Fiction Fix Seventeen

85
Fiction Fix
by pretending I tried. I hate that he agreed.
I hate that we found a good therapist. I hate
that she saved our marriage, to whatever
extent it can be called saved. Saved in the
manner of a clergyman gone astray, maybe,
or a woman with a tumor and three months
to live whose airbag works exactly as intended
when she’s T-boned by a drunk at a four-way
stop.
Well-meaning people on internet forums
will tell you that this sort of situation—Lauren
and Marcus and Rick and me with our signals
crossed and our roles confused as if we’re
Shakespearean actors who’ve accidentally
shown up for Cats—is unsustainable, unfair,
unwise, unethical, and perhaps—if you ask
the more cynical—unavoidable.
K80GR80 says, Communication! Talk to your
spouse about your needs. They won’t know what
you’re missing if you don’t tell them.
I thought about this, decided to make a list
in the small but expensive notebook Rick’s
mother had sent me for Christmas. I delayed
the writing by searching for an instrument
worthy of the leather-bound book, finally
plucking a black pen with a bold tip out of
the cup on the desk. Then I sat, opened to the
first page, stared, flipped to one in the middle.
I’m never sure what goes on the first page of a
new notebook, but this seemed inappropriate,
something that ought to be tucked away.
NEEDS, I wrote at the top of the page.
I drew a bullet point.
Made it bigger.
And bigger.
Turned it into a black hole doodle that consumed
the title, then kept going until the page
was filled and scored with concentric circles.
The question—what needs aren’t being met?—
felt as answerable as What does ultraviolet light
look like? or How has the capital of the Maldives
changed since 1972? A question that hinged on
information I didn’t have, a sensation I had
never experienced. The nightmarish test for
which one is not prepared.
“What do you need from me?” I asked
Marcus two nights later when we were walking
along the tracks downtown.
He glanced at me, hands tucked in his
pockets against the leeching chill. “What do
I need?”
“That you don’t get from Lauren, I mean.”