Read Online Love in Mid Air by Kim Wright - Free Book Online Page B

squirreling the box away underneath
     my side of the bed. If I listened to one in the car I made sure to pop it out after each session. It wasn’t just to hide it
     from my friends—I was hiding it from myself. It’s embarrassing to try this hard. I felt like a political candidate standing
     by the side of the road on election day, waving at every car that passes. I felt like a dog in a pet shop cage, an ugly girl
     at a dance. This painful eagerness, this hope that wore down every day but grew back at night while I slept. In time I came
     to understand that this hope was what I must squash, if I wanted to survive. And then one Sunday I sat there in a pew beside
     my husband and I looked up at Christ, dangling above me like he couldn’t decide what to do either, and I prayed, “Okay, if
     you won’t make him love me, at least make me stop caring.” (This is the one prayer that would eventually be answered, although
     I didn’t know it at the time.)
    At the end of the series, on the very last track of the sixth CD, the woman therapist answers twenty commonly asked questions
     about how to revitalize a marriage. What do you do when he won’t talk? When he works too many hours or you suspect there’s
     another woman? When you disagree about the kids? When he brings you gifts that aren’t your taste? When you feel so fat and
     unattractive that you’re sure you can’t draw his attention? When you feel so fat and unattractive that you don’t want to?
     Did we mention he’s not talking? Do only women live in the land of feelings? What do you do when you’ve tried everything and
     it still hasn’t worked? What if it’s just not the way you thought it would be? How did you think it was going to be? Can you
     even remember? The woman on the tape answers every question except one: Why do women stay?

Chapter Five

    W hen I wake up Monday morning, Phil has left me a note on the counter. He wants me to have a complete physical. He has begun
     to suspect that my problems might be chemical, or even hormonal. Maybe my blood sugar is low. There’s always the chance of
     early menopause. He has taken the liberty of calling the therapist we were supposed to see today and postponing the appointment.
     It just seems prudent to rule out any medical causes first. He believes that we can fix this. Everything is fixable.
    It is the longest note he has ever written me.
    I call Dr. Bennett because he’s the only doctor I know, even though he’s a family practitioner and we don’t see him much unless
     Tory needs a booster. Usually it takes a couple of months to get in—unless you’re sobbing like hell when you call, I guess.
     If you’re sobbing like hell when you call they put you on hold and come back and say they can see you that afternoon.
    Dr. Bennett is a very kind man who speaks barely above a whisper. His nurse takes my blood and urine and weighs me and asks
     a bunch of questions about what I’m eating and how I’m sleeping. I’m overdue for a pelvic and he gives me one, only I can’t
     seem to stop sniveling and at one point, after the Pap smear and before the anal, he looks up at me between the vee in my
     legs and says, very softly, “It looks like you’ve hit your limit.”
    “What?”
    “Everybody has a personal limit and it looks like you’ve hit yours.”
    This strikes me as being so true and so kind that I start crying again and I say, “Would you please tell that to my husband?”
    Dr. Bennett tells me to get dressed and meet him in his office, which has cheerful pumpkin-colored walls and is full of photographs
     of children on a sailboat. I tell him Phil’s work number. This is a little awkward for him, I realize, for while Phil is a
     dentist and not a doctor there is still some sort of professional-courtesy issue. He says, “This is Dr. Bennett and I have
     just finished examining your wife.” He pauses and then says, “No, her blood sugar is normal.” He pauses another minute and
     says,