Alix Ohlin - Inside

Grace was perfect for him. She was trustworthy, caring, loyal, and smart; she understood both him and his work. So their divorce was, for a time, the great failure of his life — until he went on to other failures.

He discovered the truth about his marriage when he almost slept with a patient. An unhappily married forty-year-old banker whose husband was sick with pancreatic cancer, Marisa was rumpled and bosomy, with a messy tangle of upswept brown hair and lipstick that was always smudged; her perfume was unpleasantly spicy and overpowering. Every time she came in he thought she looked like she’d just gotten laid, although he knew from their sessions that this wasn’t true. Lonely, bereft, she wanted someone to hold her hand; she loved talking to Mitch, and there soon developed an unspoken tension that he allowed to build. He even grew to rely on it, the excitement of it feeling, at times, like the only thing that got him through the week.

At home he and Grace were sleeping in the same bed but on different schedules; she went to bed early and he stayed up well past midnight, so they overlapped as little as possible. Then Marisa’s husband died, and the day after the funeral she came into the office sobbing, dissolving, and admitted that despite her pain she was flooded with relief. Mitch patted her hand, understanding that she had chosen him for this confession instead of a priest, and that to violate her trust would be profane.

Years later he saw her at the Jean-Talon Market, and she looked great. She had lost weight, and her hair and clothes were less rumpled, though she still couldn’t keep her lipstick on. She was standing fifteen feet away, choosing an eggplant, and when she looked up and saw him, the expression on her face was horrified. He nodded noncommittally and drifted away, realizing that she hadn’t looked at all sexual during that terrible time in her life, of which she had just been reminded. She’d just been a mess. Only someone as lonely and narcissistic as Mitch could have interpreted it otherwise. He walked quickly to his car, half his grocery list abandoned, thanking his lucky stars that the damage hadn’t been worse.

A couple of days later, he stopped by Grace’s room again, during visiting hours, showing up empty-handed; bringing flowers to your ex-wife seemed like a weird thing to do, no matter what the circumstances were. There was another patient in the room, the wall-mounted television was blaring a French téléroman , and his heart went out to Grace. She hated television, which gave her headaches when she was tired. Now she was staring up at the ceiling, slack-jawed, her expression vacant, her hands by her sides. When he knocked, her eyes jumped to life, and she looked so happy that he flushed. He should have come back sooner.

“How are you feeling?” he said, pulling up a chair next to her.

“Fantastic.” She smiled, in spite of her evident pain. She had lost the glassy-eyed look, though she was still pale and the planes of her face were shadowed. Somebody had braided her hair. “Azra says you helped out at my place. Thank you.”

“It was nothing.” He had brought back the key to her apartment and set it on the bedside table, on top of what looked like a drawing her daughter had done.

In the other bed, a middle-aged woman moaned, seemingly agitated by the TV as well, so Mitch turned around to look. The soap opera was taking place in a hospital too, where a young woman wearing a lot of makeup was hooked up to a life-support machine while a handsome doctor looked down at her in consternation.

“ Mais non, mais non ,” the other patient mumbled, though Mitch couldn’t tell what exactly she was objecting to. A detergent commercial came on with a raucous jingle, and Grace winced. Noises carried into the room from the hallway, too: doctors being called to stations, the bright chatter of nurses, the hum and beep of distant machines. He was so used to being in a hospital that he rarely thought about it from the patient’s point of view, how difficult it must be to get well in the midst of the chaos and noise. He wished now that he had brought Grace something, a magazine or a book. “Is there anything else I can do?”

“I don’t know. Tell me what’s new. I haven’t seen you in ages.”

He shrugged, not knowing where to start.

“I heard you were with someone, a lawyer or something.”

This gave him pause. “Where did you hear that?”

Grace’s eyes sparkled at him. “It’s a small city. Somebody met her at a party.” She was right, of course — it was a small city — and it was no big deal. Nonetheless he felt at some obscure disadvantage. “It didn’t work out,” he said.

Grace reached for his hand and squeezed it. “Sorry.”

She was watching him intently, waiting to see if he had anything more to say about it, which was so typical of her, and so different from Martine, who simply would have changed the subject, that he smiled. He realized, now that his initial shock had passed, that Grace still looked good. She had stayed trim, probably still ran and skied. For a second he couldn’t help picturing her in those early months, splayed on their bed and whispering to him urgently, “Come inside.” She never put it any other way, and when he did she’d say his name, as if his identity had been a bit of mystery to her but was now, at this crucial moment, confirmed. This was the Grace he would always think of: young and smart and so fiercely competent that it took him years to discover just how vulnerable she was. She smiled at him now, wistfully, as if she were tracking his thoughts.

“It’s okay,” he finally said. “What about you?”

“Oh, no. Between work and Sarah, I don’t have time to meet anybody.”

“Where’s your practice now, anyway? Are you still on Côte-des-Neiges?”

She shook her head, wincing as if it hurt to do so. “I quit. I’m a teacher now. Grade six, on the West Island.”

“What? Seriously?” He was shocked by this. Plenty of therapists burned out, tired of hearing about intransigent life problems day after day, but Grace’s passion for her work had always seemed inexhaustible, her curiosity about other people such an entrenched part of her personality. She was the one everybody cornered at parties, the recipient of her friends’ troubled late-night phone calls. Strangers poured out their hearts to her in airports and grocery stores, and she never complained or seemed frustrated or bored. Her profession suited her better than anyone he knew, including himself.

“It’s a long story,” she said, clearly not intending to tell it.

Then her eyes shifted behind him, and he turned and saw a little blond girl trooping into the room — scissoring her legs in giant steps, swinging her arms like a tiny soldier — with Azra trailing her. Then she saw Mitch, stopped short, and cocked her head to the side. He guessed she was about nine.

“Come here, you,” Grace said fondly.

Mitch stepped back as the girl approached her mother and gently ran her fingers along her arm, as if afraid she might break.

Grace smiled at her. “That tickles,” she said.

Sarah smiled and kept doing it, her fingers scurrying up and down Grace’s arm like mice.

“Stop, kiddo,” Grace said. “Say hello to my friend Mitch.”

“Hi,” the girl said, without looking at him.

“Hi, Sarah. How are you?” This wasn’t the sort of question you asked children, who didn’t go in for small talk, and the girl ignored it. She didn’t seem bothered by his presence. It was just one more thing that had happened — her mother in this strange place, the doctors, staying with Azra.

“What’s the best thing that happened to you today?” Grace asked her.

“Azra gave me a Snickers,” Sarah said.