CHAPTER TWO
So that's how I came to be standing outside a redbrick Georgian building near Trinity College, my finger hovering over a button next to the typed words Ms. Ellen Early. I felt a sudden urge to turn around and head home. But maybe, just maybe, I'd get lucky and the therapist would prescribe something lovely like lithium that I could sprinkle on my morning coffee. I pressed the button and heard the door click open.
I climbed four flights to the top of the building and gave the receptionist my name. She asked me to wait. There was a sofa but no magazines. I sat there trying to look like I had a rich inner life to occupy me. Ten, fifteen, minutes ticked by, and finally, she said Ms. Early would see me.
The therapist stood from her midcentury architectural chair as I entered the room. She was alone. I had assumed a previous session had gone over, but no. She didn't apologize for keeping me waiting, just shook my hand and gestured to a seat opposite her. The room was built into the rafters, airy and bare, the walls and floorboards painted white.
Her short dark hair was slicked back in a 1980s supermodel kind of way, and she was wearing an expensive-looking gray silk shirt. She had beautiful nails, shaped to a soft point like almonds. They made a small pleasing sound as she tapped them on the table next to her.
She looked like someone who might live in a brownstone in New York—married, but her husband would live on the other side of Central Park—they had decided not to live together to keep their relationship fresh. She would have high-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets and never cook except for when she hosted dinner parties. She would share a bottle of champagne every night with friends who dropped by with takeout, and the rule would be that they weren't allowed to talk about work, only culture, travel, problems with the electoral system, whether cheek fillers could ever be a feminist choice and existentialism. She probably had no children. No, actually, she did. One grown son who called her by her first name and came to her for advice on ethical dilemmas at work. You could just tell she was a woman who would never, ever empty the junk from her car into a Lidl bag and then put that bag into the attic to be sorted out at an unspecified later date.
Not that I would know about that.
"So, Eliza, how did you hear about me?" she asked, pulling me out of my reverie.
She spoke slowly, her Irish accent almost undetectable under a sophisticated transatlantic purr.
"A friend gave me your business card." My voice strained on friend.
Ms. Early folded her hands. "And what brings you here today?"
When I hesitated, she said, "Let's try this. Why don't you tell me what you think the biggest problem in your marriage is?"
Well, Ms. Early, the biggest problem in my marriage is my husband. And I don't know if his behavior is the result of social conditioning, millennia of hunter-gatherer genes in his DNA, his emotionally distant father, excessively high testosterone or actual clinical narcissistic personality disorder, but let's just say it's starting to grate. Oh, and to top it all off, I think he's having an affair.
I settled for, "We don't communicate well?"
She gave no indication as to whether this was the right answer or not.
I tried again. "And I suppose I'm not very good at asking for what I need. Like time to myself?"
That was always, always the answer to any marriage dilemma in those psychology columns in newspapers. But no. Nothing from the therapist. Not even a blink.
Then I remembered an excerpt from some article I'd read in Cosmopolitan. "And maybe I don't show him that I care anymore? Because I'm too wrapped up in our daughter?" In actuality, I didn't show that I cared anymore because the way he chewed was so irritating it gave me a stress headache. But you couldn't say a thing like that to a person like Ms. Early.
She drummed the table again with those elegant nails. I was annoying her, though I couldn't blame her. I was annoying myself. But what did she want?
I babbled on, hoping for some clue as to what answer would please her. "You see, Richard's under a lot of stress at work. We moved back to Dublin from the UK for this huge new job. He used to be the manager at Drury Lane in London, but Blind Alley Theatre hired him to produce a new play."
I waited for the typical, "You're Richard Sheridan's wife?" Almost everyone had heard of Richard. He was a rising star of the theater world, and now that the hometown boy was coming back to Dublin to work his magic on the beleaguered Blind Alley's fortunes, he was getting even more attention. But there was no flicker of recognition on Ms. Early's face. I plowed on. "Richard's under a lot of pressure, and the move has been a bit of an adjustment for all of us. And I suppose maybe I'm not always there for him...emotionally?"
Puke.
