by Caro Carson
“I guess it’s our divorce, then. We told the colonel that we were getting a divorce, and he ordered us to come here. We won’t meet the residency requirements to file for a divorce for another twelve weeks, so we’re to come here weekly until then.” She said it so calmly, as though she was describing plans for lunch.
“Are you currently living together?”
“Yes.”
“Helen, do you feel safe in your home?”
The implication was offensive, but Tom held his tongue. He was an MP. Although he rarely patrolled the garrison as a captain, when he’d been a young lieutenant, he’d been on the scene for too many domestic disturbances. He couldn’t imagine hitting a woman in his home, but he knew other men didn’t behave the same way. It was a legitimate question.
“If you’re asking if Tom is violent, the answer is no.” Helen understood the reason for the question as well as he did, since it had turned out she was an MP as well. He’d known in Las Vegas that she was a captain in the army being stationed at Fort Hood. He had not known she was coming to the 89th MP Brigade. The shock of her walking into Oscar Reed’s office had been paralyzing.
“Tom, do you feel safe around Helen?”
No. Just looking at her face is breaking down all my defenses. I wanted her. I want her still. I can’t make a wall strong enough to keep the pain out. It’s killing me.
“Yes,” he said. “Fine.”
“How long have you two been married?”
“Six days,” he said. “We were married Saturday night.”
“Ah—oh.” Jennifer hadn’t expected that answer; he could tell by the way she nearly dropped her pen. “I see.”
“Technically, it was Sunday morning,” Helen clarified, “but at one-thirty in the morning, so it would have felt like Saturday night.”
The only reason she knew that was because he’d told her so when she’d taken off her wedding ring with that damned margarine. The ring was still sitting on the kitchen windowsill, four days later.
Jennifer recovered, smoothing the yellow-lined paper of her legal pad. “And how long were you two a couple before the wedding?”
She’d asked it of Helen, but Helen didn’t know. Tom let her squirm for a minute. Six days, and he was already a bitter man. “How long since we first talked, or since we first laid eyes on each other?”
Neither woman answered him.
“We saw each other in the casino earlier in the day, but we first said hello about eleven-thirty in the morning. So, fourteen hours. Then the wedding.”
Jennifer was doing her best to school her features into a doctor-like, I’ve-heard-it-all-before expression, but she wasn’t quite pulling it off.
“It was a Vegas thing,” Helen said, practically apologizing. “You can see why we need to divorce as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, we have another three months to go before we meet the Texas residency requirements.”
“So this was just a spontaneous kind of thing like people do on a whim? Elvis and alcohol, like in the movies?”
“Right,” Helen said, grimacing. “It wasn’t a serious thing.”
Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband? I do.
She’d said I do. She’d said it, damn it, after they’d talked for hours about what it meant and how they felt. It hadn’t been a joke of a wedding. She’d loved him. She’d believed in them, but now she was denying the vows had been real and sincere and warm and healing.
“She doesn’t remember.”
Both women looked at him in surprise. That had come out sounding more pissed off than he’d intended.
He tried again. “She doesn’t remember. We had drinks before the ceremony and drinks to celebrate after, and she woke up in the morning with no memory of the day before. A blackout.” Yeah, he was bitter.
“I see. Have you ever experienced a blackout before, Helen?”
“Never. If you’re asking if I am an alcoholic or a binge drinker, I am not.”
The counselor nodded and turned to him. “And you, Tom? Do you remember?”
“Everything.”
He looked at Helen as he said it, looked her in the eyes, and she looked back at him, frightened. The woman he’d held in a chapel courtyard while she’d snuggled into him was frightened of him.
With two hands on the overstuffed arms of the chair, he shoved himself to his feet and headed for the door.
“Tom, wait a minute.” The counselor stood up and tossed her legal pad on her desk. “I can’t imagine how difficult this situation must be for you, so I won’t give you any platitudes. But it is my job to help. This is a unique situation. I don’t know that we can work to salvage a marriage, because that marriage never really existed.”
Wrong. He pulled his patrol cap out of the cargo pocket on his pants, ready to leave.
“Or, to be more accurate, it doesn’t exist in one person’s mind,” Jennifer amended. “What I think you two need to work on is building intimacy with one another.”
Intimacy. That got his attention.
Helen looked shocked. “Why would we do that when we know we’re getting a divorce?”
She’d asked Jennifer, but Tom answered. “Because you said that you remembered something when we did that.”
That had been her explanation for why she’d pulled him down onto that couch and made love to him that morning. He’d kissed her again as soon as she’d said it. She’d kissed him back, too, practically going boneless in his arms for a moment, before she’d remembered that she didn’t remember who he was.
“I’m not suggesting sexual intimacy,” the counselor said smoothly, as if it was standard practice to discuss other people’s sex lives. “I think you would benefit as a couple from building emotional intimacy. A personal connection. Not necessarily a romantic one, although that could result from it.”
“What other intimacy is there?” Helen sounded as skeptical as Tom felt.
