The Breakup Doctor

by Phoebe Fox

Mom cleared her throat and picked at something on her napkin. “Well...that’s all right. I mean, I’m not sure if your father will be coming.”

  “What do you mean? He’s your biggest fan.” Too late, I covered my full mouth with a hand, but my mother didn’t even notice my breach. She became very busy rearranging her silverware.

  “I mean that your father and I may be taking a little break for a while,” she said, her voice strained.

  There was a moment of silence that her words dropped into like an anchor.

  “Hang on,” I said. “What do you mean, ‘a break’?”

  “A little time for ourselves,” my mother said. She focused her gaze just over my shoulder toward the sliding doors. “Just...a break.”

  “What are you talking about?” I ground out. “You don’t take ‘breaks’ from your family.”

  Stu looked bewildered, and Sasha’s eyes had gone wide.

  Mom thrust her cutlery back down to the table, but stopped herself just short of letting them slam.

  “Keep your voice down, young lady!” she said in a harsh whisper. “Don’t you dare broadcast our family issues to the neighborhood. I mean that I’m taking some time for me. I need some space. I’m going to be living down in Naples for a while, in theater housing. It’s a long drive from here to there, and one of the patrons offered up her guesthouse, and...and I’m sick of feeling like the heroine of an Ibsen play. I’m going to go do what I want to do for a change, and if you kids can’t support me in that, then I guess I’ll just have to do it all on my own.”

  She took a shaky breath and then stood up. I didn’t try to stop her when she brushed past me and went into the house.

  “Jesus.”

  I looked over at Stu, whose voice was all but inaudible. His face was pale, and he reminded me of the little kid I’d grown up with. Sasha’s mouth was open, and her eyes met mine as though looking for answers.

  And all I could think about was my dad in the garage, skipping dinner so he could work on the cabinets he was making for my mother.

  seven

  We packed up and got out of there. Mom had disappeared into her bedroom after dropping her bombshell—somehow still managing to make me feel like the bad guy for yelling at her. I couldn’t even say goodbye to my dad. I didn’t know how to face him.

  All I wanted was to drive straight over to Kendall’s, wrap myself up in his arms, and pour out the whole story to someone who could give me the objective distance to process it. But Stu and Sasha had looked shell-shocked ever since the Mom Bomb. They couldn’t be left alone. I told Stu to follow us to my house.

  As soon as we made my front door, Sasha pushed my brother down onto my ratty yellow living room sofa and then plopped listlessly down beside him.

  “What the fuck is up with your parents?” she said.

  Stu didn’t even react, just sat slumped, staring at his hands in his lap. I set my purse on the table by the door and came to sit on his other side, bookending him.

  “Mom’s not leaving him, is she?” he asked the room at large. “She can’t be leaving him.”

  “They’re the most solid couple I know,” Sasha said. “If they get divorced, there’s no hope for any of us.”

  Since her own parents had gotten divorced when we were in seventh grade, Sasha had adopted herself into ours. And we adopted her right back, as evidenced by the fact of my mom including an “outsider” in her casual announcement that she was leaving my dad. Sasha was family too.

  I didn’t answer her. I had no idea what to say. The two of them were upset enough for all of us—I didn’t need to add to it. No one spoke for a long time. We sat together on my sofa leaning against one another, linked together like plastic barrel-of-monkeys.

  Finally, Stu seemed to snap out of his stupor enough to look around for the first time.

  “Damn, Brook. What ate your house?”

  Sasha smacked his arm. “Not now, Stuvie.”

  But he worked himself free of our dogpile and stood up to get a better look at the walls. “Seriously, sis. What’d you use to get the paper off, a jackhammer? Ever hear of wallpaper remover?”

  He was clearly recovered enough for smart-assery. I pushed up off the sofa. “I’m going to go wash the chlorine off me.”

  “Nice going, Stu,” I heard Sasha snap behind me.

  “What?”

  Their bickering voices faded as I headed back toward my bathroom to take a shower. When I got out, towels wrapped around my head and body, Stu was sitting on my bed, leaning back against the pillows that were propped against the wall in lieu of a headboard.

  “Geez, sicko,” I said when I saw him. “You’re lucky I didn’t come out naked.”

  He made a face. “You walk around naked? Exhibitionist.”

  “In my home? Where I live alone? Yes, unbelievable as it may seem, sometimes I do come out of the shower naked.” I was a little reassured that Stu was managing banter. A sarcastic Stu I knew how to handle; silent, devastated Stu worried me. “What did you do with Sasha?”

  “She’s in the other shower. Is this what you two do on girls’ night? Kinky.”

  “Stu, I’m a mental health professional, so I want you to believe me when I tell you you’re deeply sick.”

  Instead of lobbing back an insult, he fingered my beige comforter, looking down at it. “I like what you’re doing in the house,” he said after a moment. “I think it’s going to look nice.”

  Weirdly, the unexpected compliment made my eyes prickle. I sat down on the bed next to him, shoving at his legs with my butt to get him to scoot over.

  “You don’t have to say that. I know it looks condemned.”

