Exes and Ohs

by Beth Kendrick

  True, I wasn’t sleeping with Lucy’s dad while simultaneously trying to talk her mom into revealing the truth about her child’s illegitimate parentage, but I’d take my victories where I could find them.

  At the end of the session, I headed out to the waiting room and started to give Mrs. Spitz the update on Lucy.

  “Luce and I had a great time today—”

  “Oh, Gwen, there you are! Thank God!” Harmony St. James lunged up from the chair beside the magazine rack. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  I blinked. “Harmony. Hi. You’re early.”

  She wrapped her hand around my wrist. “Don’t worry. I know you’re insanely busy, but this’ll only take a second.”

  Mrs. Spitz and Lucy gaped.

  “Mommy, is that Catherine Zeta-Jones?” Lucy asked.

  Harmony blushed and fluttered. “Oh no, honey! I’m not Catherine Zeta-Jones.” She beamed at Mrs. Spitz. “I get that all the time.”

  Mrs. Spitz turned to me with one eyebrow raised.

  “Okay. Harmony, you’ll have to hang on a few minutes because I need to talk to my current clients.”

  “But I’m supposed to be on the set by noon! And you said you needed to talk to me! I’ll be done in five minutes, I promise.” She started tugging me back toward my office.

  “Can’t we just reschedule the appointment?” I asked.

  “We may as well just do it now, as long as I’m out here. Don’t worry, I’ll talk fast!”

  I looked at Mrs. Spitz, who looked at Lucy, who still hadn’t closed her mouth.

  “Go ahead.” Mrs. Spitz waved us away. “We’ll talk next week at the regular time.”

  I shook my head. “But it’s very important that you—”

  “Oh, thank you!” Harmony covered her heart with both hands and whirled around to face Mrs. Spitz. “Thank you so much!”

  Mrs. Spitz shrugged. “If it’s an emergency…”

  “Oh, it is! It is!” Harmony gushed right over my objections. “I’m going to be sending you good karma for this. Good, powerful, Synchrona karma!”

  At the word Synchrona, Mrs. Spitz nodded nervously and hustled her daughter out of there.

  Harmony blew past me and powered down the hallway, which left me no choice but to lecture the back of her head.

  “Harmony, I understand that you want to speak with me, but I insist that you respect the rights of my other clients. When I ask you to wait, it’s for a good reason.”

  We stopped in front of the office while I unlocked the door.

  “Oh, I know. It’s terrible of me to just barge in like this.” She widened her enormous blue eyes. “But after we talked last time about Leo and Alex C., I got to thinking, and well…”

  My hand froze on the doorknob. As I waited for details, I forgot to inhale, exhale, or relax my forehead, which had suddenly gone all wrinkly in the manner of a Shar-Pei.

  “Yesss?” I finally prompted.

  “I talked to my spiritual adviser this weekend and I asked him what I should do and what would be best for Leo.”

  I gave in to my irritation for a moment. “In the future, when you have questions about Leo’s mental health, please remember that he does have a psychologist—”

  “Oh, I know, and you guys are great.” She seemed to feel a bit sorry for me. “But you just can’t understand life’s complexities the way Synchrona can. I mean, Synchrona is really based on science, while psychology…well, you know…”

  Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

  She patted my arm. “Anyway, Grover—my adviser—felt the same way you did. He said I should tell Alex C. the truth. Because family security is very important to kids Leo’s age.”

  “That’s true.”

  “And he said a father has a right to know about his own son.”

  Odd how when I said something, it went in one ear and out the other, but when Grover said the exact same words, it was like Moses had just carried them down from the Mount.

  “So I have to call Alex C.” She nodded solemnly. “But I need you to help me.”

  I paused. “And how would you like me to do that?”

  “I need you to be here to support me while I call and tell him.”

  I collapsed against my office door, which swung inward, freeing me up to fall on my ass. When I picked myself up, Harmony had fixed me with an expectant gaze.

  “Harmony, before you say anything else, you should know that I’m in the process of referring you and Leo to another therapist here.”

