"The man you described looked so nice, so kindly, did you think about what I asked you the other day – whether you might have gotten two different people confused?"
A long pause. "Yes, I did think about it. Like I told you, I think that must have been what happened."
"But who, Kate? Who might you have gotten mixed up?"
"I remember there was another man who care around that time."
"The day of the shootings?"
"Maybe not that day exactly."
"Well, think more about it, will you, Kate? Try to remember, okay?"
"Yes," she promises. "I'll try."
Putting down the phone, I hope against hope that she decides she saw Dad when he came snooping around the motel, and, so frightened by the shooter, transposed Dad's kindly features upon his.
I pick up the diary again. On Monday, August 18, the proverbial shit hits the fan:
Monday
W's column: This morning he as much as says a certain member of his Happy Few is shagging her shrink on the old analytic couch!
Furious, I phone him up.
‘Oh, hi there, love,’ he says, all prissy and smug. ‘I wonder what's on your cute little mind this lovely sunny Monday morning.’
‘How could you write something so vile?’
‘Is it, love?’
‘You bet it is! Listen, W-’
‘No, you listen, bitch! That's just a taste – do you hear me? – the merest whiff of what I can do. So mind your manners and I'll mind mine, and get over this nonsensical notion that I sent you those nasty items in the post. That's not my style. My style of waging war is the same as yours – total! Hear what I'm saying, love?’
‘Yeah, I hear you. Sounds like you're making threats.’
‘Not threats, darling. Statements of fact. This isn't a big town, at least not our set. We don't have to adore one another, but it's better to live in peace than war. Now the good news – right after Labor Day I'm off to Europe, my usual haunts… Venice, Paris, Cap d'Antibes. As I recall, there's a certain Parisian saddlery shop you like. My intention is to stop at Hermes and pick you up a nice piece of tack, say a saddle and bridle set. Call it a peace offering, my way of saying that for all the harsh words between us, it's my profound hope that we can remain friends. So, love, what do you say?’
I ignored his peace offering, changed the subject.
‘What am I going to tell my shrink? I'm seeing him in an hour.’
‘Tell him “all's fair.” He'll understand.’
‘Tell me something, W?’
‘Anything, love.’
‘How many people have you gone after like this? How many have you tried to destroy?’
‘What a question!’
‘Since you don't care to answer, I'll have to rely on what I know. Since Max and I became friends, he's told me a few things. And then there's the matter of your rentboy, facts your Happy Few may not be fully acquainted with.’ I'm sure that chilled him! ‘Oh, and there's one other thing – don't bother getting me any tack.’
‘You'd like that too much!’
‘Well, next move's yours, love. Of course, I'm hoping there won't be one.’
‘You'll just have to wait and see, won't you?’
‘I guess I will. Toodleloo, love.’
God, what a fiend!
Later
‘Where does he get an item like that? How dare he publish such a thing!’
‘W thinks he's God around here. He publishes whatever he likes.’
‘I've got a call in to my lawyer.’
‘He'll tell you to ignore it.’
‘Tell that to my wife!’
‘What he wrote was for my eyes, his way of saying “Don't mess with me,” I haven't decided yet whether to heed his warning or take him on.’
‘Please listen to me,’ R said, sincere and sweet and grave. ‘You have serious problems – a kidnapped daughter, a pending custody battle, a terrifying recurring dream. I rarely give advice to patients, that's not an analyst's role, but this feud with Channing's a sideshow compared with what's really important in your life. My suggestion is to concentrate on the important stuff and let this sideshow pass.’
God, he can be such a good fatherly analyst when he wants to be! It made me feel great that he cared so much.
‘You're right,’ I told him. ‘W's not important. This morning's column is tomorrow's fishwrap. Trash!’
‘Exactly!’
‘So let's get back to work on the dream.’
He was so pleased. He came up with another brilliant spiel about Mom and Blackjack and breakage and how I must have seen something traumatic when I was little and froze the moment like a mental photograph and when it was frozen it became something that could shatter, and that's what the broken horses are all about.
He was brilliant and I was dazzled. When he was done, I told him I adored when he spoke like that, and I wished I could adore him in body because that's my way of adoring a man.
‘It always comes back to that, doesn't it?’ he said.
‘I guess with me it always does.’
‘I told you – assume you've seduced me, assume we've made love, then move on from there.’
‘How can I believe something like that when I know we haven't?’
‘We can't.’
‘Because it would break the rules? Are you so bound by rules you'd deny yourself what you so clearly want and need?’
‘Listen, Barbara-’
‘Do you know, Tom, that's the first time you've called me by my first name since I started coming here?’
I turned to look at him, caught him mopping his forehead with his handkerchief.
‘Now that we're on a first-name basis-’
He laughed.
‘See how much you enjoy my company? Thing is, Tom, I just don't see the difference between ‘assuming’ we've made love and actually doing it. Because if for therapeutic purposes we're to ‘assume’ we have, then seems to me we might just as well do it – for therapeutic reasons too, of course.’
‘That's impossible.’
‘I know you want to.’
‘If I did, I'd consult a colleague. That's how we handle those matters.’
‘Oh, goody! Bring in a third party! Spread the word around! Play right into W's hands!’
‘Know something? I think you liked his column this morning. I think now you want to make it all come true.’
Guess what, Dr. R? You're probably right!
Later
As promised, T brought pot to the F. We smoked it together then made love. I felt I was moving on another level in a mysterious hazy world where everything was right, every move slow and perfect and complete. It was as good sex as I've had in years. When we were done, I started to sob. T couldn't believe it, kept asking ‘What's the matter? What did I do? Did I do something wrong?’
‘No, darling, it's just the beauty of what we did that makes me cry, this incredible floating feeling I'm left with. Guess I'm crazy, huh? How do you like being involved with such a crazy lady?’
‘I like it just fine,’ he said.
When we were dressed, ready to leave, I told him I couldn’t meet him day after tomorrow, but that Friday would be fine.
‘How can I bear to wait so long?’ he asked.
Driving home, I wondered whether it was just the pot that did it to me, made me feel so lifted and clear. Is this what I've come to, I wondered – a slut who requires drugs to feel moved?
At the thought, I started to cry again. I was so red-eyed when I got home, I put on dark glasses so Marie wouldn’t know I'd wept.
‘Dinner at seven, Mrs. F?’ she asked me at the door.
‘No, thank you, Marie. Tonight I'm dining at The Elms.’
‘Very good, ma’am. Thank you, ma'am.’
‘Yes, thank you, too, Marie.’
After reading this entry, I feel for her again. So many emotional vectors in her life appear, in hindsight, to be heading toward a tragic intersection. But I think even if I weren't aware of the August 27 denouement, I'd feel, reading this material, that some kind of major crisis was in the offing.
She's concluded rightly that her old confidante, Waldo Channing, has not only been a false friend but is pathologically malicious besides. Now she must choose between her natural instinct to try to vanquish him in a social war or deny herself the pleasures of a fight for fear of furthering her former husband's goal of taking away her sons. The reference to Max intrigues me. Could Max have told her about Waldo's and Maritz's blackmail schemes? And is that reference to the ‘rentboy’ the then-scandalous fact that Waldo had originally found Deval on the porn shop-prostitute-hustler DaVinci strip?