Off the Deep End (56)
“What do you mean?” Dr. Stephens feigns innocence like he doesn’t catch my veiled reference, but I don’t believe him for one second. Everyone knows about Shane’s affair. Chloe posts pictures and videos of them all over social media. She’s more attached to our family name than I am in the online world.
“He’s moved on to a newer and fresher model,” I say. Part of me hates that he’s such a cliché.
“Do you know when their relationship started?” he asks.
What he really wants to know is if they were having an affair before all this went down. It’s easy to assume that since they got together so quickly after Gabe’s death, but they’d never met each other until after the accident. That much I’m sure of.
“I can tell you exactly when it started. Shane joined a running group three months after Gabe died, and that was the beginning.” I let out a laugh. Not sure if it’s bitter. “Of the end.”
I was downstairs curled up in the chair next to the fireplace, which was normally one of the coziest spots in the house, except it wasn’t when the fireplace was cold, dark, and unlit. The entire space was black because I refused to let anyone turn on the lights. It’d been that way for days. I kept the shades drawn at all times too. I didn’t know if it was day or night, but it really didn’t matter anymore because my life was over. I couldn’t live without Gabe. I didn’t even want to try.
Shane came downstairs that night and found me sitting there motionless and lifeless like he’d done so many times in the last three months. I hadn’t moved from the position since he went upstairs over two hours ago. “I joined the Falcon Lake Leggers. I’m going to meet everyone for my first run tomorrow morning at six.”
“What?” I wasn’t sure if I heard him right. Shane loved sports, but only if he was watching them on ESPN. He’d played soccer in high school, but a knee injury had put a stop to all that during his junior year. He still played with Gabe in the backyard, but Gabe had out skilled him years ago, and he was definitely never a runner. He didn’t even like to go on long walks.
“I need to do something.” That was all he said after his announcement. He fixed himself a snack in the kitchen and headed back upstairs.
I hadn’t given it a second thought because he’d come downstairs and said some pretty bizarre things over the past few months. He’d made the guest bedroom into his man cave, and he’d disappear there for hours. Every now and then, he’d suddenly rush downstairs with an important life-changing announcement. So far, he’d said he wanted to sell everything we had and travel the country in an RV and remodel the second level, and the latest had been that he thought he should quit his job and go back to school to become a lawyer even though he loved his job as an investment banker. Thankfully, that only lasted a few days because he was the only one able to work.
I hadn’t seen a patient since Gabe died. I never would again. The thought of some washed-up housewife sitting on my couch and crying about how stressed she was or whining because she didn’t know which uppity private school her child would get into made me want to vomit. It wasn’t just that their problems seemed insignificant. It was more than that. I couldn’t find it in me to offer them any kind of hope or peace. Everything felt bleak. You couldn’t have a therapist who spent every waking minute wanting to die. I’d spent years developing relationships with my clients and building my caseload. Some of my clients had been with me since the very beginning, and they were almost like family. At one time, I’d cared deeply about them, but I didn’t even have the energy to return phone calls or answer emails. I ghosted every single one.
And the most messed-up thing about it?
I didn’t even feel bad. My ability to care was gone, and I wasn’t sure I was ever going to get it back. So I barely noticed when Shane followed through on his running proclamation and got up the next morning at five so that he could be downtown by six to meet everyone. The following morning, he was up and at it again.
That’s when he slowly started coming back to life.
The first thing I noticed was that he was lighter. He didn’t do everything like he was moving through sludge with concrete slabs strapped to his back. The lighter he became, the heavier I felt. It was the strangest thing. Like I absorbed all his pain, too, or it multiplied mine, I don’t know. But I didn’t like it.
“Are you like the last one in the pack?” I asked in the middle of week two when he was scrounging through the closet trying to find a windbreaker to keep the rain off him. It was a mean thing to say, and I knew it.
“You know what?” he said without looking up, his head buried in his search. “I’m surprisingly not.” He let out a small laugh.
Everything in the bedroom stilled. The air froze. So did we. Him buried in the closet. Me on the bed. Nobody laughed in the house anymore. It was an unspoken rule that we didn’t laugh, and he’d just made a sound into our bubble of grief. He’d pricked a needle into it, and now what were we supposed to do with it? The moment felt like it stretched forever until he finally said, “You know what? I don’t care if I get wet. I’m just going to go.”
He’d taken a step. One I couldn’t take. That was the day our paths officially diverged. They were already looking like they were heading in different directions, but he stepped into a new emotional space without me.