In Between Days Page 4

  After a moment, Lorna lets go, and he continues pouring.

  “Maybe I should leave the two of you alone,” Elise says. “I feel really bad for being here right now.”

  “Nonsense,” Elson says, waving her off. “We’re just having a drink, right? We’re just a bunch of friends having a drink.”

  “You’re the only one drinking,” Lorna points out.

  “Okay,” he says, “so I’m the only one drinking. Big deal. I’m also the only one who’s about to stand up and go take a piss.” And with that, he stands up clumsily, feeling the shift of the room, and starts toward the hall. In the background, he can hear Lorna apologizing to Elise. His divorce, she is saying. His daughter. He moves toward the bathroom and closes the door. He stares at his face in the mirror, its distorted image, then runs some water. Suddenly the room is tilting, the Mexican tiles changing shape. He sits down on the edge of the tub and tries to catch his bearings. He feels a little nauseous, a little ill, and then suddenly he’s on the floor and crawling toward the toilet. In the background, he can hear some music coming on. Marvin Gaye? The Four Tops? As the singer sings Oh baby, baby, Elson vomits twice, very violently, into the bowl. The music goes off, and then he hears his name being called. He vomits again, this time so forcefully that he feels it in his gut, his stomach muscles tightening, and then he looks in the bowl and notices that there are tiny red specks on the porcelain rim. Others float around in the bowl. He wipes his forehead, loosens his tie, stares at the specks, then moves over toward the wall and tries to relax. As he slumps down on the floor, he can feel the dampness on the back of his shirt and feels faint. A moment later, there’s a knock on the door, and then another, and then he hears his name being called. When the door finally opens, he can see Lorna’s worried face looking in.

  “Elson?” she says.

  But he can’t bring himself to speak, can’t bring himself to say a thing. He stares at her for a moment, then closes his eyes.

  “Elson?” she says again. “What the fuck is happening?” And that is the last thing he hears for a very long time.

  Part Two

  1

  “WHAT WERE WE talking about?” Dr. Peterson says.

  “When?”

  “The last time.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Cadence.”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Honestly.”

  “I think we were talking about your husband,” he says, looking through a file on his lap. “At least, according to my notes.”

  “We might have been,” she says. “I don’t really know.”

  The room they’re sitting in is a large, high-ceilinged office with glass walls overlooking the skyline of downtown Houston. The room is aggressively air-conditioned and very white. The furniture is spare, modern. No doubt picked out by some Scandinavian designer with impeccable taste. Two palm trees sit in iron pots in either corner of the room, but otherwise the space is empty, save for the two tiny couches they’re both sitting on. Across from her, Peterson taps his pen.

  “Well, isn’t that part of the reason we’re here?” Peterson continues abstractly. “To talk about him?”

  “I thought we were here to talk about me.”

  “Well, that too, of course. But I guess what I mean is him in relation to you.”

  “Not today,” she says bluntly, looking out the window.

  “Why not?”

  “Just not today.”

  Ever since she got the phone call last week that her ex-husband Elson had been taken to the hospital in an ambulance, she has cringed at the sound of his name. The call had woken her up from a dream, a dream she’d been having about her father’s farm, and after she had woken up from this dream, after she’d learned what had happened, she had gotten into her car and then driven all the way across town at three in the morning to St. Ignatius Loyola, which is where she’d found Elson, lying in a bed, his girlfriend at his side. His girlfriend had been the one who called her. Lorna. A thin wisp of a girl. Not much to look at, really. Still, she had been exceedingly nice to her, so nice, in fact, that Cadence had found it hard to dislike her. What was a nice girl like this doing with Elson? she’d wondered. Elson had been asleep when she’d arrived. Hooked up to a heart monitor. A tube in his nose. He had looked like a tiny child, an infant, helpless and alone.

  As they stood over Elson’s body, Lorna had tried to explain to her what had happened. He’d been vomiting, she said, vomiting pretty hard, and then at one point he’d passed out cold on the linoleum floor of the bathroom. By the time he’d come to, the ambulance was there, and so they’d taken him out to the hospital, to the intermediate care unit, which was where they were standing now. At the time she’d called, Lorna said, she’d thought it might have been more serious, maybe life threatening, but now she wasn’t sure. They hadn’t let her see him, she said. They were running some tests, of course, some routine stuff, but she hadn’t known what to do, hadn’t known who to call, so she’d decided to call up Cadence. Every time she spoke, this poor girl, she looked down, as if embarrassed by what had happened, ashamed for what she’d done, for waking up Cadence at three in the morning and making her drive all the way across town to see him.

  Cadence had assured her it was fine, that she would have done the same, then she’d patted the girl’s hand. She pushed from her mind any thoughts of what Elson and this girl might have done together on her own living room couch or what Elson might be doing now to support her, how he was probably supplementing her income with money he rightfully owed her, how he was probably paying her utility bills, her cable, her rent. She ignored all of these things and embraced this girl, pulled her tightly to her chest, and told her it was fine.

  “I’m just glad he’s not dead,” she’d said and smiled.

