The other day I read something Yeats said about the ethical impulse always breaking the ethical law.
That afternoon I finally got Brian into bed.
It was different from what I’d expected—what with everything that had led to it. Friendship. Desire. Whatever. When we were finally lying together, Brian inside me, gently moving in and out, me holding him, sweaty against him in the way I’d so often imagined, it almost felt less real than it had in my head. When you’re alone, imagining, you can bring all your concentration to bear on what he feels like beneath you, inside you, above you. When he’s there you get diverted thinking about what he’s thinking, how he’s responding, what he’s feeling, wanting, what your body feels like to him. You monitor and modulate his arousal. Your arousal. All that stuff. It’s much more complicated. In some respects, the other person always gets in the way.
Brian’s a quiet lover. Not like Mark. Mark fucks emphatically. Talking talking talking. Ordering me around. Bend. Kneel. Lift. Suck. I climb and move all over him. I feel like I’m a part of something. I couldn’t tell if it was me coming or him coming when I finally started to come and despite what people say about it—about knowing when it happens—I still often confuse our bodies at that moment. What’s moving, spasming, contracting. Which one of us.
With Brian it’s different. I mean it’s lovely, but I’m as quiet as he is while we’re fucking. It’s almost like I’m afraid to disturb him. Afraid to say anything to break his concentration. The way they say you should never wake a sleepwalker. His sounds of appreciation and excitement are low and deep and genuine. But quiet, which is strange for someone so talkative and generally boisterous. It’s like being in church, a library.
He keeps his eyes closed and I feel like I want to bang him against the bed to crack him open. Let me in, I remember saying when we were making love, and I know he had no idea what I meant. He’s a puzzle. It surprises me because I feel so connected to him, attached. When my mouth closes over his cock it feels right in there. I feel I could touch every part of him. Reach inside him. But it’s harder than I thought it would be. Harder to get inside.
I was thinking I’d have to train him, bring him out. The way Mark did for me. But it’s not the same thing.
“It seems like you want to be dominated,” he said after we made love again the next afternoon. He said it in a disinterested sort of way. Anthropologically. It was funny, him spelling it out like that. We were on his floor. He ran his hand down my back, pushed away a copy of Les Fleurs du Mal he’d been reading to me.
“I’m not like that, Terry,” he said.
“It’s okay. I’ll teach you.” I climbed back on top of him, but there was a gulf I couldn’t cross.
Wear your black silk dress. Nothing underneath. And those black heels. And be here in fifteen minutes, Mark used to say over the phone. It would be midwinter, freezing.
Nothing underneath, do you understand? No stockings. Nothing.
I remember squirming out of my pantyhose in the back seat of a cab, nervously eyeing the driver in the rearview mirror to see if he was watching. I remember thinking he’d probably seen worse. Once I even left the stockings behind. I was so turned on I think I might have done it on purpose.
When I’d get to Mark’s he’d pick me up at the door and fuck me with my dress and shoes on. For hours. At some point the dress would come off but I’d never remember when.
I wonder if he does this with Yvonne.
“It’s freezing out there,” Brian said when I suggested the thing about the dress.
“Just tell me,” I said. “Tell me what to do. Force me to do something.”
“Get me a glass of water,” he said, and we both laughed.
Brian’s the first Catholic man I’ve ever made love to. I can feel the guilts and hesitations, the conflicts inside him. Like they’re my own. And I can’t help but feel he disapproves. We fuck, then barely mention what we’ve done. It’s like we’re trying to do it without actually acknowledging what we’re doing. I think he keeps his eyes closed so he doesn’t have to register it’s me. His teacher. A married woman. I can’t even say we are lovers. We can’t take the liberties lovers can.
I’d wondered if he could handle me—I even asked him—but now I’m beginning to think that it’s me that won’t be able to handle him. I can’t break into him.
“Tell me your fantasies?” I said. Brian just laughed.
I have to accept the fact that maybe he doesn’t have any.
“There are things I haven’t been telling you,” I said to Eric, “but I can’t remember what they are.”
