Chapter Thirteen

Considered leaving husband altogether.

Will had also written this, at least that was the phrase it most resembled, in the notes in Dawn Farrington’s file. His notes took up far more space than would have been necessary if he had been less profligate with his handwriting. While he did economize by writing on both sides of the paper, he did not number them, and somehow, on occasion, pages were not in order and Flora had been forced to shuffle and reorder them to find the correct continuing page.

She couldn’t tell if the phrase had been a question he’d asked Dawn or if it was a statement of fact. There was some sort of mark after the “altogether,” but even if it was a question mark, did it mean he had asked her or had she asked herself? What came after it, however, was written in a way that seemed to suggest emphasis or something like drama on Will’s part and unlike the “perhaps” question preceding it, it was in quotation marks: “This is not my right life.”

Flora felt at times like hers was not her right life either, but she had no feeling of what would be, whereas Dawn seemed clear that what she wanted was just out of her reach and could be acquired if only she were free or in the right place. Flora occasionally had the feeling that her right life was somewhere else, too, maybe a life where she had pursued playing music or lived in Paris. But those were so far from her reality now that she didn’t even long for them. They seemed like loosely remembered stories of another person’s life.

Sometimes when she got in the car to go on an errand, she thought of Rabbit Angstrom and how he just found himself driving further and further away without having actually decided to do so, not consciously anyway. She knew that she was meant to sympathize with Rabbit’s wretched, drunk wife, Janice, but Flora identified with the man in that instance. What Rabbit did seemed so easy, like letting gravity do its job without resistance. It might be something she would be apt to do if she were pursued by the beast, because she was then incapable of overthinking. When free of the beast, she regarded the potential of escape in a remote way and as both exciting and comforting. Her daughter, unlike Rabbit’s, was an adult and would not necessarily be ruined—certainly she wouldn’t die—by an absconding mother.

But the narrative didn’t quite fit Flora and not only because John Updike was probably not writing for the likes of her. She was not adventurous or lustful, and she didn’t feel trapped. She didn’t see herself in the problem that had no name or some of the other women’s lib ideas that Abby or Trudy talked about, in a way that felt to Flora like indictment or at least strong suggestions. No, that was not the problem. There was no problem, really. She almost wished there was.

There was a book she remembered reading aloud to one of Lillian’s grandsons when he was young. She could only remember that the primary actors were a cat, a mouse, and perhaps a cricket. One of them slept in a matchbox. They carried on a full life just under the noses of, but completely unnoticed by, the towering and bustling humans all around them. The idea of those two worlds existing virtually in the same space, but with the dominant world completely unaware of the tiny world, was alluring. It was the only sort of fantastical idea that ever interested her, and she had no idea why it did. The essence of the situation stayed with her and she thought of it often. Living in her quiet jobless daytimes, she felt a bit like the animals, living in a semi-hidden world, unnoticed, like she was getting away with something.

Was it the idea of living a parallel life, where she followed impulses without shame or self-consciousness? Maybe. What would that life be? Who would she be? She wondered if Dawn was finding out. But Flora was now even less inclined to ask about her, because she didn’t want to know if the experiment had failed or had never happened at all. That would be too disappointing. It didn’t turn out well for Rabbit. It was a romantic and, she had to admit, narcissistic and immature impulse.

The woman’s office was in her home. Flora found this strange, slightly unprofessional, but ideal for her purposes. It simply looked as if she was visiting a friend, if, as her moments of paranoia allowed her to believe, someone was spying on her. A few times after she made the appointment, she imagined Will asking Mrs. Eberly, instead of answering the phone or shredding files, to take a day to investigate Flora’s doings. She conjured images of Mrs. Eberly, cast in the role of a Scandinavian Natasha, in her white uniform, driving her heavily air-freshened Town and Country station wagon, jotting down notes in her stenographer’s pad as she trailed Flora going in and out of Burdett’s, the hair salon, and then, mysteriously visiting someone on Westbrae Drive, staying for an hour, then going back home. She imagined Mrs. Eberly sharing her report the next day over their daily lunch at the Maplewood. Will would put down his drink when she got to the part about Westbrae Drive and demand of Mrs. Eberly, “Whose house was it?”

“Well, I can’t say, Doctor. There was no name on the mailbox and I didn’t see much more than a woman answer the door and let Mrs. Rose inside,” Mrs. Eberly, the platonic apparatchik, would reply patiently, undaunted by his accusatory tone.

“What did the woman look like?” he might continue in his inquisition, summoning the waitress for his second Manhattan.

The woman was handsome. That was the first word that came to Flora’s mind when she met Dr. Simmons at her doorstep on Westbrae Drive. Handsome in the unapologetic way of Greta Garbo—a fine, strong nose, long limbs, and a perfectly fitting, well-cut pantsuit in burnt orange. Flora was relieved. She had been a bit worried that Dr. Simmons might be dressed in glittering multi-colored scarves clutching a deck of tarot cards, even though she had given no indication of such an aura during their brief initial conversation, a call she had made from the pay phone outside McDonald’s.

