I'm Glad About You (40 page)

Which frankly threw Van into a rage. When Kyle reappeared on the threshold of his own home, she practically spit in his face, and not over the fact that he had left in the first place. It had actually suited her just fine to have him disappear for a whole month; she was free, in that time, to do as she pleased. She and the girls had fallen into a routine that fit them, and her besotted suitor had even taken the opportunity to begin insinuating himself into the role of husband and father. Not that Van admitted as much; Kyle had put that one together when he found a half-eaten grilled rib-eye in the refrigerator and she had fumbled her explanation of what it was doing there. The whole thing was appalling, but he wasn’t going to get into some circular argument about it. His new goal was simply to make his choices functional. He called the parish office and asked for a recommendation for a couple’s counselor.

Van had no intention of making this marriage work, but once he registered the problem with parish leadership, she had nowhere to run. Refusing to enter counseling would have made it impossible to get that annulment. And once they were stuck in that room with Roger, their kindly, white-haired Teutonic mediator, no amount of determined and circular logic passed muster. Old Roger had a truly excruciating idea of communication: He insisted on slowing everything down to a snail’s pace, and then once you were down there with the snails, you had to explain every thought three times before you were allowed to inch forward to another one.

“So what you’re saying, Kyle, is that you were upset when Van admitted to you that she had been unfaithful to your marriage.”

“Yes.”

“Could you tell that to Van?”

“Van, I was upset and hurt, actually, when you admitted you were unfaithful.”

“He wasn’t hurt, he was enraged. He was furious! And terribly threatening.”

“Okay, we’ll get to that in a minute, Van. What I’m hearing is that you felt frightened.”

“Of course I felt frightened, he frightened me.”

“But I really need you to take this one step at a time. When feelings run away with us, it’s hard to understand what is at the core of the misunderstanding.”

“It’s not a misunderstanding. He never loved me. He was in love with another woman when he married me and he never pretended otherwise.”

“I was not in love with Alison.”

“LIAR.”

“I hadn’t seen her in YEARS.”

“Whoa whoa whoa. You see how quickly this can run away from us! We’re going to slow this ship down. Slooooow dowwwwwn. Just repeat back to Kyle what he said to you.”

“What he said was a lie.”

“That’s a judgment, Van. We’re not going there, remember? What I heard, from Kyle, is that he was upset and hurt that you had been unfaithful to your marriage.”

“So?”

“Is that what you heard?”

“Yes, I heard him say that.”

“Could you tell Kyle that that is what you heard? And that’s all we need you to say.” He started to coach her. “‘Kyle’—”

“Kyle,” she snapped. “I heard you say that you were upset and hurt that I was unfaithful to our marriage.” Admitting that Kyle had in fact strung those dozen words together clearly felt like an outrageous loss of the moral high ground she had staked out with such unflinching determination.

“Good. Good! Marriage is about communication. We’re just here learning to communicate. Now that you have told Kyle what you heard him say, let him know how that made you feel.”

“I already told you; it makes me feel like he’s an insane liar.”

“That’s a judgment, remember? We’re going to try and stay away from those. Let’s just stick with feelings for now.” Kyle wanted to strangle old Roger, but he couldn’t help enjoying how panicked it made Van to have every single word put under the microscope like this.

“I feel—frustrated,” she finally said.

“That’s good, you feel frustrated.”

“How is that good?” she asked, with bitter common sense.

“It’s good because now Kyle knows what you felt, when you heard him say that he was hurt and upset when you—”

“I did not ‘betray’ our marriage. How can you betray a marriage that never existed?”

Roger nodded at this, endlessly patient. “We’ll get there, Van. We will get there. One step at a time. Kyle, what did you hear Van say?”

“She said a lot of things,” Kyle pointed out.

“Let’s just stick with the one statement. How she felt when she heard you say that you were hurt and upset—”

“How come we have to hear that again?” Van asked. “How many times does he get to repeat that—that—”

“Van,” Kyle interrupted. “I heard you say that you feel frustrated.”

