The August Deception.
As is usual at this time of the year, each of his patients comes up with different but not entirely original ways of coping with what they consider David’s wanton neglect and lack of consideration. How dare he leave them for the entire month of August? More than that. Five weeks and four days if you count the days he’ll be gone at the end of July and the days he’ll be gone in September before he returns on the fifth. Five weeks and four days, never mind any goddamn month, who’s kidding who here?
Arthur K’s way of dealing with this abominable situation is to try to wrap up the analysis before the end of the month. Not merely put it on hold until after Labor Day, but wrap it up forever. End it. Which David knows from experience is not always a simple thing to do. But Arthur K — who’s been telling him that the night on his sister’s bed after the dance was the one and only time he’d ever touched her — seems eager to confess this Tuesday that he and his sister had been making love on and off, every now and then, ever since that night, even after they were both married...
“To other people, of course. She’s my sister, marrying her would be incest.”
...had been doing it regularly, in fact incessantly right up to the time of her death twelve years ago, when Arthur’s phobic reaction to automobiles started. If David would like to know, in fact — and then perhaps they can put this thing to rest once and for all and bring this so-called analysis to its long-awaited conclusion — if David would like to know what really happened that day...
Veronica’s husband, Manny, is off at work as usual, he owns a ladies’ ready-to-wear store on Fourteenth Street, he sells mostly to Spanish people, yellow dresses, red dresses, the cheap gaudy shit they like to wear. His sister and Manny live up in Larchmont, which is where Arthur goes to see her at ten o’clock that Wednesday morning. Wednesday is when he goes to his chiropractor and then drives up afterward to see his sister. He does this every Wednesday. He does not think he can get through a week without seeing his sister, without doing to his sister what they started doing together all those years ago. He loves his sister more than anyone on earth.
“I was never ashamed of my love for her. I still love her, if you want to know.”
On that fateful day that will mark the end of her life, she is wearing for him what she wears each and every time they make love, a blue robe not unlike the one she’d worn when she was fifteen and a virgin, and a laced pink nightgown, though shorter than the one back then.
“Veronica never had any children,” Arthur K says. “She always kept her body nice. Same body she had when she was fifteen. Firm belly, breasts, everything, even though she was... what... fifty-three when she got killed in the accident?”
His voice catches.
David waits.
“I really want to end this fucking thing,” he says.
Should David risk a prompt?
End what? he wonders. The belief that their transgression is what caused his sister’s death?
Or the analysis?
He waits.
“She told me... she said she...”
David waits.
“She said she told Manny.”
There is a long, shattering silence.
“I said... I... I was flabbergasted. I said What? You told Manny? I told Manny, she said. About us? I said. About us, she said. She said this would have to be the last time we ever, what we did, what we just finished doing. She said Manny never wanted to see me again, never wanted to talk to me again, never wanted to hear about me again, fucking my own sister, the shame, the shame. This is what Manny told her. Said I was fucking my own sister. We had just finished... she was sitting on the edge of the bed naked when she told me all this. This was afterwards. We always had a cigarette afterwards. We were sitting there smoking when she told me this. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, I was in this little easy chair she had with the gold fabric. We were both smoking. I said Veronica, how could you tell him this, are you crazy? She said she couldn’t bear the guilt any longer, she had to tell him. I said What guilt, what are you talking about, guilt? We love each other, what guilt? How could you do this? She said I’m sorry, Arthur, I couldn’t bear it anymore, the lying.
“I... I got on my knees in front of her, I took her hands in mine, her cigarette was in the ashtray, smoke was coming up. I said Veronica, you’ve got to tell him you were kidding, and she said Kidding? How can I tell him I was kidding? Who would kid about something like this, Arthur? I kissed her hands, I kept kissing her hands, I kept saying Please, Veronica, over and over again, and she said Arthur, you have to go now, I have a manicure appointment, I have to drive over to my manicurist, and I said Please, Veronica, I was crying now, I said Please don’t leave me, and she said I have to, and I said Please please, Veronica, and she said Go now, Arthur, please, he’ll kill me if he knows you were here, and I said I hope he does. She was crying when I left. Her Camaro was parked in the driveway outside the house.”
She comes to his office on his lunch hour that Tuesday afternoon. She brings bagels and Nova and they make love on his couch afterward. She tastes of onions when he kisses her.
On Tuesdays, the show is dark.
He goes to her apartment again that night.
But he makes sure he is home again by ten so that he can call Helen before she goes to sleep.
He calls Menemsha again at seven the next morning, and tells Helen he’ll be leaving for the office early, lots to do before he comes up there on Friday. She asks him what he’ll be doing on his birthday tomorrow. He tells her he may go to a movie. She says he ought to go celebrate with Stanley Beckerman. He tells her he’ll think about it.
“Anyway, we’ll be talking again before then,” he says.
Today is Wednesday.
Matinee day.
But not in his office. No matinee on the black leather couch today because Kate must be at the theater by twelve-thirty for a real matinee at two. The moment he puts the receiver back on the cradle he runs downstairs and catches a cab to her apartment.
At ten that night, he calls Massachusetts again and tells Helen he’s going down for a walk and a cup of cappuccino at that place on Seventieth Street. She advises him to be careful, and he tells her he’ll call again in the morning. As soon as he hangs up, he heads for the theater. The stage door is on Seventh Avenue. He gets there just as the cast is coming out. She takes him by the arm.
“Hi,” she says and reaches up to kiss him on the cheek.
“Goodnight, Kate,” one of the girls calls.
“Goodnight!” another one calls, waving.
They have cappuccino together in a place on Sixth Avenue. He kisses her frequently and openly as they sit holding hands at a corner table. Later, they go to her apartment where they make love frantically and hastily. He does not get home until midnight, and is relieved to see that there are no messages from Helen on the answering machine.
Alex J has his own way of dealing with the imminent month-long hiatus. Month and more, don’t forget. Alex J clams up. He has been silent all this week. Today is Thursday, and the hour is ticking away, and he is still silent. This is his way of punishing David. You want to go to wherever you’re going and leave me flat? Okay, I’ll pretend you’re already gone, how’s that? And if you’re already gone, I don’t have to talk to you. I can just lie here and look up at the ceiling, okay?