Douglas Kennedy - Five Days

I closed my book of synonyms. I opened the front door, I stepped out on the porch. We were now deeper into October. The mercury was on a downward curve. So I could only stand outside, covered just in a robe, for a minute or so. But in that time I resolved to end my marriage just after Sally finished school in June.

I let only two people in on my plan. Lucy knew. And Lisa Schneider knew.

I called Dr Schneider the day after I made my decision to go. She’d already been contacted by Dr Bancroft, so she was expecting my call. Lisa — we were on a first-name basis onwards from our first session — was in her mid-fifties. A tall gangly woman who radiated quiet intelligence and decency. Though she had her clinical side, she was nonetheless always engaged in my story and the way I so wanted to change its depressing narrative. Her office was near the college. I began to see her once a week, every Wednesday at eight a.m., adjusting my work schedule to start at ten that morning in the hospital. As Dan was already at work by the time I drove off to Brunswick he never knew that I was now talking with a therapist about an exit strategy from our marriage — and about everything else that had been unsettling me for years.

‘Why do you think you are one of the underlying reasons for your husband’s emotional detachment?’

‘Because the entire marriage started under the shadow of loss. My loss of Eric. Dan knew how broken I was by his death.’

‘So Dan took on that part of you when he got involved with you. He understood instinctually that you did not have the same love for him that you had for Eric. Yet he wanted to be involved with you. Sounds like he made a decision to engage with your ambivalence towards him — an ambivalence that, as you’ve reported, was clearly there from the start.’

In a later session, when I described my ongoing lack of passion for my husband — and how I was going through the motions — Lisa said:

‘But didn’t you try to be passionate with him for years. despite the fact that you never really felt the love for Dan that you did for Eric?’

‘That still makes me guilty of being with someone for two decades whom I never should have been with, and wasting his time as well.’

‘So Dan never had the capacity to leave you, to register your diffidence towards him? To think, I can do better.’

‘I could have been a better wife.’

‘Did you ever reject him physically?’

‘No. Whenever he wanted sex I never pushed him away.’

‘Did you ever criticize him, make him feel small, insignificant?’

‘I was always trying to keep him buoyed, especially after he was fired.’

‘Did you ever, before a few weeks ago, sleep with another man during the course of your marriage?’

I shook my head.

‘Given what you’ve reported to me — his isolation, his emotional distance, his anger towards you — do you really blame yourself for having an affair?’

I lowered my head and felt my eyes go all moist.

‘I still love Richard.’

‘Because he showed you love?’

‘Because he was so right. And I lost him.’

‘“Lost him” makes it sound as though it was your fault he went back to his wife. Whereas the truth is, having agreed together to leave your respective spouses he got a case of profoundly cold feet. So why was that your fault?’

‘Because I feel it’s always my fault.’

They call it ‘the talking cure’. I don’t know if it cured anything, as every time I drove through Bath I had a stab of sadness that would then linger for hours. There would be frequent moments while having sex with Dan — it was never ‘making love’ — when I would remember Richard’s touch, his hardness, his absolute desire for me. There were times at the dinner table — especially on nights when Sally was at Brad’s and Dan and I were alone — when I would get to talking about something I’d read in that week’s New York Times Book Review, and Dan would try to show interest, and I would be reminded of the way Richard would be so engaged when it came to anything literary, and how animated the conversation always was between us.

Months passed. Winter edged into spring. I did my work. I spoke twice a week with Ben and saw him once a month — and helped him through a difficult patch when that amazing abstract painting he was working on was turned down for the big Maine Artists show that May; the reason given that he was the student artist selected last year, and they couldn’t bestow the honor on him again. Though Ben understood this logic the rejection still bothered him. There were a few weeks where we were talking daily, as his self-doubt had become more vocal again, and he wondered aloud on several occasions whether he was good enough to really make it in the ultra-competitive art world.

‘Of course you are,’ I said. ‘You know how your professors and the people at the Portland Museum of Art rate you.’

‘They still rejected the painting.’

‘It wasn’t a rejection — and you know the rationale behind their decision. It’s a fantastic piece of work. It will find a home somewhere.’

‘And you are the eternal optimist.’

‘I’m hardly that.’

‘But you seem to be in a better place than a couple of months ago. Are things improved with Dad?’

I chose my next words carefully:

‘Things are somewhat better with me.’

Because things were quietly progressing towards the big change I would institute shortly. I’d found a job — as a senior radiographic technician at the Maine Medical Center down in Portland. Besides being the most prestigious hospital in the state it had also attracted so much medical talent from Boston, New York and the other big East Coast cities, for all those ‘lifestyle’ reasons that local magazines trumpet. The radiography department was a significantly larger one than our modest operation in Damariscotta. There would clearly be far more patient traffic and professional pressures than I had been dealing with. I found the head radiologist — a woman named Dr Conrad — very curt and to the point. But during my interview it was evident that she was impressed. I had taken Dr Harrild into my confidence when it came to applying for this job (especially as a reference from him would be crucial). And Dr Conrad did say, after offering me the job, that I had received the most glowing recommendation from ‘your boss’ in Damariscotta. The job paid $66,000 a year — a $15,000 improvement on my current post. I found the apartment in Portland. Through Lucy I also found a lawyer in South Portland who told me that, as long as my husband didn’t contest things, she could get the divorce through for around $2,000. Sally got accepted at the University of Maine, Orono, where she’ll eventually major in business studies (‘because I like the idea of making money’). She was surprisingly resilient when Brad dropped her the week after their graduation.

‘I knew it was coming,’ she said when she broke the news to me. ‘And when you know someone’s going to eventually dump you, hey. can you really sit there and cry when it happens?’

But when you don’t know that someone’s going to dump you.

A week after this conversation Sally took off for a summer job as a camp counselor in the Sebago Lake region in the west of the state. Ben, meanwhile, had received some truly good news — a year-long junior year fellowship at the Kunstakademie in Berlin. They only take two dozen American undergraduates a year. His new painting apparently clinched the deal for him. He was beyond dazzled by his acceptance, and was already immersed in learning everything imaginable about Berlin. To earn money for the year ahead he took a job at the summer school in Farmington, teaching painting. Meanwhile I found the apartment in Portland — and did the deal with the landlord about redecorating it myself in exchange for a lower rent.