Shrunk Yet? by Peter Aronson

Patrick, paranoid about the robustness of his marriage since most of his friends have divorced, starts wondering what his wife talks to her psychiatrist about.

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Personally, I thought my wife and I had our shit together.

Helen and I had been married for 19 years, were in good health and by choice never had kids, so we could travel freely and do whatever we wanted to do whenever we wanted to do it.

We had avoided, I thought by a pretty wide margin, what seemed to be the inevitable downward spiral into what Helen called the snake and spider-infested sinkhole of life, the anger, distrust, and deceit spurred by extra-marital affairs, abject boredom and morbid unhappiness, ultimately leading to a bloody, litigious, trying-to-strangle-each-other divorce.

Because of the breakups surrounding us, we had begun tracking the divorce rate among our friends, defined as couples we knew for at least two years. When the tabulation showed 51 percent, I thought that must be wrong, too high, so we double and triple checked our numbers. It turned out to be 53 percent, meaning more than half of our couple friends had split. Most had kids.

"Why can't they just get along? They made a commitment," I said, draining my glass of white wine at dinner one night in our apartment.

It was on that night that Helen had told me about Rick, a sculptor at the Art Students League, where Helen painted two times a week, when she wasn't writing a short story, or working on her third novel.

"Our lockers are next to each other, we started talking, about what else - that model who looked like and was hung like The David," she said, with a laugh. "So we've had lunch a few times."

She just blurted this out as we finished our salmon and drank our wine, like she was talking about the weather, sunny skies, mid-70s. No biggie.

"Oh, that's nice," I said, "glad you found a new lunch partner. I'm sure he's a nice guy."

That's what I said, but not what I was thinking. Helen had never mentioned anything like this before... and it came on the heels of the 53 percent, with a chart listing all our divorced friends now posted on our kitchen bulletin board. Helen had thumbtacked it there and circled the 53 in red Sharpie, to be adjusted, likely up, as new stats came in.

I had begun seeing my shrink about three years before all this, when I began having nightmares about, then became fixated on, skydiving nude. I know it sounds crazy, particularly because I don't even take my shirt off when I swim, but it is a thing (yeah, Google it!). Maybe it had something to do with me turning 50, not sure, but Helen mocked me, said my anxiety would prevent me from even getting on the plane, let alone taking my clothes off and jumping.

"Your dick will not see the light of day," she said, laughing, yet egging me on. "If you do it, I'll go to the grocery store topless."

I survived my male menopause meltdown. I didn't skydive. Time moved on.

Around the time I learned about Ricky the sculptor, Helen told me, not for the first time, almost in a prepared speech one morning over coffee: "You know, Patrick, I need to tell you that you have become more and more anxious and less and less flexible the longer we're married." I wasn't sure how seriously to take this complaint, but decided, after studying the divorce list one Saturday afternoon, when Helen was out, supposedly getting a manicure, supposedly not with you know who, to take it quite seriously, wondering if it was some kind of verbal warning shot across the bow.

Soon after, in mid-March 2020, events beyond our control compelled me to join Helen working at home, she in her writing room/art studio cum second bedroom, me keeping my accounting business afloat at the tiny desk in our bedroom, my laptop open next to a stack of manila folders, one for every tax return I had to prepare by April 15. I was a writer too, but, well...

So it was around this time, about 8:30 am one morning, when Helen received an email. She read, she grimaced, then announced, "I'll be in my room from 10 until 10:45. Please stay away from the door during that time, ok?" She had a fake smile plastered on her face, as if much more was actually going through her mind.

I immediately thought about Ricky the... I wasn't sure what to call him.

"Why'd you say, 'Stay away from the door'?"

"Because, Patrick, I need the room for myself, ok? I'm Zooming with BS." She shot me a look.

BS was our nickname for Helen's shrink, Dr. Bojan Stefanski.

"Oh... ok," I said, trying to think this through. "But..."

