PAUL HAD ALWAYS HAD an analyst, ever since he could remember. It began long ago, when, after several days of kicking, screaming, and gobbling handfuls of soil from his mother’s potted plants, he was carried by his parents, working in tandem, into the car and on to Dr. Trowbridge’s office in a tall building on North Michigan. How old he was then—eight, ten, six—Paul couldn’t recall precisely. But he did remember quite clearly that first sight of the analyst.
Dr. Trowbridge struck him as a comfortable, grandmotherly woman. She sat calmly in a leather chair behind a formidable wooden desk, smiling a friendly greeting as his parents dragged him in. She had short wavy gray hair, plump cheeks, and very thick glasses with pale-pink frames; she wore a cotton print dress with short sleeves. It must have been summer. He remembered they had no coats. Later on, in their private sessions, when she used to come out from behind her desk to stroll around the green-carpeted office, he noticed that she wore black oxford shoes with laces, old-lady shoes. Her ankles were thick.
Once he was in the office that seminal afternoon, he ceased his kicking and screaming. No one knew exactly why. He was distracted, perhaps, by the new surroundings, by the abstract mobile of colorful shapes hanging from the low ceiling, by the soft artificial light and the numerous framed documents on the paneled walls. He caught his breath and shut up, impressed that he had driven them to do something about him at last, to stop him, as if he were a runaway windup toy on which they had placed an overdue restraining hand. And what they had done was this relaxed elderly woman who smoked with a slender black cigarette holder, something he had never seen before.
He grew very fond of her and she allowed this fondness. Now, at fifteen, Paul didn’t remember much of what they had done or said together except for the mazes. Dr. Trowbridge was very keen on maze games. She produced a new one almost every time Paul came. They bored him, but he felt it would sound impolite or ungrateful to tell her that, particularly as she appeared to enjoy them so. As time passed, he graduated from large, wooden block mazes to small cardboard or plastic structures, to dittoed sheets, the most abstract. (Yes, she said, when he remarked on the dittos, she had other young patients. This bothered him, the idea of other children bending their heads with her over the same dittoed sheets, basking in her endless, soothing calm, especially since he never saw them in the small waiting room that hummed with white noise. But as they talked it over he came to accept a nonexclusive relationship.) He hadn’t understood the purpose of mazes at first, and performed aimlessly, until Dr. Trowbridge explained that the purpose was to find the most direct way out. Even then they didn’t make much sense—why not linger, he thought, on the intricate paths—but he tried to be cooperative. She taught him to work backwards from the goal. Dr. Trowbridge didn’t take things as seriously as his parents, nor was she appalled by his lapses into violence. And as she listened and nodded in her quiet way, it began to seem that there was space in him to absorb still another shaming incident with a bit of compassion. This lack of seriousness in her puzzled him, though, for he knew what her purpose was. She was hired specifically to take him seriously, to find out what made him so difficult. She was a superior being who lived above the fray. At least that was what he inferred. Her office was hushed like a holy place. With her he was not difficult.
Then, one nasty day, she announced that he was getting too old for her. She was a child psychiatrist, she explained, and he at thirteen was no longer a child. He was ready to move on to a specialist in adolescence. Paul made a scene, of course; it was the least he could do to preserve his self-respect. He ripped the mobile from the ceiling, tangling and cutting his fingers in the wires, and shouted bitter accusations, which she sat through quietly as if she had expected them.
“I know how you feel,” she said. “Separation anxiety.” That phrase from the occult language was a further betrayal, and sent him further into rage. He was heading for the curtains, the blood pounding in his head, lunging to fling them down, when she said, “Please, Paul. It’s so hard to get curtains. They have to come and measure, and bring samples of fabric. It takes weeks. Please.” She smiled mildly, and he stopped.
By now he had forgiven her and thought about her with gentle nostalgia, since he was fairly well settled in with Dr. Crewes, whose office was just off Lake Shore Drive. Dr. Crewes was not like Dr. Trowbridge, either in spirit or in appearance. She was much younger, for one thing, maybe thirty or thirty-five, he guessed. Sometimes he thought she was smarter, too; she sounded smarter, in any case. She chain-smoked and fiddled with things on her desk and had a sharp, knifelike voice that sometimes echoed gratingly in his ears hours after he left her. She wasn’t easygoing, but to compensate, there was a simmering excitement in talking to her. Lately a pleasant sexual buzz hovered around him when he sat opposite Dr. Crewes. They talked about it, naturally, and she said evenly that it was quite all right. It was to be expected. She smiled and showed two perfect rows of small sharp teeth. Dr. Crewes had a broad face, wide green eyes, and shoulder-length straight brown hair that she dashed nervously off her forehead. She never removed her very large round tinted glasses. Usually she wore pants suits with soft sweaters and odd loops of beads. Once, on a rainy day, she had worn blue jeans. Paul encountered her sometimes in his dreams wearing a succession of bizarre costumes, but he never touched her. Either he was afraid, or she drifted away when he reached out.
With the professional help of Drs. Trowbridge and Crewes, Paul had inched his way through youth as through a mined field. He had reached his second year of high school, a better than average student, though there had been months now and then of neglecting his studies and becoming obsessed by games—first backgammon, then chess, most recently horse racing. He won $150 at the track last summer, which he never told his parents about, but he told Dr. Crewes. She seemed proud of his skill in calculating odds, and made clever, provocative analogies between games of chance and real-life situations. Paul told her everything. Even the things he deliberately planned not to tell—in bouts of resistance—she somehow got out of him, or else once they passed by undiscussed, they came to seem insignificant.
Now, Monday, he had made a special appointment with her, apart from his scheduled Thursdays and Saturdays, to discuss the calamity. His parents, after nearly two decades of marriage, were, incredibly, intolerably, separating. Immediately. His father had told him only last night. There had been a vicious scene, during which his mother retreated to the bedroom while he and his father shouted at each other. She was the one being left. His father was going to live with a woman about ten years older than Paul. The very thought of her was intolerable.
His father was a psychoanalyst, his mother was a psychotherapist, and his father’s girlfriend was a psychiatric social worker in training, who had first appeared as his student in a seminar. Paul did not have the naive illusion that the membership of all three parties in what his parents called “the helping professions” was any guarantee against emotional upheaval. No. He had matured that much since Dr. Trowbridge. The wretched triangle of experts did not strike him as bizarre, any more than the fact that each of them continued daily to counsel others in torment. He had more than once overheard his parents remark on how the prolonged work of clearing the treacherous paths of the self disposes one to instability. Just like coal miners get black lung, thought Paul.
Indeed, among their friends, largely pairs of analysts, therapists, and social workers, Paul had already witnessed suicide, alcoholism, recurrent infidelity, breakdowns, and violence. So the source of his feeling of utter shock was merely that he had always believed Richard and Nan perfectly matched.
This was what he sullenly told Dr. Crewes now, after which she asked in cool tones, “How does it make you feel?”
He replied by resting his head on her desk and weeping. The sounds of his sobs were ugly to him, great gasping noises like the screeching of gears in an immense and overloaded machine.
