Neighborly(35)

But I’m the one here with her. I want to feel proud, chosen, but instead, my mind returns to the question I had the night she sent me the invitation to GoodNeighbors:

Why would Andie pursue me?

Session 40.

“Honestly, I think there might be some suppression.”

“What am I suppressing?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“But what makes you think it?”

“I’ve been doing this a long time. It’s just a sixth sense I have. There’s information that’s too painful for you to integrate. That’s what denial is.”

“I’m not in denial.”

“You want to talk a lot about your best friend. That feels safer for you. But you won’t talk about him. So I’ll help you. I read some articles. I know that there were multiple victims. He had a type. Girls who were looking for a father figure, and that’s how he started. That’s called grooming, the process of—”

“I’ve heard of grooming.”

“Do you believe that’s what he did?”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

“We all have certain stories we tell ourselves. Narratives that are comfortable, and even when they’re painful, they’re tenacious. We’re tenacious. We hang on to our narratives.”

“I’m not hanging on to a narrative. I’m hanging on to the truth. But you don’t seem to believe that I’m telling you the truth. You think I’m in denial.”

“I don’t know that for sure. I think it’s a possibility worth considering. You might have blocked out some memories, the ones that don’t fit your narrative.”

“I feel like you’re trying to trick me. All this talk about narratives and possibilities. You want me to doubt myself.”

“No, I want the opposite for you. I want you to learn to trust yourself. But if consciously you believe something, and your subconscious knows it’s not true, how can you ever do that?”





CHAPTER 11

DOES YOUR HUSBAND KNOW?

“Can I just tell you,” Doug whispers, his palm flat against my cheek as we lie side by side in bed, “how much I love you?”

“Yes,” I whisper back. “You can always tell me that.” Let it saturate every cell of my body. Let it blot out everything, especially that latest note.

Two notes in one day. No, someone’s definitely not finished with me yet.

How can she know that there are things—important things—I haven’t told Doug? Is it just a guess, because everyone has secrets, or because it’s obvious that I do? If Andie’s right, if I’m that transparent despite everything . . .

Then it would mean the writer of the notes is someone who’s been looking at me. Someone who’s interacted with me. Probably someone from girls’ night.

No. It was just a guess. Because every wife has something she keeps from her husband.

Doug snuggles in closer. “I love you more than I ever thought possible. More than I love anyone except Sadie. And I love you even more through her.”

“I love you, too.”

His face grows serious. “The truth is, I just miss you. It’s like, I don’t only want to be Sadie’s dad. I want to still feel like your husband. I’m not always sure how to do that or where I stand with you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re just so distant sometimes. Will you tell me what I need to know to get close to you? Will you tell me what I should do or what I should stop doing?”

He looks so earnest. He loves me and wants to be close to me, but what I feel is pressure. Like when he’s saying he doesn’t know how to be my husband, what I hear is that I’m doing a lousy job being his wife.

He inches forward, and I can feel it coming. I don’t dread it; I’ve always liked kissing Doug, but I don’t feel up to what’s next.

We need this. We have to reconnect. I told Doug that I know he meant well with the bikes and is just trying to make a good life for us and I’m sorry that I get so stressed over money. That’s led us here, to his declarations of love, to this precipice. It brings me back years, to before Doug, to when I wondered how I could say no. If I could say no.

I’m grateful for Andie’s advice. It’s good to just let things go and be happy, admit that I don’t have a real problem after all. So we’ll have more debt. It’ll be OK. We have our family and this house. We’ll always have each other.

I kiss Doug back, and I know I could enjoy it if it wasn’t for the encroaching awareness that this needs to go somewhere. It has to end in sex because you don’t just make out with your husband. He hasn’t been inside me in a month, at least. I’ve put him off long enough, citing the exhaustion of preparing for the move, and the move itself, and being the new kids on the block. All of it true, but they’re excuses nonetheless.

I’m a wife. I’m not just a mother. This is what a wife is supposed to do. This is what a sexual being is supposed to do, and I’m not supposed to need three fifteen-dollar cocktails to do it.

I’ll enjoy sex again sometime. I’m not asexual, like Gina. I’ll start sleeping again, and my hormones will continue to regulate. Like Tennyson said, Sadie’s still so little. My sex drive will come back. And once I stop breastfeeding, I’ll start drinking again. In the meantime . . .