The Breakup Doctor Read online

  We ate on towels on the sand as we watched boats pull into our cove and anchor, until it looked like a regatta. Finally I set down my paper plate and leaned back.

  “Ugh.”

  “Ugh,” Kendall echoed, lying beside me and closing his eyes against the orange sun, holding his belly. “Good thing the water’s shallow—I don’t think I float anymore.”

  I turned my head and watched him as he lay on the beach. Kendall was so often contained, careful, perfectly groomed. Now his limbs were sprawled across the towel, legs bent up and arms splayed out to his sides. His short hair, usually parted on the side and combed down, stuck up in random directions from his head, giving him a boyish look. A fine sprinkling of sand coated his skin, clumped here and there where he’d rested a hand or a thigh on the beach. I loved him like this, and I wished I had a camera.

  “Take a picture—it’ll last longer.” His eyes never even flickered.

  I laughed and scooted closer to him, flipping onto my belly and resting my chin on my hands. “You read my mind. I was just thinking that I wish I had a picture of you like this—all beachy and disheveled and relaxed.”

  “Mmmm.” His eyes were still closed, but his lips smiled. I watched him some more, inching my fingers closer to rest on top of his. He clasped them but otherwise didn’t budge.

  I turned back over and lay beside him, closing my eyes and letting the wash of red behind my eyelids and the warm blanket of sun lull me into a half-sleep to the sounds of the crying gulls and the gentle susurrations of the Gulf of Mexico and the distant snippets of a family’s conversation that eddied over on the breeze.

  “...needs to keep an eye on him.”

  “...enjoy herself...see them from here...”

  “You...coddle her. When...learn responsibility?”

  The voices were growing louder and I shifted position and opened my eyes, glancing to where they were coming from: a couple not much older than we were, lounging on their boat with their gazes trained on a little boy about five or six squatting on the shore with a garden trowel and a plastic bucket. A wiry, sun-browned teenage girl walked along the water forty or so yards away, studiously avoiding looking in her parents’ direction.

  That was my family when Stu and I were little—except that next to me as I pretended my parents didn’t exist was Sasha, who could only ignore my brother for so long before sneaking up behind him and scaring him senseless, or plopping down on the sand beside him and drizzling baroque wet-sand designs on top of his sand castles from her fingers. I smiled at the parents on the boat, even knowing they couldn’t see me. They’ll be okay, I wanted to tell them. One day they will like each other. And you’ll have done okay.

  I pictured Kendall relaxing next to me on a boat like that, while the two of us watched our children play and argued harmlessly over our parenting styles. We still hadn’t talked about his asking me to move in. It scared me to death to think about taking a plunge like that again. I’d been burned so badly the last time I’d thought I’d found forever. How could I trust in that again? How could I trust that forever even existed? If I’d ever thought any two people were indivisible, it was my mom and dad, and look where they’d ended up.

  But Kendall wasn’t Michael. I’d picked him specifically for that reason.

  Laughter carried over on the wind and I saw the woman on the boat playfully shove her husband’s arm. I felt the sun-stiffness on my face as I smiled.

  Kendall had sat up and was watching the couple too, his face furrowed from sleep. He looked adorable—logy and rumpled and familiar.

  I took a deep breath of the salt air. “Kendall.”

  “Mmmmm.”

  “Why don’t we go get my things tonight and take them to your house?” My heart was thudding, but this time with excitement as much as nerves. I was ready. I’d said it.

  “Oh...babe. I can’t tonight.”

  “What?”

  I’d been ready for a smile, for his face to light up. Instead he pushed up off the sand and busied himself organizing the cooler and our sunscreen and our discarded shorts. He pulled on the end of the towel we’d been lying on, so I rolled off of it and he yanked it up.

  “Don’t get mad. I just have to go into the office for a while.” He started rolling the towel into a giant, sloppy doobie.

  I stood up, trying to brush the sand from my thighs, but gave up when it felt like aggressive dermabrasion. “You have to be kidding. On a Saturday? Our first day off together in how long?”

  “It’s my busy season.” He leaned over to lift one handle on the cooler and waited, but I made no move to grab the other.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Come on. Let’s head back.”

  “No.”

  “‘No’?” He almost spluttered it.

  “It’s our life, Kendall. I know you’re crazy at work. So am I, but our relationship doesn’t just go away.” My voice broke on the last word, and I realized with horror that I was about to burst into tears.

  He dropped the handle and rubbed his forehead with a single finger—hard, as though something were stabbing its way out from the inside. “Brook, please. I’m just... I’m trying to do the right thing here.”

  My heart was pounding—with fury...with fear. “I don’t understand what that means. You have to be on call twenty-four-seven for every client you have? Their personal lackey?”

  “That’s not it. Look, you can’t understand—”

  “I can’t understand? I have responsibilities too, Kendall. I’ve been running around for weeks trying to hold my career and my house and my family together. And I’m a psychologist! Understanding is my job!”

  “You’re not a real psychologist; you’re just a counselor.”

