The Breakup Doctor Read online

  Once we were seated, I asked her about her date Friday night.

  A huge grin took over her face. “It was amazing.”

  Weren’t they all? At first.

  I wished Sasha would slow her roll with men. I tried not to encourage her when she got so carried away too early in, so instead I told her about my new clients, asking her advice about starting a Web site, and running by her some ideas for future columns. All the while I tried to sneak surreptitious looks into my bag to see if I’d somehow missed my phone ringing. By the time the check came and we headed back out to our cars, I felt drained.

  I mustered one last hearty smile. “Thanks, Sasha. I feel so much better. I’ll call you later and let you know how our little talk goes,” I said, rolling my eyes with a shake of my head as though I were talking about Kendall leaving the toilet seat up.

  She hesitated at the door of my Honda. “You sure? I can come back to your house with you if you—”

  I waved her off. “Nah, I’ll probably just lie down for a while. I’m feeling kind of tired.”

  “Didn’t sleep much last night, huh?” she said sympathetically.

  Worn out from my day yesterday, secure in the childish belief that everything was basically okay and safe and good, I’d slept like the proverbial baby, actually. But I didn’t correct her.

  “It wouldn’t be any fun to watch me nap. I’ll call you later on,” I repeated. It was the only assurance that would get her to go.

  She leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “You’d better. And be tough, Brookie. ‘A man will treat you only as badly as you allow him to.’ Another one I learned from you. See? I do listen.” She gave me a smile that made my heart ache with its pure kindness and love before leaving me at my car to go home, alone.

  But I didn’t go home. Kendall’s condo pulled me back to it as unerringly as if it had attached prongs into me.

  I pulled into the parking lot and circled to the residents’ spots, praying his car would be there. Not sure what it meant if it was.

  His assigned space was empty. My heart plunged. Instead of heading back around to the visitors’ area, where I usually left my car—why hadn’t Kendall ever gotten me a permit for the other assigned residents’ spot his condo entitled him to?—I continued around the lot to where it curved toward another block of units. It was a numbered spot—reserved for a resident—but no one was in it, and I didn’t care anyway. It offered a direct line of sight across the little retention pond right outside Kendall’s front door. I turned off the engine and sat for a moment, not sure what to do next.

  I retrieved my phone from its side pocket in my purse to check it yet again for Kendall’s missed call or a text message. Nothing.

  What was I supposed to do now? Go inside and wait, drilling my fingers on the table like a wronged housewife? Start calling police stations, morgues, hospitals within LifeFlight distance of Fort Myers? Sit by the phone and wait for a ransom call to come in? Should I be panicking, or enraged? In the complete absence of any information, I didn’t even know how I was supposed to react.

  I called his cell phone again—desperately, hopelessly—and adrenaline jolted through me when it rang. After one ring I heard Kendall’s voice, and I wanted to cry ridiculous tears of relief.

  “This is Kendall Pulver. Your call is important to me. Please leave a message—”

  I jammed my finger down on the end button. Sasha’s voice replayed in my head: One or two means he looked, then declined—that would be bad. My chest tightened and my eyes grew hot and prickly.

  Then my heart started to pound like an oil rig when I suddenly saw Kendall’s black Mercedes nose around the corner from the back entrance to the complex and snuggle into its usual spot. Just as if it were any other day.

  I ducked my head, praying Kendall wouldn’t look in this direction.

  His car had a dent in the side I had never noticed. I wondered if he knew it was there. Probably. He noticed everything about the car. I was surprised he hadn’t had it fixed already.

  Some part of me acknowledged that my mind was occupying itself with inanities. I told myself I was simply being very calm and very rational, and ignored Wise Therapist’s voice that suggested my mind had chosen to cope by removing itself to a safe distance and observing what was going on in my life as though it were happening on a movie screen.

