So Much for My Happy Ending (29 page)

“You can't be here.” His words came out mechanically, like a robot programmed to warn a thief that the car they are about to steal has an alarm. “You're not allowed here.”

I cringed and looked to Maddy, but all I saw on her face was sympathy and understanding. “I know what you said on the phone. I came anyway.”

“You have to go away.”

Now I was just plain scared. Who was this man who spoke like a five-year-old child? Surely he couldn't be my husband.

Maddy sighed and took another careful step forward. “Listen, I need to talk to you about Mother.”

Tad shook his head vehemently. “She's not my problem anymore. I don't have to deal with her anymore.”

“None of us do, Tad. She committed suicide last week.”

A strangled cry pushed its way out of Tad's mouth. He backed up farther so that he was nearly out of the room. “No. No, no, no, no, no, no!”

With three large steps Maddy crossed to him. I watched as he crumpled against her and sobbed as she stroked his back and whispered words that I couldn't hear.

 

Maddy was at the house for over an hour. I used the time to go for a run. I ran around my block a total of thirty-nine times. Each time I completed the circle I picked up the pace a little more until the only thing I could concentrate on was the strain of my breathing. I ran until I was too physically drained to feel anything intangible like the pain of betrayal.

When I finally went back into the house Tad was sitting on the sofa with his head in his hands. Maddy had her purse pulled over her shoulder and her eyeliner was badly smudged. She motioned for me to walk her out.

I stood on the doorstep with her and prayed that all she wanted to say to me was goodbye. I couldn't bear any more revelations. Even soap opera characters had their limits.

She looked up at the gathering clouds in the sky and for a moment I thought she wasn't going to speak at all. But eventually she cleared her throat and began. “April, I don't think Tad is okay.”

I wiped away the sweat that was beginning to trickle into my eyes.

“He needs help. Professional help. But…I'm not sure he's going to be willing to get it.” She finally turned her gaze to me. “Try to convince him otherwise, but please remember, there's only so much any one of us should be willing to sacrifice. He needs someone to tell him that if he doesn't get help he will lose everything that's important to him. But April—” she leaned forward and her voice lowered with a new level of gravity “—he does not need a martyr.”

I stared at her, unsure of what to say. Apparently she hadn't expected a response because she simply nodded and then walked past me to her rental car, which was parked across the street. I watched as she got in, pulled out of her spot and then disappeared around the corner.

I looked back at my front door. “Go on, April,” I whispered to myself. “Go conquer your demons.”

I walked in and there he was, my demon, sitting in the middle of the couch looking absolutely devastated. His head was still in his hands and I could make out the sound of quiet sobs, the kind of sobs that leaked out after you no longer have the strength to wail.

I was a sweaty mess. I could practically feel the blackheads and pimples forming under my skin. It would be so easy to excuse myself to take a shower, thus putting off the inevitable confrontation for a few more minutes. But looking at Tad I knew he needed me now.

My eyes traveled to the phone. I should call Allie and Caleb and tell them that I wouldn't be making it for drinks later on, but I knew that was one call that would be left unmade. I couldn't be here all night, no matter how much Tad needed me. My sanity depended on it.

Tad looked up as if noticing me for the first time. “My mother's dead.”

I pulled on the edges of my T-shirt. “Yes, I know…I was here when your sister told you.”

Tad met my eyes and I could see fresh tears threatening to break through. “I should have told you.”

“Yes, you should have.” I had yet to go to him, and the ten feet that separated us felt like a mile.

“I just wanted to leave that part of my life in the past. What happened back then has nothing to do with who I am now.”

It was such a ridiculous statement that I actually laughed. “Do you really expect me to believe that you're the first man in the history of the world who was in no way affected by his upbringing? Please. In one way or another our past shapes all of us, whether we like it or not.”

“Not me.” His voice had taken on a hard edge and I bit my lip and waited for the fireworks. But they didn't come. Instead, Tad just slumped over once again. “I wish Maddy hadn't told me. I thought that when I left I wouldn't have to deal with this again. Goddamn her, why did she have to come?”

I bit down on my lip. Wasn't he getting upset over the wrong thing? I suppose we all deal with grief in different ways. A good wife would put her arm around her husband's shoulders about now, but something stopped me. What other secrets were there? How much of the story did I know? But I couldn't ask these questions, not in the wake of his mother's death. So I swallowed them and tried to focus on the issues that I knew couldn't wait. “Tad,” I said carefully, “Maddy told me that your mother was bipolar.”

“Yeah, she told me that, too. I knew there was something wrong, but I just thought…” Tad ran his hand through his hair. “I don't know what I thought.”

