Taking a decision
It was a small advert, flickering on the right hand column of
Stacey’s screen, but it spoke to her. Played on her mind. After another evening
of silence - sat next to each other, eating off trays on their laps, kind ‘good
nights’ and rolling away to their own thoughts - she’d had enough. She called
the number, made the appointment.
“You’ve
been coming here for a few months now, do you feel any differently towards your
husband?” asked the kindly looking old man with a pointy grey beard and half
moon glasses. She shook her head.
“No.
It’s the same. But, well, I haven’t told you everything.”
“For
this to work, you need to be honest.”
“I
know.”
“So?”
“I’ve
been seeing someone else.”
“Having
an affair?”
“Yes.”
“And
how does that make you feel, Stacey?”
Stacey
squirmed. “Excited, alive... guilty.” The psychologist didn’t say anything,
waiting patiently. “I don’t know what I want. It’s so silly, I don’t want to
ruin everything, hurt him. I just wish I could feel like I did before.”
“When
you first met your husband?”
“Yes...
and for a good number of years after.”
“Would
it be true to say, and think about this carefully, would it be true to say
that, what you really want is to feel the way you used to feel with your
husband, rather than to feel the way you do about this new man?”
Stacey
sat back. She took a breath and closed her eyes briefly.
“Yes.”
“You’re
sure?”
She
nodded.
He
leant back in his chair and lifted his hand. He reached towards a drawer in the
his desk then paused. With a swift movement he pulled open the drawer and took
out a small cardboard packet. He placed it on the desk and tapped a finger upon
it.
“I
don’t usually like to prescribe pills, but in your case I think you’ll find
they’ll help.”
Stacey
picked up the pack and turned it over in her hand. It was plain white, no
markings.
“Try
them for a week or so, see how you feel. Of course, you don’t have to take them. It’s your choice.”
The
pills seemed to do little at first. Perhaps she felt a little calmer, a little
more patient. Then after a couple of weeks her lover seemed less important to
her, in fact she noticed things he did and said that aggravated her. He was
just like any other man.
Her
husband reached out and held her hand one night after they put their dinner
trays down, or she held his, she couldn’t remember. And then, five more pills
and five more days later, when he came home from work, she went into the hall
to greet him. It felt
as if he’d been gone a lifetime. They clung to each other as they
hadn’t for years.
Stacey
awoke and gazed at her sleeping husband. She smiled and kissed his cheek. He
murmured but did not wake. She got up and went to her handbag. Only one pill
left. Later on, she called her psychologist. The number rang and went dead. She
tried four more times.
Stacey
awoke with a start. She emptied her entire handbag on the ground, rifled
through pockets and drawers. Nothing. She jumped in the car, driving anxiously
through the traffic to his office. The door was locked, letters piled up on the
mat inside. Stacey crumpled to her knees and wept.
That
evening she sat at the dinner table twisting her wine glass around by its stem.
The front door slammed. A tear trickled down her face as her husband sat next
to her and put his arm around her shoulders.
“Bad
day?” he asked.
Stacey
nodded, letting her head fall heavily into his shoulder, “Thank god you’re home.”
by Tina Smith
A dance of archetypes, nicely woven, with enough ambiguity to leave questions and introspections in the mind of the reader.
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