“Yes it is,” Sandy said. “Let’s talk about your decision. Why don’t you want to share what’s in your bag?”
“I didn’t say I had a letter in my bag,” Gretchen said. Sandy heard it as an admission that she did.
“Then let’s just pretend you do,” Sandy said. “You wouldn’t share it? I’m asking why.”
They looked at each other. Gretchen knew this would happen, Sandy thought. Give her time to play it out.
“Steve and I are living apart. We have our own lives. It’s very important for me to keep myself separate from Steve,” Gretchen said.
Come on, Gretchen, Sandy thought, not that again.
“Why did you bring the letter here today?” Sandy asked.
Gretchen pushed out her hands, palms up.
“I brought my notebooks, my notes for my lectures, my cell phone, my wallet,” she said. “I brought what I was working on.”
“You were working on Bill’s letter?”
“Okay,” Gretchen said, hesitating. “I do have a letter from Bill. But I haven’t opened it.”
“Why haven’t you opened it?” Sandy asked.
“I didn’t have time,” Gretchen said.
“Really? You didn’t have time?” Sandy said, eyebrows arched. She looked at Steve, who was looking intently at Gretchen.
Take it easy, Sandy, she reminded herself. This was progress, a lot of progress. Gretchen had brought Bill into the room, into their discussion. He could be sitting in the green chair. Gretchen wasn’t quite ready to have Bill there, fully be there. Right now he was sort of a ghost. But …
“Why haven’t you opened the letter?” Sandy asked again.
Gretchen was baffled. All the stuff she used to do, it didn’t work. Nothing worked. A giant step: she was ready to give up trying to do that stuff. They were closer, Sandy thought.
“Of course I could have opened the letter,” Gretchen said slowly. “So why didn’t I? Good question.”
Sandy let the good question hang there. Let them think about it. All of them. Steve, Gretchen, herself—and Bill in the green chair. Are you comfortable over there, Sandy thought, sitting in that big green chair with Steve and Gretchen’s marriage? Apparently Bill was. He’d been sitting there a long time.
“I know it was a big deal and hard for you guys to separate,” Sandy said. “And I think you did a very good job of disentangling from each other. That was not so easy. But now that you’ve done that, and you’ve been exploring each other again, I think it’s time that you began exploring how to be intimate with each other.”
“Okay, but we still have to have some limits,” Gretchen said. “I have really fought hard to have my own space.”
Sandy shook her head.
“Gretchen, can we cut through the no-trespassing signs,” Sandy said. “Why don’t you want to share Bill’s letter?”
“But I haven’t even read it,” Gretchen said evenly.
“Yes, because you chose not to read it,” Sandy said.
“Why does that matter?” Gretchen said.
“Why does that matter?” Sandy said. “Because you used to want to edit what Steve reads or sees. But now you’re not so sure.”
Sandy saw that now Steve was hanging on Gretchen’s every word.
“Just humor me, Gretchen,” Sandy said. “Right now, I’m just asking you why you don’t want to share the letter with me or with Steve.”
“First of all, there is a question of privacy,” Gretchen said. “I didn’t write the letter. It’s Bill’s letter. It would be his decision as to whether anyone read it.”
“I see, so this is a question of Bill’s rights or something?” Sandy said. “Let’s just pretend for a moment that Bill is here with us, sitting right over there in the green chair.”
“I thought the green chair was for the marriage,” Gretchen said.
Sandy wondered, Does Gretchen see the marriage sitting in the green chair?
“Let’s just put Bill in it for a moment,” Sandy said. “Maybe the marriage is sitting in the green chair with him.”
Amazingly, both Steve and Gretchen looked at the green chair. Sandy smiled, she couldn’t stop herself.
“Can I say something?” Steve said.
“You don’t have to ask permission,” Gretchen said. Like the teacher she was.
But sometimes you do, Sandy thought. There was a reason Steve asked permission.
“I think Bill has been sitting in the middle of our marriage for a long time,” Steve said.
