Chapter Eighteen - The Credit Line
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Credit Line
The first thing Dr. Anika Bell asked us was not why I had left. She asked what we thought had happened. Eli and I looked at each other across the small counseling office above the pharmacy.
The room had two armchairs angled toward a green sofa, a window overlooking Main Street, and a white-noise machine outside the door that sounded faintly like rain.
No framed quotations about forgiveness. No bowl of polished stones labeled with emotions.
I appreciated both absences. Dr. Bell sat with a notebook on one knee.
“Not the award show,” she said. “Not yet. I’m asking for the story each of you tells yourself about how you got here.”
Eli shifted beside me on the sofa. I had chosen the end nearest the window. He had taken the other without comment, leaving almost a cushion and a half between us.
“You first,” I said.
Dr. Bell looked at me. “Why him?”
“Because I usually go first.”
Eli’s head turned. The answer had surprised both of us.
Dr. Bell nodded once. “All right. Eli?”
He rested his forearms on his thighs.
“I thought we had a good marriage that I neglected in ways I didn’t understand.”
I did not look away.
“What?”
His gaze came to me. “That’s what I thought.”
“Until when?”
“The archive.” Dr. Bell lifted a hand before I could continue.
“June, you’ll get a turn. Let him finish his version, even if you disagree with it.”
I sat back. Eli continued.
“I thought the award show exposed a problem. Then I started going through old records and realized that night had exposed a system.”
Dr. Bell said, “A system of what?”
“Of making June invisible when it was convenient. Professionally. Publicly. At home too, sometimes.”
Sometimes bothered me. I let it. He went on.
“I told myself I appreciated her. I thanked her privately. I depended on her for everything. I thought that meant I saw her.”
“Did it?”
“Not anymore.” Dr. Bell waited. Eli swallowed.
“I saw what she did for me. That’s not the same thing.”
The sentence landed cleanly. I hated how much I liked it. Dr. Bell turned to me.
“Your version?” I looked through the window. Below us, somebody in a red jacket came out of the pharmacy carrying a paper bag and immediately stopped to answer a phone.
“My version used to be that my husband humiliated me on television.”
“Used to be?”
“That happened. It’s just not the whole injury.”
“What is?” I thought of the files. The press notes.
The interviews. The seat card taped to the chair.
MRS. ELI MERCER.
I thought of hotel rooms where I had rewritten lyrics while Eli slept. Award speeches where he thanked everyone around the work except the person doing part of it. Staff who knew his preferred water temperature and did not know I wrote the song that paid their salaries.
“It was thousands of things.”
Dr. Bell did not ask me to narrow it. Her silence left the whole answer standing.
“The dedication hurt because twelve million people heard him give my place in our story to another woman. But if that had been the first time he failed to see me, I think we would have survived one terrible conversation.”
Eli’s hands stopped moving.
“The problem is that I had been disappearing for years.”
I faced him fully.
“Not all at once. A sudden disappearance would have been easier to notice.”
He held my gaze.
“A credit omitted. A dinner moved. A question answered for me. An interview where you said I inspired a lyric I wrote. A staff member putting me on your calendar because nobody thought you should have to manage time with your wife yourself.”
His face tightened at that one. I kept going.
“You did not wake up every morning and decide to erase me. I know that. You just accepted every version of our life that made my erasure useful.”
Silence settled over the room. Dr. Bell let it. No rescue. No translation.
Eventually Eli said, “Yes.”
No explanation followed.
Dr. Bell asked me, “What happens in you when he agrees?”
The question annoyed me.
“I don’t know.”
“Take a guess.”
“I want to trust it.”
“And?”
“I don’t.” Eli looked down.
Dr. Bell asked, “What would make agreement trustworthy?”
“Evidence.” Her eyebrows lifted slightly.
“That sounds like a lawyer’s answer.”
“I’ve been spending time with one.”
“What does evidence mean inside the marriage?”
I almost said I didn’t know.
Then I thought of Eli leaving when the timer ended. The archive. The crew payments. The repaired sentence in Sadie’s approval chain. A kiss stopped halfway through.
“Behavior that continues after the conversation is over.”
Dr. Bell nodded.
“That is specific.”
Eli said, “I can do that.”
I turned toward him.
“Don’t promise something because it sounds right in therapy.”
His expression changed.
“You’re right.” Dr. Bell looked between us.
“Eli, what did you want that promise to do?”
“Make her feel safer.”
“And what did June hear?”
He looked at me before answering. “Pressure to accept reassurance before behavior.”
“Was it difficult not to explain yourself?”
“Very.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to make her feel better.”
I laughed before I could stop myself. Dr. Bell glanced at me.
“What was funny?”
“He wants to make me feel better because then he gets to feel better.”
Eli inhaled. I expected resistance.
Instead he said, “Sometimes.”
“Not sometimes.” He met my eyes. I heard my own certainty and forced myself to slow down.
“Not only sometimes in the old pattern.”
