The Seven Year Bitch (17 page)

“The boxes are filled with essays,” I told Shasthi. “I'm judging a contest.” She had come in a little while before and was kneeling, bent over the tub, her knees resting on a folded towel, and swabbing the baby with a washcloth. He loved the bath and he looked up at me with his hair all slicked back. I felt terrible that I wasn't the one giving him the bath, but I was also relieved. It was hard bending over like that and slightly terrifying.

Of course I would never step away from the tub while he was in it, but what if some unknown psychosis overtook me and I did? For just a moment. And returned to find him drowned.

“You are going to read all that?” she said.

 

 

Russell came home from
Jamaica a hero because he brought Duncan a rubber ducky with dreadlocks painted on it to look like a Rastafarian and a clam shell with a marijuana leaf painted on it. He didn't kiss me hello.

“Don't forget we have Corinne today,” I said.

“Shit,” Russell said.

I waited for Russell outside Corinne's office for twenty minutes and then, thinking that he might already be up there and that he had not even had the courtesy to wait for me, I buzzed and walked up the stairs. I took off my shoes and sat on my end of the couch. Russell's side was empty.

“Do you want to get started without him?” Corinne asked.

“Are we allowed to do that?”

“We can fill him in when he gets here.”

She was wearing a hunter-green sweatshirt, her cat curled on her lap, and her neatly made bed in the sleeping loft behind her.

“I'm the judge of an essay contest for Informilk baby formula,” I said. “I'm reading essays from women all over the country about what it means to be a mom.”

“Last week you were thinking about what it means to be a man. Now it's what it means to be a mom. It seems you're dealing with a lot of labels.”

What did it mean to be a shrink? I wondered. It certainly didn't mean getting dressed and leaving your apartment.

“And what does it mean to be a mom?” she asked.

“Most of the essays are about scrubbing the toilet,” I said.

“Is that what it means to you?”

I started to cry. “It means not ruining your son's life by getting a divorce.”

“And is that what you would be doing?” she asked, handing me a box of tissues that I hoped she hadn't found on the street. “Ruining Daniel's life?”

“Duncan,” I said.

“Sorry, Duncan,” she said.

“I just can't stand it anymore,” I said. “He's so defensive. If I say, ‘Pass the salt,' he says, ʽI, I, I, I, I, I didn't take the salt, I didn't touch the salt. I, I, I don't know anything about the salt.' He was so ridiculous here last week. I couldn't even understand what he was saying and then he started burping.”

“He did seem quite flexible,” Corinne said.

“Flexible?” I asked.

“Yes, he seemed much more flexible than other men.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, feeling hopeful that Russell was flexible and might be able to change.

“The way he was able to sit Indian-style with his knees flush against the couch.” She did an awkward, ugly imitation of him, and I suddenly thought I was going to throw up. She made it sound like I was married to some kind of circus sideshow freak, a grotesque contortionist, a rubber man, a rubber band.

“Is there anything about Russell that you like?” she asked.

“I don't know.” I wept into the tissues. This was terrible. My marriage was terrible. And I wasn't sure how it had gotten this way.

“When I was in my first year of business school, I did a bad thing,” I said, not sure why I was bringing this up now. “It was a public policy class, and I had to write about class-action lawsuits—there was a certain statute a whole section of my class had to write on. I was up late in the law library and I had the statute in my carrel on my desk, and I somehow packed it into my book bag with the rest of my books. I didn't realize I had it until a couple of days later when the professor made a very angry announcement that it had been stolen from the library and whoever had it better bring it back. I was scared. I didn't want to be seen as cheating or getting some kind of unfair advantage, so I tied it in a garbage bag and threw it into the back of a garbage truck. It's the stupidest thing. I really don't know why I did that.”

“You felt stuck,” Corinne said.

“I had made a stupid mistake.”

“Was marrying Russell a stupid mistake?” Corinne said.

“I guess it was,” I said.

“And would you like to tie him in a garbage bag and throw him in the back of a garbage truck?”

I didn't say anything. I just cried, feeling sorry for myself that a conversation like this one was what my marriage had come to.

“You know this is going to take a lot of time,” she said. “He might never change. He might always come in here and burp and splay his legs all around.”

I just sat there continuing to weep. As much as I hated this, I thought, couples therapy was much more helpful without Russell.

“Well, our time is up,” she said. “I'll see you next week.”

 

 

For the next few
days I noticed a lot of couples giving each other the finger. Men giving women the finger. Women giving men the finger right back. Spring was in the air, and couples were out, sitting on benches in the tiny little area of Washington Square Park that wasn't being blasted. If you wanted romance in New York anymore, if you wanted Washington Square Park and the Twin Towers and couples saying nice, romantic things about each other, you had to watch
When Harry Met Sally
, because that's the only place they were. My movie started with couples giving each other the finger—white, black, Asian, Muslim, Hispanic, young, old, fat, thin—everywhere you looked, a lot of fingers.

I sat in the café and listened to Said talk about his mistress. I watched his wife slumped over her Irish coffee. She wasn't a wife, I thought. She wasn't in a marriage. How strange that she could think she was a wife, and I, a virtual stranger, could know that she wasn't.

Joy called and I told her I was going to couples therapy with Russell.

“Don't bother,” she said. “You should do what I'm doing.”