Dr. Crewes played with the button of a ballpoint pen lying on her desk while she waited. “It’s terrible for you, I can see, especially after all the progress we’ve made.”
“I can’t understand it,” Paul wept. He blew his nose and tried to control the trembling of his shoulders. “The worst thing is that I can’t believe it. How could he go and do this to us, after all those years? How could he? I’d like to ...” His bony boy’s fingers locked and tugged and twisted like an interpreter’s making signs for a deaf-mute. “I could tear him to pieces.”
“You seem to be identifying strongly with your mother.”
“Well, for Christ’s sake,” said Paul, “it’s not a question of identifying. I mean, look what he’s doing to me! Shit, I didn’t do anything to him except get born, and now ... I don’t know, maybe it is me. Maybe he can’t put up with me anymore.”
“Ah,” said Dr. Crewes. “You see, your guilt is coming out. What did I do to deserve this, and so forth. You did nothing. You have to separate that out. What exactly did he say to you?”
“After dinner last night he said he had to have a talk with me. So we sat down. He said he was leaving right away, and he couldn’t really explain but it was no longer possible—that’s what he said, no longer possible, get that—for him to go on living with my mother. Then he said he was in love. In love! At his age!”
“And what did you say?”
“Nothing. Not until he started on the piano. See, I was being very quiet. I couldn’t say anything, I was so shocked. And at that point my mother was puttering around the dining room table, clearing the dishes away like she just worked there or something. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of answering. But then he got started on the piano. Which was right there, too, staring us in the face. Well, you know about the piano.”
The baby grand piano had been a joint acquisition. Paul and his father both played extremely well. They had shopped for it together two years ago to replace an old upright, when it became obvious that Paul’s was no ordinary talent. Paul still remembered what a good time they had had in the showrooms, trying out all the models with snatches of sonatas and popular tunes. Finally they settled on a large black Steinway. Paul cared for it like an attentive parent, cleaning its keys and polishing its glossy surface. He was as fussy about his piano, his father used to joke, as Nan was about her expensive carpeting.
“So he says”—and here Paul mimicked his father’s thin raspy voice and ponderous delivery—“‘Paul, I know this will seem unfair to you, but I have to have the piano.’ ‘Over my dead body,’ I said. Then he started yelling and running around the room, about how he’s tired of giving and has to start taking for himself. And then ...”
“Well?”
“Well, I sort of got hysterical and tore the place up.” Paul grinned, a tentative flicker of light, then his mouth set sullenly again. He stared at the harsh Van Gogh print of sunflowers above Dr. Crewes’ head, which often had a semihypnotic effect on him.
“You look proud of yourself.”
“Well, then to calm me down, I guess, he said okay, he’d leave the piano. Then a minute later, no, he’d take it. Meanwhile my mother went off to their room. She said she was tired and going to sleep, and he could handle this scene since the whole thing was his idea anyway, and he should have given me more time to adjust to the change. Honestly, by the time it was all over I swear I didn’t know if he was taking it or leaving it.”
“What about your mother’s going off to her room? How did you feel about that?”
“What? Hell, I don’t know. I guess I thought she could have stuck up for me more. But she’s got her problems too. Listen, I’d like to kill the both of them. What the fuck am I going to do?”
“You’re filled with rage and guilt, Paul. As is to be expected. You have to understand that, and that’s what we’ll have to work on, whatever happens. We’ll have to deal with your rage and guilt.”
“Deal with! Deal with!” Paul leaped up, his thick gray sweater hanging loosely from his shoulders as he waved his arms violently in the air. He was a tall, sandy-haired boy with gaunt cheeks and a wide mouth. He had ice-blue eyes that in moments of excitement became flecked with pale-green flamelike shapes. “Is all of life one long process of dealing with things? Is that all there is to it? Hell!”
Dr. Crewes flashed her teeth in one of her courteous, enigmatic smiles. With a familiar final gesture, she reached for her appointment book. The fifty-minute hour was over.
“Thanks,” said Paul. “I must say I expected more sympathy from you. I mean, simply as a human being. You’ve known me all these years.”
“Yes,” she said, “you’re disappointed. I can see that. But if I gave you the sympathy you want, it wouldn’t help the treatment. I understand how you feel—we’ll have to deal with that too.”
He set out to walk the mile home, though the cold winds off the lake were fierce. Night was falling. The sky was a dull gray. He had heavy schoolbooks to carry and his bus was right at the corner. But he felt like walking, masochistic or not. Thinking, out in the cold. He was disturbed at how he hadn’t been able to get across to Dr. Crewes that his reaction was not yet loss or sadness but only shock. It was inconceivable that they were not happy with each other. He had thought of them, sometimes with mild sarcasm, as practicing experts in marital happiness.
They left for work together in the morning—his father would drop his mother off at the Carl Rogers Institute, loosely connected with the university—leaving Paul alone to clear the breakfast dishes. Often, calling goodbye from the kitchen as he heard the door click open, he had felt like the parent, sending the youngsters off to school with a sense of release. Then his father picked her up at five-thirty. Sometimes they stopped to shop on the way home. They cooked dinner together—Nan was a meticulous and inventive cook—while talking over their cases. The last year or two, Paul had found the daily progress of these cases rather tedious, so he had taken to staying in his room until they called him to the table. But they seemed to enjoy it, that was the crucial point. Finally at dinner they would ask, “And how are things going with you, Paul? Everything under control at school?”
It was beginning to rain. Little pellets of ice hit his face and clung to his eyelashes. He trudged along Fifty-fifth Street, thinking. Once a week his father went out again in the evening to give a seminar to social work trainees. Paul turned a windy corner, winced with pain and cold as a fluttering twig blew at his cheek. As he blinked, he could see some faceless dark feline creature leering at his father, raising her hand often to impress him with pretentious answers, luring him away from home, where he belonged. He was not going to think about that part of it.
They had been happy—he had watched them for years at it, and if he couldn’t trust what he saw anymore, then what could he rely on? In school they were learning about a dead philosopher called Berkeley, who said that nothing we see is really there. Of course Paul had thought it was pure nonsense, but maybe Berkeley was right. Maybe everything in the world was deceptive, his parents included.
Richard and Nan generally did not go out on week nights since they got up so early every morning. They read side by side, or else his mother made phone calls to her friends while his father did paper work at the small desk in the living room. Occasionally people dropped over, therapists who talked about their cases. Paul would greet them—they liked to scrutinize him; he had something of a reputation for his violent tendencies, and he rather enjoyed their veiled curiosity. He might listen to them talk for a while, then go to his room. They did not stay late. But weekends were another matter entirely, devoted to pleasure. Nan and Richard would wake early as usual, and as soon as the few chores were done, take off in their shorts and running shoes along the Midway—weather permitting, as they said. In the winter it was swimming in the university pool. They seemed to have a passion for rhythmic movement which Paul did not share. When he was twelve he had rebelled, declaring that he no longer wished to accompany their leisure-time rounds like a pet—their five-mile runs, their serious movies on social themes, their bargain-hunting expeditions, their drawn-out dinners in foreign restaurants, their eternal Sunday afternoons at friends’ houses, drinking cocktails and eating through numberless bowls of salted nuts. His mother was hurt, but his father smoothed it over. “Typical of adolescence. He’s finding his own style. It’s natural that he should be bored with us. Let him alone.” “All right, Paul,” Nan said, in a voice straining not to sound resentful. “From now on you can make your own plans. You have your keys to come and go.”
