The New Husband(6)
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AS THE memory of that terrible day faded, Nina’s eyes filled with tears. A cry broke from her lips, sending her shoulders quaking. Susanna and Ginny were at her side in a flash.
“Oh sweetie, I know it’s not the best magazine, but it’s not that bad.”
Nina managed a weak laugh before she relayed what that magazine actually signified—that day, when she first got the news.
“Have you talked to somebody?” Susanna asked with concern.
“I talk to you girls,” Nina said defensively.
“No, I mean somebody professional,” Susanna said.
“A therapist,” Ginny added, not that the clarification was needed.
Maggie and Connor were both seeing a therapist, but for some reason, Nina hadn’t found one for herself. Everything was still so raw that talking about it felt like poking an open wound. And then, when Simon came along, her life seemed to stabilize. The welcome distraction from her troubles had made it possible to suppress her feelings, but maybe no more. Maybe her friends were right. The move was a trigger, and perhaps the time had come to get real help. She should have done it ages ago. She was a social worker and honestly knew better. But then again, the cobbler’s kid not having proper shoes was a trope for good reason.
“Anybody have a recommendation?” asked Nina.
“Mine’s great,” Susanna and Ginny said simultaneously.
The three laughed and hugged, and Nina’s fresh tears felt like a cry of relief.
CHAPTER 4
Dr. Sydney Wilcox worked on the second floor of a redbrick office building, in a neighborhood dotted with small businesses. The office itself was cozy and intimate with muted walls and a beige rug. The bland aesthetic was clearly intended to encourage patients to contribute their own color and energy to the environment. The soothing gurgle of a miniature fountain blended with the nearly inaudible hum of a white noise machine put there to ensure privacy. It was all carefully orchestrated to convey one critical message: this was a safe place to share.
Nina sat in an oversize armchair facing a stout woman in her early sixties who had a pageboy haircut that was more salt than pepper. Plastic-frame glasses gave Dr. Wilcox a professorial air, but there was nothing intimidating about her. She had her notebook open, her expression relaxed and nonjudgmental.
“How do we start?” Nina asked.
Nina kept her hands clasped on her lap, allowing her interlaced fingers to nervously caress her knuckles. Why so anxious? she asked herself. She’d been in the business of untangling human messes, and it wasn’t like this was her first time in therapy. There had been some bumpy days early in her marriage, typical intimacy problems and communication snares that snagged lots of young couples shocked by the cold-water plunge of child-rearing.
“Where do you want to start?” Dr. Wilcox asked.
Nina should have expected her response—therapy was the fine art of asking questions. “Where do you want to start?” might as well have been “What brings you here today?”
Nina spoke of Glen, Maggie, and Connor, providing Dr. Wilcox with the necessary background information. She recalled the day the police came to inform her that Glen was a missing person, then told her that he was still missing, and that many months later, with the help of a successful quiet-title lawsuit that transferred the property title to her name exclusively, she’d sold her home in Seabury, bought a new one in the same town, and moved in with a new man, all in the span of little more than a year and a half.
Nina waited for a flicker of recognition to come to Dr. Wilcox’s eyes—Oh, you’re that woman!—but saw nothing of the sort. Maybe she didn’t watch the news, or maybe, like anyone outside her immediate friends and family, Dr. Wilcox had forgotten all about the Glen Garrity story. After all, tragedy was personal, and like a wound, it mattered most to those people left with the scars.
“How has the move gone?” asked Dr. Wilcox.
“Good, good,” Nina said, worried she sounded like she was trying to reassure herself. “I mean, Maggie is taking it the hardest.”
Nina explained how Maggie had grown hostile when Simon became more than a friend.
“What about Connor? Does he get along with Simon?”
“Well, yes. Maybe because he’s older. But Connor had some difficulties with his father.”
“Difficulties?”
“Glen was something of a workaholic. My nickname for him was Glengarrity Glen Ross.”
“From the play,” Dr. Wilcox correctly noted.
“And movie about those crazed salespeople trying to save their jobs.”
“He was a salesman?”
“No, he worked at a bank. Not in a branch, in the main office. He was a senior financial advisor. Always busy with something. The first night after his dad went missing, Connor confided how he was sad they didn’t spend much time together.”
Dr. Wilcox took notes with her pencil.
“I tried to convince him that his father loved him very much and that they did do things together. Glen always went to Connor’s games, and they watched sports together on TV. But that wasn’t the same—it wasn’t what Connor wanted or needed, and Maggie had her own frustrations with her dad, mostly to do with his availability or lack thereof.
“When I tried to talk to Glen about his work habits, his obsession with his phone or email, he’d remind me that all the financial pressure was on him, and guiltily I’d let the behavior slide. I don’t think I realized the effect it had on Connor, but that night he told me he didn’t feel like he really knew his dad, which turned out to be true for all of us.”