  I had known the second the word had come out of my mouth that it was inaccurate, and I had no idea why it popped out. But Kendall’s answer floored me. Half the time he called me a doctor, and I corrected him every time. Silence dropped between us like a sandbag. I wondered if the couple I had been watching a few moments ago was watching us argue now. This was when we needed to break the tension with laughter, the way they did. To defuse this potential bomb before it exploded.

  But Kendall didn’t crack a smile. “I’m sorry, Brook. That was uncalled-for.”

  I shrugged, not meeting his eyes. “It’s the truth.” It was the first time I’d gotten the not-quite-good-enough feeling from anyone except my mother.

  He was the one who’d asked me to move in with him, but now I felt like a pathetic, needy girlfriend pushing for too much, too fast. I felt the way I had when Michael torched the future he’d promised me with a single phone call. I waited for Kendall to backtrack—the touch of his hand, reassurance, anything, but the only sound between us was the crying of seagulls.

  “I’ll get you back so you can get into the office.” My voice was flat. Say no. Change your mind.

  “Thanks.”

  eleven

  I dropped Kendall off at his condo without another word after our fight, and stormed back to my own house. Furious at him, and needing to bleed off steam, I seized on a home improvement project: running my Dad’s electric sander over the pitted living room walls where Sasha and I had ripped up the wallpaper. Flying dust made my chest ache from coughing, and the fine particles lodged into my sinuses, so I finally tied a pair of panty hose over my face as a filter. I couldn’t find my safety goggles, so I wore an old snorkeling mask strapped over my head. It was not my best look.

  My mind couldn’t let go of the thick stew of anger and resentment I’d held on to ever since Kendall and I had wordlessly reloaded the cooler onto Dad’s boat and I’d yanked up the anchor and thrown the boat into reverse.

  How could he have planned to work today, the first day we’d spent together in weeks? How could he be so thoughtless?

  Worse, why did he have to tell me right when I finally
said I was ready to move in together? Didn’t he know what it had cost me to finally say yes to him? How hard it had been for me to trust again, and take another leap of faith? What a big step this was for me?

  Shame heated my face. No, actually, he didn’t.

  I’d never told Kendall about Michael.

  I justified the omission: You didn’t talk about previous relationships when you were starting to date someone—that was Dating 101, as I’d tried to tell Sasha a hundred times. And then, by the time things were starting to get serious between us, we’d been together for a couple of months, with me practically living at his house already. At that point it felt like it was too late to bring up something so huge.

  So how could Kendall have had any idea how sensitive I was in that area? I’d never let him see it.

  And that meant that our fight was really my fault.

  I shut off the sander and stepped off the ladder, nearly setting my flip-flop down on a tack strip I’d exposed when I’d ripped out the old carpet. Its rusty nails bristled like burnt-orange fangs. Slow down, I admonished myself. There was no need to let my recriminations make me careless.

  I fired the sander back up and started the same mindless process of smoothing it in gentle circles over and over small areas at a time, wishing I could smooth my agitated thoughts so easily.

  Was this how I’d driven Michael off too—by not letting him see any vulnerabilities? By hiding how I felt, being too reserved, too careful? Maybe he never felt like I loved him enough?

  What a hateful irony.

  Kendall was a saner kind of love...solid and secure. Even though we’d moved fast, I’d been sure to be careful, to keep my head about me. Maybe he had taken my caution as a lack of interest—maybe I’d hurt him by not answering him right away when he asked me to move in?

  I was so lost in my thoughts, I didn’t realize I was pressing too hard on the sander until I saw I’d left messy circular gouges in the drywall. Dammit. I shut the machine off and set it on the bare concrete floor, then ran a hand over the wall to assess the damage.

  It was damp.

  What? I tore the snorkel mask off and pushed the panty hose down to rest on my neck as I poked at the wall.

  My finger sank in as if it were made of softened butter.

  I stood staring stupidly for a moment at the bizarre image of my finger embedded in my wall before I pulled it back out. Hunks of drywall crumbled around the hole it left like a malevolent black eye staring back at me.

  I rested the flat of my hand against the wall and pushed. My arm disappeared into it as if I were a ghost.

  I registered the wet-dough feel clumped on my fingers, and I knew before I fully yanked my hand out what the matter was.

  A leak behind the wall, from the adjoining bathroom.

  With a sickness in my stomach, I began pulling out chunks of soggy, crumbly wall until the hole was the size of a grapefruit...a cantaloupe...a watermelon...and then there was no fruit large enough to describe the gaping maw in my living room.

  As I stared into the bowels of my house my vision literally went red, and rational thought vanished in an instant. Suddenly I was tearing at the walls, soggy drywall splatting everywhere.

  And still it wasn’t enough—I needed to destroy something. I reached for the closest weapon at hand and my fingers wrapped around the handle on Dad’s sander, and before I could check the impulse, I swung back and smacked the heavy sander with all my strength into the wall.

