After the valium works its witchery, I do a drawing of a nude male figure (of no one real, though it bears some resemblance to Carroway) with a penis that looks like an antler. I rip out the page from my book and file it under A (for antler or aberration). Or ambivalence. Or Adrienne.
Is it the message of the drawing that penises are really weapons? Perhaps the disfigured penis points the other way. It demystifies the weapon.
(Why didn’t Thomas call back? Why isn’t this more than friend concerned about my reasons for calling off our date? Since we’ve become lovers, we seem to be running on different tracks.)
Alone in the house, listening to “The Marriage of Figaro” on QXR, I start to giggle to myself. The image of the penis- antler gets to me. I try to keep a serious face and keep breaking up. What a funny drawing that is! What a funny thing to do!
I make myself a cup of Camomille Tea and treat myself to a Cadbury bar I had been hiding in my purse. I had been saving it as a reward for the appropriate moment. This is my treat to myself. I take tiny bites. The chocolate nourishes me. It is like love. It is the very thing.
My mind does a walkabout (there’s something I’m supposed to remember) during my single morning session. I have a way of listening to things, hearing them with my feelings without focusing on words. My patient, Kermit Epstein, had been obsessing for months about his wife being a kind of vampire. I understood the feeling, had similar soundings myself in connection with Yuri. I understood the feeling, but not the real issue the feeling disguised. As Kermit is pursuing his obsession (and my mind is elsewhere), I am struck with an insight. Kermit is afraid of his wife (has invested his wife with frightening powers) because he is greatly dependent on her — more so than he knows and much more so than he is able to admit. The vampire business is a protective disguise. If she leaves him, he has the feeling that his life would leave with her. It would be like having his blood drained, or (the emotional equivalent) being denied suck — having the breast taken away. He is absolutely terrified, this grown man, of being weaned. No wonder he resents the woman and is unable to stand up to her. “Why don’t I leave her?” he asks himself in different words again and again. And I don’t have the answer (not the real answer) until I am removed from his monologue by distraction. “Because you’re afraid you’ll die without her.” The answer repeats itself. Echoes for me.
What I had forgotten is that today is the day I am supposed to go with Yuri to this family therapist to discuss (as if everything hadn’t already been laid bare) the disrepair of our marriage. I dread the prospect.
Y
I harbor the illusion that my life is in the process of radical change. The illusion is based on a few uncharacteristic gestures, only one of which comes to mind. I took off from the hospital yesterday morning, went to Barney’s and bought myself a pair of hundred and fifty dollar shoes marked down to a hundred and nine ninety five. I wore them away from the store, my feet embraced by their luxurious leather, until the right one began to pinch at the small toe. I took them off during lunch with Peter, lined them up under the table like an extra set of feet. I grieved at their betrayal, thought of returning them, though there was no time for that. There was barely time to hear the conclusion of Peter’s story, which concerned a new woman in his life.
There was a revised self in my mirror, an adventurous misery in the eyes. I no longer concerned myself with Adrienne’s moods, accepted the rift between us as an illness not susceptible to treatment. On the drive over to Peter and Barbara’s annual party, she rested her hand on my arm. “Let’s not stay late,” she said. “Okay?”
What did it mean, I thought, her saying she didn’t want to stay late? I found myself analyzing her remark — the more innocuous the more puzzling — as if it were one of the more significant riddles of the Sphinx.
The party was as it always was, some fifty people milling about in two large rooms, the buzz of conversation like some industrial noise. I returned Peter’s obligatory bear hug, pushed my way to the bar, had a Scotch and water, ordered a refill, and only then looked over the room. I saw Adrienne, smiling brilliantly, flitting among the crowd, a wilting butterfly. I knew about half the people there, all therapists of one denomination or another. I was too sober to face them without another drink.
Barbara came over, appeared from nowhere, and asked, with exaggerated concern, how I was getting along.
The question had no context for me. “Terrific,” I said.
“You look wasted, you know?” she said. “Peter and I are worried about you.”
I had known Barbara for fifteen years and I had never before — perhaps once or twice in a small way — been excited by her presence. When she touched my hand, I felt the heat rush to my face. “You’re looking very fetching tonight,” I said. “Your hair is different.”
“I had a cut,” she said. “Peter thinks it’s too short. Do you like it?”
“I think it looks sexy,” I said. “You look a little like what’s her name, the actress who’s been rediscovered. Louise Brooks.”
Blushing, Barbara averted her face. “Yuri, that’s very nice,” she said, “even if I don’t know who Louise Brooks is…. I want to show you something. All right?”
I followed her, carrying my fourth or fifth Scotch, into the master bedroom — the bed piled halfway to the ceiling with coats. There was another person in the room, a man standing at the window smoking a cigarette.
“I fell in love with it at sight,” Barbara said, pointing out a painting on the wall, a somber turn-of-the-century landscape in shadings of dark brown and black. “Peter thinks it’s too dark. I want a second opinion from you.”
It was nearly impenetrable in the half light. “It’s like glimpsing the secret world through veils of mist,” I said.
“I like that,” she said. “Secret veils of mist. Yes.”
When the man with the cigarette wandered out, I put my arm around Barbara’s waist and kissed her. The gesture seemed to make itself, was without premeditation.
When we came apart Barbara turned toward the door to see if anyone had seen us. We moved against the wall alongside the door and kissed again, mouths open, bodies contending for the same space. It was like passion, had the form of. We separated when someone knocked at the closed door. A woman I didn’t know came into the room, nodded at me, made her way to the pile of coats. “I’m glad you liked the picture,” Barbara said.
It was like an enchantment. For twenty minutes I had been in love with Barbara. When I reentered the party it was over.
I caught a glimpse of Adrienne’s face in a moment of repose — the willed animation gone — and I could see how sad she was. It was sad to see her sad. It struck me that she knew I had kissed Barbara. I started over to comfort her — it wasn’t my job anymore — but I never got there. She was talking to Peter.
I have almost no memory of what came next, though I do remember an argument I got into with a foolish man who had written a fashionable book debunking Freud. When I finished with him — a crowd gathered around us — there was a smattering of applause. After that, I made the rounds, gave myself willingly to the game play of the party.
At about midnight, we collected our coats and said our goodbyes. “Don’t go,” Peter said. “There’s a story I want to tell you.”