar is definitely romantic,” Steve said. “And I happen to know, though I can’t see it from here, that there is a double seam in the back.”

  “Go on,” Sandy said. “More.”

  “I happen to know that Gretchen’s hair, sort of palomino colored, is natural, and when I look at it, it seems romantic too, like it’s gold, but gold in layers, it’s really beautiful,” Steve said. “You know, it’s romantic too, because it’s long hair, it sweeps down over her shoulders, it’s long and thick.”

  “Take it another step, will you?” Sandy said, half expecting Gretchen to object, but Gretchen didn’t. She sat there quietly, her beautiful romantic blue eyes focused on Steve.

  “Okay, the simple blue skirt isn’t so simple either, it’s a dark, almost black, blue and it contrasts with the white blouse, and it’s not form-fitting, hugging, but it’s sexy too, it doesn’t hide her body,” Steve said.

  Again, Sandy thought that might bring out Gretchen’s anger, but she sat there, looking at Steve. Waiting her turn?

  “Okay, I notice the fact that Gretchen has kicked off one of her shoes, and that foot is resting over the one that still has a shoe on,” Steve said. “And I never noticed this before, but I can see the heel of the shoe that Gretchen has kicked off has a sort of copper half circle around the back of it, just on top of the low hee
l, it’s like a spur.”

  “That’s pretty good,” Sandy said. “How are you feeling right now?”

  She was pretty sure what he was feeling and she wanted it on the table. How could she know his feelings? It came from Steve to her in a hundred small ways, from his eyes, to his hands gripping his chair, to the arch of his backbone.

  “I’m feeling sad,” Steve said. “And I’m feeling incredibly stupid, which is nothing new, it’s been a recurring theme in these sessions.”

  “Why are you sad right now?” Sandy asked.

  “Well,” Steve said. “Okay, looking at Gretchen for so long, I’m sort of turned on.”

  “This is crazy,” Gretchen said loudly. “This is supposed to be serious?”

  “It is serious,” Sandy said. “And I think you know it. It’s very serious.” She looked at Steve.

  “Why are you feeling aroused?” Sandy asked Steve.

  “Gretchen is like some beautiful woman who rides a horse to meet her lover, the highwayman,” Steve said.

  “Come on,” Gretchen said.

  “And?” Sandy asked.

  “The highwayman betrays her,” Steve said.

  “And?” Sandy asked.

  “She pulls out the silver inlaid dueling pistols from the finely tooled leather holsters lashed to the pommel of the saddle of her big black horse and shoots the highwayman dead,” Steve said.

  “This is so melodramatic,” Gretchen said. “I am not some character in a Brontë novel. Or in the Alfred Noyes poem. And I’m not Anita Garibaldi, on a big galloping black horse, with a pistol in one hand and a baby in the other. And this is not marriage counseling. And I’ve done research.”

  Sandy sat up straight, she blinked. Okay, Gretchen, take it away.

  “And what did you find in your research?” Sandy said.

  “I mean, what theory of marriage counseling is this?” Gretchen said. “Are you doing Structural Family Therapy? Milan Family Therapy? Solution Focused Therapy? Narrative Therapy? No. This is like a freshman enrichment seminar in college.”

  “Like the one where you met Steve?” Sandy asked.

  “Yes, like Elizabeth and Her Poetry, where I met Steve,” Gretchen said.

  “That was the one where he had an insight about Queen Elizabeth’s dress?” Sandy asked.

  “Which is all he’s doing now,” Gretchen said in frustration.

  “Which is when you fell in love with him,” Sandy said.

  “You ask us to look at each other and describe each other,” Gretchen said hard, demanding. “But what we look like, particularly what Steve looks like, can change all the time. I look at Steve now, and he’s rugged, cords or jeans, flannel shirts, I mean, he used to get his shirts handmade, now he doesn’t even get them pressed. He’s all outdoorsy and friendly. What I’m saying is that someone like Steve changes his look at will, to suit his purposes.”

  “Maybe he’s just changed,” Sandy said. “Why don’t you look at him?”

  “I just described him,” Gretchen said.

  “Come on, Gretchen,” Sandy said.

  “No! Can we back up for a second,” Gretchen said. “Steve looked at me and saw a romantic. He felt badly because he had betrayed the romantic part of me. Okay, it’s true that I do have an inclination to dress as a sort of austere romantic. And I would like to believe that whoever I’m with really loves me. But I think Steve missed the austere side.

  “You see, we have two children. We both had careers. We had a sort of team going. And, as a matter of fact, we did have uniforms. Steve was the protective businessman who was going to make sure the team was provided for. I was the loving supermom who was able to take most of the kid responsibility while also having my own career, though not a career with as much pizzazz as that of my super Silicon Valley husband.

  “Even the kids knew they were part of the team, that they were supposed to do well, like that was just required, they had to pull their weight and they did.

  “So then, Steve doesn’t just betray me, he betrays the whole team, the whole project, everything we’ve been working to build. It wasn’t romantic love. It was making sure the kids’ lunches were packed, that we had contributed to the 401(k)s and that our investments were properly allocated between fixed income and stocks. That the kids had 529 plans for college. All this stuff. We were building this thing one block at a time. And he pulls that all down?”

