Listen to the Marriage

by John Jay Osborn

  “No,” Steve said. “Not anymore.”

  “But you did,” Gretchen said wistfully. “You lied a lot.”

  “And I’m so sorry,” Steve said.

  “Maybe you are sorry,” Gretchen said. “Funny, I actually believe that you might be sorry.”

  “I am,” Steve said.

  Gretchen turned to Sandy.

  “Here is Steve going out with his Italian cooking lady, Gabby. Here we are living separately. But here we are faithfully coming to your office every week, week after week.”

  “But here I am not sleeping with the Italian cook,” Steve said.

  “Yes, I do want to ask you about that,” Gretchen said.

  Now she leaned forward.

  “Actually that is a great question, Sandy. Do I trust Steve?” she said. “Steve, I think you have made a good-faith effort here, in this office, with Sandy helping you out.”

  Gretchen turned to look at Sandy again.

  “So, all in all, yes, I trust Steve,” she said. “Amazing.”

  Now she turned to Steve.

  “By the way, how are things going with Gabrielle?” she asked. “I know last time I said I didn’t want to hear about your weekend. I said that all that counted was what happened in this office. Now I do want to hear. I just never know how I’m going to feel. Do you? So how is it going with Gabrielle?”

  Steve didn’t say anything for a moment. Finally …

  “How is it going with Gabby? I enjoy her company,” Steve said. “Is there anything specific you want to know? That would be easier to answer.”

  “Why didn’t you sleep with her? Who goes away for a weekend in Mendocino with a beautiful earthy Italian babe and doesn’t sleep with her?” Gretchen asked.

  “Well, we made out,” Steve said.

  Sandy and Gretchen smiled. You used the joke to change the subject, Sandy thought; why didn’t you answer Gretchen’s question?

  “Okay. What does Gabrielle think about all this?” Gretchen said. “How you are sleeping with her and going to marriage counseling week after week with your wife?”

  “I haven’t slept with her,” Steve said. “I told you that.”

  “I know,” Gretchen said. “I guess she doesn’t want to sleep with you if you’re still involved with your wife. As in coming here.”

  “That’s part of it,” Steve said.

  Of course Gretchen remembered that Steve had said he hadn’t slept with Gabrielle, Sandy thought. Gretchen is taking you somewhere, can you see it, Steve?

  “Oh, Steve,” Gretchen said, and she leaned toward him. “It’s hard, isn’t it? Really hard.”

  “She thinks I ought to divorce you,” Steve said suddenly, honestly. “She has a sort of cut-and-dried attitude. She doesn’t tolerate a lot of ambiguity.”

  For the first time, Steve had thrown Gabrielle into the room. Not the dark-haired beauty of the Internet, but the Gabrielle he actually knew. This was progress, and Gretchen had brought it on.

  “That’s what you wanted to hear, wasn’t it?” Steve added.

  “I did want to hear what Gabrielle was thinking about you and me,” Gretchen said.

  “So why the hell didn’t you just ask me?” Steve shot back.

  “I did ask you,” Gretchen said. “And I was proud of myself for daring to ask you. You just didn’t hear me. I made real progress. Why didn’t you hear me ask?” She paused and then suddenly lit up. “I know why. Because I screwed it up by pretending that I assumed that Gabrielle had slept with you, even though you told me that you hadn’t slept with her. I’m sorry. I make things so complicated sometimes I can’t unravel them. I thought you might be lying to me. But I’m trying to learn to be better.”

  “It’s okay,” Steve said.

  “No, it’s not okay,” Gretchen said.

  Everything seemed to stop for a moment. Finally, Sandy said to Gretchen: “So what do you think about Gabrielle wanting Steve to divorce you?”

  “That Gabrielle wants Steve to divorce me?” Gretchen said.

  “Yes,” Sandy said.

  “Well, it’s a bummer,” Gretchen said. “But then what did I expect? I mean, love is sort of take no prisoners. But what really hit me was that Gabrielle can’t tolerate ambiguity.” She looked at Steve. “And she’s still fun to go out with?”

  What a good question, Sandy thought. Ambiguity is our stock-in-trade here.

