I Like You Just Fine When You're Not Around (2 page)

After a quick gargle in the clinic's bathroom, Tig drove to her office and sat behind her desk. She took a sip of coffee from a cup with
Go On, I'm Listening
printed on the side, because that's what she did as a relationship therapist: she listened.

After a busy morning of one-on-one visits, Tig was determined to finish her last day of work, shower, walk Thatcher, and take a nap before heading back to her mother's room. She would wrangle her silent and invisible sister home, empty her trash, and work to get her boyfriend to understand she needed more time before following him to Hawaii for his sabbatical.

Today, the only thing that sat between Tig and the rest of her life was the fighting Harmeyers. Jean and Newman Harmeyer, the counseling world's most insufferable couple. Not the couple, really. It was the husband who was insufferable . . . unbearable . . . repugnant.

“She knew exactly who I was when she married me.” Newman Harmeyer cast scathing looks at Tig and his wife Jean, the soft flesh at his jaw jiggling.

Tig assessed the couple seated across from each other in her office, more sparring partners than teammates. She opened her mouth to speak, but Newman interrupted her. “She's the one who's changed, nagging me about work all the time. So what if I go golfing and buy a few rounds afterward? I always come home.”

“Eventually,” said Jean, and she lifted her chin.

“It's not like I'm fooling around.”

“You could be. I'd never know. I don't know what you're doing most of the time. We never make love.” To Tig, she said, “I tried to get him in for a checkup.”

“I'm tired, Jean. I don't need to go to the doctor. I don't need therapy. I just need a wife who gets it.”

“Oh, I get it, all right.”

Tig scrubbed her eyes under her glasses and shot a quick look at the clock on the table between her and the angry couple on the couch across from her. Ten more minutes, and she could say goodbye to Newman Harmeyer.

“Did you just check the time?” Newman Harmeyer fairly spit the words at Tig.

Startled, Tig rolled her chair back a guilty inch.

“What?” he demanded. “Are we not interesting enough for you? Is that it? For Christ's sake, Jean. Why are you wasting my time?”

Tig blinked hard, but, as irritated as she was, she glanced at Jean Harmeyer's tasteful, pained expression and opened her mouth to apologize.

Newman took advantage of Tig's hesitation, and launched into his next tirade. “You'd rather go home, would you? Get on with your day?” With a disgusted shake of his head, he said, “Ridiculous.”

The sneer in his voice sliced though Tig's veneer, rattling the thinning tolerance that caged her fury. She heard her mother's voice from her youth, “Girls, I am on my last nerve.”

Tig slid her gaze away from Jean Harmeyer's stiff face, turned her attention to Newman Harmeyer, then narrowed her eyes. “I apologize to both of you for my inattention. I have had a difficult week. My mother has been very ill. That said, I think we should call it quits before either of us says something we might regret,” she said in her most precise psychologist's distinction.

Newman Harmeyer had the bearing of the playground bully, cocky with a history of successful intimidation in his portfolio. “I'm paying you to listen to me, not whine about your mother. You got something to say to me? Because now's the time. We won't be back to this dump.” He gestured dismissively around her small windowed office with the overly sympathetic spider plant and silent, easy-to-spill-your-guts-on couch.

In that moment, Tig thought about her lovely, kind, mother who was now anxious and confused in a nursing home, while this man was free to berate and abuse as he saw fit. As if from above, Tig saw herself, sitting in her own office, being treated like a naughty child by this vile man. In that second, a second she would regret later, she felt the sleep deprivation clear and the blanket of fatigue that shrouded her courage lift. She felt sure the universe was giving her permission to take a good healthy swing.

Tig pivoted in her padded office chair to squarely face Newman Harmeyer. She saw he had the childlike glee of a boxer briefly free of the ropes, just before the knockout punch.

“Seriously, Mr. Harmeyer, your problems couldn't keep an insomniac awake.” She paused and watched as the dimmer switch behind his eyes ratcheted up a few degrees. “I didn't need the last six months to get the picture. I get it. Your wife gets it. Every clichéd, old, desperate man in the universe gets it. Your wife is more competent than you, more attractive than you, and makes more money than you, so you're having a midlife tantrum. But you won't admit that. Instead, you take it out on her by drinking, detaching from the family, and denigrating your marriage. You are doing everything but actually having an affair, which would allow Jean to divorce you without guilt.”

