Authors: Jill McCorkle
When she sees
Roger in the photograph, she feels oddly homesick. It’s the same feeling she had as a kid staring into her View-Master at images of places so real she wanted to claim them as her own. As a ten-year-old, her favorite reel was the one of Yellowstone Park —hot springs and sunsets, red rock ledges so steep and close she was afraid to take a step while viewing. In the one of Old Faithful there was a man in plaid Bermuda shorts and a white dress shirt with his whole family in tow, which dated the photo and invaded her space. They did not belong in her life. She loved the moose in the snow, the almost navy sky, but most of all she loved the black bears, so real she wanted to reach out and stroke their fur.
. . .
There is another
photo of a much younger Roger in front of the old E&R Drive-In before it was torn down and replaced by a Food Lion. It was a fixture in the area, catering to the Saturday night dates of a three-county region. Roger was one of the many supporters trying to save it. And so was she. Somewhere in the huge gathering of people spilling beyond the frame, she knows she is there. So is Tripp Trout, Roger has said, but very few people know what he looked like before the mask.
“So we could have met twenty years ago,” he said. “Been together so long we’d be sick of each other or maybe in counseling by now.”
“You were already married.”
“And you were engaged.”
“You said I wouldn’t have liked you back then.”
“But I lied. What were you wearing?”
“Levi’s, T-shirt, Birkenstocks,” she said. “I was real original.”
“Wait. I
do
remember you,” he said. “I tried to pick you up but you ignored me.”
“No, I tried to pick
you
up but you said you had to ask your wife.”
Now they refer
often to
the day we never met
and have pinpointed other possible intersections, the ghosts of their younger selves acting out all the parts they never got to play. In fact she once drove by that place in the mountains where he used
to go. She might have stopped for gas and walked into the very store he went in to buy that oatmeal bath. She could have met him then. She could have said,
Bad day, huh?
How much time do you have and I’ll tell you
.
I have more time than I know what to do with
.
She turns off
the light in his office and makes her way to the darkened bedroom where Roger is stretched out sleeping, Elsa snoring at his feet. She reaches out to familiar shapes, window, wall, brittle unnourished ficus she is attempting to resurrect, chair with his jeans slung over the back, table where his reading glasses are folded. She finds the footboard, Elsa’s blanket. Fur, flannel, skin; knee, thigh, hip. His chest moves up and down under the weight of her hand.
PS
Dear Dr. Love
,
By now you have gotten several letters from me and this will probably be the last. I don’t care that you never respond. In fact, I’m glad that you don’t, because if you did, it would show a weakness in your professional ethics. In all my other letters, I have been trying to explain myself a little better because I always felt like maybe you liked Jerry more than you liked me. And what is it about human nature that makes us all want to be the one liked the most? In those other letters I was still trying to convince you how I was the right one, but the truth is that now so much time has passed that I just don’t give a shit. The right/wrong stalemate is what keeps people in your office for way too long. I thought I
might wrap it all up in my mind by writing you this
final
letter. And I will tell the truth —not that I haven’t told the truth in the past, I have, but let’s just say I also lied.
What has been consistent and honest in all my letters is how I don’t think your name works and I still think you should change it. You might say it led you to do what you do, and you might mention other people with prophetic names like Judge Learned Hand or someone I knew named Clay Potts, who still makes mugs and stuff to sell by the highway, but I never liked the way your name feels like a bad joke to all those people who are struggling with their marriages. Maybe you should change it to Dr. Apathy, which they (the 1960s shrink set) said was the opposite of love instead of hate, and I absolutely agree with this. In fact, I think if they ever remake
The Night of the Hunter
, which is one of my very favorite movies (or was until Jerry got religious), they might rethink the tattoos that the preacher has on his hands. Lord, Robert Mitchum was scary there using his hands to show the fight between love and hate, and him a cold-blooded killer hiding behind Scripture. But imagine a preacher (or a marriage counselor) with hands saying
LOVE
and
APATHY
. You love all those little games; you can put your hands behind your back and say,
Pick
.
