Beside Herself Page 9

  “I like the analogy,” Dr. Snow said. “Am I hearing you right? Are you thinking at this moment that you want to end the marriage? That you don’t want to be together any longer?”

  Hannah didn’t answer right away. Hearing the therapist say those words made Hannah think two things. The first was that it was possible to leave Joel—in the realm of possibility in the world, that option existed. The second thing she thought was, What are the other options?

  Hannah cleared her throat. “I feel betrayed,” she said reasonably. “I feel like the person I trusted the most in the world was not actually trustworthy, which makes everything seem undependable. I feel completely blindsided. I missed any and all signs, if there were any, and it seems like the thing you do when your husband has an affair—you get a divorce. Am I wrong about that?”

  Dr. Snow shook her head, and it finally occurred to Hannah who she reminded her of—Dr. Melfi on The Sopranos. Hannah loved the show so much. She and Joel were probably the last people in the country to watch it, which for her made it more fun somehow. They were on the last season; it was a long one, and they probably had about fifteen episodes to go. She never, ever skipped ahead or watched it without him, but now she would. She would have to.

  “It’s true that many people choose to end the marriage after discovered infidelity,” Dr. Snow said slowly. “But some don’t. Some use the chance to reevaluate their relationship and sometimes even strengthen it.”

  “How is that possible?” Hannah said. “That does not seem possible.”

  “Many therapists believe that when someone goes outside the marriage, it’s a symptom of something else that isn’t right between husband and wife,” Dr. Snow said. “That someone isn’t getting the warmth or intimacy or support or whatever it might be that they need, so they seek it out somewhere else. And that can be the case. But I personally believe that affairs can also happen in happy marriages. Someone is drawn to someone else not because they don’t like their spouse but because they are just drawn to that other person—and they have a momentary or sometimes longer-than-momentary lapse of judgment. Basically they make a mistake that, in this case, they almost always come to regret. Now of course that doesn’t happen when someone falls in love with the other woman or the other man, when they want to be with them only and no longer with their spouse, when they can’t let them go, but that does not sound to me like what’s going on here. Am I right about that, Joel?”

  “Yes,” he said quickly. “You are very, very right about that. I would do anything to undo it, to make it not have happened, to just say to Tara, ‘No, thank you, I’m fine.’”

  Joel had been looking okay, even good, but now that pale-green color passed over his face. He looked around.

  “Is there a bathroom?” Hannah asked.

  “Through there,” Dr. Snow said, pointing. Joel jumped up and ran. They heard the door shut followed by the sound of gagging.

  “He keeps throwing up,” Hannah said. “Every time we really talk about it. We ended up in the emergency room the night I saw his texts.”

  “Did you go with him?” the doctor asked.

  “To the hospital?” Hannah asked. “Yes. Reluctantly, but yes.”

  “And how was that?” she asked. “I mean, you had just found out, right? Were you able to care for him at all? Help him?”

  “Well, yeah,” Hannah said. She looked toward the bathroom door, which was still closed, and cleared her throat. She was about to tell her about climbing onto the gurney with Joel, maybe ask if she had any thoughts about that, but then she thought, No way, I’m not going to share that, with her or with anyone. When Hannah thought about it, she felt ashamed. Like she was weak, like she still needed Joel no matter what he did to her. Dr. Snow looked at her expectantly, but she just shook her head. Finally, they heard the toilet flush, and Joel came back out.

  “Sorry, sorry,” he said, his voice slightly gravelly. “That’s been happening a lot lately.”

  “That’s what Hannah said,” Dr. Snow said. “Look, I don’t want to push either of you too much tonight. I think this is a really good start. I’m not inside your heads, and I’m certainly not in your bedroom with you, but just the fact that you are both here tells me a lot. There’s something about your body language, both of you, that makes me think we can do a lot of good work together.”

  “All this from a slice of, um,” Hannah said, sounding somewhat hysterical. It was something Tony Soprano said to his therapist after she made an intuitive remark about him. She could not think of the word, which at that moment seemed important, like it was somehow a key to something. “A slice of . . .”

