The Gretchen Question

by Jessica Treadway

  In the end, each of us got hurt by the other. Neither of us felt we’d been wrong, or felt inclined to apologize. I know it’s ridiculous that we’ve let it go on this long, without finding some way to make up, but that’s just the way it is. I can’t forgive her challenging my behavior as a mother, and I guess she can’t forgive my reminding her that she’d failed to do, or have, the things I knew she wanted most.

  No, that wasn’t really what came between us, the lie Will told and my resentment about her telling me how I should handle it. What came between us was the move she made one night as she was leaving, after a few hours of confessional conversation over a bottle of wine (three glasses for her, one for me). I said good-bye at the door and waited to close it behind her, but instead of letting me do this she turned and leaned, aimed her face toward mine, and pressed her lips as close as she could manage to my mouth, before I gave an exclamation and pulled away.

  “What are you doing?” I wiped away the remnant of her touch with the back of my hand. “What the hell was that?”

  Her expression was a mix of chagrin and injury. “I’m sorry. I thought we were both feeling it, I thought you might have wanted me to.”

  “No! I did not! Oh, my God.” I slammed the door between us, then yanked it open again. “What would have given you that idea?”

  “I don’t know. It was just a feeling. I’m sorry—really, I am.” She put a hand on my doorway to keep herself upright. “I didn’t think it would upset you so much. I thought we were in the same boat—both of us trying to pass.”

  Pass. It was the word I’d used for myself when I first moved to this town, knowing that I didn’t really belong in it. But Pascal meant something else. I was going to make her say it. “Trying to pass for what?”

  I could tell she knew she’d already said more than she should have. I could see she regretted it. “I’ll go home and sleep it off,” she said, with a clumsy, embarrassed smile, and I told her that was a good idea.

  That was when the afternoons with Will ended. Not right after he told her the lie about the lump I didn’t have.

  But it didn’t bear thinking about now, as I blew through the stop sign at the end of my street and gunned the accelerator toward the therapist’s office on the other side of town. What were the chances I’d get stopped? Not many police officers out and about at this time of day, and besides, I’d heard those sirens earlier—wherever that was, that’s where the police would be, at the emergency.

  I pulled into the therapist’s parking lot with only a few minutes to spare. I stepped out of the car sniffing at myself, dismayed to find that changing my shirt had only barely subdued the smell. I dove back in behind the driver’s seat, suddenly realizing that he might have been looking, at that moment, out the window. I calculated my options: Call and cancel. Call and reschedule. Don’t call and don’t show up. Go in and keep the appointment.

  But there was really only one choice, I knew: I had to do this, and it had to be today. It was time. Taking a deep breath, I stepped out of the car again, feeling the afternoon’s bewildering heat seep into my scalp. The intention defines the experience, I heard in my head, spoken in Grettie’s voice. Well, then. Just because it had never worked for me before didn’t mean it wouldn’t work now. I intended to get what I needed, for myself and my son.

  It was not the fancy and famous psychiatric hospital in the town next to mine that the police brought me to when they found me trying to commit suicide under the bush in the cemetery more than twenty years ago. Who am I kidding—I don’t think I actually intended to let myself fall asleep in that snow.

  But it’s hard to be sure. Maybe I really only did it to get Grettie’s attention, even though afterward I decided not to tell her about any of it. I know how pathetic that sounds, but it’s the truth. She had an infant to take care of, and I hardly ever got to see her anymore. When I did see her, she was of course tending to Cam. She was tired, wrung out. She who always seemed to be able to do everything that was asked of her had finally met her match, and it threw me for a loop, seeing her like that. But not until I gave birth myself did I understand how hard it all is on both your mind and your body, having a baby to take care of. I’ve been ashamed ever since, that I faked such an attempt and then, to make it worse, didn’t admit the truth to anyone. Allowed the therapist and the other people at the hospital to believe I was that depressed, that desperate. It’s a little confusing to me even now, because I did feel those things. I can’t be sure I didn’t mean to kill myself, but I do remember thinking as I arranged myself in the snow under the bush that I would get up and go home before I fell asleep. But then the cops came and it was all over—I got pink-slipped into the hospital.

  I always thought pink-slipped meant being fired, but I learned another meaning that night. They can also issue one if they think you’re a danger to yourself or someone else. The slip they showed me was actually pink. With that pretty piece of paper they can throw you in the nuthouse for a minimum of seventy-two hours, after which you can plead your case to be released.

  My commitment was not to the fancy and famous hospital in the next town, but the ugly blond-brick building two towns away in the other direction. I’d been there only once before, for a mammogram, but that was in the basement—the psych unit was on the top floor. Bars on the windows, of course. I hardly slept at all that first night because they put me on short checks, which meant that the door opened and a flashlight was shined on me every fifteen minutes.

  In the morning I saw the therapist assigned to my case, the same one I had made the appointment with for today. He approved my release after the seventy-two hours, on the condition that I continue to see him as an outpatient at his regular office, the one I drove to now after moving too quickly at the municipal waste facility and spilling garbage all over myself.

