The Breakup Doctor Read online

Once I’d broken past Lisa’s hard outer shell, she was insatiable for advice. It was nearly eleven o’clock by the time I wrapped up our session and headed out to my car.

  I found Kendall sound asleep in bed when I crawled in beside him twenty minutes later. I didn’t want to disturb him—this was his firm’s busy season, and I knew he was exhausted with the long hours he’d been working. I hovered over his face, propped on one elbow for a few moments, hoping he’d rouse enough to kiss me good night. He didn’t even stir. I gave up and lay back, snuggling up to his side and whispering, “I’m home.”

  Kendall slumbered on, blissfully unaware, in the mummy pose he always slept in—on his back, arms crossed over his chest—while the word home echoed strangely in my head. Was this my home? Nothing of mine was here except for some clothes and a few toiletries. My own run-down, neglected house had never felt like home either, though—just a storage unit for my things. And I’d long since moved out of my parents’ house.

  What was “home”?

  I studied Kendall’s face, soft and untroubled in sleep, and gently touched his warm arm where it rested over his chest, but still he didn’t stir. The neediness that washed over me left an unpleasant feeling in my belly. I was styling myself as a confident, knowledgeable relationship expert, and here I was craving reassurance like a child.

  “I’m home,” I tried the word out again, more softly.

  Kendall just slept on.

  four

  My first article for the column was much harder to write than I expected.

  Fifteen or sixteen inches, Sasha calculated for me, was about six hundred words. So far I had three of them on the page.

  Dating is hard.

  Oh, that was excellent. Wonderful insight from a professional therapist. When I was a kid, chewing the end of my pencil always helped me think when I was stuck, but the blinking cursor just laughed at my frustration. I couldn’t gnaw on my keyboard. I started over.

  In the wild, wide world of dating, it’s hard to navigate the ups and downs.

  Eh. I couldn’t even have the satisfaction of crumpling up the page and throwing it away. Computers sucked. Deadlines sucked. My writing sucked.

  There’s no such thing as a how-to manual for dating. Anyone who tells you different is probably—literally—selling you something, like one of hundreds of self-help books sitting in bookstores—and probably on your shelves at home.

  Hmmm. That wasn’t too bad. Kind of negated my setting myself up as yet another expert, though. Still, I kept writing.

  The truth is, no one knows the rules for dating. That’s because there are no rules—every situation is different. Every person is different.

  So wouldn’t you love to have your own personal dating guru to help you navigate the bumpy road to love?

  “He didn’t call when he said he would—what does it mean?” Ask...

  I stopped and leaned back. Think of a title, Lisa had told me. Something catchy.

  Sasha had called me a breakup savant, but that brought to mind a stammering Rain Man—not the best image for a relationship guru. “Ask the Relationship Guru”? No. I got a mental picture of a swami sitting cross-legged on a mountaintop. “Ask... Madame Mojo”? Sounded like a dominatrix. Dr. Love? That just sounded like a bad seventies porn film. The Love Doctor?

  “I love her but hate her kids...can it work?” Ask the Love Doctor...

  It wasn’t bad.

  I leaned forward again, my fingers tapping on the keys.

  I ran the finished product by Sasha Wednesday night before I turned it in to Lisa.

  “What do you think?”

  She frowned into the screen, chewing her bottom lip. “I like it. It’s good.”

  “But...?”

  “What? I like it.”

  I sighed and flopped down onto her plush red couch, where she sat with my laptop balanced on her knees.

  “Sash, you never just ‘like’ anything. You love it or you hate it. What did I do wrong?”

  She drew her eyebrows together, staring at the screen. “That’s the thing. I don’t know. It’s good—really,” she insisted at my rolled eyes. “It’s just not...special. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.” She gestured absently behind her, where her bookshelves spilled with titles like How to Find Him, Hook Him, and Reel Him In; Dating: A Survival Guide; How to Be Married in a Year; Get Him to the Altar.

  I flopped over so I was lying on my stomach, my legs bent up. “But readers can write in about their personal dating situation. I can answer specific questions.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s like having your very own self-help book, personalized just for you.”

  “Mmmmmm.” She nodded slowly, still eyeballing the screen.

  “So what do you think? Is it ready? Should I turn it in? Is this what Lisa was looking for?”

  Sasha stared intently into my laptop as if it were trying to teach her calculus. “Well...yeah. I like it. It’s good.”

  It needed work.

  I took another stab at it...and then another stab...and then another, until I had taken so many stabs I felt like a serial killer. Finally I wound up with something pretty close to what I originally shown Sasha, and I sent it in.

  Thursday afternoon, my cell phone rang with an unfamiliar number.

  “Is this the Love Doctor?”

  For a second I stared dumbly at the phone before I realized it wasn’t a prank call. “Um...yes,” I stammered.

  “My name is Tabitha Washington. I work at the Tropic Times? I just saw your first article, and...and I...” She faltered to a stop.

  “You had some questions?” I’d figured there’d be some rewrites called for. Even after all my efforts, I wasn’t completely happy with the final result.

  A brief pause. “Uh-huh. I was wondering...”

  “Yes?”

