“You’re the one who wanted me to go to therapy in the first place!” Alex pointed at Isabel. “I can’t believe you’re resisting this.”
“I’m not resisting couples counseling—wait! Just listen to me for a second. I’m not saying we shouldn’t go to couples counseling, I’m just saying that I don’t feel comfortable going to the doctor you see for individual therapy. Why can’t we find a neutral person? Someone whom we’d both feel comfortable with?”
“We can.” Alex had calmed down. “If you don’t like Pat. But let’s just try this for now—okay? For me? This is hard for me, this therapy thing. I don’t want to have to get into all my stuff again with someone new. Pat knows me now. It’s easy with her.”
Isabel looked down at her ragged cuticles and chipped fingernails. “Fine. I’ll try it. But I don’t think it’s right. I’m telling you that straight out. It’s not right. I can’t believe Pat even suggested it.”
“She didn’t. I did.”
“Isabel, before our time is up I wanted to approach you with an idea,” Pat said. “As you know, I have been seeing Alex for a period of time. It’s been, what, Alex? Seven months? Well, I know this is somewhat unorthodox—you two coming to me for couples therapy on top of my work with Alex—and I hear that you don’t feel entirely comfortable with this arrangement. So I’m proposing that you come to me as an individual—just for a session or two—so I can get a more rounded picture. You’re shaking your head. Would that not be acceptable to you?”
“I don’t think any of this is acceptable.” Isabel tried to stay as measured and calm as the therapist as she addressed her husband. “Alex, this is unorthodox. Pat doesn’t even know me—”
“That’s exactly why she wants to meet with you one-on-one,” Alex interrupted. “Isabel, you said you’d give this a shot. You said you’d try it.”
Isabel looked at her husband, whose beseeching look matched that of Pat’s.
“Fine,” she sighed. “I’ll try it.”
“I appreciate your coming in, Isabel.” Pat motioned for her to take the seat opposite the desk. “I do think that this will inevitably help me to help you and Alex both work through this difficult time. If I may, I’d like to start out by asking you some questions and, since it’s our first visit one-on-one, I may scribble some notes down, if that’s all right with you.”
Suddenly you care if something’s “all right” with me? Why start now?
“That’s fine.”
“Okay, well, to begin with, what would you say your major problems with the marriage are? This is probably a good place for me to point out that whatever you say to me in here will not be repeated to Alex either in my individual sessions or in our couples sessions.”
“My major problems with the marriage?” Isabel considered the question. “Where do I begin? I mean, we covered some of this in our session last week.”
“Yes, we did.” Pat looked up from her notepad. “But what I’d like to hear is your perspective on the marriage, on your relationship with Alex. We touched on it last week but we didn’t go much beyond the surface.”
Isabel shifted in her seat. “The sex stuff’s thrown me for a loop. I mean, like we talked about, I’m in my prime and Alex has the drive of a ninety-year-old. And it’s not just sex drive, because I know there are pills he could take or whatever. It’s something more than that. It’s deeper than that—like he clicks off whenever it comes to intimacy. Like he’s not even there. So that bugs me. And Alex says he doesn’t see what the problem is. No, that’s not right: he says it’s my problem. That I place too much importance on sex. Oh, and he hates that I can remember how long it’s been since we last made love. He says I keep score.”
“Do you?”
“No! I don’t keep score as much as I just feel like it’s been forever since we had sex and then I check the calendar and I see that—”
“Ah. So you do keep track of your lovemaking.”
“That’s not what I said! I was just—”
“You just said that you checked the calendar, correct? So you make notations of when you and Alex are intimate?”
“No. That’s the thing. I keep track of social things on my calendar. Dinner with Marty and Alice, for instance. And, if Alex and I had sex when we got home that night I remember it. So I don’t keep track, really. Not the way you and Alex are suggesting.”
“Me and Alex. You put me and Alex together as a united front. Is that how you see us?”
Duh.
“Yes. I told you that. Well, I told Alex. That’s why I don’t think it’s a good idea to get counseling from you for our marriage—because I feel underrepresented in our session.”
“So why did you end up doing it? Coming in with Alex?”
Isabel picked at her thumb again and pushed down against the speck of blood. “I was scared not to.”
“What are you scared of?”
Isabel looked up from her hands. “What am I scared of? Alex, of course. What else would I be scared of?”
“You’re scared of Alex?”
“Ah, yeah.” Isabel was bewildered at Pat’s naiveté.
“Why?”
“Why am I scared of my husband? Are you serious? You seriously do not know why I’d have a reason to be afraid of Alex?”
The therapist was still.
Pat could not be this good an actress.
“Let me see if I am understanding this. He’s been coming to you every week for seven months. Every single week. And he’s never once talked about how he gets violent with me?”
“Excuse me?” Pat was trying hard not to appear astounded.
“You two have never discussed his violent rages? How he’s made me bleed? How I end up in a different motel each time because I’m embarrassed to go back to the same place twice wearing my sunglasses at night? He’s never told you any of this?”
Nothing.
“Oh, my God. I feel sick.” Isabel grabbed for her purse on the floor and stood up to put her coat on. “I feel physically ill.”
“Isabel, wait.” Pat scrambled to think of what she could say.
“Wait? Wait for what? For you to do your fucking job and figure out why your patient is coming to you in the first place? Wait for my husband to kill me? Jesus! No wonder the fights haven’t gotten any better! He’s been lying all along. He hasn’t dealt with any of it. I think I’m going to throw up.”
Isabel ran out of the office, through the lobby and out into the fresh air. She stopped on the sidewalk and sucked in the air as though she’d been suffocating.