“Yes, go away,” I said. I put my arm around her waist and locked her against me.
She reminded me that the door to the hallway was open behind us, that someone, some secret agent of the respectable, might catch us in our illicit embrace. We were both at the moment fully clothed. I let go of her to close the door, still unreconciled. When I turned around she was lying on the bed in provocative pose. “Do you want to fuck, doctor?” she whispered in mock-German accent, an imitation of one of my imitations.
“You think you’re irresistible, don’t you,” I said, angry at myself for being so readily charmed.
I remember the fierceness of our lovemaking if not the specifics. I remember the desire and terror, the exchange of orgasms like the taking of vows. We had sex several times during that long night as if fucking or sucking was the appropriate language of forgiveness, the only undeniable proof.
We had proven to each other that we could survive the unforgivable.
On the drive back — much of this account is of comings and goings — I said lightly, lightly treading air, “I’m sorry you hated my paper, sweetheart.”
She looked at me — I watched her from the corner of my eye as I drove — with unaffected surprise. “You don’t really believe that, do you? I can’t imagine that you really believe that, Yuri. You know better, don’t you? I say a lot of things I don’t mean. You know I respect you a lot.”
I only knew it when she told me it was so. It’s possible that I misread her all along, had been willing to believe whatever flattered me and deny the implications of the rest.
I am skipping ahead, pursuing some private chronology of Significant Events. I was at a Psychology Department party, an end of term spiked-punch affair. The chairman, who was no friend of mind, got me into a corner to discuss ostensibly — I have some theories about his motives but will not pursue them here — marginal Ph.D candidates. Adrienne’s name came up. I don’t know that he knew we were living together, but he had to know there was some tie between us. Still, he proceeded to talk about her with unconcealed dislike. “The woman is a snakepit,” he said. “She should never have been allowed to remain in the program.”
I made an awkward attempt to defend her, presuming she needed no defense, mentioned how perceptive she was, how finely tuned, how smart. It was not a conversation I needed, though a difficult one to escape. I was a part-time faculty, dependent on the chairman’s good graces for my employment.
“Entre nous, this lady’s trouble,” he said. “I happen to know there’s serious disturbance there.”
There was more. Was I betraying her by continuing to listen to him? He was talking about Adrienne using her seductiveness in her dealings with men when I found some excuse to leave the party.
At first I wasn’t going to mention this conversation to Adrienne, but then I decided — I worried the issue until it clarified — that silence was a form of betrayal, a way of feeling superior. Still, I muted Norman’s malice in reporting his remarks. Even in the diluted form I gave them, they precipitated a fight. The bearer of bad news never gets off easily.
“Norman is a malicious fool,” I repeated over and again. “No one takes Norman seriously.”
“What you refuse to see,” she said in the voice of superior wisdom, “is that what went on between you and Norman has more to do with you than with me.”
I could read her mood well enough to see what was coming and took her hand, which she let me hold only long enough to feel its loss when it was gone. My objective was to forestall the inevitable.
“I’m very upset,” she reminded me.
“I understand that,” I said. “It’s upsetting to find out someone is whispering malice about you.”
She stared at me with undisguised dislike. “Why are you doing this to me?” she asked.
“Doing what, sweetheart?” I strove to be reasonable.
“If you don’t know,” she said as if she were offering privileged information to someone without the appropriate clearance, “you’re much more limited than I thought. I really don’t see how you can be a therapist and be so blind to your own motives.”
“You’re the only one that matters to me in this,” I said, distrusting the assertion as I made it, raising my voice.
“I hate it when you scream at me,” she said. “It makes me hate you.”
“I’m not your enemy,” I said in the voice of an already engaged combatant. “If I withheld Norman’s viciousness to protect your feelings, that would be patronizing. Norman is an asshole. I suspect that he was attracted to you and felt put down at not getting what he wanted.”
“I slept with Norman,” she said, turning her face away.
The news had too much impact to allow it to register.
“Why are you saying that?” I think I said.
She took my hand, was unusually solemn. “I’m not making it up, Yuri.”
“When was this?”
“It was before I knew you,” she said. “I was in training analysis with him.” She squeezed my hand as an offer of reassurance. “I didn’t stay with him for long.”
“Whose idea was it?” I asked.
She averted her face, said nothing I could hear.
I fantasized exposing Norman’s treachery, though realized there was nothing I could do. “I’d like to break him in half,” I said.
I don’t remember where we were — what room, which place — when this confrontation took place. Adrienne was sitting next to me, impacted, suffering, her hand on my hand. I was torn between revulsion and tenderness, left her for another room, then found my way back, impelled to heal the rift between us.
I omit the silences in this account.
“Norman doesn’t matter to you,” Adrienne said. “You really want to kill me.” She had her head turned away when she made this pronouncement so I had no way of reading her face.
I muttered something about the abuse of authority, though I recognized that Adrienne was right or mostly right or partly right. I asked her why it had happened.
“No reason,” she said. “Self-loathing maybe.”
“You’re too good for that,” I said.
She laughed. “That’s the voice of love speaking,” she said.
I realize how selective this document is, how much of consequence it leaves out. The claims of feeling, in their moment, seem to drive out all else. One tends to fall in love with those to whom the psychological prophesies of childhood lead. We were fighting to free ourselves from an inescapable emotional destiny. If our love couldn’t survive disappointment and betrayal and violent battles of will, what was the point, whispered mock-logic, in continuing together?
I’ve mentioned Adrienne’s problems in freeing herself from Ralph’s dependency, though I have mentioned nothing of the difficulty in dissolving my marriage to Patricia. Aggrieved by my defection, Patricia had refused to give me a divorce. Gradually her position had moderated and we had been negotiating through lawyers — and occasionally by phone directly — a closure to our marriage. So when she suggested that we meet and talk in person about a settlement I consented despite Adrienne’s objection to my going. Adrienne’s resistance to the meeting became more impassioned as the time for the appointment neared.
The meeting with Patricia is not in itself the issue here, is of less concern than Adrienne’s opposition to my having a drink in public with a woman I had been estranged from for over two years. At the time I thought the issue was jealousy, which I found both flattering and upsetting. It was more likely that Adrienne didn’t want our situation to change, needed the frisson of ghostly shadows sharing our bed. The powerful factor of the illicit.