“Maddy's bipolar, too.”

Tad didn't say anything.

“It seems to be a hereditary illness, Tad, and I think…maybe…”

“You think I'm crazy,” he said.

I felt all the muscles in my body tighten. His lack of defensiveness felt like an admission.

“Sometimes I feel it,” he said quietly. “It's like there's something inside me, something dark that's struggling to break out and take over.”

He had said something to that effect to me before but I hadn't understood what he meant. It had always been there; I just hadn't seen it.

“I can't explain it well,” he continued. “It's just that at times I feel like…like…” Unable to find the words to demonstrate his emotions, he raised his left hand and curled it into the formation of a claw and simulated the act of scratching the walls.

It took all my restraint to keep myself from running out the door. Who was this person I'd married? I looked away in an attempt to hide the fear that I knew must have been written all over my face. “First thing tomorrow I'm going to make an appointment with a psychiatrist—not a therapist, a psychiatrist. I'm going to get you help.”

Tad nodded but didn't say anything.

“So you'll go to the appointment and if the doctor diagnoses you as bipolar then we'll get you some medication and you'll get better.” I knew I was oversimplifying things, but I was pretty sure that both Tad and I needed a few deceivingly easy answers right about then.

Tad nodded again. “I'm so sorry about the other night…when you fell.”

You mean when you pushed me,
but I didn't say the words. Instead, I just tried to reap some satisfaction from the fact that Tad had learned how to say the word
sorry
.

“I'm so tired, April, I don't think I can talk about this anymore tonight.”

“That's fine,” I said a little too quickly. “I'm going to take a shower and then I'll go out so you can have some space.”

“Where will you go?”

“I'm going to meet Caleb and Allie. I still have to tell them the gruesome truth about my Dawson's exit.”

“Liz had no right to push you out.”

I wrinkled my brow. “I didn't tell you that Liz pushed me out. That happened when you were on your business trip.”

Tad straightened up and his eyes darted from one end of the room to the other before he settled on looking at his wedding ring. “I called your work. I got Gigi on the phone and she filled me in.”

“Gigi? That little bitch is the reason I was pushed out in the first place. Liz rushed my exit to appease her. Did she tell you that?”

“No,” Tad said, the misery in his voice palpable. “She didn't tell me that. She must have felt threatened by you or something.”

“I don't have any idea why she would have. Anyone can see that she's the new darling of Dawson's. I'm just the evil stepmother who was standing in her way.” I could have gone on with my rant, but one look at Tad's face held me back. No matter what lies he had told me, the fact was he had just lost his mother—it was no doubt devastating. Even an estranged mother had a special place in her children's hearts. I should know.

I walked to him and squeezed his shoulder, feeling like I owed him some kind of demonstration of affection. He seemed to be grateful for it but made no indication that he required more from me, so I got up, took a shower and got out of the house as quickly as I could.

C
aleb and Allie were already at Bubbles when I got there, and had somehow managed to snag a table. A bottle of champagne was chilling in front of them.

Caleb waved me over. “We were beginning to wonder if we were going to have to start the party without you,” Allie chided as she tried to make eye contact with a harried-looking cocktail waitress.

“I'm five minutes late,” I snapped and sat in the chair they had saved for me.

Allie and Caleb exchanged quick looks. “Hard day?” Caleb asked.

I shook my head. “Of course not, I'm free from Dawson's. I never have to deal with Gigi, Blakely, Liz or any of the others again. How could I have anything but great days?”

Allie shrugged. “I don't know, but I get the feeling that we need to get this champagne uncorked pronto.” She finally succeeded in getting the attention of the waitress, who quickly came over and popped open our bottle before pouring it into the waiting flutes.

I tried to take a deep, cleansing breath. I needed to get myself together, otherwise Caleb and Allie were bound to start asking questions that I wasn't ready to answer. I took a sip of champagne, resisting the urge to down it in one gulp, and forced myself to smile. “Sorry, I'm just working off a little road rage—some idiot nearly killed me on the way over,” I lied.

Allie leaned back and draped her arm over the top of her chair. “You know, I might go get myself a degree, too. Any excuse that gets me away from Liz is a good one. She fully laid into me today. Apparently my department isn't doing enough to turn the returns into exchanges. Half the merchandise that I'm forced to take back are stolen goods. What should I do? Invite the person to steal something else?”

I managed a polite laugh. I wanted to tell her that Liz was an evil bitch who deserved a horrific fate, like being forced to wear comedogenic drugstore-bought cosmetics. But I knew that in the eyes of Caleb and Allie that kind of sentence would be the equivalent of cutting off someone's hand for stealing, and my extremism would only invite the inquisition I sought to avoid.