"Patrick, for God's sake, there are no buts here. You know BS keeps me sane, keeps me stable. I love you, but I need a comfortable, private place. Private, ok?"

I noted that she said private twice, with gusto.

I paused for a second, then said, "Yeah, ok, yeah, I get it Helen. Of course, shrink appointments should be private." This was a tad awkward.

Helen Zooming with her shrink was new. Me being home, in the adjacent room, while Helen was Zooming with her shrink was new, too. I had never before given much thought to what Helen told her shrink. But now I was thinking about the bite, the sting in her voice.

My mind shot straight to my alleged inflexibility and anxiety and all the shit Helen knew was clogging my brain, including, of course, Ricky the...

I took a breath and tried to sort through the thoughts in my brain. I knew, or thought, Helen loved me, but we were spending a lot of time together, cooped up in our apartment. Were things - you know, all those things - mounting?

I realized I should check my email, too. Good thing I did. My shrink, Dr. William T. Frakas, known in our home as WTF, also had emailed me. He was rescheduling our appointment for 10 am that day, moving it up one day... Zoom Zoom - boom! This meant that Helen and I would be Zooming with our shrinks at exactly the same time, in adjacent rooms separated by one single, solitary wall.

This struck me as an awfully weird and awkward coincidence.

"So what are we gonna do?" I asked Helen, holding my arms out, confused and looking for connubial guidance. "What if we hear what the other says?"

She shook her head. "You're gonna be in one room, I'll be in the other, the doors will be closed and we'll whisper. It'll be ok."

But then she stalked off into the kitchen, for more coffee, and I could tell she was not ok.

"Just be nice," she blurted out from the other room. "Just, you know..."

She didn't finish her sentence, but now I was wondering if she thought I was angry about stuff, including that Ricky the dicky guy... I really wasn't sure what to call him.

"What are you talking about?" I asked, as I entered the kitchen, pretending to need more coffee even though my cup was mostly full.

She took a sip from her cup, looked down, then up. "Just don't bash me, ok? And I won't bash you."

I shrugged a What the fuck? "Come on Helen, I love you, why would you think I'd bash you?"

At 9:58, we went our separate ways, into our separate Zoom rooms. We both locked our respective doors behind us.

For all I knew, she was emptying the closet where we stored our winter coats and was shoving them under the door to soundproof the room.

But then I heard "Shit!" shouted by Helen from that room.

"What's wrong?" I shouted back, alarmed.

"Nothing!" she shouted in return, clearly showing the rooms were not soundproof.

A moment later, I was staring at a blurry WTF, for 30 seconds, then a minute, until the Zoom picture sorted itself out. After another minute or two of nonsensical small talk about the oddness of having a therapy session via camera, with sirens wailing in the background, I spent the next 42 minutes whispering about what Helen might be saying about me.

I felt like I was in an old Woody Allen movie, a paranoid, blabbering, narcissistic 53-year-old on an anxiety-fuelled hallucinatory flight.

"I'm pretty sure I just heard her say 'fuck.' Maybe 'fuck Patrick,' or maybe she said, 'I fucked Rick,' not sure," I told WTF.

But then I wasn't sure if I heard any words, or any sounds at all.

"Maybe it was nothing - or maybe it was the neighbor?" I surmised. "But why would the neighbor say, 'I fucked Rick,' if, in fact, that's what I heard?"

"Patrick, you're having your delusions again, aren't you?" WTF said, shaking his head. "Are you taking your medicine?"

"Yeah, of course I am, what do you think?" I hadn't taken my meds in two years. Not even Helen knew that.

When Helen had double downed on pestering me about my lack of flexibility, i.e. never wanting to go to her restaurant, or not wanting to go out with her friends, I decided to show her. I flushed my meds... and kept doing so, script after script.

I rambled and sneered while I talked entirely about what Helen was (or was not) saying.

"But what if I..."

"Time's up, Patrick," WTF said, cutting me off. "See you next week."

He smiled and in mid nod tapped a button jettisoning me from his Zoom orbit.

