Yuri asks me (in bed of all places) if I’m still seeing Carroway.
“Not as a regular patient,” I say. Even in evasion, I feel it necessary to tell a version of the truth.
“Do you mind,” he asks, “if I see Mrs. Carroway as a patient?”
“Why should I mind?” I say.
“If you were still seeing Carroway, it might create complications.”
“I told you I wasn’t, didn’t I?” My voice is shrill. “What do you want from me, Yuri?” Panic gathers. My smile is like a mask.
“Have I missed something?” He does a double take, a routine that used to amuse me. “Are you pissed off at me because I was right about Carroway?”
“You’re so wrong, Yuri. You couldn’t be more wrong.”
“The man has a reputation as a seducer of shop girls,” he says. “He’s a classic sociopath.”
The phrase “seducer of shop girls” makes me giggle. “Oh Yuri,” I say and touch his arm. “You don’t have to put Carroway down. You’re not in competition with him.” I put my arms around him. Yuri. Yuri.
“I’d rather you didn’t take on Mrs. Carroway,” I say.
I think of what I’ve done as characteristic yet unlike me. It happened that once and I am clear that it will not happen again. If Carroway makes any attempt to renew contact, I will tell him (I talk to myself the words) that I have no interest in seeing him again. I am even thinking of not going to the hospital on Thursday (I can call in sick) to avoid a confrontation. It has always been hard for me to refuse a direct request. The “good girl” wants to say yes to whatever is asked. She needs to please. Yuri has been particularly sweet these last few days. He senses my pulling away. (It’s as if he knows but doesn’t know he knows.)
My father, when he was young (my father was always young), was a charming and charismatic man. He was the most charming man. It was not his fault (nor mine) that my mother didn’t want a husband. When she married Spencer, she got a man who would never trouble her. My father’s dead now. My stepfather has never been fully alive.
I delayed leaving the hospital. I got drawn into a conversation with my supervisor (a jealous, mean-spirited lady), from which it was difficult to break free. It was a relief not to find Carroway waiting for me on the steps. The man is sensitive to my feelings, I let myself think. He is aware that I don’t want our thing (our thing that is really no-thing) to continue. It strikes me as I record my feelings that I am not telling myself everything I know. I feel grateful to Carroway for his tact and walking to the subway, I consider stopping by his loft to thank him. I feel no danger in making this unannounced visit. I am completely and perfectly calm. A black teenager makes an obscene remark as our paths cross. This ruffles me only a little. I let myself take it as appreciation. I feel radiant. I feel absolutely elegant. It is a blissful day to walk and I decide to go to the subway by way of Carroway’s loft, a slightly longer route. I will acknowledge the gracefulness of his behavior. I will thank him and leave.
I go through several changes of mood going up the four flights of stairs. I consider retracing my steps as I approach the door. I must take responsibility, I tell myself. I have made a decision, I have come this far. There is nothing to do but knock at the door and complete my errand. I am a great distance from my feelings. I am in a state of weatherless calm.
There is no answer to my knock. I listen (suspiciously) for sounds of movement inside. Thursday is his afternoon at his space, he told me. I tend to believe what I’m told. I knock again. If intent were enough, I would knock down the door. I’ve been a presumptuous lady. Yes? (I can feel myself unravelling.) My seducer of shop girls has made a point of avoiding his shopworn therapist. (How else explain his absence?) I would sit down on the steps but they are filthy and there is nothing to put under my skirt. I give myself fifteen minutes, then a five minute extension on the fifteen. Then (I have waited so long already) another five minutes. (I am not, am I, this fallen woman, waiting to see her seducer?) I return down the stairs. I am feeling fragile, slightly damaged. On the second landing, I hear someone coming. “I’m glad I didn’t miss you,” he says, taking my hand. “I had an appointment with my lawyer. You know how it is.” There is no occasion to thank him for his tact. I forget why I’m there.
“I really have to get home,” I say, going back up the stairs with him.
I have come this far. And he is so overjoyed, so persuasively overjoyed, to have me here. “I know I don’t want to go on with this,” I say, though I follow him up the devious steps to his balcony. It no longer seems like an altar to me. More like a stage this time. A place for performance. He congratulates me when it is over. “You were sensational,” he says. I feel myself blushing. I am pleased and touched. (I am the secretive girl my stepfather disapproved of.) I am on a high. (I feel I can do anything I want.) It is a scary scary feeling.
When I come in, Yuri looks at me as if he knows everything. His eyes are narrowed. (I know that look.) “What happened?” he asks.
“What do you mean what happened?” So much for belligerence. Then I make my excuse. “The train broke down,” I say. “We didn’t move for almost an hour.”
“I know how awful that can be,” he says. “I always panic in trains when they don’t move. Why don’t I fix you agin and tonic.”
His solicitude offends me. “What I really need is a hot shower, Yuri. And would it be so terrible if I had some private time after doing clinic?”
“The way you put it,” he says, “implies that I’m the one who’s keeping you from doing what you want. Is that realistic?” “Don’t fight,” Rebecca says. “We’ll agree that it’s not realistic.” How blind he is, I think. “Can we talk about it after I take my shower?” I say. It is not a question, though I wait for his reply, frozen in place.
Rebecca embraces me from behind, startles me. “What are you doing?” I scream at her. I feel that everyone has turned against me. Why won’t you let me be loveable to you? (Don’t love me so much.)
If I don’t pull myself away, I will stay at the bottom of
these stairs forever. I go up. I lock myself in the bathroom. I undress for the second time.
I think of myself as a bad person who has been wronged by being thought of as a bad person.
I do (did) what I have to do. I discover who I am by doing what is necessary to be myself.
In the shower, I feel charged with energy. And I think: what is it? What is it that I am feeling? I can barely breathe I am so terribly alive. (What is really going on?) I am a child in the shower. I sing. I abandon myself. (I feel myself abandoned.) And Yuri lets me go on with it. Yuri doesn’t care. Yuri no longer cares for me.
Five
Transference
Let me set the scene. I am packing the car in a desultory way when Peter and Barbara drive up to say goodbye. We are leaving the Vineyard three days early because the weather — it is our mutually agreed on excuse — has failed us. We have been shrouded in mist, our view of the ocean denied us for almost a week. Barbara scurries in the house to see Adrienne after giving me the kind of kiss mourners exchange at funerals. My memory to this point is absolute.
Peter sidles up as is his style, his posture itself an unacceptable insinuation. “Depression is not the way to nirvana, buddy,” he says. He puts his arm on my shoulder and I shrug it off. “I’m feeling for you, you asshole,” he says.