  Two things happened as I put the full force of my body behind the swing: The sander gave a disgusting wet-flesh thunk and then dropped from my hands to the concrete floor with some ominous rattling sounds. And my foot landed with all the weight of my body directly on the rusty exposed tack strip.

  I let out a howl.

  I grabbed my foot, hopping in place to keep my balance. Blood was dripping along the rubber of my flip-flop, but even after I tore it off I couldn’t see how deep the wound was. I took a few deep breaths, coming back to myself, and hobbled into the master bathroom, leaning against the counter so I could draw my leg up yogi-style. The flesh around the punctures was white and shocky-looking where I wiped away the slow-welling blood. Did I need stitches? A tetanus shot?

  My mom would know. I realized with a jolt of surprise that she was the person I wanted to talk to most. Because I had a boo-boo. I limped toward where I had left my cell, but four numbers into calling home I jabbed the “off” button. Mom didn’t live at home anymore.

  My foot continued seeping sinister dark, thick blood, so I hopped back toward my bathroom, still holding the phone, trying to keep from dripping all over the concrete slab. Then I looked down. What did it matter? I deliberately planted my foot, watching the dark stains it left on the bare gray cement.

  I dialed again—this time Mom’s cell—and she picked up after two rings, her “hello” so deliberately impersonal I knew she had seen the caller ID.

  I didn’t respond, abruptly feeling stupid.

  “Brook Lyn?” my mother said.

  “Yes?” I said, as though she were a telephone solicitor inquiring, “Is this the lady of the house?”

  Another beat. “Brook Lyn, are you there? I can’t hear you. I have plenty of bars, so I think it’s your phone.”

  I sat on the bathroom counter and pulled my injured foot up across the other leg, wishing I had never picked up the phone. But it was too late to simply hang up. “I was calling to...to make sure that Stu and I know how to reach you.”

  “You can reach me on my cell phone, Brook Lyn. Obviously.”

  “Obviously,” I said sarcastically. “I was worried about emergencies.” Like what if I get gangrene and my foot falls off and I need a blood transfusion and you’re the only donor match?

  “It’s the Neapolitan Theatre. Your father has all of my contact information.”

  “Fine. Just making sure.” My foot was throbbing, and I waited for my mother to fill the silence.

  I heard a sigh. “All right, then. I’ll talk to you later—”

  “Do you know if I need a tetanus shot?” I blurted.

  “A tetanus... For what? Are you hurt?”

  “I cut my foot. Punctured it, actually. I stepped on a carpet tack strip.”

  “With nails?”

  “Yes. Huge metal ones. Rusted.”

  “You stepped on a strip of rusty metal nails? Of course you need a tetanus shot, Brook Lyn. Don’t be dense.”

  As a palliative, “don’t be dense” wasn’t really what I was hoping for. But that looked like the best I was going to get.

  “Do you need someone to help you?” my mom asked.

  She’d walked out on Dad. On our family. There was nothing I’d need from her.

  “No.”

  Another sigh, and then my mom said, more gently, “Honey... I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

  I didn’t know if she was talking about my foot or everything else, but either way I’d give her the same answer. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Thanks anyway.”

  I hung up the phone, hobbled over to my purse, and then headed for the emergency room.

  twelve

  The sun had sunk out of sight and dusk had set in by the time I limped into the ER. Only one other patient slouched against a chair in a corner of the quiet waiting area, a man reading the spread newspaper that rested on his lap. Behind the counter a blonde in scrubs chatted animatedly with someone out of my eyesight. I hobbled to the counter and stood in front of her for a minute or two, my wounded foot propped at an angle against my left leg, before finally clearing my throat.

  “Can I help you?”

  A curious greeting. Yes, I have come to the emergency room of a hospital. Clearly you can help me.

  “I have an injury—I stepped on some metal nails. I think I need a tetanus shot.”

  “Insurance?”

&nb
sp; “Yes, I do.”

  She finally looked up. “I need your card,” she said in the tone you use with morons.

  After I dug it from my wallet and placed it on the counter, she clattered a clipboard in front of me. “Fill out these forms, please, and have a seat. We’ll call you in a few moments.”

  The guy in the waiting area was sitting next to the sole table provided, so I took a chair on the other side of it and started filling in the paperwork. A sour smell came off of him, like the weight room of a gym, and I breathed through my mouth.

  By the time I had filled out the information form (front and back), my medical history, the release form, and the privacy policy—which I had actually had time to read—we were both still sitting in the teal-and-white waiting area. Molly Welcome Wagon was continuing her involved conversation with her unseen confidante.

  “You have to wonder how long we’d have to sit here if it wasn’t an emergency.” The man’s voice was strained, but amused.

  I looked over. He was younger than I thought—maybe mid-thirties. He wore a plain T-shirt that had probably started as white, but was now smudged and sweat-stained. His jeans were faded and as dirty as his hands.

  “How long have you been here?” I asked him.

  He checked the watch on his left wrist, never moving the arm from where it rested across his lap. “Maybe an hour, hour and a half?”

  I lifted my eyebrows. “Great. Well, I guess they have to prioritize.” I slumped back against the chair.