With a shaky hand, Tig stood and smoothed her black trousers, tucked the yellow legal pad under her arm, and put herself between her desk and the stunned couple.
Shut up, Tig. Shut up
, she thought, but she couldn't stop. It was as if she was defending her mother, her client, and herself when she added, “And you're a prick.” Tig met Newman Harmeyer's shocked look without flinching, despite being aware of the heat creeping into her cheeks.

Newman said, “
What?
” and hauled himself to his full height.

Tig squared her shoulders. “Here's a piece of advice for free. Why don't you join the Peace Corps and spend some time with people who have real problems? While you're at it, get down on your knees and thank the Lord that this amazing woman over here hasn't divorced your sloppy, reptilian self.”

Newman Harmeyer clenched his right fist and took a step closer. Tig. She noticed the vein at his temple and reflexively took a step back, glanced at her desk telephone, and gauged the distance.

Surprising Tig, he turned on his heel, took the two steps to the office door, wrenched it open, and let it swing wide and crash against the wall.

“Come on, Jean.”

As if she were slowly waking up, Jean Harmeyer stood and followed her husband, nearly colliding with him as he stopped to say with a gritty grin, “You just lost your job, missy.” With his eyes on Tig he walked through the door, catching his cell phone secured on his hip, and it bounced back into the room. The couple stopped and stared at the disobedient device, seeming to balance its electronic value in their lives against the value of the perfect, righteously indignant exit. It was a neck-and-neck competition.

Finally, with a slight tilt to her lips, Jean Harmeyer disappeared through the doorway while her husband bent and reached for his phone. After missing with the first pass, he tucked his tie beneath his belly and made another swipe. Phone in hand, he gestured with significant force and spittle, saying, “You're going to need a lawyer.”

Tig grasped her desk and dropped her head. The abrupt quiet in the room was interrupted by the incessant beep of a delivery truck backing up outside the coffee shop next door. Tig pulled her dark hair up and away from her face and neck and held it briefly before letting it swing down and brush her cheeks. Tig read the simple reminder taped to her desk.

1. You count, too.

She peeled the note from her desk, carefully placed it in her large leather bag, and watched her shaking hand as she pushed the zero button on the phone to connect to the receptionist. “Macie? Have the Harmeyers left?”

Macie's pixie voice popped through the speaker. “Oh, I heard them. He bitched all the way out the door. I don't know what you said, but he is
pissed
.” Macie extended the word
pissed
for emphasis.

Tig rested her head in her hand. “I doubt they'll need a referral to another therapist. They won't be back.”

“Don't count Mrs. Harmeyer out. She had a killer look on her face and she rescheduled for herself.”

“She did? Wow, good. Maybe she'll stand up to him after all.” Tig paused and then said, “Give me a few minutes to get myself together, and then can you dial the business office at my mother's nursing home?”

“Sure Dr. Monahan, take as long as you need.”

“By the way, where can I get that bumper sticker your brother has?”

“Mean People Suck?”

“No, the other one: Horn Broken, Look for Finger. I think that might be my new motto.”

With an unsteady hand, Tig pulled her smartphone from her purse, obsessively checking her messages. Nothing. If only Wendy would call. If her older sister would come help with their mother, Tig could go with Pete on his sabbatical, guilt free. Tig whispered, “Frickin' Wendy.”

Wendy defied birth-order personality predictors of the firstborn child. She was supposed to be what Tig was: dependable, conscientious, cautious. The leader of the pack. Instead, Wendy acted like the littlest chimp, equally likely to swing from a chandelier, buy a convertible, or finagle a free cruise from a handsome millionaire. She was not the girl to count on when papers needed sorting, furniture had to be moved from a childhood home, or mothers relocated.

Somehow, Tig managed to get a dose of both first and second child. She was structured and responsible, a caretaker but also a people-pleaser, while Wendy swanned around, all show-off energy and big ideas. Tig needed some of that indomitable energy now, because as it stood, Tig couldn't even go to work without guilt and then losing her shit.