  “Gabagool,” Joel said quietly.

  Yes, that was it. She just wished she had thought of it.

  “Sort of like that madeleine of Proust’s,” Dr. Snow said knowingly before Hannah had a chance to explain. It was the reference Dr. Melfi made in response to Tony Soprano’s gabagool comment. Hannah sat back in her seat. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, Joel had found a good therapist.

  “Great show,” Dr. Snow said.

  “The best,” Joel said.

  “So what do you think?” Dr. Snow asked. “Are you willing to give it a shot? Can you come back next week?”

  “Yes,” Joel said quickly.

  “Hannah?”

  If she hadn’t reminded Hannah of Dr. Melfi, she might have said no in that moment, but something stopped her from doing that.

  “I’ll try,” Hannah said—mumbled, really.

  “Okay, let’s say same time next week,” Dr. Snow said. “And for the record, I do think it is possible to get through this and heal from it and be at least as strong as you once were on the other side. But it isn’t easy, and ultimately both of you have to want it or at least want to try. Let me leave you with one thought before we call it a night. This is important, and it is sometimes a hard thing to get your head around. Your first marriage as you know it is over. You will never again be that Hannah and that Joel, the ones who met and fell in love and never, ever betrayed the other or thought of a life without the other. You will have to put that relationship and all the expectations and rules that went with it away. But now you have a chance to embark on a second marriage together. You are different people. Hannah, your eyes are open in a way they weren’t before. And Joel, you have done something you regret, and you now tangibly know what you have to lose. But you are still Hannah and Joel. You still live in your same house with your kids. And you can still love each other and be married. Think about that until next week, okay? Do you think you guys will be okay? Will you be able to move through your days until we see each other again?”

  “Eventually I can see coming once a week,” Joel said, his voice still raspy. “But no, I don’t think we can. For this first week at least, can we come more often? Can we come every day?”

  Dr. Snow reached for her appointment book. She leafed through each day, putting her finger on the page and looking up and down, mumbling to herself about moving this person here and that person there.

  “Hannah.” She looked up. “Are you on board, at least for now? Do you want to try this? Are you willing to come each day for a week or so before moving to a weekly schedule?”

  What would Tony Soprano say? she wondered. And then she remembered he and Carmela broke up and came back together. He, of course, was a terrible example of a faithful husband—that was really the point, she guessed—but still. The whole time they were apart, she rooted for them to get back together, and when they did, despite everything, it seemed right. She knew it wasn’t going to be that easy for her and Joel; she knew she wasn’t a fictional wife on a fictional show where two people could get over a fictional affair with no real-life consequences, but she could give it one week before facing the inevitable. In fact, that would be her plan: one week and then she would call the divorce lawyers.

  “I’m willing,” she said.

  Every day for the rest of that week, Hannah felt like a zombie, an extra on The Walking
Dead, but as they made their way up I-95 to Dr. Snow’s little castle, she felt herself wake up and tried to shift from the zombie apocalypse to New Jersey mob life. She thought of Tony and Carmela and Meadow and AJ, and by the time they turned onto the street and spotted the turret, Hannah felt not like herself, exactly, but like a new version of herself.

  In the office at the top of the winding stairs, they talked about if it was really possible to recover from a betrayal, and Dr. Snow’s never-wavering answer was always yes, it was possible, if both partners wanted it to be. While Hannah pushed to focus on the here and now, Dr. Snow spent some time wanting to understand who they had been before this had happened. What did they argue about? What was their never-ending fight, the thing that kept coming up that had no resolution? Slowly, over the course of the week, it became clear that they’d never loved each other less than they thought they had, but they had been so busy, so caught up in taking care of everyone, that sometimes a month would go by when they didn’t have sex. Each time there was a tiny revelation like that, Joel always jumped in to say that was no excuse for what he had done, and Hannah firmly agreed.

