The Wednesday Group (10 page)

Adam's brow is creased. He keeps shaking his head as if he can't believe how unreasonable she is.

“I come in here wanting to work through things, to make them better, but instead I feel…” She takes a water bottle from her purse and opens it. “More out of control.”

“Is that how you feel when Adam doesn't follow the rules?” Elias asks.

She nods, takes a sip of water, but has trouble swallowing. She doesn't want to cry.

“I'm sorry,” Adam tells her. “I'm trying.”

She glares at him. For a second their gazes meet. “Trying what exactly?”

“I'm going to therapy and groups. I've been doing a lot of writing with the steps. I call my sponsor twice a day. I tell you every move I make.”

“Except when you don't, and you come home when I have a babysitter planned.” Hannah feels tears welling. She takes a deep breath.
Control
, she tells herself.

“I think what your wife is asking isn't so much about Wednesday night but more to do with understanding how frightened she is.”

“I'm asking that she understand that I'm trying as hard as I can,” Adam replies.

“Okay.” Elias looks at Hannah. “Can you hear what he is asking for?”

She slams the bottle on the small table that sits between the chairs. Water spills. “What I need you to understand is that I feel anxious all the time. Nothing is the same. I go out with my friends, who don't know any of this, and they tell me I have the perfect life. I want to laugh in their faces. It's such a farce. But I smile and pretend that I'm as lucky as they think I am. I can't look at my mother without wanting to cry. But I'm not about to tell her what's really going on. She'd never speak to you again.”

Adam doesn't shy away from looking at her now. “I get it,” he says.

“No, you don't. What you don't get is that every little fucking rule you break, however well intentioned, feels like you're breaking our marriage vows again. That's what you don't get. If this were a normal marriage it wouldn't be a big deal, obviously, if you came home an hour early. But it's not a normal marriage, no matter how much I wish it were.” She dabs her eyes with a tissue.

“It's upsetting for you not to feel understood,” Elias says.

That makes her cry harder. She hates that the man she still loves, who's only two feet from her, doesn't reach over to hold her hand and tell her he understands how alone and ashamed and petty he's made her feel.

 

Lizzy

It's the kind of weather that sets off migraines—a thirty-degree shift in temperature. One day it's forty, the next seventy. If Lizzy didn't have medication for her headaches, she'd probably have to move to a climate that wasn't so variable. But she loves it here, especially the small hamlet she teaches in.

She erases the whiteboard in her classroom as a few students meander in for the third-period class of the day.

“Hey, Ms. Nickels,” Bryan says. “Guess what I did last night?”

She turns and smiles at him and the capricious tuft of bright red hair sticking out above his ear.

“What did you do?” She expects a wisecrack.

“Homework.” He holds up a hand for a high five.

She swats the air, purposefully missing.

“Aw,” Bryan whines. “You can do better than that.”

“Not in my skill set.”

A few others walk in, and she feels herself come to life. The classroom is her sanctuary.

Kathryn brought up the word
safe
a few times in their group, and although Lizzy wouldn't exactly consider her home unsafe at this point, she can say with certainty that she feels most at ease, even peaceful, in a room full of teenagers.

The bell rings. A few students are chatting. Most are sitting, staring blankly. Lizzy writes a few notes on the whiteboard. A couple of students read it and giggle. She is going to begin teaching limiting reagents today, and she likes to start using the analogy of “Ms. Nickel's Brew.”

“I need five spider legs, one toad, and two student eyeballs.” She jots that down. “Here is what I happen to have. Eight eyeballs, twenty-five spider legs, and only one toad. Which one,” she asks, “will limit my brew?”

Bryan shoots up a hand. Lizzy nods for him to answer.

“You have a broomstick?”

“Of course. But which ingredient will limit how much I can make?”

“The toad,” Bryan says. “That's kinda easy.”

“Right. It's no more difficult when you use formulas and equations.” Her right temple aches. It's the first sign of a migraine. She puts up a problem.

“Work on this,” she tells the class, then opens the drawer where she keeps her bag. She reaches in for the blue Imitrex bottle and shakes it. There's no noise. She rummages around in her purse and realizes she doesn't have another bottle.

It's eleven-twenty. She'll have to call the main office and ask them to find someone to watch her class for forty minutes while she runs home.

The dean of students is in Lizzy's room within five minutes. She explains what the class needs to do and what her next class should get started on, then she races out of the building.

Home is thirteen minutes away when all the traffic lights are green, seventeen when she hits red. She pulls out of the school parking lot, massages the spot above her eye that is starting to pulse with more force, and feels frustrated with herself for coming to school unprepared.

Passing the old town hall, she glances at the daffodils that are starting to shoot up and begins to think of the group. She likes everyone a lot, and even after only two weeks, she'll miss them, but she's decided it isn't the right fit for her. She can relate to all of the women, but her own situation just doesn't feel nearly as critical. Later today, she'll give Kathryn a call.

On top of the pain above her right eye that is growing steadily sharper, her body is beginning to feel listless, another symptom.

She turns onto Rolling Hill Road. Their yellow colonial is a few houses away, and she squints when she thinks she sees Greg's green Toyota in the driveway. Why would he be home? He works eight- to ten-hour days at a software company right down the street from the high school she teaches at.

She parks in the driveway, closes the door carefully, quietly, not wanting the sound to pierce through her head. She hurries up the front concrete steps, opens the door, and calls for him.

There's no answer. In the foyer she looks up at the chandelier. It shivers slightly. Odd. It must be her headache offsetting her vision. She calls to Greg again.

Still nothing. Maybe he didn't feel well and came home for a nap.

“Greg,” she calls yet again. “I just came home to get some Imitrex.”

She climbs the stairs, then stops on the landing. Is that rap music? She glances down the hall at the doors of the four bedrooms that were once intended for the children who never happened.

