Page 4 of The Therapist

TWO

Sandy

No one ever told me that ageing would be the worst experience of my life.

Every morning, I get out of bed and go to the bathroom mirror, stand close and study my face, searching for signs of decay.

With microscopic intensity, I examine my skin for wrinkles and marks and my body for sagging parts.

I am fighting time and gravity and I hate it, but that’s not what I hate most about getting older.

Today I can see that the line between my eyes is a little deeper, a little more visible.

No doubt courtesy of last night’s drunken argument with him.

I see the two of us, me with my wine, him with his beer, shouting and spitting our hate for each other.

Leaning forward, I use my fingers to stretch the skin.

Would a facelift help? Botox? Fillers? All of that is so expensive.

But the loss of physical beauty is not the worst thing.

The worst thing about ageing is the loss of hope and expectation and choices.

At sixteen I was glorious with peachy skin and a firm body.

I was the girl who turned heads wherever I went.

Boys danced to my tune and they were so entertaining to play with, to use and discard, to destroy when I could.

The world was my oyster. I was going to do everything, go everywhere. I was going to leave my small life behind and conquer the world. I saw the rest of my life as a bigger version of school, where my looks opened every door and always got me what I wanted.

But then I was seventeen and eighteen and nineteen and I realised that conquering the world is not as easy as it seems because beautiful girls are everywhere.

I had to take a mundane job so that I could live. Money is boring but so very necessary. But even at nineteen and twenty, even at twenty-five, I still had hope for a grand life. I was waiting, biding my time until the hand of fate gave me everything I wanted.

And then I fell into infatuation. I won’t say it was ‘love’ because I don’t do that.

I can’t do that. But I was drawn to his physical beauty and so I let my guard down a little.

That was stupid. And then I got pregnant and I let him convince me that it was a good thing.

And now I am here with two children and ‘the husband’.

We are two beautiful people who have made each other ugly by staying locked together in a toxic marriage dance.

When I’m not in an argument with him, I feel trapped and bored as I watch the wrinkles write themselves onto my face. When I am in an argument with him, I am filled with fury and venom and I hate myself as much as I hate him.

Is it any wonder that I need to entertain myself, that I find ways to keep myself amused? What other choice do I have as I stagnate in this small house, tied to a family I have no interest in?

I watch the man I married as he ties himself in knots to keep me happy and then lashes out when he sees that he’s failed. It makes me smile to see him out of control. I like it.

And until a few months ago, that was at least keeping me going.

But then it wasn’t enough. I needed someone outside of my life, a stranger, someone who would listen to whatever I said, someone who would give me all his attention.

I crave attention, focused and pure. It feeds me like water feeds a plant.

I know myself in a way that few people ever do. I know who I am and what I need.

I found the perfect person. A therapist. Who better to listen to me, to tell me that I am perfect and the world around me is damaged, the people around me a disappointment? I walked into his office with my prepared story and my mask in place.

‘Sandy, Sandy!’ I hear him, the husband, my husband, my burden, calling me, and I groan, leaving the mirror to go downstairs.

‘Can you take over here? I have to get to work. Stop crying, Felix, just stop,’ he screams, and my stomach turns at the chaos in the kitchen. My seven-year-old son’s nose is running and he is only half dressed.

‘Mr Teddy is coming to school today,’ my daughter tells us, attempting to stuff the large purple toy into her backpack.

‘No, he’s not,’ I reply. She’s a real little madam, this five-year-old child of mine. I can see my own personality every time she opens her mouth and I have to resist the urge to tell her, ‘There can only be one little girl, only one.’

‘Mr Teddy is coming to school today,’ repeats Lila, a look of pure determination in her green eyes.

‘For God’s sake,’ he mutters.

And then he stands and grabs the teddy away from Lila.

I wait and watch, interested to see how this goes for him.

I know he would like to wake up to a quiet kitchen with two angelic children sitting at the table, eating their breakfasts.

He would like me to be more involved, more present.

But you can’t have everything. He has me and he should be ecstatic every day.

He takes the teddy to put it back in Lila’s room as the child begins to wail.

‘Great, just great,’ I shout, watching his shoulders tense.

He makes things worse and then he tries to blame me for the chaos.

If he would accept that mornings are loud and messy, this would all be easier, but he keeps trying to fix things.

I hate the mornings as well and try to leave him to deal with them as much as possible.

‘Shut it,’ he says, looming over me, and I feel my heart race.

I can’t push him too far. He’s too big, too strong, and he could really hurt me.

