Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [20]
“Honestly, I’m not sure.” He waited for the doctor to respond, but when he continued to sit there, staring, Milo went on, almost surprised that he had more to say. “I may not be the happiest guy in the world, but I thought that we were doing okay. Then Christine started to get angry over the littlest things. I felt like everything I did upset her. Then she started asking for some space. Some time apart to think things over. But when I finally got an apartment, she went ballistic. Told me that she had never expected me to sign a lease. I guess that she just wanted me to stay with a friend for a couple weeks while she thought things over, but when your wife asks for time apart, I didn’t think that meant a sleepover. So now I don’t know what to think.”
“Did you want to move out?”
“Not at first. When she first asked for space, it scared the hell out of me. I felt like she was trying to throw me out. But after a while, I started to think that some time apart would be good for us. So when she tried to get me to stay, I refused. It had taken me so long to accept the separation that I couldn’t just turn back on it without giving it a try. If that makes any sense.”
“It’s been about a month now, right? How has it felt living apart?”
“It’s odd,” Milo said, unsure how to express the mixture of so many emotions and concerned about saying too much. Arthur Friedman had warned Milo not to lie to doctors (and had ironically expressed his tacit approval of lying to one’s wife), but he didn’t think that his client was referring to a therapist.
Arthur Friedman likely despised the notion of therapy altogether.
“I mean, it seems crazy to think that Christine is in our house, only a mile away, and I’m stuck in a crummy little apartment, waiting for her to figure things out. But I have to admit that it didn’t feel wrong either. Moving out, I mean. And even when she didn’t want me to take the apartment, I did, because I thought it would be a good thing for us.”
He didn’t mention that the absence of Christine had also made it exceedingly easier to deal with most of his demands, and that he had found this to be remarkably liberating.
“You said that Christine’s trying to figure things out,” Dr. Teagan said. “Are you figuring things out too?”
“Honestly, I don’t know what there is to figure out. I don’t know what has changed. Like I said, I don’t think we were the happiest people in the world, but I thought we were doing all right.”
“When did you know that there was a problem? Was there a moment when you knew for sure?”
Milo knew the moment. Would never forget it. Though Christine’s eruption on the corner of Beachwood and Partridge had represented the opening salvo in their martial combat, it wasn’t until an afternoon in January when he knew that the marriage was in serious jeopardy.
They had just completed the outer lap of their neighborhood walk and were heading for home. Milo had exhausted his list of conversation topics generated earlier that day and had been filling the last fifteen minutes of silence with comments on the neighbors’ choice of landscaping, which amounted to little considering the season. They were just a block away from the house when Milo proposed the enormous value of grass that was genetically engineered to grow to a predetermined height (an idea that had spontaneously come to Milo but one that he still liked a lot) and their game of chicken finally ended.
Christine blinked.
“Goddamn it, Milo! Is that all you’ve got? Grass? Goddamn motherfucking grass!”
Milo remained silent for a moment, hoping that the outburst might be followed by an apology, the rapid retraction of Christine’s acknowledgment that there was trouble. As much as he had hoped for months to confront the issue head-on, he now found himself wanting to make it go away as quickly as possible and resume détente. Instead of offering an apology, Christine held her ground and stared at her husband, cheeks flushed, breathing heavily.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Milo said, hoping for a conciliatory Never mind or Forget it.
Christine pressed