The desk phone rang and Tig picked it up. Macie's voice said, “I have Hope House's business office on the line.”

Tig cleared her throat, calling forth her professional, no-nonsense voice. “This is Tig Monahan. I'm trying to understand why I have not yet received any bills for my mother, Hallie Monahan?

“Yes, Dr. Monahan. As you know, we cannot release information about your mother's trust and the specifics of her care here unless I have permission from your mother.”

“My mother isn't capable of that. I'm her daughter and her power of attorney. I need to know the financial details in case I'm required to make decisions in the future.”

Unruffled, the woman on the phone said, “I assure you that her bills are taken care of, and will be in the future as well. Rest easy.”

“Forgive me if your assurance isn't enough for me.” She checked herself and said, “I'm sorry. I'm just tired.” The line was quiet and Tig waited for a softening. When none came, she said, “I'll stop in. Thank you.”

Tig hung up, pulled a cardboard box from beneath her desk, and rearranged the diploma and cactus inside to make room for her empty coffee cup, a glass jar of almonds, an Oh Henry! bar, and a stick of melon-flavored lip balm. She had agreed to go with Pete. She had committed to accompanying him on his sabbatical, and at least packing up her office was a step closer to honoring that wobbly commitment.

She laid the photograph of Pete on top of a stack of Hawaii brochures. Pete gazed up at her with his perfect teeth displayed in his it-never-rains-in-California grin. Tig closed her eyes and ran her thumb across Pete's smile.

Macie poked her head into Tig's office. “Mrs. Biddle is here.”

“No way. I thought we had closure last week.”

“You did. She just showed up wearing that T-shirt that says My Other Shirt Is In the Laundry. Says she just needs a few minutes. I could suggest she take those minutes to actually do the laundry.”

Tig considered this and said, “Maybe if I don't berate Mrs. Biddle, I won't feel so terrible about everything else in my life.” Macie started to speak, but Tig said, “Send her in. I need to redeem myself. Maybe when the Harmeyers' lawyers come and try to take my license away, she'll speak up for me.”

• • •

Forty minutes into the appointment with Mrs. Biddle, Tig realized that, instead of making her feel better, Mrs. Biddle was making her feel anxious and, frankly, hopeless. Mrs. Biddle undid the blue plastic child's barrette that held her dyed jet-black hair in place on the left side of her head. She had an identical yellow barrette holding her hair behind her right ear. She pulled her hair tight and re-clipped it, forcing her bangs to poof forward and create a kingfisher-like headpiece. There was no way this woman was going to save Tig today or when the lawyers came.

Mrs. Biddle clasped her hands. “I can't believe she's gone.” She was only sixty-five, but with the facial puckering of a career smoker, Mrs. Biddle looked seventy-five. There was no doubt in Tig's mind that the strongest muscles in Mrs. Biddle's body were around her lips. The rest of her muscle tone had gone out of her like the flame of a candle, the conquering breath being the death of her daughter. Tig suspected the older woman lived on lipstick and cigarettes.

She touched Mrs. Biddle's arm. “Go home tonight and have a good meal,” she urged. “Remember how important creating unusual meals was to Francine? She'd want you to thaw out one of those dinners she left behind for you, maybe call a friend over.”

Mrs. Biddle looked into Tig's eyes. “Would that help you, if you'd killed your only child?”

Tig shook her head. “You didn't kill Francine. People get cancer for lots of reasons. She hadn't been around your smoking for years and years. I thought we'd moved beyond that kind of thinking.” Tig examined the lines surrounding Mrs. Biddle's tired eyes. “I'm so sorry, but we're out of time for today. I want you to think about the meal you will choose to eat in honor of your daughter tonight. Call a friend, and consider bringing home that puggle at the Humane Society you talked about.”

Mrs. Biddle took a breath and moved through the office door. With surprising speed and strength, she reached back and briefly gripped Tig's hand, looked her in the eye and said, “Why are you leaving? You know you don't want to.”

Tig opened her mouth to protest, but Mrs. Biddle released her hand and stepped away before Tig could utter a word.