I took a breath, closed my eyes and sat in complete silence. I tried to overhear any syllable of sound coming from Helen.

Was she still talking? I heard something.

Maybe she was doing the same eavesdropping thing, her ear pressed against the wall I was staring at.

I stopped breathing.

If only the walls could talk? I couldn't help but think. Her walls, that is.

I decided to play it cool, and not be the first one to open a door. I wanted Helen to yell, "Hey, Patrick, you shrunk yet?"

The silence continued. Was she now writing, or pretending to write by not exiting the room? Or was she waiting for me to make the first move? Or was she lying on the floor wondering what I was saying or doing? Then I thought that, theoretically, this could go on forever, with perhaps starvation forcing one of us to give in.

---

A week later, our joint shrinking took a turn towards the surreal.

I remember the exact time, because I was looking at the clock on the stove when I heard a ping from Helen's computer. Helen was on the treadmill, I was buttering a piece of toast, it was 8:28 am, and ping. Then a second ping 30 seconds later. From down the hall, I could hear Helen panting and running along with her Peloton instructor. I licked the knife and walked over to her computer on the living room table. I hesitated for a second. Then I looked down.

The message was from BS. The subject: Important News.

I looked towards the back of the apartment, where I could still hear Helen panting and running. Was I actually checking to see if my wife would enter the living room and catch me reading her emails?

The computer pinged a third time. I noticed there was a red dot next to the message. That meant the message was serious business.

It was therapy day, 90 minutes before Helen's appointment with BS.

Helen would need to know if her appointment was canceled. I clicked on the message. I saw it was a pretty long email, longer than a simple cancellation.

I moved closer and began reading. I was still holding the piece of buttered toast in my left hand. I scrolled with my right.

I read and then thought the only thing I could think of. Holy shit! Helen's beloved shrink of God-knows-how-many not years but decades, was suddenly retiring, leaving her rudderless. In the middle of Covid, no less. He was older and his wife was frail, he explained, and with the increasing medical danger, he had to close his practice ASAP, leave the city, hunker down and focus on surviving. No Zooming, no nothing.

"I'm so sorry, so very sorry after all these years to end it like this," he said, adding that he'd mail his final bill once he got resettled.

I had not known Helen without BS.

BS had helped Helen navigate our courtship and engagement, helped her with her difficult transition; I had allergies, it was her cats or me, not both. Emotional stuff. And then after we got married, my imperfections, my inflexibility, my anxiety - and then my fixation to skydive naked, to prove something, anything - page after page she wrote out in a notebook.

At one point, she shouted at me, "If I don't deal with all this crap, we're going to get a divorce!"

Then she added even more loudly,"Just like everybody else!"

This was a few months before we started making our chart that had now ticked up to 55 percent.

I knew BS was integral to our success, kind of a third wheel in our marriage. "He's so flexible," she once told me, saying the word flexible slowly and seductively as if it would cause a spontaneous orgasm. "Flehhh... xxx...ible," she said, displaying her tongue, explaining that he occasionally allowed Helen to change her appointment time without charging her an extra administrative fee.

I glanced at the clock. Helen would be done running in a few minutes. I stood frozen in the living room, heard a siren way too close to our building.

I realized I could fix two problems at once.

I put down the toast next to Helen's computer and with two hands and a few clicks, deleted the message from BS. Then I went into Helen's trash and deleted it from there, so there would be no trace of the message.

Then I thought - shit, fuck, now what?

I had a little more than an hour and a quarter to figure this out. At 10, Helen was expecting to have her next appointment. For a delirious split second, I thought I should just tell her and deal with it.

"But why'd you delete the message?" she would ask.

No, I couldn't tell her.

I heard another siren outside our apartment, this time the wailing was so close it sounded as if the Covid ER was about to crash through our door.

"Hi darling," Helen said, as she entered the living room, sweaty and carrying her water bottle. "That was a great workout. I ran 3.2 miles in 34 minutes."