Anyway, when you last saw me, I did not look good. In fact, I looked like shit on a stick. Most of us coming in and out of your home office did, you know. I know you think that you have it all
figured out so people don’t see one another —five-minute intervals and in one door and out another —it
is
a big-ass house —but truth is, I rarely made an immediate exit. I would stop off in your little bathroom there at the front to splash water on my face and get myself looking good enough to go pick the kids up from school. Sometimes, you may recall, I would even have to excuse myself during a session. You might have thought I was being avoidant but truth is I was bored. I suspect being bored and having your mind wander during marriage counseling is not a good sign. I would suspect that that level of boredom should say something big. You should tell people right up front how if they’re bored then probably the best thing for everybody is to call it quits. Don’t take their money, don’t make them sit there and say stupid things back and forth.
Anyway, I did like sitting there in your bathroom, the way the white noise enveloped me and kept me from hearing all that Jerry was probably saying about me while I wasn’t there. He probably said things like how I often rearranged the furniture or changed the lightbulbs to get a better feel to the room, or how I didn’t check the cabinets and pantry before going shopping and how he was tired of me buying things like sugar or mayonnaise or a big can of pepper for fear there was none back at home. He didn’t like that I bought Chef Boyardee either even though the kids love it. Who doesn’t? I don’t like being told what is
right
and what is
wrong
.
“Do you know how many bags of sugar are in that pantry?” he would often ask, and I would say, “No! how many?” like it was a game, which made him mad enough to pull out a bunch of bags and stack them there on the floor like we might be getting ready for a flood. Then I might say something like
Do you know how many
Sports Illustrated
s are in the bathroom getting all wet and soggy?
or
Do you know how you bruised my arm when you grabbed me so hard during sex the last time we had it?
But you know better because you know Jerry. Those would be my fantasy marriage-counseling complaints, where I might also have big stinky jock sneakers in the hall and a man thinking of all the new ways he might go about satisfying me.
In reality I would say,
Do you know how many daily devotional books and Mensa quizzes are neatly stacked on the shelf in the bathroom? Do you know where the antibacterial cleanser might be or that thing you use to scrub your tongue?
Jerri did not like for his tongue to look like a normal tongue. I don’t even know who thought of a tongue brush but I am open-minded enough that I said if he needed to do that it was okay with me, that I personally didn’t feel the need to scrape my own but certainly I wouldn’t judge him for doing so.
You (and the whole planet Earth) were always talking about Venus and Mars, and I got it. It was like the tongue brush or the way I like toilet paper backed up to the wall and Jerry likes it spinning off the front. Different strokes and so on. But that
explanation just didn’t work when it came to religion, mainly because Jerry kept trying to
save
me. “From what, Jerry?” I must have said forty times. “What are you saving me from?”
I guess coming to you was like going somewhere like Saturn or Uranus to work it out. Remember when I observed that? And then I said how sometimes a planet is
not
a planet, like Pluto for instance. All these years we thought it was a planet only to find out it wasn’t. Clearly I was too subtle for both of you because you didn’t do more with my observation and Jerry just shook his head and winked at you as if to say,
You see? You see how off she is?
and I said, “Up Uranus.” Do you remember that? I’m hoping that you can picture us there that day: Jerry and Hannah from three suburbs over.
Anyway, I think that marriage vows should include an escape clause that says the contract is broken if one party up and makes a big switch in religion or politics or aesthetic taste. I mean, it just isn’t fair, and there needs to be an easier way out. There’s all that discussion about marriage versus civil union. Well, I think everybody needs to be civil and I think anybody that wants to call a relationship a marriage should have the right to do so. I’m an open-minded person and these days a more honest person, so I’ll just go ahead and tell you that you were not our first counselor. In the beginning, we —like so many who come to you —were just hoping for an honest appraisal, like when you take your car in. Do they open the hood and just close it with disgust, like the
way people often describe cancer:
They opened and then just closed her right up
? Or do they say,
Well, this vehicle might not have been the
best
choice for you, but there’s miles left in her. Keep her in tires and oil and she’ll probably get you where you need to go
? Or do they say,
Ah yes, she’s a beauty and if you just pay attention to the subtle sounds of this complex engine then she’ll be purring for life and won’t you feel proud to have a hand on her wheel?
