Tales From the Crib (31 page)

She smiled, then turned to Kimmy. Summer asked her if she promised to love and cherish herself for all her days. Kimmy did. The minister asked if she promised to obey her inner wisdom and always do what she knew was best for herself. Again, Kimmy said she did.

“For those of you who promised yourselves that you’d enjoy more sunsets, look out there.” She motioned her hand toward Anjoli’s expansive window at the most glorious pink and purple cotton candy stretching across the city skyline. “God is great,” she said with energy. “All of you are here to witness this magnificent affirmation of self-love. Congratulations, Kimmy. As your aunt’s friends on Broadway say, you are your own wife.”

Amid cheers and applause, and a random
mazel tov,
Alfie turned on the CD player at full blast to the Divinyls singing, “When I think about you, I touch myself . ..” Kimmy scrunched her mouth to one side and shook a fist playfully. Then the blushing bride gave Alfie the finger.

“And the first dance will be Kimmy alone,” announced the DJ as he popped in Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself.” She twirled around the center of the living room like a silly child as people watched and began chatting again.

“Remind you of our wedding?” Jack asked, elbowing me.

I laughed. “Not in the least.”

“Same venue,” he returned. “May she have a smoother road than we did.”

“Jack,” I said. “We really need to talk.”

“You’re not dumping me, are you?” he joked. He wasn’t being cocky. It was just so clear that we were happier these last few months than we had been in years. Maybe ever. We were joining each other in the mundane things the way we used to back when we dated. We took trips to the supermarket together so we wouldn’t have to interrupt our riveting conversation about nothing. I washed; he dried. I changed diapers while Jack took out filled trash bags. We had our time together, after Adam went to sleep, where Jack used me as a model for his paintings. We drove by a garage sale and picked up a couch that seated us perfectly as we both reclined on opposite ends to read. It was like a flesh puzzle where my leg would drape on the back of the couch while his would fit right underneath. We met in the middle without getting in each other’s way.

Our new favorite activity was “visiting” the house in the Berkshires via Internet. It still hadn’t sold and the price had been reduced by $150,000, but we were still far from being in a position to make an offer.

“Of course I’m not dumping you, Jack,” I assured him as I stopped a waiter for another canape. “I just think we need to talk about where our relationship is going.”

“We’re still married, Luce. What else is there?”

“But we almost got divorced, Jack. If I wasn’t pregnant, we would be divorced right now,” I reminded him.

“See, it was meant to be,” Jack dismissed with a laugh. “Adam saved our marriage.”

“Jack, I don’t want our baby to save the marriage. I want us to,” I said when suddenly Jack realized I was serious. “I think we should go to a couple’s counselor.”

“Again?!” he protested. “It didn’t work for us last time.”

“Because Dr. Lee blew us off. We can get another one. Jack, I really want to do this. Everything’s great right now, but I want to figure out what went wrong last time and not let it happen again.”

“It’s different this time,” Jack said. He was right. It was more comfortable between us. I was able to tell him how I felt without him immediately suggesting I flip a switch and feel something else. I tried to use humor as an escape hatch less often, but it was tough. I seemed to have a reflexive instinct to try to inject humor when, frankly, some things were no laughing matter. Still, I wanted an expert to inspect our new marriage and stamp it kosher.

“Can you humor me and just go to counseling for a few months?” I asked.

He nodded. “Can you humor me and dance with me to this cheesy song?” Jack held his hand out, then wrapped it around mine and led me to the dance floor. The lights were dimmed and Kimmy’s wedding dress sparkled in the center of the room. The crowd joined in for the chorus: “I’ve been to paradise, but I’ve never been to me.” Jack rolled his eyes as we danced with our sleeping son in a sling sandwiched between us.  

Chapter 37

The following week, we started seeing Dr. Etta Rosenblatt, who came highly recommended by Mary, the La Leche League leader. Without a moment of hesitation, she said that when she and her husband were having “adjustment issues” Etta worked wonders for them. I appreciated her candor and wasn’t sure if I’d be as willing to share with a group of casual acquaintances that my husband and I needed a therapist. I took some comfort in seeing several mothers casually jot down the therapist’s name between recommendations for fenugreek herb and lanolin.

