So I talked to Thomas about Carroway and later, when I felt I could trust him, about my drawings. This is what I realized. I realized that what I was getting from Thomas (we were not lovers then, that wasn’t it) had replaced my need for Carroway. Then I asked myself, Why isn’t there more between us? What does Thomas want from me? (I’m never really sure what people want from me.) The question I should have been asking myself is what do I want from Thomas. I tend to confuse what people want from me with what I want for myself.
I’m in session with a patient when Carroway calls out of the blue (he doesn’t say who he is) and asks if we can get together. I know the moment I hear his voice that I no longer care in the same way. “I can’t talk now,” I say. “Can you call back in twenty minutes please?” My voice, which echoes in my ear, is calm. I am the professional person I pretend to be. (The hand holding the phone begins to cramp.)
“It gives me chills to hear your voice again,” he says. “I love the sound of your voice.”
“I’m with someone,” I say. “Is there a number where I can reach you?”
“Look, I’ll call back later,” he says. “I don’t want to impose myself on you while you have other commitments.” He hangs up without the usual amenities.
I dismiss Sara Huddle a few minutes early. The woman has been locked for weeks in the same obsessional grievance. I am out of patience today, feel burdened by the tedium of her monologue. When she is gone, I try not to think about Carroway calling back. I have the sense that the entire psychoanalytic institute (Yuri among them) is observing my composure at this difficult time. I am a model of indifference. I take two Tylenol caplets for a headache that goes off and on like flashing neon lights. This is the drilclass="underline" when he calls I will tell him that I don’t want anything more to do with him. If he can’t accept that, I would be willing to meet him very briefly in some public place to explain myself. Between patients, I rehearse my lines. I never get a chance to use them. Carroway doesn’t call back.
After my last session I call Thomas and tell him of Carroway’s disruptive call. Thomas is his concerned self. He says he will take off from work if I need to see him right away. I have an hour free at four Tomorrow, I tell him. He suggests that I come to his studio in Soho, but there really isn’t time for that. Finally, we agree to meet, though postpone the decision of where. I sense we are involved in a tug of war.
I am lying down (coming down with something) and no one comes upstairs to ask how I am. (Even Rebecca stays away.)
I hear Yuri poking about in the kitchen, the shock waves of his presence. I want to scream something at him, some skyrocketing obscenity. (It is the thing about oppressors that they never identify themselves as oppressors.)
I feel crazed.
(Let me confess something. I have always been secretly afraid of losing touch. My most primitive terror is of coming apart. Going mad. There is little or no clinical evidence to support these feelings.)
I fall asleep briefly and Rebecca wakes me. “Are you coming down for dinner, mommy?”
“Only if I don’t have to fix it,” I say.
“Daddy’s already made dinner.” She says it, my lovely child, like a reproof.
“How could he?” I say. “There’s nothing in the house.”
I put on make-up, change my clothes (just my blouse really) and come down. Yuri has made pasta and meat sauce, has burned the garlic. Father and daughter have started eating without me.
“What’s everyone been doing?” I say with worked-up cheer.
Yuri says something that makes no impression. Rebecca says, “Oh, Daddy!” with affectionate exasperation. I am thinking: How distant I feel from you, Yuri. It’s as if your presence were an illusion on a TV screen. A lifelike configuration made up of inscrutable dots.
Yuri is in a good mood for a change. He jokes with Rebecca. I offer him a smile. I am thinking: Who’s going to wash the pots and pans when dinner is over?
I have my sketchbook open in my lap. The drawing is already visualized, though the page remains blank. Yuri’s presence (he is sitting across from me) makes it impossible for me to start. I know that he won’t have the grace to leave (he knows I need to be alone) without my making a fuss.
We talk for a few minutes about the difficulty Rebecca is having with a math teacher. When our banalities exhaust themselves, I attend the blank page in my book. “Yuri, don’t you have anything to do?” I ask in a kind voice. “You know I like to have time to myself after dinner.”
He lets out one of his ponderous sighs. “I can’t live like this, Adrienne,” he says.
I find myself laughing crazily. “What do you think you want Lm me?” I ask. I hear Rebecca stir in her bed and I put my finger over my lips to caution him.
He raises his voice nevertheless. “You’re not here,” he shouts. “It’s lonely living with an invisible woman.”
“I don’t want Rebecca to be brought into this,” I say softly.
He jumps to his feet with a clamor, bumping the marble coffee table with his knee. An eruption is imminent. “I’m sorry about your knee,” I whisper. “Think about it. There’s really nothing I can do for you.”
“What does your shrink think is going on?”
“I don’t talk to Henry about you,” I say. “As you’re always telling me, you’re not my problem.”
“Your marriage of twelve years is going to hell,” he says, his voice rising with each succeeding word, “and you don’t talk to Henry about it. It’s beyond belief. What the fuck do you talk to him about?”
I feel under siege. “I’m not prepared to discuss that with you,” I say. “Okay?…Please don’t wake Rebecca. She doesn’t need to hear you run amok.”
“You’re maddening, you know? You drive me mad.”
“So you like to tell me,” I say, keeping my voice low. “You make yourself unhappy, Yuri, because you refuse to accept things as they are.”
He points his finger at me as though it were a loaded gun. “What exactly do I refuse to accept?” The question reverberates through the house. His self-control is as fragile as egg shell. I imagine Rebecca sitting up in bed, listening in a terrified state.
“I don’t want to have this conversation,” I tell him. “I have a right not to have it if I don’t want it.”
I run upstairs to see if Rebecca is all right. She is sleeping restively, has kicked off one of her blankets.
(I am my own person, damn him.) I cover her, kiss her flushed cheek. “Love you, sweetie,” I whisper.
I lie in bed for a while with the covers over my face, listening to the rasp of my breath. I have my hands (who can tell where hands will wander?) between my legs. I have trouble getting into it. The house is suddenly so quiet I can hear Rebecca’s wheezy breathing from across the hall. And the sound of a television, the insinuating music of a suspense movie, from the house next door. I am wrapped up in depression like a mummy swathed in strips of sheet.
I reach my sister Grace on the phone and talk for almost an hour. (Yuri says two hours — I plan to check it when the bill comes in.) I end up telling her more of what’s going on than I intend. It takes awhile to unravel my story. And Grace has a story of her own.
Our mother has been calling her to complain about Spencer. Something is wrong with him and he absolutely refuses to see a doctor. She wants Grace to talk to him, which Grace thinks is funny. “I’d rather chew nails than ask anything of Spencer,” she says. I laugh. Then Grace laughs. “I wasn’t aware of being funny,” she says, which makes us both laugh again. (I wonder why mother chose to call Grace and not me. I used to be the one she’d come to for advice.)