Of course they were happy, thought Paul, wiping the wetness from his face with his glove. It was unmistakable. Sometimes they seemed such a closed, snug unit that he felt like an intruder. They had spent years alone together before he was born, and he suspected that they had never grown used to the fact of his presence, or sensed quite what to do about it. One evening last fall he was studying in his room and didn’t come out to greet them when they returned from work. When he finally emerged at seven o’clock they were busy in the kitchen, earnestly reconsidering one of his mother’s drug addicts. “Why, Paul, my goodness, I forgot all about you,” his mother said, and rushed over to kiss his cheek. “You must be starving. Here, have some crackers while we finish getting dinner ready.”
The only times he didn’t feel like an intruder, but like the very whirling axis of their lives, were the times he got into trouble and caused them trouble. When it was found in his freshman year at U High that he had been cutting classes for weeks, when it came out a year later that he was the mysterious decimator of the school library, with a cache of unstamped books on the floor of his closet, when it was discovered that he was the founder and guiding genius of the widespread and lucrative football pool the school principal had been trying in vain to stamp out, then their evenings turned into long tearful family confrontations. What Nan and Richard said during these sessions was confusing: at first they threatened to stop paying for his analysis if he didn’t give up his antisocial behavior. But at the end, at the reconciliation, they said he needed more intensive treatment, and that they would all go together to talk to Dr. Crewes. Those discussions caused him pain and anger and remorse, yet when they were over Paul felt a satisfactory sense of wholeness. He pulsed with energy and appetite; while his parents crept to bed weary and enervated, Paul would fix himself a triple-decker sandwich and a glass of milk, and eat voraciously. Then he rested, complacent in the knowledge that thoughts of him would keep them lying awake for hours.
Still, despite the trouble he used to cause them (he had been somewhat better lately—the result of good treatment, his father claimed as he puffed on his pipe), he knew they were happy. It was a quiet life, but they appeared to thrive on it. A quiet life indeed; a year ago he used to rage over it in his sessions with Dr. Crewes, caricaturing it with contempt as a suffocating, middle-class, middle-of-the-road, mediocre dead life. But Dr. Crewes had helped him deal with those feelings of rage and rebellion. When he was grown, Dr. Crewes said, he could lead whatever sort of life he chose. Meanwhile, in their home, he must have some respect for their preferences, which were in fact his parents’ ways of dealing with their own needs and hostilities and fears. Paul was stunned by that profound insight. He glimpsed a baffling world where every attitude was a way of dealing with the attitude beneath it; as time passed, attitudes heaped up in stratified layers like geological formations. Social criticism had no place in the analyst’s office. Gradually he gave up his scorn. To understand all is to forgive all, somebody once said. They seemed so happy and settled, it was uselessly cruel to keep battering at the walls of their comfort. They called each other dear and darling and did small favors for each other like making cups of tea or fetching newspapers, with glowing benign faces that seemed to portray an utter and wholesome rightness. They had found their center, he thought, borrowing Dr. Crewes’ phrase. They were all center, no movable electrons.
Then this mad dash to the periphery, this flying apart, must be some form of illness, like a virus, that could attack and disjoint the entire system. But like a virus it could go away just as mysteriously as it had come. As he walked and mulled it over, stepping carefully on the slippery sheet of ice underfoot, Paul became fervently convinced it would go away. It was some sort of emotional disruption in his father, certainly, and it would have to be dealt with, but it was not anything that came from the center.
He entered his apartment building with relief, chilled to the bone. His lips were stiff and chapped. It must be below twenty degrees out there, and God knows what with the windchill factor. Perhaps he should have taken the bus. But at least he had thought things through a little. He had faith now that it would all work out eventually. Just a half hour ago he had imagined the session with Dr. Crewes was a waste of time, yet after going over the facts he felt much better. He recalled some of the things Dr. Crewes had said, and they seemed quite perceptive. Very often, in his long experience, the sessions did seem a waste of time, and then later he would realize how much had actually been accomplished. The sessions had a delayed effect, like some medications. It was all very intriguing. Maybe he would study medicine after all and go into psychiatry rather than music. With his background he had a head start.
He was almost smiling as he got off the elevator. He walked briskly, stuffing his damp gloves in his pockets and looking forward to a hot dinner. It might not work out right away, he mustn’t expect miracles, but he couldn’t be deceived by the happy tableau they had presented for so long. Berkeley was absurd, as he had thought at the beginning. What you see, you see because it is there. Meanwhile he ought to comfort his mother and explain things to her. Caution her about trying to rush things one way or the other. Nan was like that. Once a decision was made she immediately had to do tangible acts to certify it, as if it might slip through her fingers. He remembered how, when she and Richard decided last September to go to Barbados over Christmas, she had rushed out to buy new luggage. Paul unlocked the door and stepped into the hall. It was dark.
“Mom?”
“Yes. I’m in here, Paul.”
He flicked the hall switch—a warm glow of light filled the tidy narrow space. Nan was curled up on the living room couch doing nothing, not even reading the paper that lay spread out in her lap. She was tall and dark blond, rather like Dr. Crewes, but older and fairer in complexion. She had a pleasant, squarish face with thin lines of anxiety around the eyes and the small mouth. She could look quite attractive, Paul always imagined, if she wore clothes with some dash. But as though unaware of the passage of time, Nan wore the placid styles of her youth two decades ago, shirtwaist dresses, pleated skirts, and shoes with high thin heels. She wore pearls and clip-on earrings and used hair spray. Still, he thought uncomfortably, she was not the kind of woman to drive a man away. She was warm and capable and easy to be with. If he were his father, he would think he hadn’t done so badly after all those years.
“Hi,” he said. “Why are you sitting here in the dark?” He turned on another light, then followed her fixed stare across the large room.
Stunned, Paul saw why she wasn’t speaking. There was a huge nude space in the corner near the window where the piano should have been. Three hollows in the rug where the legs had rested.
“Shit!” he screamed. He tore off his coat, threw it onto the floor with his books, and rushed to the space as if the piano could spring back, conjured by the pressure of his lanky body. “Shit! He can’t do that!” And he let out a long howl. He could feel the blood rushing and pounding in his chest, his face growing unbearably hot. This was how it always happened, starting with the rush of blood. There were no words for this storming bloody torrent. He thrashed around looking for objects to attack and hurl.
“Paul,” his mother said quietly. She didn’t sound restraining, only tired. “Paul, don’t, please don’t go into that. I’m too worn out. I couldn’t stand it.”
He stood quivering like a besieged animal.
“Thank you. Come here and sit down by me.” She patted the cushion next to her. “Can you?”
