The Nearest Exit (39 page)

“I’m accident-prone.”

She nodded as she approached. “When’s the flight out?”

“I got sick of airports.”

She watched him run his fingers through Stephanie’s hair. “You here to break our hearts?”

They ordered Thai takeout and ate in the living room without turning on the television once the whole evening. School was treating Stephanie roughly, it seemed, and later Tina said the teacher blamed her declining grades on their separation. “Half America’s marriages are broken, and this is the best she can come up with?”

“Let’s go meet with her this week. Together.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Tina answered.

That’s when the reality of his return to family life hit Milo with the strength of one of Heinrich’s blows. Plans for the future. Responsibilities. It wasn’t freedom he’d been wanting all this time, just a different kind of obligation. Later, after Stephanie was in bed, he even said, “What about Dr. Ray?”

“She tells me she’s kept our Wednesday slot open. You up for it?”

“Absolutely.”

“You know?” she said after a moment.

“No, I don’t.”

“It’s almost as if you never left.”

She didn’t mean it literally—she and Stephanie had, after all, spent half the evening catching him up on the things he’d missed—but in terms of the ease that filled the apartment his first night back, it felt to her as if it were a year ago, before things had begun to go wrong.

Saying all that made her self-conscious, so she pulled back again. “I know, it sounds corny. And really, it’s probably just the initial glow. Tomorrow we’ll be back to the same ol’ same ol’.”

After they made love in the wide bed that felt like a decadent luxury after months of hotels, and he had vaguely explained away the cigarette burns on his arm, Milo went to the kitchen, naked, and poured two Merlots to take back to the bedroom. On his way back, he noticed a thick manila envelope on the table beside the front door. Across it, in black marker, was milo. He checked the door, but it was locked. He opened the envelope.

As they drank, Tina wiped a drop of wine from her breast and said, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said, then thought better of it. Lies had ruined things, and he’d had enough of them. He went to get the envelope and showed it to her. “Seen this before?”

“No. Should I have?”

He rubbed his eyes; his father had placed the envelope while he and Tina were having sex. “It’s from Yevgeny.”

“Looks like work to me.”

“Just something of interest.”

“Well, don’t wait for me.”

“What?”

“You obviously want to dig into it right away.”

“Am I that obvious?”

“Not often enough,” she said, then kissed him.

He left her to sleep and went to the living room with his Merlot and a square of the Nicorette he was beginning to suspect had become his new addiction. He opened up the manila envelope and began to read about the life and times of Xin Zhu.

“Glad you made it, Milo,” Dr. Bipasha Ray said, showing off a radiant smile he suspected was not entirely honest. They all shook hands, and despite the chilly damp outside Dr. Ray padded to her chair in bare, manicured feet. The pleasantries were dispensed with quickly, beginning with “How has it been between the two of you?” When they both agreed that the last two days had been like another honeymoon, she pursed her lips and said, “Very nice.” She didn’t have to point out that anyone in the world could last two lousy days.

“So, Milo. Anything you can say about where you’ve been these last few months? The few times Tina and I met, she didn’t seem to know.”

“I’d tell you, but I’d have to kill you,” he said with a banal smile, but Dr. Ray didn’t seem to find that funny. She was one of the few therapists the department had cleared for staff use, but she’d never had much patience for Company humor, particularly when it utilized the threat of death. “No, I just mean that all I can say is I was moving around a good bit. Working here and there.”

“Working too much to call and check in with your family?”

Milo looked at Tina, who had no expression at all, then back at Dr. Ray. “No, actually. It’s against the rules. It’s not safe to call your family when you’re working undercover. You place them and yourself
in unnecessary danger.” He decided against mentioning that he had tried to call a few times.

“Of course,” Dr. Ray said, then brushed at the knee of her jeans. “Does that mean you were in real danger?”

“No, no. Just a figure of speech.”

Dr. Ray nodded, smiling. “Milo, some months ago you were telling Tina that you thought these sessions weren’t the way to take care of your marital problems. Could you expand on that?”

“I’m not sure I said that.”

“You did, hon,” said Tina. “I said I thought it was helping, and you said you didn’t.”

This was starting to feel like an ambush. “Okay, maybe I did say it.”

“So, what did you mean by that?” asked Dr. Ray.

Milo rubbed his arms. The room was vaguely chilly, and he decided that if they wanted to ambush him, he would open himself up to it. He would, for the moment at least, trust that honesty was the path of rightness. He said, “What I meant was that I hadn’t been entirely honest. During those sessions, I mean.”

“What?” That was Tina.

“It’s not so uncommon,” Dr. Ray said generously. “What matters is that you’ve admitted it aloud, and we can move ahead in a more constructive manner.”

Tina said, “Have you really been lying here?”

“Not lying. Just not always opening up completely.”

“Tina, Milo may have good reasons for drawing the distinction.”

“Yeah—to save his own ass.”

“I’m not saving my ass, Tina.”

She didn’t believe him. Their drive here had been pleasant and light, and he wondered if she, in turn, had been dishonest with him, knowing that she and the good doctor would be setting him up. She said, “Just don’t tell me you’re protecting national secrets by lying in couples therapy. How much time has to pass before your life stops being classified, huh? It never occurs to you that by then it might be too late.”

Where was this coming from?

“Tina, let Milo speak. Milo?”

In the silence that followed, he found himself fidgeting with the knee of his pants in some strange solidarity with Dr. Ray. He forced himself to stop, though he knew how it looked, how
he
looked—awkward and nervous, a man never to be trusted.

After the things he’d done, the places he’d been, what was this? A study belonging to a little Long Island psychologist. But
Christ
, it felt like one of those cells on the nineteenth floor, with John in a bad mood.

