Couples Therapy
Albert Fitzgerald stroked his mustache. Finally, he thought, as he ran his fingers down the hairy slope of white. After multiple attempts to grow the perfect Pancho Villa mustache, he had succeeded at last. He took a long look at the two individuals sitting in front of him. He took note of the wife�s appearance. She was beautiful, almost ethereal looking. Fitzgerald could not help but mentally compare her to his own wife, a jolly plump woman, also white haired. He tried to remember the last time he had sex with his wife. It must have been months since the last time they tried. The last time was a true testament to their aging bodies, an awkward 40 minutes of accidental limb bumping and joint cracking. Sex was just another thing he had learned to live without, along with carbohydrates and double-fudge mud cake. The silence in the room was beginning to leave the realm of acceptable and enter into awkward. To break the tension, Fitzgerald asked the question he always asked new clients. �So,� he said as he stroked his mustache. �Why don�t you tell me how the two of you met?� Steven looked at Albert Fitzgerald. The wall behind him was decorated with plaques. He studied them, diplomas from Cornell University and the University of Michigan, certificates from various psychiatric seminars. He looked back at Albert Fitzgerald, M.D. He couldn�t help but find it difficult to take this man seriously. His ridiculous snowy mustache, his bifocals. His flawless posture. His tidy suit and suede loafers, the matching maroon socks casually peeking out as he stretched his legs. He looked exactly how Steven had imagined a shrink would look. He peered over at his wife sitting next to him. They were sitting on the same couch, but she had scooted all the way over the left. They were right next to each other, but Steven had never felt so distant from her. At this point in their relationship, their marriage, he didn�t even recognize this woman. What happened to the wild, free-spirited girl from his freshman dorm? The girl who would dance into his room, still dressed in pajamas, and sing into his ear to wake him up. The girl who sent him secret-coded messages to meet her under the oak at three in the morning. The girl who kissed him lightly on the tip of the nose when he told her he was falling in love with her. The Analeise that Steven had loved was nothing like the frigid stranger on the other side of the couch. Analeise remembered the first time she saw Steven. Immediately, she wanted him. And she intended to get him. She remembered the boy from the library, his serious face, his tattered jeans and baseball cap. He was so shy. She remembered the lengths she went to so that Steven would notice her. She would lead him into the dorm lounge at night, put his hands on her hips and lead him around the room in a slow dance as he stumbled awkwardly and smiled at her. She would run and jump onto his back, ambushing him, as they would tumble into a dog-pile, laughing the whole way down. Analeise remembered the times her girl friends would comment on Steven, telling her how lucky she was to have broken him open, wormed her way into the heart of the cutest-but-shyest boy in their freshman dorm. The air-conditioning in Albert Fitzgerald�s office roared, providing temporary relief to the Chicago summer humidity. Analeise answered Fitzgerald. �We met in college,� she said. �We were in the same freshman dormitory.� Analeise looked over at Steven. She wanted to touch him, hold his dry hands on top of hers, the way it had always been. She ached to feel his pulse again. The morning of their wedding, Analeise told Steven how nervous she was. He took hold of her hand and moved it up to his heart. �You feel that?� he asked. �It�s your heart beat,� she said. �Listen,� he whispered. He gently put his other hand over her wrist. At that moment, Analeise realized what Steven was trying to show her. Their pulses matched, his heart at the same pace as her wrist. Immediately, a wave of calm washed over Analeise as they stood for one unadulterated moment of stillness. What soft skin, Albert thought, admiring Analeise�s perfect complextion. She had three small freckles scattered about her face. Angel�s kisses, he thought. He scanned the beautiful woman on the couch, up and down. He was pretending to listen to the husband, tuning in occasionally, nodding his head, tricking him into thinking he was paying attention. But all he could do was stare at Analeise. He counted the buttons on her blouse, from the bottom up. He had become very skilled at finding tactics to sneak peeks at women�s breasts. The button counting technique was one had had developed many years ago, when he first came to realize how very bored the sight of his own wife�s body made him. Luanne Fitzgerald, once Luane Dole (or Lovely Lou as she listed herself as on Chanceforlove.com) had formerly been the star of all Albert�s sexual fantasies. However, at this point, she was nothing more to him that words on a computer screen, flirtatious instant messages and sexual innuendo. It was her screen name he had fallen in love with, the way she sent him kissy face emoticons and her sultry salutations. He imagined that meeting her in person would be the cherry on top of a wonderful virtual relationship, one that had caused him to spend hours within the wooden walls of his study, glued to his laptop, clinging to Lovely Lou�s every word. Every time he heard those three familiar upscale notes alerting him of a message from Lou, he would leap to his keyboard. How could a relationship so alive and thrilling online be anything less in person? Finally he would be able to assuage the curiosity clouding his thoughts. He would see her face. Steven rolled the cuff of his Pendleton. The scar stretched up his left forearm. The Florida Scar, Analeise called it. He had hid it for years under wrist bands and long sleeves, embarrassed by its darkened color and rough texture. But she loved it, and that alone took the entire sting out of it for him. Steven continued talking to Dr. Fitzgerald, a neutral instrument to talk to his wife through, so that she might finally hear him. �I�m not quite sure why we�re here, to be quite honest.