You and your wife are sitting in your therapist’s waiting room. You look at the door, paranoid that someone you know will come in and you’ll attempt to cover up your embarrassment with small talk—small talk in a small town—your voice quavering in that high-pitched lilt that broadcasts your self-consciousness, with your oblique attempts at humor that only you chuckle at. And not talk about why you’re here, though you’ll know that he’ll know why you’re each here, and you will both wonder what, precisely, is the other’s why. And then you will have to not explain that your wife is more upset than you had ever seriously thought she was that occasionally she catches you doing a double-take when an attractive woman walks by and you insist that you’re just people-watching and that the attractive woman just happened to walk across your field of vision at the moment and your wife insists that you’re lying and it’s all the time and not occasional, and you state, trying to be funny, again in a way that only you find funny, that you got married but didn’t go blind, and your wife insists that it’s a matter of respect and if you loved her you wouldn’t do that and you feel stifled and overly-monitored and not trusted, and that this ridiculous impasse led you into this office.

So, what if your mechanic, your child’s teacher, your tennis partner or one of your clients walked in? When you expressed this to Dr. Carenot, she shifted, her clunky stone bracelet clinking against the wooden arm of the chair, and obtusely said, “We all have our problems.” Was she implying that this self-consciousness was a problem of yours or was she suggesting that there would be nothing to be embarrassed about because you and whoever walked through that door would be on equal footing, and, of course, it would be perfectly normal to be sitting in a therapist’s office . . . because everyone does!

You and your wife are sitting catty-corner to each other, not alongside each other, probably symbolic of your relationship, you figure, trying to think like your shrink, though she doesn’t like to be called that as, she explained, that it’s not considered complimentary these days. The waiting room chairs are comfortable, but not too so—no shrink wants to make you too comfortable. They are lightly upholstered in navy blue, a color probably carefully chosen as the color least likely to be outdated in five years. Soft, but not soft enough to sink down into; still thin enough to feel the wood underneath. One needs to be anchored in reality, you know, she might say. Everything—the carpet, the paint color—is dull and soothing. You guess the message is that therapy should be dull and soothing. But what of the stronger emotions? The passions? And the exciting breakthroughs you hear about but have not yet experienced? Don’t those call for bolder, louder tones to pull them out and encourage them? You hear a muffled voice coming from the wall—the next office over or down the hall. The voice gets louder to the point of yelling and, though you can’t make out the words, you can’t mistake that high-pitched-yet-authoritative tone, that self-assurance, that piercing—how to describe it—rightness. You and your wife exchange glances—the type of glances where you each raise your eyebrows, and a half-smile crosses your lips. Heather, the office manager, rushes in, almost in a panic, flipping on the white noise machine, muffling the loud voice coming through the walls. Heather with the impossibly long legs. The long legs that you can’t be seen staring at. You notice, out of the corner of your eye, your wife staring at you, monitoring your gaze. You close your eyes. Better to think of Heather’s legs than to stare at them. You pretend to relax. You breathe slowly—breathe in, 1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . 4 . . . 5 . . . 6 . . . , breathe out, 1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . 4 . . . 5 . . . 6. . . . Pretend to meditate. The scent of tangerine and lavender suffuses the air—subtle but unmistakable—as Heather passes close to you. You smile, knowing your wife is still looking, probably still stunned by Heather’s sudden surprise appearance in the waiting room. You picture Heather in her usual spot, sitting at her receptionist’s desk, behind the counter, legs safely under cover. Last time you came in, she had a copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost open in front of her. You couldn’t help asking about it, and she talked about her English class at a local college, with your wife shifting her weight, grunting, and finally saying: “Why don’t you just give her the copay so we can sit down.” After a minute, you open your eyes. The legs are still there. Heather’s straightening up the waiting room, squaring the magazines on the coffee table, putting the chairs back in their places. She glances at you as she bends over the magazine rack. She smiles. You smile. Your wife frowns. Your wife is glaring at you now, giving you the “You’re old enough to be her father” look. At least this therapy session won’t be dull.

You smile at your wife and pretend to ignore Heather. Pretend you don’t see what you couldn’t not see. You smile at least a dozen times, hoping your wife will like you smiling at her. Your wife has accused you, in therapy, of feeling that you always have to please people. You argued that it’s hard not to feel like you always have to please her when she is monitoring your every move, your every glance. Dr. Carenot nodded—one of the few times she didn’t take your wife’s side. You turned to your wife and smiled triumphantly. You knew that didn’t help matters.

The door to the outside opens and a middle-aged man, about your age, holds it open and waits. So, you all wait, expectantly looking at the door until in shuffles a teenage girl out of central casting for “disaffected youth.” She has spiked, blue hair, a nose ring, and heavy mascara that gives her eyes the appearance of automobile headlights, although not with their high beams on. She looks at no one, makes no eye contact. She holds her cell phone—enclosed in a bubble-gum-pink case, and she stares at the screen, occasionally hitting it with a finger adorned with chipped black nail polish. She somehow navigates her way—without looking up, without watching where she is going—into a chair in the corner of the room, and slumps into it sideways, leaning against the chair’s arm, with her knees bent and her Doc Martens on the cushion. The man, presumably her father, talks to her and she ignores him—gives him no sign she has heard him or is even aware of his existence. He tries again, this time a little louder and a little more insistent. Same response. He sighs and now he slumps, air leaving him like it’s hissing out of a deflating balloon. You avoid eye contact. You wonder how much of your life is spent trying not to see things. Your wife seems to ignore the whole scene that you’re absorbed in, and you. You wish there were more times that she ignored you like this.

