Twenty Four Weeks - Episode 6 - "Seventeen" (PG)

by James David Denisson

learning to get in touch with my feelings.”

  “I love how you felt when we first met.”

  I laugh. “You can still get me to feel that way, you know?”

  “I can?”

  “Like what I’m feeling now.”

  She smiles. “You know what they’re doing, don’t you?”

  “Who?”

  “Grant and Mary.”

  “Them? Oh, yeah. Is it working?”

  She smiles shyly. “I keep thinking of our first time, and I keep thinking of what you wrote about it. Maybe I’m thinking of sex too much.” She exhales deeply. “These pregnancy hormones are driving me crazy. But, I miss it with you, you know? I miss being with you all the time. I miss the times before when we were together, and we couldn’t wait to get home at the end of the day to be with each other.”

  I feel my eyes starting to water but I manage to keep my composure. “Me too,” I say.

  “I want you to come home, but I want you to want it.”

  “I want it,” I tell her. “But...” I can’t say that I need to be alone to think. When I’m with her all reason goes out the window. Maybe that’s what I need. Maybe I need to stop thinking so much and act with the heart. I don’t know.

  “I know,” she says. “There’s too much going on in your head. You need your space. I can be patient with you, if you can with me. I’m going to act a little crazy from time to time.”

  “I just don’t want to rush things,” I tell her. “We’re doing so well, but you know, I keep expecting something to go wrong. So, I hold back. I know it’s wrong, but I do. There is so much we need to sort through. I just don’t know where to start.”

  “Well, I think that’s Grant and Mary’s job to point us in the right direction.”

  “Yeah,” I say, nodding sadly. “But sometimes I just get so angry – angry at you, at me, at us.”

  “Don’t forget Wade,” she adds with a slight smile.

  “How can I?” I say, “…when I have to look at his stupid face every day. But, what I’m saying is: I have to let that all go otherwise I’ll get bitter, and that’s the last thing I want. If this works, and I’m really hoping it does, and I’ve still got that bitterness in me, then we won’t last long. I’ll go back to the same old ways. But I’m done with that.”

  “How do you get rid of that anger? I mean, I deserve that anger.”

  “You don’t. You really don’t.”

  “Well, I think I do.”

  “And you’re going to have to let that go too.”

  “I know. But it’s hard, Judd. I’ve got this shame. I feel it all the time and I don’t know if I can ever make up for it.”

  “That’s the thing,” I say, “…if you can’t get over that then we’re just as screwed as if I hold onto my bitterness. And anyway, both of can’t make up for what we’ve done to each other. It’s done. It’s history. We have to find a way to look past it.”

  “You must be close. You’re so calm,” she points out.

  “You think just because I’m not yelling and calling you names that I’m not angry. I am. I don’t have the rage I had when... you know. I’ve just had some time to get over that part. But I’m still working through my anger. But you know, I bottle things up, that’s part of my problem.”

  She nods. She knows.

  “And I’m getting there,” I assure her. “I’m replacing those bitter thoughts with positive ones, most of the time anyway.”

  She sighs. “I just hope that when we get to the end that we find that all this work, this pain, is worth it.”

  “I think it will be.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  Saturday

  I pick her up in the morning the following day and we drive upstate again, the second week in a row. I love driving the Porsche, and Phillip was allowing it to continue, but I knew the dream run was coming to an end. I’ll have to return it soon. Quinn was right, this was no family car. This was a midlife crisis car, and I could not afford to have one of those. I was an impending family man and I had responsibilities.

  “So,” Grant says when we’re sitting in our places, the same as the week before, “how did we go?”

  We nod together, but don’t say anything.

  “You talked about your stories?”

  We nod again.

  “And the rings?”

  We both hold up our left hands.

  “Judd, how does it feel to have it back on?”

  I clear my throat, sit forward slightly. “Good, I think. It feels... familiar... and maybe comforting. I saw Quinn was wearing hers and I remembered that we were together even though we’re not... Does that make sense?”

  “You’re still not living under the same roof?” Mary asks.

  Quinn shakes her head. “No,” she says quietly. “I’ve asked him to come home, but I don’t think he’s ready.”

