Chapter 2
The sunrise greeted me through the floor-to-ceiling windows in soft rays of orange while the scent of salt water and tropical flowers drifted through opened balcony doors.
I hear the waves, the palm trees swaying in the breeze – reminding me I was in paradise, but this suite was proving to be a chamber of doom.
This is not a pleasure trip by any means.
It’s war – her in one room while I lay behind the trenches in the other.
And speak of the she-devil…
She steps out with a pair of blue shorts showing full, thick, shea-buttered thighs, and a yellow tank top that lays perfectly against her breasts and flat stomach.
A curly ponytail swings from the center of her head while silver hoops hang from her ears.
She has enough gloss on her lips to fry a chicken leg.
That’s Lanai.
She always used to say she ain’t going nowhere looking musty, rusty, dusty, or crusty.
“Leaving already?”
“Yep,” she answers tight-lipped, sliding on them big glasses.
That’s when her signature scent hits me – pistachios, caramel, and vanilla.
Who knew these together could make her skin smell so divine?
Who even knew pistachios had a scent? But these together?
On her? Sheesh! There’s something about the way she layers it with lotion and that body butter that makes her smell irresistible.
Or it could be the fact that I know and love the smell of her skin even when she’s not wearing any products.
“Have fun talking about me,” I taunt.
“Everything isn’t about you, Henny.”
Mercy.
She’s beautiful even when she’s irritated. Especially when she’s irritated.
“Why are you so uptight?” I ask her. “You came here of your own free will.”
“I came here to get this over with, and get back to my regularly scheduled life.”
She eases out the door without saying anything further, carrying one of those if-you-stay-ready-you-ain’t-gotta-get-ready purses that’s about the size of an approved American Airlines carry-on.
I get up, slide on my sandals, and step out onto the balcony.
After a few minutes, I watch her walk over to the retreat’s therapy gardens where most of the sessions take place.
Curiosity gets the better of me. I wonder what kind of things she’ll say about me. What she truly feels. If this sarcasm she spews is really just a way for her to deflect, as Dr. Makalua said.
There’s only one way to find out.
* * *
I KNOW I’M not supposed to, but at this point, desperation takes over.
I need to know if this marriage is really over.
I leave the suite and take the path to where I know Lanai is located.
Through the thick, lush bushes I’m perched behind, I see her sitting on a bench beneath an open-air wooden canopy, waiting for Dr. Makalua to show up.
She’s taken off her sandals and moved her sunglasses on top of her head.
She sits with her legs crossed while the wind blows her ponytail.
She looks contemplative, sad almost, and less guarded than she is when she’s around me.
When Dr. Makalua walks up, the sadness quickly falls from her face, replaced with a bright smile.
“It’s good to see you again, Lanai,” she says, sitting in a woven chair with a notebook resting on her lap. “How did you sleep?”
“Pretty good, considering.”
“Considering that you had to share the place with Hendrick?”
“Exactly.”
I shake my head. This is wrong. I wouldn’t want her doing this to me, so I turn from the tropical leaves to quietly walk away when I hear Lanai say, “Let me stop. Actually, something about listening to Hendrick snore from the living room last night helped me sleep.”
The doctor chuckles. I stop in my tracks and turn back around to listen.
“Snoring, huh? Usually that’s a complaint in relationships.”
“Not for me. It’s funny because many things he does irk me, but this was never one of them. I got so used to his snoring that whenever he wasn’t home for whatever reason, I couldn’t sleep.”
“And how has it been since you’ve been separated? You two live apart, correct?”
“We do, and I don’t sleep well at all, which is probably the reason I’m so cranky all the time.”
“This is very interesting to me. I’ve never heard this one before in all the years I’ve been practicing. He was your real-life sound machine,” Dr. Makalua says, smiling.
Lanai grins in a reminiscent way. “Yes, he was. And get this—I bought an actual sound machine, hoping it would help me sleep, and it doesn’t.
Do you know how messed up it is to have to go to the doctor to get a prescription for sleeping pills because I can’t sleep without him?
” she asks, then stares at the water with tears in her eyes that don’t fall. She blinks them away.
My heart aches because I can alleviate all of that, but I just don’t know what she wants from me anymore. How can you make something right when you don’t know how?
“Tell me how it feels,” the doctor presses.
“It feels horrible. Feels like I’ve given too much of myself to him, and now I don’t know how to be alone.”
“Maybe that’s because you’re not supposed to be. This is the man you chose. The man you were in love with. That you married and wanted to live happily ever after with. Are you really ready to give that up?”
Lanai’s eyes drifted to the water again, but this time a tear escaped and rolled down her face.
It struck me in the chest and made me realize that all that pain, the contempt in her eyes when she looked at me, is a mask for the real, raw feeling that she keeps from me but can’t quite explain.
She doesn’t know how to tell me that I’m not the man she thought she was getting, and that hurts to say, but I know it’s what she feels.
Now I understand what my father meant when he told me that women don’t leave a relationship because they want to.
They leave when they feel they have no other choice but to.
Lanai wipes the tear away and says, “He used to make me feel like I was an integral part of his life. Things mattered to him, yes, like his job, his own well-being, his lil’ hobbies and whatnot, but at the end of the day, I was most important.
The world could be on fire, and as long as I was okay, he was okay. ”
“What changed?”
She shrugs. “Everything eventually became more important than us. He got busy working, climbing the ladder, missing important things in my life. He answered emails during dinner. He would cancel date nights because he had to meet with somebody. And he didn’t seem to mind how all those corporate women fawned over him, touched his arm and pretty much made it clear that they were open for business, if you know what I mean.
Shoot, I wouldn’t be surprised if he actually slept with one of them. ”
“Is that what you think?”
“Yeah, I do.”
And now I know why she’s really angry at me. She thinks I cheated on her.
“Has he ever been unfaithful to you?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Then what makes you think that he may have been?”
“It’s just that…he stopped seeing me. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a great provider, but you shouldn’t have to beg a man who says he loves you to text you or call during the day to check on you.
I shouldn’t be the only one planning anniversary dates and vacations.
And I’m so tired of hearing ‘after I close this deal we’ll do this or that’.
It never happens. I was lonely sitting right next to him while he’s all in his phone, feeling like everything else is important.
I’m not a priority to him anymore, Dr. Makalua, so who is? ”
Even the doctor couldn’t come up with anything philosophical to say. She just sat there, scribbling notes while Lanai dropped her head into her palms, looking like she was in distress.
Meanwhile, I’m hiding in the bushes like a coward, silently taking blow after blow while listening to what she thinks of me.
Lanai didn’t hit me physically, but her words sure beat the heck out of me.
And still, I want so badly to go over there and console her, but how can I when I’m not supposed to be here?
Plus, I have some things I need to work through right now, too.
I spent so much time trying to build a future for us that I stopped being present in the life I already had.
I’m not the victim in this marriage falling apart.
I’m trying to save it, yes, but I’m also the reason why it started crumbling in the first place.
“One thing I know about marriages is, it takes both parties to make it work. So what I want you to focus on at this retreat is what you can do to get along with Hendrick for the rest of the week. I’m not asking you to salvage anything. Just try to focus on getting along. Can you do that?”
“I suppose.”
“Okay. That’s your assignment. We’ll reconvene at our next session to see how it’s going.”
“Okay.”
She stands and hugs her. It’s my cue to get out of there.