The noise is definitely coming from his study. She knocks. He doesn't answer, and she imagines him lying on the carpet, unconscious from a heart attack.

She barges in.

“Oh God.” She covers her mouth. There on the computer screen, which happens to be in her direct line of sight, is a girl on her hands and knees, with one man penetrating her mouth and another man forcing himself in from behind.

Greg glances over his shoulder, sees her, and hurries to shut off the computer.

She stares as the screen goes black and he zips up his pants.

He turns off the music. “I'm sorry,” he whispers.

“I was getting a headache, and I didn't have any medicine at school. I thought you'd be at work.” She speaks robotically, as if she's ordering food from a drive-through window.

He stands and walks toward her, then stops when she glances at the crotch of his pants. The last thing she wants right now is for him to touch her. She thinks of sticky white semen.

“I didn't think…” he begins.

“No, of course not. Why would you? I mean, I never come home during the day. I mean, I didn't think to call. I didn't think you'd be home. I … Why were you listening to that awful music?” she asks.

He fidgets with his belt, looking around the room at everything but her. “I like it sometimes.”

But she's already forgotten the question. That girl on his computer, she looked younger than the students at her school. She was blond and petite, and her breasts were small, peachlike. She had been moaning, as if she enjoyed what they were doing to her.

Lizzy points to the computer. “Do you think she really likes it?”

“What?” He avoids her gaze.

“The girl you were watching. Do you think she really likes it?” She feels strange. Not crazy, or enraged, or upset. And her headache, it's still there, but it's oddly disconnected from her, as if it's a few feet away, pulsing healthily.

“Lizzy, look, I'm sorry. I—”

“How old do you think she is?” she asks.

He backs up. “Look, I know you're upset.”

Except that's not how she feels. At least not in the way he's thinking she is. No, she's worried about the girl.

“Do you think she's eighteen?” she asks.

“Of course she's eighteen.” His words come out squeaky, defensive. “She has to be. They can't hire younger ones.”

“But she didn't look it.”

“It's against the law for them to be under eighteen.” He finally looks at her, his face red and angry. “They have to be,” he shouts.

“Don't talk so loudly.” She puts a hand to her head. Why is he yelling? She just wants to know how old the girl is. That's all.

“It's just that your questions seem so … so … off the point.”

Her head feels as if it's filled with wet concrete. “What is the point?” she asks.

“Oh, for Christ's sake.” His face is redder and sweaty.

Somewhere in her brain she receives a message that she should be hurrying to the bathroom, grabbing her medicine, and rushing back to school. But she doesn't move. His eyes dart.

“Work, what do you tell them?” She watches him. He looks at her for a second but can't hold her gaze.

“Sometimes I work at home where it's quieter.” He speaks to the wall.

“With that music?” The neurons in her brain begin to light up, to connect again. Her headache is back, tenfold. “How often do you come home?”

“It's not like I keep track. I don't have a time card.”

Her chest swells and burns as if it's filling with poison gas. She holds on to the wooden door frame. “Why are you getting so defensive?”

“I'm not getting defensive.” He stiffens. “It's just that I feel like you're the Spanish Inquisition.”

She glances around the room. The blinds are down, which she feels grateful for. Not that anyone could see in on a bright day like today, but if the mailman, or … She sniffs. The air is musty, and she guesses the windows haven't been opened for a while. She walks to the bookshelf and picks up their wedding picture. In it they are smiling at each other, glowing, as if nothing but the other existed. She places it facedown.

“I'm not the Spanish Inquisition,” she says, emotionless. “I'm your wife. The one you don't want to have sex with.”

“It's not about you,” he says.

“You know, I used to think you were shy, inhibited, self-conscious. I used to think that's why it was difficult for you to have sex. But it's because you'd rather look at other women.”

“Lizzy, please. It's not about you or us.”

It feels as if there's a knife going through her right temple. She has to get her medication, but she can't, not yet.

“But it is about us,” she says. “It's about you choosing to have your sex life without me. So it is about me. And us.” She thinks someone in her group said this, and it didn't really click then. It does now.

“Whatever.” He shakes his head. “I can't deal with all the philosophical stuff. I have to get back to work.”

“I don't think this is exactly philosophical.” There's an awful taste in her mouth, like sour milk. More neurons connect, yet not enough for her to fully engage.
Is this shock?
she wonders as she watches him touch his belt, his hair, move his feet, as if he's skulking around in a cage. He's free to leave.

She sinks to the floor. “I don't know what to do.” She tugs out her bun. Her hair falls into large ringlets.

He sits a few feet away and reaches to touch her, but stops himself. “You have a bad headache. You need to take your medicine and lie down.”

She flicks a tiny scrap of paper on the rug. “I just don't understand. I mean, it's okay if you watch a little porn. I'm not a prude. It's that…” She wraps a lock of hair around her finger and pulls it as hard as she can. “It's that … you don't want me. That's all. Really, I'm not a prude.”

“But I do want you. I've told you that.” He taps his hand on the carpet, frustrated.

She takes a deep breath.
Get it together
, she tells herself, yet she's cracking, and every time he talks her arms prickle, and her blood surges.

“Stop,” she shouts, even though it makes her head scream to raise her voice. “You not having sex with me is about me.”

He grabs her arm. “Come on. Get up and take your medicine.”

“This is not about my medicine. I'm not crazy. Don't treat me like I'm crazy.” Although even as she says that, she realizes that she's not looking like a picture of mental health at the moment.

“I'm not treating you like you're crazy. But you need to stand up. I'll get you a glass of water.”

She bats his hand away. “I don't want medicine or water. I want you to have sex with me, now. Here in this room, where you watch other women. That's the least you can do.” She glares, daring him.