Christine hated it when Milo was late for anything.
chapter 5
Things were not going well for Milo, because things were going well for Milo.
He had allowed Christine to choose the marriage counselor, assuming that one therapist would be just as good as another and thinking that the ability to choose might make his wife happy. So Christine had chosen Dr. Dana Teagan of Hartford, Connecticut, and having only spoken to the therapist’s secretary, was visibly surprised to see a middle-aged man enter the waiting room and invite the couple inside.
Dr. Dana Teagan was a short, thin man with a full head of hair and a well-groomed goatee, making him look decidedly younger than his fifty-plus years. His voice was soft and warm, and as he shook Milo’s hand, he held it a second longer than necessary, somehow assuring Milo in this subtle gesture that everything would be all right. He wore the type of clothing that actors donned in holiday commercials, connoting tradition and family: a soft patterned sweater, a pair of dark corduroys, and well-worn brown loafers. The appearance of the man had made Milo suddenly feel as if he were in a Hallmark Hall of Fame Christmas special, and he half expected to find a group of uncommonly good-looking people sitting around a stone fireplace as he entered the doctor’s office instead of the three chairs, an assortment of indoor plants, and the desk he found instead.
After the formalities of insurance coverage and scheduling were complete, Dr. Teagan suggested that he spend some time meeting with Christine and Milo separately, in order to get to know them on a more personal level before moving forward with them as a couple. They agreed, and Christine eagerly volunteered to take the first twenty minutes while Milo retreated to the waiting room.
Though Milo embraced the idea of meeting with a therapist in order to find a solution to his troubled marriage, the thought of sitting across from a mental health professional scared him to death. He had no intention of mentioning the demands that plagued his life, but he worried that a psychologist might see right through him, picking up on things he said or even physical symptoms of which he was completely unaware. These were, after all, professionals who were trained to diagnose and treat mental illness. Perhaps there were indicators that Milo exhibited each day without even knowing.
Worse still, what if a demand arose while he was meeting with Dr. Teagan? What if conflagration had still been pounding away in his mind when he entered the doctor’s office? What if the need to pop a balloon or shake and open a can of Canada Dry diet ginger ale struck while he was sitting on what he thought was going to be the kind of leather couch that Freud might have used? Would a doctor be able to detect the amalgamation of signs indicating that his patient was under an unusual amount of unusual stress? The clenching of teeth, the nearly imperceptible (but not nearly imperceptible enough) shaking of the hands, the inability to focus, the tightening in the chest, the occasional bouts of flatulence, the beads of sweat that would eventually sprout on his forehead, and the inevitable piercing, searing pain that came with his inability to satisfy a demand?
All of these concerns made the prospect of entering Dr. Teagan’s office daunting and unnerving. If he weren’t so concerned that his refusal to attend these sessions might arouse suspicion in Christine’s mind and raise questions that he could not answer, Milo might have forgone the counseling process entirely. But this, he feared, was their only solution, the only means of reconciling and continuing on with their comfortable life. He would have to hold the line, maintain his composure, and do everything he could to avoid entering the doctor’s office with a demand already weighing him down. And if a new one arose in the midst of a session, Milo hoped that its onset and initial symptoms would be too small for even a professional such as Dr. Teagan to notice.
Dr. Teagan’s office was located in a building that housed several other therapists, family counselors, and similar head doctors, as Milo’s father would have referred to them. Therefore, the waiting room contained an odd collection of reading material, differentiated enough for the wide variety of patients that the room serviced. Included in the pile was the innocuous Highlights magazine, which Milo recognized as a children’s magazine though he had no memory of ever seeing a child actually reading it. Without a conscious thought, he began thumbing through the most recent copy, stopping to read the three-page spread of children’s poetry. The poems weren’t very good, but they were amusing just the same, including his favorite:
My Hurt Elbow
My school nurse is the smartest adult person I know.
I went to her office because I had a rash on my elbow
That hurt when I scratched.
My mom put smelly cream on it that just made it smell.
But Nurse Mancuso found the cure.
She told me not to scratch.
And it worked.
It didn’t hurt anymore.
Milo was reading this poem for the third time, beginning to commit it to memory, when Christine emerged from the hallway connecting Dr. Teagan’s office with the waiting room. “Your turn,” she said, avoiding eye contact as she passed him, or so he thought. Milo couldn’t be sure. It was easy to read too much into Christine’s facial expressions at a time like this, but still, it made him uneasy as he commenced the short walk down the hall into Dr. Teagan’s office.
“Hello, Milo. Take a seat, please.”
The doctor’s informal use of Milo’s first name surprised him. During their preliminary encounter, the doctor had referred to him as Mr. Slade, but after fifteen or twenty minutes with Christine, it seemed that he was already on a first-name basis with Milo.
He wondered what she might have said.
Milo crossed the rectangular office and took a seat in a cushioned chair positioned between two large indoor plants, noting a small table with a digital clock placed just to the left and behind him, affording the doctor a clear view of the time while presenting Milo with none.