He obeyed, sat down next to her on the couch, and sobbed loudly again.
“Paul, I am so sorry. Really I am. I am so sorry for what this is doing to you.”
“What about you? What are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know,” she said in a high voice. She ran both hands through her fine hair, pulling it all back from her face so that for an instant she looked austere. “I’ve been thinking that I’ll go back into treatment. I could go back to Dr. Steinberg. He was always very supportive.” She pressed the fingertips of both hands together, forming a little spired temple. “To find out what I’ve done, why this is happening. I’m totally in the dark. Oh, I know I’ve made a lot of mistakes, that I have certain ways. ... I’m sure some things must have driven him crazy. But still—”
“I meant,” he cried, “what are you going to do about the piano?”
“Oh, the piano. I don’t know. What can I do? He did it while we were both out. I came home a little while ago and found it gone. He took all his clothes too.” She spoke calmly, as if from a vacant space inside.
“I have to get the piano back. Where is it?”
“In his apartment, I guess.”
“What apartment?”
“Didn’t he tell you? He’s got an apartment with this Cheryl, on Dorchester. He arranged it all last month, before we knew.”
Paul hung his head over his knees. “He can’t get away with this,” he mumbled.
“Would you like some dinner?”
“I don’t know. I don’t feel like eating anymore.”
“I’ll make something anyway. You’ve got to try.”
It was odd seeing her in the tiny kitchen by herself. They had always done their fancy dishes together. Paul watched from the living room: Nan moved in slow motion, opening cabinets with faltering hands and a vague air, very slowly taking cans and boxes off the shelves and staring at their labels for long moments as if she had never seen them before. Then she opened the refrigerator door and stood looking inside it for a long time. Paul stared at her back; her shoulders began to shake as though she had opened the door onto a pathetic scene.
“Oh, forget it, you don’t have to cook.”
She finally removed something wrapped in aluminum foil and let go of the door. “No, it’s all right. I’ve got to get used to it. This is some chicken Kiev left from yesterday. He made it, actually. You see—” and she tossed her head archly—“he leaves something of himself with us.”
“How long have you known?” he asked her while they ate.
“A week. I wanted him to tell you before, to give you some time, but he said no. He insisted. A clean swift break was what he wanted. It’s been absolute hell, knowing all week and not being able to tell you. He’s not himself, Paul, this cruelty, this coldness. That bothers me more than anything else. It’s like a sickness. I think he’s psychotic. I really do. I think he’s sick. It has to do with his mother. He needs help.”
The food was sticking in his throat. Everything he ate felt, dry and scratchy as straw. He kept taking gulps of milk to wash it down, but he could still feel the lumps lying heavily in his chest. “I’m going over there tomorrow to get the piano back. You’ll give me the address.”
His mother pushed her plate away and got up. “I’m going to call him.” She brushed a few crumbs off her blouse and caught them in the palm of her hand. Paul realized how wan and weary she looked. Her face was shiny, her lipstick faded, and her skirt wrinkled as though it had been crushed underfoot. “I can’t just let it fall apart like this. It’s too hasty. It doesn’t make any sense. Maybe I can talk to him about it.” Nan went to the phone.
“Wait. What if she answers?”
“Her?” His mother smiled wryly. “I don’t care a thing about her. As far as I’m concerned, she doesn’t exist. I’ve met her, you know, around the university. We once discussed Karen Horney. Isn’t that funny? She’s nothing at all. Just young.”
“So why ...?”
Nan tilted her head and gave him a peculiar look that he couldn’t decipher, almost a grin, as she raised the receiver. She took a folded piece of paper from her pocket. “His number. How do you like that? I’ve got to consult a scrap of paper to telephone your father.”
Evidently the girl didn’t answer, since his mother began talking right away. “Richard, it’s me. Look, Richard ...” Her voice was shaking, cajoling and vulnerable. Paul felt flushed; he began clearing the table noisily to drown out her words, while his ears strained to hear above the clatter. Nan waved her hand at him to be quiet.
“Richard, look, I’m not calling to pester you or whine, believe me. I want what’s best for you. I mean, whatever you think is right for your particular needs. But I think, I’ve been thinking, this has all been too fast—I mean, I can’t absorb it. Can’t we get together and talk about it, just so it isn’t so abrupt? Maybe,” she added timidly, “even see someone about it, together?”
A very short silence. His mother sat down quickly, perched on a hard chair. Paul scraped the leavings of the two plates into the garbage can.
“All right. But, Richard, can I tell you one thing? Before you get all involved in your—your new life, as you call it, Richard, think about what you’re doing. It isn’t so simple. You have a ... a problem, this is an emotional crisis. Try to see it that way, Richard. I think you need help. Maybe you should go back to see Dr. Jonas alone, have a consultation.”
Another silence. Her lips twitched. “You’ve never talked like that. That’s what makes me think—”
Then, after a dead pause, “All right, if that’s how you’ve decided it’s going to be, I’ll call a lawyer in the morning.” She hung up.
Paul was holding a pot half-filled with reheated rice. He walked slowly into the living room. “But you didn’t mention the piano!”
“He’s really finished. He said ... incredible things.”
“The piano!” he shrieked.
“The piano,” she repeated, as if it were an unfamiliar word. “Oh, the piano. I’m sorry.”
He dumped the rice on the carpet, at her feet, and slammed the pot down after it. Then he grabbed his coat. As he went out the door he glimpsed Nan sinking slowly to her knees and scooping up handfuls of rice.
He skipped school the next day and walked all the way to the Point and back. There had been a thaw after yesterday’s rain, so that the gutters were running with slush. At about seven he went to his father’s place. It was a sleek new apartment building, steel and glass. The doorman stopped him to ask his name and destination, and Paul laughed curtly as he replied. When he got up to the sixth floor his father was at the apartment door, waiting.
“Paul.”
“I came for the piano.”
“Paul, you can’t carry it away.”
“Aren’t you going to let me in? I’m kind of cold.”
His father stepped aside. The girl was sitting cross-legged on the floor, leaning against a pile of crammed cartons. They were apparently in the middle of their dinner, which was Kentucky Fried Chicken. A large paper bucket bearing the face of the jovial colonel lay on its side, spewing out chicken parts and discarded bones. They were drinking wine out of paper cups, Bolla Soave, the same kind his father and Nan drank at home. The girl was pretty much what Paul had expected. It was reassuring yet eerie to see his banal predictions verified. She had short straight black hair that fell in bangs to her green-shadowed eyelids, and she wore a long red and green flowered gypsy dress with a round neck. Silver earrings dangled nearly to her shoulders. Her bare feet, sticking out from under the dress, were very small and delicate. But she was plumper than Paul had envisioned. She had enormous breasts. Paul imagined his father’s head nuzzling the huge breasts while the girl lay naked on the bare wood floor, her legs raised and parted. She wiped the chicken grease off her lips and hands and stood up.
“Cheryl, my son Paul.”
Cheryl came towards him smiling, extending a hand.
Paul turned away from her. “I want to talk to you.”
