“Leon, I didn’t think you were going to make it.”
I walked into Roberta’s office twenty minutes late for my appointment after spending the afternoon at Loraine’s office, setting up a webcam and some spyware on her computer. It might sound a little over the top to be spying on my wife like that, but after catching her with Michael, I didn’t feel like I could trust her. She doesn’t like the idea, but that’s her problem. The spy gear would ensure that I was never caught off guard like that again. Still, as I installed everything, and she looked on, I knew this wasn’t the best way to keep my marriage intact. If I couldn’t trust my wife, there wasn’t much hope for us. Maybe a little time with Roberta would help me get my mind right and get past this.
“You’re lucky I even showed up with all the shit I had to deal with this weekend.” I sat down in the reclining chair in front of her. I’m sure I looked like shit, because I hadn’t slept more than a few hours since last Thursday night when I busted them.
“What happened?” She picked up her notebook and a pen.
“Plain and simple: I caught Loraine cheating on me.”
“Leon, I’m sorry. I know how much you’ve been trying to work on your marriage.”
“Oh, let’s not even go there, because she had the nerve to be using the time I spend here to be seeing the motherfucker.”
She put down the pen and looked at me for a long moment, probably trying to restrain herself from saying what she really felt about Loraine. I always wondered how therapists managed to keep from stating their personal feelings. In Roberta’s case, she would just ask another question.
“Was it the same man you’d been concerned about?”
“Yeah, it was that motherfucker. Roberta, I swear I wanted to kill him.”
“What about Loraine? What does she say about all this?”
“Oh, she’s so sorry,” I said, my tone edged with sarcasm. “She just wants to work it out. I’m surprised she didn’t call you for an appointment.”
“No, I haven’t heard from her…yet. But what about you? Do you want to work it out?”
“I don’t know. I love her, but she’s fucked me up pretty good this time. I don’t know if it’s possible.”
“Couples have affairs and survive them, if they are willing to work on the marriage to save it. The real question is do you want to save it, Leon?” She gave me a pointed look. Good old Roberta; she never would take “I don’t know” as an answer.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever trust her again,” I admitted, thinking of the camera I’d just installed. “Every time I think of her being with him, I just want to scream.” I slammed my hand down on the arm of the chair.
“I know you’re upset, but you have to stay calm.”
“Roberta, that son of a bitch came to my house. How am I supposed to stay calm when my mind is full of stuff like that?”
Roberta peered over her glasses at me and stared me down. I knew exactly what she was doing. She wasn’t the type of woman to say things twice. She would sit there and look at me like that until I calmed down. No sense in prolonging the stare; I folded my hands in my lap to let her know I’d heard her and that she could continue.
“I told you this was going to happen,” I said bitterly.
“Yes, you did.”
“And it’s going to happen again. Loraine’s going to sleep with him again if you don’t help me, Roberta. You gotta find a way to stop me from finishing so quick. If I can’t please my wife, she’s gonna keep finding someone else to do it.” I was reaching a point of desperation. All this work I’d been doing in therapy and I still hadn’t accomplished a damn thing except digging up old memories. I wanted a quick fix, because with Loraine’s cheating ass, I felt like the clock was ticking on my marriage.
“We’re going to find a way, Leon. I promise you we’re going to find a way.”
“Yeah,” I scoffed. “That’s what you keep saying, but so far I don’t see a damn thing changed.”
For a quick second, her eyes narrowed and her mouth tightened, like she wanted to curse me out for questioning her ability as a therapist. “Well,” she started, “perhaps there’s another reason that things aren’t progressing as quickly as you’d like.”
“What are you talking about?” If she was about to suggest another hypnosis session, I just might have to find a new therapist.
“You’ve got much bigger problems we should be dealing with if you’re going to have a healthy marriage.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked again, this time slower, like she hadn’t heard me the first time.
She held her ground and gave me that stare again. “I think you know exactly what I’m talking about, Leon.”
“Oh my goodness. Are you back to that again?”
She nodded.
“I told you it’s not true. I was just messing around when I told you all that stuff.”
“And I told you that I know you’re lying. Look, it’s vital to your recovery that I know everything about you. I can’t help you if I don’t fully understand all your problems.”
“So you say. Can we change the subject, please?”
She hesitated for a second, then pushed aside her notebook and removed her glasses. “Sure. There’s something else I need to talk to you about anyway.”
“What?” I snapped. I was starting to feel like this woman was just inventing stuff about me to keep me coming back for more therapy.
“Someone broke into my office this weekend.”
I raised an eyebrow. “So what does that have to do with me? I didn’t do it.”
“I believe you, but the police may want to talk to you about it.”
“For what?”
Roberta let out a deep sigh. “Unfortunately, your file was one of the ones taken from my file cabinet.”
“My file? I thought doctors kept stuff on computers nowadays.”
“My computer records contain your insurance information, billing, and stuff like that, but the notes that I write during our sessions are kept in my file cabinet.”
My eyes swiftly landed on her notebook, that damn pad where she was constantly scribbling down everything I said—and who knows what else. Maybe that’s how she stopped herself from sharing her personal opinions; she wrote them all in those notes.
I leaned forward and narrowed my eyes at her. “What exactly did you have in my files?”
She tried to be subtle about it, but I saw her roll her chair backward a few inches as if she felt the need to put some distance between us. “I had some recordings of your hypnosis sessions and my notes from your sessions.” She said it nonchalantly, like she hadn’t just told me that some total stranger now had access to every humiliating detail of my life that Roberta had managed to unearth during our sessions.
“You’re joking, right?” I shouted as I stood up from my seat. She scooted back another foot, this time not trying to hide the movement. “Don’t you keep that shit under lock and key?”
“Yes, I do. Whoever it was broke the lock.” She was still talking in that calm, rhythmic voice that they probably practice in therapist school or whatever. I used to find it soothing, but now it was just pissing me off that she didn’t seem to understand how bad this was.
“Roberta, what exactly did you have in your notes?”
“Everything. Everything we ever talked about.”
My mind raced back to the start of my therapy sessions, then did a quick fast-forward as I remembered some of our more intense sessions. Holy shit. Twice a week for practically a year. That was a whole lot of “everything” I’d shared, all compiled into one very embarrassing file. That folder was full of my confidential information, some of which I hadn’t even shared with Loraine, and now it was out there somewhere.
“You mean to tell me that somebody’s out there with all my personal shit?” My heart was in my stomach. “This is bullshit. If that file gets in the wrong hands—”
“I know it doesn’t help, but I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? What the hell is it with you, woman? Sorry isn’t good enough.”
In a sudden burst of rage, I swiped my arm across Roberta’s desk, knocking her notebook, lamp, and telephone to the floor. She screamed and jumped up from her chair. It gave me an odd sense of satisfaction to see her finally show some damn emotion. With that, I stormed out of the office, wondering if things could possibly get any worse for me.