Couples Retreat – Part 1: The Jungle Welcome

The retreat brochure promised reconnection through presence. Nina had read it four times on the flight from New York, and each time she had felt a little more like a fraud for booking it.

"We're not broken," Owen had said, on the plane. "We're just quiet."

"We're quiet because we have nothing left to say," Nina had replied, and turned back to the window.

The jungle outside the retreat was loud. Frogs, birds, insects, rain drumming on the wooden roof of their cabin. Everything was green, damp and enormous, and the air tasted of salt and flowers.

"It's beautiful," said Owen, from the doorway.

"It's humid," said Nina.

"You're allowed to think it's beautiful."

She didn't answer. She was watching a lizard on the windowsill, which was watching her back with perfect indifference.

The facilitator was called Teresa, a small, sharp-eyed woman in linen trousers who greeted them on the terrace with iced tea and a clipboard. She asked them each to name one thing they were grateful for in the marriage. Owen said the way Nina laughed at bad films. Nina said Owen's patience with her mother.

Teresa wrote both down without comment.

"Good," she said. "Now tell me one thing you've stopped saying to each other."

The silence went on for a long time. The frogs filled it.

"That I miss him," Nina said finally. "Before the job. Before the house, the bills, the planning. When we used to talk all night."

Owen looked at her, startled. He opened his mouth, closed it, then said softly, "I miss the way you used to look at me when you thought I wasn't watching."

Teresa's pen stopped moving. She looked up, slowly, with an expression that was neither surprised nor pleased. Just attentive.

"Thank you," she said. "That's the first honest sentence I've heard today."

They walked back to the cabin in the rain, not holding hands, but close enough that their elbows brushed. When they reached the door, Owen stopped.

"Nina," he said. "Can I ask you something without it being a test?"

"Yes."

"Do you still want this? Us?"

She thought about it, honestly. The rain ran in streams off the roof. Her hair was dripping. She had never felt so clearly that she didn't know the answer.

"I want to find out," she said. "Do you?"

"Yes," said Owen. "Can I kiss you, Nina? Just to see what we remember?"

"Yes," she whispered. "And if I stop, we stop."

"Of course," he said, and kissed her.

It was tentative at first, a little awkward, like a language they had once been fluent in. Then something in her loosened, and she leaned into him, and the rain on the roof seemed suddenly louder, warmer, closer, like a heartbeat in the dark.