Page 23 of Canadian Boyfriend

“My point is that yes, you know Sarah was lying about being on the pill. You know she had agreed to a course of action she was undermining.” I winced. Hearing it said so plainly was painful, but it was an oddly welcome sort of pain. This straight talk was why I liked Dr. Mursal. “What you don’t know, what you’ll never know, iswhy.

“I don’t think having this conversation again is the best use of our time today,” she went on. “Can we agree to shelve it and focus on the more immediately relevant point, which is that you’re feeling as if you may need to quit hockey?”

“Yeah, OK.” Dr. Mursal had encouraged me to go back this season. She’d told me I’d been in survival mode, that I’d beenprioritizing Olivia, and that while that strategy had been fine for the short term, it couldn’t go on forever—it was as if she and my mom had ganged up on me. She’d said that since I was a veteran who had always embraced the role of looking after the rookies, it would be good for me to return. To be needed. Then she’d asked a question, which had sealed the deal: “If you don’t go back, what are you going to do all day when Olivia’s in school?”

My answer had been: Stare into the abyss. Fall into the abyss.Becomethe abyss.

When I thought about people dying of a broken heart, it was always really old people. “They were married for sixty years,” the neighbor would be quoted as saying in the newspaper. “He didn’t know how to live without her.” It wasn’t that, for me. It was that I was always standing a little too close to the abyss. Icouldn’tfall in. It would mesh with all the little voids inside me so easily. And then where would Olivia be?

That wasn’t a rhetorical question. The answer was: with Sarah’s parents.

So, motivated by fear, I’d allowed myself to be coached. I’d listened to Dr. Mursal when she said I should go back to work. She’d also said a lot of stuff about it being OK to be mad at Sarah even as I missed her, and OK to want things for myself.

I’d listened to my mom, who was always saying that thing about the only way out being through.

“Let’s talk about what’s happening that’s making you say it would be easier to quit,” Dr. Mursal said, back in the reality of a hotel room in San Jose where I was still so far from through that it freaked me out if I faced it head-on.

So I didn’t face it. I answered the question in front of me. “Nothing’s happening. I just got here.” Well, I had almost hit Badger, and I should probably fess up about that, but I decided to waituntil next week when my appointment would be in person and I could eat pretzels while confessing my Rocky Balboa moment.

“What’s happening in yourmind?” she asked. “Not as it relates to Sarah, but to your return to hockey.”

“I’m worried about Olivia. I can’t fall asleep at night, I’m so worried about leaving her.”

“But you trust Lauren.”

“Yes.”

“What words did you use to describe Lauren when we were first talking about Olivia staying with her?”

“I said she was the best thing that ever happened to the best man I know,” I recited obediently. Dr. Mursal had often had me repeat that line in the run-up to the season.

“Is it Tuesday you’re worried about? Olivia’s time with…” She shuffled through her notes. “Aurora?”

“No. I trust her, too.”

“Why?”

“She’s been Olivia’s dance teacher for years, and I don’t know, I just like her.”

“Why?”

“Well, mostly I like that she doesn’t care that I’m a hockey player. But also…” I thought about how to explain it. “I like that she sometimes answers a question with another, totally unrelated question.”

“Can you give me an example?”

I cast my mind back. “We were eating ice cream once—in the convertible—and she had an… exaggerated reaction to her first bite.” By which I meant she looked like she was having an orgasm, but that was not a clinically relevant detail. “I asked her if everything was OK. Instead of answering, she said, ‘Why do you call this the Depression Car?’ It was such an out-of-the-blue question.”

“But was it really?”

“Well, it was unrelated to what was happening.”

“But what if you zoom out and think more generally about what was happening?Wasthe question so misplaced?”

“I guess not?”

“It sounds as if Olivia is in the hands of two women you respect and trust.”

“Yes.” I could not argue with that.

---