� Steven felt Analeiese�s eys burning into his cheek, her boney shoulders squaring off with his own, broad and masculine. Why was he here? As far as Steven was concerned, he was the same as the day he married her. It was Analeise who had changed, Analeise who constantly made him feel like he was doing something to hurt her, Analeise who demanded therapy. He sat quietly night after night as she yelled at him, insulted him and gave him the cold shoulder for days. He thought about divorce once, but he knew that underneath this shrill woman was the girl who made him promise to never let her be anything but his. And that was a promise he intended to keep. Analeise aggressively squeezed more lotion from the bottle and vigorously applied it to her long, manicured fingers. The cracks in her dry skin reminded her that she may in fact one day explode right out of it. Then her spine stiffened. The words fell out of her mouth like bricks. You did this to me. She was horrified to hear herself say the very sentence she had trained herself to keep deep down in the pits of her throat. She looked up at the ceiling tiles, a checkered pattern of light and even lighter grey. If she could just keep her gaze towards the ceiling for a short while longer, she would not have to see the look of pain on Steven�s face. Steven�s hand ran up his cheek. He did this when he was nervous, the first step of a routine that was followed by wiping the saliva dry from his lips and then balling his fingers together, applying pressure until his hands were met with an violent series of pops. Analeise prepared herself. With Steven, that was never a good sign. Albert looked down at his unanswered client questionnaire. He generally used these sheets to jot down notes; peculiar traits about his patients, tearful confessions, history of mental illness. But on this particular morning, all that was written on the questionnaire for Steven and Analeise Waters was a small pornographic sketch of the wife with her arm wrapped around the stick-figure version of himself. The night Albert first cast his eyes on his wife, Luanne, thirteen years ago, his disbelief nearly caused his knees to buckle. Lovely Lou? It couldn�t be. Albert looked into the eyes of the woman wearing the Greenbay Packers cap, the item of clothing she had chosen to use to distinguish herself. At five foot three and 140 pounds, stalky would be the correct word to describe Luanne. Her skin was wrinkled, her eyes small and beaty. She clutched her hand to her heart and enveloped Albert in a bear hug, her scent a strong mixture of chrysanthemum and linoleum. She answered telephones at the local hospital, directed phone calls to their desired destinations. She was not the beautiful Amazon woman Albert had dreamed of. She was not the physical embodiment of the Internet vixen who had stolen his attention for months. But he smiled at her, sucked it up, kissed her on the mouth and enjoyed what it felt like to have another human body touch his own. He was too old, too unattractive, and most of all too tired to find another companion so he proposed to Luanne Dole exactly one week after their first face-to-face encounter. Steven could not look at his wife. The truth had finally surfaced. He, the one who had given Analeise as much space as she demanded, desperately trying make her happy, was being blamed for ruining her, breaking her. He listened to her explain how she felt marriage destroyed her, robbed her of her spontaneity, killed her sense of adventure. He listened to her tell him how he should have known her well enough to know that routine and stasis would one day kill her. He watched her eyes drip tears, her lip quiver. He sat still as the past sixteen years unraveled before him, as his wife cracked to pieces along the lines she refused to acknowledge. Steven lifted his head, locked eyes with Analeise. She gulped from crying. Steven lifted his wife�s hand from her knee. It felt so new, cold and slick. He took a deep breath and placed her small and delicate hand on his heart. She closed her eyes, shut them tightly as Steven get up off the couch and walked out of the room. But she heard the door close. The wind whipped on the dorsum of her hand. She kept her eyes closed, wishing that her husband had not let go of her hand, her hand that fit inside of his like fingers to a glove. When Analeise finally opened her eyes again, she was surprised to see Dr. Albert P. Fitzgerald sitting by her side. She sat completely still, frozen to the bone, as he placed his thin, shaking hand on top of hers and whispered, �I�m so lonely,� into her ear.
Copyright © 2007 Bryn Lee Lovitt |