Flora followed Dr. Simmons immediately to the left and down one short corridor then a turn down another until they were in a small room at the back of house with windows overlooking a lush ravine. There was a desk, two chairs, two walls filled with books, and a large, low-pile area rug with stripes—variants of burnt orange alternating with browns and yellows. Dr. Simmons gestured to one of the two identical chairs, each made of oak with large square leather cushions in dark brown. The armrests were wide enough to hold a pad of paper and a coffee mug, which Dr. Simmons’s did. The chairs more or less faced each other but both turned at a polite angle a bit away from a head-on meeting. Flora was impressed by the lack of a couch, shrink version or otherwise, and the fact that the chairs for doctor and patient were equally ample. In between the two chairs was a small round table, also oak, with a box of tissues, a covered water carafe, and a drinking glass. A few logistical similarities to Will’s office, Flora observed, but where Will’s conveyed authority, Dr. Simmons’ instilled comfort. Flora was immediately suffused with warmth and could not believe her luck in randomly finding a woman of such sound mind and sophistication.

She also felt a stab of envy for Dr. Simmons’s life. This might have been a path that Flora could have taken if she had not stopped her social work. While technically in the same genus as working in the hospital with blatantly needy patients, it was a world apart.

“Flora,” Dr. Simmons, said, her hands clasped in her rust-colored lap, elbows resting on the wide armrests which still allowed substantial space before they even threatened to disturb the mug and notepad which lay untouched beside her. “What prompted you to call me last week?”

While Flora hadn’t known what to expect as far as a way to begin, she was pleased at the specificity of the question. It turns out she didn’t have to deliver the abbreviated narrative of her entire life that she had prepared but that she felt was a poor representation of who she was much less why she was here. She knew precisely what had prompted her. If she had given herself a moment to think, she might not have answered as she did, but Dr. Simmons disarmed her and made her feel brave and closer to her real self than she was used to feeling. She had the sense that her pre-cooked introduction would not be credible to Dr. Simmons anyway. She suddenly wished that Dr. Simmons were her friend instead of a professional psychologist, not least of which meant that Mrs. Eberly’s imaginary report would then have no subterfuge to reveal. Dr. Simmons was someone for whom she could fathom having a gaily-anticipated lunch date in her calendar.

After Jenny and Tanya had finally arrived, tousled and giddy, on the rainy staffing emergency day—Will hadn’t surfaced in all that time—Flora was free to leave the office. With Dawn Farrington on Flora’s mind again after a three-year hiatus, what floated to the top were not the details of her sad life, but the fact that she had taken the bold move to phone Will at all (how had she paid for her sessions?). She drove toward home with still-damp shoes. She had forgotten her umbrella in the bucket outside the office, but the rain had stopped. The sky was now expansive and white, the sun straining to break through. After subsisting in the relative dim for hours and without her sunglasses, she could barely see, her head ached fiercely, and she was hungry. Her mind was humming erratically with illustrations from the children’s book with the small, sub-rosa creatures intercut with images of Will’s scrawl and Dawn’s gentle handshake. Dazedly, she pulled into the McDonald’s. Not six feet from where she’d nearly squealed into the parking lot, near a guard rail, stood an incongruous phone booth. After foraging for three dimes in her change purse, she entered the phone booth and found a miraculously intact phone book hanging from its trusty cable. Finding Psychologists in the Yellow Pages, she dialed the number of the only woman listed among a dozen names. This confluence of conditions, nothing more earth-shattering, is what prompted her to call Dr. Simmons.

Flora already kept many secrets from her husband, like the lack of productive activity during her weekdays or her true feelings about most things. While seeing Dr. Simmons was akin to a tryst—the classic sort being something Flora couldn’t imagine desiring—it was not what compelled her most. Perhaps Dawn had acted on the unconscious feeling that seeing a shrink might be a way to have a secret parallel life without abandoning or upsetting anyone. But what Flora wanted was someone to narrate her into a story like she did with the piano students’ homes she sat in, half an ear listening to their playing, the rest of her senses attuned to their lives. And like she did when first discovering Dawn’s file. Having Dr. Simmons take notes on her and place them in a file folder and then in a beautiful oak file drawer would, she believed, anchor her to the existing world.

People who knew Flora well and people who didn’t know her well gave her gifts they thought she’d like—perfumes, scarves, elegant pillboxes—which should have assured her that she had finite edges and the thick, bold outline of a personality. But she was always surprised when people recognized her from meeting to meeting and had the self-conscious habit of unnecessarily reminding people of her name. She envied the portrait of Abby in their family room, painted from a photograph when she was seventeen. She had recently peroxided her hair, so instead of its natural dark brown, it was auburn. She only wore the color for a few months, but the portrait was eternal. In the photo she had been holding Giselle, their crotchety miniature poodle whose runny eyes left permanent stains on her otherwise white fur. The artist generously omitted those but could not be convinced to swap in Abby’s natural hair color, claiming that the lighter color was more interesting because he could vary it and render a more dynamic effect. Flora had assented because she lacked the will that day to argue, Abby found it hilarious, and Will was irate, sure that he would have been able to convince the artist by reminding him who was paying for the commission.

