Disturbances in the Field

by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

“Do you translate it distraction? That’s funny, I always thought of it as diversion. I guess because it sounded like it: divertissement.”

  “Technically you’re right. But I’ve always wished he had used distraction. It seems more in keeping with the rest. It’s more serious, after all. Anyone can seek diversion, without being in a state of dread. But distraction is something you need more desperately. Well, never mind, I know it seems pedantic. Go ahead.”

  “No, it’s good to be precise. Anyway, we should share our diversions, or distractions. That way we each have more diversion. Surely that’s better than sharing our black holes.”

  “Surely.” She grinned with her old schoolgirl slyness. “So?”

  “So tell me something. Tell me about the magazine. It’s never dull or stupid. You must be awfully good to manage that.”

  “I am. People think it’s glamorous, but I’m a drudge. To keep it in shape I run it like a dedicated housewife who goes around picking up every bit of lint on the rug every morning. You think that’s funny. Well, I suppose it is. You don’t want to hear about the day-to-day housework, though. I’ll tell you about a burgeoning social trend I have discerned through my telephone contacts with eminent writers. The latest thing for a certain type of writer, a male writer, often a professor, somewhat over forty with at least two novels or books of poetry to his credit and two hairs on his chest, is to divorce his wife and take in a doting youngster. Most but not all of these men write about sex, alienation, and aging, and the male intellectual’s Judeo-Christian angst over these three items. Their tight interrelations. The girls, meanwhile, are talented literary types just out of college. Upon graduation they go into service, as it were, the way the same type became governesses in Victorian novels. They serve as housekeeper, muse, and concubine all rolled into one. Ellen Kimberly’s daughter did it, in fact. Ellen thinks it’s an honor, like being a page to a senator. Actually, if you took these fellows out of their jeans and cut their hair and put suits on them, they’d look not much more thrilling than a Senate committee. There ought to be a law.”

  “Shouldn’t you at least call them women?”

  “I’m not an ideologue, Lydia. If they were women they’d know better.”

  “Were we so different? Oh, I know the men we married were different, but in essence, what we did?”

  “Me, you mean. I know what you’ve always thought. But I didn’t sacrifice anything much when I stopped dancing. The fact is, I wasn’t all that good. Don didn’t really interfere. We do it to ourselves.”

  “Well, he certainly doesn’t interfere now, at any rate. Did you make a feminist out of him, or what?”

  “Oh, I gave that up. I realized it has to be done before age ten.” She paused to eat her radish. I was relieved to hear her sounding more like herself. “He doesn’t not interfere for the right reasons. I think it’s a mixture of chivalry, laziness, even fear. But I can’t quibble over motivation any more. As long as the situation is satisfactory …” She looked longingly at my lasagna. “I’ve never craved total communion, like Nina. I don’t think I’d like it. I like privacy. But look, we’re back to ourselves again. Let me see, what distraction can I offer you next?”

  She assessed me with those shrewd eyes. As a girl she let her splendid auburn ponytail fan out over her back, but now her hair was cut razor-straight, not quite reaching her shoulders, framing her face. The fine lines of her face had grown less fine, it was true, but they still reflected for me her excellent mind of like refinement, which her Continental parents in the diplomatic corps trained her not to display too readily. It is a mistake to underestimate her. The opening clichés are mere distractions, while she busies herself observing, gathering data, weighing and measuring.

  “Would you like to talk about Ronald Reagan?” she asked. “Cutbacks in school lunches? Have you heard ketchup may be considered a vegetable?”

  “Enough.” I laughed. “I want to hear about your serenity.”

  “Pascal always made me uneasy. True, you take up something to distract you from the emptiness and before you know it you need distraction from your distraction. It becomes self-defeating, an endless chain. Running the magazine is a bit like that. Not that I don’t believe in it, or do it better, possibly, than anyone else could. But I also do it simply to do something, the way other women take courses or play cards. And yet with all that, I couldn’t see believing in God to escape the chain. I suspect that’s the biggest diversion of them all.”