  The waiting room occupied the same physical space it had back then, but I barely recognized it. In fact I did a double-take and checked the number on the door, wondering if I’d entered the wrong suite. But no, it was the right room—it only felt new, felt different. There was actual art on the walls now, small abstracts and a figure or two. If I remembered correctly, the walls themselves had been off-white and held a few cheaply framed, standard-fare posters—buds, ponds—that seemed to aim at being ignored instead of noticed.

  He must be doing better financially, now, than when he’d had the assignment of Doctor on Call at the ugly hospital. The walls of the suite were painted orange, which might sound garish but actually looked nice. Prints in similarly bright colors hung above the sofa and behind the chair I chose to sit in, this time, because I always took the sofa back then.

  Back then the only reading material on the coffee table was Reader’s Digest and a copy of that day’s newspaper, often stained by coffee or smudged by fingerprints. Now there was an assortment of magazines, ones I would actually like to read: The New Yorker, Vanity Fair. If I were a patient now, I thought, I might come early to look at the magazines, and to prepare myself for my appointment. I used to avoid getting to his office before ten of the hour, so I wouldn’t have to see the patient before me walking out. Today, I didn’t care. But it didn’t matter anyway, because given how much the garbage and recycling chore set me back, not to mention the frantic trip home to change my clothes, I arrived at the waiting room only a minute or two before my scheduled time.

  The sound of the office door opening was the same as all those years ago. Despite the fact that I no longer cared, it ignited the little bit of tinder remaining in my chest, which I hadn’t known was there. The spark led me to realize (with no small measure of dismay) that it was possible I did still care, at least a little.

  He’d always had a little routine when greeting me: two steps from the inner sanctum, facing forward. Then a forty-five-degree turn to where I sat. Now I saw that the routine had not changed since I’d seen him last, all those years ago. “Celia Santoro?” he said, with a pleasa
nt, solicitous air. In an instant, his voice pulled loose the careful knot I’d secured inside myself.

  Though I had used the false name in booking the appointment, it never crossed my mind that he might not recognize me. When I was younger—at the time I knew him—I fancied myself beautiful. He’d told me this, and so had Grettie. A few men I’d dated said the same.

  But now I knew that I looked like a forty-seven-year-old woman—one who’d been treated for cancer, to boot. My hair had grown back in, but it was too short. And I’d lost more weight, with the recurrence, than the first time around.

  But beautiful or not, sick or not, shouldn’t he remember me?

  I’d prepared myself for that moment—the meeting of our eyes, his sudden understanding of who I was. To be honest, I hoped to flummox him. I’d never seen him flummoxed. That was a word I’ve always loved, and a state I looked forward to seeing the therapist in.

  It didn’t happen, at least not at first. He addressed me by the false name and showed me in. I saw him wrinkle his nose—ever so small a movement, almost imperceptible. It’s me! I wanted to cry out. The urge to confess it to him felt overwhelming. It’s me who smells like garbage!

  But I’d made a promise to myself about how this meeting would go. No matter how much I wanted to, I would not allow him to see that I was vulnerable. I took the chair across from him, lowering myself into it slowly. Though my stomach muscles had long since recovered from the surgery, I was still in the habit of moving with more care than I had before my original diagnosis.

  “I’m glad you finally made it in,” he told me. “I remember you had an appointment arranged for last fall, but then you canceled.”

  I’d almost forgotten I’d done that, booked a time with him after Will and Sosi left in such a huff over Thanksgiving weekend. I was afraid Will would do what he in fact did end up doing—refuse to come home until I gave him what I wanted, which I couldn’t do without talking to the therapist first. The appointment was for December thirteenth, and when I recognized the date as the anniversary of the one all those years ago, I canceled. I’ll do it later, I thought. I had enough to deal with: more blood in the toilet, the news that the cancer had returned, scheduling treatments. I got distracted, I wasn’t up to facing the therapist. Not that I was up to it today, either, but … I had no choice but to be here, my options were running out.

  I made my murmuring noise and nodded, as if to indicate to him that I was glad I’d made it in today, too.

  Across from us, against the wall, was the couch. The couch. Surely it could not be the same couch. But I could not be sure … how was it possible that I remembered so vividly so much of my time in this office, but not the couch? The style, the upholstery? The smell? It could not be the same couch, I decided.

  Even as we faced each other straight on, he failed (or pretended to fail; how would I know which?) to realize who I was. Clueless, Will would say.

  He’d gotten older too, of course. His hair was thinner, and mostly gray. He himself was thinner and smaller. Back then he’d worn more casual clothing—Oxfords, corduroys. I had never seen him in a tie. But obviously, he had come up in the world. He wore a tie today, and a sport coat hung on the back of his desk chair.

  There was a time when I would have wished I could shrink myself enough to fit in a pocket of that coat. I believed he could protect me from anything that might hurt me, including myself.

  But he was just another person, I saw now, who was going to die like the rest of us. Observing this in someone I’d had such strong feelings for, once, might have made me feel pity now. But not for him. Though I knew better than to believe I could overpower him and strangle him with his tie, I thought about it.