I was standing about five feet from the living room table, her laptop propped open, the still-uneaten buttered toast in my left hand.

"Why are you standing there with that toast in your hand? You'll get crumbs all over the floor," she said, as she walked by and gave me a sweaty kiss on the cheek.

"Yeah," I said, faking the best smile I could.

I took a much-needed breath, because I hadn't inhaled any oxygen in more than 30 seconds.

I took a bite of my toast.

Helen rolled her eyes at me as a piece of toast broke off and fell to the floor.

"Told you," she said, as she walked to her computer.

It was almost 8:50.

She scrolled her messages. "Strange," she said, "I didn't get an email from BS this morning. He always sends me an email on the day of, confirming. I need that Zoom link. Ha."

She smiled and winked at me, proud she had picked up the new lingo.

"I'm taking a shower," she said.

I watched her walk into the bathroom.

Then, I don't know why I did what I did, but later realized that in panic mode, a person's brain and body move towards a solution as an automatic, protective response to relieve the anxiety of the panic.

I grabbed my laptop and in a frenzied moment, typed as fast as I could to create a new gmail address: drbojanstefanskimd1956118@gmail.com and added the email address to my computer.

I then created a Zoom account using that gmail address.

I then typed Helen an email from the new address.

Sorry Helen to be late with our confirmation. I had to change my email address because I was hacked. If it's not one thing in our world, it's something else. See you at 10. Dr. BS

I was breathing heavily as I pasted the Zoom link into the email. I couldn't believe I was doing this. I clicked send.

Helen said her last Zoom therapy session was a little weird. Jesus, what was she gonna think of this next one?

At 9:52, I announced to Helen: "I've got WTF in a few minutes. I'll be in our bedroom." I then smiled at Helen and craned my neck in her direction. "And no eavesdropping now, understand?"

I winked, she rolled her eyes at me and I closed and locked the door behind me. I double checked the lock to make sure. I already had emailed WTF and told him I was sick and would have to reschedule.

I turned off the lights. I removed the portable fan from the closet, put it on the table next to my computer and turned it on high, for maximum sound distortion. I signed on to Zoom and made sure the camera was off. I double checked it.

It was 9:59. I clicked on Zoom. I knew Helen was always on time. I looked at the wall in front of me and knew that Helen was on the other side of it, facing a desk that was facing the very same wall I was now facing. We were literally, physically, only about three feet apart.

It was now 10:00. I tapped start meeting. A nanosecond before Helen's face flashed on the screen, I realized I inadvertently had turned my camera on, not off. Jesus Christ! I smacked my laptop with my arm and flipped backwards in my chair. My computer and my tax folders flew off the table, papers fluttering everywhere, and my computer landed at a weird angle on top of a sneaker, next to me on the floor.

"Are you ok, Patrick?" I heard Helen yell through the wall.

My arm was killing me, but, somehow, my computer camera was facing up, showing an obscure shot of the ceiling.

"Take an Advil, Patrick, if you need to!" Helen shouted.

I didn't say a word.

Helen's concern, if that's what it was, lasted two seconds. She turned towards her computer and in a soft, calm voice said, "Hello Dr. Stefanski, are you there?"

She was squinting into the camera, trying to figure out what she was looking at.

"Dr. Stefanski?"

I moved the noisy fan from the desk to the floor, next to the computer, covered my mouth with a handkerchief, made sure I was well out of the camera's view, and quietly garbled my best Slavic accent, to mimic the doctor, "Yuess, Helen. Begin."

Helen had told me that BS began his sessions like that, with "Begin." And he rarely said anything else, except "Hmm," or "Ok" and then "Goodbye, Helen."

I took a deep breath and prepared for whatever.

"Where are you Dr. Stefanski, I can't see you?" Helen said.

I was looking at Helen from an extreme side angle. All she could see was our cracked, white ceiling, although she didn't realize it.

A flood of guilt suddenly rushed through me. What was I doing?

