Page 48

48 | Uptown Girl KAITLIN

When our divorce was finalized, Ethan and I stopped seeing our couples counselor. For obvious reasons.

You can’t fix something you’ve already returned to sender.

After the Harvest Festival debacle, when he and Ruby arrived home to his apartment (even though it wasn’t his night), he called me and insisted we go back for a therapy session.

“But we aren’t a couple!” I protested. But I knew I had no leg to stand on.

“Kaitlin, we’re in this together,” he whispered, so Ruby wouldn’t hear. “Whether we like it or not.”

The man loves a lecture. It’s so annoying when he’s right.

Of course I know I went off the deep end. Of course I know I took it too far. I know I am not fine . I knew that before I blew it all up. In retrospect, that’s probably why I did it.

So I didn’t have to pretend anymore.

On the downside, I no longer have access to the school’s office copier. Lisa has been handed those responsibilities, and she is already drunk with power. I can’t wait for her to organize a PS421 field trip to Target to shop for jumpsuits.

Those administrators will miss me when she gets to talking. And never stops.

Today, I am back on the Upper West Side for our therapy session. Back in my childhood hood.

Once in the psychologist’s office, with its requisite Matisse print and World Market cushions, I actually don’t mind being there. At least I’m not holding my breath anymore—despite the doctor’s overpowering floral perfume. I have hit rock bottom. The truth is out.

And, more than anything, it’s a relief.

I sit on one side of the couch, counterbalanced by Ethan, as she faces us, hand poised above her notepad. We are farther apart than ever.

Ethan begins by explaining what happened at the festival, in his words. What he describes is an admittedly ugly scene, involving aired dirty laundry near hay bales. And I sit ready to spew venom back. About how he chose the very worst possible person to date. About disrespect! But I discover, when it’s my turn, I am no longer fired up to prove my point.

Years before, the same doctor—with the same short curly salt-and-pepper hair and tortoiseshell glasses—once asked us, with regard to our arguments, “Would you rather be right or loved?”

I guess now that we’re not in love, being right seems significantly less important too. I am too tired to fight. Especially when part of me knows he’s mostly in the right. And it is when I admit that fact out loud that I start to cry. It is a surprise even to me.

Ethan is kind about it. He is kind, full stop, I allow myself to admit. The therapist is too. They eye me with concern, emphasize all the change I’ve experienced lately, suggest I take “some time” to visit with my sister in the Bay Area. Take a time-out from mom-dom. From ex-wife-dom. From PTA-dom. From work. Pluck ripe fruit from her orange groves. Reset. A California infusion.

I don’t say no.

I don’t miss Ethan, I realize. Not in the way my reaction to his being with Sasha suggested. I don’t think I even felt betrayed by his choice, though he knew I disliked her. I think I was more jealous that Sasha liked him —saw value in him and not me—than the other way around.

That’s a lot to admit. I don’t like it one bit.

It took a total implosion for me to realize that Sasha isn’t even Sasha at all for me. She’s just an idea of something that feels stolen from me—a symptom of what the therapist calls my “scarcity mentality.” The idea that one person’s success is another’s failure. Sasha is a stand-in for the harsh lens through which I see myself. Something tantamount to fluorescent lights in an airport bathroom. And who likes that?

For all my “compulsion,” as the doctor gently labels it, I rarely check Hugo’s social media anymore. In fact, since the scene at school, I have erased the apps off my phone. I never text him either. That relationship petered out in the worst way, anyway. Not with a dramatic big to-do, as a torrid affair might suggest. First came the end of my marriage. (Even in that, Ethan was maddeningly tepid.) And, eventually, the affair ended with a bleary dulling of edges. It, too, proved insufficient. He, too, proved boring. A figment of another time. A ghost of homeboys past. Not the missing piece that would make me whole.

Why was I never enough?

“Why do you think Sasha became the arbiter of value in your mind?” the doctor asks.