  “At least you avoid the emptiness.”

  “It depends on what you consider emptiness. I enjoyed it when the babies were small and I sat in the park in the sun for hours, and then cooked dinner and waited for Don to come home. I didn’t feel like a thinking reed.”

  “It’s amazing how you’ve altered history to make it tolerable. You hated sitting in the park. I know because I sometimes sat there with you. Do you know how many times you said your brain cells were decaying? Why did you look for work in the first place? Anyway, you couldn’t go back to that now, Gaby. Imagine, a woman your age sitting in a playground all by herself. Shocking.”

  “I guess not. I could take other people’s babies to the park, maybe? It’s such a pleasant image, in hindsight. Sitting on a bench in the sun. No phone calls or deadlines.”

  “That diet is making you light-headed.”

  “It’s very possible. Give me some of your wine, would you? I could use it.” She drank half a glass at once. “Look, I’ll tell you about what you call serenity. It’s simple. I just accept things.” She smiled in an oracular and irritating way.

  “Oh Gabrielle! You sound like that woman—what was her name?—who announced that she accepted the universe.”

  “Margaret Fuller, yes. The really good line, though, was Thomas Carlyle’s response: ‘She’d better.’”

  “And you like that?”

  “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “No. Some people enjoy fighting all the way. And it’s also lacking in charity. So besides the universe, what is it exactly that you accept?”

  Gaby pulled her jacket around her shoulders. It was growing chillier, and the lunch crowd was thinning. She pushed away the plate of lettuce, gazed at the statues, and fiddled with an earring. When she spoke at last, she had that elusive, un-English rhythm of pauses between syllables. “I accept that no matter how hard I worked I would never have been a great dancer. I did better with words. I don’t think verbal people make great dancers. I accept that I can’t change the way I was brought up; those early things can’t be eradicated and it’s a waste of time trying. That my life is a patchwork of compromises and perhaps I like it that way, stitching together pieces that don’t match. That no sudden revelations or great changes are going to—”

  “Ah, I thought that once. You’re mistaken.”

  “Are going to happen in me, I was going to say, not to me. This is who I’ll be for the duration. Also that I got what I wanted, and God, did I regret it. I wanted Don to get off my back. For air. I even made inane remarks about his getting interested in someone else—remember?—so I wouldn’t be the target of all that devotion. Well, he did, a couple of years ago, and it was not fun. We do shape things for ourselves, you know, lay the groundwork early on for certain events. Like plotting a mystery. Oh, I don’t mean a freak accident, Lydia. That’s different. But you have to be very careful what you long for.”

  “I never knew a thing about it.”

  “There wouldn’t have been any point in whining. But it was awful. I don’t mind saying it now. He knew exactly what he was doing and why, though we didn’t talk about it at the time. We have a way of silently playing into each other’s hands. We’re very well attuned in many ways. For better or worse.”

  “So that’s what he meant the other day, about forgiving and forgetting. And you weren’t sorry then that you hadn’t … Remember, that time years ago?”

  “It’s not a question of an eye for an eye. It just wasn’t in me.”

  “That was before yo
ur women’s group.”

  “A women’s group can’t undo your history. It wouldn’t have made any difference. I’m not one to lie and hide. Why, do you think you would have done differently?”

  “If I had ever wanted to,” I said, “sure, I think I could have. But then I’m more greedy than you.”

  “I don’t see you dashing around now.”

  No. Thank you for staying, I had said to George as I kissed him good-bye the next morning, before the children came home. And when I told him it was the nicest thing that had happened to me in a long time, he understood perfectly that I could not make a habit of it. “I said, if I wanted to.”

  “Incidentally, Lydia—Don asked me to mention this but I’ve been hesitating. I didn’t know how you’d take it. An old friend of his is in town for a few weeks on business, from Chicago. An awfully nice person, bright, pleasant. He does real estate, or something in that line. He’s a bit at loose ends, not knowing many people. I’m sure he would love to go out to dinner with someone. What do you think?”