What if she said she was fucking Rick the Dick and was trying to figure out how to tell me? What if she asked for advice and demanded an answer?

I covered my mouth with the handkerchief again, turned towards the whirling fan and applied my pathetic accent: "Vhen you lay on de couch in my office, you coodn't see me, vemember?"

"Oh... oh, ok," Helen said.

I clicked a button turning my Zoom camera off, so there was no chance she could see me. On the screen, Helen looked sad, helpless. She so relied on BS.

"My husband is in really bad shape," Helen began. "I need to help him without him knowing I am helping him."

My head jerked.

"Dr. Stefanski, he's suffering. I've been telling you this for years, but it seems like it's getting worse. It's rather pathetic, actually."

I felt my jaw clench. I was staring at Helen. All she saw was a blank screen with Dr. BS on it in big, bold, black letters.

"You know, doctor, this really has nothing to do with Covid, although it may have exacerbated his condition."

I was trying to understand...

"He's delusional, Dr. Stefanski, and I don't know how to tell him. I don't know if I should tell him."

I covered my face with my hands. I closed my eyes.

But a moment later, I squinted through two slightly split fingers, looking for a bare sliver of Helen, afraid to hear what she would say next, but unable to look away.

She had stopped talking and was shaking her head. She seemed to be trying to stifle a tear. Or, maybe not. She finally spoke.

"He's trying so hard, doctor, so hard. But he's really just a flounder. He thinks I'm boffing some dickhead. He imagines himself a writer, too, Dr. Stefanski, because he has a 20-year-old unpublished short story sitting in his sock drawer. But alas, all he is is a nerdy, boring, frumpy, dumpy, anxious accountant."

She paused and looked out the window while thinking. Then she turned back towards the camera.

"And he's so stuck in his ways. Could he ever - I mean ever - on a whim, just utter the words, "Hey babe, what would you like to do tonight?"

I was now lying on the floor. I had taken a pillow from our bed and had covered my face.

"So, I'm trying to help Patrick, Dr. Stefanski, I really am. In fact, doctor, the reason I continue to see you is so that I can help him. I need to talk this through with you. I don't need you for me."

Helen stopped at that sentence and stared into the Zoom camera, looking to see Dr. Stefanski, who was somewhere else in the universe, but certainly not on the other side of this Zoom, as Helen thought.

Helen kept staring, and then said, "Dr. Stefanski, I hope I didn't hurt you by what I just said." She smiled sympathetically. "I don't mean I don't need you. It's just that I'm feeling pretty solid these days, a little claustrophobic, because of the obvious. But I feel happy. And, you know, despite all my griping, Patrick's nice to me, treats me with respect. A kind-hearted man, he is. I love him, I really do."

Helen paused for a few seconds, then frowned a bit and shook her head.

"But you know, doctor, maybe... maybe this is all about me? Maybe I'm the one who's all screwed up, and Patrick is just fine. What do you think, doctor? What do you think?"

She stared at her computer. All she could see was Stefanski's initials on a black screen.

"But I know doctor that you won't answer, that's not your style, you Freudian motherfucker."

Helen laughed.

"I didn't really mean that, doctor. I just get a little frustrated at your lack of words and I guess I said what I was thinking, but that was not polite of me."

She looked deeper into the computer.

"No, it wasn't. I'm sorry."

I was hysterical... and confused. I had begun biting the pillow as I held it to my face. The session had 10 minutes left.

I wasn't delusional, or anxious, or boring. At least I didn't think so. And Helen, well...

"I mean, Dr. Stefanski, it sort of comes down to this single, solitary question: What is the purpose of life - to strive for emotional independence and freedom, or to seek emotional, matrimonial attachment, the ultimate in human bonding, two beings entwined in body, mind and spirit, striving, you know, to achieve the seemingly unachievable? One or the other, right? Isn't that why we're here on earth, trying to figure out all this relationship crap? Because we're all social animals - right? ...ruff, ruff."

