Lady in Waiting: A Novel (25 page)

“No snacks today?” I asked as I settled into my chair.

He smiled. “Are you hungry for some?”

I wasn’t.

I began with telling him about the weekend at my parents’ and then Brad’s surprise visit to the apartment. And then I told him about Brad’s accusation, based on the punch-bowl discussion, that I had the same doubts about our marriage that he did.

“The thing is, it was a dumb conversation while I was making punch. I had no idea Brad heard any of it.” I leaned back in my chair. I had been talking for close to fifteen minutes with little interruption from Dr. Kirtland.

“Why do you think it was a dumb conversation?” he asked.

“Because it was! I didn’t bring it up. Leslie did. And I never would have said what I did if I had known Brad was listening.”

Dr. Kirtland now leaned back in his chair. “No, you probably wouldn’t.”

“But I didn’t mean anything by it.”

He shrugged. “Then why do you think you said it? Do you still think about this guy Kyle?”

“I never think about him!”

“So he’s perhaps a representation of what you wonder when you think about why you married Brad? Maybe you wonder how your life would be different if you’d made different choices? That’s not so odd.”

I stared at the empty bowl on the table.

“Who do you think you risk disappointing by being honest, Jane?”

Only for a second did I entertain the thought of continuing to insist the punch-bowl chat had been silly talk and nothing else. “Well, Brad, of course.”

“You sure it’s Brad?”

“My parents too, I guess.”

“You guess?”

I lifted my head. “I don’t have all the answers. That’s why I’m here.”

Dr. Kirtland sat forward in his chair. “I’d like for you to think about that. Who do you risk disappointing by being honest about how you think your life is playing out?”

Molly’s revelation sprang to my tumbling thoughts. “Look. I know what you have figured out about me. I know you’ve figured out I’ve let
everyone make all my decisions for me, and I admit you’re right, and honestly, I’m glad you’ve figured it out, but I can’t undo the past—”

He cut me off. “Where did you get that?”

“What?”

“Where did you get the idea that I think you’ve let everyone else make all your decisions?”

I wasn’t about to tell him Molly told me. “Isn’t that what I have done?”

“Did someone tell you that’s what you’ve done?”

My cheeks bloomed with heat. I thought I had marked a milestone by embracing this uncomfortable knowledge about myself and that Dr. Kirtland would be proud of me for admitting it. But he was hacking away at the notion with a calm voice and disarming questions.

“But … but it’s true,” I said. “I don’t like it that it’s true, but it is. Isn’t that what you were getting at last time I was here? That I needed validation from my parents and from Brad and that’s why I let them make my choices for me?”

Dr. Kirtland was silent for several moments. “I have a little assignment for you. A couple, actually. I want you to make a list of all the qualities you appreciate about your husband. Don’t ask anyone else for input on this, okay? No one. Not Molly. Not your sister. All right?”

I nodded.

“I also want you to make a list of things you like to do. Or things you would like to try. Or things you would like to learn. Again, no outside help. Will you do that?”

“So you’re not going to answer my question.”

He smiled. “You are.”

“By making lists.”

“The lists are a start, yes.” He stood.

“So we’re done?”

“For today.”

“And what about this weekend when I go to New Hampshire to see Brad? What am I supposed to do?”

“You told me you were going to New Hampshire so that you and Brad could watch your son compete.”

“Well, yes, but—”

“One thing at a time, Jane.”

The empty bowl seemed a challenge to me then. As if it were up to me to fill it.

On Friday evening I locked up at eight and headed to Molly and Jeff’s to stay the night to make it easier to get to the airport the next morning. Molly invited me over with that rationale, and I accepted her invitation, but the truth was she knew I was nervous about the next day. The plane ticket Brad bought for me had my return flight on Sunday. He called me midweek and asked if I could stay overnight since the last flight back to Newark on Saturday left Manchester too early. We’d miss seeing Connor after the meet. I told him I could stay, but I didn’t know if he meant we’d be at a hotel near Dartmouth and did that mean separate rooms or would we be driving back to his place? And where would I sleep then?

Meanwhile, I had started Dr. Kirtland’s lists over a caprese salad at lunch. At that moment Brad’s looked like this:

I had started to write
Thoughtful
. Brad had always been a considerate person. Polite. Even to people who didn’t deserve it. But I didn’t finish it. His gentle cruelties of late kept me from writing the rest of the word.