  “But I like you!”

  I tried not to feel flattered. “It’s not really a choice. I have a conflict of interest.”

  “What’s the problem?” She didn’t seem nervous or defensive, just curious.

  I cleared my throat. “Remember Alex C.?”

  “Of course!”

  “Well, I sort of…know him.” In the biblical sense.

  She did a double take worthy of any soap opera. “You do not!”

  I hung my head. “I do.”

  “Well, that’s perfect!” She smiled. She actually smiled. This, to her, was good news. “Then you know his number?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Great! That’ll save me one boring 411 call. And—bonus!—you can calm him down if he gets all angry and, you know, guy on me!”

  “I really don’t think—”

  “Oh, thank God for Grover. He always shows me the right path. This is such a miracle.” She bent over, disappearing from my line of vision while she rummaged through her Louis Vuitton bag, and reemerged clutching a purple candle and matches in one hand and a small glass pyramid in the other.

  “Okay. Just give me a minute to get centered.” She lit the candle, wafted some lavender-scented smoke my way, then closed her eyes, clutching the little pyramid in both hands.

  I coughed. “You’re not really supposed to light candles in here.”

  “Shhhh.” Her palm swooped down inches from my face and then back up over hers. “Can you hear that?”

  I listened. I heard some little kid caterwauling in the waiting room, but nothing else. “Hear what?”

  “The earth. Turning. Connecting.” Her eyes popped open, white and blank like something right out of The Exorcist. “Embracing.”

  “Uh…”

  “I have courage because I am a strong and worthwhile person,” she chanted, turning the pyramid over and over with her fingers. “I have courage because I am a strong and worthwhile person.”

  So beautiful yet so mental. Ain’t it always the way?

  Then the humming started. After which followed more deep cleansing breaths and positive affirmations. “My spirit is pure, my path is clear. I follow the path of Synchrona to live my best life.”

  I couldn’t decide whether to call Oprah’s copyright lawyers or write her up as my next case study. I had no idea how long this would go on, but just before I started checking my email, she seized the phone on my desk and turned back to me.

  “I’m ready. What’s his number?”

  There are moments of grave doubts and regret in a therapist’s life (not to mention a new girlfriend’s life), and this was one of them. But after a slight hesitation, I surrendered Alex’s work number, my reasoning being that she could have easily obtained this information from someone else, so it wasn’t as if I was giving away state secrets.

  She dialed, waited, and then adopted a very brusque, clipped voice. “Hello, this is Harmony St. James calling for Mr. Alex Coughlin.” She pursed her lips, shook her head impatiently. “Well, I understand that, but I must insist that you pull him out of the meeting immediately. This is urgent!”

  She covered the receiver with one hand and winked at me. “Do I do a great businesswoman or what?”

  “I’m blown away,” I said, slumping back into my chair.

  She turned her attention back to the phone and continued lambasting the secretary. “Young lady, you get Mr. Coughlin on the line right now, or I’ll have you fired!”

  I star
ted waving my hands frantically, but the damage was already done. She winked again. “Want me to put it on speaker-phone?”

  “Oh my God, no!”

  “Okay, okay, here he comes.” She tossed her long curls over her shoulders and took a deep breath. “Alex? Hi. It’s Harmony…Yes, that Harmony. No, don’t hang up. Guess where I am!”

  She paused for a moment, scrunching up her nose. “No…no…oh, knock it off, Alex.” She gave me a thumbs-up. “I’ll tell you—I’m in Gwen Traynor’s office!”

  For the next thirty seconds, Harmony had to hold the phone about a foot away from her ear. I could hear Alex from all the way across the desk. He didn’t sound happy.

  Finally, she tried to regain control of the situation. “But that’s not even the big surprise…Well, I’m never going to tell you if you’re going to be like that…You say that now, but believe me, you’ll be sorry if I don’t tell you…Say you’re sorry…No, say you’re sorry…” She stamped one stiletto-clad foot on the carpet. Apparently Synchrona serenity was a very transient state.