  Kendall got out of his car and sauntered toward his building as though he’d been out for a morning constitutional. He had on shorts and a T-shirt—his usual workout wear—and a duffel bag over his shoulder. I watched him scan the visitors’ parking area. For a second my heart plummeted as his eyes panned over to where my car sat on watchdog duty directly across from his condo, but his gaze didn’t even falter, just swept smoothly right on past. Context was everything—he wouldn’t have been expecting to see my car in a different area.

  I watched him draw his cell phone from the side pocket of the bag—the cell phone that no doubt read 736 MISSED CALLS—and punch in a number.

  Not mine, I was forced to assume when he started talking. He was too far away for me to hear anything. Or else the weird roaring sound in my ears was drowning out everything else. My heart was pounding and I felt sick to my stomach.

  Kendall opened his front door still talking. I registered that I ought to pull out, or at least slouch down in the seat so I didn’t look like I was doing exactly what I was doing—sitting in the parking lot stalking my...my...stalking Kendall. But I didn’t do either of those things. My body felt heavy and hot and icy cold all at once, and I couldn’t really move anything.

  His eyes trolled the parking lot again, and this time I swore he saw me frozen in the driver’s seat of my little blue Honda. He looked back down at his phone, and I watched him punch the keys. A few moments later, as if hearing it from underwater, I distantly registered the chiming tone on my cell phone that told me I had a text message.

  Numbly I looked at the caller ID window and saw that it was from Kendall. As if in slow motion I pressed the button.

  I’m sorry, Brook. I can’t do it.

  When I looked up Kendall was walking inside his condo, the door swinging shut behind him.

  fifteen

  Sasha called before I’d even made it back into my own driveway.

  “How are you? What’s going on? Where was he? Did you talk to him? Do you need me to come over again?”

  “And the category is, ‘Things you say to your best friend after a breakup,’” I said, my voice dull and flat.

  “Oh, no. Oh, Brook. What happened?”

  I told her, at least as much as I knew. I’d thought that between Sasha and me I knew every breakup strategy in the playbook, but a breakup by disappearance and text message was completely new to me.

  “What do you need?” Sasha said briskly. “Recovery plan one, two, or three?”

  Plan one was the tried-and-true self-indulgence approach. It involved large quantities of ice cream, breakup music (suicidal songs by Joni Mitchell and Ani DiFranco for Sasha; angry relationship rock like Alanis Morissette and Ben Folds and Maroon 5 for me), shopping, and ex-bashing. Plan two was purging and desensitization—throwing out all the old pictures and notes, deleting every email, erasing all his contact info, and creating long journal entries detailing every reason why he wasn’t “the one,” from a tendency to cheat to leaving pubic hairs on the soap.

  Plan three was Sasha’s province alone. It included coping mechanisms like staking out the ex’s house, watching to see where he went and with whom; as well as some minor property damage: letting the air out of his tires, or running over his mailbox, or TP’ing his lawn. I never selected plan three, but Sasha always asked with what I thought was slightly rapacious hope.

  None of them felt right to me at the moment. Not even three.

  “I don’t know yet. I’m not sure I need a plan. I feel...fine.”

  “It has
n’t sunk in. You’re in shock.”

  I swung the car into my driveway and shut off the engine, but stayed sitting in the driver’s seat. “‘Shock’ is a strong term...”

  “No, think about it. It’s like when you stub your toe really hard or accidentally set your hand down on a hot burner. You get one quick moment while your brain makes sense of what just happened before the pain actually sets in. You know it’s coming, but for that one flash of a second you get a reprieve. I think it’s your body’s way of letting you get prepared for it.”

  “Yeah. Maybe. Or maybe I just wasn’t as invested as I thought I was.” I really did feel strangely indifferent, removed, as if I had watched Kendall’s carefree walk to his town house like a scene from a movie.

  “Well, then you’re smart. He’s just a self-important little wanker.”

  “Not ready for that, Sash.”

