A Better Man by Leah McLaren Read Free Book Online Page A

have this bizarre feeling that Nick just wishes I’d disappear?”
    Harriet glances down at the notepad in her lap and makes a note with a flick of her left hand. “I think you actually said that you felt like
you
were disappearing—that you might cease to exist.”
    “Yes, but only because he was wishing me out of existence. Me and the twins too. I still feel it, but it’s even stronger these days. Actually, it’s like he’s the one disappearing now. He’s there physically, but there’s just no sign of the other Nick.”
    “What do you mean by ‘the other Nick’?”
    Maya considers the question. “The Nick I married.”
    “Tell me about
him.
” Harriet nestles into her wing chair, slipping off her shoes and pulling a pair of stocking feet up under her like a sparrow settling down in its nest.
    “He was … beautiful. The most beautiful man I’ve ever known. Before the twins came we used to lie in bed togetherfor hours on end, talking about everything and nothing—teasing each other, making up a kind of secret language, or at least that’s what it felt like. We had more sex then, of course, but it wasn’t even like sex in the traditional sense. I felt like we were part of the same space-time continuum, with our outsides just packaging for pleasure.”
    “You were very much in love,” Harriet says.
    “That’s another way of saying it.” Maya smiles, remembering. It’s been a long time since she’s allowed herself to recall the good times this way. Even in the safe cocoon of her shrink’s office, the indulgence seems slightly dangerous. It’s as if her tenuously constructed life might fly apart just by admitting to a time when it seemed effortlessly whole.
    “We used to go to parties and end up in a corner talking to each other. Not because we were shy but because we were more interested in each other than anyone else. People would come up to us and say, ‘Aren’t you two sick of each other yet? Haven’t you run out of stuff to talk about?’ But we weren’t, and it felt like we never would be.”
    “Until now?”
    “Yes, I suppose. In a way. Although it’s not so much that we’ve run out of things to say as it is that the things we would say if we could bring ourselves to be honest with each other wouldn’t be the sorts of things either of us would want to hear. So we don’t say them. But it’s like the effort of not saying them—of keeping the unsayable things unsaid—precludes any other kind of real or natural conversation. The kinds of conversations we used to have all day, every day. I think that’s what I miss more than anything. Just talking.”
    Harriet shifts in her cashmere, jots a note. “Let’s go back to these unsayable things. Can you tell me what they are?”
    Maya frowns, then stops when she feels the crease appearing between her eyes. “For me I guess it would be that there’s something heartless about him since he became successful, something hard and dissatisfied, as if he’s disappointed all this
stuff
hasn’t made him happier.”
    “And what do you think he might say to you?”
    This surprises Maya—the question seems like it’s a violation of the cardinal rule of therapy:
The only person you can ever hope to change is yourself—and even then only a little bit.
At first she feels like she can’t possibly answer. She is quiet for a long time, picking at her fingernails like a neurotic teenager. Harriet waits, implacable, at ease in the silence between them.
    And then suddenly Maya knows the answer. “I think he’d say that he doesn’t know how to love me anymore.”
    Harriet’s eyes widen slightly, a rare physical response. “Why do you think Nick doesn’t love you?”
    Maya shakes her head. “Not
doesn’t
love. Can’t.” What she doesn’t add, because it would make Harriet probe more deeply, is that she hardly blames him.
    Maya returns home late that afternoon, laden with shopping bags filled with stuff she doesn’t need or want or