On my own list, I had written only one thing. Only one thing had come to mind.

I carried the lists with me as I walked the seven blocks to Molly and Jeff’s, and as I walked, I wondered what Brad would write on his list if he wrote one about me.

Molly looked at the clothes I’d brought to wear to Connor’s track meet—jeans and a loose-knit blue sweater Brad gave me for Christmas the previous year—and promptly escorted me into her bedroom to find something else to wear.

“But Brad gave this sweater to me,” I protested.

“Yes, but think about when he gave it to you. Six months after hearing you tell Leslie you wonder why you married him.”

I plopped onto her bed. “Why do you and Leslie have to keep bringing that up?” I had already decided I wouldn’t mention that she and I were both off somehow in our conclusions about what Dr. Kirtland thought my underlying problem was.

She ignored me. “You want to wear something that doesn’t remind him of last year at all. Or any of the last twenty-two years for that matter.”

“They weren’t all terrible.”

“I didn’t say they were. I am just saying you want to wear something that doesn’t remind him of the past. Here.”

She tossed me a pair of silky taupe capris and a pink shell the color of cherry blossoms. As I caught them, she threw a summer-white fitted jacket at me and a striped scarf in pale teal, rose, and cream.

“It’s a track meet, Moll.”

Molly turned from her closet to face me. “No. It isn’t.”

And she left me with instructions to try them on.

Later, while Molly, Jeff, and I were watching a movie, Molly’s cell phone trilled. She reached for it on the ottoman next to her.

“It’s my mom.” She rose and took the phone with her into the kitchen.

The twins were watching something else in their bedroom, so Jeff and I were alone in the living room. It was the first time since Brad moved out that I’d been with Jeff when the girls weren’t in the room with us, and I was sure he’d subtly planned it so that he didn’t have to be alone with me. I looked over at him, and his eyes darted to Molly standing in the kitchen with her back to us. I decided to be completely honest. I had nothing to lose.

“Shall I just ask it and get it over with?”

He jerked his head back to face me. “What?”

“Shall I just ask what you and Brad talked about when he was here last weekend?”

“I … um …,” he faltered.

“Does Molly know what you talked about?”

He had a bit of the deer-in-the-headlights look about him. “Jane, I don’t think … I don’t think I’m the one you need to talk to about this.”

I turned my attention back to the television. “So she doesn’t know?”

“I … This is between you and Brad. Really. I don’t want to be in the
middle of it. I don’t want Molly in the middle of it. We think the world of you and Brad.”

I turned back to him. “I’m just afraid it’s too late. Is it too late?”

Jeff hesitated a moment before he spoke. “I don’t think it’s too late. But I also don’t think anything will change until you two sit down together and decide what you want out of your marriage. I told him that. I can tell you that much. Look, I think it’s good that you’re going up there to see him. You both have too much invested in this relationship to let it just … evaporate.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do if he tells me it’s over,” I murmured, though not really to Jeff. “What am I going to do then?”

Molly was saying good-bye to her mother. Jeff eased back into his chair. “I don’t think it’s up to just him, Jane.”

A second later, Molly walked back into the living room with a bag of jalapeno kettle chips, the kind that once you start, you can’t stop eating, because when you do, the burn crawls down the back of your throat and refuses to be calmed.

M
olly’s shoes were a bit loose on me as I made my way from the arrival gate to the area by baggage claim. Although I had only a carry-on and a shoe box of cookies for Connor that Molly and I made at midnight the night before, Brad and I agreed to meet in baggage claim anyway.

Brad was waiting for me at the first set of doors to the outside. I could see him studying me as I walked toward him; aware perhaps that I was wearing something he had never seen before and intrigued by the slight hitch in my step from wearing shoes a half size too big.

He wore stonewashed 501s and a heather gray Henley. He had his hands in his pockets, but when I was just a few feet away, he pulled them out as if to wrap me in an embrace. I stopped short, ready to fall into those arms, ready to hand over my overnight bag if he reached for it.

“Hey,” he said. He took the step between us, kissed me on my cheek, and took my bag. His other hand rested lightly on the small of my back as he guided me away from the press of people from my flight and several others. “Flight okay?”