“Good!” Roger was ridiculously pleased that Kyle was cooperating. “And how do you feel when you hear that she is frustrated?”

“I feel sorry about that, actually. I wish she wasn’t frustrated.”

But Kyle’s trivial success in maneuvering the rules of this absurd exercise only annoyed Van further. When they got home, she informed him in no uncertain terms that she thought that the counselor had already taken his side against her, and that she found the whole process unfair in the extreme. Kyle thought momentarily about pointing out how unfair it was of her to blame him because she had cheated on him and was having another man’s child. Instead, he thought for a moment, and said, “What I hear you saying, Van, is that you find this whole process unfair. Is that what you said?” Van just stared at him. “So that makes me frustrated.” At this, Van stalked past him, into the kitchen. He heard Maggie coo, “Mommy, Mommy!” and then the sound of the back door slamming, as Van blew by her daughter so she could go outside and call her lover on the phone.

Kyle was well aware that she spoke to the guy six or seven or eight times daily. She was careful not to use their landline but he dug through her purse one night at three in the morning; the cell phone was chock-full of calls placed to and received from “RT.” He then went to the parish phone book and paged through all the R’s and T’s; none of the names popped out at him as a likely suspect. Which led him to understand that even the initials were a code, a secret language, between this utter stranger and his wife. Before he could go any further—
just hit send, call him, insult him
—his better brain stepped in and reminded him, with mournful dignity, that this unhappy situation called for more wisdom, not less. While Van clearly felt that taking the girls away from him and putting a new household in place around this other father was what needed to happen, Kyle had to consider the endless years of shuttling children back and forth between double homes and double parents, not to mention ever-multiplying sets of grandparents. The scenario filled him with unspeakable dread.

The whole situation was already a mess. The girls knew that Mommy was no longer theirs; she drifted by them with the kind of self-contained indifference she previously had reserved only for Kyle. She still tended to their snacks and crayons and diapers and dresses, but a weary impatience had set in. Neither one of them was Mommy’s beloved anymore. That was reserved for the baby in her belly, and the man who had put it there. Increasingly, Kyle found himself trapped in an unrelenting worry for these small strangers. He started sneaking little treats into the house for them—Waffle Crisp cereal, apple juice, those long squishy Go-Gurt things. Maggie somberly tried to tell him that she wasn’t allowed to eat Go-Gurt, and then she burst into tears. He held her on his lap and the two of them, together, figured out how to open the plastic tube and squeeze out the sugar-hyped goo. Van was out somewhere; who knew where. It was easy these days to sneak such nutritional outrages into the home. Her attention was not there.

“I feel worried about the girls,” Kyle asserted clearly at their next session.

“Van, how do you respond to that?” queried their guide to marital communication.

“That’s hilarious, is how I respond to that.”

“What I’d really like you to do, Van, is repeat what you hear Kyle say—”

“I am aware. Kyle, what I hear you saying is that you are worried about the girls.”

“Is that what you said, Kyle?”

“Yes, that is what I said.”

“And Van—”

“Yes, I know what comes next,” she informed him, suddenly deciding to behave. “This is how I feel about what you have said, Kyle. I feel frustrated that it has taken you so long to express any interest whatsoever in the well-being of your children.”

“Kyle—”

“Thanks, I think I have this, Roger. Van, I hear you say that you are frustrated because you feel that it has taken me a long time to express interest in the well-being of our girls. Is that what you said?”

“Yes, that’s what I said.” No matter how much you distilled this stuff down, there was still so much attitude attached that there was no way not to know that she held him in the highest contempt for his neglect of the children.