Dr. Rosenblatt’s reception area was decorated with framed Chinese paintings and olive and orange satin pillows strewn across a comfortable black couch. She had three small fountains where water drizzled down a pyramid of rocks, which patients were probably supposed to find relaxing. They reminded me of the ones in the house we couldn’t afford. Hanging from a clear fishing wire in front of the window was a crystal, refracting sunlight and getting Rosenblatt’s feng shui all in place. Feng shui has always had the opposite effect on me than what it was intended to do. Instead of opening my energy channels to peace and prosperity, it annoyed me. Something about a person—or in this case a room—telling me to relax and turn on my heart light or unblock my chi always made me want to break things.

The dark wood door opened as Jack and I looked at each other with anticipation. A short senior with milky white skin and red hair pulled into a disheveled bun emerged with another couple. We could only see their backs because they scurried out so quickly. Didn’t they realize we were there for the same reason? “Hello,” she said, taking a full two seconds to deliver the word.

I’m not going to be able to stand this calm, nurturing routine.

Jack was right. We don’t need therapy. We’re fine.

That other couple didn’t look like they were half as happy as Jack and I are.

I wanted to make a run for it, but went inside her office anyway. Jack and I sat on a small blue love seat while Dr. Rosenblatt turned her desk chair to face us. Surely her removing the barrier between us was some sort of feng-shui meets-psychotherapy way of telling us how very
with
us she was. Behind her sat a white dry-erase board and a bookshelf filled with small plastic toys, keys, action figures, and a hand mirror.

She folded her hands onto her lap and leaned forward to show that she was listening. “So, Lucy and Jack. What are you here for?”     

Good fucking question!
I didn’t say aloud. How I hoped she would not make us play with the action figures or have me look at my vagina with the hand mirror. The image of a circle of women in my mother’s living room saying loving affirmations to their vulvas is still burned in my memory like a POW remembers his internment. Surprisingly, Jack showed no resistance.

“Lucy and I almost got divorced a while back,” he started. “We’re happy now, but she thinks we need to come here to keep it that way.”

“Well, I wouldn’t put it that way,” I shot back.

Dr. Rosenblatt held her hand up at me. “Jack, are you finished?” He nodded. “Now, Lucy, tell me why you think you and Jack could benefit from counseling.”

“I want to figure out what went wrong the first time around so we don’t make the same mistakes again,” I said, trying to showcase my sensible responsibility. “We have a child now.”

“Are
you
finished?” she asked.

“Oy,” I slipped.

“Oy?” Dr. Rosenblatt asked. “It means- ”

“Oh, I know what it means,” she said. “I was wondering what you meant by ‘oy.’”

Hey, that time
I
wasn’t finished!

“Well, you know, doc, sometimes an oy is just an oy,” I said, laughing. Jack laughed too, tapping my thigh as if to say
good one.
The doctor smiled ever so slightly. She reached into her desk drawer and pulled out two printouts for Jack and me. The heading read, “XYZ statements.” It advised couples to focus on specific behavior rather than make general complaints. I was supposed to tell Jack not that he was being a big, fat fucker, but rather that I felt hurt by his big, fat fuckerness. Or something like that. The main point was that I was supposed to make “I” statements instead of ones that went something like, “You are such a slob!” Instead, I should calmly inform Jack, “I feel disrespected when you leave your socks on the floor.”

The follow-up conversation was supposed to go something like this:

 Jack: What I hear you saying is that you feel disrespected when I leave my socks on the floor. Is that correct?

Me: Yes, Jack, you heard me correctly.

Jack: Is there anything else?

Me: No, not for now.

Jack: So you are finished.

Me: Yes, I am.

 Then I guess we’re supposed to kiss or something because I feel acknowledged and heard—and God bless him, he let me finish.

“But does this get him to pick up his socks?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” Dr. Rosenblatt said, looking to Jack.

“I work hard all day and when I get home I just want to kick off my shoes and socks and be comfortable,” Jack defended. “I don’t want to worry about throwing my socks in the hamper.”