He had asked permission because he was about to let his anger speak. He was saying, The son of a bitch has been hurting me.
His words produced an immediate reaction:
“You don’t know anything about Bill,” Gretchen said. “You know almost nothing about me either.”
But there was no conviction in Gretchen’s words. They were rote.
Let’s back the train up, Sandy thought. It had been moving along so well, but the engineers between Gretchen’s and Steve’s ears had switched it to a trunk line that went nowhere.
Sandy felt it was better to take them back and put them on more or less solid ground.
“Now, what would Bill think about sharing his letters with Steve?” she asked.
Sandy gave them a concrete question that took them away from the hurt that Steve had laid out. They would have to deal with that, but when they were ready.
“Obviously he would be against it,” Gretchen said. “It expresses private feelings that were meant to be shared only between Bill and me.”
“He doesn’t want to share his private feelings?” Sandy asked. “Why?”
“That seems self-evident,” Gretchen said. “Private feelings are the ones that you don’t share.”
“I don’t feel like running around in a circle,” Sandy said. “You talk to Bill about what happens here, what happens in this room, right?”
Of course she did. Sandy saw Gretchen flinch, knowing where this was going.
“You share with Bill the most private things that happen in here, don’t you? You have no trouble with that, right?” Sandy went on. “This isn’t really about sharing private things, is it?”
“You tell me what it’s about, then,” Gretchen said evenly, on the verge of anger.
“I’ll try. It’s about intimacy. You’re scared of being intimate with Steve, and for good reason. He hurt you. That was terrible, but you’re getting over it. Now, Bill, look at him.”
Sandy looked over at the green chair in the corner. She flicked her hand in its direction.
“He’s almost a thousand miles away. And he’s married. How is he going to hurt you? He’s about as safe as it comes. So you can open up to him, and being that he has nothing to lose, he’s never critical, never angry,” Sandy said.
Now she looked over at Steve.
“Whereas this guy, he’s all kinds of potential trouble. There is a fundamental difference between this guy,” Sandy said, looking at Steve, “and that guy.” She looked over at the green chair.
“Which is?” Gretchen said.
“This one,” Sandy said, pointing a finger at Steve. “This one is real. Whereas the one in the green chair is imaginary.”
“Bill isn’t imaginary,” Gretchen said in a low, rumbling voice.
“Oh, I think he is,” Sandy said. “But let’s just suppose that you shared his letter with Steve, and you just didn’t tell Bill about it. How would that be?”
“I lie to Bill?” Gretchen said. “Is that what you’re suggesting?”
“Sure,” Sandy said. “Why not?”
“I thought you were all about telling the truth, that Steve and I were supposed to work on being honest with each other, that everything else flowed from that,” Gretchen said.
“Being honest with each other—yes,” Sandy said. “I didn’t say anything about being honest with Bill. He doesn’t seem to be particularly honest himself. At least, he’s lying to his wife. For starters.”
“So did Steve,” Gr
etchen said. Hard.
“Yes, he did,” Sandy said. “But he isn’t lying now. Look at him. Do you think he’s lying to you?”
Gretchen did look at Steve, and then back to Sandy. Then she looked at the green chair, then back at Steve, then at Sandy.
“No, now Steve’s not lying,” she said.
“Okay, now let me ask you something else,” Sandy said. “Who do you trust? Steve, or the imaginary man in the green chair?”
“This is crazy,” Gretchen said, angry. “This isn’t marriage counseling. You’re giving me the third degree while Steve just sits there brooding in his corner.”
“Let’s bring him in, then,” Sandy said. “What do you think about all this?” she said to Steve.
“How did you know that Gretchen had a letter from Bill in her bag?” Steve said. Out of nowhere. Sandy didn’t expect that.
“Intuition,” Sandy said.
“Just intuition?” Steve said.
“Yes,” Sandy said. “Would you like to read Bill’s letter?”
“That’s not my decision,” Steve said carefully. “I respect Gretchen’s privacy.”