“That’s fair.” Dr. Bell wrote something. I wanted to know what. I disliked that too.
“What would structural change look like around the song?” she asked.
Eli answered first.
“Correcting the public credit.”
“How?”
“Everywhere we can. Interviews. Website. Future performances. The official history.”
“That’s publicity.”
“It matters.”
“It does. It isn’t enough.”
“What else?” There was no defensiveness in the question. I leaned forward.
“The songwriter metadata.” He nodded.
“The publishing records.” Another nod.
“Royalty accounting.”
“Agreed.”
“Every database that can be corrected. The old money needs to be traced. Not guessed. Not turned into a generous check from you.”
“I agree.”
“And future use requires actual consent.”
“Absolutely.”
“Written.”
“In writing.”
“No one gets to decide that because I’m your wife, I’m automatically fine with a rewrite, a sample, a performance, an anniversary package, a documentary, any of it.”
“Agreed.”
Dr. Bell said, “June, why does the accounting matter emotionally?”
I frowned.
“Because it’s mine.”
“That is a rights answer.”
“It’s also an emotional answer.”
“Say more.” I turned to Eli.
“Money is where people stop pretending something was symbolic.”
He listened without moving.
“The song built part of our life. If the record says you wrote it, the money followed that record. If we correct the public story but leave the accounting untouched, then we are still asking me to accept a version of truth that costs everybody except the people who benefited from the lie.”
Eli’s eyes stayed on mine.
“I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“That was the problem.”
The words came out sharper than I intended. I did not apologize for them.
He said, “I should have.”
“You should have.” Dr. Bell let that remain too.
Then she asked Eli, “What do you hear June asking for?”
He did not answer immediately.
“Not an apology.” I gripped the edge of my notebook.
“What then?”
“For the truth to become operational.”
The phrase was not mine. It was better than the one I had been trying to find.
Dr. Bell asked, “What does that mean to you?”
“That if her name belongs on the work, it belongs on the records that determine who gets paid, who gets asked, and who gets remembered. Not just in a speech.”
Something in my chest shifted. I did not call it trust.
Not yet. Her attention returned to me.
“Accurate?”
“So far.”
“Complete?”
“Not yet.” Eli waited.
I said, “I need it not to depend on whether we stay married.”
His face changed. There. The part nobody wanted.
“The credits get corrected if I divorce you.”
“Even then.”
“The accounting gets fixed if I never move home.”
“Even then.”
“The consent rules apply even if you’re angry with me.”
“Even then.”
“And none of it buys forgiveness.”
“It doesn’t.” He looked down at his wedding ring. I waited for the pain in his face to become a request. It didn’t.
He rubbed his thumb over the band once and said, “That’s how it should be.”
Dr. Bell leaned back.
“If the credits and money were corrected tomorrow, would that obligate June to stay married?”
“No,” Eli said.
“Then keep those tracks separate in here too.”
I wrote the distinction in the margin of my notebook because I needed to remember it when tenderness made me stupid. The session moved to smaller things after that.
Calendars. Who initiated contact. What happened when one of us needed space. Dr. Bell asked us to identify one old behavior each of us would stop and one new behavior we would practice before the next session. Eli chose answering questions directed at me.
“I do that?” he asked.
“You did.” His face fell.
“You did it at the cardiologist last year.”
“What did I answer?”
“She asked me whether I was sleeping.”
He stared.
“What did I say?”
“That I’ve never slept well.”
He closed his eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know you knew the answer.”
“That’s not the point.”
“It isn’t.” He wrote it down. My turn.
I hated my answer before I gave it.
“I’m going to stop saying something is fine when I mean I’m choosing not to fight about it.”
Eli turned toward me. I expected relief. Instead he nodded slowly.
“That would help.”
“It might not feel helpful.”
“I expect it won’t.”
Dr. Bell corrected him.
“You hope.” A faint smile crossed his face.
“I hope.” When the hour ended, she asked whether we wanted another joint session. I met Eli’s eyes. He looked at me but did not answer for us. That was almost funny after the previous ten minutes.
“Yes,” I said.
“Yes,” he said after me.
Outside the office, we paused on the stair landing. The pharmacy below smelled faintly of detergent and menthol. Eli put one hand on the railing.
“I’m going to tell my business lawyer to include the accounting correction in the proposal.”
“Don’t tell him I asked for a number.”
“I won’t.”
“And metadata first, not after the press statement.”
“Metadata first.” I started down.
“June.” I stopped. He stayed two steps above me. No attempt to close the distance.
“The public correction still matters to me.”
“It matters to me too.”
“I don’t want you to think I suggested it because I only care about appearances.”
I considered that.
“I don’t.” His shoulders loosened.
“But if the public correction is the only thing people can see, then it becomes another performance.”
The relief disappeared. He nodded.
“So we fix what people can’t see too.”
“Exactly.” We walked downstairs separately.
At the pharmacy door, I opened my notebook and wrote METADATA FIRST beneath the session date. Then I closed it and put it back in my bag.