  “Could you, um...”

  Tabitha Washington was pussyfooting around as if my ego were fragile as glass. “Whatever it is, you can just tell me,” I told her. “I’m sure I can fix it.”

  “Oh, thank God!” And for the second time that week a strange woman burst into sobs as I listened in bewilderment. “My boyfriend...his wife...here...!” I made out between her ragged gasps. “I think she wants to get back together. Maybe he does too. Should I ask him? That looks too needy, doesn’t it? Am I overreacting?”

  “Hang on, Tabitha. Breathe.” In the momentary silence broken only by Tabitha’s sniffles and the distinct sound of her blowing her nose, my mind raced. Here was another woman asking me what to do—desperate for me to tell her what to do—when she didn’t know the first thing about me—not even my real name.

  Was it possible that a lot of people were this hungry for direct, one-on-one help in the face of relationship problems?

  Tabitha was still making wet noises on her end of the line, and I realized she was waiting for me to say something. “What do you need me to do for you, Tabitha?” I asked slowly. “How can I help?”

  “I want to hire you.”

  And just like that I had my second client.

  I got the gist of the story in between hitching breaths: Tabitha had started dating her boyfriend, Cooper, five months ago, very shortly after his wife had an affair and then moved away. Now the wife was back in town, and Tabitha was nervous.

  She was at work and didn’t have time for us to go much further into it. And my mind was suddenly bubbling with an idea I couldn’t wait to act on. So after I quoted Tabitha the hourly rate for my breakup doctoring services that Sasha had come up with—without even a warble of hesitation in my voice—and we agreed on a time for our first consultation early next week, I got to snap out something I’d always wanted to say:

  “Stop the presses.”

  “Um...what?” Tabitha said blankly.

  Apparently I was the only Howard Hawks fan
between us. I rephrased, asking her to hold off on printing the article I had sent her—I’d be sending in a new one in a couple of hours. And then I hung up the phone and let my fingers fly over the keyboard.

  I finished the article in half the time I’d promised, checked it once more to make sure it said what I wanted it to, and pressed send.

  five

  My first column ran the next morning.

  My father called at seven a.m., as soon as his paper was delivered, full of congratulations. “Wonderful job, doll.”

  “Thanks, Dad. Mom likes it too?” I asked.

  “Oh...sure, sweetheart. We both love it.” But I knew from his tone that he was speaking only for himself. I suppose it was expecting too much for my mom to call and tell me she was proud of me.

  Sasha showed up at Kendall’s condo at seven thirty—right after he hustled out the door for work with a promise to read the column that night—balancing an armful of newspapers and two big Dunkin’ Donuts coffees.

  “It’s too early for champagne,” she said, her smile stretching her face. “I thought you’d want extra hard copies. Rockin’ it old-school.”

  “It’s just a silly little article,” I said, but I reached for the papers in her arm and eagerly opened the top one to locate my column.

  There it was, with the big, splashy headline, “Ask the Breakup Doctor.”

  Sasha tore her eyes from the article and looked over at me. “You changed it!”

  I nodded as Sasha and I read it together, bent over the kitchen table shoulder-to-shoulder with the paper spread out below us like an offering.

  A broken leg requires an orthopedist. A broken car requires a mechanic. And a broken heart requires a specialist too. Every week in this column I’ll be helping you navigate the rough waters of dating and the stormy seas of rejection: The Breakup Doctor is now in.

  So you got dumped. We’ve all been there, and it stinks. But what defines us is what we do next, in the relationship’s postmortem: how we handle ourselves, how we recover, how we move on and find someone new—and bring ourselves that much closer to finding the right one.

  Handling a breakup gracefully and in a healthy way is a learned skill, like playing the violin or being good at tennis. And as with musical talent or sports, some people are more inherently gifted at it than others.

  But it’s a skill everyone can learn—if they are willing. And until our school system realizes that teaching Conflict Resolution or Coping with Rejection might be as useful as calculus or physics—maybe more so—there’s me.

  Send me your questions, your worries, your deepest, darkest fears and angriest revenge fantasies, and I’ll help you through it all. I’ll walk you through every aspect of a breakup—what to do, what not to do, and how to carry the whole thing off with style and panache, no matter how messy, ugly, or nasty your breakup is. In this situation more than any other, the old adage is true: The best revenge is living well.

  You can get through it, and I’ll show you how. And believe it or not, when it’s over you’ll be grateful you got out of a bad relationship (because if it were a good one, you would still be in it, right?), and ready to find a good, healthy, positive one.

  At the end of it I had written a thumbnail bio that stated that I was a mental health professional who ran a private consulting service for “the recently and reluctantly single.”

  “This isn’t the article you showed me,” Sasha accused when she’d finished reading.

  I looked at her, my best and truest audience, and chewed my bottom lip. “Yeah. I got to thinking about Lisa...and what you said about me and breakups, and making the article more original, more personal, and... What do you think?”

  “Brook.” She shook her head, and my heart plummeted. “It’s fantastic! It’s perfect.”

  “Really?”

