Mark was staring out over the Arts and Leisure section of the Times. I wasn’t sure if he was staring at me or just in a daze. Tony curled on his lap, padding his paws against Mark’s jeans. I was sprawled on the rug beside Chico, planning Monday’s class.
Maybe it was the Al-Anon meetings, but I had started to feel back on track a little. I practiced detaching, like they said in the meetings. I kept trying to see myself as separate from other people. I had taken several pictures of me and Mark and scissored them in half. I wrote my name and Mark’s name on a large piece of paper, then I ripped it in half and put the two halves in different places. I did visualizations of my mother in a sealed box hurtling through the universe away from me. I’m learning to separate.
Brian is in both of my classes now, auditing one, just, I think, to be with me. It helps me get to class. And I think I’ve been helping him too. We spent three days at Angelika seeing every film on the marquee. There’s still this longing between us, but after that time in his apartment we’ve kept things pretty tame. I was reading his poems, encouraging him to write. He was encouraging me to confront Mark. But I wasn’t ready. Actually, I was avoiding Mark. I was almost afraid he’d do something to give it away.
Mark put the paper down and held Tony, stroking his fur. He picked him up and kissed him on the nose. He was looking at me.
Ask him, I kept thinking. I’d had a dream the night before about this guy Mr. Italiano, and I thought it might have been a sign. I mean why would I dream about Mr. Italiano? When the gallery opened, Mark and David had two silent partners. One of them—Mr. Italiano we called him, they weren’t supposed to reveal his name—owned this beautiful de Kooning he wanted to get rid of very privately. The trouble was, Mr. Italiano had a huge insurance policy out on the painting which stipulated that the de Kooning had to stay in his apartment. So Mark had his keys. He had to bring people all the way up to East 67th Street to see the painting. But when he sold it, it covered the gallery expenses for months.
In the dream, Mark had his arm around Mr. Italiano. I thought the dream might be telling me that Yvonne was a silent partner. Still, why wouldn’t Mark have told me? Maybe Yvonne has a secret painting, too, though all I’ve seen is that hideous dog—which doesn’t look very valuable. Maybe it’s illegal, maybe the painting was a gift. And maybe she’s having an affair with Mark.
That’s the thing about dreams. Maybe it was warning me that Yvonne is the kind of silent partner I should worry about.
“Are you in a Dylan phase or something?” Mark asked
I’d been playing Blood on the Tracks for two hours. And reciting the Serenity Prayer to myself.
“I guess.” I picked Chico up and pulled him to me.
“I think I prefer Maria Callas,” he said. He picked up the Week in Review. “Can we switch? I’m in the mood for a little shrieking and moaning.” I’d had on Norma all week.
I didn’t answer. When I stood to stretch Mark reached his foot across and through my legs and pulled me toward him.
“Cut it out. I’m working.”
“What is going on with you?”
“What do you mean?”
He stared at me.
“What?” I asked.
He just kept staring.
“What?”
“I’m just looking at you,” he said. “Take it easy.” He leaned back in the chair. “Tonight’s the last night of the Three Stooges festival at Film Forum. Want to go?”
“Uh-uh.” I shook my head. I’d already gone with Brian.
“How’s your stomach?” he asked.
“Okay,” I said.
“Are you premenstrual or something?”
“I don’t think so.” I’d skipped my last period. I always do when I’m upset. So I wasn’t sure where in the cycle I was.
“How come you’re so quiet?”
I shrugged. “I’ve been writing,” I said.
It was true. Brian had encouraged me to write. I’ve always kept a journal. Notes, dreams, day-to-day stuff. But last week I wrote a poem. It’s more direct than the stuff I wrote in college, but it needs work. It’s called “Position of Prayer.” I just have the beginning.
I should have known
the way you loved
to fuck me in the ass
that I would end
up on my knees,
if only from exhaustion.
It’s all behind me now.
I have always knelt
to the wrong gods.
That’s as far as I got. I wrote a lot more, but this is what I could salvage. It’s not Yeats, but it’s a beginning.