Caleb leaned forward. “Enough of the Dawson's talk. I have some important news to tell you guys. Actually I'm
making
some important news.” He paused dramatically before continuing. “A whole bunch of people are going to Sacramento to protest the state's refusal to recognize gay marriage, and guess who's helping to spread the word amongst the ever-important San Francisco gay community?”

Allie clapped a hand in front of her heart. “You're helping to organize a protest? Why, Caleb, that's so Susan Sarandon of you!”

“Let me get this straight,” I said slowly. “You are going to fight for the right to marry?”

My tone alerted both Allie and Caleb that I had a problem with this. “Yesss,” Caleb said. “You don't have a problem with gay marriage, do you?”

“No, except…well, gays fighting for the right to marry is kind of like women fighting for the right to be drafted. Why would you give up a perfectly good excuse to avoid that kind of hell?”

Allie and Caleb exchanged more looks but I ignored them.

“I mean, maybe you think that marriage will solve all your problems.” My voice was getting higher pitched but I had lost my ability to control it. “Maybe you think that if you get a seemingly nice, normal guy to put a ring on your finger you'll gain some normalcy in your own life. But—” I leaned forward and waved a finger at Caleb “—how do you know that Mr. Normal really
is
normal? Because he told you he was? Because he's romantic and has a good job? Do you think that means something? Well, let me tell you something, it doesn't mean shit. Everyone thought Jeffrey Dahmer was normal until he started eating people. So I ask you, how the hell is a person supposed to know that their Mr. Normal isn't a cannibal?” I fell back into my chair and downed the rest of my champagne while Caleb and Allie gawked at me.

Allie shifted uncomfortably in her seat and Caleb crossed his arms over his chest before speaking up. “April,” he said, “is Tad…eating people?”

I squeezed my eyes shut. I was going to have to give up on the idea of keeping Tad's behavior a secret. “No,” I said, “but I kind of wish he was, then I would have a great reason to get divorced. No one would be able to accuse me of walking out on my husband without good cause if he was chopping up the neighbors and marinating them.” I opened my eyes. “It would be such an easy decision.”

“Wow,” Allie said quietly. “I don't know what to react to first—the fact that you're talking about divorce, or how incredibly frightening that statement was.”

Caleb held up his glass and swirled the liquid around gently. “I don't know everything that's going on with you two but—” he locked eyes with me “—there are plenty of valid reasons to divorce a man…even a man who isn't a murderous psychotic.”

“He has a sister,” I said as I poured myself some more champagne. “The bastard I'm married to has a sister.”

Allie shook her head so that her red hair fell flirtatiously over one eye. “Sorry, that's not a good enough reason.”

“He told me he was an only child, and then today I come home and, surprise, surprise, there she is on my doorstep. It turns out there's a brother, too, and a messed-up mother and a dad who abandoned all of them when they were little. Everything Tad ever told me about his childhood was a total lie.”

“Are you kidding me?” Allie's eyes widened in horror. “Who does that?”

“Wait a minute.” Caleb absently tapped his finger against his glass. “Why does this sound familiar to me?”

I sighed. “You're thinking of last season's story line on
One Life to Live
. Sam had led everyone to believe he was an only child from this upper-crust, pedigree family when he was really the son of some mafia guy. He had a brother, a sister—you name it, he had it.”

Caleb snapped his fingers in recognition. “That's it! Wait, Tad isn't mafia, is he? Because that would be good grounds for divorce, too.”

“No, he's not mafia. He's just crazy.”

Allie smiled. “Aren't we all?”

“Well, if I wasn't before I'm definitely getting there now,” I retorted. “But this is different. He says he feels like there's a dark force inside him that's struggling to get out. He's going to see a psychiatrist and hopefully the shrink will be able to tell us something, but I'll bet the family gene pool he's bipolar.”

Both Allie and Caleb were frozen in place, clutching their drinks as they struggled to come up with a response.

Their silence forced me to contemplate what I had just said. “Oh, God,” I whispered. “Oh, God, how am I going to handle this?” I folded my arms onto the table and let my head fall on top of them. Obviously, crying into my champagne was not the way to go.

I felt Caleb's hand pet my hair. “Okay, why don't you start from the tippy-top.”

“Yeah,” Allie added, “because I am completely lost.”

I told them everything. Except of course for the scene in the kitchen in which he grabbed me and I “fell” to the ground.

“What do I do?” I asked when I had finished my account. “What's the right thing to do?”

