Hourglass by Dani Shapiro

Author:Dani Shapiro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2017-04-10T16:00:00+00:00

—

M. and I go see a couples therapist. Eighteen years. Things come up in the course of eighteen years. Together we’ve weathered Jacob’s illness, my mother’s death, his mother’s decline. We’ve fought each other’s battles: my bad reviews feel even worse to M. than they do to me. A friend’s betrayal of him makes me want to come out swinging. We’re each other’s first readers. We have always been on the same side. When people ask if we’re competitive with one another—two writers under the same roof—the question itself seems absurd. We’re together. All in. Deep inside the us of us.

So why—the therapist wonders—are we here?

M. sits silently, so I begin.

“I’m frightened,” I say. And then I start to cry.

I feel M. next to me on her sofa. His body is my home. Yet lately, I have had flashes, unbidden moments in which I wonder who the hell he is. I secretly fear that I’ve been wrong about him.

While M. was making the movie, he let things slide. Bills piled up. I trusted he knew what he was doing. Then our Writers Guild health insurance lapsed, and he didn’t tell me. Ever since I found out, I’ve been in a panic. It feels like every step I take is fraught with danger. As if the earth’s crust might just open up and swallow me whole. What if something happened to one of us? Just yesterday I didn’t let Jacob go out for a bike ride. I was afraid he’d fall and break his leg.

I’ll take care of it.

M.’s head is in his hands. He knows just how badly he’s fucked up. His voice is low, muted.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

I’m not interested in sorry.

“I didn’t want to disappoint you. I just wanted to fix things.”

My voice, too, sounds different to my ears. Reedy, shaking with rage.

“You put our family in danger,” I say.

“What are you most afraid of?” the therapist asks.

Just a short while earlier, as we walked to our appointment on West Ninth Street—a pretty block just off Fifth Avenue—I had noticed an elderly homeless woman pushing a cart filled with all her worldly belongings. Who had she been? How had she gotten there? It seemed a possibility that I could become that elderly homeless woman someday. That this life M. and I have built together is flimsy, the world merciless, and time, time unrelenting.

I see M. in my peripheral vision as I stutter out my worst fears. He flinches at my mention of the homeless woman. The therapist tilts her head to one side. She hardly knows me and has no reason to believe what sounds like histrionics of the creative class. Really? That’s what you’re most afraid of? As if it were ridiculous. As if it were simply out of the realm of possibility.

—

Late summer. At our local farmer’s market, I wait in line for goat’s milk yogurt, green roses, sourdough bread, fresh eggs while M. picks up some beef to grill. It’s a bright, sunny day—with just a hint of autumn in the air—but I’m not feeling bright or sunny.

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