“You know, with all due respect, doctor, I can live with the socks on the floor. Jack and I have bigger fish to fry.”

“It’s not about the socks!” Dr. Rosenblatt said with her index finger pointing in the air. Then she got up and started drawing diagrams on her white board. She drew a blue dot on one end of the board, which was Jack, and a red dot at the other end, which was me. Then she frantically dotted a black line between the two of us. “The message we intend to send is often not the same message that is received,” she said. “To Jack, socks on the floor are a way of relaxing. Jack is saying to you, ‘I feel comfortable in my home.’ But what Lucy is hearing is ‘Jack doesn’t care about my need for a clean, orderly house.’ What we need to do is teach you to translate each other’s messages. Does that make sense?”

“Yes!” Jack said emphatically.

It does?!

For the next twenty minutes, I listened to Jack talk about his childhood role in the family and his thoughts about what it means to be a father. It was all stuff I’d heard before, but it had been a while. Plus, I’d always heard bits and pieces. Memories scattered before me over years without any real cohesiveness or context. I settled into my half of the love seat and reluctantly admitted that perhaps the forced time listening to each other might be good for us.

“Is there anything you’d like to tell Jack about how you’ve been feeling about the relationship, Lucy?”

“Recently, I’ve been very happy,” I said.

“Is there anything that’s hurt you over the past few months?” she asked. “And please call me Etta.”

“Well ...”

“Go on,” Etta encouraged. “And remember, ‘I’ statements. Now face Jack and share.”

“Okay,” I began. “That time when you- ”

“I
statements!” Etta corrected.
“I
felt such and such when you did such and such.”

I raised my eyebrows at Jack, wondering if I should just let this one pass. After all, he and Natalie had broken up. We had been so happy over the last few weeks. We spent hours joyously shopping on the Internet for furniture we weren’t going to buy for the house we couldn’t afford. We turned his former bedroom into a makeshift studio and filled it with paintings and sketches of my plump body. Why was I about to rock the boat with memories of Natalie?

“G’head, Luce,” Jack said. “I can take it. I know we’ve had a rough year. I think it’ll be good to get it out in the open.”

“That’s the spirit!” Etta said, clapping her hands. “Okay, Jack.
I
feel angry when you bring women into our home, have sex with them, then take them to the playground with our baby.”

“Oy!” Etta slipped.

We saw Etta twice a week for the next six weeks and somewhere around October I started hearing about parts of Jack’s life I didn’t know about. There were no dramatic revelations of beatings or abuse by the evil cousin, just little things that helped me make better sense of Jack. Of course, Etta always quieted me when I tried to make an observation, saying that I should be focusing on my response to what Jack was saying—not analyzing him. I hadn’t known that Jack’s mother never allowed him to mention his father’s name after he remarried and stopped visiting. “Upward and onward,” she repeated like a mantra in the months after he left. As the visits became less frequent, Susan advised Jack not to think about such unpleasantness. When his father evaporated, she grew impatient with her son’s constant inquiries about his father. She had no answers for him. One day, she snapped that he should never speak his father’s name again. Jack persisted a few times, but Susan smiled placidly and said, “I’m sorry, but I do not know anyone by that name.”

Finally, the week before Thanksgiving, the topic of the miscarriages came up. “Lucy has always said that I blame her for the miscarriages,” Jack began.

“Do you?” Etta asked.

“Of course not!” he cried.

“Are you sure?” she challenged.

“Of course I’m sure. What kind of husband would blame his wife for a miscarriage?!”

“Jack, no one’s blaming you for blaming her,” Etta said with her trademark calmness. “Blame is an emotion, not a rational thought. Blaming Lucy would not make you a bad person. It would make you human.”

“You think I’m to blame?” I snapped.

“What does it matter what I think, Lucy?” Etta asked.

“I cannot believe this! You
do
think I’m to blame. I didn’t do anything to cause those miscarriages! Don’t you think it killed me to lose those pregnancies?! And now you’re saying I was to blame. What kind of therapist are you anyway?”

“You have a lot of anger around this issue,” Etta said. She stood to write on her white board.

“No! I don’t need any diagrams. You know I’m not at fault for this, don’t you?”