  As it turned out, what had happened to Elson hadn’t been that serious after all. A torn esophagus is what they said. That had been the final diagnosis. A torn esophagus from too much puking, or from puking too hard, she couldn’t remember. In any event, Lorna had claimed that it was probably from something he ate, an allergic reaction or food poisoning. Not from something he drank? Cadence had asked. No, no, Lorna had said. Probably not. She wondered, even then, why this girl was protecting him. Had he trained her to do this, or was it something else? Guilt perhaps? Guilt for letting this happen? Didn’t she realize that Cadence knew her husband, her ex-husband, better than anyone? That if anyone was to blame it was obviously Elson? She suddenly felt sorry for the girl, sorry that she had had to inherit her misfortune, her burden, and as they parted ways, she’d squeezed her hand gently.

  “Good luck with him,” she’d said. “He’s more than a handful.”

  “Yeah.” Lorna had laughed. “I’ve noticed.”

  Then she’d patted her hand again, thanked her, and walked down the hall.

  So this is what had happened. But what she couldn’t explain to Peterson, what she didn’t want to explain to Peterson, was that earlier that night, as she’d been driving across town to the hospital, she’d been almost paralyzed with fear. The thought of losing Elson now, after everything that had just happened, it was almost too much to process. She began to regret certain things she had said to him, certain things she had done. She began to feel guilty for the way she had treated him, the way they had fought. Then at one point—and this is what she couldn’t explain to Peterson—she began to second-guess herself, began to second-guess the divorce. She began to wonder whether any of this would have ever happened had she simply treated him better, or forgiven him, or had they both tried a little harder.

  Second-guessed her divorce? Jesus Christ. What would Peterson do with a thing like that? He’d have a field day with it. He’d bring it up for the rest of eternity. She knew how his mind worked. How he processed these things. She knew exactly what he’d think. For the past several months, Peterson had been needling her, probing her, trying to catch her off balance, trying to get her to reveal things she didn’t want to reveal. His style wa
s to sit back patiently and wait, to sit there and watch her, but recently she had given him almost nothing to work with, and she knew it annoyed him. Had she not just left another psychiatrist the previous fall, she probably would have left Peterson by now. But what else could she do? The man wasn’t a dolt, just exasperating. His incessant pen tapping, his placid smile, his overreaching claims.

  And now, as she looks at him, she wonders whether or not he will try to persist, but after a moment Peterson simply looks at her and smiles, then closes his file.

  “Well, what would you like to talk about then?” he says.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Why don’t we play one of those games you like? What’s that one? Association?”

  He stares at her, refuses to take the bait, adjusts his tie. “How ’bout we just talk about you today?”

  “Okay,” she says.

  “How are your classes going?” he says finally, grasping for something to ask.

  “They’re fine.”

  “Anything new to report?”

  “No,” she says. “Not really.”

  “What about that man you were talking to. That man in your class. What’s his name? Has anything developed there?”

  “Developed?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know,” she says, pausing, trying to think how to put this. “I guess you could say that a few things have developed there.”

  “In what sense?”

  “Well,” she says, deciding now to throw him a bone, “I guess in the sense that I’ve slept with him.”

  Peterson looks at her, trying to hide his surprise. “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m surprised it took you so long to tell me.”

  “Well,” she says, smiling, “I’m surprised it took me so long to sleep with him.”

  He stares at her, then looks down at her file. “So would you say you’re dating this man now?”

  “No,” she says. “I’d say I’m sleeping with him.”

  Peterson nods. “And does this man have a name?”

  “No.” Cadence pauses. “Not for now. For now, we’ll just call him the man.”

  Peterson smiles at this, shakes his head. What he doesn’t know, and what Cadence will never tell him, is that this man she’s referring to is not another student, as he presumes, but the instructor of her class, an adjunct lecturer who has been teaching at Rice for the past two years on a part-time basis. That she’s become involved with him is a surprise even to her, but it’s also not something she wants to get into with Peterson right now. Not today.

  “Okay,” Peterson says. “So, this man, do you find him attractive?”

  “I just told you I slept with him.”

  “I know, but that’s not an answer to my question.” He pauses. “Okay, let me put it another way. Do you like him?”

  “In what sense?”

  “In any sense.”

  She pauses. “I think so.”

  The truth is, she isn’t sure if she likes him. All she knows is that when she goes in to Rice twice a week to take her evening business class she enjoys hearing him speak. She enjoys watching him stand at the front of the room and talk to the other students about abstract principles and hypothetical scenarios, knowing all the while that she’s slept with him, that she knows where his scars are, that she knows where he likes to be kissed. They met on the first day of class, when she’d stayed late to explain to him that she didn’t like to be called on in class. That it wasn’t anything personal, but that she just didn’t like it. As someone who was twenty years older than the average student in the room, she’d said, she felt a little uncomfortable about it, that’s all. He’d smiled and told her that he understood, that he would feel the same. Then he’d asked her her name, why she was back in school, and all the rest. She had tried to be cautious at first, but soon found herself telling him all about Elson, about their divorce, and about how she was trying to go back to school now, after all these years, simply for practical reasons. To make herself marketable, she’d said. To become a viable option on the job market. He’d laughed and shook his head. Ah yes, he’d said. The job market.

