Page 8 of Alone With You in the Ether

“They’re doing very well,” Regan said. “My parents are having an anniversary party next month.”

“Oh?” asked the psychiatrist. “How many years?”

“Forty,” Regan said.

“That’s very impressive. It must be very beneficial to have such a stable relationship in your life.”

the narrator: Regan’s parents had slept in separate bedrooms since she was ten years old. In Regan’s opinion, marriage was very easy to do if you simply operated in totally separate spheres. If she were to chart her parents as a Venn diagram, the only three things in the center would be money, Madeline’s achievements, and what should be done about Regan.

“Yes, it’s wonderful,” Regan said. “They’re made for each other.”

“Is your sister married?”

“Yes. To another doctor.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize your sister was a doctor.”

“She is. A pediatric surgeon.”

“Oh.” It was anOh, how impressive, as it usually was.

“Yes, she’s very smart,” Regan said.

Sibling rivalry was nothing new, though Regan didn’t exactly feel the need to disparage her sister. It wasn’t Madeline’s fault she’d been the more pleasing daughter.

Regan touched her garnet earrings, thinking about what she’d say when she called her sister back. The last thing she wanted was to bring Marc home, and certainly not for this party. Her parents hated him, but not in a fun way, and certainly not from a place of concern. They hated him because they didn’t particularly like Regan, either, but also there was a very palpable sense—to Regan, anyway—that their opinion fell somewhere along the lines of:At least Marc is sufficiently rich. He wasn’t after her for her money, and that, they exhaled, was a relief.

Madeline thought Marc abrasive, but Regan thought Madeline’s husband passive and uninteresting. He was all the worst things about doctors; all diagnosis, no bedside manner. Marc, on the other hand, was bedroom eyes and gregarious laughter, and had he ever told you about the time he lost a goat-milking competition to one of the locals in Montreux?

So, yeah. In Regan’s experience there was always room for disagreement.

“Anyway,” the psychiatrist said. “How is your volunteering going?”

“It’s fine,” Regan said.

The doctor meant the docent job, which had at least put Regan within the realm of art, even if she was no longer studying or creating it. Every now and then she looked around at the pieces and thought about picking up a brush, or possibly rushing out to buy some clay right after work. She had hands that itched to be busy, to be occupied by something or another, but it seemed every time she sat down lately, her mind simply went blank.

“Have you thought about what you’ll do next?”

Next. People were always thinking about what to do next. Other people were always planning their futures, moving ahead, and only Regan seemed to notice how the whole thing was just moving in circles.

“Maybe art school,” Regan said. A safe answer.

“That’s a thought,” the psychiatrist said approvingly. “And how are you adjusting to your new dosage?”

Beside the fridge lived five translucent-orange pill bottles. Regan took three in the morning and three at night (the lithium she took twice). One of them, a name she would probably never remember, was relatively new, and about as difficult to swallow as certain aspects of her personality. Taken with too little food, she got incurably nauseated. Taken too late at night, her dreams were so vivid she woke without any concept of where she was. She usually grimaced at the bottle before finally conceding to open it, placing it on her tongue and swallowing with a gulp of flat champagne.

“In my professional medical opinion, Charlotte Regan is unwell,” was the diagnosis by the psychiatrist that her lawyers (or more aptly, her father) had hired. “This is a young woman who is well-educated, intelligent, talented, and raised in a secure and loving home, and who has the capacity for great contribution to society. But it is my professional belief that her bouts of depression and mania make her easily led astray by others.”

The pill typically went down with the chalky, bitter taste of repetition. Regan was a spontaneous person who was now tethered to the mundanity of a routine—morning and night, plus the monthly blood tests just in case the pills that made her well decided to poison her instead—though she didn’t necessarily resent the doctor for that, either. Resentment seemed a pointless task, and was, like most things, far too much effort to conjure.

Later that night, Regan would take that pill and the rest of her pills and then wander into the bedroom she shared with Marc. The apartment was his space, full of his things and designed to his taste—he’d already owned it when she moved in and Regan hadn’t bothered purchasing anything since her arrival—but she could see why he wanted her inside it.

the narrator: Regan believes there are two ways to manipulate a man: either to let him pursue you or to let him pursue you in a way that makes him feel he’s the pursuit. Mark is the latter, and he loves her the same way she loves art, which Regan considers a pleasing form of irony. Because even when you know everything about how a piece is made, you’re still only seeing the surface.

“I feel much better,” Regan said, and the psychiatrist nodded, pleased.

“Excellent,” she said, scribbling something down in her notepad. “Then I’ll see you again in two weeks.”

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