readingrat | fic: The Cuckoo -- Chapter 12 (Reply)

Part II

Chapter 12: Divorce Counselling

The waiting room was decorated with impressionist prints, the curtains were in pastel colours, the furnishing bland. Wilson could have been in charge of the interior decoration. Pete put his feet up on one of the low tables and whistled tunelessly. Lisa pretended not to care; maybe she didn't. She took out her phone and started texting.

"Dr Cuddy, Dr House? I'm Richard Staines. Please come in." A man in his late forties, casually dressed, had appeared in the doorway. He ushered them into his consulting room.

Pete cast a quick glance around: bookshelves, more nondescript prints, a 'comfortable corner' with couch and armchairs, and a 'no nonsense' corner with desk and visitor chairs. They were guided to the 'comfortable' corner. He plonked himself into one of the armchairs, hoping that Lisa would take the other and force their host onto the couch, but Lisa was much too polite to do so. She seated herself at the end of the couch closest to his armchair, while Staines took the other armchair.

"Can I offer you something to drink?" he asked. "Coffee? A glass of water?"

When both demurred, he took out a case file, a notepad and a pen. "I got a somewhat cryptic email from Dr Nolan saying that you were in urgent need of some help in organising your family life."

Lisa answered with one of her tight smiles.

Staines took that as an assent. "We - my partner and I - specialise in helping couples who have parted ways to find amicable solutions to all aspects of child custody. My partner is a lawyer, I'm a therapist who has specialised in family therapy. Our normal procedure is that I gather all the necessary background information and help the couple to come to a decision regarding their respective rights and responsibilities. My partner ensures that the legal aspects are dealt with. We don't do couples counselling; if you feel in need of that, you should consult a couples counsellor. Any questions?"

Lisa shook her head.

"Good! Let's get to the specifics regarding your family situation and your relationship. The more I know about how you feel, the easier it will be for me to make suggestions that can be implemented on a long-term basis. I know this can be very painful, but trust me, it's better to confront your emotions than to pretend they don't exist; self-deception only drags out the whole process. And you've already taken a giant step by admitting that you have a problem for which you need some outside mediation, instead of trying to muddle through on your own."

Lisa nodded. Pete bit his tongue to stop himself from saying something about platitudes that could be found in any New Age manual.

"If I understood Darryl's email correctly, you used to date."

Lisa nodded.

"You have one child together, who …"

"We don't," Pete interrupted.

"Rachel is solely my child, and she isn't the issue," Lisa inserted smoothly.

"I'm sorry," Staines said, frowning at the printout of an email that was at the top of the case file. "I understood there's a boy named James."

Pete guffawed. "James is forty-seven," he said.

Staines snapped the file shut. "Well, you didn't come here for the fun of it," he said, "so why don't you fill me in?"

Lisa leaned forward. "James Wilson is our mutual friend. He'll need health care soon and would like to avoid a hospital setting, so he's staying with me. Pete," she gestured towards him, "is helping out with Wilson, so he's staying with me too. It's important to Wilson to have Pete around, but Pete's driving me crazy."

Staines looked at him, puzzled. "You're not Greg House?"

Lisa chimed in. "He is. I … call him Pete."

(Apparently there was no need for him to say anything. He leaned back comfortably.)

"Let me see if I got this right: you have a friend, James, staying with you because his health is compromised. Dr House - can I call you Greg?" Pause. "Or Pete?"

"Pete's fine," he muttered.

"Fine. Pete, you're at Lisa's place expressly to help with James's care."

He nodded.

"Pete and Wilson have been friends for years," Lisa added.

"O-kay," Staines said, taking notes. "When did you date and for how long?"

"Does it matter?" Pete asked. "Wilson isn't our kid."

Staines put down his pen. "It usually does."

Lisa stepped up to the mark, as expected. "It was five years ago, and we dated for about a year. Then, about a year ago, we dated again for a few months," she said.

"You, Lisa, are finding the present arrangement stressful, but you believe it to be beneficial to James," Staines continued his summary.

"Yes."

"And you, Pete?"

He stretched out his legs. "I'm good with it."

"Lisa, what aspects of Pete's presence bother you? Is it the physical presence of an ex-partner in such close proximity or is it some habit of his? Or do you disagree on anything regarding James?"

