Someone Else's Shoes(63)

She peels off the last of the nail varnish. Underneath, her thumbnail looks pale, shell-like. Vulnerable.

“I don’t know. I guess I should tell my dad but he’s so depressed. I don’t know if it will just make him worse.”

“I would,” says Colleen. “I mean if it was me I’d want to know.” She turns back to the mirror and picks up the tongs again. “Jesus. Why are adults so complicated? You’d think you’d have sorted it all out by the time you were in your forties.”



* * *



? ? ?

Phil sits in the chair and sips from the glass of water that Dr. Kovitz always leaves on the side table. For the last three sessions he hasn’t touched it but now he finds it’s a useful way to gather his thoughts after a question he is not entirely sure how to answer.

“I mean there’s definitely something going on with her. She’s . . . never home. And a couple of nights this week she’s come back late and kind of . . . glowing.”

“Glowing?”

“Like she’s . . . really happy. From within.” It hurts him even to say the words out loud.

“Have you asked her where she’s been?”

Phil takes a sip of water. “Um . . . no.”

“Why not? . . . You don’t want to know the answer?”

He shakes his head. Not quite a no, more “I’m not sure.” There is a long silence, in which Phil stares at the carpet, and then Dr. Kovitz says, “I’m struck by your perceived lack of agency, Phil. It’s like you feel there’s nothing much you can do. Not just about your wife, but about events in general. Is this something you’ve felt throughout your life?”

Phil thinks. He can remember feeling quite different from this, full of plans, of dynamism. He remembers buying the camper-van, the way he had pictured their future together.

“No.”

“Why do you think you’re feeling like this just now?”

Phil takes another sip of water. He cannot think of what else to say so he decides to say nothing. He says nothing for some time.

“I’d like to go back to your father’s illness, if I may, Phil. That seems to have had a profound effect on you.”

“I don’t really want to talk about that.”

“Well . . . I could just ask you a few general questions then. About him. Was your relationship with him a good one?”

“Of course!” Phil hears his voice, too loud, too emphatic. He knows Dr. Kovitz will hear it too. He misses nothing.

“Of course. Did you spend much time together when you were a child?”

“When he was off work, yes. But he worked a lot. He was always working. But, you know, he was a good dad.”

“So he had a strong work ethic.”

“Yes. He used to drum it into us: that we should put everything into our work.”

“And you did?”

“I did. I mean, I was a bit different from him as I think I was more focused on family. Different generations. Men were different then, right? Plus . . . it took me and Sam a while to have Cat, so I felt differently. She had . . . miscarriages, you know. It made her feel . . .”

Dr. Kovitz waits.

“Well. She used to say she felt like a failure. I never thought she was. It was just horrible for her. You feel so helpless, you know? She would go through these pregnancies and then just when we’d start to feel like this one was going to stick . . . she’d lose it.”

“And how many times did that happen?”

“Four,” says Phil. “Four times. The last one at five months.”

“I’m sorry,” says Dr. Kovitz. “That must have been very hard.”

“Well. Hardest on Sam, obviously. She was the one carrying them.”

“Hard on you too, though.”

“You just don’t know what to say to them, you know? She’d be crying in the bathroom and she was so sad and after a while you don’t know what to do.”

“What did you do?”

“I just told her it would be okay. That we would get there.”

“And you did.”

“We did,” says Phil, smiling suddenly. “Sam had this procedure. This stitch thing. And then, a few months later, she got pregnant with Cat. And when she was born, she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen . . .”

It had been the best few months of his life. All his workmates would moan about sleepless nights, about being ignored by their wives for the baby, or the state of the house, but Phil was always happy to get up and give Sam a rest in the small hours of the night. He loved holding Cat to him, rocking her, breathing in her baby smell, gazing into her eyes. She was so precious, so vulnerable. He felt as if, for the first time in his life, he had achieved something miraculous, something so far beyond his expectations for himself that his eyes would fill with tears when he so much as thought of her. His child. Their baby. They didn’t try for any more children. They decided to leave it for Nature to decide, and when nothing happened, they decided they were lucky to have their beautiful girl, and that it would be churlish, given what they’d been through, to expect more. Or maybe if they hadn’t, they had each decided to keep those thoughts to themselves.

“So . . . that’s a lovely thing, Phil. It was understandable that you were a little more focused on your family than your father had been. You had gone through so much to have one.”