The Breakup Doctor

by Phoebe Fox

  It wasn’t just the empty time that used to be filled with conversation and company. Not simply being used to having someone to bounce ideas off of, share thoughts and observations with, to laugh with over nothing. Losing someone was more than losing their company. You lost your whole routine, the little daily events that became second nature to you. It was that change that made the transition so much more keenly felt. It wasn’t just one element that was suddenly absent from your life. It was everything connected to it: the habits, the scheduling of your time.

  I missed Sasha. Terribly.

  During the week I called her at least once a day. I left messages every time. Said I was enormously sorry. Asked her to call. I sent her an apologetic email telling her my tongue had gotten away from me, that I wished I could take back what I said, that I was abjectly sorry. Finally I texted, “Sasha, I’m really, really sorry.” But nothing.

  I heard nothing from Chip, either—but I hadn’t really expected to. Given the embarrassing and criminal end to our evening, he probably didn’t want to be reminded of his behavior any more than I did. After crossing the professional line so completely and irrevocably, I would never be able to face him again, and my sole consolation for the entire episode was that at least I had formally ended treatment with him before breaking every boundary imposed between therapist and patient.

  Despite the shambles of my personal life, the Breakup Doctor requests continued to stream in, and during the week I met with five new clients. By Friday, when my latest column ran, I’d gotten twenty-one more emails from potential clients, and I was starting to get my feet under me again. Regardless of what was going on in my personal life, my new professional life was indisputably taking off. And little by little, I felt better. Lonely...but better.

  I felt so much more solid, in fact, that I realized it was time to deal directly with the Kendall situation, instead of letting myself be sucked blindly into his undertow.

  Not that I had any intention of confronting him. Now that I was more rational, myself again, I knew that was fruitless. He’d made his decision while he was actively in a relationship with me, seeing me every day, to all intents and purposes living with me. Which evidently he’d realized he didn’t want to do. There was nothing to be gained by “talking it out” with him, except to make myself feel worse. He was clearly no longer interested in being with me, and finding out why wasn’t productive. The only thing that was at this point was to tie off loose ends: go get the rest of my things from his house, return the few things I had of his, and put the whole thing behind me. Move forward.

  I’d been working at home all day, answering emails from clients and potential clients, and I was in jeans and a T-shirt. But I changed into one of my work outfits—a sleek tweed pencil skirt and purple silk blouse that I knew flattered my coloring and made my eyes look like big brown Bambi eyes—with my usual cardigan over it to hide the bandage on my shoulder. I put on makeup. I slipped on a pair of pumps—having one of Sasha’s designer pairs would have given me an extra boost of confidence, but I still felt good enough—and I headed over to his condo, this time straightforwardly, not skulking inside like a criminal. I looked as completely different as possible from that poor, sad, bedraggled girl in the rain outside his condo.

  It was Friday evening, so I knew he wouldn’t be home. Fridays were when Kendall met with coworkers and friends downtown after work—“social networking,” he called it, as if he had to justify doing anything that wasn’t work-related at every free moment. I planned to simply let myself in—I still had my key, if he hadn’t changed the locks—get the last of my meager things I’d had at his house, and leave.

  Kendall’s car wasn’t in his spot, of course. I felt an odd mixture of relief and regret, and I had to admit to myself that part of me had hoped he’d be home, that he’d see me looking professional and pulled-together. That he’d have to face me like a man as I took my belongings and removed myself finally and completely from his life. That he’d wonder what on earth he’d done, wish he could take it all back.

  I walked the path I’d taken so many times before: around the residents’ parking area and along the pathway that ran along the tea-colored water in the drainage pond.

  I knew the divot on his doorjamb from where we’d jarringly learned that his new dining room table didn’t fit through it. We’d flipped the tabletop face down on the grass outside his unit, its legs in the air like a dying bug while we painstakingly unscrewed each one, then screwed them back in once we carted the pieces inside. I knew that the doorbell didn’t work, and hadn’t since Kendall had moved in, and how we always forgot to buy a new one, literally slapping ourselves on the foreheads every time we came home from running errands with everything we needed except that.