In the middle of “Idiot Wind” I grabbed a small bronze maquette from the bookcase. It was shaped like a weapon or fertility symbol and was made by one of Mark’s sculptors. I held it to my mouth and sang with Dylan. It’s a song I sang with the band. I always loved to sing when I was angry, jerking back and forth into the mike, into the audience, sounding more angry than I’d ever let myself sound in real life. Even though it was only a small Brooklyn band I’ve never felt the way I used to feel up there on stage. When you could be someone else, or maybe just a cooler, stronger version of yourself, that music coming through you.
I leaned into Mark, into the Week in Review. I sang. “I can’t feel you anymore. I can’t even touch the books you read.”
“What is with you?” He slammed the paper down.
I turned up the volume and kept singing. Louder and louder. The blast from the speaker knocked several rocks off the top of the bookcase. Tony and Chico jumped from the chair and raced out of the room. Mark grabbed my shoulders and started to shake me. Dylan kept going. “You’ll never know the hurt I’ve suffered nor the pain I rise above.”
Mark held me against the wall. This wasn’t the way I’d wanted it to come up. I wasn’t prepared, hadn’t figured out what I’d say, what I’d ask. On Sunday, for God’s sake. I pushed away.
“I know about Yvonne,” I said.
He looked positively stunned.
“I know who she is.”
“What are you talking about?” He was looking at me the way you watch your opponent about to slam back a tennis ball.
“Oh, come on, Mark. Don’t act like an asshole on top of everything.”
“Terry, you’d better tell me exactly what you mean.”
“Oh, exactly. I’ll tell you exactly what I mean. Yvonne Adams. I know everything. I know you’re fucking her. Exactly.”
“What the hell are you talking about? She’s a client. She’s looked at some work. She has something I’m interested in.”
“I can see that.”
“A painting, Terry.”
I thought of that dog. I’d have to check it.
The phone rang and the machine clicked on but I couldn’t hear who was talking. A voice rambled leisurely.
“I’m telling you,” Mark said. He stood there looking at me, hands in his hair, elbows out, like someone about to be frisked by a cop. “Wait a minute,” he said, “I refuse to be a part of this conversation. I don’t believe I’m even discussing this. Even if I were fucking Yvonne—which I am not—it would have nothing to do with you. Do you hear me? Nothing.”
The answering machine beeped for the end of the message.
“Are you nuts? Are you kidding? It has everything to do with me. I’m your wife. I’m your wife.”
“Do you hear yourself? Do you hear what you sound like? Jesus. You sound just like your mother.”
Dylan was blasting. Mark ripped the needle off the album.
“We went through this five years ago,” he said. “I told you I didn’t believe in marriage. I told you I would never allow myself to be in this position. Questioned and cross-examined.”
I leaned against the wall. He was right. He hadn’t wanted to get married. Kept talking about Nietzsche and Foucault, limits and freedom, good and evil. I’d thought he’d get over it. I mean, it sounds great, but who really believes that stuff?
“I won’t be married to someone who’s fucking someone else,” I said.
“And I won’t be manipulated by you. I will not allow you to dominate me the way your mother keeps your poor bastard of a father shackled to the bathtub listening to opera. What’s more, you don’t want me to.” He turned quickly and knocked over a stack of CDs. “Why the fuck do you think you’re with me? How long would you have stayed with me if I’d let you lead me around by the nose?”
“Say it,” I said. “Just say it, goddammit. Say you’re fucking her.”
“I’m not talking to you until you calm down.”
“Fuck you. Fuck you, Mark.” I grabbed the maquette and threw it across the room, just missing the Bakelite clock David gave us as a wedding present.
Mark grabbed my hair, yanked me around, and slapped me. I remember the fast scratching sounds of the cats running across the floor. All I could think of was that woman in the pink dress from St. Barnabas Church.
“Jesus,” he said. He stood looking at me. I think he was more shocked than I was. “Listen, I’m going out for a half an hour.” He took a step toward me. “I’m sorry I hit you. Terry, Jesus, I’m sorry. But when I come back we have to talk.”
I didn’t say anything. I heard the door shut. I scooped Tony up and held him so tight he started wriggling and scratching to get down.
I tried to calm down. I put Dylan back on, picked up the CDs, did some breathing exercises. I said the Serenity Prayer. Over and over. It occurred to me we hadn’t made love. We always make love after we fight. But we’d never fought like that. Except for when we were deciding whether to get married.