“Cheryl, would you mind?” It was a disgrace—he was apologetic.
Cheryl went into another room and closed the door behind her. Paul hadn’t heard the sound of her voice.
The apartment was cluttered yet looked bare and unlived in—it could be adapted to any pattern of life his father and this Cheryl fell into. Odd pieces of furniture, cartons, shopping bags, a broom and dustpan, were placed haphazardly, like litter. Looking around, Paul recognized with a slight shock two bridge chairs, a brass magazine rack, a straw wastebasket.
“Where is it?”
Richard finally shut the front door. “Where is what?”
“You know, the piano.”
“Oh, in the living room. This way.”
It stood alone in a large room that was empty except for a cream-colored shag rug on the floor and two more bridge chairs from home.
“Didn’t she bring any bridge chairs of her own?”
Richard cleared his throat and patted his graying hair. “Look, believe me, I know this confrontation is very difficult for you.”
“Oh, never mind that crap. I really didn’t think you’d do it. I didn’t realize what a bastard you were underneath.”
Richard paled. “Well,” he said coldly, “take it. No one’s stopping you.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll have a mover here tomorrow. I’m taking the day off from school.”
“Paul.” His father motioned to one of the old bridge chairs. “Let’s start again. Sit down. Please.” Richard sat. His stomach, as he settled in the small chair, sagged with flab, despite all his running. He was so pathetic that finally Paul sat down too.
Richard’s thinning hair was tousled. Paul wondered if she had rumpled it in a moment of affection. In his white shirt, dark trousers, and silver-rimmed glasses, his father resembled the benevolent village druggist Paul had often seen advertising toothpaste on television.
“I think I’m going to laugh,” said Paul. “You and her.” He motioned with a flip of his hand towards the door where Cheryl had disappeared. He expected, hoped, his father would respond angrily again, but Richard only nodded, as if it were the most natural coupling in the world.
“Are you feeling all right, Paul? Have you talked it over with Dr. Crewes? Don’t hold anything back. Tell her what it’s doing to you. It’s best to get it out, you know that. You think I’m a bastard, fine, tell her. Say anything. She’ll help you deal with it.” His mother was right. Richard spoke in a tinny mechanical way, as if his real self were elsewhere. Once again Paul was forced to think he must be sick.
With pity he went over to Richard and put a hand on his shoulder. “What is it that’s making you do this to us?” he asked kindly.
It was past eleven when Paul left for home. They had had a long and, he felt, meaningful talk. They both cried, Paul copiously, Richard joining in as one might to be sociable. At around nine Cheryl had padded into the room tentatively, but Paul shook his head, no, so Richard motioned her away. About an hour later they moved into the other room, where at Richard’s suggestion Paul ate some cold Kentucky Fried Chicken. Then Cheryl, who must have entered the living room by another route, began playing a Scarlatti sonata on the piano. Richard closed the door.
“She’s very good,” he said. “She never could afford a piano of her own before. It makes her very happy.”
Paul felt much better when he left. He understood, at least partially, why his father had done this shocking thing. According to Richard, the root cause was that he had smothered his rage at Nan’s compulsiveness and rigidity for many long years. Now it had finally erupted, as it had to someday, in this form. Also, according to Richard, he was not sick but healthy for the first time in his life. His pathology, he outlined carefully in simplified terms that Paul could understand, had been in submitting to Nan’s rigid controls. Now, with maybe twenty or more years ahead of him, he was going to start a new life and integrate his personality. It would be, he said, a voyage of self-discovery. He swallowed some wine as he talked of self-discovery, and in his eagerness to explain, a few drops dribbled along his chin. He had had trouble with women, he said, ever since boyhood—his mother got him off on the wrong track, as mothers tend to do (they both smiled knowingly), and as a result his whole marital relationship with Nan had been an unconscious working out of unresolved hostility towards his mother. He sucked deeply on his pipe amid pained reminiscences of his mother. This revelation surprised Paul slightly. His grandmother was a kindly, frail old woman with an unexpected and remarkable sense of humor; true, he thought, she did have a tendency to shower them with food and gifts on the rare occasions when they visited, but he had never realized, until Richard told him, just how controlling she was. As for Nan, Paul knew of course that Nan kept the house neat and worried excessively about getting places on time, but he had never dreamed of the tortuous ramifications these failings might have had in Richard’s mind.
“We’ll see each other often, Paul,” Richard said as he was leaving. “We’ll have an even better relationship, now we can be more open with each other.”
Paul was relieved to find Nan wasn’t waiting up for him. He felt funny—no, he could recognize and accurately name the sensation now, thanks to Dr. Crewes—ambivalent about telling Nan of his visit. He was filled with elation at the true communication he and Richard had achieved, and what he craved more than anything else was to share that elation with someone close. Yet that person couldn’t be Nan since, in some complicated way, it had been achieved at her expense. He had to hide it from her, to protect her from more pain. Paul couldn’t be angry with Nan for her pathology—with his background in treatment he knew better than that; he could only be sad at how it had wrecked the family. With the dim light of the hall behind him he looked in on her from her bedroom door. She was wearing a faded blue flannel nightgown and sleeping discreetly on her side of the big bed, her thumb touching her lips. He pitied her.
He didn’t get up at the usual time the next morning. When Nan finally came to awaken him he said he had a bad cold and wouldn’t be going to school. He was planning to surprise her with the piano.
“I’m sorry you’re sick. It’s all that walking in the rain. Can I get you some aspirins? A cup of tea?”
“No, I don’t have any fever.”
“You were out late again last night. With friends?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” she sighed, gazing sleepily around the room, “I’d better run. I’ve got my battered wives group coming first thing in the morning, then I’m taking a couple of hours off, first to see the lawyer, and then I’m seeing Dr. Steinberg for a consultation. I’ve got to get this thing straightened out in my head so I can start dealing with it realistically. I’m just not able to function this way. Patients talk to me at work and I drift off, I just can’t concentrate.”
“Well, maybe he can help you.”
“You don’t have an appointment with Dr. Crewes today, do you?”
“No, tomorrow.”
“Okay, take care of yourself. I’ll phone later to see how you are. You’re sure it’s nothing more than a cold? Does your throat hurt?”
“No, I’m sure. So long.”
As soon as she was gone he leaped out of bed and telephoned the moving company around the corner. He had worked there last summer, so they knew him well. They would do it on short notice if he offered to help.
When all the arrangements were made he had a sudden doubt—maybe he had better call his father. In the elation of last night he had forgotten to remind Richard to leave his key with the superintendent. Cheryl might not be in, and even if she was, he didn’t feel up to dealing with her yet.
Richard was with a patient, the secretary said.
“This is his son. It’s urgent.”
“What is it, Paul?” Richard’s voice came across anxiously. “Are you all right? Is Mother?”
“Yes, yes, we’re fine. It’s about the piano. I wanted to get you early. Could you have your super let the movers in? I’m not sure what time. Sometime between one and five, they said.”
“But, Paul, I don’t remember saying anything about the piano.”