Helen smiled whimsically and nodded, fancying her sense of humor. A moment later, she turned her head to glance out the window. She seemed to be looking at the very same boat I could see out my window, bobbing in the rocky current in the East River, certain to make even the most seasoned seaman sick as a dog. Was a storm coming, or had it passed as Helen disemboweled my persona and, somehow, I missed it?

"Do unto others as you would like others to do unto you. This applies to marriage, to the person you love, right?" Helen knew an answer was not forthcoming. She knew her shrink rarely said a word, sessions were like talking to a rock.

Helen said those words and had those thoughts while still looking away from the computer, her gaze out the window, in another world.

"If I'm in a wheelchair someday, I want Patrick to take care of me, put me in an oversized BabyBjörn and carry me up a mountain, so we can drink tea and eat cookies at the top. Because that's what I would do for him. Care for him until his heart flitter flutters to a stop."

A tear trickled down my face. I had been worried about Rick the Prick. But Helen had been worried about me.

"Shouldn't I just tell Patrick the truth, that he's got it all, all he has to do is reveal his true heart and mind, scream a little and let go?

"What do you think Dr. Stefanski? I know you Freudian fuckheads aren't supposed to answer, but what if Patrick kills himself over this, drives a steak knife through his gullet because his stuck-in-the-butt anxiety overwhelms him, and I didn't deal with him properly? Or what if my perception is all wrong because this is all on me? And you didn't answer me, because you couldn't put aside your fucking Freudian ideological stuck-up-the-ass bullshit and tell me the truth."

Helen's face was now so close to the screen I could see her blackheads. She wasn't smiling anymore. It looked like we were nose to nose, except she couldn't see me. I looked at the wall and imagined Helen on the other side, staring straight at me, only her laptop and the wall in between.

I was actually waiting for Dr. Stefanski to say something - really.

"The problem with all you shrinks - all of you -" Helen waved her hand dismissively - "is that you all think you're better than us. We're the ones with the problems, you've got all the answers - and you won't tell us."

A moment later, Helen's scowl turned to a smile of satisfaction. She glanced to the side for a sec, took a breath, then refocused. "But you know, Dr. Stefanski..."

I didn't want to hear any more. I had run out of soggy tissues and the snot and tears were beginning to overwhelm me, not to mention my wounded, unraveled psyche.

No, no more. I grabbed my handkerchief, covered my mouth, and garbled, "Time's up Helen, guudbye." I clicked off Zoom and shut down my computer as fast as I could. Didn't matter that it was three minutes early. My screen went black, silent. I winced. I hated shutting her down, but I had to. I was staring at my computer, looking through the blank screen, into the darkness, into the void, right at Helen, but I saw nothing.

What was she doing?

What was she thinking?

I heard what I thought was a window opening. I thought I heard that sliding sound, of metal on metal. We had a huge window in that bedroom, without a screen, because it was being fixed. It was a window you could climb through.

Why would Helen open the window? It was cold outside. A downpour had just started.

I rushed to the door, unlocked it, then unlocked her door with a key and swung it open.

"Helen, are you ok?" I said in a panic.

Helen was standing next to the open window, looking across the East River, the rain slashing down.

"Yeah, I'm good," she said, as calmly as I had ever heard her say those three words.

She turned towards me and smiled broadly, then a little sheepishly. "I'm really pleased, Patrick. Dr. Stefanski was especially helpful this morning. I see our life together more clearly than I have in a long time."

She smiled again, this time a coy, shy smile. "I know it's still morning, but want to make love?"

Later, as we lay in bed in each other's arms, Helen said, "I love you Patrick, I really do. Dr. BS really helped me today. Clarity came to me like a shining star."

She kissed me on the cheek. "I know it's expensive, darling, but I hope you don't mind if I continue seeing BS for years to come. He really helps me."

Helen smiled.

I tried to smile. I took a breath... then another.

I again heard loud sirens from the street. They seemed to be getting closer.