I'm Glad About You(94)

Van had no intention of making this marriage work, but once he registered the problem with parish leadership, she had nowhere to run. Refusing to enter counseling would have made it impossible to get that annulment. And once they were stuck in that room with Roger, their kindly, white-haired Teutonic mediator, no amount of determined and circular logic passed muster. Old Roger had a truly excruciating idea of communication: He insisted on slowing everything down to a snail’s pace, and then once you were down there with the snails, you had to explain every thought three times before you were allowed to inch forward to another one.

“So what you’re saying, Kyle, is that you were upset when Van admitted to you that she had been unfaithful to your marriage.”

“Yes.”

“Could you tell that to Van?”

“Van, I was upset and hurt, actually, when you admitted you were unfaithful.”

“He wasn’t hurt, he was enraged. He was furious! And terribly threatening.”

“Okay, we’ll get to that in a minute, Van. What I’m hearing is that you felt frightened.”

“Of course I felt frightened, he frightened me.”

“But I really need you to take this one step at a time. When feelings run away with us, it’s hard to understand what is at the core of the misunderstanding.”

“It’s not a misunderstanding. He never loved me. He was in love with another woman when he married me and he never pretended otherwise.”

“I was not in love with Alison.”

“LIAR.”

“I hadn’t seen her in YEARS.”

“Whoa whoa whoa. You see how quickly this can run away from us! We’re going to slow this ship down. Slooooow dowwwwwn. Just repeat back to Kyle what he said to you.”

“What he said was a lie.”

“That’s a judgment, Van. We’re not going there, remember? What I heard, from Kyle, is that he was upset and hurt that you had been unfaithful to your marriage.”

“So?”

“Is that what you heard?”

“Yes, I heard him say that.”

“Could you tell Kyle that that is what you heard? And that’s all we need you to say.” He started to coach her. “‘Kyle’—”

“Kyle,” she snapped. “I heard you say that you were upset and hurt that I was unfaithful to our marriage.” Admitting that Kyle had in fact strung those dozen words together clearly felt like an outrageous loss of the moral high ground she had staked out with such unflinching determination.

“Good. Good! Marriage is about communication. We’re just here learning to communicate. Now that you have told Kyle what you heard him say, let him know how that made you feel.”

“I already told you; it makes me feel like he’s an insane liar.”

“That’s a judgment, remember? We’re going to try and stay away from those. Let’s just stick with feelings for now.” Kyle wanted to strangle old Roger, but he couldn’t help enjoying how panicked it made Van to have every single word put under the microscope like this.

“I feel—frustrated,” she finally said.

“That’s good, you feel frustrated.”

“How is that good?” she asked, with bitter common sense.

“It’s good because now Kyle knows what you felt, when you heard him say that he was hurt and upset when you—”

“I did not ‘betray’ our marriage. How can you betray a marriage that never existed?”

Roger nodded at this, endlessly patient. “We’ll get there, Van. We will get there. One step at a time. Kyle, what did you hear Van say?”

“She said a lot of things,” Kyle pointed out.

“Let’s just stick with the one statement. How she felt when she heard you say that you were hurt and upset—”

“How come we have to hear that again?” Van asked. “How many times does he get to repeat that—that—”

“Van,” Kyle interrupted. “I heard you say that you feel frustrated.”

“Good!” Roger was ridiculously pleased that Kyle was cooperating. “And how do you feel when you hear that she is frustrated?”

“I feel sorry about that, actually. I wish she wasn’t frustrated.”

But Kyle’s trivial success in maneuvering the rules of this absurd exercise only annoyed Van further. When they got home, she informed him in no uncertain terms that she thought that the counselor had already taken his side against her, and that she found the whole process unfair in the extreme. Kyle thought momentarily about pointing out how unfair it was of her to blame him because she had cheated on him and was having another man’s child. Instead, he thought for a moment, and said, “What I hear you saying, Van, is that you find this whole process unfair. Is that what you said?” Van just stared at him. “So that makes me frustrated.” At this, Van stalked past him, into the kitchen. He heard Maggie coo, “Mommy, Mommy!” and then the sound of the back door slamming, as Van blew by her daughter so she could go outside and call her lover on the phone.

Kyle was well aware that she spoke to the guy six or seven or eight times daily. She was careful not to use their landline but he dug through her purse one night at three in the morning; the cell phone was chock-full of calls placed to and received from “RT.” He then went to the parish phone book and paged through all the R’s and T’s; none of the names popped out at him as a likely suspect. Which led him to understand that even the initials were a code, a secret language, between this utter stranger and his wife. Before he could go any further—just hit send, call him, insult him—his better brain stepped in and reminded him, with mournful dignity, that this unhappy situation called for more wisdom, not less. While Van clearly felt that taking the girls away from him and putting a new household in place around this other father was what needed to happen, Kyle had to consider the endless years of shuttling children back and forth between double homes and double parents, not to mention ever-multiplying sets of grandparents. The scenario filled him with unspeakable dread.