Cutting Teeth(68)

She pushes her nails into the fleshy meat below her thumb. I am the rising sun on the ocean horizon. I am light through the still trees. I am the lasting snow at the top of the mountain. She breathes her affirmations in and out. “Nothing really,” she says. “I just wanted to see if I could get you to take a look at some financial statements for me and tell me what they might mean.”

He grins as she slides Miss Ollie’s documents across the table and decides, once again, that what Marcus doesn’t know won’t hurt her.





TWENTY-NINE




“Wait,” Darby commands her husband as he opens his mouth to speak. “Maybe I should be standing up for this.”

“I think the advice is usually the other way around,” he says.

“Well, I think I should be standing.” She removes herself from the sofa they spent eight hours deciding on, popping between Crate & Barrel and Pottery Barn and back again until they finally collapsed on this exact floor model and cried out together, “We’ll take it!” before erupting into a fit of stupid giggles. That was seven years ago. She still likes this couch.

She feels much better standing. Assume an athletic stance, her volleyball coach always told her, so you’re ready for the strike.

Griff looks twice as uncomfortable as he did before. Good. He stares down at his shoes. “What I was going to say is—” He coughs. She hates unnecessary coughing because that’s marriage, hating someone’s peculiar, obnoxious noises; marriage is not an affair with their children’s preschool teacher or a lady at the gym. “I’m sorry.” And she can tell that whatever he says next, he really is. Sorry. “I didn’t want to tell you this way. I haven’t been working late.” Oh no. Her stomach climbs to a sickening elevation, waiting for it. “I’ve been taking an improv class.”

She stares at him. Like she’s watching a movie and the sound and video display aren’t totally synced.

“An … improv class.”

“Yes.” He shakes his head as though even he can’t believe it. “Yes, I can show you the receipts and everything. And as far as the phone thing, we’re on a group text chain. It’s funny. I’m funny. On it, I mean.” He shrugs one shoulder.

“I know you’re funny,” she snaps. “I’m married to you.”

“I’m sorry.” Can he please stop saying that? “I set a goal to get over my—my social anxiety disorder, that’s what the therapist called it.” Darby feels, of all things, a spark of anger. For how many years has she been encouraging him to seek professional help and always she was made out to be the pushy bad guy. But now, Griff’s done it. He’s not only looked up a therapist, but made an appointment and seen one. Probably more than once from the sound of things. Without telling her. Why didn’t he tell her? “I saw an Instagram ad for an online therapist and I thought, why not? His name’s Rahul. I should have told you about Rahul,” he says, as if reading her mind. “But I had this idea that it would be a surprise. A good surprise.”

Bullshit. The thought comes to her so briskly that she flushes crimson. Sure, maybe he took the classes, but he didn’t care about surprising her. He wanted something to himself.

“Also…” he falters. “I was embarrassed and not sure if I would chicken out. Plus I knew you’d want to come to one of my shows.”

“You have shows?”

“Showcases, more like. They’re not a big deal. Nothing fancy.”

“Who are you?” It’s the most articulate thing she can manage on short notice. Therapist. Improv. Shows. A whole world about which Darby knows nothing.

“There was that Christmas party at the end of last year. Do you remember it? You told me it was a girls’ night. But I found the invitation in the trash and it wasn’t. It wasn’t women only. There was karaoke.”

Darby does remember. She sang “Come On Eileen” and she missed Griff in that moment because he loves that song, but she didn’t feel guilty. “I was doing you a favor,” she says. A small fib. He should be thanking her. She’s always making casual excuses for him. Oh, he does like you, he’s just an introvert. No, no, he clams up sometimes, sorry. Really, he’s so wonderful, just not a big group person, you know? She can think of a dozen of these conversations she’s had with friends over the years. Eventually, she got desensitized, though, and stopped feeling the need to explain Griff.

“At first I was mad. It was almost worse than if you were having an affair. I mean, that’s how much you didn’t want to have me around? It was awful, Darby.”

Hold on a minute, the conversation is moving entirely in the wrong direction, she’s swimming upside down. How is she the bad guy here? What’s going on?

He grins sheepishly, asking her to understand something he’s never even bothered to explain to her. “But it was a wake-up call. I get it now. It’s frustrating for you to have to babysit me at parties and whatnot and, well, believe it or not, I don’t love it myself.” He chuckles. “Rahul says it’s a real thing. There are symptoms. Excessive sweating, trembling, nausea, difficulty speaking, a rapid heart rate. An actual diagnosable syndrome and I have it. I know it’s not like I’m a social anxiety disorder survivor or anything.” Though it sounds to her like that’s exactly what he thinks, like she should make him some colorful supportive wristband. “So I knew I had to treat it like a disease, to do something drastic. Dive into the deep end, so to speak.”