his throat.
… accept the things I cannot change.
The words click on like a tape in his head, there unwilled. And pictures: Caitlin rigidly staring out a black window while a beady-eyed drunk, his evil twin, shrieks and rants behind her. Caitlin and the drunk being thrown out of a cab. The drunk coming out of a blackout with his penis wilted inside her.
He changes his mind on the gin and tonic and follows her through the door. They are standing a few feet in from the street, facing the back side of an office building that shares the alley. He scans the length of the alley, open to the next block on the far end. The wedding guests will be passing by soon. He and Caitlin might be spotted here. He tells himself he won't let anything happen, but he also hopes he's wrong. Already, long shadows are stretching in shafts across the street. The top several rows of office windows catch the last of the sunset like square embers. Caitlin lights the cigarette, another orange glow.
'How long you in town for?' His question hangs uncertainly in the air.
Caitlin hands the lighter to him. 'I'm leaving in the morning.'
'That's too bad.'
Caitlin nods without conviction. 'It's good seeing everybody, Andrea and Phil. And you. I'm glad you're doing so well, Michael. Andrea keeps me up on everybody.'
'You should stay a few days and…' He can't finish the sentence. And what? Let me make you happy?
'I've got a meeting on Monday,' she says.
'Hell, I've got meetings all week. You cancel them, reschedule. You should stick around. There's a new restaurant in Soho I've been meaning to try.'
'I don't like it here anymore, Michael.'
'What, you prefer Texas?' He says this jokingly, but honestly the idea seems incredible.
Caitlin laughs. He casually hoists an arm around her thin shoulder.
'Tell me about the life of a Texan beauty.'
'It's not exciting, but I like it. I have a house with a yard and a vegetable garden. I have a golden retriever. Dagwood. We go for walks down to this bridge every evening. You should see it, Michael. At sunset, bats, hundreds of them, swoop out from under the bridge and funnel up into the sky. They look like a twister.'
'I don't know, Cate, sounds pretty lonely to me.' He feels the warmth of her skin under his fingertips. She seems to be missing his cues, the heat that Mike feels rolling off him in waves. Instead, she continues to talk about the bats, a subject immune to subtle redirection.
'No really, it's beautiful. They do this thing, like sonar. They fly inches apart, wing to wing, bouncing signals off each other. They can't see a thing, but it doesn't matter because they can feel the shape of everything.'
'My son dressed as a bat last Halloween,' he tells her. 'He insisted on being a green bat, go figure. Rachel bought some green tights and sewed him green felt wings. We had to stand behind him at every neighbor's door and mouth 'bat' so they'd know.'
Mike can recall every detail of that night: Rachel kneeling behind their son and safety-pinning the wings in place, Noah's round little belly protruding between his tights and a remarkably tiny sweatshirt. Everything still so small. Noah had refused to change out of his costume after they got home, and had fallen asleep with the felt wings wrapped around him like a blanket. Mike and Rachel stood over him, watching his little chest rise and fall, his face smeared with chocolate and flushed pink with sleep.
Caitlin steps out of his clasp, drops her cigarette on the pavement and grinds it out with the toe of her shoe.
'He sounds like a sweet kid, Michael.'
Her voice wrenches him back, and he is momentarily disoriented. Despite the mugginess of this evening, he feels chilled, as though a fever were breaking. And then the afternoon slowly comes into focus, each moment leading up to this one, frozen like tracks behind him. This is one of the rewards of sobriety, an uncomfortable clarity.
'Yeah, Noah is amazing. The whole thing, having a kid, I can't explain it.' Mike has to struggle to remain in the moment. 'I'm luckier than I deserve to be, Cate.'
Caitlin grins and half turns toward the door. 'You always were, you son of a bitch.'
'I'm sorry.' He wants to say something else, but he doesn't know what.
'I know, Michael. Get over it.'
All of their friends are there. Mike stands next to Phil and looks out over all the faces he knows. He finds Rachel sitting in over to the left, studying the program in her hand as though there might be a quiz later. He can tell by her carefully erect posture that she is being brave. A wrenching tenderness grips his throat, unexpected, half-forgotten. When he finally catches her eye, she smiles brightly. He tries to return her smile in such a way that she will read what he's thinking. You, he thinks. I swear it's you.
Caitlin sails forward up the aisle. Then Andrea. The judge says some words. In the presence of this loving community. This is an affirmation of life. What we do matters. Then there are the promises, in good fortune or in adversity, to seek with her a life… Mike doesn't remember saying those words himself, though he knows he did. But he does remember hearing Rachel say them and seeing in her eyes absolute surety and calm, a faith in him that bound him to her irrevocably.
He watches Phil and Andrea embrace, the moment stretching imperceptibly until it snaps back into real time. The room bursts into applause and laughter. He can see only dimly: flickering candles, the fluttering outlines of bodies rising. There is music again, plunging forward, triumphant, and then the bride and groom are swept into the crowd and everyone is swirling up the stairs. Mike steps into the vortex, searching blindly for his wife. She is there somewhere – he can feel her.
The Bodhisattva
You'll never guess who I bumped into yesterday. Your predecessor, Dr. Fletcher. I was walking Porkchop in the park. No makeup, my baggy sweats. The split second I recognized him coming down the path, my first instinct was to climb a tree and hide. I probably should have, but there's the problem of hoisting up a fat Pekingese. And it would be so typical for him to spot me up there, crouching on a limb like the Cheshire cat. Can't you see it? 'Abby, what a surprise.' I've humiliated myself enough with him, thank you very much.
I just told you how I felt, didn't I? I felt like climbing a tree. That seems pretty straightforward.
I'm sorry, I guess I'm feeling a little defensive today.
Get this, he's bought a place over near Flatbush Avenue. Small world and all that. I actually said that when we saw each other. I mean there're over two million people in the borough, why shouldn't he be one of them? But I was so flustered. You'd think, after all this time.
He sees me, he says, 'Would you believe I was just thinking about you? How are you?' Which, coming from a shrink, is always a loaded question. No offense. And he squeezes my shoulder. Next thing I know I'm walking arm in arm with this man I haven't seen in two years. Three, come July twenty-third.
What do you mean, what did I do? I didn't do anything. What could I do? Scream for help? Help, this man was my shrink and now he wants me to talk to him? That's what you all get paid for, theoretically anyway. No, I just tried to act like an adult. I asked him about Bangkok. Turns out, there's not much call for shrinks there. The Thais don't talk about their feelings. Not out of a sense of decorum or rigidity, I gather, but they just don't see the point. Given my own experience, I can't help but admire the wisdom of that. And then the nail in the coffin for a psychotherapy practice, guilt is not a Buddhist concept. Karma takes care of that. He stayed a year and a half, counseling the American businessmen there, but it wasn't enough to make a go of it.
He said, 'Everyone is happy there, so I had to come back to New York.'
I was tempted to suggest that he has some kind of allergic reaction to happiness, but as I said, I was trying very hard to be adult.
He looks great, by the way. He was wearing those flowered jams or whatever they call them and a Mets cap, which should look ridiculous on a forty-three-year-old man, but they didn't. And that earring, this little diamond. I used to think that was the sexiest thing. His hair may be thinning a bit under the cap, but otherwise he looks