"No," Lisa said hurriedly. "We agree about Wilson. It's about all we do agree on. And I'm okay with having him there: we knew each other for years before we started dating, so I'm used to having him around without being in a relationship with him. It's just that the situation is difficult: I'm busy with work and with my daughter, Wilson is being … . He's depressed, and Pete isn't doing anything to make things easier for me. He isn't helping, and it's driving me nuts."

Staines made a few more notes. "Would it help if Pete moved out?"

"I doubt it. He'd be around all the time because of Wilson, so he'd still empty my fridge, leave his things lying around, annoy my daughter, play Domino Day with my CD collection, …"

He couldn't let such a misconception stand. "It was a Rube Goldberg machine, designed to switch the TV off."

Lisa's eyebrows entered into close communion with her hairline. "And I'd want a machine that did that when I have a perfectly good remote control because?"

"Because remote controls have infra-red senders that don't work through walls. My machine switched the TV off from the kitchen, which meant that your crippled kid didn't have to wheel herself back to the living room whenever she forgot to switch it off." (Not to mention that the rugrat had greatly enjoyed helping him gather and set up various parts of the machine.)

"My 'crippled kid' couldn't wheel her chair through the detritus afterwards to get to her bedroom! I spent an hour removing the debris to clear a path for her."

"Progress requires sacrifice," he said glibly.

"I see," Staines said. "Lisa, how did you deal with Pete's habits when you were dating him?"

Lisa hesitated for the first time. "When I was dating him, I had more leverage. At least, the first time round. The second time was so short that his habits weren't an issue."

"Leverage? In what sense?"

She flicked her wrist, embarrassed at having to spell it out. "Then, he wanted something I have. He doesn't now. That's our story in a nutshell."

"You're referring to sex," Staines said bluntly.

"Well, yes," Lisa said with a martyred, do-I-have-to-state-the-obvious eye roll.

"You withheld sex whenever Pete's behaviour upset you," Staines summarised, his face professionally blank. Unfortunately his eyes refused to follow the example of his facial muscles - they closed and opened several times in quick succession, a nervous tick that gave away his emotional unease.

"Yes. … What else was I supposed to do?" She sat back, crossing her arms.

Staines tapped his notes. "Well, as you have noticed, it only works as long as you have sex as a bargaining chip. Couples for whom sex isn't an option, for whatever reason, also have to cope somehow. And it only works if one partner is keener on getting sex than …"

"Believe me, it worked!"

"Did you ever try anything else?"

Lisa stared at Staines blankly.

Staines refused to give up. "Talk about what was bothering you? Ask him to change certain behaviours?"

"He could have talked J. Edgar Hoover into embracing communism by the sheer power of his logic. There's no way he would have let me talk him into anything he didn't want. I couldn't even get him to …" She drew a hand through her hair. "Never mind, it's history."

(Wouldn't he just like to know what she hadn't been able to talk him into! When he listened to Chase or Wilson recapitulating their relationship, he got the impression that she'd had him pussy-whipped. When, however, he observed how she capitulated to his demands and graced even the most outrageous remarks with little more than an eye-roll, he found it hard to believe that he hadn't walked all over her.)

"But you must have realised even then that having him camp on the couch …"

"His own apartment," Lisa corrected.

"… or his own apartment, wouldn't work forever."

Lisa laughed. "My father was camped out on the couch so often, we'd joke that he could sub-let his bed."

(That explained a lot. He really, really would like to meet her mother, but he guessed that wasn't an option considering he'd nearly killed both Cuddy daughters.)

"But it's not working now," Staines pointed out.

Lisa did her little head-shake thing coupled with a tight smile. "That's why we're here."

"Very well," Staines said. He sat up a bit straighter. "In situations like this one it can be helpful to focus on your former partner's strengths and to remind yourself of those attributes that make him a valuable ally even if he isn't a viable partner. Lisa, what are Pete's strengths?"

Lisa didn't have to think about this question. "He's loyal. When he has a goal nothing will stop him - and I mean absolutely nothing. He's fearless, and I've never met anyone with such personal integrity."

(That didn't sound like him.)

She cast a side glance at him. "And - he's an incredible person. He's brilliant, he's funny, he knows everything."

(That sounded more like him.)

"When he's convinced of something he won't back down. That - can be a problem."

(That sounded very much like him - in a euphemistic sort of way. In plain-speak it meant, 'He's a stubborn ass!' But Staines probably got that.)