I was back in the chair. I was sick of that couch. I hadn’t told Eric about sleeping with Brian. I hadn’t been to Yvonne’s since I’d vowed not to—not even once—but I still felt like I needed to tell him.
Eric leaned back. On the wall behind him was a new painting of a sailboat. A bad painting, though probably he doesn’t think so. The boat—hangs is the only word for it—in the middle of a swirl of greenish-blue that has white icing-like ripples smudged at intervals. It seems stranded, unmoored. A lost soul.
“Just say everything that comes into your mind,” he said, “and don’t worry about repeating yourself.”
I thought of long strands of cutout paper dolls. I could see whole rows of me repeating, joined at the hands and shoulders.
“Nice painting,” I said. “It makes me think of A Portrait of Jenny.”
It didn’t. It wasn’t moody or atmospheric in the least. It was moodless. Without weather. Like a magazine ad plunked down on a piece of construction paper.
“The film?”
“What?”
“A Portrait of Jenny.”
I couldn’t help laughing. I was looking around the room for something to talk about. My eyes scanned the bookshelves. Discipline and Punish stuck out at eye level. Foucault.
“I had a dream,” I said.
He nodded.
“I dreamed you and Father Dugan—I told you about him, right?”
He nodded again.
“Anyway, you and he kept changing into one another. He—you—were wearing a priest’s collar and those oxblood shoes you have. ‘I want you to tell me everything,’ he kept saying.”
“And what did you tell me?”
“I don’t remember.”
Eric just sat there waiting, his chin balanced on the tips of his fingers.
“He tied my hands and feet with rosary beads,” I said after a while. I was making it up. “And spanked me.”
“So you feel safe when you’re tied down?”
“I don’t know.”
The clock said 12:30. The hands a solid line dividing the face in half.
“Why do you feel you need to be punished?”
He was trying everything. I felt almost sorry for him. But I was also feeling sorry for myself. Help me, I wanted to scream.
“Do you think I’m bad?” I asked him. It was out of my mouth before I could stop it. I remembered Yeats and breaking the ethical law, but it seems to me I don’t know anything about ethics. Everything feels all helter-skelter inside me. Haphazard.
“What do you mean ‘bad’?”
“Do you think I’m ugly?”
The night before I’d stood for the longest time in front of the mirror. Mark was on the bed writing catalog copy for the gallery. I’d been trying on clothes, checking to see if I’d gained any weight, waiting to see if Mark would notice anything different about me.
“What do you think I look like?” I asked Mark.
“A lot better than this shit I’m supposed to be showing.”
He said it without looking up.
“Do you think I’m ugly?”
“Oh Christ, not again.”
For someone who is Jewish, Mark says Jesus and Christ a lot.
“Treas, I love the way you look. You know that.” He put his notes down and came up behind me. He hugged me, kissed my hair, my ear, closed his hands over my breasts, then slid my shirt down. I looked at the two of us in the mirror. Adulterers.
“But don’t you sometimes look at me across the table and think, Jesus, she looks hideous?”
“Well, you do get that Karl Malden look from time to time.” I’ve noticed that Mark’s gotten really cautious whenever we enter any potentially serious conversation.
“Come on, you know what I mean. I mean don’t you look at yourself sometimes and see something completely different from what you’d expected? What you’re used to seeing. I mean, look at me. Do I look the same as I did yesterday? I think I looked completely different yesterday.”
Mark just shook his head and held me. We looked at each other in the mirror. He crossed his eyes and made a face that used to make me laugh. I had assumed he’d know in a second I was having an affair. So much for Proust.
I looked back at the mirror. Sometimes I think if I look long enough I’ll see myself the way other people do. I read somewhere that no two people see precisely the same thing. Like the color green is slightly different to each person. Even if someone says teal green everyone will point to the same thing. What they see as teal green. But what they’re each seeing is something different. So what really is teal green? I think Judy Davis is beautiful and Mark thinks she’s just okay. I wish I could see what he’s seeing. But that’s about taste. I’m talking about what you see. It’s always bothered me that there are parts of me that other people will always be able to see better than I can. Like if I turn around to see myself from behind, I’ll always be seeing a slightly twisted version of myself. Or take the back of your head. How many people really know what the back of their ears looks like? But a stranger sitting behind you at a concert might spend the entire time watching them. Know them better than you’ll ever know them. See how they give you away.
