Dirty Diana

Chapter 20

Chapter 20

—

“Not every marriage that ends is a failure,” Miriam says softly. She reaches for another sip of her tea and Oliver nods solemnly in agreement as if he’d come up with this little nugget himself.

“Well, but it is though, right?” I ask. “I mean, a failed marriage is exactly that, a marriage that ends.” Why is Oliver looking at me like I’m speaking in a foreign tongue?

“Of course, Diana. But I’m not saying your marriage is at its end. The notion I’d like to introduce—that I think is important in our work together—is to understand the successes you’ve achieved together.” I’m so confused. Are we succeeding or failing? She’s been doing this the whole hour, talking in tightly knit circles that confound me. “Diana, you look panicked.”

All eyes on me again. “I just feel like, maybe last time there was progress?”

There wasn’t any progress. Last week, I’d tried to incorporate an exotic dancer into our relationship and now whenever Oliver looks at me it’s like he’s genuinely frightened of what I’ll suggest next. And now we’re here, to lay all the pieces in front of Miriam. And worse, now that we’re here, I can’t follow what she’s saying and Oliver seems to speak her language and not mine, and my head is starting to pound, just behind my right temple. I’d honestly thought I’d be better at therapy.

“Would you like to share what you feel has been progress? How did you feel after we met last?”

“Good.” I jump in too quickly.

Oliver looks at me curiously. “Which part felt good?”

I can’t think of a single thing in the moment. My mind goes blank as I grope for a positive detail from this week. “We had Emmy’s game. We were a real unit, it felt like, cheering her on.”

“Were we going to root for separate teams? At our own daughter’s soccer game?”

“These days, I don’t know.” If he is going to get shitty, I can too. But I want to demonstrate for Miriam that I’m in control. “Oliver’s a great dad. We love our daughter. And we’ve always been on the same page. So many of our friends argue over parenting—how to discipline, how much screen time, et cetera. I think it’s a big deal that we’ve never fought about any of it. We’re really good friends, who love each other.”

“Is that enough for you?” Oliver asks. “I’m not trying to be an asshole, I’m really asking.”

I pause. Friends isn’t enough for me. I know it’s not. “I don’t know,” I say quietly. I look down at my hands. I rub my thumb into the opposite palm and try to think of something else to say. What’s the magic sentence with just enough information to appear like sharing but without divulging anything I might later regret? Until I stop thinking of therapy as a game, we won’t get anywhere, I know, but I can’t seem to stop.

Oliver clears his throat. “We should tell her.”

Jesus. Why does therapy have to mean being honest about everything?

“Do you want to or should I?” he asks.

“I don’t think it needs all this buildup and fanfare, does it?”

Oliver looks down and mumbles what feels like a confession. “I’ve been going to strip clubs and Diana thought it would be a good idea to have a threesome with one of the dancers.”

“I didn’t ask for a threesome!”

“Well then, what was that?”

“It was an attempt. An attempt to…try something different. Just like you were trying to do.”

We both look to Miriam, but her expression is blank. She jots a note in her book.

“It didn’t go well,” Oliver adds.

“Which part?” I interrupt. “You going to a strip club or me trying to go with you?”

“Where is all this even coming from? You go from avoiding sex with me to Girls Gone Wild.”

“That’s so unfair. You’re the one lying about going to strip clubs!”

“I’m not cheating on you. It’s just an escape. And you’re so far away. I feel like I don’t even know you anymore.”

“Can you articulate how Diana feels different?” Miriam chimes in like we’re discussing flavors of ice cream.

“The old Diana would never have done that. Tried to kiss someone in front of me.” I suddenly feel like I’m in therapy with Oliver’s father. “Can’t we just go back to the way things were?”

It’s the only question today that I know the answer to. “No,” I say. There’s no going back to the way things were. Because there are no “old Diana” or “old Oliver” versions of either of us. They don’t exist. There are only ever our perceptions of each other. And Oliver’s image of me has shifted. Maybe the lenses we see each other through got cloudier or sharper, I’m not sure which. Maybe a slant of light has changed and that’s enough.

The room is quiet and still, and when I turn to Oliver, he does something that I don’t expect. Tears well in his eyes and his voice begins to tremble. “I just…don’t know how to make her happy anymore. Like we’re in quicksand. And we keep sinking and we’re trying all these ideas to keep above it and none of them are working. They just make us sink farther. And faster.”

This is the first thing to come up in therapy that we’ve actually agreed on. But what else can we do but try to keep our heads above the sand? What’s the other option? Divorce? We love each other. I could never do that to Emmy. Maybe the story of our marriage that we tell ourselves isn’t true anymore, but couldn’t it be revised? What if there’s a way to shed our old story and let a new one emerge. An even better one. I didn’t do all this, live here and work this job and pay for this house, and fit into this life, so that we would just let it burn.

“So what do you suggest we try?” I’m asking the room, hoping someone has a better idea.

“Maybe we don’t try. Maybe we acknowledge we’re in quicksand. And there’s no getting out of it.”