  She tried to hand the phone over to me. “He wants to talk to you.”

  I cowered in my chair. “I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  She beseeched me with her eyes. “You tell him about L-e-o.”

  I dropped the cool therapist façade. “Are you insane? I’m not telling him! You tell him!”

  She exhaled loudly, then pressed the receiver back against her ear. “Oh, fine. Alex? You still there? Well, here’s the surprise. Sit down…Okay, fine, don’t sit down. My news is”—she closed her eyes and went for broke—“I have a son, he’s four years old, his name is Leo, and guess what, you’re actually his father and I just wanted to tell you that so okay bye.”

  She slammed the phone down and turned to me with a relieved smile. “Well, it sure felt good to get that out in the open.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Oh, he’ll be right over.”

  8

  Fifteen minutes later, my office turned into a free-for-all. Can open. Worms everywhere.

  Alex stormed in with both hands balled into fists and immediately headed for Harmony, who was still curled up in the blue armchair.

  “I just walked out of a meeting with my most important client. This had better not be some childish prank.” His voice was quiet and controlled, but the harsh lines in his face betrayed his fury. The good-natured closet surfer I’d met last week had vanished completely.

  She leapt to her feet and came out swinging. “Oh, you are such an Aries!”

  “I’m going to be a hell of a lot more than that in a second. I do not want you anywhere near my girlfriend. Why are you in Gwen’s office?”

  Harmony widened her stance and planted her heels in the carpet. “Gwen is my son’s therapist! Actually, strike that, she’s our son’s therapist!”

  Alex took a step back to absorb the one-two punch. “My son.” He shook his head. “My son needs a therapist? Already? He’s not even five—what did you do to him?”

  “Nothing! He’s depressed. It’s not my fault. FYI, depression is a biochemical thing. So maybe it’s your genes that did it.”

  Alex turned to me. “Is that true?”

  “Well, the research is kind of mixed on that,” I hedged. “The causal factors are very complicated. There are at least two distinct types of depression…”

  But neither one was listening anymore. They were too busy circling each other like rabid wolverines.

  “I didn’t think you were capable of this, Harmony.”

  “Of what? Having a baby or dialing a phone?”

  “Gwen, how long have you known about this?” he asked.

  I feigned momentary amnesia. “Uh…”

  His eyes narrowed. “How. Long. Have. You. Known.”

  I stared at my hands and muttered, “A few days.”

  “A few days?” He whirled around, headed for the door, whirled back around, and got right up in my face. “All this time—last night—you were lying to me?”

  I backed up to the bookcase. “I didn’t lie, technically. I didn’t know what to do, because—”

  “Save it.” He cut me off with a glare and commenced pacing the room, clenching and unclenching his fists. “So you’ve met him. You met my…Leo?” He turned back to Harmony. “What the hell possessed you to name a helpless infant Leo?”

  “He is a Leo,” she informed him coolly. “He turns five next month. And Leo is the most powerful, charismatic sign in the zodiac.”

  The vein pulsing in his forehead looked ready to pop at any second. “The zodiac. Don’t tell me you’re still into all that crap.”

  “It is not crap! If you weren’t so locked into the…the rigid linearity of Western thought, maybe you’d start to appreciate the mystical forces at work in your life.”

  His jaw dropped. “‘The rigid linearity of Western thought’? Where’d you get that one?”

  “Don’t patronize me. I’ll have you know that my life coach at Synchrona thinks I’m very—”

  He stopped pacing. “Did you say Synchrona?”

  She nodded. “That’s right.”

  “You’re raising my son in a cult?” His face went from crimson to purple.

  “It is not a cult! It’s a group of enlightened philosophers who—”

  “Christ almighty. You’re raising my son in a fucking cult.” He shucked off his charcoal gray suit jacket and threw it down on the desk. “My son. My son. This has got to—” He paused and narrowed his eyes. “Wait a minute. How can you be so sure he’s my son?”

