Chapter 34
On Friday morning, I woke up to a text from Mirabelle’s mom, Eloise, canceling the sleepover planned for that night without even bothering to make an excuse.
Lucy had been waxing rhapsodic over the sleepover all week.
As it sank in how crushed she would be, my stomach seemed to fold in on itself like a deformed pretzel.
Was this what kindergarten would be like in September?
Would Lucy be a pariah there, too, thanks to my notoriety as that wackadoodle author? Would we ever get out from under this?
My awareness flew back to the family dinner two years ago where I’d first broached the idea of writing another novel, and then to that brutal day Rebecca discovered from her pickleball friend that I’d actually done it.
This was precisely what Rebeca had warned me about.
Well, maybe not precisely, because who other than Bronwyn or a fantasy writer could have dreamed up a situation so absurd.
But it was at least the outcome Rebecca had worried about—that this time, if there were blowback from my writing, it could land squarely on the two tiny shoulders least prepared to bear the burden.
Over oatmeal, I broke the news to an outpouring of tears and frustration that bordered on a toddler-style tantrum, the likes of which I hadn’t seen from Lucy in over a year.
“But why, Mommy? Why?” she cried out repeatedly.
I kept saying, “I don’t know. Eloise didn’t explain,” which was at least technically the truth.
It was all I could do to keep myself calm enough to get Lucy dressed and out the door for another ride to tennis with her grandparents.
This morning, though, I didn’t even walk my own daughter to meet them.
Taking the cowardly route, I sent Lucy across the stone path to their kitchen.
Although it would take all of three seconds for the story to spill out, at least I wouldn’t have to be present for another round of Cards Against Humanity, Pathetic Parenting Expansion Pack.
For a moment, I watched Lucy trudge down the path with her tennis bag—taped racquet handle poking out the top—and the weight of the world heavy on her back.
Then I shut the door behind her and promised myself I would go to the bakery and buy consolation cupcakes for dessert tonight.
An olive branch as apology for my utter incompetence at doing one of my most important jobs: protecting my daughter.
With this meager plan for the morning, I stepped in the shower praying for it to suddenly work its former magic.
Ever since we’d moved back in, the shower I’d counted on for years was less satisfying.
We’d only been gone for less than a month, but somehow in that time, the water pressure that had once reliably massaged my spirit, and the scalding temperatures that had felt like divine purification, had both diminished.
The result was that my showers now only seemed to result in a cleaner version of my physical self.
Given that I was not showing myself in public much, my motivation for showering had also diminished. But this morning, I had a purpose.
As I threw on my softest, most comforting pair of sweatpants, the only clean(ish) T-shirt I could find, and a Dodgers cap pulled low, I turned to grab my phone from the nightstand and slammed my right shin into the corner of the bedframe.
While I writhed in pain, it hit me that the shower wasn’t the only thing about this guesthouse that seemed to have changed since we last lived here.
In fact, nearly everything about this place felt suspended in a surreal state of “the same, only different.” Still comfortable and cloistered, yes, but also somehow smaller and more confining, like a pair of favorite jeans that had shrunk in the wash.
I kept hoping for the guesthouse to stretch out and fit me once again.
But Lucy’s bedroom door still banged into her dresser every time she walked through it, my bedroom was claustrophobic bordering on dangerous (see: bruised shin), and my beautiful bookcase shrine to Sam was a lot more sparse, thanks to my foolish decision to pare down the mementos of our life together to make space for a potential future with Max. Regret bore down on me like a vise.
In the kitchen sink, I dumped out my half-drunk mug of coffee and scraped my barely touched oatmeal down the drain.
Then I rinsed and filled the mug with water for my ritual daily check of Sam’s lucky bamboo plant.
Yesterday it had seemed maybe, possibly, almost imperceptibly, to be perking up after the gentle, if unartistic, pruning I’d given it.
A hopeful half smile rose to my lips and I began to hum our song—the one Sam had surprised me with at our wedding for the first dance: “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” by Aerosmith.