But I am unsure. Maybe the answer lies in the streets just outside the entrance to this doorman building. Down just a few manicured blocks to Eighty-Sixth and Broadway, where all my first joys and fears were awakened. Where both doubt and possibility began.

It’s time to start again.

Before we leave the couch, Ethan turns to me unprompted. “Kait,” he says, carefully. “I want to say something while I have the chance.”

We’ve decided I will be returning to this office for weekly visits, but he will not be joining me. I did not resist this plan. Now that I have blown things sky high so publicly, I no longer need to worry that people will judge me for needing help. There are so many better things to judge me for.

“I just want to say that I should have been there more,” Ethan says, his familiar eyes earnest and searching mine. “When things were off between us, I shouldn’t have responded by avoiding our life. I should have been there for the difficult day-in and day-out of parenting. I should have supported you more. And I know I’m complicit in how you’ve been feeling… and struggling. I’m going to do better.”

I both appreciate his words and know they’re eons too late. Not for saving our relationship—that was never possible. But for saving me.

After our appointment ends, Ethan and I ready to part ways awkwardly outside, under a green awning with gold lettering. I’m sure he is headed back to his office. The proximity to Midtown was why we started seeing a doctor way up here in the first place. So he could squeeze us in at lunch.

I can already see he will not be that kind of dad anymore. And, with a twinge, I realize he won’t be that kind of husband either, when he gets the chance for a redo.

It stings.

But maybe I could be better for someone else too.

I watch Ethan as he checks his phone. Finds nothing. Sighs. He is still handsome. He always will be. But he looks tired—and sad.

“Go get her, tiger,” I say lamely. I am trying to give him the go-ahead.

He might as well move on. Maybe it will help me to do the same. Move on from everything.

I remind myself of the new philosophy I am trying to adopt: It can only be good for Ruby to have more people in her life to love her. It can only be good for our daughter to have more family.

I feel a little sick imagining a part of her life that doesn’t involve me, but I have decided I am committed to keeping the peace for her sake. From now on.

At least I’ll try.

Ethan furrows his brow in confusion, but then smiles and cocks his head as he registers what I mean by, “Go get her.”

“Really?”

“Really,” I say. “You’re obviously miserable. It makes it harder to hate you.”

“Well, thanks—sort of.” He frowns. “But I think that door may be closed now.”

I shake my head. Men! “Don’t be an idiot,” I say. “The door is not closed. I saw how Sasha looked at you.”

He looks up at that. “You really think so?”

He must be feeling desperate if he’s open to insight from me, on this, after everything. I do know him though. And, for better or worse, I know her.

“Just don’t be passive,” I say. “Don’t just let life happen to you. Fight for it.”

He nods slowly, like he’s considering this.

“My two cents,” I say. An old woman strolls by us with a fluffy white dog. I turn to walk the same way.

“Is that something you think I do?” he asks. “Let life happen to me?”

I turn back to face him. “I don’t think it, Ethan. I know it,” I say. “It’s how you wound up with me.”

He bites his lip, like he had not considered this.

“Make choices,” I say. “Don’t just sit in it. Don’t wait for someone to choose you . Take it from me. It doesn’t get you anywhere good.”

“Thanks, Kait,” he says, nodding. “That’s good advice.”

“It is.” I bring a hand to my hip. “Maybe I’ll become a life coach.”

He narrows his eyes. “Mm. Maybe not.”

We both smile. For a second, I remember that there were good times.

“Anyway, go!” I say. “Seize the day!”

He waves goodbye. Turns. I watch him as he heads down Columbus Avenue, first strolling, then speed-walking, then eventually running for the train. Go get her, tiger.

I walk down the street to my train too, wishing I wasn’t underdressed. Maybe I do need some California sun.

I am not better yet. But maybe I can be.

In the shade, the warm day turns brisk. But there is a comfort in being here again. I peer up at the glowing windows of the prewar buildings I know from my childhood, down at the sidewalk etched with names. And, though I know it isn’t here, I search for my own.