  “In some ways it’s refreshing,” Steve said.

  I’ll bet, Sandy thought. But fairly limiting.

  “I’ll bet,” Gretchen said. “What a change of pace for you.”

  In sync, Sandy thought.

  Steve started to say something and then stopped. Sandy tried to think what it might have been, but she couldn’t quite grab Steve’s thought.

  In sync with Gretchen, but not Steve.

  “Do you like Gabrielle a lot?” Gretchen asked.

  “Yes, I like her a lot,” Steve said.

  But not enough, Sandy thought.

  “I feel threatened,” Gretchen said. “I’m not kidding. I thought you were madly in love with me.”

  “I am madly in love with you,” Steve said. “I have developed an ability to tolerate truckloads of ambiguity.”

  Sandy saw the tears falling slowly and handed Gretchen the tissue box.

  26.

  “Thanks for seeing me alone,” Gretchen said.

  Sandy thought that Gretchen looked better all the time. She didn’t seem jumpy anymore, as if on the lookout for something to come at her. She had managed to work out a life on her own, and she had a relationship with Steve that was complicated, difficult, but, Sandy also thought, a relationship that could be trusted. He might be about to sleep with the tricky, and Sandy thought conniving, Gabrielle, but Gretchen knew about it and everything else.

  Sandy thought, Now they are apart, now they are seeing other people, but now, in their own strange way, they trust each other more than when they were together.

  “Anyway,” Gretchen said. “Remind me what the deal is in these private meetings. Does everything we say privately have to go back to the other person?”

  “I don’t know,” Sandy said. “Whatever it is, why don’t you just share it with Steve? I am really in favor of you guys telling each other stuff. Rather than me doing it.”

  Gretchen looked over at the green chair. The marriage is there, Sandy thought, and you see it.

  Gretchen seemed to be thinking this over.

  “So what’s up, Gretchen?” Sandy said, prodding her.

  “I guess I could tell Steve this if I had to,” Gretchen said. “I’ve been thinking about how to explain this to you, and I think the way to go is to share something with you.”

  She pulled the Bottega Veneta bag into her lap and reached inside. She held something out to Sandy. Sandy took it. It was a Valentine’s Day card. On the outside, in sweeping script, it read: Love: the greatest blessing. Sandy opened it. The message on the inside read: Feeling so grateful for you on Valentine’s Day. It was signed “Bill.”

  Gretchen reached into the magical chocolate-colored brown bag again and came out with something else, which she handed to Sandy. It was a small silver bud vase, very simple, maybe Scandinavian, maybe antique Georg Jensen, Sandy wasn’t sure. It was delicate and obviously expensive.

  “And one thing more,” Gretchen said.

  The last thing Gretchen handed to Sandy was a very small watercolor painting, not even four inches across. It was a simple landscape, a beach, the ocean, and far out, a sailboat flying a spinnaker, which was in the shape of a heart. At the bottom, there were words From a secret admirer.

  “I’ve got some ideas, but I think it would help if you explained these to me,” Sandy said.

  “Okay,” Gretchen said. “As you know it was Valentine’s Day last week. The card is from Bill. The vase and the picture are from Steve.”

  “Your secret admirer,” Sandy said. “There was a rose in the vase?”

  “That would be too obvious for Steve
,” Gretchen said. “Freesia. Yellow freesia, a single stem.”

  “I like the bud vase,” Sandy said honestly. It was beautiful.

  “I like it too,” Gretchen said. “I like this purse too. Steve is great at giving presents, and I don’t just mean that they are expensive. He thinks about them.”

  “Tell me about the card,” Sandy said.

  “Just look at the contrast,” Gretchen said.

  “Tell me about it,” Sandy said.

  “It’s tacky, what can I say?” Gretchen said. She paused. “What am I trying to say? I’m judging someone on their Valentine’s Day present? That sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”

  “Not to me,” Sandy said. “How do you come out on this?”

  “It’s just a card. Bill is really earnest. He’s the salt of the earth,” Gretchen said.

  He doesn’t have any taste, Sandy thought, but Gretchen could probably teach him over time.

  “But we’re never going to get together,” Gretchen said. “We just aren’t. Even if he wasn’t married, we wouldn’t get together. I know that now.”