“But—I told you I was coming today. Don’t you remember? And then we talked, and—”
“Paul, I’m sorry, I’m with a patient and I can’t talk. There’s been a misunderstanding. Can I call you back in half an hour?”
“The piano!” Paul screamed, frantically winding the cord of the phone around his arm and stamping his foot. “You’ve got to give back the piano!”
“Paul, please calm yourself. I can’t talk now. Paul?”
“You shit, you fucker, you motherfucking lying bastard, I’m going to kill you—”
“Paul, if you don’t stop I’ll call Dr. Crewes and have her come over and give you something.” In a quieter, muffled tone, “Excuse me, Mrs. Reed, I’m sorry for this interruption—an emergency. Paul, are you there? We must talk this over calmly, don’t do anything violent. Paul?”
Paul tore the cord out of the wall and hurled the phone to the floor.
In half an hour he was at the door of his father’s new apartment, breathing hard. He knocked quietly, so as not to alarm her. Paul had it all planned. This time he hadn’t broken his mother’s dishes or uprooted her plants. He had controlled himself with effort, hoarded it for the explosion. It was a new experience for him, dressing swiftly with deft hands, plotting and savoring his vengeance. His excitement was so strong, seething and boiling in his thighs, that it felt almost like physical pleasure. It was uncanny—as he left the building he had an erection.
“Who is it?” A high young voice. She pronounced the phrase with a rising and falling melody.
“Paul. Richard’s son.”
“Oh.” The door opened. In jeans, a navy-blue turtleneck sweater, and high boots she looked completely different, swinging and competent and held together. She wasn’t as plump, either, as she had appeared last night in her long dress. She wore hornrimmed glasses that made her face serious and purposeful. Her skin was bright with morning. “Hello, Paul. I was just on my way out. Your father’s gone to his office already. Would you like to call him?”
“I didn’t come for him.”
“Oh, me?” She was bewildered for an instant, then masked it quickly with politeness. “Why, sure. Come in. Have you had breakfast?”
He shoved past her. It was difficult to keep his arms from flying at the cartons and ripping them apart, but he wanted to carry this out perfectly, according to plan. He had a goal. He went to the living room. The bridge chairs were still close together, facing each other for intimate talk, as he and Richard had left them last night.
“Do you want to hear me play something?”
“Well ... sure. Go ahead,” she said.
He plunged into a flamboyant, racing Beethoven Rondo. His fingers recoiled instantly, for she had gotten the keys dirty with her chicken grease. But he kept on playing.
“You’re terrific. Listen, please come over and play it whenever—”
“You like Scarlatti, right? Bach? That’s your sort of thing?” He didn’t need an answer. Her music was right on the rack. Grinding his teeth together till they ached, he tore the first thin book through. She reached out to stop him, shrieking with disbelief, but he waved her off with a long arm, hitting her on the shoulder so that she stumbled a few steps away. Then he did the other books, one by one, systematically. She looked on in silence.
Then she said, “Those can be replaced, you know.”
He shredded every page of her music till the room was scattered with scraps, black notes strewn on the bare floor like trampled insects.
“Look, I understand your rage. It’s separation anxiety, very common, very normal. Can’t we talk about it?”
Paul laughed. “Do you want to deal with it too?”
He came towards her.
“Paul, you’re upset, you need help. What—”
She was at the wall, one shoulder tensed and huddled against it. Her hands flew to her chest in a crossed, protective gesture. He liked that sight of her in dread, liked it so much that he paused, relishing it like the taste of something tart on his tongue.
“Paul, please, I didn’t do anything to you. Listen, my parents were divorced too, I know how you—”
He hit her across her open mouth and stepped back. At last he felt some small relief from his seething. He was overheated, and took off his heavy jacket.
“Don’t. Don’t do anything! Please!” It was a little girl’s voice now.
He laughed again. It made him feel years older to think she was afraid of that. “Stand up straight and look at me.”
She obeyed.
“I’m not going to do that. You think I’d do that? You’re crazy. You think I want to be where he’s been, in that filthy hole?”
He hit her across the face four or five times until he felt satisfied. She tried to fight back, but she was so much smaller and weaker that he could restrain both her wrists with one hand. She kicked at him, aiming for the groin, but he kicked back, flicking her feet away as he might throw off an overeager dog. Her glasses lay smashed on the floor. Then he dragged her through the rooms until he found one with a double-bed mattress on the floor. He pushed her down on it.
“There. That’s all. Aren’t you relieved? And don’t forget to tell him, when he comes back, that I want the piano.”
He had planned to do more, to hit her harder and longer and all over, but he had lost the will. It was not the pleasure he had anticipated. He was stretched out on the couch when his mother came home.
“Paul, are you feeling any better? I called twice but you didn’t answer. Were you asleep?” She set down her packages and came over to feel his forehead. “You feel cool. You don’t look too well, though. Listen,” she went on, “I brought home some Kentucky Fried Chicken for us. I know it’s kind of tacky, but I just couldn’t face cooking. Dr. Steinberg said I shouldn’t try to do everything, just take things slowly, one at a time. Not push myself. I know you could use a decent meal, but—Paul? Are you there?”
“It’s okay. Actually I adore Kentucky Fried Chicken.”
“I’ll make you some tea with it.” She started towards the kitchen. At the threshold the telephone lay in parts at her feet. “Oh, no ... This is your work, I take it?”
“Elves.”
“Oh, Paul. Paul, honestly, I’m not in any state to deal with this now. I swear I don’t know what to say. I didn’t need this. I didn’t need this at all,” she muttered.
“They’ll come to replace it if you call your business office. You can use the extension meanwhile.”
“But why?”
“He’s not returning the piano. His little pussycat plays it too. She’s very talented.”
“Oh, God. The rotten bastard. It doesn’t excuse this mess, though. Pick it up, for heaven’s sake. And will you call the phone company in the morning? You have to learn to take the consequences of your actions.”
“Sure,” said Paul. “No sweat.”
She served the chicken and mashed potatoes on their bone china plates, and opened a bottle of Bolla Soave for herself, pouring it into a wine goblet. Nan had her hair pulled back in a bun, which made her seem older. He saw her as she would be in twenty years, her parched remains. They ate silently for a while, and then abruptly Nan put down her fork and began to speak, her eyes fixed on a point beyond Paul.
“I had a good session with Dr. Steinberg today. He’s very supportive. God knows I can use some support in this. He says there are whole areas of pathology that I’ve repressed completely, that I must bring out in the open if I want to be in touch with reality. I’ll have a lot to do. But first, he says, I have to deal with the real feelings of loss and jealousy and fear and all that, that I’m feeling. But I haven’t seemed to be feeling them, have I?”
Paul shrugged. “How do I know what you’re feeling?”
“That’s the trouble. Neither do I.”
She drank, gulped, and began to sob loudly over her goblet of wine. “Oh, God, why did this have to happen! We were happy, weren’t we? We seemed all right, didn’t we? I don’t know anything anymore. I can’t even remember, it’s all gone. I know I’m compulsive in some ways, but I never thought—” She pounded her fist on the table. “Why is he so hateful to me? I’d like to kill him. And I’m terrified. Terrified.”
