Page 17 of Across the Universe

“Hi,” Jo says with playfulness in her voice. He can feel her watching him expectantly. “This was a good idea.”

Bill tosses some kindling on the fire and holds a long match to it, setting it alight. He looks at Jo from the corner of his eye, smiling at her. “Yeah? I thought so.”

With the fire lit, he sinks down onto the sand next to her. Jo folders her legs under her and she’s holding a bottle of soda in one hand. She passes Bill a beer, and he pulls one knee up towards his body to brace himself as he stretches the other leg out straight.

“How have things been going?” Jo ventures. He knows the question is broad, but her meaning is clear: she wants to hear how things are going with Dr. Sheinbaum.

“Good,” Bill says, feeling disinclined to say more. But he knows that Dr. Sheinbaum wouldn’t want him to drop the conversational ball here and just walk away. “Things have been good. My appointments with the therapist have been… helpful.”

Jo nods as she chews on her lower lip. She looks out at the water. “I’m happy to hear that.” They sit there for a minute, watching their children romp and frolic in the surf as they chase their ball. "Do you talk about us?"

Bill can hear the apprehension in his wife's voice. "The family?" he asks gently, knowing that this therapy will be less useful if he's forced to share every detail and every breakthrough with Jo.

"Us," she says, looking at the sand beneath her legs. "You and me."

Bill stares out at the water for a beat. "I do," he says. "I talk about anything that's on my mind, really. But usually Dr. Sheinbaum leads the questioning and we go where she takes us."

"Is that how therapy works?" Jo swivels her bottle of soda in the sand until it's being held up by the barrier of sand she's created. She brushes her hands together and then rests them in her lap.

Bill shrugs. "I'm not sure. I've never been to therapy before." He knows he isn't being especially forthcoming, and that Jo is only asking out of curiosity and because she wants to help him, but these are hard questions for him to answer. "This seems to be how Dr. Sheinbaum does things, so probably? I guess?"

Jo nods and sifts her fingers through the sand on both sides of her thighs. "Bill?" She looks up and stares at his profile, which he senses. "Do you talk about problems in our marriage? Is that why you wanted to know about my dreams last week?"

Bill had hoped that conversation flowed so seamlessly that Jo could’ve mistaken it for him simply wanting to sit down and talk about her feelings. But it must have been so out of character for him to focus entirely on Jo that she'd noticed. He wants to smack his palm to his forehead at his own stupidity; how could he talk to his wife so little that when he did, she knew right away that someone else had prompted it?

But he has to own up to this fact. "Yes," he says, swallowing. "Dr. Sheinbaum explained the way things are for women, and we talked about you a little. She thought it might be helpful for me--for us--if I heard what kinds of things you might have given up in your life, or what things you still wanted to pursue." It feels weirdly shameful to admit to Jo that someone else had needed to push him to ask these things.

"I see," Jo says. When he looks over at her, she presses her lips together and looks thoughtful. She's clearly thinking, but she doesn't appear to be angry. "How would you feel if I were talking to a stranger about you? Telling someone your deepest, darkest thoughts, and discussing your issues?"

At this, indignation rises in Bill. "I can tell you exactly how I'd feel, Jo, and it's not good. Do you know why?"

She frowns at him and gives a single shake of the head. "I don't talk about you like that to Frankie or any of the other women. I don't, Bill. I promise you."

"Jo," he says, looking at her incredulously. "You talked about me, my job, my thoughts, and the things youthinkI'm doing behind your back--you laid me bare on paper and sent it off to some magazine to print for everyone to read." He watches her face as this hits her like a bucket of cold ice water. Her jaw drops. "You wrote things about me, and then every woman in America read them. That was incredibly intrusive. I walk the halls at work now, knowing that all the secretaries have read your stories and dissected my life and our marriage." He stands up abruptly, brushing the sand from the seat of his shorts as he looks down at Jo. "How do you thinkthatfeels?"

Bill holds her gaze for a few seconds before throwing up both hands and then walking down the beach. He needs to kick the ball around with the kids or something; he needs to be away from Jo while he lets these feelings of resentment wash away like the tides.

CHAPTER6

Jo

"Honey,the number of times you'll make your husband mad over the course of your marriage is too high of a number to bother with," Nurse Edwina says, waving a hand at Jo dismissively. "Pssh. If I worried every time I made mine angry, I'd have a head full of gray hairs."

Jo can't help it: she looks directly at Edwina's completely gray head with raised eyebrows. In response, Edwina gives her a short, wicked little cackle. "It's the nursing that did this to my hair, not the husband," she says, putting a hand to her silvery beehive.

Jo picks up a box of sterile bandages and passes it to Edwina, who is filling the supply closet on the second floor as Jo checks off the items on a clipboard. "Is it all the night shifts?" she asks earnestly.

"Oh, probably." Edwina pauses and lets her eyes drift up toward the ceiling. "And all the babies born on my watch, the people whose lives have ended while I was in the room, the staff romances I've had to turn a blind eye to, and the heartache of realizing that there are some injuries you just can't fix." She looks wistful for a moment. "But that's life, right, hon?"

Edwina holds out her hand for the next item, and Jo scans the cart for a big container full of aspirin. She checks it off on her list and passes it to Edwina to put into storage.

"It's just hard sometimes--life. Isn't it?" Jo scans her list and makes a tick mark next to surgical tape, searching for it on the cart. "I really bungled this one by writing about Bill, and now I have no right to be mad at him for discussing our life with his therapist when I discussed it with everyone who reads that magazine." She's mad at herself for not catching that parallel before trying to put Bill in his place, not only because he was right and she was wrong, but because it's almost crazy for her to be upset with him after the way she's used their private lives as public fodder.

"Well," Edwina says with a sigh. "I've never been to a psychiatrist myself, though Lord knows it wouldn't hurt me--or anyone, probably--but I admire your husband for giving it a go. And what goes on between doctor and patient is confidential, Josephine, so don't you go thinking that you can ask him questions or demand answers. What goes on in there is private."

Jo forces herself not to roll her eyes. "I know," she says. "It's just… I feel..."

"Jealous? Revealed? Curious? Suspicious?"

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