This is a scene from a nightmare.
“No, you shut up. You let me talk now. Shut up.”
This is like a joke, a bad cartoon. The cat and the mouse who hate each other but won’t leave each other alone.
“You’re always talking. You never listened. You think you’re more important than me and everyone else.”
What is Susan thinking as she watches this? I can’t even look at her. I’m ashamed, but I can’t stop.
“No, you’re wrong. You’re exaggerating. You’re lying.”
“This is why I left you. Who could live with someone like you?”
“What are you talking about? This is why I left you.”
There’s a click. It’s Susan. She’s set down her phone on the table. The phone has a timer, and it shows ten minutes. Her Christmas vest—black with red poinsettias—should keep me from taking her seriously. But the vest has some kind of teacherlike authority, apparently, because Mike and I stop yelling.
Susan says, “Well, we’ve spent one-fifth of our session on this so far. How do you feel? Better?”
We don’t answer.
“Is it helping? If so, we can continue. Would you like some water, either of you? Your throats must be getting hoarse.”
I take the opportunity to make my case. “No, it’s not helping. He didn’t come here to compromise. He came to make accusations and try to convince you that I’m some horrible mother who deserves to have her children taken away.”
Susan looks in my direction and starts to speak. Mike, neck turning red and threatening to pop out of his shirt collar, says, “Tell her what you came to do. You want to sit there and act like Little Miss Perfect and like I’m too stupid to know how to take care of my kids.”
Susan looks at him, then back at me. “Is that true, Natasha? Is Mike too stupid to take care of the kids?”
Yes, he is. But I say, “It’s not that he’s stupid. It’s that he never cared about taking care of them until now, and now he’s only pretending to care in order to punish me.”
She turns to Mike. “Are you doing this to punish Natasha?”
“No.” Yes, he is.
She asks him, “Is Natasha a horrible mother?”
He pauses like he has to consider the question. He says, “Not always.” God, I hate him. Just roll over and drop dead, you hateful, smug bastard. “But she’s selfish. She puts her own needs before theirs. And she has a bad temper, and she takes it out on the kids.”
I open my mouth to contradict this bullshit, but Susan interrupts me. “Okay. So we have an overview of what you perceive as each other’s parenting faults. What about your positive traits? Natasha, what does Mike do right as a parent?”
I feel myself giving her a look. This is some cheesy Afterschool Special crap. I don’t see why I should give Mike any compliments at this point. “I don’t know.”
“Nothing?” she prompts. “Come on. Tell me one thing.”
Only so I can’t be blamed for not trying here, I say, “I guess he’s good at playing with the kids. Taking them outside and riding bikes and stuff.” Then I throw in, “Since he has time to do that and I don’t.”
Susan nods, then turns to Asshole. “Okay. And what do you say, Mike? What is one of Natasha’s good parenting traits?”
“She doesn’t have any,” he says, fat chin sticking into the air, waiting for me to jump over the table and punch it.
“Oh, come on, now,” Susan says. “She doesn’t have any? You married a woman without one good parenting skill, got her pregnant twice, and let her stay home with your kids for eight years? If that’s true, what does it say about you as a dad?”
Ouch. You go, Susan. I’m surprised she said that. Mike’s surprised, too. His eyes go wide, and he says, “Well, she wasn’t bad the whole time.” He pretends to have to consider some more, then says, “I guess she’s good at scheduling stuff. Making sure the kids get to school and all their appointments on time, I mean.”
Susan nods. “So we can agree that each of you has good traits. Each of you has strengths that the other may not. Agreed?”
I don’t want to nod, but I do. Mike barely tips his big head.
Susan flips a page on her clipboard and picks up her pencil. I take the opportunity to swallow hard a few times. My throat is getting hoarse, actually, and my lips are starting to chap from all the talking. Yelling. Susan clears her own throat and says, “Let’s try a little exercise. I’m going to read a list of roles that parents are often called on to play. I want you think about each role and tell me which of you plays it most often. Ready?”
We nod.
“Disciplinarian.”
“Me,” I say. Obviously it’s me. I’m the only one who cares about making the kids behave.
At the same time, Mike jerks his head in my direction and says, “Her,” as if being a disciplinarian is a bad thing and he’s pinning the label on me before he can be accused of it himself.
“Okay,” says Susan, making a mark on her clipboard. “Social planner.”
“Me,” I say again. No contest.
“Her,” says Mike.
“Motivator.”
I have to think about that one, but Mike chirps, “That’s me,” so I let him have it.
“Adventure seeker.”
“Me again,” Mike practically crows. I’ll let him have that, too, since it isn’t actually a parenting skill. I’m guessing whoever made this test had to throw in some fake ones so the bad parents could score at least a few points.
Susan nods, then says, “Nurturer.”
That’s me.
“Dreamer.”
That one makes no sense, so it’s Mike.
“Housekeeper.”
Me. Who the hell else would it be?
“Repairperson.”
Mike, I guess. But I’ve had to do more of it since he’s been gone.
It goes on and on, and I get it now. We each have our roles. Neither one of us does everything. But…“I just have to point out,” I say, “that Mike gets all the fun parts. And I’m guessing that his girlfriend takes on the hard parts for him, just like I used to.”
“Right,” he snaps. “Which is why the kids should live with me. Because with me they’d have a two-parent household.”
Jesus Christ. What an asshole. I turn to go off on him.
Susan speaks before I can. “So, Mike, will you tell the kids that? Will you tell Alex and Lucia that your girlfriend can take their mother’s place and they won’t need Natasha anymore?”
That shuts him up for a second. Then he says, “Well, no. Not exactly like that.”
“This is important,” Susan says. “This is something I need each of you to keep in mind. When you’re calling each other names, you’re also calling Alex and Lucia’s parents names. Do you know what I mean?” She turns to Mike. “Would you walk up to Alex and say, ‘Yo’ mama’s so selfish, she doesn’t care about you as much as she cares about herself’? Would you let anyone else talk to him like that?”
On the one hand, I want to laugh at Susan’s attempt at ghettospeak. On the other hand, I’m angry because I know Mike has said things like that in front of the kids, and yet he’s sitting here shaking his head like he’s never bad-mouthed me in his life.
Maybe, though, it’s because those words sound so harsh coming out of this stranger’s mouth, and he doesn’t want to believe that he’d talk to the kids like that. Maybe she’s actually getting through to him.
“What about you, Natasha? How would you feel if someone walked up to Lucia and said, ‘Your father doesn’t care about you—he’s only pretending to in order to get back at your mother’?”
Okay, this isn’t fair. It’s not the same in my case.
It stings. Yeah, it would hurt, and I’m a jerk when I act like that in front of the kids. I admit it.
“These aren’t things we want our children to believe, are they?” she asks us. No, they aren’t. She’s like a kindergarten teacher, scolding. But she’s right. “And these things aren’t true, are they? Don’t we know that?”
Yes, we do. I hate Mike’s guts, but I do want to believe that he cares about the kids. I glance in his direction. He’s glancing at me. Sheepish.
For a while after that, neither of us yells.