“Think of the word intimacy as a technical term, meaning two people who share a closeness that allows them to be in each other’s personal space comfortably. You can be intimate in that sense with anyone, such as a parent, a sibling, a best friend. Emotional intimacy does not have to become romance. It doesn’t work the other way, however. Romance requires emotional intimacy.”
Jennifer sounded like a doctor explaining high cholesterol to a patient as she defined intimacy. “Romantic gestures aren’t romantic if emotional intimacy doesn’t exist first. Take the traditional gift of a dozen red roses. If I gave a dozen roses to my boss or to my mailman or to anyone else I have not established an emotional intimacy with, the gesture would be so out of place, romance would be the last feeling it inspired. They’d certainly be uncomfortable. They’d probably feel threatened and wonder what my intentions were.”
Roses. Those rose petals had been part of the most erotic lovemaking in his life. He supposed erotic wasn’t the same thing as romantic, but the rose petals had been both. Now that he’d laid Helen down in a bed of rose petals, he could never repeat that experience with another woman. Helen had been the pleasure; she’d been the intensity.
He’d requested roses with their wedding breakfast, too. What the counselor was saying made sense: the roses had meant nothing to Helen at breakfast, because she’d lost her memory, and so she’d lost all emotional intimacy with him at that point.
“Since you two are living together, I believe building an emotional intimacy will be beneficial. What do you think?”
Just remembering Helen’s smart-aleck salute with the croissant and the way she’d bolted out the door in her wedding gown made his heart want to hide behind every wall he had—and to throw up a few more. There was his answer: building intimacy with Helen again sounded like a terrible idea. Too risky.
“I don’t think you can force someone to feel any kind of intimacy with someone else,” Helen said.
A perfect stranger. Helen looked at him, then ducked her chin and looked away. Yeah, he was the perfect stranger in her life. She’d told him so enough times.
“There have been many experiments conducted in that field, and one technique in particular has proven results. Two people sit face-to-face, without any distractions, and ask one another a series of questions. By the time the test subjects get to the last question, the vast majority report that they feel connected to the person who was a randomly assigned stranger at the start of the experiment.”
“I’ve read about this,” Helen said, astonishing him. “Aren’t there thirty-six questions? I think I read a list of a hundred questions one time. Isn’t there an app for this?”
“Twenty questions, sometimes ten. The amount varies from study to study, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if someone had created an app for this. Like many therapists, I use my own set of questions, the ones I’ve found the most helpful. When we’re further along in the process, I may ask you to write your own questions. Our goal is emotional intimacy, not romantic, not sexual.”
“Emotional intimacy with a woman who has announced she’s divorcing me.” Tom remained standing between the chair and the door. This was a terrible idea. He’d leave in a minute.
“Precisely,” Jennifer said. “If you are going to begin divorce proceedings in three months, feeling connected to one another in a mutually agreeable, respectful way will make the entire process less stressful. A divorce between two people who don’t know what to expect from each other is not likely to go smoothly. Shall we begin?”
It still sounded risky to Tom. He’d be getting attached to a woman who wanted to leave him. But what if she changed her mind? The emotional intimacy might lead to romantic feelings, but that wasn’t a guarantee. Tom could fall in love with this new version of Helen like he had with the old, and she could still insist upon a divorce.
Very risky.
When he looked at Helen, she was looking up at him from the soft armchair that was swallowing her, making her look a little vulnerable. A little fragile. Something about the angle of her chin reminded him of the chapel courtyard and her confession. It would be nice, just once, not to be the one making all the decisions.
Tom made the decision.
“All right. Let’s do this.”
* * *
Emotional intimacy.
Helen recoiled from the idea of it. Shouldn’t they be here to outline their boundaries? To set their limits? To make rules about how they would share his house until the day they could file for divorce and she could move out?
But Tom had said they’d do this, and now they’d moved their chairs so they were facing one another directly, sitting practically knee to knee. A short pile of white index cards sat on a little table beside them. She had no idea what was on them. She had no idea what she was in for.
She didn’t want emotional intimacy. She wanted rules.
“Wait,” she said. “I thought—I thought we were going to work out practical matters. We need to decide what to do when my furniture arrives. Should I pay for part of the cable bill when I don’t watch TV? I think I should pay for half of the internet connection, because I am using that.”
Jennifer looked as if she knew something Helen didn’t. Jennifer did not. She had no idea what Helen was thinking and feeling. Helen was thinking that these practical decisions needed to be made. And she was feeling...she was trying not to feel anything at all.
“Those are straightforward decisions that I don’t think you need the expertise of a psychologist to make. You seem like two fairly well-adjusted, levelheaded people. You don’t need me to do the math of dividing an internet bill in half. Are you ready to begin?”
Helen looked to Tom for help, a strange impulse considering he was the one who had given this a green light. He was watching her as closely as Jennifer had been. What did they think was wrong with her? She just wanted to get something useful out of these mandatory sessions. She realized her arms were crossed over her chest, a defensive posture. She took a breath and uncrossed her arms. “Okay. What are the rules?”
