She explains procedure, which she calls “ground rules.” Every other sentence moves into digression. Each of us (apparently) is to spell out her (or his) sense of what’s gone wrong with our marriage. After that (I’m not sure of the sequence, have difficulty listening to her), we will have opportunity to respond to what’s been said.
“Who wants to be first, folks?” she asks, looking at Yuri.
“Adrienne can start,” he says.
“I think I’d prefer to go second,” I say, conscious of looking Mrs. Wimpole directly in the eye. “It was Yuri’s idea to have this joint session. I was the more reluctant one.”
“Yes?” Dr. Wimpole asks as if my remark had surprised her. “When I was younger, I always hated to be the one to speak first. Now the more opportunity I have to talk, the better I like it.”
I glance over at Yuri to see if he finds this woman as absurd as I do. He refuses to meet my glance. This is a competition for him.
“It’s all right,” he says. “I’ll start. (Is it his anxiety or mine that I feel? I avert my eyes.) “About nine months ago, I became aware that Adrienne was turning away from me.”
“It was longer ago than that,” I say.
“You’ll have your turn,” Dr. Wimpole says in a mildly reproachful voice. “Please don’t interrupt your husband.”
Yuri offers Dr. Wimpole his most loveable smile. She seems to melt in its glow. I sense an alliance forming between diem. Is Yuri the brilliant and loving son she never had and has fantasized for herself? (Is that it, Yuri?)
I can’t listen to him. It is painful to me to listen. He is so full (fool) of words. “We had been especially close,” I hear him saying, “and I found her repeated rejections painful and incomprehensible. When I confronted her about it, she said she was going through something and needed more time to herself. I could understand that. I backed off, I gave her the space she asked, but it only seemed to embitter her more. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. But she made it increasingly clear that she didn’t want blah blah with me, neither blah, nor blah, nor even — I say this with difficulty — blah.”
“Did she give any reason for it?” Dr. Wimpole asks, a cunning look on her face. “If something like that were happening to me, I would ask for reasons.”
This is what I am thinking. (These two are in this together. They are both, Yuri and Wimpole, versions of my mother.) What must Helena think of me? What a bad wife, this Adrienne is! She does not treat this man, her husband, with the proper respect.
I half-expect that she will send me to my room after Yuri finishes his story.
Yuri is having his turn. I try to listen. “One time,” he is saying, “she thought we had been too dependent on one another and that blah blah blah blah. Another time she said she was no longer yatatta yattata yattata.” He looks toward me and I wink at him. “Yeah,” he says, “also that she had sole responsibility for taking care of the house and for the bringing up of Rebecca, neither of which has truth. I’m here because I want to work things out.”
I clap politely at his conclusion. Good show, Yuri!
“And what do you want?” Dr. Wimpole asks me. What do I want? “To tell you the truth,” I say, “I don’t really want to be here.” My voice is unhesitating, calm. (This is a sincere person, the observer will think.) “I don’t know what Yuri’s talking about. It’s been a long time since we’ve been close. I would say more like two years than nine months. I think it’s significant that he didn’t notice that I wasn’t responding to him in the same way.”
“What makes you so sure I didn’t notice?” he says, interrupting me.
“You’ve had your say,” I say, looking pointedly at Dr. Wimpole. “It’s my turn now. Do you want to hear what I have to say, or do you want to speak both parts?”
She shakes her finger at Yuri, a flirtatious reproach. “You have my word that Yuri won’t interrupt again,” she says.
“It’s interesting that you felt the need to speak for him,” I say. I laugh good-naturedly.
“I was speaking for myself,” says this paragon. “Please go on, Arianne.”
“It’s interesting,” I continue, “because women tend to be protective of him. Women fall over themselves to take care of the poor man. That’s his appeal; that’s the appeal he makes to….”
This time Dr. Wimpole interrupts. “Are you saying, Arianne, that you believe your husband is having something with another woman?”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” I say. “What I’m saying is (for a moment my mind is blank), that Yuri has a way of getting his way without you knowing that it’s happening. That’s one of my reasons, but I don’t do things for reasons. I really thought we had this good marriage. I thought, you know, that Yuri was this perfect man. Yuri is wonderful and I am this crazy dissatisfied bitch. I have this wonderful husband.
I have this satisfying career. Why aren’t I overwhelmingly happy? I must be this terrible person. Then I got involved with this man and I saw, you know, there were things about myself, needs really, I had never given attention to. I kept asking myself, Why are you doing this, Adrienne? I slowly began to realize that there was something wrong with my marriage to Yuri. I was changing and Yuri was not. I came to see that Yuri was incapable of change.” (Wimpole looks taken aback, rushes her hand through her hair.) “I’m afraid I’m not articulate,” I add.
Yuri is saying something. “Why didn’t you come to me and tell me you were unhappy?” he says in a booming voice.
“Well, why didn’t you notice I was unhappy,” I say. “Why did it never cross your mind? You know why — it’s because you don’t see things.”
“I didn’t know our marriage was supposed to be a test,” he shouts at me. “I failed your test, Adrienne, because you wanted me to fail.”
“I knew that was coming,” I say, my voice rising. “Speaking of self-fulfilling behavior. Look, I don’t need you to analyze me. You think you’re the only one who knows anything. You don’t know anything I don’t know.”
He turns to Dr. Wimpole as if to say, Look what I have to put up with. See how unreasonable this woman is.
“I think we’ve reached a counter-productive point, people,” Dr. Wimpole says. “Back up for a moment if you will. I’d like to give you my observations regarding what I’ve heard so far. All right? Do you people think you can listen to what I say without interrupting or shouting at each other?”
“That’s why we’re here,” I say.
Yuri looks unhappy, says nothing.
With a kind of ritual fussiness, as if her hands had not told the rest of her what they were doing, Dr. Wimpole locates a pair of glasses on an end table and puts them on, raising them to her forehead after a single glance at each of us. “First ofall,” shesays, Tmnotatallsurewhyyou’rehere. I’m speaking of the woman primarily, but I’m not excluding the man. Let’s put that on the table, people. This man says he wants his wife, but she doesn’t want anything to do with him and he’s angry as blazes at her for pushing him away. This woman is also angry. She says she thought she was happy married to this man, but it wasn’t true and so she has gone elsewhere to find Mr. Happiness. Has it been established whether happiness was found elsewhere?”
“It’s not as simple as that,” I say. “Yes, she did. But it’s not working out.”
“As I’ve said, I’m not in the least bit sure why you’ve come to see me,” she says, giving me what I take to be a censorious glance. Let me establish that fact before moving on to the next fact. I like to move slowly. Would you believe it, people? As I get older, I feel no urgency to move on to die next place. Well, here you are. I don’t know what to say to you people. You’re both too old for me to take over my knee and spank.”