  Gretchen leaned forward and stared at Sandy.

  “But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about him, I do. I needed him. He was really important to me,” Gretchen said.

  “Can we back up for a moment,” Sandy said. “Before you showed me the valentine card, I had a different image of Bill. He’s an English professor, he sends you letters that he writes with a fountain pen. I thought he was sophisticated.”

  “Look,” Gretchen said. “Bill is the smartest guy to ever come out of a small town in western Wisconsin. He’s created himself. It’s not easy to do.”

  “I’m confused,” Sandy said.

  “Me too,” Gretchen said.

  “I think you’re saying that you see Bill differently now,” Sandy said.

  “I do,” Gretchen said. “It just isn’t going to work out.”

  “But you knew it wasn’t going to work out,” Sandy said. “You knew he was married. That he’d already been divorced once. I thought one of Bill’s good points was that he was safe. You could just have an affair with him. Didn’t have to worry about actually being with him.”

  What are we talking about, Sandy wondered. Something didn’t make sense. Gretchen was a master of indirection. It was one of the biggest problems Sandy had with her. They needed to work on it.

  Gretchen had taken them down one path, Bill’s path. Sandy backed up to the crossroads and went down the other.

  “What did you think when you got the valentine from the secret admirer?” Sandy asked.

  “Okay, why the sailboat? When we were first in love, we talked about getting a sailboat and sailing off into the sunset, having a great romantic adventure. Across the Pacific. Steve is a great sailor, but then we had our careers and then the kids and we were working all the time. That’s why he put the picture of the sailboat on the valentine. It had a message,” Gretchen said.

  “Which was?” Sandy asked.

  “That we could still get the sailboat,” Gretchen said.

  “Do you want to get the sailboat?” Sandy asked.

  “I don’t know,” Gretchen said slowly. “I hate to say it, but there is a part of me that does. I don’t think it’s the smart part of me.”

  “Why isn’t it smart?” Sandy asked.

  “It’s romantic,” Gretchen said. “And I’ve had it with romantic love.” She looked at the green chair. “You talk about the marriage and how it’s something you build up over time. It’s like a brick wall, you build it one brick at a time. But romantic love is like a drug, you take it, and bam, you’re there, you’re in it. The problem is, then it wears off.”

  “Gretchen, it was Valentine’s Day,” Sandy said.

  “Steve was like trying to pull this romantic love thing on me,” Gretchen said. “Does he think I’m going to fall for it again?”

  “It was Valentine’s Day,” Sandy said. “Did you want him to give you a cordless power drill?”

  “But the sailboat,” Gretchen said.

  “Can I see the picture again?” Sandy said wearily.

  Gretchen handed it to her.

  “So I would have to say that Steve is pretty good at watercolors,” Sandy said. “I couldn’t do this, and I’ve taken lessons.”

  “He is good,” Gretchen said. “His mother is a painter. Well, she paints.”

  “So, looking at this picture, the sailboat is in the distance, there is a beach in the foreground, then ocean, clouds,” Sandy said. “The sailboat seems to be moving away from us. It’s dissolving in the marine layer. It’s about to disappear. That suggests to me that Steve’s message is complex. He’s aware of romantic love, but he sees that it inevitably dissolves. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a great vacation at this beach, with the kids, in Hawaii or Mexico.”

  “Are you making fun of me?” Gretchen said.

  “Or you don’t take the kids on the vacation,” Sandy said. “Yes. A little maybe. Making fun of you. Which leads me to another question: Have you come to any conclusion about going away with Steve for a weekend?”

  Which is exactly what this Valentine’s watercolor is about, Sandy thought, and why Gretchen is here talking to me.

  “A strange thing happened to me last week,” Gretchen said. “That stupid drama professor I went out with a few months ago, the one who wouldn’t let me alone? I let him come over. And then I slept with him.”

  “Okay,” Sandy said.

  “Why did I do that? He wasn’t important to me,” Gretchen said. “And frankly I don’t like sleeping around either. Believe it or not.”

  “I do believe that,” Sandy said. “So why did you do that?”