  I knew that the key slid into the lock as though it had been lubed, but that it caught partway through the turn and wouldn’t go any farther unless you lifted up on the knob. I remembered the feel of the knob in my hand, cool in my palm even on the hottest day.

  As the door swung open in front of me, it was as though nothing had changed. I was coming back home after a day at work, a night out with Sasha, buying groceries, and Kendall would still be at his office, the house quiet and perfect as a movie set until I set down whatever I had in my hands, turned on the stereo, filled the space with mealtime scents of sautéing onion and garlic.

  It occurred to me for the first time, as I walked up the stairs to the silent main living area, that I had always come home to a sterile, pristine environment I needed to fill with sensory input, and Kendall came home to scents and sounds and company. We each got what the other wanted.

  My heart was pounding like a living creature in my chest as I topped the staircase. What if his car was in the shop, and Kendall was home, sitting in the living room, aghast at my unannounced invasion of his house? What if he was waiting for what he thought was an intruder, armed with a bat or a knife or the gun he’d always talked of getting? Worst of all—the thought I couldn’t shake despite having unearthed no evidence of it—what if he wasn’t alone?

  Yes, I still had my key—but using it wasn’t part of the contract anymore. Another thing that made breakups so hard—you were stripped of so many rights overnight. The home you once entered as easily as your own was now off-limits to you; you were relegated to knocking on the door like any other visitor. The body you could reach out and casually touch, anywhere, now bore the new boundaries of social convention. It wasn’t yours to claim anymore.

  I should just leave my key on the breakfast bar overlooking the living room, let myself out and latch the door behind me. Or I should turn around and go, put the key in an envelope with nothing else and mail it back to Kendall. Here. I don’t even want the ability to come back into your life.

  Instead I dropped my purse and the keys on the sofa table behind his leather couch, just as I’d done countless times before.

  The house looked so identical to the way it had for every one of those nights that for a moment I was disoriented. It was as though nothing had happened, the last weeks a strange and unsettling dream, but now I was back from the rabbit hole and everything was normal again. The burgundy afghan knitted by Kendall’s grandmother was neatly folded across the wide arm of the cream leather sofa, where Kendall always replaced it after I dragged it over me at night in front of the television. The remote lay in the wooden tray on the cocktail table that he had bought specifically for it, next to the cordless phone—the only other place it was supposed to go when not on the charger—and his PS3 controllers.

  He must love the fact that he didn’t have to trail after me anymore, putting things back where they went. As soon as I was out of his life, Kendall must have gone through the house and eradicated every messy trace of me, every cluttery bottle or jar or tube, every sloppily hung, non-color-coded article of clothing in the extra closet. Knowing Kendall, it would be easy for me to take all of my things—they would be neatly packed in
a clearly labeled box, tucked away in a guest room closet, waiting the requisite time to be returned to me with the least amount of emotion or drama. It made me sad that nothing I’d left behind here was important enough for me to have missed in the weeks since I’d been gone—doubles of my toiletries, spare panties and bras, a couple of outfits.

  As I headed toward the master bedroom, another thought inescapably assailed me: What if, when I opened the smaller spare closet, someone else’s things were hung there now?

  The idea stopped me halfway down the hall. This was the moment I ought to turn around and leave, stop invading Kendall’s privacy, stop poking a hard finger into my own wounds, and walk out the door and to my car. Leave Kendall and his home behind, literally and metaphorically.

  The logical side of my brain pelted me with questions: What was I going to feel if I opened the closet and saw another woman’s clothes so quickly replacing mine? What would it tell me about why my relationship ended? How would it help me understand and work through it?

  The answers: Crappy. Nothing. It wouldn’t.

  I took another two steps forward and twisted the knob to the master bedroom, breath held.