  He looked over at me. “I’m not kidding. The way you’re going at this is smart—starting with a clean slate before you start making improvements. It’ll take some work, but this place isn’t really in bad shape, structurally. I think you can make it look good. You know, with this floor plan you could actually use the other two bedrooms as a home office for your practice.”

  “I could if I had any money. Which I do not.” I swung my legs up to lean back next to him against the pillows.

  “Could you please go put some clothes on if you’re going to sit so close? It’s really kind of Flowers in the Attic for me.”

  I pushed his shoulder, laughing as I got up and headed for my walk-in closet. “That was such a chick book. You’re really showing your feminine side,” I called back to him as I grabbed jeans and a T-shirt and pulled them on out of his sight.

  He said nothing, and I thought he might have left my room. But as I was sliding on a pair of flip-flops his voice came again.

  “This thing with Mom is kind of freaking me out.”

  I leaned against the wall and shut my eyes. You and me both, I wanted to say.

  But his dull tone told me how hard this was hitting Stu—nothing had ever been so grim before that he couldn’t make a joke out of it.

  So I rallied up my best big-sister, wise-therapist voice instead. “I know, babe,” I said from inside the closet. “I’m sure this is just...just some phase or something. All couples have trouble from time to time. This is really the first time Mom and Dad have had anything big, so they’re way overdue.”

  “You think? You’ve seen stuff like this before? You think they’ll work through it?”

  There was such naked pleading in his tone, I sagged lower against the wall. That singular vulnerability I could hear—that he’d let himself express only with me safely out of his eye line—made me take a breath and tell Stu the only big lie I’d ever told him.

  “Yeah, little brother, I do. I think everything is going to be fine.”

  Later that night I snuggled into my queen-size bed, realizing as my legs curled into the cool sheets how long it had been since I’d gotten into bed alone. I wrapped myself around the phone receiver, in­stead of Kendal
l, and hoped he was still awake. I was glad Stu and Sasha had wound up staying so late—by the time we’d found Meet the Fockers on television and sprawled in my living room with a liter of white wine and every bag of cookies in my cupboard, they had both seemed to cheer up a little. But all I had wanted all night was to hear Kendall’s voice and feel some reassurance myself.

  “This is Kendall Pulver.”

  For one second I thought it was his voicemail, but the noise in the background and the pause after he spoke told me otherwise. I glanced at the clock. He was still with his clients after midnight?

  “It’s me. Where are you?”

  “Brook? Hey! Hang on.”

  I heard the muffled sound of his voice talking to someone, and then the loud music and chatter abruptly torqued back as if he’d hit the volume button.

  “Hey, babe. Had to go outside to hear you.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Iniquity, can you believe.”

  “You’re kidding.” Iniquity was the kind of downtown nightclub you hated just to walk by, with the heavy bass leaking out and put­ting your heart into arrhythmia even out on the sidewalk, and a receiving line of freshly legal kids slouched against the front of the building smoking, sending their languid puffs of ennui wafting into your face. “With your clients?”

  “No, I just felt like stopping in. Yeah, of course with my clients. Why else would I risk eardrum rupture and black lung? This guy’s down here with his two sons, and I think they’re determined to get in some pretty heavy-duty father-son bonding experiences.”

  “Oh.”

  “Hey, man, watch where you’re going.” Kendall’s voice was sharp.

  I heard a slight scuffling, male and female laughter, and a lackadaisical, “Chillax, dude.”

  Kendall muttered something under his breath. “Sorry, babe. It’s a zoo down here.”

  “That’s okay. We can talk later.”

  “No, no, come on. How was family dinner?”

  I picked pills of fabric off the sheet. All I’d wanted all night was to talk to him about what had happened, but I didn’t feel like shouting it into the receiver while Kendall strained to hear me be­tween techno songs bleeding out onto a busy downtown street. “Fine.”

  “How’s Sasha’s nineteenth nervous breakdown?”

  I’d told him about what’s-his-name...the chef. I probably shouldn’t have.

  “She’s fine. She and Stu and I ended up mostly hanging out.”

  “Those two ought to just date. Solve both their problems.”

  I wasn’t sure what irritated me more—the implication that my brother and best friend were somehow defective, or the ridiculous suggestion that they date each other. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Hey...don’t be angry. I was just teasing.”

  “Sorry. I just... It was actually kind of a rough night.”

  I heard a flare-up of noise in the background—pounding bass under something that sounded tinny and shrill over the phone line, with a swell of chatter layered over all of it. Someone called out something I couldn’t make out.

  “Just stepped outside because I couldn’t hear,” Kendall said away from the receiver. “I’ll be in in a few minutes.” The voice called out something else, and then the sound was muffled once again.

  “Go on,” I said. “The client beckons.”

  “He’s twenty-three, and it’s his daddy’s money he’s investing. He can wait.”

  “What about Daddy?”

  “Daddy’s another story... But the last time I saw him was out­side the bathrooms with two girls I’m pretty sure had to have sneaked in on fake IDs.”

  “Yuck.”

  “Hey, I just lead the horse to water. It’s not my business what he drinks. So come on—tell me about it.”

  But I didn’t want to anymore. Maybe I was tired of thinking about it, or just tired, but after waiting all night to talk things over with Kendall, now all I wanted was to put the phone down and go to sleep.