“Is that what you’re supposed to do when you deal with your feelings?” Paul inquired as he continued to eat. “It didn’t sound quite right.”
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 hell 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 class to report to first. He was trying to fix his thoughts on the day ahead when, passing 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 coarse 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 embarrassed, 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 mass 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 ... God 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 hell. It can’t get worse, can it? They were happy, you know. Oh, sure, pathologies, repressions, all that shit, 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, sexy. 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 attitude—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 trimming 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. Classic.”
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?”
“I don’t know. I’m glad, I’m hopeful. Anxious, too. I’ll know better how I feel after I talk to Dr. Steinberg tomorrow, and hear what happens with Dad and Dr. Jonas. Meanwhile we’ll just have to wait. How did it go with Dr. Crewes today?”
“The usual. I’m cooking steaks. We’ll celebrate.”
“Oh, Paul, that’s sweet of you. For the first time in a week I feel like eating.”
“Will he be home for dinner?” he asked hesitantly.
“Oh, no, not yet. We’re not ready to face that yet. We’re both still too—too sore. It’s better to wait a few days till we figure out what to do. Maybe he’ll come Saturday. But don’t count on it. Don’t count on anything.”
“Oh. I guess I had this silly idea that it would all straighten out overnight.”
She came over and stroked his head. “No. It’s not that simple. There’s still a lot of struggle and pain ahead. We’ll have to change the whole structure of our relationship. Everything out in the open.” Nan drank some more, her eyes bright with zeal. “I’m going to change. It won’t be easy, but—”
“All right, all right. Let me get back to the kitchen.”
He went to bed peaceful, with only a few nagging doubts that mutated into strange dreams in which a pack of women chased him up and down a beach, half threatening, half in play. He raced up and down the concrete path bordering the shore of the lake, darting into a grove of trees to elude them, enjoying the game, but afraid too. Then he found that if they got too close all he had to do was wave his erect penis at them and they retreated in a tight cluster, backing off with round gazing eyes. He awoke suddenly on sticky damp sheets. Claudia would love this one, he thought, as he rolled over to a dry part of the bed.
He rushed directly home the next day, Friday, to see if it had arrived. School hadn’t been too painful. Refreshing, almost. He had forgotten the minor comfort of having a warm, predictable place to go each day. Of course there were problems, as he had expected. For one thing, Paul was informed that he was failing American History because he had handed in no work for two weeks. A failure would mean being dropped from the basketball team, unless he had a very good excuse. Also, the teachers were waiting for the spring term’s program choices: if he really wanted medicine later on, maybe he should take chemistry now and drop music. This was a decision he wanted to talk over with Richard and Nan. He hoped desperately that Richard would come to dinner tomorrow. They would all sit in the living room and discuss things calmly and peacefully, as they used to. He would have to tell them how he hadn’t been in school—they would find out sooner or later. His home room teacher, naturally, was demanding an explanation of his absence all week. Nan and Richard would ask where he had been. On the streets. But then again they might be too preoccupied even to ask.
He paused before opening the door, trembling. Then he rushed in. The piano was home, back in place, where it should be. Tears of relief came to his eyes at the sight of it. So it was all right to have trusted them, this time. He touched the keys hesitantly, awkwardly, as if he hadn’t touched them for weeks, then wiped them off with a damp rag. He took out his Beethoven, his Joplin, his folk song books, and rearranged them on the rack where they belonged. Then he played till Nan returned, running through nearly every piece he knew, one after the other. It was the beginning of good times again. For they had been good—he hadn’t appreciated his life before. Even Nan’s and Richard’s old, dull, suffocating ways would be welcome now, anything after this week.
“Oh, I see it’s back,” Nan called from the hall. “I’m glad.” She came over and kissed Paul. “At least one thing is in place again.” She was almost in place again too, Paul saw. That brisk, self-assured everyday coping, Nan’s distinctive note, was returning. He watched as she stepped into the kitchen, where she washed her hands and immediately began to slice onions for her special chili with avocado and sour cream. She seemed to know exactly what to do; it was a relief. Still, it was odd how he missed the wan, weepy Nan, strung out on the taut threads of her agony, or that other strange, sensual Nan, with the nighttime voice and undone hair.
“I called him today,” she chattered from the kitchen, “and asked how it went with Jonas, and he said all right. That was all he said about it. I think we should relax for a couple of days and let things take their course. Oh, he will be here for dinner tomorrow night after all. Sort of a phased re-entry.” She slid the onions into a frying pan and a hot sizzle arose, like the sizzle of Nan’s energy returning. “He asked about you. Also, I saw Dr. Steinberg again this morning.”
“Oh. What did he have to say?”
“Well, for one thing, he said to act spontaneously, out of feeling, not from a predetermined script, you know, with built-in expectations. Why don’t you play something till it’s ready, Paul?”
He chose ragtime, an ironic beat. His father would be home tomorrow night; that was all that mattered. The rest of it was puzzling. He clung to the one stable fact: Richard would come tomorrow; they would talk calmly about his problems in school; things would be normal again.
Paul went out early the next morning while Nan was still asleep, leaving a note saying he would be at the library. He had phoned to cancel his eleven o’clock Saturday morning appointment with Dr. Crewes, explaining to her tape machine that he had urgent school-work to make up. Restless with energy, lying sleepless in bed as a gray light dawned, he had formulated a practical plan. He could work all day, getting as much of the history done as possible, and hand it in Monday along with a note from one of his parents pleading family difficulties, some crisis or other. They would know what to say. With luck he would catch the teacher in a sympathetic mood; then he could remain on the basketball team.
He sat over his books for hours, surprised that he was able to concentrate. Throughout, the prospect that Richard would be there at night sustained him like a snug life jacket. By five o’clock he was weary and pleased with himself. When he got in from the bitter cold, he saw Nan’s coat thrown carelessly over a chair, her open pocketbook hanging by its strap from a doorknob. A half-empty coffee cup rested on the carpet near the couch. That was unlike her. Paul hoped she wasn’t sick. Nothing could go wrong tonight. He had been through enough—it had to end now. His back and chest broke out in a cold sweat. He had done all that homework; he had controlled himself; now he needed to talk to them. As he turned the lights on he felt a twinge of pain and remembered one more detail that demanded attention: the school nurse had told him last Friday that he might need glasses; the glare of the fluorescent bulbs hurt his eyes. This week they had been aching more than ever, especially today in the library. Paul had felt the pain but not registered it as a discrete fact, it had been so merged in the larger pain.
There was no answer when he called out, so he knocked on Nan’s bedroom door, then opened it. She was lying fully dressed on the bed, one arm shielding her eyes.
“Mom, are you sleeping?”
“Paul?” She raised her head. “No. I didn’t hear you come in. What time is it?”
“Twenty after five. Are you sick?”
“No. I’m not sick.”
He had never heard that voice before. It was low, not sensual but vacant, and sounded like it came from the marrow of her bones. He rushed over. “What’s the matter with you?”