  And then I stopped cold, forgetting even to breathe.

  Like a museum display of my last day with Kendall, the room stood just as it always looked. Just exactly as it had always looked. Not just the bed made with military precision, the pillows fluffed and arranged symmetrically. Not just Kendall’s atomic alarm clock tilted toward his side of the bed at a 45-degree angle.

  Next to the clock was the same framed picture that was always there. I remembered the day it had been taken: Sasha had invited Kendall and me to a grand-opening party for Hurricane, a new (and unfortunately named) waterfront bar and restaurant on Sanibel. The official grand opening was the following night, but the “soft opening” was media only—fountains of free booze and unlimited piles of food. Sasha had scored extra invitations, and Kendall for once came home from work at a normal time so we could meet her there.

  While the waiters and bar staff milled among the crowd sucking up on a level I’d imagined only celebrities got (“Ready for a refill? Try these horseradish-crusted prime rib bites. May I take that olive pit for you?”), and Sasha networked with local TV reporters and editors from area magazines, Kendall and I explored every inch of the restaurant, noticing details both elegant and odd.

  “Five-inch crown molding. Nice,” he pointed out.

  I nodded. “Classy. Travertine tile.”

  “Good choice.” Kendall stomped a heel of his Ferragamo on the floor of the cocktail lounge. “Pergo. Cheap.”

  “Humidity,” I excused the faux pas. We peered behind the bar. “Copper,” I said, indicating the sink.

  “Swank.”

  Outside on the wide deck overlooking Tarpon Bay a breeze blew the heavy, pleasant scents of seaweed and fish and salt toward us as we leaned against the off-white railing.

  “Plastic?” Kendall raised an eyebrow, disbelieving.

  I rapped my knuckles against the rail. “Recycled milk jugs. Environmentally conscious.”

  “Tacky.”

  I laughed. “Green.”

  He laughed too, and we looked out over the bay together, watching the sun start to descend. Then I felt his eyes on me, and I turned to see him staring. He tucked a flyaway strand of hair back behind my ear.

  “Beautiful,” he said softly.

  He was capable of those moments—the ones that always caught me off guard, a sudden outpouring of sweetness and naked connection that trapped the breath in my chest and warmed it like sunbaked sand. I brought my hand up to his cheek, and we kissed like that—soft and gentle, holding each other’s faces.

  A flash of light had pulled us apart, and I turned to see Sasha standing there with her phone.

  “Awww. You two are like a postcard out here. They ought to put you in their brochure.”

  “Shut up,” I said, embarrassed, and Kendall and I started past her back inside. “Where’s the dessert bar?”

  Later she’d emailed the picture to me, with the subject line, “Still life: Sanibel face-sucking at sunset.” It did look like a cheesy picture-perfect ad for romantic beach getaways: the sky pink and indigo and orange behind us, our hands framing our faces, mouths fused. But in the body of the note Sasha had written, “I actually love this photo.” I forwarded it to Kendall, and two days later saw with a flush of pleased surprise that he’d printed and framed it and set it by the bedside.

  Why was it still there?

  I turned abruptly and yanked open the closet door the way you’d rip the Band-Aid off a wound—and there were my clothes, four or five hangers’ worth still dangling where I’d hung them. Two pairs of shoes lay underneath, black pumps and a pair of sneakers.

  But looking closer, I realized my things weren’t exactly as I’d left them. The shoes I’d kicked off my feet into the closet were now lined up neatly side by side. My clothes had been straightened, the hangers evenly spaced on the rod.

  The bathroom offered up more of the same incongruities: my toothbrush, still in the holder next to Kendall’s, but now standing at attention; my lotion and hair gel on the dark marble counter, lined up like waiting soldiers. In the shower, my razor was in the soap holder, spooned up against Kendall’s.

  My legs felt shaky and I lowered myself to the toilet lid. (Kendall never left the seat up.)

