All of which is a long-winded way of saying that the deep sea might be dark, but that doesn’t make it uninhabited. It certainly was strange that however long it had been since we stopped sinking, we had not seen a single thing beyond the glass.
MIRI
“Let’s be serious,” the therapist says, “I don’t think that either of you are listening hard enough.”
When she says this, she is talking about me.
“All right,” I say, “I’m listening,” but this apparently demonstrates my tendency toward belligerence and we have to start the exercise again.
The therapy is free, bankrolled by the Centre on the understanding that further assistance will be forthcoming, although they are somewhat hazy on the details. This was the main thing I managed to sort, on finally getting through to someone on the phone. I tried to mention other things, tried to talk about the obvious changes in Leah, tried to ask for an explanation, but the voice on the line was implacable in the face of my questioning, assuring me several times that prolonged dives could throw up all kinds of issues and that I shouldn’t be too concerned. We call it the resurfacing glitch, the voice said, so cheerfully that I felt almost churlish for asking. It’s so common, more common than you’d think.
To begin, the therapist shows us a series of inkblot cards and asks us to say what we see in each butterflying shape.
“A genie,” I say, “an ice-cream scoop. Was the Rorschach test not widely discredited around the mid-60s? An enchilada.”
“What I see,” Leah says, looking hard at each shape, “is an eye, and an eye and an eye and an eye and an eye.”
The therapist lays her cards facedown on the coffee table and makes a series of notes in a ring-bound pad before asking me how I feel about my mother. When I say that I’m not quite sure how that could be relevant, she explains that she takes a “deep listening” approach to couples’ therapy, adding that childhood experience could often be a root of dysfunction in adult relationships.
“What we’ll do here together,” she says, “is connect the dots.”
I am, apparently, too given to the process of blame. I have allowed blame to settle over me like a weather system, swelling damp inside the curve of my forehead and setting my teeth electric. The therapist tells us to ask each other questions, insists that the silence between us can be broken by something as simple as one of us opening our mouths. I write my questions on index cards as though I am revising for a test and then fold them away somewhere where Leah won’t see. Why, I write, did you go if they’d told you to expect all this. What, I write, was so fascinating down there that you didn’t come back.
There is something, the therapist says, to be said for letting go of anger. There is something, I tell her in a voice she immediately terms unproductive, to be said for not staying away six months when your operation terms stipulated only three weeks.
It was difficult, in the morning before therapy, to persuade Leah out of the house. She no longer enjoys the process of dressing, finds fabric painful next to her skin, and groans at the prospect of shoes, of walking. On coming home again, I find that a toenail has come clean off inside her walking boots, although she seems unaware of this and moves to sit on the sofa. Without quite knowing what I’m doing, I move over to the sink and spoon a small measure of table salt into a glass of water for Leah to drink.
* * *
I’m uncertain of the time and therefore uncertain of whether or not it’s entirely appropriate for Sam to be here. She’s been knocking for several minutes, apparently, and the neighbors had to let her into the building, though there is no sign of them now and their television just switched from a soap opera to the news.
“I just wanted to see if there was anything I could do.”
She’s brought food, for some reason, wrapped a chicken in tinfoil, producing it from the depths of her bag with an awkward expression. “This looked less strange in my head,” she says. “I just thought it might be nice.”
It’s a bad day, Leah dragging herself about the flat like a grappling hook, catching on the furniture. I take the chicken and ask whether there’s any chance of a rain check.
“She’s a bit under the weather,” I say, like some smiling kidnapper in a horror movie, chatting benignly to the mailman. “I don’t want to make anything worse.”
“I read about this thing,” Sam says, “decompression sickness. I say I read about it, I mean I googled it, which I guess is reading. It affects scuba divers, pilots, astronauts—anyone who works in compressed air. Apparently, nitrogen bubbles form in the blood and the tissues and things when the pressure decreases. When they come up, I mean, from underwater. It causes dizziness, apparently—rashes, fatigue, amnesia, even personality changes. Mad stuff. I don’t know why I’m telling you this really. I just thought—you’ve been saying she’s not been well, she’s been having trouble adjusting, and I just wondered whether it was something that someone could help with? I mean, not that you wouldn’t have thought of that—if it was that. Obviously. I’m not trying to diagnose. It’s just you haven’t told me much and I thought it would be nice to check. Or not nice but, you know, helpful.”