So how can Scooter call me needy?
I’m not needy. I’m the one needy people rely on for their needs.
I’m the rock.
But I have to tell you, being everybody’s rock is hard work. And it’s not like I don’t have fears and unfulfilled dreams and problems of my own.
Ever since my husband, Mitch, was shot down over Kosovo, there has been no one to take care of me. I don’t have a Natalie of my own. I’m not allowed to fall apart—there’s nobody there to help me put myself back together again.
But I do stumble sometimes anyway and usually I hate myself for it.
Just a couple of days ago, in fact, I was hit out of nowhere by this awful crying jag. It happened in Monk’s apartment, right in front of him. I was reading an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about the restoration of a Craftsman-style house in Mill Valley, the kind Mitch and I had dreamt of having, and I just lost it.
God, it was embarrassing.
Monk started spraying Lysol all around me. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to help me or protect himself from whatever I was afflicted with.
I almost told him that Lysol couldn’t shield him from what I suffered from. But I realized the truth was that Monk already knew that better than anybody. His wife, Trudy, was killed in a murder he’d been unable to solve. I think that’s why he tries so hard to impose absolute order on the world. He does it to compensate for the order he can’t impose on his own pain, loss, and longing.
Well, that’s my guess anyway.
I didn’t want Monk or my daughter to ever see me lose control of myself, to give in to my sadnesses and fears, because I had to be strong for them. I had to be their support, and if they couldn’t count on me, I was afraid of what might happen to them.
So what could I do? Where could I go?
If I couldn’t unload on somebody once in a while, especially after a glass or two of wine, then I was going to crack and—
Oh my God.
That’s when it dawned on me, right there in my car on the way to Monk’s place: All those dates with Scooter, what did I talk about?
Myself.
I talked about all of my problems, all of my needs, all of the difficulties in my life.
I unloaded.
I wasn’t fun. I wasn’t vivacious. I wasn’t sexy.
I was needy.
Fine. I was needy. Shoot me and toss my corpse into a ravine.
If Scooter had been there in the car with me that morning, I would have told him this: Sure, maybe sometimes I whined a little too much, but part of romance is finding someone who needs you as much as you need them.
I would have said that maybe if he’d shown me a little understanding and a little neediness of his own we might have discovered something truly magical and wonderful. We might have found that we needed each other. And needing someone—someone who also needs you—well, that can be pretty great.
Your loss, Scooter.
Yeah, that’s what I should have said when he told me I was too needy.
But what I actually said was nothing at all. Clever, huh? I just turned my back on him, walked into my house, and slammed the door in his face.
Why is it you always think of the perfect thing to say long after the right moment to say it has passed?
Unfortunately for me, belatedly coming up with the perfect retort to Scooter didn’t resolve the issue in my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking about my so-called neediness. I began to look at my whole life from a different perspective and I didn’t like what I saw.
The only people I met, outside of my daughter’s teachers and her friends’ parents, were cops, grieving relatives of victims, murder suspects, and killers. Not the best dating pool, which may be why I glommed on to Scooter, an insurance salesman I met at Starbucks on my way to Monk’s house one morning.
It was worse for Monk. He basically met no one. I was his social life, which, by extension, made him largely mine, whether I liked it or not.
What I needed was more friends, more things happening in my life that didn’t involve Adrian Monk or Julie.
As I parked my car outside Monk’s apartment building on Pine Street, I was determined to shake things up. I had been living in my own narrow world too long. I had to make a change.
And this was the perfect time to do it.
My daughter was away for a week on a school field trip to a camp near Sacramento, which meant I had a week to myself for the first time in years. So I planned to make the most of the free time. I figured if I was really lucky, nobody would get killed for a few days and I could even get a couple days off.
I let myself into Monk’s apartment. It was dark. All the shades were drawn and not a single light was on. I could hear whimpering.
“Mr. Monk?” I asked with trepidation.
The whimpering kicked up an octave.
I crept into the living room and found Monk sitting on the floor, resting his back against the wall and hugging his knees to his chest.
He looked devastated. I began to get scared.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
I sat down beside him on the floor. The wall was cold against my back.