  Harmony gasped. “How dare you?” She reached up to slap him, stopping inches short of his jaw when he froze her with a look of pure, cold fury.

  “How do we even know this kid is mine?”

  “Because I was sleeping with you when I stopped having my periods, that’s why!”

  “You were sleeping with Alex Spears before we broke up.”

  “I was not.” Her hand curled by her collarbone in a pose of Victorian indignation. “I told you, the whole boxers-in-the-bathtub thing was all a tragic misunderstanding! What kind of girl do you think I am?”

  He smiled wryly and let that question pass. “So you’d agree to a paternity test?”

  “Fine.” She folded her arms. “If you’re going to be that way, fine.”

  “I’m definitely going to be that way. I’m not as stupid as I used to be.”

  “Whatever.” For all of her bluster, Harmony still looked to Alex for her cues. “And then, when the test shows that you’re the dad—which it definitely will, by the way—then what?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” He started rolling up his shirtsleeves, practically yanking off the cuff buttons in the process. “In the meantime, why don’t you keep the kid away from the big vats of Kool-Aid down at the temple, just in case?”

  She snatched up her little glass pyramid and threw it at his head, missing by a good three feet and cracking my office window.

  I took a deep breath and plunged into the fray. “Let’s all calm down for a second here. Maybe we should just—”

  He cut me off. “You stay out of this. You’ve done more than enough already.”

  But Harmony tilted her head and smiled. “I think I know what to do. It’s a little drastic, but hear me out.” She took a deep breath. “It’s too soon to get engaged, of course, but I think we should start living together.”

  Deafening silence on all sides.

  I glanced at Alex, who had gone in the space of two seconds from tie-loosening rage to ashen-faced shock.

  “What?”

  She collapsed into a chair and tucked one leg underneath her. “Let’s give it a try. You can move in, but I don’t want to get engaged yet. I mean, obviously we still have some issues to work out.”

  “Some issues?” He exhaled in a burst of sudden, choking laughter. “Some issues? Woman, are you high on drugs right now?”

  I rounded on Harmony. “Yeah, really. What
is in that candle?”

  She reached out to squeeze my hand. “I’m sorry, Gwen. This is a horrible thing to say to the new girlfriend, but you two will have to break up. Alex and I have a child together.”

  “Maybe,” he emphasized.

  “We do,” she assured him. “I’m sure, and after we get the tests done, you’ll be sure too.”

  “But…I’m confused.” And the prize for the understatement of the year goes to Gwen Traynor. “How does that lead to cohabitation and a diamond ring?”

  “Well, one of the things they teach us at Synchrona—one of the things I’ve been struggling with—is that family connections are important.” Her eyes glazed over. “Family paves the path to serenity.”

  Alex appeared torn between killing himself and killing her.

  “So?” he prompted.

  “So Leo needs a mother and a father. Grover is always saying that, but I ignored him because I was afraid to track you down. Now that I’ve told you, though, I feel better. I feel cleansed. Ready to move up to the next level.” She nodded. “You were right all along. Family truly is the most important thing. That’s what keeps us centered. And our little boy is depressed. He needs us, Alex. He needs us both.”

  He sat down on the edge of my desk. “This is crazy. I’m not having this conversation. And do you know why? Because it’s fucking crazy.”

  “We have to do what’s best for our child.” She opened her arms in a sweeping, Earth Goddess relevé. “Step outside your little box, Alex. Take a look at the big picture. The universe.”

  Alex took two steps over, placing himself directly between me and his ex. “The universe.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “The big picture.”

  “Exactly.”

  He squared his shoulders. “Okay. Just so we’re clear here, let me describe what I see as the big picture. You call my office out of the blue, threaten to fire my assistant, and pull me out of a critical quarterly meeting. You then proceed to announce that you have a four-year-old son, whom you purport to be mine. You do all this while sitting in my new girlfriend’s office, and your announcement of motherhood is followed immediately by a demand for reconciliation and marriage. Is this an accurate portrayal of events thus far?”