Maybe You Should Talk to Someon - Lori Gottlieb Page 0,41

ignores me and dials a restaurant to place the order, a process that, of course, frustrates him.

“Right, no dressing. Not drinks, dressing! ” He’s yelling into the phone, which is on speaker. “D-r-e-s-s-i-n-g.” He sighs loudly, rolls his eyes.

“Extra dressing?” the guy at the restaurant says in broken English, and John becomes apoplectic as he tries to communicate that the dressing should be on the side. Everything’s a problem—they have Diet Pepsi, not Diet Coke; they can be here in twenty minutes, not fifteen. I watch, horrified and bemused. It must be so hard to be John, I think. As they wrap up, John says something in Chinese, and the guy doesn’t understand. John doesn’t understand why the guy doesn’t understand his “own language” and the guy explains that he speaks Cantonese.

They hang up and John looks at me, incredulous. “What, they don’t use Mandarin?”

“If you know Chinese, why didn’t you use it to place the order?” I ask.

John gives me a withering look. “Because I speak English.”

Yikes.

John grumbles until lunch arrives, but once we set out our salads, he lets down the drawbridge a bit. I’ve already had lunch but I eat some salad anyway to join him; there’s something innately bonding about sharing a meal together. I hear some stories about his father and older brothers and how he thinks it’s strange that while he doesn’t remember much about his mom, he began dreaming about her a few years ago. He keeps having versions of the same dream, like Groundhog Day, and he can’t make it stop. He wants it to stop. Even in his sleep, he says, he’s being bothered. He just wants peace.

I inquire about the dream but he says it will upset him to talk about it and he’s not paying me to upset him. Didn’t he just tell me that he wanted peace? Don’t they teach “listening skills” to therapists? I want to talk about what he just said—to challenge his beliefs that he shouldn’t be uncomfortable in therapy and that he can find peace without also experiencing discomfort—but I need time for that, and there are just a couple of minutes left.

I ask when he has peace.

“Walking the dog,” he says. “Until Rosie started acting out. That used to be peaceful.”

I think about how he doesn’t want to bring the dream into this room. Could it be that this room has become something of a sanctuary for him, away from his job, wife, kids, dog, the world’s idiots, and the ghost of his mom that appears in his sleep?

“Hey, John,” I try. “Are you feeling peaceful right now?”

He chucks his chopsticks into the bag where he’s just packed away the remains of his salad. “Of course not,” he says, adding an impatient eye roll.

“Oh,” I say, letting it go. But John hasn’t. Our time is up and he stands to leave.

“Are you kidding?” he continues as he heads to the door. “In here? Peace?” His eye roll has been replaced by a smile now—not a condescending smirk, but a secret he’s sharing with me. It’s a lovely smile, luminous, and not because of those dazzling teeth.

“I thought so,” I say.

16

The Whole Package

Spoiler: After I left medical school, the rest of my life did not fall into place as planned.

Three years later, when I was nearly thirty-seven, a two-year relationship ended. It was sad but amicable and not a surprise the way the breakup with Boyfriend later turned out to be. But still, it was the worst timing imaginable for someone who wanted to have a baby.

I’d always known, in the surest possible way, that I wanted to be a parent. I’d spent my adulthood volunteering with kids and assumed that I would one day have my own. Now, though, with forty looming, I was dying to have a baby, but not so much that I would just marry the next guy who came along. This left me in a tricky predicament—desperate, but picky.

It was then that a friend suggested I could do things in reverse order: baby first, partner later. One night, she emailed me links for some sperm-donor sites. I’d never heard of such a thing and wasn’t sure at first how I felt about it, but after considering my options, I made the decision to move forward.

Now I just needed to choose a donor.

Of course I wanted a donor with a good health history, but on these sites there were other qualities to consider, and not just things like hair color or