  “Judd,” Mary says to me, “you need to know that’s okay. Everything in its own time. It sounds like Quinn has accepted that.”

  “She has,” I say.

  “Quinn,” Grant says, “what about you? How does it feel to have your ring back on?”

  “Strange.” She stops.

  “Go on...”

  “Ah... well, I took it off when we separated, and we still are I suppose, so at first it seemed a little premature. But then it made me remember Judd and what we had together, and that made things easier to see him as my husband, I guess.”

  “And you asked him to move back in?”

  “Well, I miss him. I miss having him around to talk to. I miss seeing him. It’s tough because when I do, I remember what I did to him, and that makes me sad. But I’m also glad to see him. I don’t know. I don’t understand it.”

  “It’s perfectly normal to feel confused,” Mary tells her. “It’s going to take some time to understand and sort through all those feelings.”

  “And you talked about your stories,” Grant adds, “and that should help start that process. Was there anything you wanted to say about that before we get down to things?”

  Quinn takes a deep breath. “He rewrote his. He told me how he felt about things. I loved that.”

  “Good for you, Judd,” Mary says.

  I’ve been steeling myself for what we’re going to talk about. Grant and Mary have picked the flesh off our stories, pulled them apart like a coroner, only the body’s not cold yet. I’m thinking there’s a lot of horrible, horrible things I’ve done to her and although I’ve said I’m sorry we still need to talk about them and it’s going to hurt like hell. She’s going to be angry at me all over again and I’m going to get defensive. And then we’re going to have to drive back enjoying a full hour of icy silence. So, here I am, telling myself not to get angry, not to go nuts and yell. Maybe that’s what they want though. Maybe they want that raw emotion. Maybe they think it’s a pathway to healing. All the while, in the back of my head, I can hear that little voice that I’ve been steadily ignoring for the past two years, maybe three, telling me to be honest, be authentic, be real. Be myself.

  “So what struck us immediately,” Grant is saying, “was how similar your stories actually were. You both seem to understand the issues that got you here, and that’s going to help you a lot.”

  I look at Quinn, she smiles at me.

  “And,” Mary adds, “…you’ve done a lot of the work that we’d have had to do already. Things like saying sorry for - and the forgiving of - wrongs that you’ve both done to each other. Most couples take quite some time to get there, so well done.”

  “So now we can get onto the issues that you’ve brought up,” Grant adds, “Okay?”

  “Sure,” Quinn says and I nod slowly.

  “But before we begin, it’s important to understand that all of these things build walls between you. All of these things are learned behaviours. You learn them over time as you do them. So what you need to do is this: recognise them, recognise why they are there, change the way you think or substitute the behaviour, and repent o
f it.”

  “The last part,” adds Mary, “is changing direction, not just saying you’re sorry. Like heading in the complete opposite direction to the behaviour.”

  We nod together.

  “So Judd, when do you see you two drifting apart?”

  I shift uncomfortably in my chair. “I guess when we lost our baby.”

  “Quinn told me you lost him at eight months.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Losing a baby like that is very hard. How did you handle that?”

  I look at her grimly. “I’d like to say well, and I thought I did at the time, but I’ve given it some thought and I don’t think I did handle it very well at all.”

  “How did you handle it? What did you do?”

  “I was worried about Quinn, she was crying and I wanted to help her. I guess I thought another might have made her feel better.”

  “Quinn? How did you feel about that?”

  She’s not looking at me. She’s looking the other way. “He kept pushing me to move on and I wasn’t ready. I didn’t want another baby...” She stops for a moment, chokes. I could hear her heart breaking in her voice. “I wanted our little boy.”

  “What did you need?”

  “I just need him to hold me. I didn’t need him to tell me to forget.”

  “I did hold you,” I say quietly.

  “Once or twice. But then you got onto the new baby and when I couldn’t give you one... You moved on too fast.”

  I turn my head away from her. “I wanted to make it better. I wanted to fix your pain. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “But then, when I couldn’t give you another child you stopped looking at me, touching me. It was like I’d let you down, but it wasn’t my fault.”

  “That’s not how it happened,” I snap at her.