“Why do you respect that? What kind of relationship do you want?” Sandy said. “Do you want a relationship with a bill of rights? There are no rights in a relationship.”
She said it too emotionally, too hard. A mistake.
“I asked if you would like to read the letter,” Sandy said. “I wasn’t handing it to you.”
Steve paused.
“I think that reading the letter would probably hurt my feelings, but even so, it would mean that Gretchen trusted me,” Steve said. “So yes.”
“But I don’t trust you,” Gretchen said quickly. “I don’t trust you with my feelings or my secrets. Anyway, don’t you have secrets with Gabrielle?”
“We don’t send letters, but you are welcome to read all my e-mails with her,” Steve said quietly.
“She would say that was okay?” Gretchen said.
“Of course not,” Steve said. “She’d be furious.”
“So why are we talking about this?” Gretchen said to Sandy. “It’s just going to cause pain.”
Why did you bring Bill’s letter? Sandy thought. Why hadn’t you opened it? You created this whole thing, Gretchen. This is your doing. You wrote this session. You planned it.
“Yes, it is going to cause pain,” Sandy said. “It’s also going to be scary. But it’s the only way to make this work. I want to do an exercise. It doesn’t involve opening the letter. But I want you to take it out and show it to us.”
Gretchen thought about it. And then she picked up her purse, opened it, looked inside, and pulled out a cream-colored envelope. She held it up. It was sealed, had never been opened. Her address was written in a beautiful sculpted script.
“Let Steve hold it,” Sandy said.
Slowly, Gretchen handed the letter to Steve. He looked down at it as it rested in his hand.
“What are you feeling?” Sandy asked.
Still looking at the letter, Steve said: “Weird. I feel like I shouldn’t be doing this, like I’m intruding.”
“Why?” Sandy asked.
“It’s between Gretchen and Bill,” Steve said.
Give him time, Sandy thought. Gretchen got it.
“Not anymore,” Gretchen said. “That’s what Sandy’s saying.” She locked in on Steve.
“It’s between you and me now,” Gretchen said. The great big blue eyes holding him in their gaze. “That’s the whole point of this exercise.”
Steve looked at her. Did he understand?
“Look,” Gretchen said. She pointed to the green chair. “Bill’s been sitting there. He’s been here with us. Sandy wants to throw him out. She wants the marriage to sit there, in the green chair. I’ve been sharing what we do in here with Bill. I’ve been telling him what’s happening. Sandy’s saying that has to stop. Instead, I share him with you. You. Me. No one else interferes. No one else comes into our room, this room. Our marriage sits in the green chair. Just the marriage.”
Steve looked at the green chair and then back at Gretchen. He said nothing.
Gretchen blinked. Her eyes were full pools.
“I can’t stand crying again,” she said. “Fuck.”
Sandy handed her the tissues.
“Okay, you’re right,” Gretchen said to Sandy. “You’re right.”
Then Gretchen turned to Steve:
“This letter is yours to read, Steve. I want you to read it. If you want to read all the letters Bill has written to me, you can do that too. I want you to read them all.”
Gretchen had taken them apart, Sandy thought, and now she was putting them back together. If they fit back together. Maybe they didn’t. But at least Gretchen was willing to see if they did.
Now everything focused on Steve. Two women looking at him as he held a letter from Bill. No one said anything for a while, almost a minute. Steve seemed to be thinking and Sandy let him. Then:
“I’m not much interested in reading what Bill writes to you,” Steve said to Gretchen. “Why should I be? I’m interested in what you wrote to Bill. I care about what you think. Not him.”
Yes, Steve, Sandy thought, good. But of course Steve cared about what Bill thought. Of course he felt competitive, of course he felt jealous.
It was clicking, Sandy thought, for both of them. Each leading the other one to the next step. If they got back together, she hoped they could remember this, when it all clicked. And when it wasn’t working, that they could back the train up to this junction, to the switch, where it came apart, and go down the other track, to the one they were on now.