“So Milo, I know that you and Christine are having some trouble, and I’m here to listen and help as much as possible. Can you tell me what goals you have in mind for our sessions?”
Milo breathed a sigh of relief. He was concerned that the doctor’s first question might be something like “So what secrets are you keeping from Christine?” He worried that he might be asked to talk about his odd and inexplicable demands: the bowling or the Weebles or those persistent, inescapable words in his head.
Most of all, he was terrified that this head doctor might ask if Milo thought that he was crazy.
Instead, the doc had opened up with a softball.
“I guess I’d like to get our marriage back on track,” Milo said, pleased with his response.
“What do you see as the problem with your marriage?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure.” He waited for the doctor to respond, but when he continued to sit there, staring, Milo went on, almost surprised that he had more to say. “I may not be the happiest guy in the world, but I thought that we were doing okay. Then Christine started to get angry over the littlest things. I felt like everything I did upset her. Then she started asking for some space. Some time apart to think things over. But when I finally got an apartment, she went ballistic. Told me that she had never expected me to sign a lease. I guess that she just wanted me to stay with a friend for a couple weeks while she thought things over, but when your wife asks for time apart, I didn’t think that meant a sleepover. So now I don’t know what to think.”
“Did you want to move out?”
“Not at first. When she first asked for space, it scared the hell out of me. I felt like she was trying to throw me out. But after a while, I started to think that some time apart would be good for us. So when she tried to get me to stay, I refused. It had taken me so long to accept the separation that I couldn’t just turn back on it without giving it a try. If that makes any sense.”
“It’s been about a month now, right? How has it felt living apart?”
“It’s odd,” Milo said, unsure how to express the mixture of so
many emotions and concerned about saying too much. Arthur Friedman had warned Milo not to lie to doctors (and had ironically expressed his tacit approval of lying to one’s wife), but he didn’t think that his client was referring to a therapist.
Arthur Friedman likely despised the notion of therapy altogether.
“I mean, it seems crazy to think that Christine is in our house, only a mile away, and I’m stuck in a crummy little apartment, waiting for her to figure things out. But I have to admit that it didn’t feel wrong either. Moving out, I mean. And even when she didn’t want me to take the apartment, I did, because I thought it would be a good thing for us.”
He didn’t mention that the absence of Christine had also made it exceedingly easier to deal with most of his demands, and that he had found this to be remarkably liberating.
“You said that Christine’s trying to figure things out,” Dr. Teagan said. “Are you figuring things out too?”
“Honestly, I don’t know what there is to figure out. I don’t know what has changed. Like I said, I don’t think we were the happiest people in the world, but I thought we were doing all right.”
“When did you know that there was a problem? Was there a moment when you knew for sure?”
Milo knew the moment. Would never forget it. Though Christine’s eruption on the corner of Beachwood and Partridge had represented the opening salvo in their martial combat, it wasn’t until an afternoon in January when he knew that the marriage was in serious jeopardy.
They had just completed the outer lap of their neighborhood walk and were heading for home. Milo had exhausted his list of conversation topics generated earlier that day and had been filling the last fifteen minutes of silence with comments on the neighbors’ choice of landscaping, which amounted to little considering the season. They were just a block away from the house when Milo proposed the enormous value of grass that was genetically engineered to grow to a predetermined height (an idea that had spontaneously come to Milo but one that he still liked a lot) and their game of chicken finally ended.
Christine blinked.
“Goddamn it, Milo! Is that all you’ve got? Grass? Goddamn motherfucking grass!”
Milo remained silent for a moment, hoping that the outburst might be followed by an apology, the rapid retraction of Christine’s acknowledgment that there was trouble. As much as he had hoped for months to confront the issue head-on, he now found himself wanting to make it go away as quickly as possible and resume détente. Instead of offering an apology, Christine held her ground and stared at her husband, cheeks flushed, breathing heavily.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Milo said, hoping for a conciliatory Never mind or Forget it.
Christine pressed on. “Don’t lie to me, Milo,” she shot back. “We walk together every single day but don’t have a goddamn thing to say to each other. Do you think that’s normal?”
“Well, you don’t help the situation,” Milo said, surprised by his willingness to fight back. “The sky could be falling and you wouldn’t have a word to say about it.”
“I hardly think that genetically engineered grass constitutes the sky falling, Milo. The problem is that nothing you say interests me anymore. I wish the goddamn sky would fall. At least I would have something to get excited about. Because right now, I’ve got nothing. Nothing.”
Even though he had known all of this on some level already, these words had stung Milo the most. Had silenced him.
And despite the sting, he couldn’t help but note Christine’s dramatic repetition of the word nothing, with its resolute emphasis and intended finality. Milo wanted to ask if this bit of drama was really necessary considering their lack of an audience, but as he always did in these circumstances, he refrained.
Christine waited for a response from her husband, and when nothing came, she turned and began walking, not waiting to see if Milo would follow. After a moment, he did, and the two were walking side by side again as they climbed the concrete steps into their home. As Christine crossed through the kitchen toward the bathroom, where she would shower with the door closed for the first time during their relationship, she turned and said, “I think I need some space, Milo. I think we need some time apart.”