  “Maybe you can tell me a little about yourself, to get started.” A pad of paper and a pen sat on the table next to him, but he didn’t pick them up. “Tell me what you hope I can do for you.”

  Though I couldn’t be sure, it felt as if part of my brain lit up at those words, and I thought I remembered them from the very first time I’d ever seen him, in the ugly hospital. Back then, I had not been able to answer; instead, I cried.

  I would not cry today.

  “I am not,” I told him, “Celia Santoro.” I wondered if he noticed I had to pause in the middle, to take a breath. “You don’t know who I am,” I added—a statement not a question. Just in case I was wrong, I left a space for him to correct me.

  A pause on his side now. “Should I?”

  After I strangled him with his tie, I would stamp my foot on his mouth and press down with all the weight I could muster. But no, I needed to keep my head. “My real name is Roberta,” I told him. “Roberta Chase. I’m guessing that rings a bell?”

  A quick narrowing of the eyes behind his glasses, a quick intake of breath. His temple pulsed and he shifted slightly, but enough so that I could see discomfort in the movement. Bingo, I thought.

  But he conceded nothing. Instead he said, “You’re sick.” At first I thought he meant that it was deranged of me to have made this appointment. Then I realized he was referring to what I looked like. I folded my arms across my chest and forced myself not to answer, I didn’t want him to think he could get back the upper hand.

  When I didn’t respond, he reached for the pen and paper. “Refresh my memory, if you would.”

  Refresh my memory! I would twist his arms one at a time behind his back until they snapped. “The last time I came to this office,” I said, “you raped me on that couch.”

  It was a figure of speech—not the rape part, but calling it “that couch.” Of course it could not be the same couch, nineteen years later—could it? Why could I remember not a single detail about the couch?

  I had not thought I would be in a position of having to put words to what happened that day. I thought he would recognize me immediately, and try to prevent me from getting a foot in the door.

  He moved not at all now, just stared at me without blinking. Without writing anything down. “That’s an extraordinary claim.”

  Claim. Implying something possibly not true, which means possibly true. He had given himself away by not denying it, but I doubt he realized this himself.

  “No, not extraordinary. Just an ordinary fact. You raped me, and I never came back, even though I had appointments scheduled. Now that I think about it, you might even have sent me a bill for the ones I missed.” I snorted a little, though laughter has come to pain me. Why had I not remembered before now, about the bill?

  I saw that he was studying me, and the expression in his eyes was a combustion of alarm and hatred—I read them as clearly as if his pupils spelled out the words. Hatred. In all my imagining of this moment, I had not expected to see that emotion there. Though of course I should have. What delusion had I allowed myself, to think that he wouldn’t hate me?

  “I remember now,” he said. He tried but failed to hide that he needed to clear his throat. “I saw you at the hospital, in a very depressed state. A suicide attempt, something involving a cemetery. As I recall, you were struggling with your sexual identity.” He sat up straighter, as if reciting these facts energized him. “Some confusion. You went out with men, but—wait a moment, I have it—you were in love with your college roommate. I forget her name, something unusual. Something from literature. She was living with someone else, set to marry him. Have I got it right?”

  I sensed that he was rattled, but not yet flummoxed. Probably he thought there was some way he could talk himself out of this—to talk me out of whatever fantasy he would now try to convince me I suffered from.

  “Yes,” I said. It was a relief to confirm this part of his account; he did remember. “So you decided to help me out. You said, I’ll show you how to like men. This will make you better. You told me, This is what you need.” I reached for the chair’s arms to steady myself. “And then you raped me.”

  It’s a terrible word, rape. Not many p
eople can hear it without showing something behind their eyes. But he was one of them; I might have just said biscuit or piano, for all the reaction he showed.

  It was very hard to sit through the long moments that followed. He watched me, and I could see his mind working, in a way I had not been able to all those years ago because I was so focused on myself. I wondered if he was going to break down and beg my forgiveness, or laugh and point to the door. I could have imagined either response, from what I saw in his eyes.

  And, oh, something else! Something I would not have recognized, of course, when I saw him back then. He had the same dent over his eyebrow as my son—now, I recognized the little pulse that went in and out, in and out, giving away how hard he was working to focus, or to make a calculation.

  “Is that it?” he asked. “You came back just to say this preposterous thing? For what purpose? What is your point?”

  I took a bigger breath than I ended up needing, and choked a little as it came out. “The point is that I got pregnant. I had a baby.” Okay, he was flummoxed now! But I couldn’t enjoy it. I had not anticipated that this mere word, baby, was what would threaten to make me break down—the memory of Will’s skin against mine, the way he rubbed my arm as he fell asleep. I forced myself to sit up from my slump; it was a bad habit I’d always had, which the last diagnosis only made worse. “Will. He’s eighteen now. I never told him about you—I never told anybody—but it’s gotten more complicated, now.”

  I hadn’t decided before I went in whether I’d tell him Will’s name. It just slipped out; or was I trying to appeal to the therapist’s humanity? If this was the case, it was a bad judgment call.