She's Got Next by Melissa King

Author:Melissa King
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Tammy was a well-dressed and attractive forty-year-old college professor with expressive hazel eyes and a Ph.D. in anthropology. She had been dating her boyfriend, an unemployed screenwriter with a drinking problem, for two years, during which time he’d had affairs with three different women, including her sister.

The margins had men’s names handwritten and underlined four times with an angry face, or “that’s me” written small, with a sad face. I got depressed all over again with that book and its crazy writings. It was like looking up from reading a newspaper to discover you’ve been riding the emotional little bus for a very long time.

“In session,” Wanda’s favorite move was the surprise question. When she was ready to make me have a breakthrough, she would suddenly blurt, “Are you ready to be different? Are you sincerely ready to change?” I knew she was trying to get my buy-in or commitment or something, and that was probably part of therapy, but when she asked me, I would just nod a little. I couldn’t bring myself to say, “Yes! I’m ready!” like I knew she wanted me to. It was the same feeling I got from the socially expected high-five. I mean, I can high-five when I feel like it, but I can’t do it just because I’m supposed to. I guess I’m not that enthusiastic sometimes. But I didn’t blame her for trying. You have to fake it, a little bit, just to get started.

So, instead of acting like everything was going to be okay, which Wanda had made as easy as saying yes, I started rambling on about Satyr, my favorite topic of discussion. In the middle of one of my many statements beginning with “I just don’t understand why he—” Wanda interrupted with another question.

“Do you feel like your biological clock is ticking?”

I think she was a little bored.

I wasn’t worried about any clocks. Instead, Wanda’s question made me think about this little boy, Xavier, who I saw one time in the Chicago Sun-Times. The paper advertised a baby for adoption on Wednesdays in a little space called “A Family for Me.” On Tuesdays and Fridays it was pets from the animal shelter, on Mondays it was chess moves, and on Thursday it was needlepoint techniques.

I cut out Xavier’s ad and kept it for a while. I can still remember it. “Meet Xavier,” it said. “It looks like this sweetie pie has discovered his toes, and he is waiting for you to discover all of him! Xavier, three, loves for you to talk to him. Others say, Xavier is becoming a regular little socialite who enjoys playing with others in their playpen. What you can do: You can spend lots of time with him!”

Xavier just looked mostly confused to me, at least in that one picture of him I had. One day I threw the ad away, but then I just kept remembering his face, and I got the ad back out of the trash. I wasn’t going to save Xavier, but somehow it seemed better if I didn’t forget him either.

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