"Okay, that was very good," Staines said. (Sure it was. Lisa was your poster girl for exceeding expectations, even in therapy, and she'd had years of that by now, he reckoned.) "What about you, Pete?"

He leered over at Lisa. "She's smokin' hawt." He drawled it out with a fake Texan accent.

Lisa levelled a hard stare at him, while Staines considered him. "I take it that coming here wasn't your idea," he said.

"Nope." (Lisa had marched into the living room after work jangling her car keys and had informed him that he could either come with her stat to meet someone who'd help them or pack his things and get out.)

"And yet you came."

He put on his best 'put-upon' expression, thrusting out his lower lip. "If I hadn't come, she wouldn't have let me play with Jimmy any more."

More eye twitching. "Okay. What else did you like about Lisa when you started dating her?"

He scrutinised the wallpaper on the wall behind Staines, but it held no answers. "I don't remember," he said.

"Pete, if we're to make progress, …"

"He really doesn't remember," Lisa interposed, rising unbidden to his defence. "He had … an accident, and he suffers from retrograde amnesia."

"Oh," Staines said, "that's - interesting." And he meant it.

"Finished staring at the chimp in the zoo?" Pete barked.

Staines was frowning thoughtfully. "So … if you don't remember dating Lisa, you have no reason to resent her," he finally said.

"I don't resent her. As you said yourself, coming here was her idea, not mine," Pete pointed out. "I'm fine!"

(This was going in circles.)

"And you're sure that your behaviour is not intended to annoy her," Staines prodded.

"Abso-fucking-lutely!"

"He's trying to convince me that he's not good enough for me. And he does have reason to resent me," Lisa said. "When we started dating the second time, he had amnesia already, and I didn't tell him that we'd dated before." She wasn't looking at them; she was picking imaginary lint off her sweater.

Staines breathed out heavily and leaned back. "This is complicated," he said. "I'm not sure I have the facts sorted in my mind."

Pete generously helped out with the Spark Notes of their personal history. "It's easy. We dated; I fucked it up; I fried my brain. We dated again; we split up; Wilson got sick."

Lisa had practically picked a hole in her sweater by now and judging by her next contribution, she hadn't really been listening. She just continued her guilt trip exactly where she'd left off before. "And I ordered his leg to be amputated," she half whispered.

It was time to put a stop to her random confidences. "If you're in need of therapy, call your shrink," he said brutally, "but spare us your confessions. I don't remember what you did; he doesn't know; neither of us care. You're only easing your own conscience."

"Amputation?" Staines asked. Judging by his expression, he'd lost the plot some time ago, and his eyelids were competing with hummingbirds' wings.

Pete knocked on his prosthetic. "Robo-Doc here," he said. "Accident; I was unconscious; she ordered the procedure. It's not relevant." He folded his arms to indicate that the access route to the amputation was closed to therapeutic traffic.

Staines got the message. "Okay, let's go back a bit. Let's go with the assumption that you don't resent Lisa."

"Oh, thank you!"

"Are you trying to convince her that you're not good enough for her?"

"Why would I want to do that?"

"Because she wants a relationship, but you don't?" Staines surmised.

(Maybe he wasn't a total moron.)

"I don't want …," Lisa said, but shut her mouth again when Pete grinned at her.

"It's good to be honest about your feelings," Staines told Lisa. Pete mentally high-fived him. "It's the only way we can resolve the situation. Now, let's establish some ground rules. Lisa, try to keep all communication with Pete down to a bare minimum. Avoid situations where you're alone with him. That way, he won't feel like he's being pressured into something he doesn't want."

"I'm not pressuring …," Lisa began. And much as Pete would have liked to see her squirm some more under Staines's prejudiced eye, he deemed it more important to put an end to this charade.

"I don't feel pressured by her," he interrupted Lisa, turning to Staines.

Staines more or less ignored his statement. "Pete, you shouldn't resort to showing Lisa that you don't want a relationship. If you feel cornered, then say so! Send clear, unequivocal messages. Actions can be misinterpreted; words, however, …"

" … can also be misunderstood," Pete cut in, "judging by the conclusions you've reached. Lisa isn't hitting on me at every opportunity. I'm not feeling molested."

"Then why are you acting up?" Staines asked.