It was not even so much the content of her file that would satisfy her but the fact of its being substantial enough to write down. She wanted to be documented.

It didn’t occur to Flora to tell Dr. Simmons about the beast or the photo in Will’s desk drawer. She hadn’t thought beyond making the call. And she hadn’t even really thought about that.

They walked through the miniature labyrinth where Dr. Simmons shook Flora’s hand before opening the door to the outside world. “I’ll see you next week, Flora.”

“Depression can manifest as anger. And in fact, one rather simplistic definition refers to depression as ‘anger turned inward.’”

“Freud,” Flora stated.

“Yes!”

Dr. Simmons laughed in genuine surprise, her mouth wide open and her eyebrows raised high. Flora experienced the coveted moment again, the one where they were actual friends.

Rather than glow with the possibility of impressing her erudite psychotherapist, though, Flora shook her head almost imperceptibly, annoyed by the realization that she had absorbed so much Freud malarkey over the years in Will’s wake.

“So you’ve heard that before?” Dr. Simmons asked, now just one eyebrow raised. How Flora wished she could strike that expression.

“I think maybe I have.” But she hadn’t. It just sounded like Freud. And its declamatory construction sounded like Will, but he had never once, as far as she could recall, offered depression in his litany of unsolicited diagnoses. He used it to describe some of his patients and in various forms and phrasings—depressive episode, manic depressive. How had the label evaded Flora all these years? Neither did Will accuse her of being angry, opting rather for cranky or irritable. Inert, childish accounts. Depression and anger had clear, palpable meanings, unlike his accusatory psychiatric slurs, which might have been interchangeable with jabberwocky for all the stock she put in them. If she had ever heard the aphorism Dr. Simmons just offered, she would not have resisted turning it toward herself. Anger was in her self-description collection, but somehow depression had not presented itself. And there had never been a need for clarity or accuracy because she never talked about her feelings to anyone aloud. The beast was more visual than something with words attached to it. And even the idea of the beast was largely artificial because it didn’t really have a shape or borders or a constitution that aligned with the properties of normal things.

“Does it ring true to you in any way?” Dr. Simmons asked, interrupting Flora’s inner rambling.

Flora let herself sit with the question—something Dr. Simmons had been coaching her to do over the last few weeks—to search for a true answer. She didn’t know how to answer and the silence was inflating. Too many thoughts to organize at once, like slippery wooden Scrabble tiles. Hurriedly and sloppily she tried, so she could deliver a tidy response. But nothing fit together. Dr. Simmons waited patiently and gently, both eyebrows now at rest. They were enviable brows, dark and strong, but shaped in a way that made her look confident and warm.

“I can’t really say,” Flora finally said.

“What comes to mind when you think of your anger?”

Her anger, as far as she could detect, was neither romantic nor purposeful, nor the misdirected reaction to any grave trauma in her youth, nor a politically outraged response to the female condition. She was angry about petty things like the poor behavior of others or simply feeling off-kilter or out of sorts without a known cause. Flora had tried to illustrate, over the course of her sessions, with a few examples of how she experienced rage about such small things—though she framed it as annoyance, the olive situation serving as a case in point—and how she never let on. And how she felt heroic in this. There was an incident that often returned to her, though it was easily a decade ago, wherein Dr. Fiedler, a resident at the hospital when she was working there, was chatting up a group of nurses. They were discussing Doctor Zhivago, which Flora had just been to see with Ruth. When one of the nurses asked her if she’d seen it, she said yes and offered a brief, anodyne review but said that while she was willing to get up for intermission at a play, it was an imposition at a movie theater where there was really nowhere to go but you had to get up to get out of people’s way. The nurses had laughed, but Dr. Fiedler said, “Well, Mrs. Rose, why don’t you tell us how you really feel?” implying that she was quite the outspoken dame. Underneath a forced smile, Flora fumed.

And yet when she watched other people unleash their rage on screen—Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion, Scarlett O’Hara, any depraved and childish character, and how she dreamed of putting people in their place with incisive words like that tall, self-confident Maude—it was wildly cathartic for her. If it was anyone she knew or merely someone near her in a store, like the irate woman in Burdett’s who had railed at the innocent but incompetent checkout clerk, she would feel uncomfortable, not in the embarrassed or fearful way of other onlookers, but because she wanted them to know that she empathized with them and understood the sudden and complete depletion of forbearance. But of course she would never, could never, express her own in such a way.

She was forever astonished by the stockpile of emotions they were not seeing, that they—like her husband, Dr. Fielder—didn’t even seem to detect. Or maybe they were fully aware but didn’t think it was worth addressing.