“For instance,” he finally managed, groping for something that didn’t include murder or kidnapping or robbery, “the story of how we fell in love. Back in September, at one of our first meetings, you went through it all right here. Remember?”

Tina nodded. “Of course I remember.”

“It didn’t happen like that. Not for me. I’ve never understood it—what does that even mean, falling in love while watching the Towers fall? I can’t even comprehend it.”

“It’s what I felt. I’m not going to make apologies for my feelings, Milo.”

“That’s right, Tina. We should never apologize for our feelings. Milo, tell us more. We’re listening.”

He looked at each woman again, feeling the distance between him and them increasing, and thought that this was the exact opposite of what therapy was supposed to do. “It didn’t start with love, that’s what I’m trying to say. What I felt was desperation. My life had gone to hell, and I was desperate for something to hold on to. And there she was—Tina, I mean—going into labor right there on the street. I needed something, and Tina was there at the right time.”

“Lovely.”

“Tina, let him go on. Milo?”

“Well,” he said, “when I woke up next to Tina’s bed, and we were watching the Towers on TV, I was more confused than anything else. I didn’t feel close to anybody. You were there, clutching onto me, but it was like I was alone in that hospital room.”

“Alone. I see. I fell in love, and you just felt cold.”

“Don’t misunderstand me—love did come. It just took time. And Stephanie.”

“Stephanie?” That was Dr. Ray, sounding as if he’d finally, after months, said something interesting. “What do you mean by that?”

“I don’t mean my heart melted when I saw her, not quite. It just struck me that, for the first time in my life, I’d met someone who could do nothing wrong. That’s how babies are. Nothing is their fault. If they cry or throw a fit or shit in your hands—everything they do wrong is your fault. That’s not sentimentality—that’s fact. To be honest, I was awed by this, that any human being could be utterly without guile and menace. It was new to me. It was a shock. I wanted to be near that innocence, to protect it.”

Dr. Ray embarked on one of her favorite pastimes: rephrasing what her patients had said. “So you could say that you fell in love with your daughter before you fell in love with your wife.”

“You could certainly say that.”

“Tina? Anything to say?”

Tina was just staring at Milo, her expression betraying nothing.

“Tina?”

Tina raised both hands in the air, and when she brought them down again in an expression of impotence there were tears in her eyes.

“See?” she said. “This is what I’m talking about. Him falling in love with Stephanie—how come I never heard that before? Christ, Milo. How many times have I told that story? You could have stopped me years ago, before I made an ass of myself.”

Dr. Ray said, “I don’t think you’ve made an ass of yourself. Milo?”

“Of course she hasn’t,” he said.

“Let me tell you something,” said Dr. Ray. “Tina, are you listening? I want both of you to hear it.”

Tina said, “Sure.”

Milo agreed with an “Okay.”

“Though we haven’t met as regularly as we all would have liked, I think I’ve gotten a sense of the dynamic between the two of you. You’ve probably noticed that I use the word ‘listen’ a lot. It’s not
because I’m some touchy-feely therapist. I say it because it’s an issue here. You’re not listening to each other. Wait, Milo,” she said, raising a finger at him. “Yes, you’re listening to each other’s words, but you’re not listening to the subtext.”

Both Milo and Tina waited.

“For example, Milo—why do you think you lied about the circumstances of your meeting?”

“I wouldn’t say I lied—”

“Omission is essentially the same thing.”

“Okay,” he said, ready to admit to anything. “I suppose I was afraid of hurting Tina’s feelings.”

“Why?”

“Yes,” said Tina, “why?”

He had to think about that. “I don’t want Tina feeling, I don’t know, disconnected from me. From the idea of our marriage.”

“And what’s the idea of your marriage?”

“That. The story. The myth of how it began,” he said, thinking suddenly of Tourism and how without its myth it would no longer be of any value. Was that really how he thought of his marriage? “No,” he said aloud, feeling confused. “No, that’s not it. What I mean is, whether or not that story is true for both of us, the marriage isn’t affected, because it doesn’t matter how we met. What matters is how we’ve lived together.”

Tina blinked at him. Her eyes were wet. Dr. Ray was unmoved. “You still haven’t answered my question: What’s the idea of your marriage?”

“There is no idea of our marriage,” he said finally. “It simply is.” He wasn’t sure if this was what Dr. Ray was aiming at, but it was all he could manage when cornered.

Tina said, “Stephanie.”

Both looked at her.

“That’s Milo’s idea of our marriage. It’s Stephanie. That’s what he thinks, isn’t it?”

Dr. Ray shook her head. “I can’t tell you what anyone’s thinking. That’s up to Milo to say. Milo?”

Now they were looking at him.

Tina stared at his features, waiting, because this felt like a moment of decision. Dr. Ray was good at this. She could take a seemingly happy relationship and with a few questions strip it down like a shitty old car to some lie right in its center. Or some misunderstanding.

She’d noticed this last year, right at the beginning, and more than Dr. Ray’s animal sexiness this was what had frightened her, that she would discover the falseness of their marriage and show it to them proudly, wrecking their lives. Now she was trying it again, pushing them both into a corner where Tina had no choice but to ask the obvious question, and Milo had no choice but to answer.

His cheeks were coloring. He said, “It’s an idiotic question.”

“Is it?” Tina asked. Dr. Ray said nothing.

“Yeah.” He was pissed off now. “How can anyone boil seven years down to a single idea? Of course Stephanie is one idea in our marriage, but do you really think there’s only one? How about sex? That’s one excellent idea in our marriage. And love?” He turned to Dr. Ray. “Our marriage is a hundred different ideas. I’m not going to name a single one.”