“Fine. Noted.” She rearranges her face from riled back to professional. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“How are you holding up?”
For he is her only therapist and she his only minister. “Oh, you know, the usual. Doctoring. Pastoring. Learning to sew.”
“You’re not getting a lot of rest either, Jeff,” my mother says gently.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“Agreed. So what are you giving me shit for?”
“That’s my job,” he says.
* * *
In the afternoon, Apple does a monologue. Most of Nora’s patients like the back-and-forth. She asks a question; they answer; she asks; they answer. But Apple is doing a monologue. More accurately, Monday would insist, Apple is doing a tirade.
“It’s all my mother’s fault I married Nathan Templeton. Isn’t that the point of therapy? Tracing your neuroses backward until you can blame it on your parents? Then good news: I’m cured. My appalling marriage is entirely my mother’s fault. She did warn me. This I admit. I’d like to say I had no idea what I was getting into, but it isn’t true. This is the problem with old-world wealth. It comes off as stuffy and priggish when you’re nineteen. First, she brought in my grandmother to talk to me. Grandma said, ‘You’re too good for him,’ but I thought she just meant she loved me so much no one would be good enough for me. Grandma said, ‘He’s got more dollars than sense,’ but she always did love a pun, obviously. But Grandma was—I don’t know—bohemian, I guess. What rich people call a free spirit. She never wore shoes. She was always packing picnics. Clearly she had a thing for trees. She was an artist, back when women—especially rich women from good families—weren’t artists, or anything else really. She was the one who designed the window in your library, you know.”
What?
“You’re kidding,” Nora says. “How on earth did that happen?”
A great question—I’m thrilled she’s asked it—but Apple moves right on.
“Who knows?” Apple gives a dismissive wave with nails as red and shiny as her namesake. “Anyway, when the whole wisdom-of-the-elders approach didn’t work, my mother went the direct route instead. ‘He’s after our money.’ And ‘We’re better than that.’ We are. Like she was marrying him too, not that she would. That was her point. That, and I was a silly girl who had her head turned around because he was handsome and exciting and in love with me. It sounds mean, right? It sounds like we should be talking about what a bitch my mother was. And she was. However, she was also right. So I blame her because if she could have told me that nicely, if she could have told me in a way that didn’t make her seem like a wealthy, privileged bitch, maybe I would have listened. But she didn’t so I didn’t, and now look where I am.”
She pauses for breath. My mother takes the opportunity to interject, “Where are you, Apple?”
“Right? Exactly!” Apple looks like my mother has just proved her point. “Where am I? Stuck in this shithole. No offense. Raising my kid in a goddamn haunted house.”
Haunted?
“Married to the man she warned me against—no longer handsome, no longer exciting, no longer in love with me, though don’t feel bad: I assure you the feeling is mutual.”
“How did you and Nathan meet?” Nora asks, to remind Apple of a time when her feelings were fresher, fonder.
“Oh, I met Nate before I can remember.” Another dismissive wave. Apple must do her nails herself because Bourne doesn’t have a manicurist. “I met Nate before I was even born. Our families go way back, as they say. Boston society is a small world. So, you know, similar circles: same parties, same dances at the club, same charity benefits. At one of them—I honestly couldn’t tell you which one—we were seated next to each other, got to flirting, got to drinking. But I wasn’t very much older than she is.” With a shiny wave in my direction. “He was older and gorgeous and made my mother furious. There was no way I wasn’t going to fall for him. But now I’m paying for it. Suddenly I have to be worried about leaks and cracks and repairmen who won’t work over the winter. I mean it’s just such a mess down there. Dangerous probably. Who knows how broken really. This should not be my problem. This is not what I signed on for.”
“Why is it?” Nora asks. “Why aren’t these Nathan’s problems rather than yours?”