I know that. And I also know that if he did hurt me, he would find a way to make it my fault, because everything is my fault.

Maybe it is? That’s part of the toxic dance: the lying. He lies; I lie –but who lies more?

Yesterday I spent the afternoon making burgers, applying myself to the domestic task with as much enthusiasm as I could muster, which was not very much at all.

‘Why are we eating this?’ he said when he sat down at the kitchen table, after the children had finally been sent off for their television time and things were blessedly quiet.

‘That’s what you wanted,’ I replied. ‘You asked me to make burgers. When we spoke on the phone – you called me from work.’

‘Bullshit,’ he snapped, ‘you said we were having pasta.’ Such anger over a meal choice and so obvious that it had nothing to do with the food at all.

I knew he was searching for something to get angry over the moment he walked through the door with hunched shoulders and his square jaw more tensed than usual.

But it was such a weird thing to get upset over that I laughed and then I had to keep quiet because I could see how irate he was.

I did make up the phone call about burgers to upset him.

I do that sometimes. But last week he made up a story about my agreeing to take the car in for a service, and I never would have agreed to such a thing, unless I was drunk, in which case he shouldn’t have asked me until he knew I was sober and concentrating.

Maybe I like upsetting him but maybe he likes upsetting me too.

He has his side of the story and I have mine.

Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle but maybe there’s no truth at all.

‘Just eat it,’ I said and he did, even as he drank one beer after another, knowing that I would comment on that, knowing it would lead to a fight.

‘You’re an alcoholic,’ I yelled at him last night.

‘That’s rich coming from you,’ he sneered, pointing to my full wine glass. Alcohol dulls the senses and I need mine to be as dulled as possible to survive this life.

‘Shut it,’ he repeats now as I hold my breath in the messy kitchen. I drop my gaze as he waves a fist at me, the teddy in his other hand making him seem ludicrous.

He moves away from me and violently stuffs the teddy down into the backpack.

It’s not even 8 a.m. and I can see that he wishes the day was over and he was back in bed already.

Lila stops crying abruptly in the way that she can and she sits down on the floor, patting the teddy stuffed down in her bag, her thumb going into her mouth.

She looks like me – not as pretty of course but that may change over the years.

She has golden-brown hair and a heart-shaped face and the same green eyes.

Felix is like him, blond with blue eyes and a square jaw.

He looks exactly like his father and I can’t abide the child’s crying or maybe I just can’t abide him, the little boy who trapped me here, whose first breath meant the end of my life as I wanted it to be.

‘You’re such a gorgeous family,’ strangers will tell us at the park when we are all together, and I must admit that I get a kick out of that. We are gorgeous. Picture-perfect in every way.

But scrape the surface only a little and there are things no one wants to see.

I wish I wanted to be here, and maybe if he and I could find a way to be better as people, it would be fine.

After a glass or two or three of wine, I always feel hopeful that the two of us can change and life can turn into the fairy tale it was supposed to be.

But then I sober up and he’s yelling or lying about something and that hope feels misplaced.

‘I need to get out of here,’ he says, picking up his briefcase as he heads into work, where he will sit behind a desk and try to convince people to buy the shitty mattresses his company makes.

He’s failing. I know he’s failing. There are rumblings about the business closing down, something to think about for me.

I don’t work. Caring for these children and this house and holding on to what beauty I can is enough work for me.

With each passing year, more exercise, more complicated skin routines and more effort are required to look the way I used to look, and I am losing that battle.

Turning away from the children, I pour myself a cup of coffee and take a sip. How much would a facelift cost? Exactly how much?

I hear the sound of the garage door closing and I know he’s gone.

Slamming my cup down on the counter, I yell, ‘Get dressed and into the car, both of you.’ And they listen.

They always listen when he’s not here. Despite how big he is, how scary he can be, they adore him, want to be with him, push his boundaries, knowing that he will give in on bedtime and television time and exactly how many treats are allowed. I’m not like that.

I need to get them to school, get them out of my hair, and then I will make myself beautiful. I will perfect my mask so that I can go in today and see my therapist. I will sit on his sofa and let him look at me as I speak. This thought cheers me, even without the help of a glass of wine.

I do a quick clean-up of the kitchen, stopping in front of a cupboard to look at the large blue cookie jar I have stored on a high shelf. I feel a little shiver run through me at what I have in there and at what it means for my future.

Because I can feel it getting closer now. I can feel the day is coming when I show the world exactly what my dear husband is really like, exactly who he is. And what a day that will be.