“I feel frustrated that you feel that way. I feel that you have deliberately, over the years, held them away from me. I feel—”

“Kyle—”

“Why don’t you just let me finish the thought here, Roger; I promise you this really is only one thought. I feel that there were many times, Van, when you wouldn’t let me love them. And that made me sad.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Van—”

“
Okay.
” She was pissed now, but like a trapped bird she was learning to acclimate to the rules of the cage. “I hear, Kyle, that you are frustrated with my frustration. I hear that you wanted to be a good father and somehow I stopped that from happening.”

A disappointed silence drifted over all of them. For a moment Kyle thought that Roger had fallen asleep; his eyes were shut and he was utterly still. The silence continued. Kyle decided to close his eyes as well. And for a moment, for the first time in months, the unbearable tension of utter disappointment lifted just the tiniest bit.

God is in the silence
, Merton informed him. But Merton had told him a lot of things. He had read and reread those journals and books, hoping against hope that at some point the great, confused monk’s wisdom would kick-start something in his own soul. Why did it never happen? The hours and days he spent wandering around that monastery, wondering how so many men could find so much peace and he could find none at all. Praying and suffering and begging God not to let his meager little life drift away, yearning for a renewal of passion and connection but unable to even remember what those feelings might attach themselves to. And now here he was, fighting to the death for a marriage nobody ever believed in. Except, maybe, his parents, his forlorn, hopeful parents, who had been treated so badly by Van, year after year, cut out from the lives of their grandchildren and estranged from their only son by his own willful determination that they would never know the depth of his psychic exhaustion. He was so desperate to appear happy he held them at bay and told them nothing.

His body started shaking, and he realized that he was sobbing; his body was sobbing. He could not bring himself to open his eyes, wet with tears; he didn’t want to see Van’s horror-stricken and pitiless dismissal of his broken heart. He wanted to simply feel what he was feeling, until he was through feeling it. Which wasn’t easy. The sobs moved through him violently, but he could barely understand why. Only briefly was there a moment when his grief passed through some barrier in his throat and into his brain. There was a sudden rush of sparks behind his eyelids, and he heard himself gasp, and then a deep silence which was held in some sort of darker wound. There was something there with him, in the sadness. His mind stopped wandering and waited. It was very quiet.

“Kyle, do you want to tell Van what you’re feeling?” Roger’s voice was soothing but a little too hopeful. Kyle wanted to hold up his hand, to try to keep him from saying anything else—he wanted to wait in the quiet just a moment more. But the world was rushing in.

“I think it’s my turn to say what
I’m
feeling.” Van’s voice was completely exasperated. Kyle could not yet bring himself to open his eyes.

“It’s not a matter of taking turns, Van,” Roger informed her with his professional kindness. “We’re really trying to get to some basic communication skills. That’s all we’re trying to do.” Kyle continued to breathe. The wounded calm was easing, but more slowly than he had feared it would. He realized that he might be able to open his eyes without entirely losing whatever it was that was standing there with him.

“I’m feeling sad,” Kyle said. “I feel very sad.”

He opened his eyes. Roger’s tiny office seemed to be glowing. He realized that this was just a trick of the light: The walls were paneled in a lovely blond wood; it was 5:30; the sun was going down, and light was flowing through the venetian blinds on one side of the room and bouncing off a large, simple mirror on the other. The dust motes hovered, reverential. Van, in her ever-white dress, was caught in a halo of light. The news that Kyle was sad seemed to have completely unmoored her. The silence extended between them in the golden room.

“I hear that you are sad, Kyle,” she admitted, finally. Her own disappointment entered the room and sat down with them. “I am sad too.”

“I hear that you’re sad, Van,” Kyle told her. “And I feel sorry that I have made you sad.”

She nodded. Roger for once kept his mouth shut. The light floated over them like a blessing. Then she sighed.

“Okay, so we’re both
sad
,” Van announced, with a sudden impatience. “So what? I mean, isn’t that the
point
, that we’re both
sad
and why should we stay married if we’re both so fucking
sad
?”

Roger thought about this, and answered for both of them. “One step at a time, Van,” he said. “One step at a time.”

twenty-four