Nina says, “You don’t want to be a vegetarian and you don’t want to be heterosexual—”
“I wouldn’t actually mind being vegetarian, I’m kind of interested in that, just not the hairy-leg kind.”
Nina narrows her eyes.
Madeleine says, “You suppressed a smile just now. Either that or you’re offended ’cause beneath your hemp-and-linen leisure suit you’re sporting a pelt like a Sasquatch.”
Nina smiles, says, “Madeleine, I’m going to take a chance and guess that you’re not here about your diet or your sexual orientation, or your profession. Or even your driving habits.”
“So why am I here?”
“That’s what I’m hoping we’ll work toward.”
“No, can you please just take a wild therapeutic guess?”
Nina says, “You want to go forward. But something is stopping you. You feel as though you should know what it is, but you can’t make it out. It’s like trying to identify an elephant when all you can see is one square inch of it.”
Madeleine is tempted to yield to something. Repose. The promise of it makes her newly aware that she is fatigued. “Or looking at a mountain from an inch away,” she says.
Christine had mixed feelings about Madeleine going into therapy.
On the one hand: “Good.”
“Why?” said Madeleine. “You think I’m that fucked up?”
“I think you have … issues.”
“Gesundheit.”
On the other hand: “Is this just an elaborate way of leaving me?”
“What? Christine, what are you—?” If Madeleine were Christine she would say, “Why is everything always about you?” But Madeleine never thinks of the right thing to say in the moment. Unless she is in front of hundreds of strangers.
“Christine, have you seen my keys?”
“Where did you leave them?”
That’s not what I asked you.
“They’re right in front of you, Madeleine.”
So they are.
“Why do you think you’re here, Madeleine?”
“Gee, doc, if I knew dat, would I be here in de foist place?”
“That’s very good.”
“Thank you.”
“You sound just like him.”
“Want to see me do Woody Woodpecker?”
“I’ve seen you.”
“Oh. Right, you’ve seen After-Three.”
“I’ve seen you live too.”
“Are you stalking me or what?” Nina just smiles. Madeleine says, “Want to see my evil-out-of-synch-ventriloquist-puppet laughter?”
“I’ve seen it.”
“Want to see me do it naked?”
“I’ve seen you do it topless.”
“Oh. Terrifying, eh?”
“It was very very funny. Madeleine—”
“Nina, are you American?”
“Originally, yes.”
“Where you from?”
“Pittsburgh.”
“My condolences.”
“It’s actually quite nice.”
“Got you.”
Nina smiles. “A little.”
“I’m just saying that our relationship, as it grows and matures and … deepens, will inevitably … change.”
“Just say it, Madeleine, you’re leaving me.”
“What? No! Christine, we can still — we can live together, we can still go camping.”
Christine rolls her eyes, pours herself another glass of wine and doesn’t bother to set the bottle down. She is defending her thesis next week. Madeleine hates herself for wishing Christine would shed ten pounds, feminists are not supposed to feel that way.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?” asks Madeleine, innocent distraction, reminding herself of someone—
“Like you hate me.”
— her dad. “I don’t hate you.”
Christine glares over the rim of her wineglass. Madeleine feels like a weasel, knowing she is lying but unable to say exactly where the lie is, frisking herself to find it. “I just think we should each be free to—”
“Fuck around,” says Christine. “That’s what you want, just say it, you get paid for saying horrible things all the time.” Here we go. “Go ahead, Madeleine, say it in a funny voice.”
Christine is right. But Madeleine doesn’t know how to deviate from the script.
“Where are you going?”
“Out to get cream.”
“Bullshit, Madeleine, do you ever not lie? ‘Hello,’ she lied.”
“We’re out of cream.”
“We’re out of a lot of things.”
Madeleine feels as though she’s leading a double life. Loathsome guilty troll at home. Successful ray of sunshine to the rest of the world. The one who makes it look easy. The person who looks “exactly like my cousin/my best friend in high school/my boyfriend’s sister, maybe you know her.” Photos are produced from wallets and purses; Madeleine never fails to be amazed at the total lack of physical resemblance, and she never fails to smile and say, “Wow, that’s amazing.” Madeleine is familiar. Maybe that’s why she gets away with so much. Why the audience is willing to follow her so far from home. Why there seem to be so many of her. While she fears there may be none at all. Pied Piper without a pipe.
Nina balances a smooth pink stone the size of an egg in the palm of her hand and asks, “Who’s Maurice?”
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Don’t pathologize my work.”
Nina waits.
“I made him up, that’s my job, I make up weird shit all the time, it’s what I get paid for.”
Nina waits.
“I kind of based him on a yucky teacher I had.”
Pad thai will forever taste of conjugal discontent.
“You’ve got so much to say to everyone else, pretend I’m a stranger, Madeleine. Pretend I’m the goddamn waiter.”
She has never told Christine about Mr. March. She has never told anyone, not really. Not much to tell. Dirty old man she never thinks about any more.
Madeleine is a flirtaholic. Everyone has to have a disorder nowadays, like Brownie badges sewn up the sleeve, and that’s hers. If she were a guy she would be an asshole, but she is “endearingly feisty,” a “high-octane pixie,” and has the press to prove it. She tells herself that as long as she does most of the flirting right in front of Christine, it doesn’t count. And it never leads to anything serious like an affair. Except for that one time, which definitely didn’t count. Plus the New York thing.
Deep down, Madeleine knows that what she is addicted to are escape clauses. Backdoor rabbit holes. Flirting: the long wick that leads to the stick of dynamite that can reliably blow up your life and land you in a new one. This is for people who are terrified of being trapped — and more terrified of being abandoned. This is for people for whom sex with a familiar other becomes more and more like having their wounds probed while splayed across the gutted upholstery of a midsummer car wreck.
Some say we keep repeating patterns until we figure out what they are. Madeleine is too busy to find out. It’s all fun until someone loses an eye.
“Christine, where’s my—”
“It’s right in front of you.”
Christine doesn’t even have to look to know it.
“Is it just me or are you incredibly bored too?”
Nina is silent.
“Want to play Parcheesi? Have sex on your hand-knotted Bolivian rug?” Madeleine puffs an imaginary cigar. “Don’t worry, you’re not my type.”
“What’s your type?”
“Oh, you know, masses of pre-Raphaelite hair, tad of a drinking problem, an overdue thesis and a violent streak.”