  “You’re right, you’re right—my bad. You can’t force your strategy. We’ll just wait for the numbness to wear off and then pick the recovery plan that feels right. I’m coming over.”

  “No!” I barked out, surprising myself as much as I probably did her. Right now I couldn’t stomach the idea of hashing anything out with anyone. Even Sash. “No,” I said again, softening my tone. “I’ve got some things I can get done. And I’m fine. Really. Okay?”

  “I don’t know.” Sasha sounded skeptical. “You always tell me it’s not healthy for me to be alone right after a breakup. You always come over.”

  “That’s just to keep you from doing anything harmful or felonious.”

  Sasha laughed obligingly before trickling off into a silence. “Brookie, are you sure?”

  “Hey, I’m the Breakup Doctor. You know the saying—‘physician, heal thyself.’”

  “I don’t think this is what it means. But okay. If you’re sure. But I’m checking in on you every hour on the half hour. You’d better answer.”

  “Sash, you don’t have to—”

  “That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”

  “Okay. Deal.”

  I meant to go inside after we hung up, but I sat in the car for a long time, overcome with inertia and unwilling to make any effort to put things in motion.

  My cell phone vibrated in my hand, solving the problem for me. A shrill voice started in before I could manage a “hello.”

  “He’s not...I’m blocked! And there’s some woman posting things... And I can’t even check!”

  “Lisa,” I said, incongruously grateful. My own personal issues cycloned down into a separate compartment when I was dealing with clients, giving me calm, clear focus on theirs. “I can’t understand you. Take a breath and tell me what happened.”

  She did, haltingly and in between bouts of vitriolic ejaculations about Theodore, his anatomy, and his ancestry. Apparently she’d logged into his Facebook account and read a series of messages between him and some woman named Becky. He was having an affair, she moaned. There was another woman.

  “I thought you were giving him some space,” I said sternly.

  “I am! I didn’t contact him. You never said anything about checking his Facebook.”

  Social media was changing everything—even the way we broke up. I made a mental note to write a column about Facebook hacking as another postbreakup no-no.

  “Okay.” I took a breath, glad to have something to concentrate on. Despite my assurances to Sasha, I feared being alone would leave my mind free to wander to territory best left unexplored at the moment. “This isn’t a disaster. It’s just a stumble.”

  “Um...there’s more. A lot more. It might be a disaster.”

  I reached over to where I still hadn’t pulled the keys out of the ignition and turned the engine over. “Give me your address. I’m on my way.”

  Lisa Albrecht was standing in her driveway when I pulled up. I parked in the area under her basketball goal, beside a riot of vivid pink oleander, and started to step out of the Honda.

  She was at the driver’s side before I got both feet out. “Jesus. You look like I feel. What the hell happened to you?”

  I dropped back into the seat and pulled down the visor mirror. She was right—I looked like roadkill: all the blood had drained from my face and relocated, apparently, to my eyes. Twilight-chic, thanks to Kendall Pulver. I’d been Pulverized. I snapped the mirror closed and shoved the visor back in place.

  “Allergies,” I said, thinking that Lisa Albrecht had a way of making it hard to want to help her. “What’s going on?” Again I started to push out of the car, but Lisa took a step closer, blocking my exit.

  “Not here. The boys are home.” She cast a glance toward the house and rounded my car, pulling open the passenger door and flopping into the seat. “Come on! Go, go, go!”

  I pulled my door shut and wordlessly backed out of the drive, Lisa’s single-story tile-roofed stucco retreating behind us as I put the car in gear and drove us away. “Where are we going?”

  She was leaning back against the headrest, her eyes closed, one hand rubbing her forehead. “Anywhere. Somewhere we can talk—privately. Where we won’t be seen.”

  I drove down McGregor, the royal palms planted along both sides of the street ticking off our progress at intervals far less regular than they had when I was growing up, since so many of the ancient trees had died in the last string of hurricanes. Fort Myers had never been the same since then. What the hurricanes didn’t destroy, the economic crash did, and the town was a pale facsimile of what it had been in its heyday.