So why couldn’t Mark see I was having an affair?
“Do you think I look like Yvonne?”
Mark dropped his hands and just looked at me.
The phone rang.
Neither of us moved.
And I could tell he was still seeing her.
“Do you think you’re ugly?” Eric asked. It was 12:40. Ten minutes to go. Eric fingered his tie. He hardly ever wears a tie. It makes him look like a serious child.
“Who do you think thinks you’re ugly?” He was trying everything.
“I want to know what you think,” I said. “I want to know what you are seeing when you see me. I want to know what you hear when I talk to you. Damn it, I want to know what you think of me. I mean, do you ever think of me when I’m not here? Do I ever occur to you while you’re watching a movie, or sitting at home with your wife? And what do you think of when you think of me? How do you picture me? What am I wearing? Have you ever wondered what I look like naked? I mean, do you really want to know me?”
“Terry, what do you want?”
He always turns things around.
“I want you to know me,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, “I think you want to be known. I think you want someone to know you very well. The way you think your mother knew you when you were a child.”
I almost laughed. I know you like a book. I know you inside out. You can fool your friends but you can’t fool me. My mother knew everything. Eric was looking very earnest and intent. Maybe it was the tie.
“And I think you are conflicted about that as well. You say you want me to know you, but look how long it took you just to tell me your name.”
He just sat there, waiting for it to sink in or waiting for me to say something. I wanted to help him. To say something revealing just to show him I was willing. But I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“They want to be tied down by someone they trust so that they can go over what they imagine is an edge, while someone is watching them, holding them. In control. To experience themselves as whole and complete in front of another person.”
I think this was the most sentences he’d ever strung together at the same time. But it made sense. I’ve always loved being tied down by Mark, the way he whispers now you need to be punished. How I knew he would never really hurt me. That no matter what happened he’d be there.
Eric leaned toward me. That hanging boat behind him looked so stupid and lost. I guess that’s what that phrase means—at sea.
“At the same time you want someone to establish boundaries for you. To punish you if you cross them. To decide for you what is good and what is bad.”
He kept changing person. From you to they to you again. He was gesturing with his hands, carving lines and circles in the air in front of him. I think he was nervous.
“But Terry, that’s what you’re here for. You need to learn to establish these things for yourself. You’re not a child. It’s up to you to decide what you want to be obedient to.”
He droned on and on, his voice making a buzzing sound inside me. I was thinking of Mark and Proust and being spanked. I got this feeling I get sometimes. I felt dense, like a shape in space. Like a Goodyear blimp. I felt a familiar swell and movement inside. A gush of blood. My period. The first time since October. Eric’s chair is white and I was afraid of leaking.
“Terry . . .”
I was wondering if I should stand up.
“I have to go,” I said.
“Have I upset you?”
I think it’s an expensive chair. Have any other women ever leaked in the middle of therapy? I sat on my hands. I couldn’t remember what he’d been talking about. I knew he’d said something important. That I should write it down.
After my session I stopped for tampons at the Korean vegetable stand. Then I headed to Yvonne’s. It was snowing lightly, which made the street seem clean and old-fashioned. A young guy selling Christmas trees on Broadway and 103rd had a tape recorder playing Joan Baez’s version of “O Holy Night” in French. “Cantique de Noel.” I have that album. I’ve played it a million times. But I never imagined anyone else had it. I stopped by the trees. The snow, the pine smell, the pure voice, the guy’s wool cap and mittens, his slightly out-of-this-century face, I don’t know, they lifted me. I looked up and let the snow fall on my tongue without once thinking about acid rain. I felt I could rise above, surmount and survive, anything. Mark and Yvonne. Brian. Yeats cakes and Glenda’s earrings. I thought of Midnight Mass and candles, my grandfather’s Christmas cookies. Your spirit, I heard Sister St. Rita saying. Your pure and holy spirit resides in Jesus. Rides, I used to think she was saying. I used to picture myself riding in Jesus’ arms. I’d been a child seduced by the idea of the holy and always at Christmas vestiges of it come over me. I felt the way sinners must feel at the moment of conversion. The way Jimmy Stewart must have felt when that little man came over and he knew, somewhere, it was an angel. The way that angel wouldn’t let him despair. I thought, I even said it to myself, I am made of stronger stuff than this. Cliché, I know, but that’s what I thought. I touched the branch of the fullest tree, breathed in the fragrance. J’vous en desperance Joan Baez was singing, or what I’ve always sung along with her, faking it. I don’t know whether she’s singing about hope or despair. Jesus Christ help me, I prayed. Let this lift. Make my spirit clean. I recited the Serenity Prayer. The Our Father. I don’t know how long I was standing there but suddenly I realized that Joan Baez had yielded to “Jingle Bells” and I was holding a handful of pine needles, dropping them onto the snow-dusted sidewalk.
