Free How to Be a Grown-up by Emma McLaughlin Page A

the kind of thing I had loved about us when I moved in with him, two creatives on the edge of the old Hell’s Kitchen, ordering off the early-bird menus, buying the day-old bread. When we carried the buckets of paint and sanders into the apartment, our neighbors kept complaining that a “crew” was coming and going after-hours. They couldn’t imagine anyone doing the work themselves. We sat on the floor and ate $5 pad thai and Blake listened for Wynn’s heartbeat and we felt special. Our own little Bohemia in the Bergdorf’s triangle.
    But now I was forty-one and suddenly felt like an asshole for trusting the forecast and being married to someone who also trusted the forecast. One of us should have an umbrella! We didn’t both need to have one. I didn’t have a penis. There was a differentiation of responsibilities, but someone should have an umbrella.
    “Mr. and Mrs. Turner?” a woman beckoned from a doorway. Behind her I could see pickled floors and white walls, like a beach house. “I’m Dr. Brompton.” She looked like a former dancer in an oatmeal-colored wrap sweater over white jeans, her gray blond hair twisted up with a pencil. “Please have a seat.”
    Blake did his actor thing of sitting with his legs crossed under him, which he did when he was getting down to work on something. Great. Let’s get down to work.
    “Okay.” Her voice was syrupy yet breathy as she placed her notepad in her lap. “What we’re going to do today is root out whose fault the problems in your marriage are. We’re going to dig into the blame. Who wants to go first?” Wait—what??
    “I will, I guess,” Blake said as I tried to process what the hell had just come out of her mouth. He exhaled. “Okay. Rory’s really judgmental.”
    “Wait,” I interrupted before I could even let that land. “I’m sorry, I thought we were going to have to use ‘I’ statements and own our feelings.”
    “See, there you are, judgmental,” he said in a tone that indicated he was just warming up.
    “You think I’m judgmental?” I asked. How long had he been festering about this? About me?
    He addressed Dr. Brompton: “Part of what attracted me to Rory at the beginning was that we were both artists, but really, deep down, she’s just like her parents.”
    “Mommy, I hate you!” I saw myself standing over four-year-old Wynn at the playground, tears streaming down his face because I wouldn’t let him stay and play in the thunderstorm. “I hate you!”
    Blake’s just angry at life right now, I told myself. He doesn’t mean this; he’s hurt and he just wants to strike at something and I’m the safest thing .
    “I don’t know if she’s changed or that’s who she’s really always been, but it’s definitely not the kind of person I would have been attracted to, wanted to build a life with.”
    “Wait,” I said again, swallowing my reaction, trying to get this back on track. “We’re supposed to be coming up with a blueprint for moving forward. For your career change.”
    “See, just like them.”
    “Um . . . we should be so lucky.” I swiveled to Dr. Brompton, stunned smile on my face. “My parents own their home outright. Have no debt. Have a retirement account. Long-term care insurance. And living wills. And nobody ever forgot to pick me up from school.”
    “I did not forget,” he said through gritted teeth. “I was late.”
    “Because you forgot.” Why was this relevant? I didn’t want to sound like this.
    “Losing track of time is not the same as forgetting!” He was baiting me.
    “You want to know the last time I ‘lost track of time’?” My heart sped. “I was in labor. That is not a luxury I have. I do not go grab a beer with my friends after an audition and then look up and realize my eight-year-old— I’m sorry.” I appealed to Dr. Brompton, trying to steady myself. “How is this productive?”
    She squinted behind her glasses. “Someone is to blame. We’re here to figure out who.”
    I