“That’s something, then.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Andrea. You can get rid of headaches by taking sugar pills if you think they’re aspirin. Maybe it’s just one big emotional placebo. One thing, though, is that you wind up dumping all your emotional garbage on a crowd of people you don’t really care spit for, and they don’t really care about you, and that way you avoid boring your friends with all that tripe. Instead you bore them with talk about your therapy and how deliciously healthy you’re getting.”
Sometimes she thought about going. Sometimes she would have a bad night and before falling asleep she would resolve to find out about a group for herself. But in the morning the whole idea would seem senseless. She was functioning well, she would tell herself, and even cut-rate group therapy was an expense she could not readily afford, and people who used therapy as a crutch wound up being unable to walk without it.
“I have booze and sex instead,” she told Cal one time. “They serve about the same purpose. They make me feel better afterward.”
David told her one insight he’d had in his group. “I’ve got to get out of the habit of looking for exclusive relationships. I went straight from a marriage into an apartment with the girl I told you about. Cheryl. I’m sure I got into that because I couldn’t face being alone. Now I know better. It’s going to be a lot of years before I want to be that seriously involved with another person.”
“I feel the same way.”
“I don’t want to live with anybody. I don’t want to feel obligated and I don’t want anyone obligated to me. I don’t want to worry about hurting someone.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Oh, hell, I don’t want to be hurt myself. I want to have a few good friends that I see occasionally and sleep with occasionally. That’s what I want.”
He delivered the last part of his speech with his eyes deliberately avoiding hers and his fingers busy twisting a paper napkin. His words, she decided, amounted to a rather artful proposition. And she had the feeling he’d delivered the line precisely that way before, complete with the bashfully diverted eyes and the gee-whiz number with the napkin. Well, she didn’t blame him. It was a good line and it was natural for him to get all the mileage out of it that he could.
She waited until his eyes came around to meet hers, and she put just a touch of a smile on her lips. “I think we both want pretty much the same thing,” she said, very levelly.
At the first party she’d gone to in New York she ran into a man who had known Winkie. She couldn’t remember how they got there conversationally, but somehow her name had come up.
“Oh, Christ,” he said. “Winkie Welles. What was her first name again?”
“Winifred.”
“That’s right, of course. Winkie Welles. She was at Time-Life for a while when I was there. Then I think she went over to Holiday in editorial.”
“She was with Holiday when she died.”
“That was all so long ago. She was a crazy kid, as I remember her. Beautiful and brilliant, but crazy. She took her own life, but I don’t remember how.”
“Pills.”
“If you say so. And she was your best friend at Bryn Mawr?”
She said, “Do you happen to know why she killed herself?”
“I don’t think I’d have heard, and I certainly don’t remember if I did. We were never terribly close. Just that we worked together, but I lost track of her when she switched jobs. I think she was having an affair with a married man. I could be wrong about that. But if all the researchers at Time-Life with married boyfriends killed themselves the company would have to close up shop.”
“I wonder why she did it.”
“I wouldn’t even know who to tell you to ask.”
“Oh, it’s not important. I’m sure there are people I could have written to years ago and I never bothered. What’s the point? I think I know why she did it.”
“Oh?”
“I think she was afraid she couldn’t help turning into her mother. A road company version of her mother.”
“If you say so.” The man no longer seemed vitally interested in the ghost of Winifred Welles. “Say, to change the subject—”
But she had not wanted to change the subject. “My situation was just the opposite,” she said. “I wanted to be my mother. I didn’t realize it but that was what I wanted. I thought it was what I was supposed to do.”
“Is that right.”
“But I finally found out I couldn’t do it. Or rather I could do it, because if you do something for almost ten years that proves you could do it. But then I couldn’t go on doing it, if you understand the distinction.”
“Uh-huh. I’ll be right back.”
He meant, of course, that he would not be back, but she had not cared, For the moment she was content to stand alone and apart, remembering Winkie, remembering too the several persons she herself had been in the years since she and Winkie had been close.
And she hadn’t liked that man much anyway. And there were plenty of other men at the party, and it was easy enough to go home with one if that was what you wanted.
And now she was going home with David Kolodny. His place was right around the corner, he told her, and would she like to see it? “I’d like that,” she said. Outside a stiff wind was blowing. She drew her coat together at the neck, took hold of his arm, let her body lean a little against his as they walked. Neither of them spoke. The silence was easy and comfortable, joining rather than dividing them.
His apartment was on the tenth floor of a twelve-story building. She stood at his window while he was in the bathroom. The view was unspectacular, but at least he had a view. Her single window faced a blank wall.
Not that she envied him his view. Her apartment suited her, for now, for the time being.
When he emerged from the bathroom she remained at the window. She heard him approaching but did not turn until he was at her side. There was just the briefest moment of awkwardness, that inevitable awkwardness, and then he took her in his arms and was kissing her.
And then everything was all right. It was anticipation that could rattle you, making you live in your head excessively. Liquor helped in that regard, closing off some of the doors in the brain, shutting down certain hallways and corridors. And now he was kissing her and she was learning the taste of his mouth and the feel of his body against hers and it was really quite all right.
They clung together by the window, kissing with some passion but no urgency. He put a hand on her waist, dropped it to fasten on her buttock. He drew her body hard against his and gave her a squeeze. She moaned softly and brushed the tips of her fingers over his face. They would be good together, she knew. He knew intuitively what she liked and his sense of touch was good. And she liked his smell, and the feel of his skin.
His bedroom was smaller than the living room. It contained a queen-size platform bed, a chest of drawers, and a bookshelf made up of bricks and unfinished pine boards. They kissed in the bedroom and he touched her breasts and ran a hand down over the front of her body. His fingers pressed her for a moment at the junction of her thighs, then drew away. His other hand dropped from her shoulder and she watched him unbutton his shirt. Then she began undressing.
There was no chair to put her clothes on, so she followed his example and made a little pile of her things in a corner of the floor. He finished undressing before she did and he leaned against the wall by the side of the bed and watched her. She was not at all self-conscious, enjoying the way he was looking at her and the effect it was having on him.