Read Online The Sun in Your Eyes by Deborah Shapiro - Free Book Online Page B

everyone.
    â€œThese kind of dreams, they were pretty much the only color in my life. Anyway, it was Linda who finally made me see a therapist.”
    â€œWhat does your therapist think of all this? What we’re doing.”
    â€œI haven’t talked to her about it. Which is something I should talk to her about. She’s great, really. It’s, um, therapeutic to talk to her. But sometimes things will happen and I’ll think, Viv’s the person I want to talk to about that.”
    She was often still the one I wanted to talk to, not simply out of habit, but because if she were listening, if she knew about it, whatever it was would be more interesting, more significant. I wavered between believing she felt the same way—how could she not?—and sensing that I was deceiving myself. If she’d really wanted or needed to talk to me, she would have. But it couldn’t be that simple, I thought. Our relationship wasn’t that simple. No, she must have wanted to talk to me but couldn’t bring herself to do so preciselybecause it wasn’t that simple and she trusted me to understand that. Unless our relationship really was that simple for her? She had left me with a mystery I tried to solve with circuitous thinking. It was a way to keep her present. It pleased me no end to hear her confirm now that I hadn’t merely invented the complexity between us and that I wasn’t the only one still holding on to it.
    â€œI know.”
    â€œI know I’m the one who stopped returning your phone calls. It became hard for me to talk to you. But it was also hard not to talk to you.”
    â€œI know what you mean.”
    â€œYou do?”
    Say it. Tell her.
    â€œLee, I’m pregnant.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou’re the first person I’ve told.”
    â€œWhat—oh. Oh my god. That’s—that’s wonderful!” she said, her pause giving the lie to her words, as though I had been there a minute ago and was now lost to a world of architecturally significant strollers and bamboo-fiber baby carriers. Lee had once told me that she worried she was never as excited as she was supposed to be when friends told her this news. To mask insensitivity, she said, and perhaps that lonely, quiet panic that the world is leaving you and your aging reproductive system behind, you learn to ask certain questions. How far along are you?! How are you feeling?! Legitimate questions, sincere ones even, but what did it mean if she asked them of me, now? “It’s wonderful. I mean, it’s good, right?”
    â€œYes, it’s good. Andy and I were planning this. We’re on the same page. When did I start saying things like we’re on the same page ?”
    â€œI know. You hear yourself saying stuff and it’s just—I used to think you could divide the world into things that were cool and things that you held in contempt. But as you get older, there’s this other category of things that you value just because they’re comforting and easy.”
    â€œLike when you find yourself watching a commercial for chocolate—take a break and treat yourself right!—and you think yeah, I do need to take a break and treat myself.”
    â€œRight. Women and chocolate. In the eighties it was all ‘Chocolate is like an orgasm!’ Now it’s like chocolate is a respite. Going to the spa without leaving your kitchen. It’s ‘you time.’ Which I guess means women used to want sexual satisfaction and now they just want a minute alone.”
    â€œWhat was chocolate in the nineties?”
    â€œGood question.” She thought about it. “How far along are you? How are you feeling?”
    â€œAbout a month.”
    â€œAnd I’m the only person who knows?”
    â€œI haven’t even been to the doctor. I mean, I called them and they said to come in a couple weeks, that if the home test confirmed it, that’s a yes. I