“I understand,” Gretchen said quietly but with emotion. “I wish I had my letters to Bill so I could give them to you.”
“So get them,” Sandy said.
28.
“I read the letters,” Steve said formally. “And I want to make some sort of statement about them, and even more about what is going on with you and me right now, Gretchen.”
“You want to make a statement?” Gretchen said.
Steve smiled at her. Smiled? Sandy thought.
“Statement sounds sort of stilted, doesn’t it?” he said. “Sorry about that. But about the letters. I don’t feel angry. I don’t even feel jealous.”
“That’s bighearted of you,” Gretchen said. “Although I don’t actually believe it. By the way, I went to a lot of trouble to get my letters back from Bill. He was surprisingly resistant and angry. But I got the letters. Now you’ve read them and you say you don’t feel anything?”
“Oh, I feel a lot,” Steve said. “I caused you a huge amount of pain. I feel really sorry about that.”
“And reading the letters didn’t cause you any pain?”
“Is that what you wanted me to feel?” Steve asked.
“I’m not sure,” Gretchen said. Slow. “I was thinking a lot of different things. I still am. But yes, a part of me wants you to hurt, because of how much you hurt me.”
“That was the big thing I saw in the letters,” Steve said. “How much I hurt you. I’m so sorry.”
He stopped to get himself ready for what was coming. Both Gretchen and Sandy looking at him, but neither saying anything …
“Another thing. I’m really grateful that you gave me these letters to read. You were trusting. In the old days, pre-Sandy, I would have hit the roof reading these love letters, feeling so betrayed. You trusted me not to do that. That’s a very powerful statement.”
Statement again. Sandy wondered why.
Gretchen cut in forcefully.
“Bill told me he had trusted me not to show his letters to anyone,” Gretchen said. “He said that was our deal.”
“And what did you say?” Sandy asked.
“What did I say?” Gretchen said. She turned to Sandy, as if surprised she were in the room. Wasn’t it only Steve?
“I said that Sandy had told me to give them to you, and so he had to do it,” Gretchen said. “I remembered
how, our first time, Sandy told you to give me all the money from selling our house and you did it. But I didn’t say that to Bill. Just that Sandy had said to give you the letters.”
“But that didn’t work, did it?” Sandy said. She knew.
Gretchen nodded at her.
“No, of course not,” Gretchen said. “He sees you as a tool trying to get Steve and me back together. He said that he had trusted me to keep his love letters private. He said we had made a deal.”
“But these were your letters you wanted,” Sandy said.
“I know, he got mixed up,” Gretchen said. “I straightened him out. I said how little his trust mattered to me, no matter whose letters they were. I said I was going to give Steve all the letters, mine and Bill’s. I said I wasn’t in the mood to cut a deal. I told him that there are no deals.”
Gretchen looked at the green chair as if she were exchanging glances.
“Then he tried excuses,” Gretchen said. “He said he had to keep the letters at his office and he didn’t want to go into the office. Give me a break.”
Gretchen sat up, as if to gird herself for what was coming.
“So the marriage sits in the green chair?” she said.
“It might,” Sandy said. “I think sometimes it does.”
“Well, the marriage told me to get the fucking letters and I made it clear to Bill that he had to give them to me or someone was going to send his letters to me to his wife.”
Sandy wondered if Gretchen saw how far she’d come.
Now Gretchen turned back to Steve.
“Look, after all that I went through, you have essentially nothing to say about the letters?” she said angrily.
“No. Let me say something important,” Steve said. “You aren’t done with me. I worried that we were here, that we were seeing Sandy, because you were trying to make a creative, not-so-damaging split-up with me, but that’s not what’s been going on. You’re really trying to put us back together, aren’t you?”
He looked at Gretchen for an answer. God, he looked. Yes, Steve, Sandy thought. Yes.
“That’s too facile,” Gretchen said after a moment. “This is really complicated stuff. I realized that Bill was a transitional step. But getting back together with you? I don’t know about that. I’m not there yet.”
Listen to the Marriage Page 15