Olen Steinhauer - The Nearest Exit

Where was this coming from?

“Tina, let Milo speak. Milo?”

In the silence that followed, he found himself fidgeting with the knee of his pants in some strange solidarity with Dr. Ray. He forced himself to stop, though he knew how it looked, how he looked-awkward and nervous, a man never to be trusted.

After the things he’d done, the places he’d been, what was this? A study belonging to a little Long Island psychologist. But Christ, it felt like one of those cells on the nineteenth floor, with John in a bad mood.

“For instance,” he finally managed, groping for something that didn’t include murder or kidnapping or robbery, “the story of how we fell in love. Back in September, at one of our first meetings, you went through it all right here. Remember?”

Tina nodded. “Of course I remember.”

“It didn’t happen like that. Not for me. I’ve never understood it-what does that even mean, falling in love while watching the Towers fall? I can’t even comprehend it.”

“It’s what I felt. I’m not going to make apologies for my feelings, Milo.”

“That’s right, Tina. We should never apologize for our feelings. Milo, tell us more. We’re listening.”

He looked at each woman again, feeling the distance between him and them increasing, and thought that this was the exact opposite of what therapy was supposed to do. “It didn’t start with love, that’s what I’m trying to say. What I felt was desperation. My life had gone to hell, and I was desperate for something to hold on to. And there she was-Tina, I mean-going into labor right there on the street. I needed something, and Tina was there at the right time.”

“Lovely.”

“Tina, let him go on. Milo?”

“Well,” he said, “when I woke up next to Tina’s bed, and we were watching the Towers on TV, I was more confused than anything else. I didn’t feel close to anybody. You were there, clutching onto me, but it was like I was alone in that hospital room.”

“Alone. I see. I fell in love, and you just felt cold.”

“Don’t misunderstand me-love did come. It just took time. And Stephanie.”

“Stephanie?” That was Dr. Ray, sounding as if he’d finally, after months, said something interesting. “What do you mean by that?”

“I don’t mean my heart melted when I saw her, not quite. It just struck me that, for the first time in my life, I’d met someone who could do nothing wrong. That’s how babies are. Nothing is their fault. If they cry or throw a fit or shit in your hands-everything they do wrong is your fault. That’s not sentimentality-that’s fact. To be honest, I was awed by this, that any human being could be utterly without guile and menace. It was new to me. It was a shock. I wanted to be near that innocence, to protect it.”

Dr. Ray embarked on one of her favorite pastimes: rephrasing what her patients had said. “So you could say that you fell in love with your daughter before you fell in love with your wife.”

“You could certainly say that.”

“Tina? Anything to say?”

Tina was just staring at Milo, her expression betraying nothing.

“Tina?”

Tina raised both hands in the air, and when she brought them down again in an expression of impotence there were tears in her eyes.

“See?” she said. “This is what I’m talking about. Him falling in love with Stephanie-how come I never heard that before? Christ, Milo. How many times have I told that story? You could have stopped me years ago, before I made an ass of myself.”

Dr. Ray said, “I don’t think you’ve made an ass of yourself. Milo?”

“Of course she hasn’t,” he said.

“Let me tell you something,” said Dr. Ray. “Tina, are you listening? I want both of you to hear it.”

Tina said, “Sure.”

Milo agreed with an “Okay.”

“Though we haven’t met as regularly as we all would have liked, I think I’ve gotten a sense of the dynamic between the two of you. You’ve probably noticed that I use the word ‘listen’ a lot. It’s not because I’m some touchy-feely therapist. I say it because it’s an issue here. You’re not listening to each other. Wait, Milo,” she said, raising a finger at him. “Yes, you’re listening to each other’s words, but you’re not listening to the subtext.”

Both Milo and Tina waited.

“For example, Milo-why do you think you lied about the circumstances of your meeting?”

“I wouldn’t say I lied-”

“Omission is essentially the same thing.”

“Okay,” he said, ready to admit to anything. “I suppose I was afraid of hurting Tina’s feelings.”

“Why?”

“Yes,” said Tina, “why?”

He had to think about that. “I don’t want Tina feeling, I don’t know, disconnected from me. From the idea of our marriage.”

“And what’s the idea of your marriage?”

“That. The story. The myth of how it began,” he said, thinking suddenly of Tourism and how without its myth it would no longer be of any value. Was that really how he thought of his marriage? “No,” he said aloud, feeling confused. “No, that’s not it. What I mean is, whether or not that story is true for both of us, the marriage isn’t affected, because it doesn’t matter how we met. What matters is how we’ve lived together.”

Tina blinked at him. Her eyes were wet. Dr. Ray was unmoved. “You still haven’t answered my question: What’s the idea of your marriage?”

“There is no idea of our marriage,” he said finally. “It simply is.” He wasn’t sure if this was what Dr. Ray was aiming at, but it was all he could manage when cornered.

Tina said, “Stephanie.”

Both looked at her.

“That’s Milo’s idea of our marriage. It’s Stephanie. That’s what he thinks, isn’t it?”

Dr. Ray shook her head. “I can’t tell you what anyone’s thinking. That’s up to Milo to say. Milo?”

Now they were looking at him.

Tina stared at his features, waiting, because this felt like a moment of decision. Dr. Ray was good at this. She could take a seemingly happy relationship and with a few questions strip it down like a shitty old car to some lie right in its center. Or some misunderstanding.

She’d noticed this last year, right at the beginning, and more than Dr. Ray’s animal sexiness this was what had frightened her, that she would discover the falseness of their marriage and show it to them proudly, wrecking their lives. Now she was trying it again, pushing them both into a corner where Tina had no choice but to ask the obvious question, and Milo had no choice but to answer.

His cheeks were coloring. He said, “It’s an idiotic question.”

“Is it?” Tina asked. Dr. Ray said nothing.

“Yeah.” He was pissed off now. “How can anyone boil seven years down to a single idea? Of course Stephanie is one idea in our marriage, but do you really think there’s only one? How about sex? That’s one excellent idea in our marriage. And love?” He turned to Dr. Ray. “Our marriage is a hundred different ideas. I’m not going to name a single one.”

“How about trust?” asked Dr. Ray.

“How about it?” he said ineptly.

“Of course a marriage is made of many different ideas, but they have their own biorhythms. Certain ideas come to the fore at certain times. If you listen to Tina, you’ll hear that, for her, trust is very often the primary idea. Her lack of it, in particular. Tina-am I misrepresenting your feelings?”

She shook her head.

“Tina feels as if a large part of your life is a complete mystery to her.”

“Which is why I’ve quit my job,” said Milo.

“And that’s an excellent step,” the doctor said. “But what does that mean? Does it mean that, from this point on, she’s going to start to get to know her husband? That’s impossible if you still can’t share your past with her. You may have quit your job, but that job still possesses the last fourteen years of your life. We are the result of our histories, Milo, not the result of our present.”