I went to the bookshelf and pulled up short.
The song in my head stopped as my mug crashed to the floor.
I stood there paralyzed, except for my blinking eyes, which were trying not to see the truth staring back.
Because unlike yesterday and all the days before it, today Sam’s lucky bamboo was totally, definitively, undeniably dead.
Brown, shriveled, droopy, and dead. The most important living thing Sam and I ever tended to and cared for together was gone. And it was all my fault.
I sucked in a gasp, and the first ragged sob tore me apart.
I lost all concept of time as I bawled my eyes out for Sam and all the things he’d missed despite not wanting to, his desire so strong that he’d sealed our marriage with the sentiment.
But it was long enough for Sam The Dog to bark at the door to be let out, which he had only done a handful of times in the two years he’d been ours.
I didn’t have it in me to clean up an accident, so I pulled myself together.
Unwilling to stare at the dead plant another second, I grabbed the pot from the shelf and accompanied Sam The Dog outside, where I dumped it in the compost bin on the side of the house.
Sam The Dog followed me back inside, and I noticed his big worried eyes were watching me.
When even my canine companion could tell something was very wrong, maybe it was time to take a closer look in the mirror.
For years, Frannie had been after me to “unpack my shit” (although she’d said it much nicer until recently), but I’d resisted.
Then Rebecca and William had joined the chorus, and I dug in my heels.
I told myself that I’d grieved for Sam every day of the last six years, so it wasn’t as though I needed to do it more.
But now, with Sam The Dog’s mournful face and droopy ears resting on my thigh, and the sting of Lucy’s disappointment over Mirabelle like a slap across the face, and with Sam’s lucky bamboo on its way to fertilizing Rebecca’s garden, I had to ask myself: Did I need Dr. Field’s help more than I’d been willing to admit?
All weekend long, I ruminated over how to approach Monday’s therapy appointment.
I didn’t know if I actually deserved to feel happy, but I did need to figure out how to be a whole, functioning person for Lucy’s sake.
But how would this work, exactly? Did I have to walk into Dr. Field’s office and cop to being unstable?
Would anything less be seen as unhealthy denial?
When I sat down in Dr. Field’s office on Monday afternoon, she opened her notebook.
Though she looked at me with a polite, questioning gaze, it was obvious she was absorbing the essence of my disheveled state.
I returned her stare for a few seconds before glancing down at my hands.
They were clasped so tight my knuckles were white.
Then I looked back up at her, observed the disarming mixture of warmth and professional reserve in her eyes, and decided she was the professional, not me.
Maybe it wasn’t my job to lead the process, only to participate.
So I leaned forward, and said, “I’m ready to do the work.
Let’s play Ask Me Anything.” Look out, Dr. Field.
Here come the magical superpower stylings of Thea Newhouse Packer.
And with that, I handed over the keys to my psyche, with full license to rev the engine and slam it into a concrete wall.
“I’m very glad to hear that, Thea.” Dr. Field gave me an encouraging smile, then took a slow sip from her travel coffee mug.
She probably wasn’t expecting the session to begin like this and needed a second to think of her first question.
“How about we start with something easy, like how was your weekend?”
“How about we start with something hard instead?” Obviously answering a question with another question wasn’t exactly in the spirit of an AMA, but I didn’t want to waste time now that I knew my mission.
“We can do hard if that’s what you really want.” Her eyes widened in question.
“It is,” I said in as firm a tone as I could muster, before adding meekly, “I think.”
Flipping backward a few pages, she skimmed her notes from the previous session and then asked, “Thea, do you recall when you first started worrying that your written words might have triggered certain events in your life?”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and nodded. “It was after I published my first short story in our high school literary journal.”
“Can you tell me about the story?”
“It was about a couple who got divorced several years after one of their kids died, as told by the surviving kid, who never saw the split coming. That was my senior spring. And only a few weeks after the literary journal was distributed to the entire school, my own parents announced they were getting divorced. They told me the day after I graduated. I had no idea they were struggling. I was as blindsided as the protagonist in my story.”