  “The thing is,” Hannah said during one of their sessions, “that I used to always be able to defuse my anger because I knew, without question, that I wanted to be with Joel, to stay married to him, so I could ask myself, What is your endgame? and realize there was no need to keep the fight going.”

  “I never knew that,” Joel said quietly. “That you had that internal dialogue, I mean.”

  “I did,” Hannah said. “That’s why this is so hard. I don’t know what my endgame is anymore. Or worse, I have a different endgame now.” She looked right at Joel when she said this, watching his color drain away.

  Dr. Snow also talked about the different roles they might have now—how even when Joel got tired of being the sorry one and had the inevitable urge to get on with it, he couldn’t, he did not have that luxury, she explained. He had to stay in that role as long as Hannah needed him to. He saw no problem with that and said he would remain in that position forever if it would keep Hannah with him. With Dr. Snow they talked and talked and talked. What they didn’t do was talk when they were alone.

  “Tomorrow night I’m giving you homework,” Dr. Snow said as they were leaving her after their fifth visit. “I want you to have Monica come early, and I want you to have dinner, just the two of you, before our time together here. It’s okay if it doesn’t go well. It’s okay if you fight or have nothing to say—we can talk about all of that when you get here. But just try it.”

  “No way,” Hannah said while Dr. Snow was still talking. “Coming here is one thing, but no, I won’t. That would be like agreeing that this is all okay. I’m not going to do it.”

  “Can we sit down again?” Joel asked.

  Hannah didn’t want to. She was getting tired of this. They could talk and talk and talk, and no matter what they said, Joel would still have had an affair with Tara.

  “Please?” Joel said.

  Dr. Snow sat down. Hannah knew they were going over their time. It was so unlike Joel to do something like that. Hannah continued to stand. Joel kept his eyes on her and moved back to his seat.

  “This won’t take long,” he said to Dr. Snow. “I’ve hesitated to bring this up for so many reasons. My father asked me not to, for one. More than that, though, I don’t want it to seem like I’m making an excuse, because there is no excuse for what I did. But Hannah, maybe it will give you some insight.”

  Hannah didn’t want insight. In her mind the words talk is cheap ran on a loop. She had said a week, and they were almost there. Maybe it had been enough time. Maybe she would call the lawyers tomorrow, decide which one she liked best, and move forward.

  “My parents had some infidelity trouble of their own,” Joel said. “My mother was unfaithful, on two different occasions, if I know the whole story. It was, well, it was awful, but they got through it. It didn’t break them apart.”

  Hannah was so stunned she had to work hard to remain standing. She hadn’t really known Joel’s mom well—she’d been sick when they’d started dating. But still, they’d seemed like the perfect family; there’d never been an indication that they’d been anything but.

  “Does this change anything for you, Hannah?” Dr. Snow asked.

  “No,” Hannah said.

  “Well, will you reconsider my request? Will you have dinner with Joel tomorrow night? It doesn’t mean anything. It is not an admission of acceptance—I want to make that very clear right now to both of you.”

  Poor Richard, Hannah thought. And as if he were reading her mind, Joel said, “Please don’t ever tell my father you know. Please. It would kill him.”

  “I’ll think about dinner,” Hannah said, surprising herself. “Make the plans, and I’ll see how I feel.”

  Joel took care of it all, arranging babysitting with Monica and making a reservation at the Italian restaurant in the Northeast that Hannah had always hoped to go to. Hannah had every intention of saying no, she wasn’t going to go, but she never said it, and when it was time to walk out the door and she could either make a scene or go, she just went.

  Hannah had a piece of paper with the divorce lawyers’ names and numbers folded in her pocket, and she decided she would talk as little as possible until they got back to Dr. Snow, at which time she was going to say she had tried her best, but she just couldn’t do it anymore. Once they were seated, though, Hannah didn’t want to wait a minute longer. Enough was enough.

  “This was a bad idea,” she said, putting down her menu and lifting her napkin off her lap. “Can you call Dr. Snow to see if we can come earlier?”

  “What? No,” Joel said soothingly. “We’ll have a nice dinner, and then we’ll go see her. We’ll see her soon.”

