Page 39 of The Therapist
One of her frequent complaints about her life is that he has no idea how difficult it is to take care of young children and that he never gives her enough help, and he has to admit that she’s right. It’s exhausting and boring and the hours seem to stretch on forever before bedtime. But what kind of a mother leaves her phone behind?
‘But you know everything,’ said Lila softly when Mike said he didn’t know if their mother would be back or not. Mike wanted to scream with rage. He is supposed to know everything but right now, he feels like a kid again, caught up in a chaotic world over which he has no control. The urge to hit something runs through him.
‘Chicken and salad, thanks,’ he says to the man behind the counter in the sandwich shop, and then he pays and steps away to wait. His phone beeps with an audio message and he shoves a finger in one ear to block out all the other lunchtime customers and listens.
‘Mr Burkhart, this is Detective Franks calling in relation to a report of a missing person we’ve had. I’m trying to get in touch with you or your wife, Sandy Burkhart. She’s not answering her phone. If you could please return my call at?—’
Mike stops the message, his heart racing and his palms sweating. She’s gone to the police: the therapist bitch has actually gone to the police.
‘Chicken and salad,’ the man behind the counter calls, and Mike steps forward, grabs his sandwich and gestures his thanks.Then he walks out of the shop into the cold air, thinking that he should have brought his suit jacket. Spring has arrived but it has brought no change in the weather.
He takes a bite of the sandwich as he walks towards a pub that he knows he can get a lunchtime drink at and then he stops and has to concentrate on swallowing. She went to the police.
After chucking the sandwich in a nearby bin, he feels in his pocket, glad that he has his car keys. There’s no way he’s going back to work now. The police are going to want to speak to him. They are going to want to trace Sandy’s phone, to search the house, to dissect their lives. Is this what Sandy wanted? Did she know that things would go this far? Is this her sick, twisted way of punishing him?
He thought there was some hope that Lana would wait and that Sandy would turn up. Obviously, that was idiotic. The therapist turning up last night was weird but it meant that he should have understood exactly what the woman would do today.
And perhaps he should have been the one to contact the police. He should have done it for the same reason he’s been ringing Sandy’s phone, even while he knows it’s under their mattress. It would look better if he had contacted the police and reported his wife missing.
He walks through the back entrance of the building, going into the garage where his car is parked, finding the silence unsettling. The noise from the factory next to the garage is usually tremendous but everything has fallen silent now as the company is slowly buried by the auditors. Mike gets into his car, knowing exactly where he’s going.
What has the therapist told the police about his marriage? He needs to get her on side. Maybe if she understands, if she will listen to the truth about Sandy without running off, really listen and understand, then she will call the police and tell them thatSandy really is the kind of person to just up and leave her kids, because she is. He needs the therapist to understand the truth.
It’s a few minutes after 1 p.m. and he has a couple of hours before he has to get the kids. He will go to her office and talk to her.
Perhaps he should call the detective back and explain but he’s afraid to do that. What if he says something wrong? What if the detective asks a question he can’t answer? No, the best way forward is to speak to the therapist.
A small part of him knows that what he’s doing is irrational but it’s overridden by fear and worry and by his need to be understood, by his need for the truth to come out.
He needs to convince her that he hasn’t done anything to Sandy and that she left of her own accord. He knows how weird it sounds. Women generally don’t leave their children but Sandy is a very different kind of woman.
It’s not just the violence but the detachment as well. She doesn’t really seem to care about the kids the way he had always imagined a mother would, although what would he know? His mother never protected him from his violent father. But he does remember some good moments with her, moments when his father was out and she was not busy trying to save herself by putting Mike in between her and her violent husband, and he thinks she did love him. She still loves him even though they speak so rarely, and she adores Felix and Lila, calls them ‘the babies’.
When he was a child, there was a way his mother used to look at him sometimes, used to stroke his hair and gaze down at him that made him understand she loved him. He’s never seen Sandy look at their kids that way, and she touches them as little as possible. Although when she talks about them to other people, she practically gushes her love for them.
Maybe she does love them; maybe he’s the problem because he has no real idea of what a mother’s love is really like.
The contradicting, questioning thoughts threaten to send him insane.
He always put it down to the fact that she wasn’t ready to be a mother when Felix was born but she seemed happy to be pregnant with Lila, seemed proud of her growing bump and the way people treated her. But when the baby arrived, there was the same detachment. She did all the right things, talked to the baby, smiled at the baby, but sometimes when he was watching her interact with Lila, it seemed to him that his being witness to her interaction was what mattered, rather than the interaction itself. He’s never wanted to ask her about it or discuss it with anyone else. He barely speaks to his mother, and Sandy’s mother is on the South Coast and sees the children even less than his mother does. Mother and daughter seem to have little interest in each other. But maybe Sandy has gone there?
He pulls over to the side of the road and picks up his phone, scrolling through his contacts to find his mother-in-law, Maureen. He can’t recall ever having called her before but Sandy gave him her number years ago.
His stomach rumbles as he waits for Maureen to pick up and he regrets throwing out the sandwich.
‘Hello,’ she answers.
‘Hey, Maureen, it’s Mike,’ he says and then because she says nothing, he feels compelled to add, ‘Sandy’s husband.’
‘Oh right, of course, how are you? How are the children?’
‘Good, good, everyone is good but Sandy… Have you seen Sandy? I know she wanted a bit of time away so I thought she might be there.’
‘Here?’ Maureen replies and she seems surprised. ‘Sandy would never come here.’
‘Oh right, right… sorry.’
‘How long has she been gone?’
