Confidential(50)

“Flora,” he said, “I had to come.” He sounded so tormented, like he wished he’d been able to resist, like he wanted to quit me but couldn’t. I kept pulling him back.

“I need you,” I said. It was true. I buried my head in his neck, and then let out an involuntary “ouch.” I had to be more careful with my face. I’d almost forgotten it in the joy of seeing Michael and being held by him. I’d forgotten the pain. “I need you,” I repeated, in case he’d forgotten.

“I’ll take care of you.”

“And then?” I kept my head down. I couldn’t bear to look and hear the answer.

“And then,” he whispered, “I don’t know. I’ve been so angry, Flora. No one in my entire life has ever made me so angry.”

“You make me angrier than anyone ever has, too. It’s because of how much we love each other.”

“It’s not healthy, Flora. We’re not healthy anymore. I’m not sure we ever were. It’s just that we didn’t have to face it because we were always in the dark. And since you’ve wanted us to go public, it’s like . . .” He trailed off. “For so long, I was sure you were the one.”

“I still am.”

“I thought I wanted a force of nature.”

I risked picking my head up and grabbing his face. “You do.” I kissed him, throbbing face and all, and he couldn’t help it, he kissed me back. But the urgency petered out, and when he pulled his head back, his eyes were full of sadness.

He wished he could let me go, but I wasn’t about to let him off the hook that easily. He’d made promises for two years, and he was going to deliver.





CHAPTER 39





GREER


“It’s been a long time,” I told the matching gray marble headstones. The day was overcast and cool, and I hugged myself for warmth. I was in a pair of stylishly voluminous pants, and the wind cut right through them. I hadn’t known how to dress for the occasion.

It wasn’t either of my parents’ birthdays or the anniversary of their deaths, which was when I usually visited. Today, I was there for more selfish reasons. I wanted to be heard.

“I don’t know if there’s an afterlife,” I said. “If there is, I hope you’re doing well.”

This had been foolish. If there was an afterlife, they could hear my thoughts already. I could have had this “conversation” with them from the comfort of my condo.

Dr. Michael hadn’t suggested this, and I hadn’t decided whether to tell him in session later. I didn’t believe that therapy necessitated full disclosure. He could have access to some of my most private thoughts but not every last one of them.

I must have wanted to at least give myself the option to discuss it, since I chose to come to the cemetery on Wednesday afternoon, a workday (and my therapy day), instead of the weekend. Maybe—and I hated even admitting this—I thought Michael would be a little proud of me. He liked to spend a lot of time talking about my parents, and now here I was, going right to the source.

“I don’t know where to start,” I said. It wasn’t like my parents and I had had a long history of deep sharing. We had tended to exchange information and sometimes opinions, but generally on impersonal subjects. “I mean, if you’re somewhere watching over me, you already know I’m not married. I’m not even dating. I’ve never been engaged. And I’ve never been maternal. But now I want a baby, very badly. Since realizing that, everything’s upside down.

“I don’t work the same. I don’t sleep the same. I don’t care about what I used to, and I care about things—and people—I never thought I would. I’m drawn to strange men. Well, one man. He’s my therapist. I actually have a therapist.”

My parents and I had never talked about therapy in relation to me or to them, but I knew they thought it was pure quackery. A scam perpetrated on the weak and vulnerable. As they saw it, people just had to find something they were passionate about and work hard at it. According to my parents, that was the answer.

All their opinions had been in stereo. I’d never heard them disagree.

It was only now that I saw how odd that was. That maybe they were the strange ones. That their form of happy marriage was outside the norm. That maybe it hadn’t even been happy, that they’d just found someone whose compulsion matched their own, who validated their choice to pursue success above all else, to love the accumulation of accolades and money far more than either of them had loved me. That was what therapy had done to me and for me: it had forced me to realize—no, to admit what I’d always known somewhere inside: my parents had never really loved me.

I watched some leaves skitter down from nearby trees and dance in the wind along the neighboring gravesites. It was almost pretty, in a haunting sort of way. More haunting because no one else was in sight. Just my parents and me, hanging out. For the last time.

“My therapist might become my sperm donor.” It was the first time I’d said it out loud since asking him. It was powerful, this saying things out loud. “That’s because I’m almost forty, and I’ve never been in love. And my whole life, I’ve told myself that’s because it wasn’t important, because I wasn’t one of those people who needed it. But it’s not that I didn’t need it, it’s that you didn’t teach me how to do it. Why is that? And why do I have so much trouble remembering anything specific about who you were as people? You’re just this assortment of platitudes about hard work and uncharitable judgments about people who didn’t do enough. I was so afraid to fall into that second category that it perverted my whole life.”