  “Why did he do that?” Sandy said.

  “Just look at him,” Gretchen said. “He did it because he was unhappy. He’s unhappy. Look.”

  “Why?” Sandy said, thinking that Gretchen was doing just what she wanted Gretchen to do: look at Steve.

  Sandy also saw Gretchen going up to the line. Gretchen did not like to go into unknown emotional territory, and she was about to go there; she hesitated on the edge.

  “It wasn’t enough for him,” Gretchen said, shaking her head. “He had everything and it wasn’t enough. I’m not the romantic, Steve is the romantic. He couldn’t deal with the ordinary, humdrum, take the bucket up the hill and then do it again. He had to have the beautiful princess.”

  “You say Steve couldn’t deal with the humdrum, take the bucket up the hill again and again,” Sandy said. “Okay. So, he couldn’t do that. But don’t a lot of people hate their jobs and want to change?”

  “He had the best job, he had the most important job, he made the most money, as he kept saying,” Gretchen said. “Give me a break.”

  “He hated his job,” Sandy said. “He was jealous of you, because you loved yours.”

  It stopped Gretchen cold. Steve had been jealous of her? She’d never thought of that, and now she did. There was something appealing about how a new thought could stop Gretchen in her tracks.

  “Steve jealous of me? Come on,” Gretchen said. She did this thing with her hands, as if she were in class, a big gesture, so it could reach the big audience in the classroom, her arms coming in, folded across her chest, and was shaking her head.

  “Would you do Steve’s job?” Sandy said.

  “Not in a minute,” Gretchen said. Honestly.

  “And he had to?” Sandy said.

  Gretchen suddenly smiled.

  “He wanted to,” Gretchen said. “He loved it.”

  “Why?” Sandy said.

  “You see Steve’s watch?” Gretchen asked.

  “Yes,” Sandy said.

  “That watch is a Rolex Submariner,” Gretchen said. “I bought it for Steve years ago. He wanted one so bad and we couldn’t afford it then. But he wanted to look cool, like the other guys at the firm. He wanted to be part of the team. So I got it for him.”

  Gretchen looked at Steve.

  “Yes, I’m looking at you, as Sandy tells me to do. You look sad,” Gretchen said tentatively. “That watch was what you wanted, wasn’t it? It made you happy?”

  “I thought so at the time,” Steve said slowly. “But then it didn’t. I couldn’t find a way to get off the train. It never stopped.”

  These two, they talk all the time in metaphors, Sandy thought. Luckily one of them was an English professor.

  “What train?” Sandy asked.

  “The everything train,” Steve said.

  “Which means? Steve, look,” Sandy said. “There is a complicated railway system running around your brain. Or maybe it’s like the New York subway system. You’ve got tracks crossing over each other, running parallel, then doubling back. So tell me the train you couldn’t get off. The A train? The M? Were you going to the Bronx? Brooklyn? Manhattan?”

  “I don’t think that’s right,” Steve said. “There was only one train, my family, my job, the kids, Gretchen. They were all wrapped up together.”

  Of course he was right, Sandy realized.

  The session was already ten minutes over time. No, there wasn’t another client waiting nervously in the little waiting room. Sandy was willing to go over time; if they needed to she was willing to go way over time.

  But she had a feeling that they
needed to think over what had happened in this session. Wouldn’t it be better to leave it all at Steve’s answer, incomplete as it was? Wouldn’t that be something for them to mull over?

  Sandy thought: Maybe Steve hadn’t even been riding in his own train, he’d been on Gretchen’s train, maybe you were the engineer, Gretchen, you decided where the train went. Maybe, Steve, you didn’t have any way to stop Gretchen’s train except to blow it all up.

  21.

  Each time it’s different, Sandy thought. The next time always seems to be about something else, and then you realize it isn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” Sandy said. “What is the Tactile Dome?”

  “It’s a semicircular mound with a passage that curls around inside it,” Steve said. “The passage is lined with different surfaces. You crawl around in the dark and experience different touch sensations. You climb, you slide. The passage opens up, closes, but you can’t see anything. It’s really black.

  “Anyway, it’s at the Exploratorium. You can rent it for birthdays. Chris’s whole class can come.”

  They were talking about their son Chris’s birthday. He would be six.

  Steve looked again at Gretchen. She shrugged.

  “I’m not really up for a birthday party with Chris’s whole class,” she said. “I know that’s what most people do, but it doesn’t appeal to me. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.”

  “Aren’t we doing this party together?” Steve said.

  “I don’t know,” Gretchen said. “I don’t think we have to. You’re good at organizing stuff. You could just go ahead and do whatever you want. I could have time alone with Chris afterward. Maybe Liz could stay on with you and I could take Chris out to dinner, just him and me.”

  Sandy saw confusion and then disappointment sweep over Steve. He was let down, he went down as if he were sliding down a steep hill.

  It’s okay, Steve, Sandy thought. Birthday parties are really hard when you’re separated, everything up in the air.