A Better Man by Leah McLaren Read Free Book Online

Perhaps because of his early struggles to fit in, Nick had always had a weakness for status symbols. He took an inordinate interest in material possessions, not for the personal satisfaction they provided but for the outward messages they conveyed. Maya noticed that he liked what an expensive car
meant
far more than he actually seemed to enjoy driving it. And now his wife, in her well-maintained idleness, was one of these possessions. He took a week off work when the twins were born (she thinks she remembers him being there, vaguely—a hand that occasionally appeared holding a blanket or a wipe between the day- and night-nanny shifts), but shortly after that he began to fade from view. Their conversation, once so engrossing and full of secret jokes, suddenly revolved around teething, cracked nipples and sterilization. She sensed his interest waning but was frankly too sleep-deprived to do anything much about it.
He’ll be back,
she remembers thinking at the time. Three years later, there was no sign of him.
    Maya knows she shouldn’t blame Nick for her own restlessness. And yet, like the thief who justifies his crimes through angry entitlement (
Dad smacked me around, ergo I deserve this stranger’s flat screen
), she can’t help holding him responsible. She knows she shouldn’t let her brain get stuck on the repetitive internal monologue of negative thoughts that leads her to believe, in moments like this one, that Nick is somehow conspiring to make her unhappy—that his slow, inexorable fadingof feeling is not just passivity but an act of emotional aggression. Try as she might, she can’t shake the suspicion that he holds her in contempt. Not just for what she’s become, but for everything she’s not.
    Lately this persistent, unexpressed resentment she has toward her husband brims so close to the surface she can feel it bubbling up at inappropriate moments. The car will stall in traffic and instead of cursing, she’ll mutter his name. His face will appear in her mind’s eye when she painfully stubs a toe.
Amazing,
she thinks,
the way someone can go from representing everything that’s right in your life to everything that’s wrong with it.
    Winding her way through the streets around the university, Maya comforts herself with the thought that she was right to extend her therapy with Harriet. If she weren’t on her way there now, where else would she be? Probably at the Four Seasons bar, ordering a double vodka for lunch after a round of collagen injections—or worse, upstairs in a suite with Bradley. She lets her mind linger on the notion. As tragic bourgeois clichés go, at least she’s picked the least embarrassing option.
    Harriet’s office is on the second floor of a Victorian building that also houses a small poetry press. Something about the proximity of verse fills Maya with romantic comfort. Harriet’s office is a large, airy room with two bay windows that overlook the campus library. As she enters, Maya is relieved to find everything the same. There’s an enormous rolltop desk in one corner, two tastefully upholstered wing chairs in the middle of the room and an antique daybed against the far wall. And in the middle of it all is Harriet, a tiny, liquid-eyed woman in an endless succession of black knit dresses and ropes of pearls. Sheushers Maya in and, before saying anything, looks at her in a way that manages to be simultaneously empathetic and scrutinizing. Maya falls back on the daybed without even bothering to take off her jacket.
    “Tea?” says Harriet, in her customary greeting.
    “Only if you’re having some,” says Maya, as she does every week.
    And so they begin. There was a time when Harriet needed to draw her out a bit, but not anymore. These days Maya enters the office already oozing, a bag of milk leaking at the seams.
    She starts speaking as Harriet returns with the tea tray. “Remember last week—or was it the week before that?—when I was telling you about how I sometimes