“Mary? Where are you?” Ned calls out, from inside the bedroom.
I close the medicine chest hastily and grab an oxford shirt from the doorknob. I slip it on and pad into the bedroom.
“There you are,” he says with a lazy grin. He turns over and extends a hand to me. I walk over, and he pulls me to a sitting position on the bed. I study his face. His eyes are a little puffy from sleep, but he looks like himself. Is he on Prozac now? Is it time for his next dose?
“Do I look that bad?” He sits up and smooths his ruffled hair with a flat hand.
“No. You look fine.”
He flops back down, making a snow angel in the white sheets. “Good. I feel fine. I feel better than fine. I feel happy!” He grabs my hand and kisses the inside of it. “All because of you.”
Yesterday I would have been touched by the sentiment, but now I question it. Why this sudden exuberance? Is it a side effect of the Prozac, or the reason he’s on it in the first place? What are those other pills he’s taking?
“Hey, you’re supposed to say something nice back to me.” He pouts in an exaggerated way.
“Why is it that when handsome men make faces they still look handsome?”
“I don’t know, you’ll have to ask a handsome man. But not dressed like that. Now gimme back my shirt.” He pulls me to him and flips me over with ease. In a flash I’ve tumbled to the messy comforter, and he’s above me.
“Hey! How’d you do that?”
“I wrestled in school.” He kisses me suddenly, with feeling. I find myself responding, though with less ardor than before. I can’t stop thinking about what’s in the medicine chest. Maybe I don’t know him as well as I thought. I pull away.
“I have to call Judy.”
“She hasn’t called?” he asks with a frown.
“No.”
He sits back on his haunches and pulls me up easily by my hand. “If you don’t reach her, we can go down to her house and look around. Doesn’t she live in town?”
“Yes. Olde City.”
“That’s easy enough. My car’s downstairs.”
“You park on the street?”
“No, this house has a garage.”
“Let me try her again.”
Ned rubs his eyes and stretches. “I’m awake. You hungry, sweetheart? You want anything?”
“Maybe. After I call her.”
He touches my cheek, gently. “How are you doing?”
“I feel better today. More normal.”
“Good. It’s gonna be tough telling Judy, isn’t it? You three were pretty close.”
I nod.
“I’ll go take a shower and give you some privacy, okay?”
“Thanks.”
“You want to come with me? Think of all the water we’d save.” He leans over and gives me a kiss. I can feel the urgency behind it, his need for more, but I keep thinking of the row of bottles. I feel myself tense up. Ned feels it too. “Is something the matter?”
I don’t know what to say. I want to be straight with him, but I shouldn’t have gone into the medicine cabinet. None of it is my business, even the fact that he’s taking medication. “Uh, it’s nothing.”
“It doesn’t look like nothing. It doesn’t feel like nothing.” He releases me and looks me in the eye. “You having regrets?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“It’s none of my business.”
“You’re sleeping with me. If it’s about me, it’s your business.” He cocks his head slightly.
“Well, then.” I clear my throat.
“That bad, huh?”
It’s hard to face him. His eyes are so bright, and they smile when he does, showing the barest trace of crow’s feet. I love crow’s feet. On other people. “Okay, here’s my confession. I wanted to wash my face, and I couldn’t find the soap. So I went in the medicine chest. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help seeing.”
His face is a blank. “Seeing what?”
I look at him; he seems so earnest. I don’t want to hurt him. He’s been nothing but good to me.
“My Clearasil?”
“No. The bottles. The pills.”
“Ohhhhh,” he says, with a slow sigh, deflating on the spot.
“It doesn’t matter to me. It’s not that I hold it against you or anything. It’s just that…”
His green eyes flicker with hurt. “Just that what?”
“I was surprised, I guess. You seem so fine to me, Ned, you really do. But then I open up the medicine chest and there’s a Rite-Aid in there. What do you need those pills for? You’re fine. Aren’t you?”
“What if I wasn’t? Then you leave?”
A fair question. I’m not sure I know the answer.
“Forget it, Mary. You want to understand, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, once I did need those meds. All of them. But I don’t need them anymore. I’m better now. Over it. If you look at the bottles, the dates are years old.”
“Okay.” I feel relieved. What I’ve been seeing are his real emotions, not some drug-induced elation.
He draws the comforter around his waist. “You want to hear the whole story?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know where to begin. Wait a minute.” He screws up his face in thought. “Once upon a time, I was very depressed. I didn’t even know it, in the beginning. I’d been depressed for so long, I thought it was my personality. I was never really able to stay close to anyone, especially a woman. That’s why I was so reserved on our first date. I was too busy figuring out how to act.”
“Youwere kind of quiet.”
“Nicely put,” he says, with a weak smile. “I spent most of my adult life being kind of quiet. All it got me was alone-and gossiped about. Then I hit bottom, a couple of years ago, at work. Nothing interested me. I had no energy for anything, even sailing. I could hardly get out of bed to start the day. I started missing work. I don’t know if you noticed.” He glances at me.
“Not really.”
“No one did, except my secretary. She thought I was a tomcat.” He laughs, ironically. “I was a mess. I just lost it. Lost my way. A nervous breakdown, my mother called it, but that’s a dumb term. Technically, I had a major depressive episode, according to the DSM. That’s closer to it.”
“DSM?”
“Diagnostic something-or-other Manual. You want to read all about me? I used to know my page number, but I forget now.” He gets up as if to leave the room, but I grab his hand.
“Forget the book. Tell me the story.”
He settles back down. “Where was I? Oh, yes. God, I feel like I’m on Sally Jessy.”
“Sally Jessy?”
“Morning TV. A big hit with depressed people.” He smiles. “Anyway, to make a long story short, it was my mother who got me help. Drove into town, pulled me out of bed, and stuck me in the car. She did the job. She got me to a shrink, Dr. Kate. Little Dr. Kate. You’d like her.” He laughs softly and seems to warm up.
“Yeah?”
“She’s great. Pretty. Tough. Like you.” Suddenly his eyes look strained. “I would have killed myself if it hadn’t been for her, I know it. I thought about it enough. All the time, in fact.” He looks at me, seeming to check my reaction.
I hope my face doesn’t show the shock I feel.
“The first session, I sat there on thisIKEA couch she has, and the first thing out of her mouth is, ‘No wonder you’re depressed, you smell like shit.’” He laughs.
“That’s not very nice.”
“I didn’t need very nice. I needed a kick in the pants. I needed to understand myself and my family. I went into therapy with her. Every day. Sometimes twice a day, at lunch and after work. She started me on meds, which ones I don’t remember, but they didn’t help. We tried a few others until we got to Prozac-it was new at the time. It worked well-and Halcion, to help me sleep. I could never sleep. Christ, I was a mess.” A strand of silky hair falls over his face, and he brushes it away quickly.
“It sounds hard.”
“It was. But it was a while ago, and I lived through it. I’ve thought about throwing the meds away, but they remind me of where I was. Of how far I’ve come. Kate says I’m supposed to be proud of that. Make an affirmation, every morning.” He rolls his eyes. “Can you see it? Me, facing a mirror, saying to myself, ‘I’m proud of you, Ned. I’m proud of you, Ned’.” He bursts into laughter. “I don’t think so.”