I don’t mean to imply that Stick was cured. For one thing, a complete “cure” of emotional conflict seems to me an illusion that blinds itself both to the power of instinct and the real world. Stick was born with an aggressive, selfish nature that cannot be fundamentally altered and we live in a society that, despite its public claims, admires and rewards ruthless individual behavior. What was accomplished was the creation of self-consciousness. Guilt, some might call it, although I believe the result with Stick is closer to the idea implicit in the word responsibility. He came to understand that his resistance to pain and loneliness, his relish of competition, is not shared by many. He learned patience in the face of the simple although annoying truth that most people who are thrown into cold water sink rather than swim.
Halley’s “cure” seemed to proceed, if at all, with the stubbornness of normal therapy. Six months after the fall retreat, by the time Stick severed his end of their metaphorical incest, she had already transferred her fixation to me. Under the guise of reporting what Gene, Jack, Didier (and others) felt about his management, she used to give Stick explicit accounts of her lovemaking. To make clear what has already been implied, since our “games” were satisfying her Electra complex, she stopped that behavior after our first encounter. Nevertheless, in April of 1992, when Stick told her he no longer wanted to hear about her affairs, she was rocked.
She hunted for me immediately, although it was during work hours, something she avoided. (She concealed our intimacy from others, just as she had pretended not to be friendly with her father.) She found me out back, watching the work on the new recreational area. They were laying a full basketball court, putting up a volleyball net on the grass, and carving a true running path for jogging enthusiasts.
I was on the grass, under the new volleyball net, watching as they put down a layer of blacktop for the basketball court. The smell had driven all but the workmen away. Halley appeared in a navy blue suit and high heels. She had to circle around to reach me. Her right foot gave out on the soft earth at the border and she twisted her ankle slightly. She kicked off her shoe angrily, bent over and rubbed. I got up and went to her. “Did you hurt yourself?”
I was astonished when she turned her face to me. There were tears in her black eyes, the first I had ever seen. “You know I’m not all right.” She tried to walk, stumbled because the other foot was still in a high heel shoe. She kicked that one off too. Her stocking feet were getting dirty.
“Here,” I said, putting an arm around her. “I’ll help you onto the grass.”
“You can’t do this,” she said bitterly and I knew she didn’t mean my physical act of charity. “Do what?”
“You know.” She hopped while I held her. We reached the grass and I helped her sit down. She brushed dirt off the bottom of her feet. “Get my shoes,” she said, glancing up. She squinted against the tears. Her mouth was tight as if she were also fighting unhappy words. “I’m going to quit. If he thinks I won’t, he’s kidding himself.”
I fetched her shoes. She checked the heel of the one she had twisted. It was all right. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” I told her.
“He—” she nodded at the top floor of the Glass Tower, “he doesn’t want to hear my, quote unquote gossip, anymore.” She stared at the machine while it rolled over steaming tar. Perhaps inspired, she shut her eyes, squeezing back the tears. “He doesn’t even know I’ve already stopped telling him.”
“Yes he does.”
She frowned at my interruption and ignored it. “He said if I have anything to tell him I should do it in the Friday marketing meeting.” She played one of her notes of feeling. There was a sad chord to its bitterness. “Fuck him. I can get another job like that.” She snapped her fingers.
“Why don’t you?”
She raised her head, slowly, eyes clearing. She pursed her lips, stretched her legs, and thought for a while. When she settled her gaze on me, she had regained her self-possession: a pretty young woman taking a break from the office to flirt casually with a co-worker. “The Great White Father says I’m in love with you,” she smiled at me sweetly.
“But we know that’s impossible, right?”
Her innocent, charming smile didn’t fade when she answered, “I told him he’s scared of you.”
“That was probably the most provocative thing you could say to him.”
Her smile disappeared. “He hates me,” she commented. She leaned back on her hands, looking up at the sky.
“No,” I said. “He just doesn’t love you. He’s not capable of love.”
She called to the blue air, “It’s the same thing.”
“Where would you like to work?” I asked.
She coughed. “I — uh—” She coughed again and then couldn’t stop. I suspected her suppressed tears were the cause. She leaned forward and I pounded her back twice. She got them under control. “You know Mom’s quit drinking before,” she gasped out as they ended.
“Not the same,” I said.
“Why?” she asked, elongating the word like a child playing at keeping a conversation going.
“I bet she never admitted she was an alcoholic. She just did it on her own, right? For a week or two? This time she’s been on the wagon for four months.”
Halley didn’t answer. She watched me, her black eyes big and solemn.
“She has your father’s support — instead of teasing her, undermining her resolve,” I continued.
“I called Edgar,” she blurted out.
“Good,” I said. “He’ll help you find work that’s worthy of your talents.”
“I’m going to fuck him,” she informed me without rancor or challenge, merely a promise.
“From what I know of men like Edgar that’ll probably speed up the process. Although he’d help you anyway.”
“I don’t want a job. He’s worth, what? Six hundred million? He can keep me until I get pregnant. Then he’ll leave his wife.”
I nodded and waited.
She rotated on her behind, legs under her, elbows on her knees, and faced me. “I was glad Mikey died.” She rocked back and watched me.
I nodded.
“That’s what you want me to say,” she told me.
“If it’s the truth.”
Her eyes strayed up to the volleyball net. “I felt like shit for a while, but then I realized I was glad. That’s why I told Gene I loved him.”
I nodded. “Because you wanted to be able to love.”
“Right,” she agreed.
“So really you were just trying to be a better person when you told him you loved him?”
“It made him happy and I … I believed it, too. Even I believed it for a while.” She tilted her head and she regarded me, waiting.
“Bullshit,” I said.
“No,” she shook her head.
“All of it. Pure bullshit,” I said. “What’s bothering you is that your father is paying attention to your mother instead of you.”
Halley smiled. Head tilted, arms hugging her knees, eyes bright, she smiled as if I had just complimented her. The roller reached the border of the court and started beeping, a steady insistent noise to warn that it was moving backwards. She held my attempt at an impassive gaze while her eyes were lively and interested. When the roller stopped beeping and turned to press another section flat, she asked, “Do you love me?”
“More than ever,” I said.
She rocked forward, patted my arm, then reached for her shoes. I watched her small feet fit into them. I knew the details of every pore of her body and all its incarnations: the birthmark above her left hip, the puffed look of her belly bloated by menstruation, the quizzical stare of her wet knees breaking the water of her bath, her hair down and long to play the cool adventuress, her hair bound in a pony tail for girlish comfort. I knew, as well, every turn of her quick competitive mind, furiously constructing disguises. She stood up and nothing remained of the pain she had brought to show me. She stared at the roller squeezing moisture from the black ground. “Dr. Neruda’s playground for gifted children,” she said and laughed.