My first choice of a therapist was Ashley Hoffman, but he is so brilliant and popular, a patient has to die for you to get an appointment. So I chose a Dr. Levine for his good Jewish name because I had decided that the only way I could get some objectivity to counterbalance what had become Jerry’s religious fervor was to find a good atheist or agnostic or Unitarian. Well, that is not information that you can find anywhere in an advertisement. So, I thought I could go the more subtle route and look for a good Jewish name, which I did, only to have another bad joke played on me. Dr. Levine’s mother, it turned out, was a Baptist, and that’s how he had grown up down in Alabama, with Mr. Levine nowhere in sight. His accent was thicker than mine and he used the words
bless
and
blessing
all the goddamn time. Jerry liked him, of course. Jerry likes talking to men better than he likes dealing with women even though he won’t admit it. I know you picked up on this, too, but I’ll come back to that. I felt that this lack of separation of church and marital state was a big conflict of interest. I wanted to tell Dr. Levine that I wanted to sue his ass for false advertisement
because there is a great and rich Hebrew heritage in the field of psychotherapy but, of course, I didn’t. Instead of that I told Jerry that Dr. Levine had to let all his clients go because he was suffering a nervous breakdown of sorts and then I opened the Yellow Pages, closed my eyes, and found you. The name
Love
sounded prophetic at the time. Ha ha.
But I did like how you always had the daily paper and
People
magazine in your bathroom, except sometimes when I started reading, I forgot that I had to go back in there and hear what a difficult person I am. Remember that time you had to come and get me and I told you I was feeling sick? Really I was reading about David Koresh and thinking how Jerry’s new religion was getting on my nerves but at least he wasn’t
that
bad. Not yet anyway. Of course, I wanted to know what to be looking for in case the turn he’d already taken got worse.
Love or apathy. The game of marriage. The game of monogamy. Some would say
monotony
. You take turns. You go round and round. Sometimes you have to pay a penalty or lose your turn. Still, it’s not easy to make a big change and that is what I was often thinking while collecting myself and watching others coming and going. The people I saw leaving who looked good and all together were already done deals I suspect. You could tell the ones who already knew they were out of there and were just going through the motions to appease the other one enough to get a better deal during the divorce —more money, more time
with the kids. I mean, so many people go to counseling for the kids, and that’s a good thing when it works —kind of like a sermon when it’s good and inspirational and you can use what you hear —but it can also become selfish. All that money that could go to college and all that time that could go to taking them fun places. I mean, I spent a hell of a lot to get bored and wander around getting creeped out by your spooky violent and primitive art stuff.
I wish I could get all that money back from you. One day I added it up and it totaled at least a new car, which I really need these days. Do you remember how Jerry wanted to have me diagnosed crazy? And then how he was hoping I had brain cancer? “Something is causing your abstract thoughts,” he said. I mean no offense, well, actually I do mean a little offense, I never understood why you didn’t get pissed off and tell him to let you tend to your own business. I mean, you listened to him sitting there in all his born-again glory. He would have loved a reason to have me drugged or lobotomized so I’d just drool and go along with whatever he said whenever he said it.
And I am someone who does believe in the higher power of necessary medication. Amen. Like there are times when a smidgen of this or that is just what you need. I loved the feel of Demerol when I was in labor and don’t know what I would have done without that epidural, scream out lots of terrible things, I suspect, which I did anyway. And this drug they give you with
a colonoscopy is just a dream —you’re relaxed on one side, wide awake and watching television. I wanted to nominate myself for an Emmy. And I believe in spiritual highs, too. What I don’t believe in is someone having the power to dictate someone else’s spirituality or aesthetic code. Like if I hate corduroy, that is
my
business, not his.