Pete cocked his head to the left. "Aren't you supposed to be neutral?"

Staines smiled without humour. "I am being neutral. That doesn't blind me to your behaviour. Ever since you got here you've been acting bored and put-upon, as though you were doing Lisa a favour, when it seems to me that she's doing you a favour: she's letting you stay at her place so that you can be with your friend."

"I'm doing Wilson a favour, not him," Lisa said tiredly. "And I profit too, as long as Wilson is happy. I asked Pete to come and stay with me."

"Pete, maybe you aren't 'good' with the situation after all. Do you feel that you've been dragged into something you didn't want to get involved in?"

(A few weeks ago that would have been true. He'd felt imposed on, manipulated. Now, he wouldn't leave even if Lisa begged him to.)

"Nope," he answered thoughtfully. Feeling Staines's gaze on him, he added, "That's my 'normal' behaviour. But Lisa has seen so little of me the past five years that she has forgotten what it's like."

"I certainly haven't!" Lisa protested. "Yes, it's your default behaviour - when you're bored or when you're trying to prove a point. You're not bored at the moment - your brain is working overtime to manipulate Wilson into getting treatment - so that only leaves 'proving a point'."

He looked away, tapping the arm of his chair irritably. He needed something to work with, something for his fingers, but there was nothing suitable within reach, so he got up and moved over to the desk. There was bound to be something there - a paperweight, some clips, elastics, a few pens, maybe even a stress ball?

"It's a very good point," he muttered.

Staines half-turned to follow his progress. "Pete, maybe you could dispense with making this point. Even if Lisa should want a relationship again, …"

"I don't!" Lisa interjected.

"… Maybe wants a relationship again, as long as you don't feel pressured by her, it's not your problem." He turned to Lisa again. "Do you feel that he's trying to shield you?"

"Yes!" Lisa expelled a long breath, like someone who had finally got a message across to a particularly dense kid.

"Pete?" Staines said. "Don't! She can look after herself."

"She can't!" Pete exploded. "She's too goddam stupid!"

Staines stared at him. He stomped up to Staines's armchair and glowered down at the man. "Often," Staines said carefully, "people feel responsible for their former partners or think they need to look out for them. That seems to be the case here. Lisa is an intelligent woman, Pete. She can cope …,"

"Yeah? Then why is she letting a domestic abuser live with her?"

"James?" Staines asked, leaning forward, suddenly very intent. "James is an abuser?"

"No, me! I crashed my car through her house when I saw her with another guy." The silence that followed his statement left him ample time to regret having made it.

Staines's eyes flickered to and fro between them. "Why did you keep this from me till now?" he finally said.

Pete shrugged, pinching his lips together.

Lisa leaned her forehead on her fingertips. "He … wasn't out to harm me. … He was trying to kill himself, not me. …" She rolled her hand. "It was before his amnesia," she added as though that made it better. "He can't even remember it."

"It's still important. I definitely can't recommend having Pete stay with you, now that I know this," Staines pointed out.

Lisa smiled at Staines apologetically. "That's why I didn't tell you. It prejudices people against Pete when they hear about it."

As manipulations went it was a fairly primitive one, but he had to give her kudos for attempting to sell him as a victim of slander and misunderstandings. Perhaps ploys like this one worked on donors or insurance reps, but Staines didn't look convinced. Luckily his phone beeped at that moment. Staines glanced at it and grimaced.

"I'm afraid our session is over," he said, "and it's too late to cancel my next session. In view of the situation, however, I suggest that you come again tomorrow at … let me see …" He tapped the screen of his phone. "I can cancel the three o'clock session. At three p.m.?"

Lisa nodded. Pete kept his face blank. It wasn't as though they could make him come again. When Staines held out his hand, he ignored it, preferring to take the quickest route to the door.

By the time he reached the parking lot he'd shaken Lisa off completely, her short legs and heels being no match for him with his state-of-the-art prosthetic, and he'd have enjoyed nothing better than to drive away leaving her standing in the middle of nowhere, but it was her car and she had the keys, so he ended up kicking his heels while she navigated the potholes that riddled the parking lot. When she unlocked the car, he slid ungraciously into the passenger seat.

"Did you have to tell him - that?" she said, fastening her seat belt.

"I thought that was the idea: openness, brutal honesty, all cards on the table," he replied, although he silently agreed with her that it had been a stupid thing to do.