“And what is that?” I asked.

“You should come here with me to Kenya.”

“What!” I said.

“It's true. I'm in Kenya. I'm buying a farm. I met a man. This is it, Izzy. I have finally met a good man. I'm going to live here half the year and I'm going to bring him back with me to LA for the other half. Today I bought a sheep because it looked like Chanel. I thought it was a goat, but when I got it home to the shamba they said it was a sheep.”

“Home to the shamba?” I said. “How are the boys?” I asked, my voice quavering a little.

“They're here. I got PlayStation. They love the goat. Sheep.”

“So tell me about him,” I said. “The man.”

“His name is Chilemba. He's twenty-two. He has a wife, of course they all do here, but he's going to divorce her. You have no idea what fucking can be like,” she said. “We're going to Egypt and Mombasa.”

“Just be careful,” I said, thinking there was no way she was being careful.

The next week Shasthi
called and said she couldn't come in to work that day because her cousin had died in Guyana. The family was gathering at the airport to see off the relatives who were able to leave the country and go to the funeral. Russell and I had our appointment with Corinne and nobody to leave Duncan with.

“That's fine,” Russell said, “because I can't go anyway. I have a meeting.”

All morning I intended to call and cancel but at two o'clock I found myself walking toward her loft with Duncan in his Bugaboo. I convinced the men in the pizza parlor next door to let me leave the stroller there, and walked up Corinne's steps holding the heavy baby in my arms. Even carrying Duncan, I walked up stairs straighter than Russell.

“So this is what a baby looks like,” Corinne said. “I don't think there's ever been a baby in this apartment. I don't think the cat likes it too much,” she said. “He's never seen one.”

I put Duncan on the floor and for several minutes we watched the cat's alien eyes follow the baby's every move.

“How are things this week with Russell?” Corinne asked.

“Russell,” Duncan said. “Dada!”

“I look at other people's husbands and I wonder why I made the choice I made. He says ‘I love you' all the time. ʽI love you. I love you. I love you.' But he doesn't notice that I don't say it back.”

“I love you,” Duncan said.

“I love
you
,” I said and kissed him.

“And do you love Russell?”

I didn't say anything.

“Were there other men you could have married?” Corinne asked.

“No,” I said, thinking of Gabe Weinrib waiting for me at the airport.

I put Duncan next to me on the couch and had what I decided was my last session with Corinne. I couldn't keep coming week after week and complaining about Russell. There was nothing she could do for me. I had to figure this one out by myself.

“How was couples therapy?” Russell asked when Duncan and I got home.

“It was good,” I said. “Duncan and I worked out all our problems.”

Russell bent down to kiss Duncan. “Did you like going to therapy?” he asked in baby talk.

“Yes,” Duncan said, nodding and giving us his shy smile.

S
ince I paid good money for you and didn't make use of your financial services, I think you should do me this one favor,” Gabe said.

I smiled. He had called.

“What favor is that?” I asked.

“Come with me to get my hair cut,” he said. “I have an appointment tomorrow at four and I need your help. You can bring Duncan.”

“I have a sitter at that time,” I said.

“Then bring her too,” he said.

“I really can't,” I said. “I'm married, Gabe. I can't go all over town watching you get your hair cut.” I'd never even gone with my own husband to get a haircut.

“I'll be at a place called Tomoko on East Thirteenth Street tomorrow at four. Please, please, please come.”

The next day, walking along Thirteenth Street, I thought about a movie I had seen as a kid. It was called
The Adventures of the Wilderness Family
, and it was about a mother and father and sister and brother who leave the big city and move to the middle of the wilderness. As a child I had never seen anything so traumatic. There was no phone or television or games, just this family of four alone amongst grizzly bears in some kind of one-room cabin. Our family went to Cape Cod every summer, which was miserable enough, but this was inconceivable.

I hadn't thought about that movie since I was a kid, but now, walking to see a man who wasn't my husband get his hair cut, I suddenly couldn't get it out of my head. That's what I should be doing, I thought, packing up my family and moving us somewhere like that away from all distractions. Dora the Explorer with her intolerable nasal whine was destroying us. The wilderness would be safe compared to that.

Duncan should see me as a mother, cooking more than his oatmeal every morning, protecting him from a grizzly bear with a broom or something when his father was out hunting for our very survival.

I was so involved with thinking about the Wilderness Family, it was a little shocking walking into the salon and seeing Gabe in a barber's chair, wearing a black robe, his eyes closed, while a beautiful Japanese girl massaged his neck.

Since his eyes were still closed, I could leave, I thought, but another beautiful Japanese woman brought me a cup of green tea and, bowing, indicated that I should sit in the chair next to him.

I watched him in the mirror getting his neck massaged. He was so great looking, I thought, but vulnerable too. Watching him was somehow not unlike watching Duncan sleeping.

The girl pounded on his back with her palms pressed together. Then he opened his eyes and saw me looking at him in the mirror.

“Rieko, this is my friend Isolde,” he said. “She's going to help us here today.”

He smiled at me.

“What do you think we should do?” she asked.

“Maybe a little shorter in the back, and some layers,” I said.

“Here?” she asked.

When it was over, Rieko helped him off with the black robe. He was wearing just a white undershirt until she took his button-down shirt from a hanger and he slid into it. I watched his fingers working the buttons.