  He told her his name was Gavin, that she should call him Gavin, and that had been the beginning. The next week they’d gone out for coffee (his suggestion), then drinks (her suggestion), then back to his apartment in Rice Village. He told her that night that he had been divorced himself, twice, and that he hadn’t had the best luck with women. Then he’d told her that he had a son from his first marriage who was mildly retarded. He told her that everything he did was for his son, to get him help, to get him assistance. She wondered, even then, if this was just a line, something he used on all the girls, but decided in the end it wasn’t. He was young—maybe thirty-eight or thirty-nine—and had a nice body. In fact, the first time she’d touched his body, it had been like going back in time, like going back to an earlier time in her life, a time when Elson himself had been in shape, a time when he used to play tennis and jog twice a week.

  So yes, in a way she liked him. But still, she wasn’t sure what she was getting into, and she didn’t want to get into it with Peterson. Not today. She knew what Peterson would say, how he’d react, how he’d interpret it. She knew all the questions he’d ask. This was Peterson’s bread and butter, after all. His mode of inquiry. This is what he got off on. And she didn’t want to give him the pleasure. So, as he sits here now, staring at her, she simply looks at him, smiling, giving him one-word answers until he finally stops asking.

  “Okay,” he says after a moment, shifting gears. “And how about your children?”

  “They’re fine,” she says.

  “Your daughter’s back in town, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Any new developments there?”

  “What do you mean? With her case?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not going to be talking about that anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “She doesn’t want me to.”

  “Never?”

  “No,” she says. “Never.”

  “You realize that everything you say here is confidential.”

  “I realize that,” she says. “I’m just trying to respect her wishes, you know?”

  She looks at Peterson evenly. Ever since she brought it up, she’s sensed that Peterson has had a strange fascination with her daughter’s case, that he likes hearing about it, that he enjoys considering all the moral complexities. It’s almost like he’s just sitting there, waiting for her to mention it, even as she’s talking about something else. And now he looks deflated, annoyed. He taps his pen.

  She smiles slyly. “You look disappointed.”

  “Why would I be disappointed?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, and drops it.

  “Let me ask you something, Cadence,” he says after a moment. “Do you feel like you’re getting anything out of these little sessions we have?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Why? Are you suggesting I don’t?”

  “No,” he says. “I’m not suggesting anything.”

  She stares at him. Peterson. Insufferable Peterson. She wonders what it must be like to be his wife, to make love to him. Do you like it when I touch you here? she might ask him, to which Peterson would reply, I don’t know. Do you like touching me there? Every question answered with a question. This was Peterson. This was his mode of detachment.

  Peterson fumbles through a few more questions, looking at her file, covering every topic he can think of, before finally throwing up his arms. “You’re going to have to help me out here, Cadence,” he says after a moment, sighing. “This street runs two ways, you know.”

  “I know that,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

  She can tell she’s unnerved him.

  “I guess I’m just not in much of a talking mood today,” she says finally, leaning back on the couch. “In fact, I think this might be
a good place to stop.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  Peterson looks at her, nods, then reaches for her file and starts writing something down, scribbling away. This is the second time she’s done that this month, ended their sessions abruptly. Usually Peterson protests, tries to push forward, but today he doesn’t seem to care. And neither does she. She’s long since stopped caring what Peterson thinks of her. She watches him as he scribbles, then stares at the long row of filing cabinets on the wall behind him. All these screwed-up people neatly arranged in yellow files, she thinks, all alphabetized. She wonders where she ranks among them, where she falls on the general scale of screwed-up-ness.

  When he finally finishes scribbling, she looks at him. “By the way, I’m not going to be coming in next week.”

  “Why not?”

  “I have a test that night. Not for my business class. A different class.”

  “Maybe we can schedule a different time then.”

  “No,” she says. “I actually think I’d like a week off from this anyway.”

  “Okay,” Peterson says. “Fair enough.” He looks at his watch. “We still have fifteen minutes.”

  She smiles at him. “Maybe you can give me a discount today.”

  He grins. “I’m afraid that’s not how it works, Cadence.”

  “Well, then, why don’t we just say I’m giving you those minutes. Okay? You can call up your wife. Tell her you love her.”

  Peterson looks at her, then finally concedes. “Okay,” he says, smiling now. “Sure. I might just do that.”

  Then he stands up and shakes her hand and lets her out the door.

  Without stopping by the receptionist’s desk to pay her bill or to schedule another appointment, Cadence starts down the hall toward the elevator. Another pointless session with Peterson, she thinks. But as soon as she gets to the elevator, as soon as she gets in, she realizes she’s crying. She has no idea where this sudden outburst has come from, or what it means, only that before she knows it, she is rubbing her face, drying her eyes. She reaches into her purse for a Kleenex. There’s a woman standing beside her in the elevator, watching her, and as they get off at the first-floor lobby, the woman turns to her and reaches out her hand, touches her.