The way in which she made this request, followed by the immediate closing of the bathroom door, left the conversation in limbo, where it would remain. She would continue to ask for this space but without giving specifics or demanding a response for another three months until he finally obliged.
Milo related this story as succinctly as possible to Dr. Teagan, who seemed to nod at precisely the right moments, just enough to encourage him to continue without appearing to pander. His affection for the man grew with each passing minute.
When finished, Milo had wanted to ask the doctor if it was normal to assume that time apart and space meant a trial separation, but he was afraid to even mention the word normal to the doctor, as if entering the word into the record might expose a considerable chink in his armor.
Instead, Milo waited, and after ten interminable seconds, Dr. Teagan spoke again. “Do you still want to be married to Christine?”
“Yes,” Milo answered quickly, and meant it, though the reasons that he desired to remain married to Christine were unclear. Milo thought that he and Christine were fairly compatible, and they were fortunate enough to share some excellent friends. They owned a home in which they had invested a great deal of time and money, and it was finally starting to look like the house of their dreams. Milo also adored Christine’s family, particularly her mother and father, and the thought of throwing all that away for a shortage of conversational topics befuddled him.
When Dr. Teagan failed to respond to his one-word answer, Milo reasserted his affirmative response and waited, determined to force the doc into the next move. After a moment, the doctor suggested that they ask Christine to join them.
When Christine sat down in the chair beside Milo, she could not have felt farther away from him. He thought about the information that he had just shared with the doctor, information that he didn’t think Christine would have wanted shared, and he shuddered to think about what she might have said during her time alone in the office. Milo turned and looked at Christine, hoping to flash a smile or take her hand, which would have been second nature less than a year ago, but Christine’s eyes remained forward despite Milo’s certainty that she knew he was looking in her direction.
“So, Christine, why don’t we start with you? I know that you’re not happy with Milo’s decision to move out. But you also told me that you had been asking for time apart prior to Milo’s decision to move. What was it that you wanted from Milo when you asked for space?”
“I didn’t want him to move out,” Christine said, a razorlike quality to her voice. “I didn’t expect him to take furniture and pillows and canned goods, for Christ’s sake. I just wanted a week or two apart, to think things over.”
“Christine,” Milo said. “I didn’t know that. I really didn’t. When you asked for space, I thought you were talking about separation. I really did.”
“But when I told you what I really wanted, you moved out anyway. Not only that, but you waited until I was in Chicago to move out. You couldn’t have waited until I came home?”
Milo knew that if they had been alone and she had been angry enough, Christine might have thrown the word coward into the last statement, and perhaps justifiably so.
“I thought it would be easier on you if I moved out while you were gone. But I told you I was going.”
“And it was easier on you too, Milo?” Teagan suggested.
“Yes,” Milo said, once again admiring the doc’s sense of timing. “It was easier on me too. You knew I was moving out. I just didn’t want to have to do it under your nose.”
“But why did you move at all? After I asked you to stay, you still left. Why?”
“Look, Christine. It took me three months to come to terms with it, but in the end, I thought that it would good for us. I know
you didn’t mean to, but you convinced me that time apart would be for the best.”
“So you went out and got a lease without even telling me? Without even consulting me?”
“I know it sounds stupid now, but I thought it would make you happy. I thought it would be a nice surprise for you.”
“In fairness, Christine,” Dr. Teagan added, “when a spouse suggests for a couple to spend some time apart, they aren’t typically referring to a week or two in a hotel or at a friend’s house. They are usually referring to a trial separation of some kind. I know it hurt you that Milo moved out, and I think that Milo made a mistake in not consulting you in the process, but I don’t think he intended on hurting your feelings. In his mind, he was doing what was best for both of you. And to be honest, it might end up helping your relationship a great deal. Can you see that?”
The words came forth from Dr. Teagan like liquid sugar. They weren’t said in judgment or condemnation, but rather like the cooing whisper of a mother’s voice in a baby’s ear. At least that’s how they sounded to Milo. But he was sure that they were not being received as well by Christine.
“So you think this separation is a good idea?” Christine asked, turning her anger on the doctor.
“It may be,” Teagan said, his casual tone unwavering. “It might give the two of you a chance to appreciate what you may have forgotten. It could give you a chance to become acquainted with each other all over again.”
“What do you suggest?” Milo asked, trying to cut off any more potentially charged remarks from Christine. He knew that his wife’s temper was like a freight train: slow, nearly impossible to get started, but thundering and unstoppable if given ample momentum.
“I think the two of you should try to get to know each other again. Go out on some dates. See how that feels. It’s obvious that we have some work to do here as well. Communication seems to have broken down between the two of you, and we may be able to do some of that work here. But I think it’s important that the two of you begin reconnecting. And maybe that process can start with dinner and a movie. Or maybe just a coffee. What do you think?”