Part 2 (1/2)
She groaned and shuddered, hiding her face. ”You're right, you're right. I'm totally out of touch. I can't even convince myself.”
”I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I shouldn't have said that.”
Nan wiped her eyes with her linen napkin. ”I have a patient whose husband beats her,” she said dully. ”She comes in and talks about it. And I think, while I listen, that's better than this-this screen between us. I haven't known him for years. It's been like a play.”
He led her to the couch and sat next to her. She seemed genuinely present for the first time in days-it made him want to talk, to seize the opportunity. ”Mom? Do you know what I did today?”
Immediately he regretted his words. Nan raised her head with a start; the familiar shadow of dread crossed her face, and her eyes closed.
”What?”
”Oh, nothing. I mean, I just slept the whole day. I guess I was that wrung out.”
”Oh, Paul, it must be h.e.l.l for you, and neither of us is doing you much good. You've got to rely on Dr. Crewes. She'll help you, she knows you, and she can be objective about the situation. That's what you need. You're seeing her tomorrow, aren't you? You'll be well enough to go out tomorrow.”
The next morning the phone, the extension in the master bedroom, rang before eight, as Paul was dressing. This was nothing unusual; the phone had been ringing steadily ever since his father left-friends calling daily for reports on his mother's emotional condition. Several called quite early so as to be undistracted, before leaving for tightly scheduled days at the office. Paul ignored it and began getting his books together. In two days he had completely forgotten what was happening in school, that world having flicked off like a light bulb. He even had to check his program card to remind himself which cla.s.s to report to first. He was trying to fix his thoughts on the day ahead when, pa.s.sing by his parents' bedroom on his way out, he saw Nan sitting on the edge of the bed with the phone at her ear, listening, not whispering rapidly as she usually did. As she listened, tears ran down her face, which she wiped carelessly with the belt of her coa.r.s.e woolen bathrobe. Paul stopped in the doorway to watch.
”Yes, yes, of course I will. I know.” Her voice was gentle, lower and more intimate than he had ever heard it. He was embarra.s.sed, as if he were surprising her naked. Her whole body seemed to have softened and relaxed; her face was somber but live with emotion. ”It's all right,” she was saying. ”You know I do. I can. I'll do anything.” She hadn't yet combed her hair, and it hung in soft pale clumps over her forehead and cheeks and neck. Her words came out husky with sleep and tears. She held her unbelted robe loosely around her body with one arm, while she stretched her long bare legs in front of her, as though feeling their weight and ma.s.s after long disuse. ”No, no, I'm not crying. I'll be right there. Don't do anything. I have to finish dressing.” Paul reddened and turned away.
”That was him,” she came to tell Paul, tying the robe quickly. She looked haggard now. He noticed how much weight she had lost over the week. ”He wants me to come to his office right away. He had a fight with her last night, and he realized he can't stay with her. Paul, I'm worried. But relieved, in a way. He says he suddenly sees that this is all some kind of pathological outburst, that he's having a sort of breakdown. He's canceled all his patients. I'd better get over there.”
”And you think ... something may work out?”
”I don't know. But he turned to me-that's a good sign. He sounded more like himself, except weak. Like he was ... in need. Oh, Paul, I hope we can ... G.o.d knows I'll do anything.”
She rushed off to dress.
Paul didn't go to school after all, but instead walked the streaming slushy Hyde Park streets most of the day. That afternoon he told Dr. Crewes that he had beaten up Cheryl.
”Did you want to rape her too?”
”Oh, no, I don't think I'm ready for rape yet. I'm only fifteen, you know. Don't rush things.”
”You can be funny if you want to, but you know it's just avoidance, Paul. Resistance.”
”Okay, okay. No, I didn't want to rape her. I'm not even sure how to go about raping someone, but I think if I wanted to I could have done it. You know I don't have the proper inner restraints. That's my problem, right, what we're supposed to be dealing with?”
”Maybe you were afraid you couldn't measure up to your father?”
”Huh?”
”And now you're worried that you may not be punished for it. Your father hasn't called or come around to express his disapproval, has he? So you may in effect be rewarded for what you did, if your parents do get back together. You would then see this violence as having a positive effect. Which would be very confusing.”
He tried in vain to follow her path of reasoning. ”I never thought of that.”
”There are a lot of things you haven't thought of. Now, what do you feel about your parents seeing each other today?”