  “I’ll just see you tomorrow.”

  “What do you mean? Aren’t you at the condo?”

  “No, I’m at my house. We wound up here and... I’m pretty tired.”

  The sounds in the background faded and I knew he was walk­ing farther away from the club.

  “You won’t be there waiting for me? How will I know I’m home?” Kendall’s tone was teasing, and something loosened in my tight chest.

  “It’ll smell like boy. No girl cooties,” I said.

  “I like girl cooties... Your cooties anyway.”

  I smiled into the phone and we listened to each other breathe for a few seconds.

  “I’d better get back inside,” he said finally. “I’ll give you a call as soon as I wake up.”

  “Okay.”

  We said good night and I leaned over to put the phone on my bedside table. I was so worn-out I thought I’d slip immediately into unconsciousness, but I lay on my back for a long time, blinking up at the ceiling in the dim blue light seeping in through the blinds, my eyes scratchy and wide-open.

  eight

  The newspaper assigned me an email address for reader mail, and when I checked on Monday morning to see whether anyone had written in, I had thirty-seven messages.

  Seventeen were some variation on how happy readers were that our local paper finally had a relationship advice column. Eleven were questions from readers that I could use for future col­umns. Four were nasty diatribes against dating, the mental health profession, “ridiculous navel-gazing,” and me. Three were requests for a date. One was the most pornographic come-on I had ever read, offering to erase the memory of every bad relationship I’d ever had with his “tumescent love wand.”

  And one was from a man calling himself “Duped and Dumped,” wanting to hire me to help him through a breakup.

  That made client number three, and it looked like Sasha was right—I might have found my calling.

  “Duped and Dumped” turned out to be Richard O’Flaherty, a kind gentleman in his late sixties. Over cappuccino at Daily Beans off Gladiolus, he told me he’d met “the love of my life, my soul mate” on an online dating site, moved her and all her belongings to his waterfront home after a single face-to-face meeting in her Omaha, Nebraska, hometown, and was devastated when she disappeared a month later with his computer, his wallet, and ten thousand dollars she’d cleaned out of his checking account.

  “Richard...you gave her your PIN numbers?” I asked gently.

  “She was my soul mate!”

  My initial step was to combat his naiveté so he didn’t get taken advantage of again. We spent the first half of our session together going over the ins and outs of Internet dating, and what danger signs to look for. I created a list for him of potential big red flags in online dating profiles. (“An old-fashioned girl who likes a real man to take care of her” could mean “looking for a sugar daddy.” A woman who made a point of saying she “believed in the institution of marriage” might be trying to put a good spin on the string of ex-husbands in her wake.) I made a mental note to devote a future column to the topic.

  Then we finished out the hour talking about the woman who’d conned him, and the way it made him feel, and why he thought he might have been taken in by her. Richard seemed to be a good­hearted, sincere man who was looking so hard for love, he was seeing it even where it didn’t exist. After he left I sat for a few more moments at our table, jotting down a game plan for our future ses­sions to help him slow down and wait for a relationship to develop, instead of trying to make it spring fully formed into life.

  This was such a common relationship misstep that I wanted to write a column right then. Sasha did the same thing—had one or two dates with someone where she really connected, and then made the mistake of thinking she knew enough about the other person to be in a committed re
lationship. A lot of people did it, and while I understood the urge to connect and be known and loved, you had to travel the path of getting to know each other. There were no shortcuts to that destination. That was why I was taking my time to decide about moving in with Kendall.

  I finally had to fold up my notebook to get to my next appoint­ment—with Tabitha Washington, who’d asked whether we could meet at her house after work, instead of somewhere public. I real­ized why as soon as she opened the door to me: Her face was blotchy, her eyes swollen, her nostrils red and chapped. She wore a pair of stained drawstring sweatpants and a quilted housecoat that had to have belonged to her great-grandmother.

  I schooled my features not to react as I introduced myself, and Tabitha invited me inside. She led me to a sitting area with chintz sofas facing each other across a Pottery Barn coffee table, and flopped onto one of them. I sat down across from her.

  Lisa Albrecht had started spewing invective against her hus­band almost before we were seated. Richard O’Flaherty had wanted to ease into talking about his breakup slowly. Tabitha simply got right to the point.

  “So where do you want me to start?”

  “Well...how about with a little background on your relation­ship?” I suggested. And we were off.

  She’d been dating Cooper for five months—beginning not long after his wife cheated on him and then moved out of town. He was smart; he was kind; he was handsome. An emergency room doctor, he worked unusual hours that made it hard for them to spend a lot of time together, but the connection was real, and the sex, Tabitha men­tioned repeatedly, was phenomenal.

  “But last week Maria showed up at Verdad, where I was meeting some girlfriends, and cornered me,” Tabitha said.

  I knew the place—a Mexican restaurant downtown. “The wife?”

  “Ex-wife,” she stressed, and then frowned. “Well...estranged, I guess.”

  “They’re not divorced?” She shook her head. That was a red flag, but I didn’t want to form an opinion till I knew more. “Okay. What did she say?”