I tug the bag over the rat and seal the band at the top. David takes it from me and slides open the trash receptacle beneath the island, dumps the dead rat inside. RIP.
Just as he’s yanking the garbage bag from its container, there’s a sound from downstairs; the pipes sing, the walls start talking to one another. The shower.
I look at David. He doesn’t flinch; instead he knots the bag at the top and slings it over his shoulder. “I’ll take this outside,” he says, striding toward the front door.
It’s not as though I was going to ask him her name.
15
“Guess who.”
“Mom.”
I let it slide. “How was Halloween, pumpkin?”
“Good.” She’s chewing on something. I hope Ed remembers to watch her weight.
“Did you get a lot of candy?”
“A lot. More than ever.”
“What was your favorite?” Peanut M&M’s, of course.
“Snickers.”
I stand corrected.
“They’re little,” she explains. “They’re like baby Snickers.”
“So did you have Chinese for dinner or Snickers for dinner?”
“Both.”
I’ll have a word with Ed.
But when I do, he’s defensive. “It’s the one night of the year she gets to eat candy for dinner,” he says.
“I don’t want her getting into trouble.”
Silence. “With the dentist?”
“With her weight.”
He sighs. “I can take care of her.”
I sigh back. “I’m not saying you can’t.”
“That’s what it sounds like.”
I bank a hand against my forehead. “It’s just that she’s eight years old, and a lot of kids experience significant weight gain at this age. Girls especially.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“And remember she already went through a chubby phase.”
“You want her to be a waif?”
“No, that would be just as bad. I want her to be healthy.”
“Fine. I’ll give her a low-calorie kiss tonight,” he says. “A Diet Smooch.”
I smile. Still, when we say goodbye, it’s stiff.
Tuesday, November 2
16
In mid-February—after nearly six weeks shriveled inside my house, after I realized that I wasn’t Getting Better—I contacted a psychiatrist whose lecture (“Atypical Antipsychotics and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder”) I’d attended at a conference in Baltimore five years back. He didn’t know me then. He does now.
Those unfamiliar with therapy often assume that the therapist is by default soft-spoken and solicitous; you smear yourself along his sofa like butter on toast, and you melt. It ain’t necessarily so, as the song goes. Exhibit A: Dr. Julian Fielding.
For one thing, there’s no sofa. We meet every Tuesday in Ed’s library, Dr. Fielding in the club chair beside the fireplace, me in a wingback by the window. And although he speaks softly, his voice creaking like an old door, he’s precise, particular, as a good psychiatrist should be. “Kind of guy who steps out of the shower to piss,” Ed has said, more than once.
“So,” Dr. Fielding rasps. An arrow of afternoon light has shot into his face, making tiny suns of his glasses. “You say that you and Ed argued about Olivia yesterday. Are these conversations helpful?”
I twist my head, glance at the Russell house. I wonder what Jane Russell is up to. I’d like a drink.
My fingers trace the line of my throat. I look back at Dr. Fielding.
He watches me, the grooves in his forehead scored deep. Maybe he’s tired—I certainly am. It’s been an eventful session: I caught him up on my panic attack (he seemed concerned), on my dealings with David (he seemed uninterested), on my chats with Ed and Olivia (concerned again).
Now I look away once more, unblinking, unthinking, at the books on Ed’s shelves. A history of the Pinkerton detectives. Two volumes on Napoléon. Bay Area Architecture. An eclectic reader, my husband. My estranged husband.
“It sounds to me as though these conversations are causing you some mixed feelings,” Dr. Fielding says. This is classic therapist argot: It sounds to me. What I’m hearing. I think you’re saying. We’re interpreters. We’re translators.
“I keep . . .” I begin, the words forming in my mouth unbidden. Can I go here again? I can; I do. “I keep thinking—I can’t stop thinking—about the trip. I hate that it was my idea.”
Nothing from across the room, even though—or perhaps because—he knows this, knows all of it, has heard it over and over. And over.
“I keep wishing it wasn’t. Weren’t. I keep wishing it had been Ed’s idea. Or no one’s. That we’d never gone.” I knot my fingers. “Obviously.”
Gently: “But you did go.”
I feel singed.
“You arranged a family vacation. No one should feel ashamed of that.”