The Pisces
Page 46

I walked with him across the boardwalk slowly and onto the sand. In the dark, in some ways, he looked just like one of the other junkies, if one of them were wearing a strange fish costume. Or he was a veteran amputee who, having fallen out of his chair, was trying to drag himself back: what remained of his legs wrapped in a sparkly, scaly bag.
“Goodbye,” he said.
I began to sob. I ran back into the house, where Dominic was now barking crazily.
“I’m sorry,” I cried to the dog. “I’m so sorry for everything. Here, come here.”
I put my arms around his neck and cried into his fur. Then I ran up the stairs and Dominic, still loyal in spite of everything, followed me up. From upstairs I could see that Theo had made it only halfway to the ocean. I called to him, but he didn’t turn around. When he finally got to the tide, he didn’t climb up onto the rocks, but simply dragged himself into the sea, never once pausing or looking back. Pulling himself across the sand he looked so helpless and pathetic, but as he crawled into the ocean and disappeared, he suddenly seemed so in control of himself. I thought, He is the laws of nature, though I didn’t know what that meant.
I ran back down the stairs and over the sand to the water’s edge—Dominic racing behind me. I sat down in the sand and waited. I waited there all night with no blanket, just me in my sundress. I huddled against the dog to keep warm. Once in a while I would call out Theo’s name, but he never came back.
46.
By morning I was very sick: in the spirit, the mind, and the body. I couldn’t stay in Venice any longer. Clearly something had gone very wrong, and I was getting worse. Group therapy had only led me to a merman with severe abandonment issues. Fuck this whole situation. I had come here to get away from Jamie, in the hope that the distance would help me recover. Now he was pursuing me and I didn’t even want him anymore. Didn’t that mean my mission was accomplished? Hadn’t I won? It was time to return to Phoenix and claim my prize. I decided to call and tell him the good news.
“It’s me,” I said.
“I know.” He laughed.
“How are you?”
“I’m okay. I haven’t heard from you. I’ve been worried.”
“I’m sorry. I needed some time to do some thinking.”
“Oh yes?”
“Yes.”
“And what are your thoughts?”
“Well, I was wondering first if you are still with—Megan. Or has that already burned out?”
“Well, there’s been some complications with that situation, actually.”
I knew he would fall out of love fast, but this had ended quicker than I thought.
“Oh really?” I said.
This was going to be good.
“Yes, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about this. But I didn’t want to text it to you. And when I wasn’t hearing back I figured I would talk to you in person when you returned.”
This was it. He wanted me back. He was leaving Megan for me, he just needed to be sure I still wanted to be with him too before he ended things. Men are cowardly. But I could understand that and had sympathy for him. Five minutes before, I had been lovesick over Theo. The heart contains multitudes. We all need someone in our lives, because ultimately, humans are weak.
“Actually, I’m thinking of coming home early,” I said.
“Oh yeah?”
Now he sounded nervous.
“What do you think about that?”
“Listen, Lucy, I don’t know how to say this. I—I hope you aren’t thinking of coming home early for me.”
Oh no.
“No, not for you,” I stammered.
“Okay, good. Because, uh, things have changed a little with Megan and me.”
“How so?” I snapped.
“Well, it appears—it appears she is pregnant. And she’s going to keep the baby. So we’re going to be parents together. She’s going to move in with me, at least for a while.”
I was silent.
“Lucy?”
I couldn’t say anything. All those years I had tried to get us to cohabitate, and all it took for this blond scientist bitch was some little womb booger and there he was, boom, ready to commit. I didn’t want to show him I was angry. I didn’t want to curse him out, give him that satisfaction of knowing he had won. Where I thought I had all the power in my pocket it now belonged to a fetus. But I couldn’t say anything. No words would form. I was totally alone.
“Hello, Lucy, are you there?”
I was in a fetal position on the floor with stomach cramps. I didn’t say a word, just let him yammer a few more times until he hung up. What was I thinking? Jamie would have only been a bandage. It was Theo I really needed. But now he was gone forever. I was withdrawing fast. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. The hospital wouldn’t be right. What could they give me that could fix this? It wasn’t a real drug I was coming off of. It was way worse.
47.
Somehow, I found my way to group. Dr. Jude took one look at my unwashed hair, my skirt covered in sand, face drawn and skinny, and nodded knowingly as if to say, This is where the addiction takes you.
Yes, this was where you ended up: disheveled, lovesick, alone. Wherever you thought you would end up, wherever you thought the worst could be, was nothing like where you actually ended up. There was a reason they all kept coming back to group. Somewhere, in the backs of their minds, they must have remembered what the pain was like. They didn’t want it anymore.
But Sara was still seeing Stan and she seemed like she was doing okay. She chirped about how she was integrating her Stan life into her self-care life.
“This time, I’m still doing me,” she said. “I’m still self-dating. But it’s also nice to always have a partner now at salsa dancing. He does warm-ups with me before improv class too. True, I have to pay for everything. And technically he has nowhere else to go. But he’s here for me now. The way I see it, if he didn’t want to be with me he could still be sleeping at the Korean spa. Those floor mats are not so uncomfortable. He does have a choice. He’s not forced to live with me. He’s choosing me.”
Sara said she wanted to stay in group and also stay with Stan. Dr. Jude said she didn’t recommend it, but she wasn’t going to kick her out.
“You’ll see,” said Sara. “I’m really flourishing. I’m even thinking of getting into spoken word.”
I wondered if Sara was totally kidding herself or if she was proof that the seemingly impossible could be done after all: the mending of an old, unhealthy relationship into a new, healthy one that didn’t destroy you. Should I have been more responsive to Jamie when he had first started texting? Why had I ignored him to chase a relationship that was only sustainable when confined to a rock? Clearly I had made some kind of wrong decision or I wouldn’t be back here, head in hands, seated next to Dr. Jude’s framed poster of Jungian archetypes. What was worse, still, was that the others all seemed to have gotten better without me. Even Diana had been totally clean, off the tennis boys for over a week, and was paying more attention to her children.
“Regardless of how I feel about my husband, whether I lust after him anymore or not, my children are what I really live for. I’m doing this for them. So that I can be present. It wasn’t fair to be sitting at the kitchen table with them while they ate pizza, running off every five minutes to check my phone in the living room to see if a twenty-three-year-old had texted me. I wasn’t able to be there for them. And they could sense it.”