“He called this morning. He’s decided after seeing Dr. Jonas, the high priest, that what he needs is a complete separation, even though he’s not going back to his girlfriend.” Her face was totally motionless except for her lips, which barely moved as she spoke.
Paul sat down on the bed. He hardly grasped the sense of her words, so stunned was he by this new, hollow voice coming out of her. It must be Nan, he thought wildly, yet it was not Nan. In panic, he hunched his shoulders and made a supreme effort to sit still and speak quietly.
“He’s not coming back?”
“No. I told you. He’s—uh, let me see, what does he have now? Oh, it’s a midlife crisis, the doctor said. It’s so hard to keep up with the diagnoses.”
“Are you being funny?”
“Yes, I think so. Isn’t it funny?” She didn’t laugh or smile, though. “He wants control over his own life, he wants—um, let’s see, what else—he wants to change his patterns of response.” She spoke in a dull, singsong manner, almost demented, almost like a chant. “There is allegedly a whole phase of early development he never went through. And of course he needs to get in touch with his true feelings. That, by all means. Who could quarrel with that?”
“Mom, should I call a doctor for you? I mean, a regular doctor?”
“No. I’m quite well. I am in touch with my feelings at last. I have no feelings.”
“Please!” he shrieked, his voice cracking high like a much younger boy’s. “Stop it!”
“Sorry,” she said in the same flat way. “That wasn’t true. The truth is—what is the truth? Can you believe, I think I love him. But how can I love that bastard? It’s an obscenity.”
He got up. His veins were throbbing with blood again. It was himself he would hurl this time, knock himself out cold to lose consciousness. Bang his head on the wall till it broke open and spilled like a coconut oozing milk. The roots of his hair prickled; he felt a falling, thudding drop in his intestines.
She half sat up, leaning on her elbows, and gave him a stabbing, menacing look. “If you do that,” she said slowly in her hollow tone, “if you throw anything or touch anything, I swear I will tear you to shreds.” Her fingers bent stiffly and curled up.
She was hypnotic. He wished he could go to her and cry on her breast, but she had become too awesome for that, a terrible, mythical creature.
“Thank you,” she said, relapsing into herself, and lay back again.
Paul went to his room, sat on the bed, and shook. Everything shook, inside and out. He watched the shaking hands with a removed fascination. Soon he heard a key in the lock and he jumped to his feet. The door opened and closed, then a shuffling sound, then the bumping of wooden hangers in the front closet.
“Paul? Are you home?”
He tried to answer but nothing came out of his throat, which had locked shut. He walked to the living room.
“Hello, Paul. I wanted to see you,” his father said. His suit was creased. His striped shirt was wrinkled, too. He lit a cigarette.
“I ...” Paul tried to say, but only a crackling sound came. Tears filled his eyes. He feared that he was going to collapse into his father’s arms and cry like a child. He didn’t want to do that, but he felt it was going to happen anyway. Then he heard the soft padding sounds of his mother’s slippered feet and he waited, gripped with curiosity to see who she would be this time. Nan was simply herself, worn, gray-faced, smoothing her dress and brushing the hair out of her eyes.
“Richard? I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Hello, Nan. I thought I was coming for dinner. Or do I have the wrong night?”
“Dinner?” she whispered.
“Dinner. What’s the matter? Are you sick or something?”
Nan leaned on the kitchen doorframe. “Richard, I assumed after you called this morning that you weren’t coming.”
Paul rolled his aching eyes from one to the other. It was like a play, just as she had said.
“Oh, did I say that? I don’t remember. I wanted to see Paul. Nan, we can still see each other, after all—”
“Richard, you’re insane.” It was that voice again.
“Now let’s not get started like that. Can’t we even meet without accusations? Always the same old story. God, how did I ever put up with it for so long,” he grumbled bitterly, turning away and walking to the window with his hands thrust in his pockets.
Nan straightened up. “All right. Dinner.” Her voice was charged now with an eerie brightness. “What’s for dinner? Anyone have any ideas? What can we serve on short notice for our distinguished guest?”
“I’ll get dinner,” said Paul.
They stared at him in surprise, as if they had forgotten he was there.
“I’ll get dinner,” he repeated in a loud, hoarse voice. Paul shoved past Nan into the kitchen. His hands were shaking again. He yanked open a drawer and took out the carving knife. Clutching its handle tightly to steady the trembling, he held it out straight in front of him and returned to the doorway. He looked from one to the other. They were standing in the same places, Nan slumped against the doorframe and Richard farther away, at the window, hands in his pockets. They didn’t know yet. Nan was not looking at him but at Richard.
His father noticed him first. “Paul?” he said quietly, and started towards him. Then Nan saw too and gasped. Her hand jerked up to her mouth.
“Don’t come near me,” said Paul. Nan stepped aside, but Richard moved closer to grab his wrist. Paul flicked the knife upward so it grazed the sleeve of Richard’s jacket.
“I’m going to solve all your problems for you,” Paul said.
“Paul, no, put it down, please,” said Nan. He ignored her. Richard was affecting nonchalance now, standing nearby in a relaxed pose, waiting for Paul to lose his nerve and drop the knife.
Paul imagined the thrust, how hard and deep he would have to push, the resistance of the flesh and then the crowning surge of warm blood. It would be the greatest release of his life, a great flow, a torrent. He stepped toward Nan, who cringed, then he stepped back. He moved toward Richard, who inched back cautiously. To Nan again. Then Richard. Then Nan. They were holding their breath, terrified of him. Whose blood? The question darted through his head, in and out of turns and dark corridors, a maze with no exit, and then suddenly balked, up against a flat wall of flaming red, he swiveled the knife and sliced inside his own wrist. A path opened, a thin red line, then an ooze, a stream, dripping from his trembling arm onto the green carpet. He dropped the knife. They were upon him, Nan whimpering and rocking to and fro, Richard embracing him and sobbing. Nan ran for a dish towel and bound it tightly around his wrist.
“Quick, let’s get him into the car,” she cried. “Get his coat.”
Richard stood sobbing in choking gulps. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”
Nan threw a coat over Paul’s shoulders and pushed them both towards the door. She was swift and efficient.
“I did this,” moaned Richard. “This is my doing.”
She had a moment, at the elevator, to place a hand on his shoulder and lean against him. “Oh, Richard,” she said gently in a soft wail, “you can’t leave now. Oh, you can’t. You see how much he needs you.”
Richard nodded again and again, wiping his eyes with his fist.
The towel was sopping with blood, but luckily Nan had remembered to bring along extras. She changed the bandage and dropped the dripping red towel in a trash can outside the front door.
“Poor child,” she murmured. “Oh, my poor baby.”
“I’ll do anything for him now,” said Richard. He had stopped crying and was slamming the car door shut and starting the engine. “He’ll need more intensive treatment. I’ll have a consultation with Dr. Crewes. Can you stand to have me—”
“We’ll work everything out, everything. Just so long as he’s all right,” said Nan from the back seat, where she sat cradling Paul’s head in her lap.