Caleb and Allie both quickly looked away. They didn't have any answers. The things I was describing happened to guests on
The Ricki Lake Show
all the time but they didn't happened to people like us. We were too normal. Or at least I used to think we were.

Caleb pulled himself together first. “You're doing the right thing,” he said with an assurance that I knew he didn't feel. “You're going to call a psychiatrist tomorrow and you're going to be supportive of him.” He paused as if to weigh his own words. “And then…then you're going to apply to that summer language program at Cal.”

“Are you crazy?” I let out a humorless laugh. “I can't go to Cal now. I can't afford it.”

Caleb held my gaze for a full thirty seconds before saying, “My treat.”

I gasped, then looked at Allie to see if she had heard what I had. She straightened up in her chair and quickly finished off her glass of Cristal. “I'll chip in, too.”

Caleb held up his hand in protest. “No, no, this one's on me,” he said. “No offense, ladies, but I make a lot more than both of you and I have a lot more saved.”

“Caleb, that's so sweet,” I said, fresh tears springing to my eyes. “But you know I can't accept. It's too much.”

“You have a birthday coming up, right? Consider it an early birthday gift.”

“Um, the tuition for that summer session is three thousand dollars.”

“Okay, so consider it an early Hanukkah gift. What would that come out to…three hundred and seventy-five dollars for each of the eight nights.”

Allie shook her head in disbelief. “That beats the hell out of chocolate gelt.”

I smiled dismissively and split the rest of the champagne between our glasses. “I really appreciate the offer, Caleb, but it really doesn't make sense for me to enroll right now. I don't know what's going on with my finances or my marriage—any aspect of my life. So for me to invest a lot of your money into a language program on the off chance that I'm going to be able to pursue a doctorate any time within the next decade is just irresponsible and stupid.”

Caleb rolled his eyes. “Oh, God forbid we do anything that could be perceived as irresponsible or stupid. We should always take the safe route, right, April?” He leaned over the table so that it was difficult for me to avoid his eyes. “We should always take the road more traveled. Isn't that right? We should marry the nice guy with a good income, take the job that offers us a steady income, even though we hate it, and we should always give up our dreams for the sake of practicality. After all, that is the philosophy that got you where you are today, right?”

My face heated up and I tightened my grip around my glass stem. “I don't want to throw your money away,” I whispered.

“And I don't want you to throw your life away. When I get home I'm going online to get you an application. You're going to Berkeley this summer and that's final.”

 

When I got home that night I felt an odd sense of relief. Caleb had given one aspect of my life some unexpected clarity—attaining a Ph.D. I would still have to find a part-time job, but that was doable. I'd need to learn French…but of all the things I had on my plate that one seemed the easiest to accomplish.

The rest of my life was another story. The next morning after Tad went to work I called Kaiser Medical Center and asked to be connected to the psychiatric department. The earliest appointment I was able to schedule was three weeks away. And those three weeks turned into some of the most difficult of my life. I didn't know what to say to Tad so I avoided saying anything at all. Every morning when he woke up to go to work I pretended to be sleeping late. Then I would spend my days filling out job applications and contacting temp agencies. Then I would pray that Tad would work into the evening hours, which he almost always did. When we did speak it was strained. I would ask him how his day went. It was always fine. He never gave me any details, and I was too afraid to ask for any. Tad was falling asleep in front of the television with increasing frequency and when that happened he almost never made it to the bed, which was a major relief. Why would I want to share my bed with a stranger?

My mother called a few times. She never caught me at home and I never listened to her messages. I knew I needed to talk to her, but I couldn't deal with her drama just then. I could barely deal with my own.

The day I drove Tad to his appointment was beyond awful. I sat behind the wheel of the Z3 that I had yet to sell despite the ad I placed in the paper. Tad sat beside me staring glumly into space.

I glanced over at him. He looked so forlorn. So totally despondent. I reached out and gave his knee an awkward pat. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You know, this is the first step to making everything better.”

Tad didn't say anything. I pressed my lips together and turned on the radio.

We drove in silence as Beck explained to the world that he was a loser who needed to be killed. The song faded out as we approached Kaiser.

It seemed that the psychiatric department was located in the most remote corner of the building, which would have worked in favor of those patients who wished to be discreet, provided they knew where they were going. Tad and I were not so well-informed. Instead, we were forced to expose the reason for our visit to a handful of strangers as we repeatedly asked directions.

Finally, we found the right lobby and I announced our presence one more time to the receptionist.

The woman behind the desk smiled warmly at me. “Has he been here before?”

I glanced nervously at Tad. He was standing right next to me. “No, um, this is our first time.”

“How about other Kaiser departments? Has he been to this facility before for any reason?”