The session was no better and no worse than usual. You and your wife seem to have a greater understanding of your problems while being no closer to resolving them. Are you both that stubborn, or is your therapist missing something? Anyway, you scheduled your next session because that is what you do in therapy: schedule the next session, and the next and the next, until you get the epiphany that either unlocks the answer to your problems or makes you realize that this is as good as it gets, or are those two things the same? Outside, the autumn air is cold and silent. Nothing moves. No air rustling the few dry leaves left on the trees. No wind chasing the fallen leaves in orange, yellow and brown revolutions. The car is silent. After a few months of therapy, you and your wife have gained a fuller appreciation of each other—a fuller appreciation of how ridiculous you both are. Yet, like most humans on earth, you just can’t help but continue being ridiculous.

“You were looking at that girl’s legs,” your wife says, facing forward, looking at the still, silent world outside the windshield.

“I wasn’t looking,” you say, as if on cue, as if she didn’t know that was what you were going to say. “I closed my eyes.”

“You closed your eyes because you were looking.”

“How could I be looking if my eyes were closed?”

Your wife feels that, like you, Dr, Carenot does not take her concerns seriously, while you feel that the doctor always sides with your wife.

Your wife huffs—a sign she is giving up the argument for now—and says: “We’re really making progress, aren’t we.”

And you share an uneasy laugh—a crack in the dam that has bottled up all the tension over the past few years, all the tension that has obscured, like a curtain coming down in the theater, your intoxication with her smell, her walk, her laugh that you once were aware of.

You and your wife decide to go out to dinner to a nice place, agreeing that the two of you need a “date,” but really trying to avoid the tedium of sitting at home silently staring at each other over lukewarm leftovers. Your wife is wearing a black dress that seems unfamiliar, and you wonder if this is the first time she’s wearing it or if you just never noticed. She looks relaxed, she has an open smile. After appetizers, she says she wants to order a bottle of wine.

“Are we celebrating?” you ask.

“That remains to be seen.”

You can’t remember when the two of you seemed so relaxed together. You’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop, which maybe means you’re not as relaxed as you think you are, but it’s been so long that you felt even this degree of ease, that you choose to ignore that puppy biting at your pant cuff. You’re talking to the sommelier, and you hear a slapping sound, a thud, a pause, and then another slapping sound, and then a rhythmic pounding—thud-thud-thud-thwack. You look over your wife’s shoulder to see across the room, but your wife moves her body to block your view. “What’s so interesting over there? You’re here with me, remember?”

You hear raised voices, and your wife stiffens, as if reacting to some anticipated blow. She straightens just enough for you to see over her shoulder, across the restaurant. There is a couple at a table with the man facing you—a little older than you, thin, balding, eyes bulging, hands raised in supplication. The tabletop is shaking, the liquid in the glasses sloshing with each thud. There is a large steak, held by the woman, her thin arm looking small and pale attached to the large, cooked piece of meat that she is repeatedly slamming against the table. Her wrist is adorned with a bracelet of large stones, like river rocks, accentuating the steak pounding that is sending juices flying, flying onto the man’s white shirt, flying into her hair, covering his face so he looks like the scene at the end of Carrie.

Your sommelier has excused himself to join the waitstaff milling around the couple’s table in a semi-circle, giving the combatants wide berth, like onlookers at a beach watching a poor guy who was just dragged from the surf, waiting to see if he will live or die. You fixate on the woman’s bracelet, and then on her high-pitched-yet-authoritative tone with that self-assurance and piercing rightness, and you exchange looks with your wife, first looks of astonishment and then looks of recognition. “We all have . . . ” you start to say, and you both burst out laughing. Your wife stands and says, softly, “Let’s pay and get the hell out of here.” Her eyes reflect the candlelight, and her lips curl up in a smile and then part. You fumble for your wallet and put down two $100 bills, figuring that will more than cover the appetizers and the meal you didn’t have. Your wife tucks her neck-length brown hair behind her ears, leans forward, kisses you hard on the mouth, takes your hand and whispers, “We all have our problems. Let’s go.”

E. H. Jacobs is a New England-based psychologist and writer. His debut novel, Splintered River—a literary political drama—was published this fall. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Vassar College and a PhD in Psychology from Temple University. His work (short stories, poetry, memoir) has appeared in several journals in the U.S. and U.K He has published two books on parenting, professional papers in psychology, and articles for the general public on psychological topics, and he has been a contributing book review editor for the American Journal of Psychotherapy. He has served on the clinical faculty of Harvard Medical School. He was a finalist in the Derick Burleson Poetry and the Phil Heldrich Nonfiction Contests and was a nominee for the Nina Riggs Poetry Award. His work can be seen at www.ehjacobsauthor.com.