“There are no rules. It’s a process. An exploration.” The counselor was seated several feet away at her desk. Helen had noticed there were standard fluorescent lights in the office ceiling, but they were off. The Tiffany lamp had a golden glow. Maybe fluorescent lights were bad for mental health. Who knew? Who cared?
I want out of here.
“One of you will draw the top card and read the question out loud. You will both answer. You are talking to each other, so you can discuss the question as long as you like, or you can move on to the next card. Pretend I’m not even here.”
As if. Helen snorted in disbelief at that one.
Tom did, too.
Well, look at us, agreeing already.
The counselor got the counseling going. “Read the first question, Helen, when you’re ready.”
She reached for the first card. Her hand trembled.
Tom nudged her knee with his. “Go ahead. Shoot. I can take it.”
“Okay, here goes. ‘Would you like to be famous?’” Relief made her smile a bit. That wasn’t so bad.
Tom smiled a bit, too, as he sat forward to answer. “No, I don’t see any benefit to being famous. I like my career. Being famous would get in the way.”
Helen nodded and set the card on the table.
“You’re supposed to answer, too.” His voice was gentle. He wasn’t needling her for forgetting the rules already. He was just prompting her.
“I don’t see any benefit to being famous, either. Actually, I take that back. It would be great to get in to see shows and stuff. I’d go to New York and see Hamilton and meet Jimmy Fallon and things like that. Then I’d like the fame to disappear. I get the impression that stars have to work pretty hard to maintain it. I don’t want to deal with that on a daily basis.”
“This isn’t so bad,” Tom said, as he reached for the next card. Then he read it, and the smile on his face faded. “Would you say your childhood was happier or sadder than average?”
“Wow. That got more personal, fast.” And you don’t like it. And, for some reason, that concerned Helen.
“It’s your turn to answer first,” Jennifer said from her seat at the desk. So much for forgetting she was there.
Helen watched Tom. He’d already put on a neutral, expressionless expression. She gave her answer to a statue of a soldier. “Before I became an MP, I would have said my childhood was average. Mom, Dad, house in the suburbs, nice public schools. But once I started working garrison as a lieutenant and responded to domestic disturbance calls, I realized my childhood was happier than so many others. My mom fed me three meals a day. My dad never broke my arm to teach me a lesson. It’s tragic how many children can’t say that.”
Tom let the silence last one beat too long. “Same here. Mom fed me. Dad never broke my arm to teach me a lesson.”
She kept her gaze steady on his expressionless blue eyes. There was more to his story. He was hiding it. He was hiding everything. This wasn’t intimacy.
It doesn’t matter. Split the internet bill for twelve weeks.
“Okay, Tom, Helen, our time is up, but this was a good start. We’ve set a goal, and you’ve gotten an introduction, at least, to how the process will go. We’ll pick up where we left off next week. Thank you for coming in today.”
“Oh. Yes.” Helen blinked, breaking her connection with his impassive gaze. Everything felt awkward as she tried to get out of the quicksand of the chair. Tom offered her a hand to pull her to her feet when she was already starting to stand, so they bumped into each other, followe
d by sorry and sorry. Helen turned to put the table with the cards back against the wall, but Jennifer told her she’d take care of it, so Helen turned toward the door and found Tom waiting there, hand on the knob. He opened it and ushered her out, his hand briefly touching her lower back, such a gentlemanly thing to do while they were both dressed for war.
Get a grip.
As an MP officer, she’d been tested in a thousand scenarios that were more difficult. There was no reason to be flustered now about anything. Tom had retreated behind his military demeanor; so could she. With professionalism firmly in mind, she hesitated in the lobby of the office building. “I’m going to find the restroom.”
“Okay.” His expression was less stoic now, that stony face softening a bit. “I’ll wait here.”
“No—I meant you go on ahead. It’s not a good idea for us to walk out together. What if someone from the brigade sees us?”
“They’d think we’d both had business in this building?”
She surreptitiously surveyed the nearly empty lobby. Friday evening, there were only a few people still around. This seemed as private a moment as any. “I meant it when I asked you not to tell anyone else that we were married. When I walk into brigade headquarters for my first day of work on Tuesday, how many people are going to ask me about you?”
“Don’t worry, Helen.” He spoke her name in a low voice. She’d stepped closer to him for privacy, and with his height, he could murmur directly into her ear. “I’m still your dirty little secret.”
His voice slid over her skin, hitting every sensitive spot behind her ear, under her jaw, that deep voice that had said sex and love...and mine. She breathed in swiftly. Oh, what exactly had he said? Her body knew. She could’ve slid down his six-foot-two frame and melted into a puddle around his combat boots.
Her body knew. Her mind did not.
Tom put his patrol cap on. Pretty much every macho adjective fit the man: tall, dark and handsome, chiseled jaw, and yeah, he had six-pack abs and bulging biceps, because she’d seen everything that morning in Vegas. Dress all that up in a military uniform and she was pretty much lusting after the man she needed to divorce in twelve weeks.