  “This is going to sound crazy, but I think it had to do with Steve,” Gretchen said.

  Life is a puzzle, isn’t it? Sandy thought. Valentine’s Day, the picture, the bud vase, the one-night stand. How do they all fit together? Sandy didn’t try to push Gretchen to bring it all together. Maybe it was enough that she could see that they all had to do with Steve and the weekend.

  Enough? Sandy saw how much progress that was, how far Gretchen had come to be able to see that it all had to do with Steve.

  “If I go away with Steve for a weekend, I’m not going to sleep with Steve,” Gretchen said.

  “Yet you just slept with someone casually,” Sandy said.

  “It wasn’t casual,” Gretchen said stiffly.

  “Well, what was it?” Sandy asked.

  “I don’t know,” Gretchen said. “He was there when I realized I didn’t love Bill. He helped me when I was down. And, frankly, maybe I did it because he didn’t count.”

  No, Sandy thought. If that were true, you wouldn’t be telling me about it.

  “They all count,” Sandy said. “Every single one of them. You slept with this guy you don’t care about because you do care about Steve. I don’t know exactly why this guy, at this time, and how it connects with Steve, but it does. Because you’re angry at Steve? Scared of Steve? Want to hurt Steve? Or something else entirely. But believe me, it was about Steve.”

  There were tears now in Gretchen’s eyes. She grabbed a tissue before they reached her face.

  “You’re right,” Gretchen said. “It was all about Steve. And I don’t want to tell Steve about it.”

  “Gretchen, why don’t you make it easy on yourself?” Sandy said. She was resigned, and she sounded that way. World-weary.

  “Just tell him, will you?” Sandy said. “Not tomorrow, perhaps, but you’ll know when it’s right.”

  “Okay,” Gretchen said. “I will.”

  “Good,” Sandy said. And suddenly she got it. Of course.

  “I know why you slept with the professor,” Sandy said.

  “Yes,” Gretchen said. “So do I. I just figured it out. I was saying goodbye to him. I said goodbye to him because I’m going to do the weekend with Steve. I was saying goodbye to all of it.”

  “It’s time,” Sandy said.

  �
�But it doesn’t mean I’m getting back together with Steve!” Gretchen said, leaning forward, suddenly angry. And then the wave passed over her.

  “Of course not,” Sandy said. “By the way, what do you think Steve gave Gabrielle for Valentine’s Day?”

  “Excuse me? You’re evil today,” Gretchen said. “Why would I care about that?”

  “You wouldn’t,” Sandy said. “Because you know that there is no way he put half as much thought into that gift as he did into his gift for you.”

  27.

  Sandy looked at Gretchen’s beautiful bag, the one from Bottega Veneta that Steve had given her. It was a deep buttery brown, large like a lawyer’s bag. Usually Gretchen casually dropped it on the floor and ignored it, but today she’d carefully moved it close to her chair, as if she were protective of it.

  Sandy looked at Steve. Steve was looking out the window. Through it, you saw the top of the tall pepper tree, and now there were finches hopping in its branches.

  Gretchen, why are you so protective of the bag? Sandy wondered. What’s in it?

  Suddenly the bag moved. There was something in it, alive, moving. As if there was a snake, a cobra, in the purse.

  Gretchen saw it too.

  “I put my phone on vibrate,” she said. Pulled the bag into her lap, opened it, looked in, took out her phone, looked at the message, turned the phone off, tossed it back into the bag, closed the bag, put it back close to her, on the floor.

  “Sorry,” Gretchen said. “I meant to turn it off.”

  Which you have done every session for months. What is it now, Gretchen? Why was it not turned off?

  Marriage counseling: they came to her office serious, and completely prepared. They never left a phone on unless they wanted it on.

  And then Sandy knew. How? Who knows? She had been sitting with this unusual woman, this talented, brilliant … Anyway, Sandy knew.

  “Call this an educated guess,” Sandy said, looking at Gretchen. “I’m wondering. Do you have a letter from Bill in your bag?”

  It was as if she’d slapped Gretchen. Her face went red; her eyes darted at Sandy.

  “What I have in my bag is private,” Gretchen snapped. “And what I share is my decision.”