”Good. I mean, anything but this h.e.l.l. It can't get worse, can it? They were happy, you know. Oh, sure, pathologies, repressions, all that s.h.i.+t, but they were okay.”
”Do you really think so, or do you just want very much to believe it?”
”Well ... it's funny you should say that. See, we were reading this eighteenth-century philosopher in school and-”
”Wait a minute. Let's not get into philosophy. Let that rest a minute. What were you really feeling when you hit that young woman?”
”It was terrific. Like, s.e.xy. Like jerking off.”
”You see, even your imagery-”
”Oh, I'm teasing you.” He laughed. ”You're playing right into my hands. What's wrong with you today, Claudie? Is something bothering you?” Her name was Claudia. He used it sometimes with joking bravado, and she didn't seem to mind, in fact he suspected that she liked it. But she hated his diminutive version; it worked every time.
Dr. Crewes started to put a cigarette between her lips but it slipped out of her grasp and rolled along the waxed floor. Paul retrieved it for her. ”It seems to me,” she said, holding the burning match, ”that your one 'success,' as it were, in overpowering a woman has made you very ... skittish, so to speak, and your att.i.tude-towards me, for example-is colored by it.”
”Okay, you know you turn me on. I've told you that before. What does it have to do with anything? Listen-my family is living through this-this nightmare. Are you going to help me or aren't you?”
Dr. Crewes puffed and blew smoke at the ceiling with apparent concentration. ”I'm trying to, Paul. All right, let's get back to the violence. After your phone conversation with your father about the piano, did any alternatives occur to you, any possible responses other than going to his apartment and attacking his mistress?”
”Mistress! Jesus, I thought that was only in books.” He reflected, and answered thoughtfully, ”The way I saw it, it was going to be the piano or her that got it. Something had to get it. But I realized that if I broke up the piano I'd be sorry later. Self-defeating. You see, I thought it out logically. So it had to be her. Now, considering everything we've been dealing with all these years, I think that was progress. Don't you?”
She stubbed out the cigarette with sharp taps of annoyance.
Paul arrived home before his mother that afternoon, feeling almost lighthearted. Certainly he had been flippant during the session, but maybe that was a good sign. There was reason to hope. He was impatient to hear how things had gone between them. He was also starving, he had realized on the way home, and so he stopped to buy a real dinner: two large steaks, a box of spaghetti and a can of clam sauce, a head of lettuce and two ripe tomatoes. He had the water boiling for the spaghetti and was tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the steaks when his mother entered. Paul rushed to the door, the carving knife still in his hand.
”Well, how was he? What happened?”
Nan squeezed his hand with her chilly gloved fingers. ”Oh, Paul. Oh, so much happened. Let me get my coat off. Would you make me a strong Scotch? I'm worn out.”
She collapsed in the nearest chair, Richard's leather recliner.
”Well, tell me, for Christ's sake.”
”First of all, he's sending back the piano tomorrow. I wanted you to know that right off. He realized how horrid and selfish he's been about that.”
”Great, but I mean what really happened?”
”I thought you'd be so excited about the piano. He told me, by the way, how much it meant to you. That is, precisely how far you would go. ... She frowned for an instant. She was looking more like herself, Paul noticed. ”But we won't go into that now. No more guilt and recriminations. I guess we've all been overwrought and irrational. Still, Paul, really! ... Well, anyway, he's sick, as I thought. He's a man who's sick and needs help badly. While I was there I made an appointment for him with Dr. Jonas for tomorrow morning.”
”But what happened, about you and him?”
”Shh. Don't yell. And don't wave the knife around like that, you'll hurt yourself. This whole Cheryl episode was the working out of a psychosis. I'm mixed in, his mother, the works. Cla.s.sic.”
Groaning with impatience, Paul went to the kitchen and got out the Scotch and ice cubes.
”Anyway,” she went on, ”we talked and cried, and he was different. Like he used to be, not with that cold surface. Oh, Paul.” Her face eased for a moment. ”I wasn't wrong all those years, was I? I mean, we loved each other, didn't we?”
”I thought so. Here's your Scotch.”
”Thanks.” Nan took a short swift drink, tossing her head back expertly. ”Ah, that's good. He was heartbroken at what he's made us all go through. He said he was even afraid to call, he was afraid I wouldn't want to see him. Of course I'd see him, no matter what. He's totally bewildered and mixed up. But I think he's past the worst.”
”How about you?”