  “Joel, I can’t sit here next to you and pretend things are okay. I can’t order spaghetti and an arugula salad and act like you didn’t do a terrible, terrible thing to me. How am I supposed to do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Joel said honestly. “I just don’t know.”

  “This is all for nothing in the end, I’m sorry to say. I gave myself a deadline, one week, and I’ve sat in her office and listened to her say that infidelity doesn’t have to mean the end, and I believe that she believes that. But what I believe is that you lied to me, you had sex with another woman, and you just must not have ever loved me as much as I thought you did.”

  “No,” Joel said, pushing up out of his seat like there was something important to tend to and then sitting back down. “No. None of those things. I mean, yes, I did those bad things. But I love you; I have always loved you at least as much as you thought I did—more—always more.”

  “Then why?” Hannah asked. “No, don’t answer that. We’ll just go around in the same circles we’ve been going around in all week. Please, let’s go, I don’t think I can even face a server here. And I can’t stand being around other people. They are either happy and unscathed or miserable and betrayed, and I can’t see another couple without wondering which category they fall into. It’s exhausting. If we can’t make our appointment earlier, we can just wait in the car. At least we’ll be there.”

  Joel stood up. “Let me just—at the very least, let me get us a glass of wine. I’ll tell them we might not order, that I don’t feel well. The place isn’t crowded; they won’t mind, I think. Please, just one glass?”

  Joel looked pale and was getting paler by the second, and Hannah thought, Uh-oh. She had considered showing him the paper with the lawyers’ names on it to prove she was serious, and now she was glad she hadn’t. She didn’t have to do that in public. This had been a mistake, clearly, but now she just had to get through it.

  “Fine, fine,” she said quickly. “I’ll have a glass of red.”

  It was a relief when he left the table and walked the short distance to the bar. She settled her napkin back on her lap and took a deep breath. In a few minutes he returned with two glasses of red wine. Hannah took a long
sip.

  She wasn’t going to talk—really, she wasn’t going to—but she heard herself talking anyway.

  “Here’s how I know this is all a waste of time,” she said. “You know how Dr. Snow said we could start our second marriage together? Really, that’s the only thing that kept me going back to her this week: I was curious to see if it made any sense, if it seemed possible. But the thing is I wish we could still be the old us, so how am I supposed to get from the old us to the new us? All I feel is anger and disbelief. Oh, and I feel betrayed. And I feel like I don’t know you. So the new us, our second marriage, as Dr. Snow put it, seems to be our first marriage minus all the good and plus a whole lot of bad. That doesn’t seem like a good marriage to me. Does it to you?”

  Joel was shaking his head. He looked as pale as she had ever seen him, and she wondered if he had already located the bathroom. She watched as he took shallow breaths through his mouth and closed his eyes for a few seconds. She sighed, thinking this was where it went downhill. He would sprint to the bathroom, and that would be that for now. In that moment she wanted him gone, from the table, from the restaurant, from her life.

  She squinted her eyes and looked right at him. “Have you thought for one minute about how you would feel if the tables were turned? If I had had an affair? I should have an affair,” she said, spitting out the words. “I mean, why not? You did it. Why shouldn’t I? And then, when I’m done and satisfied, maybe I’ll be ready to start our second marriage.” She finished her wine and wished another full glass would magically appear. Her heart was beating so fast it made her feel slightly nauseated, and she was having a hard time holding Joel’s gaze, but she did not want to be the first one to look away.

  Finally, he shifted his eyes to the table, his face alarmingly pale. The words I don’t mean it ran through Hannah’s mind. But she willed herself to not say them. She watched as he rose from his chair and backed away, looking at her until he couldn’t anymore. He bolted to the left and into the bathroom. She wondered if he had asked for a table not too far from the restrooms. The main dining room was in a completely different room; there were just a few tables near the bar. That forethought would be just like him. So why, when he’d made the monumental choice to sleep with Tara, had he not thought it through the way he did everything else?