I had forced him into it. He kept saying he wouldn’t love me any less if we just continued living together. He just didn’t like the idea of marriage. Didn’t like what it did to people. I started thinking that maybe he was right. Whose marriage really looks good when it comes down to it? No one’s. I was thinking about how much I love Mark. Love to come home to him, be with him. Go to movies and talk. I’ve never talked to anyone the way I talk to Mark, never had so much fun. I was thinking how I should be adult about it all. Maybe it was true. You could have a brief affair and it wouldn’t mean anything. What harm would it have done if I’d been able to make love to Brian? I could still do it now. It wasn’t bad or good. Mark’s always gotten on me for that.
“Everything with you is either good or bad,” he says. “You’re not a child, for God’s sake. Life is complicated.” Or he teases me. “Good little Catholic girl. Obedient to the bone.”
“Remember your Nietzsche,” he wrote on his wedding card to me.
I felt calmer and ready to talk. Love was bigger than I was making it out to be. Love was about the long haul. I poured a glass of wine but didn’t drink it. I took Dylan off the turntable.
Mark came in exactly a half hour later.
I went over first and put my arms around him. He was tentative, then he yielded.
“Terry, we have to talk,” he said. He held me. Kissed my hair. I leaned into him.
“Look, I’m sorry I got all crazy,” I said. I rubbed my head along his chest. “It’s okay. Just tell me the truth and I’ll stop asking.”
He dropped his arms and fell into the chair on top of Chico, who hissed and darted out.
“I said I am not going to discuss this.”
“You just said we have to talk.”
“I refuse to talk about Yvonne.”
“Just answer this, then. Have you gone to dinner with her?”
“I’ve had dinner with her.”
“Do you like her? I mean, are you attracted to her?”
“Terry.”
“Just answer me.”
“Goddammit you’re starting again. Yes. I like her. She’s cute. She’s a little lonely. She reminds me of my sister.”
“That’s sick.”
“Jesus Christ. Aside from any of this, if I wanted to get involved in a purely sexual relationship, and I am not saying I do, I am certainly not going to talk to you about it.”
“Oh. And your relationship with your sister is purely sexual?”
“You’re not being rational. You’re not listening to me.”
The keys. I wanted to ask about the keys. Let him try to explain the keys. But then I’d have to explain how I knew about them.
“I just want to know what’s going on.”
“Terry, you’re my wife, not my jailer.”
“I’m going to bed,” I said.
“Fine.”
“Fine. Fuck you. Fine. I hate you. Your stupid ideas. I hate Foucault. And Nietzsche. I hate Nietzsche.”
Mark suddenly laughed. The way he laughs when I’ve surprised him. He shook his head. I turned to walk to the other end of the loft. He pulled at my shoulder.
“Cut it out.”
“Come here,” he said. He pulled me toward him and rocked me. “Tree, Tree, Tree,” he whispered into my neck. He kissed me. “I think maybe the girl needs a brushup. Yeah, I think she needs a refresher course in Nietzsche.”
I yanked away. “Don’t touch me,” I think I said.
He pushed me forward onto the couch.
“Get on your knees,” he said.
I tried to pull away. He put his arm around my waist and lifted me up until I was kneeling. He pushed my head toward the couch. Yanked down my jeans.
“Come on, baby. Time to say your prayers. I think you forgot to say your prayers tonight.”
Obey God, Go to Church, Read the Bible. I could see the pencil scrawl on Dean & DeLuca’s bathroom wall. The penis with eyes. I felt sick.
Mark must have noticed something because I think he turned me around. I remember him saying how clammy I felt. And then we were in the bathroom. I was puking my guts out. Retching and choking.
Mark held me. Washed my head with a cold cloth. Held my wrists under cold running water. He brought me onto the bed and then held me and rocked me for what seemed like half the night. It was getting darker and darker. Quieter.
Tony and Chico humped up around us. Chico kept pushing his cold nose into my hair and face.
The room seemed so still. Mark and I rocked together on our bed.
“Treas,” he said after a long time. “Honey, do you think you might be pregnant?”