Eric tapped his oxblood shoe on the rug. We’d been sitting in silence for ten minutes. Actually, I was lying on the couch.
“Theresa,” he said, “if you don’t move forward, you don’t just stay in place. You start slipping back. Regressing.”
I was thinking about how much money I was losing each minute I didn’t talk. I looked up at Eric’s big black-and-white wall clock. I thought of the clock over the bar at the Time Cafe. The way it moves backward, around and around, the whole time you’re there. The whole time you’re there that clock is speeding backward. I stared at Eric’s clock and saw its hands crossing counterclockwise, the hour beginning again, then the day, yesterday, the year. I curled on the couch. I saw me and Brian standing in the Hall of Evolution—right by the apes—the first time we held hands. Before anything had started.
I felt small. A child. A baby. My body got that dense feeling I get sometimes. Like a shape in space. I was buzzing, fuzzy. I could feel myself beginning to unravel. The hair on my arms standing out, thickening, my torso yielding to gravity, bending forward. Hair all over me. A lumpen, cumbersome body. I felt myself slipping backward through the entire process of evolution. All shuddering blood and fur. I slipped farther and farther back until I was a fish skittering through water. A quick phosphorescence on a wave. Then the mud and I was part of the ooze, seeping into the silty mush, a leafy thing washed in a bog. Eric’s shoe shot past my line of sight like a salmon slipping upstream. I wanted to sleep. I wanted Eric to lie on top of me and hold me. Stop me. Rock me to sleep.
“Theresa,” he said, “I want you to try to talk to me.”
And I want you to fuck me. I didn’t say it. I didn’t even want it really.
Brian and I had not become lovers. By the time Dylan was singing “You’re a Big Girl Now,” around again on continuous play, we’d somehow skirted it all. One minute we were on his couch, kissing, touching, working off each other’s clothes. The next I was sobbing in his arms and overcome by nausea. At least I hadn’t thrown up.
He was great about it. In half an hour I told him everything. Well, some of it. Yvonne. Mark. The affair. Pastina, lipstick, Opium. The green scarf, the Korean woman, the red plastic alarm clock and all those shoes. In half an hour I explained about the Three Stooges, Aunt Anita, and the figure skaters. Tristan and Al-Anon. It all came out in a jumble and I know he really didn’t get what I was talking about.
He held me and talked to me.
“Theresa,” he said. “Do you mind if I call you Theresa? It’s a beautiful name.”
“Only my shrink calls me Theresa,” I said.
“My name’s not Theresa,” I said now to Eric.
“Excuse me?”
“I said my name’s not Theresa.”
“All right. What is your name?”
I could tell he thought I was going to start playing games. I wondered how much I could push him before he’d start to yell at me. Hit me. I don’t think therapists are allowed to yell at their patients. Certainly not hit them.
“Terry,” I said. “My name is Terry. Everyone calls me Terry. Not Theresa. I don’t know why I told you my name was Theresa.”
Eric didn’t say anything. I could hear him breathing, but now I couldn’t even see his shoes. My eyes were closed. I heard the two of us breathing. Breakthrough, I could hear him thinking. Maybe he’d come over and hug me.
“What else do you want to tell me?” he asked.
The guy is absolutely dispassionate.
“I’ve been going to Al-Anon meetings,” I said.
This is true. I’ve gone back. Not to St. Barnabas. I didn’t feel I could go back there. I’m going to a church on Waverly Place. I like it better there. The people. Mostly gay men and women. People like me. Downtown people. I’ve begun talking, too. The place is comforting. As a kind of superstition I always wear Yvonne’s skirt and blouse to the meetings. I’ve admitted I’m a co-dependent, though to tell the truth I’m still not quite sure what that means. When I hear it defined it sounds pretty much like anybody. But I even like that.
“Do you like the meetings?” Eric asked.
“Yeah.”
“And what do you call yourself there?” he asked. I’m pretty sure he was joking. Trying to be lighthearted.
“Well, that’s the thing,” I said. “I say I’m Yvonne.”
There was a silence.
“What else do you say?”
I’ve been introducing myself as Yvonne. Sharing at meetings that I’m having an affair with the husband of a woman I like very much. A close friend. That I found myself trying to look like her and act like her. That I really do look like her. When I write this down it sounds pretty crazy. And I guess I’ve been feeling crazy. I’m continually afraid I’ll run into Sarah at a meeting. I haven’t told her any of this. And she’s my best friend.
“Terry,” Eric said. The first time he said my real name.
“Eric, I’m scared.”
“It’s okay. It’s okay to be scared. It’s good you’re talking.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I said, but I didn’t feel good. I’d begun to drop by Yvonne’s after almost every session and I was going today. “I don’t want to leave,” I said.
“It’s okay. Call me if you need to talk,” he said. “And thank you.”
“For what?”
“For trusting me with your name.”
It wasn’t a hug. But it was something.