  I didn’t understand. Not only had he not gotten rid of my things as quickly as he’d gotten rid of me, but they were preserved like some kind of shrine—a memorial to me, or to the relationship we had. Everything was still here, just as it had been—everything except for me.

  I wanted to lie down on his king-size bed and let my sudden exhaustion take over. I wanted to slip into sleep and quiet all the voices in my head trying to make sense of what I was seeing. I wanted to be waiting when he came home, to pick back up where we left off, to go on as if the last few miserable weeks had been just a fight, a misunderstanding, a cooling-off period.

  Except that we hadn’t really fought, we hadn’t said anything to be misunderstood, and there was nothing to cool off from. Things had just...stopped.

  Ten minutes ago was normally when I would have called Sasha. She would have understood. Hell, she would have come to help me make sense of things.

  The memory made a sharp ache for her start in my chest as acute as the one I’d felt since Kendall had bugged out of my life.

  What was wrong with me that everyone who said they loved me had left me? Kendall...Sasha...my own mom. My eyes grew stupidly wet, and I grabbed a wad of toilet paper and pressed it to my face.

  I bit my tongue hard, blinked quickly, and carefully dabbed the tissue along my lash line. I needed to stay looking my best. I didn’t know when I’d made the decision, but I was heading downtown to find Kendall. It was long past time we had a face-to-face talk about what the hell had happened between us.

  That was how you handled relationships when you were an adult. That was what I could never make Sasha understand—what I’d forgotten in the blind shock of Kendall’s disappearance—that the direct approach was always best. The games and tricks and sneaky little operations Sasha employed after a breakup twisted her up in pretzel knots and didn’t give her any answers. I knew that firsthand, now. Worse, they made her look like a crazy person. Which she wasn’t. At least, not in any arena of her life other than dating. She was funny and talented and hardworking and strong and loyal.

  I flutter-blinked again and forced my mind back to the mission at hand. Getting weepy over our broken friendship wasn’t going to solve anything right now.

  I balled up my tissue and stood to toss it under the toilet lid and flushed. No traces of my visit. In the mirror where I’d gotten ready so many mornings, I finger-fluffed my hair, wiped away the last traces of smeared mascara, pinched my cheeks to chase away the paleness that had
washed out my face.

  In the car I swiped on more lip gloss and felt strong again. Nothing’s ever so bad for a woman that a bit of lipstick can’t make it a little better. One of my mom’s more ridiculous sayings, but suddenly I understood what she meant.

  I backed out of visitors’ parking and pulled out onto McGregor, watching the palm trees and stucco of Kendall’s complex growing smaller in my rearview mirror.

  twenty-nine

  I whipped my Honda into a vacant spot in the lawyer lot—right next to Kendall’s Mercedes. Seeing his sleek black sedan there brought up a welter of conflicting feelings—hurt that apparently I wasn’t good enough for him, but my parking lot was; irritation that I’d insider-traded the valuable secret to him in misplaced trust; and, crazily, hope and tenderness—surely his parking here meant he still cared about me?

  If anything else, Kendall was a creature of habit. He would be at one of three trendy hangouts: the Bar Belle, built along a cozy alley off Hendry Street; Andale’s, where I’d had my date with Ben—poor Ben, who was far too nice for me in my present state; or Ship to Shore, tucked away by the river where Hendry met First Street.

  I worked my way into downtown from the edges, starting at Ship to Shore with my fast-beating heart held in my suddenly dry mouth.

  There is no such thing as stealth or anonymity in a town where, even though the population is around fifty thousand, only a small portion has lived here their whole lives, and that same ten percent or so can be found at some bar downtown on most any given night. The regulars sat outside, under the string lights, where it was quiet enough to talk and still legal to smoke. I was met on the patio by a hail of greetings before I even set foot inside.

  “Hey, Brook—pull up a chair.” Marti Greckle, who came home from college as the wife of a high-profile real estate developer who never seemed to be with her at her nightly happy hours.