"Honesty, yes - between you and me. Not between us and him!"

"You heard him. If he's to help us, he needs background information," he said, aiming for nonchalance.

"I gave him all the background information he needed. What you gave him just distracted him! You know how it'll be from now on: he'll be harping on about me needing to distance myself from you, he'll insist on a change in the living arrangement, and it'll be all about preventing another 'attack'," she rolled her eyes and her hand drolly in illustration, "instead of focusing on how we're to get Wilson through this."

She had a point, but he couldn't help contradicting her. "You won't be of much use to Wilson if you're dead. It's common sense to stay away from me."

"At the moment there's a greater likelihood of Wilson dying if you disappear than of me dying if you stay. I'm not going to kill Wilson for the sake of a principle."

"What makes you think I can save Wilson?" he asked moodily.

"You'd better!" she said, as though that settled the matter and killed the cancer. "And tomorrow you'll cooperate with Staines."

"No way! Tomorrow you're on your own."

"Pete, …"

"You said it yourself: it's a waste of time. He's going to dig around in our past, which I can't even remember. This was a long shot right from the start; now it's a lost cause."

"So what do you suggest?" she asked challengingly. "So far, all you've done is mock my suggestions for getting the situation under control and sabotage the session with Staines."

He dug out the key that had been burning a hole in his pocket for the past hour and flourished it in her face.

"What's that?" she asked, leaning back to get it into focus.

"A Room of My Own," he said, grinning smugly. "A whole apartment, actually."

"And that is a great suggestion now, coming from you, but was a crappy one when it came from Staines?"

"I didn't need Staines to suggest it. I had the idea all by myself," he pointed out.

"You'll still drive me crazy when you come to see Wilson," Lisa said.

"I won't; I'm taking Wilson with me."

She stared at him in disbelief. "You're going to look after Wilson when he's dying?"

He shrugged carelessly, staring out of the window in front of him. "Why not? It's not like I have a full-time job and family obligations."

"I was going to employ caregivers," Lisa said, answering his unspoken question, "but that's not what I meant."

There was something in her tone that made him glance at her. She was staring out of the window now, chewing on her lip.

"I don't think Wilson will care if I have to pump myself full of drugs to stay on my legs," he said, not quite feeling guilty when she flinched. He'd gotten widely differing accounts of their mega-break-up from Wilson, Chase and Taub; the only thing all accounts had in common was a relapse on his part.

"Fine," she said after a pause, "if that's what you and Wilson want. What does Wilson say about this?"

"Wilson says that the kid shouldn't have to watch him die." Actually, Wilson had said that he couldn't impose on Lisa, not when she was already stretched to the limit with her new obligations as interim dean, but if he told her that, she'd feel obliged to prove the opposite.

She leaned back and closed her eyes. "No, I suppose not," she finally said, "but she'll miss him."

"She can visit every day for all I care - at least for as long as Wilson is fit enough to keep her occupied."

"She's eight, Pete! That's not an age at which she can traipse around Philly on her own, and I haven't got the time to drive her everywhere."

She couldn't have served him a better straight line if they'd practised this conversation. "I've seen her get into the elevator and press the button to the first floor," he said, proffering the key on his flat palm for closer inspection.

Lisa looked at it, frowning. Then she looked at him questioningly.

"Haven't you noticed that there's no one living in the right hand apartment on the first floor?" he asked.

"Na-a," she said, "there's a couple living there. Both of them teach at university. French and history, I think."

"The lights in the apartment go on at six p.m. every evening, even though it's light till past eight now, and go off again at eleven p.m. They've set their lights on timer to discourage burglars, but they've been gone for over two months."

"So your clever plan is to occupy their apartment? That's crazy, even by your standards!"

"Thanks. But, no, that wasn't the plan. I talked to your concierge-cum-caretaker, and he contacted them for me. They're on a sabbatical in Paris, and they're prepared to lease it out for the next few months."

He watched the emotions warring in her face: grudging admiration interlocked with exasperation. The latter won hands down.

"You put me through that awful session with Staines when you had a solution at hand, you ass? I should …" She trailed off, leaving open what deeds of horror she was inflicting on him in her fantasies.

He turned to the passenger window so she wouldn't see the slow smile on his lips. Her accusation was an indirect admission that his idea was better than hers, and that was all he asked for.