“You like this one?” the man asked. Up close his face lost some of that old-fashioned look.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, “but my husband is Jewish. We never have a tree.”
The guy shrugged. He pulled the tree I’d been fondling and rolled it against the others on the stand. Then maybe he felt bad.
“Here,” he said. He smiled and handed me a short bough. “It’ll be our secret. Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas,” I said.
Something about the exchange made me feel pathetic. I crossed Broadway to Yvonne’s. Redemption is never as easy and atmospheric as it is in the movies.
I slept at Yvonne’s. I slept all afternoon. I’d pulled aside the curtains slightly so I could see the snow falling. I hung the bough in the window. I undid the covers and blankets and lay down on her bed. I had that heavy, drowsy, menstrual feeling, my belly swollen and tender. I wanted to sleep. I’ll say one thing: that room is neat. No distracting paraphernalia. You could almost forget you have a history in a room like that. It felt good to be back. I closed my eyes and imagined myself held. Yvonne’s bed is big and soft and the sheets felt clean. No doubt she changed them before she left. I let myself sink into her bed. I let myself be held. The thing is, I couldn’t figure out who was holding me. Not Mark. I didn’t want to think about Mark. Not Brian. He was too vague and separate. Not Eric or Father Dugan or my mother. I imagined myself embraced by huge, strong, furry white arms. Feathery arms. Like a big muscular bird. I imagined myself held by the universe. I rocked gently. I hummed “O Holy Night.” And then I started saying my name. Over and over. Terry. Terry. Terry. It’s okay, honey. It’s okay, Terry. Ssh. Ssh. You are going to be all right, honey. It’s okay. It’s okay. I felt like I was inside myself. Holding myself. You’re enough, I said. You are enough. I crooned and whispered. Like I was cradling myself with my voice. I rocked and rocked.
I woke to the phone. For a second I thought it was the doorbell. The room was dark and I was pretty groggy. Four times it rang—time enough for me to realize what it was and where I was. The machine clicked on and I counted the seconds for Yvonne’s outgoing message. She hadn’t changed it to say she was out of town.
“You look pretty hot in that bikini,” the voice was saying. I can’t remember what else. The voice. Mark’s voice. It was unmistakable. I can’t remember what else he said though I played that message over and over, backward and forward, in a daze. You look pretty hot in that bikini. Harmless words, really. Any friend could have said them. I could have said them and I hardly know her. My husband’s voice coming like a ghost over the phone machine. Like a sneaking, unfaithful ghost. Spraying through the room like a shot of come. You look pretty hot in that bikini. There were no endearments. No honeys or loves or babys. I remember that. But Mark’s not stupid. You don’t leave incriminating messages on your lover’s machine.
The red incoming light was blinking like crazy. Calls that had piled up over the week. I thought of the confession box. Father Dugan. You are totally lacking in integrity. I thought of Yeats and the ethical impulse always breaking the ethical law. I thought of Jesus and Nietzsche and the Serenity Prayer. And I erased every message on that tape.
Then I laid down on Yvonne’s bed and imagined her plane exploding, sending that bikini shooting out over every part of the universe. I couldn’t even surround it with a beautiful pink bubble because every time I tried to picture it the bubble turned into a hellish moil of boiling red fire.