  She grinned at me and grabbed me into a hug. “It’s so you! This is what you’re great at! Anyone can offer relationship advice, but you’re the best at breakups of anyone I know. I love it, Brookie. I love it.”

  In a spill, I told her about Tabitha, and how her phone call—and Sasha’s encouragement—had sparked the impulse to make the column more specialized.

  “I’m helping her, Sash. And your editor too—already I can see that they’re feeling better about themselves, stronger. It’s like an immediate gratification I never really get in my practice. Not like this.”

  She was beaming. “This is your calling, Brook. You were born to be the Breakup Doctor.”

  “Well, for now, it’s great. I’ve got some money coming in, I’m still able to help people until I figure out how to get my practice back on track...and it’s all thanks to you.”

  She waved me off halfheartedly. “Oh, now...it’s not all due to me. Maybe mostly.”

  I grinned and pulled her to me for another hug. “Thanks, Sash. You’re the best friend on earth.”

  She left for work a few minutes later, promising to call when she heard the reaction at the paper.

  At ten o’clock Stu called to offer his two cents: “Nice job, sis. And thanks for reminding me why I don’t get into relationships.”

  I laughed. “Grow up, little brother. I can’t wait until the right girl knocks all your bachelor BS flat on its ass.”

  “Good idea—a dominatrix. I haven’t tried one of those yet.”

  And Kendall read the article that night after work, sitting on the sofa with a bowl of ice cream and the paper spread out over his knees while I chewed my thumbnail and paced the living room floor behind him.

  He sat quietly for a moment after he read it, and then shook his head and found my gaze.

  “Amazing. It’s so hard to get my mind around the fact that people will look for advice on their most intimate issues from a stranger in a public forum. But it sounds good to me. Great job.” He folded the paper carefully along its creases and set it down beside him.

  Kendall wasn’t much of a reader. If it wasn’t the Wall Street Journal or SmartMoney magazine or Golf Digest, he never cracked a spine except his own. So I tried to be happy with his compliment.

  But his reaction stirred something unpleasant in the region of my gut usually reserved for my mother’s cutting remarks.

  “Well, you know,” I sallied, loitering near him against the arm of the sofa, “therapy in general is basically telling your most personal issues to an objective, uninvolved listener.”

  He looked up from his ice cream. “Oh, absolutely. I know it works for some people.” He put down his bowl and flicked on the TV.

  I leaned over to take his empty dish and carried it into the kitchen.

  “A lot of people, actually,” I called over the breakfast bar as I rinsed it in the sink. “I think I’ve helped a lot of people in my practice.”

  “I know, babe,” he said, not taking his eyes off of Kudlow and Company. “For people who need that kind of thing I bet you’re great.”

  I turned off the water and regarded the back of Kendall’s carefully combed head. He’d promised to come home early tonight to celebrate my first column. I had dinner ready and on the table at six o’clock. At six thirty-three he’d swept in with a bouquet of carnations, full of apologies, plopped the flowers and his briefcase down on the breakfast bar, and sat across the table from me to wolf down cold salmon and braised broccoli with slivered almonds. At six fifty-four he’d made an occasion of unfolding the paper and sitting on the sofa to read my article, but I could see his eyes flicking to the clock on the DVD player to make sure he didn’t miss the beginning of his show.

  A surge of irritation swelled up in me. I wiped my wet hands in jerky movements on the kitchen towel, then walked back into the living area, still clutching the towel in taut fingers. I planted myself right between Kendall and Kudlow.

  “What ‘kind of thing’ are you talking about?” I asked testily.

  I was sure I s
aw him visibly swallow the urge to shoo me out of the way like a gnat, but he met my eyes with an apologetic smile. “I didn’t mean anything by it, Brook. I wasn’t belittling what you do.”

  “Okay.”

  “I wasn’t, Brook. I’m sorry—I’m an insensitive ass.”

  “Sometimes.” I wasn’t ready to be mollified. “You could at least take ten minutes to be happy for me. To pay a little attention to me, instead of”—I gestured behind me at the TV—“some old balding banker.”

  “He’s not a banker.”

  “That’s not my point.”

  Kendall sighed and looked down into his lap as if he wished he had a manual lying open on it entitled, “How to Handle Your Girlfriend.” When he looked back up, though, his expression was clear and conciliatory.

  “Brook, I’m sorry. I had a crazy day, and one hell of a long week. I took off as early as I could. I’m sitting right here. I guess I’m not sure what you’re looking for from me.”

  What was I looking for? He did come home early. He read the article. He complimented it—sort of. He was here, with me, instead of at the office.

  So why did I feel...incidental? Invisible? As though I hadn’t had his full, involved focus on me for weeks. Not since he’d asked me to move in.

  As soon as the thought occurred to me, the lurch in my chest told me that was it: This thing was hanging between us, unspoken, leaving me stuck in limbo, mentally checked out of my own house, but not really sure I belonged here yet either.

  Not talking about things didn’t mean they weren’t there, swelling up and waiting to explode. I couldn’t keep letting his suggestion sit on the back burner of my mind, unresolved because of my own relationship baggage. Kendall and I needed to clear the air.

  “Can we talk for a few minutes? About us?”