  Not unlike Lisa Albrecht, I supposed.

  I sneaked a glance over at her and tried to imagine what she’d looked like when she was younger and carefree, before the newspaper business had hardened her and her husband’s departure had finished the job. She had good bone structure—cheekbones high and sharp, deep-set eyes that might have looked exotic before overwork and worry made them hollow, a mouth that might have been full before she’d grown habituated to pulling it into a tight, disapproving line. In her youth her hair had probably been a sunny golden blond. Now her drugstore efforts to recapture that color left it a strange grayish-yellow, silver roots showing at her part.

  “Didn’t your mother teach you it’s rude to stare? Take a picture; it’ll last longer,” she muttered without opening her eyes.

  I was actually grateful for the rush of annoyance I felt as I snapped my eyes back to the road. It crowded out the reminder of yesterday on the sand with Kendall, when he’d told me the same thing as I gazed adoringly, pathetically at him.

  “You seem drained,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  She opened her eyes and lifted her head, fixing a flat gaze on me. “Does this look like okay?” she asked, pointing a knobby finger at her face.

  “You don’t look good,” I agreed.

  I pulled onto Travers, a street of high-end but older homes that was my favorite biking route. The neighborhood bordered the Caloosahatchee, but only the residents seemed to know about the gorgeous, private views from the rear streets.

  I parked alongside an overgrown line of areca palms that opened onto a tiny unpaved pull-in that was invisible until you were actually on it. The pathway was between two properties but seemed to belong to neither, and I often tucked my bike amid the arecas and sat on the sun-warmed rocks along the riverbank. Throwing another glance at Lisa, who was seemingly blind to our surroundings, I wished I hadn’t brought her here.

  But she was already getting out of the car, so I did the same, pulling off my sandals and dropping them into the footwell before closing the door.

  “Come on,” I said, making for the river.

  Lisa followed, but left her shoes on. I settled onto a relatively flat rock and tucked my feet up under me, breathing in the musk of the river and hoping it would fill up my soul the same way it did my lungs.

  Lisa stood somewhere behind me.

  “Y
ou’re the one who said you wanted to talk,” I said without turning around. “Somewhere private.” I wasn’t in the mood for her attitude.

  After a few moments I heard the swishing of her shoes across the stiff St. Augustine grass and then she picked her way onto a large rock near me with uncertain steps and lowered herself awkwardly to a tenuous perched position. Lisa Albrecht was not the outdoorsy type, I guessed.

  “Okay, Lisa. What happened?”

  It rushed out in a torrent, like water bursting into a foundering ship. She hadn’t called Theodore—she’d done just what I’d instructed and left him alone. But he didn’t call. He didn’t try to get hold of her. What was she supposed to do, just sit idly by while their marriage swirled down the drain? So she checked his Facebook page—at first just a time or two a day, as a way to feel she was still having some contact with him. And then, when she saw a post from Becky Anastasi—a new “friend,” someone Lisa had never heard of, whose page featured pictures of a tan, lissome blonde sailing and windsurfing and wakeboarding—posting, “Not bad, for an old man—you can really hang, Theo!” Lisa friended her. What wife wouldn’t?

  But Becky Anastasi ignored her friend request. And she ignored Lisa’s second one...and her third. And then when Lisa tried to friend her a fourth time, Becky Anastasi’s page had disappeared.

  So she tried several of Theodore’s usual passwords until she successfully logged into his Facebook account, and then she checked his message history. Becky Anastasi had quite an interactive relationship with Lisa’s husband, cute, chatty little notes dating back a few weeks, and to each one Theodore had replied. Maybe just a few words, maybe only the pubescent “LOL.” But he replied to every single inane, ridiculous thought coming out of Becky Anastasi’s tiny bleached head...when he’d always told Lisa that not everybody worked with words for a living and was such a “compulsive communicator.”