we chatted, I felt like I was on a therapeutic roll—Allison, now Lance. For an instant, I forgot about my dead patient. Or so I thought.
“You’re embracing your life, Howard,” I said, high on success. “This is meaningful.”
Yes, Howard.
My slip-of-the-tongue stunned us both.
“That’s not my name,” he said, staring at me with a look that made me simultaneously shamed and concerned for my safety.
He was out the door before I could think.
Chapter Four
“Tough luck,” Richard said. “The Westerman deal, I mean.”
He was trying to make small talk while waiting for the kids for their off-decree Thursday evening with Dad. This spur of the moment behavior was typical of Richard, who tended to regard rules made by someone else—even if that someone happened to be Judge Negron who set the terms of our separation—as works in progress.
“Hmm,” I said, using my body language to keep him penned in the foyer.
“Stopped by their place on the way over here to give my condolences. I just couldn’t get out of New York in time to make the memorial service. Very important case.” My eyes did a reflexive roll—a bad habit of mine, I know. In the process, I took notice of his charcoal suit, one I hadn’t seen before, which was perfectly complemented by a shirt of the palest grey and a creamy silk tie. His understated, yet elegant, appearance seemed critical commentary on my own dated outfit. “Camille called me Monday morning as soon as she hung up with 911.” He shook his head in disbelief.
“She called you?” I said. I hear about my patient on the news, and Richard gets a personal call?
“We’d just that minute wrapped the show, so I was able to pick up. What a tragedy.” He did the head shake again. “But Camille is a strong woman. She’ll be okay.”
“Oh, I’m sure she will,” I said.
“Why the hostility here? She’s just lost her husband, and you know what she said? Are you listening? Said she was putting me up for membership in the San Antonio Country Club. That would include you too, of course, if we ever get things straightened out between us.”
“Did it occur to you,” I said, “that accepting her favors might be unethical given that I’m her husband’s analyst?”
“Deceased husband’s analyst.” He stared up at the light fixture, seeming to inventory the dead bugs congregating there, then slipped his keys into his pocket and jingled them around. “I have a place in this community, Nora. Unlike you. Camille’s just a dear friend. A dear friend and an amazingly generous person. Besides, the kids would love the club. You could drop them off at the pool in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon.”
“Let me get this straight. Now the guy who had to be court-ordered to pay fifteen hundred dollars for summer camp can’t wait to shell out forty grand to join the country club? The same guy who wanted Ofelia, our elderly and child-phobic maid, to tutor the kids in Spanish and teach them to mop floors for summer vacation now likes the idea of them spending the day lounging poolside?”
“It’s an investment,” Richard said. “Good for business contacts.”
“We’re Jews. They don’t do Jews at the San Antonio Country Club.”
“Things have changed there,” he said.
“Bullshit.”
“All my friends are members. People I’ve known my whole life. Did you know I went out with Camille in high school?” He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, leaned into his reflection and straightened his right eyebrow with a spit-wet index finger. “Nothing serious. She just wanted to make what’s-his-name, the quarterback, jealous. Small world.”
“It’s your small world.” I said.
I didn’t need to be reminded that absolutely every high-end woman in town had been with him at one time or another. There had been at least ten women from the Jewish Old San Antonio clan on Esther and Stu Kleinberg’s A-List of potential bearers of grandchildren. My name did not appear on that roster, a fact my mother-in-law never tired of referencing in my presence. I did not need Richard salting that old wound. And I didn’t need him telling me San Antonio was a small world, as if I didn’t live here every provincial day of my life. Most of all, I didn’t need him sticking his nose into the little bit of space that was mine, if only for the short-term grace of our separation agreement.
We glared at each other for a minute. Richard’s eyes watered a little. I decided it was his contacts. The kids had let slip that he’d gotten new ones—green-tinted to intensify his eyes on camera.
“You’re so bitter, Nora,” Richard finally said. “I understand the bitterness is a symptom of your inability to deal with being disowned by your mother and losing your father…and now Howard’s gone.”
“My mother is irrelevant and my father isn’t lost. He’s dead. Just like Howard. D-E-A-D. Why can’t you say the word?”
“There’s no need to shout,” he said.
“I’m not shouting,” I shouted.
“Just stop,” he said. “You’re out of touch with reality.”
“Why don’t you ever say the word, Richard? Maybe because your parents are dead? Maybe you’re the one out of touch with reality. Maybe that’s the reason we don’t get along. Maybe it’s your fucking unresolved grief.”
Ordinary people might think psychiatrists possess an advantage in human relationships, some kind of insider knowledge that greases the interpersonal gears. In our marriage, emotional insights had been converted into weapons of psychic destruction—plowshares into swords. Months before, I’d come to the conclusion that the only accomplishment of our union, aside from the kids, was the defeat of the town’s best marital therapist. After two years of twice weekly appointments, Dr. Bradley had concluded that separation was the only hope of saving the marriage. So much for that theory. The three blocks between the house and my estranged’s fancy apartment obviously hadn’t changed a thing.
“You really should keep the shades drawn in the family room this late in the day,” Richard said, changing the subject, stepping from side to side, bobbing his head around, trying to scope out the house in search of additional maintenance failures. “I’ve told you a thousand times that direct sun drives up the electric bill and fades the rugs.”
Pugsley, the older of our dogs, had gotten the gist of the situation. He positioned himself at the foot of the stairs, growling softly like a canine motion detector when the former man of the house threatened to violate the boundary.
“How about we consider my household not your business,” I said. “Until further notice.”
“As long as I’m paying the bills,” he said, “this household is my business.”
Although I chose not to acknowledge it, he had a point.
The house and the
