I said, “What’s he like?” She said he is some kind of a psychotherapist, divorced, lives in Mill Valley. His former wife is Korean, a fashion model. She made him install a plate-glass window in their living room so birds would fly into it and break their necks. She had them stuffed.
“Oh, I know the guy,” I said. “Women find him attractive.”
“How do men find him?”
I was conscious of the danger.
“He dresses well. He likes classical music and hiking. He goes sailing. He’s a good cook. Doesn’t smoke.”
“You think he’s a prick.”
Sonny was six years old when she went up on a roof with a boy. He pulled down his pants. She pulled down hers. They looked. Years later she still worried about what she’d done, thinking she could never be famous because the boy would tell everybody she’d pulled her pants down. She was a success in school and had innumerable boyfriends. None of that changed anything for her. At the age of six, in a thoughtless moment, she ruined her life.
Billy comes to my office, sits, looks me in the eye, and says, “Girls like to be spanked.”
Sonny will see the man, sleep with him, then linger in regret to the end. If I said, “I know for certain he has leprosy,” she would still see the man, etc. Nobody passes up romance.
Sonny says she dislikes being touched by doctors. I thought to remind her, but she said quickly, “He’s different.” With me — as if talking to herself — she needn’t bother about little connections.
There was a message for me at the motel. I hoped it was Sonny, but it’s from Evelyn.“Call immediately.” I call. The crazy pitch of her hello means she bought something or she met a famous person. I’m wrong. She says, “I went to a garage sale in the Oakland hills. Are you listening? There was a Swedish dresser with glass pulls. Inside one drawer I see a piece of paper, like folded in half. I opened it. It’s a sketch in red crayon. Old, but nice, not faded. I scrunched it quick into my purse. I also got a pewter dish and a pocket watch. I went home. No, first I met Sheila for coffee. I didn’t tell her what I got. She’s so jealous. Later I went home and took the sketch out of my purse. I smoothed it out. It’s the head of a woman, signed by Raphael. I almost died. So I phoned Sheila—”
“You stole a Raphael?”
“Listen, I almost died. Sheila has a friend in the art department at Berkeley. I called him and went to his office. He almost died. He said it looks authentic, but he couldn’t be positive. He told me to mail it to a man in England. The greatest living expert. So I mailed it to him.”
“Insured?”
“Regular mail. Listen. Listen, the expert just phoned me. He says he almost died. It’s authentic. But listen. Wait till you hear what else …”
Sonny tells me she will separate her emotional life from her sexual feelings. “In other words,” she said, “I’ll have an affair only if I can’t become entangled with the man.”
“In other words, you’re already doing it.”
“How embarrassing … I lied.”
Byron says, “And, after all, what is a lie? ’Tis but the truth in masquerade.”
Are some truths told only by lying?
You know why there is heaven and hell? It’s to make the past real. Otherwise there is no past. There is only the present.
Eddie met the woman years ago, in another state, prior to her divorce, long before she changed her hairstyle and became a different person. His own hair, though beginning to gray, was much the same. He figures she recognized him immediately, but since he didn’t recognize her, she didn’t tell him they’d met before. Both acted as if neither was part of the other’s past, even after they’d slept together again. Eddie imitated himself: “Oh, did you grow up in Michigan?” By then he knew she had. He remembered. Years earlier, he now remembered, the first time they made love, he’d asked, “How do you handle your feelings?” She had told him, in the tender darkness, that she loved her husband.
“Why are you doing this with me?”
“This is this,” she said, “and that is that.”
It would have been possible early on, with only a little embarrassment, to stop pretending.
“Don’t you remember me?”
“Should I? Wait, oh no. Oh no. This can’t be happening. You’re not Eddie Finger, are you?”
But Eddie didn’t, or couldn’t, stop pretending. Naturally, then, she couldn’t either. He told himself that she didn’t want to be recognized. Why else would she have changed her look? She actually did look different. Time passed. Then it was too late. It was impossible to stop pretending. Too much was invested in the lie, the black hole of their romance into which everything was sucked. He thinks she knew he knew she knew he knew. He couldn’t go on with it. There was too much not to say. He stopped seeing her. “She waits for me in hell,” he says. “We’ll discuss it then. But she’ll have changed her hair, you know what I mean?”
Breakfast with Henry near campus. A strange woman joined us at the table. She smoked my cigarettes and took my change for her coffee. In her purse she had a fold of bills compressed by a hair clip. “My tuition fee,” she said. Henry smiled and carried on as if she weren’t there. He refused to be inhibited in our conversation. He said one of his colleagues felt happy when he turned fifty because he no longer desired the pretty coeds. He would concentrate on biochemistry, get a lot of work done, not waste time fucking his brains out. Henry laughed. He didn’t believe in this lust for biochemistry. The woman, pretending to study for a German class, looked up from her grammar and said, “I will learn every word.”
It was cold, windy, beginning to rain. Deborah was afraid she wouldn’t find a taxi. She’d have to walk for blocks in the rain. She didn’t want to go, but her psychotherapist wasn’t charging her anything. A few months back, she told him she couldn’t afford to continue. He lowered the rate to half. Even that became too much for her, so he lowered it to nothing. She stood, collected her things, and pulled on her coat like a kid taking orders from her mother, then fussed with her purse, her scarf, trying to be efficient but making dozens of extra little moves, rebuttoning, untying and retying her scarf, and then reopening her purse to be sure there was enough money for a taxi if she could find one. She wanted to stay, talk some more, but couldn’t not go to her psychotherapist. She felt he really needed her.
Sonny says, “The woman can’t understand any experience not her own. She’s Irish.” She didn’t mean because she’s Irish. She meant thin, practical, cold. She meant not like herself, dark and warm. She meant blond. In effect, the way people talk is what they mean. It is precise and clear — more than mathematics, legal language, or philosophy — and it is not only what they mean, but also all they mean. That’s what it means to mean. Everything else is alienation, except poetry.
Sonny has green eyes. I can’t not see them.
Sonny’s teeth are crooked. I can’t not desire to lick them.
I think of Sonny’s terrible flaws. I love her flaws.
I’m so furious at Sonny I almost hate her.
I told Sonny I love her. She said,“I’m a sucker for love.”