  “Distraction, eh? I’m not such terrific company these days.”

  “You’re very good company. You seem as lively as ever.”

  “Do I? That was one of the things that bothered Victor. Well, tell me, I’ve been out of it for so long, what exactly is expected on a date of this kind?”

  “I imagine all that’s expected is that you eat your dinner and converse. You certainly wouldn’t have very much trouble there. Anything more should be optional.”

  “I don’t know. I’ll think about it. Let’s get back to matters of consequence. How did you manage to accept Don’s little fling?”

  “It wasn’t a little fling. It was a mess. He’s such a romantic, he wouldn’t know how to have a little fling. Everything he does is quite thorough.”

  “So?”

  “You’ll laugh at me,” she said, and drank some more of my wine. “But I remembered that quote in Nina’s kitchen, from Epictetus. ‘Everything has two handles, one by which it may be borne, the other by which it may not. If your brother sin against you …’”

  “Oh yes, yes, I know, don’t pick it up by the handle of his injustice. After all, he’s your brother, the comrade of your youth. That’s the handle. Really, all that Christian charity is sickening.”

  “You were just mentioning charity, Lydia. And it’s not Christian. It’s Greek.”

  “Can’t you stop being an editor for a little while?”

  “You’re a true friend,” she said kindly. “Another self, was it? You’re offended for my sake. But you needn’t be. It passed.”

  “I am offended at how sanctimonious you sound! You’re just too good to be true. Do you hope to be canonized? That was part of your upbringing too.”

  “You’re missing the point entirely. I wanted him back. That was the truth of it.” She looked at her watch. “I ought to head for the office pretty soon. Do you want to go in and see the paintings?”

  “In a minute.” I still had a bit of wine to finish. “Did George ever tell you about disturbances in the field?”

  “No. What is that?”

  “It’s from some psychological theory about emotional needs and such. In an ideal world, let’s say, you would seek what you need and immediately be satisfied, without any complications, and also, you would be able to satisfy people who need things from you. Of course in the chaotic actual world this rarely happens—thus we have neurotics and frustrated people—and what prevents it from happening is called disturbances in the field. The disturbances are, I guess, circumstances, other people, acts of God, whatever. It’s derived from field theory in physics. A framework for looking at events.”

  She was tearing off bits of lettuce and munching them rhythmically, as Alan’s old hamsters used to do. “What is the field, though? It sounds like Bloomingdale’s on a Saturday.”

  For all her saintliness, I wanted to get up and put my arms around her. “Life. The whole works. I don’t know.”

  Gabrielle shrugged and munched. “I was never good at broad inclusive visions. I see one thing at a time. I’m the hedgehog. Or is it the fox? I could never even remember which was which.”

  “This business with Victor, you see …” I knew I shouldn’t, but she had touched me, and the wine prodded my tongue. “I need him, but I can’t … when he’s there it doesn’t work. He needs, oh, maybe he needs this fat lady, but I doubt it. What he really needs is me. The disturbances are so thick, though, we can’t begin to see each other through them.”

  “Lydia.” She reached over to take my hand. “Maybe you could try to talk plainly to him.”

  “Plainly? Plainly, the disturbance is … What we both need is for that bus not to have crashed. We need them.” I regretted it the minute the words were out and I saw the muscles of Gabrielle’s fine face go slack with impotence and pity. Yet I didn’t stop. “Remember that quote from Schopenhauer, when we lived in the apartment together, about the endlessness of desiring? Like the fisherman’s wife—for every wish that’s satisfied a new one springs up. God, he was so wrong. If I could have one wish I would be satisfied. I would not be like the fisherman’s wife. I would never ask for anything again.”

  She murmured something sympathetic and squeezed my hand—what more could she do? It puts people in a terrible position, speaking like that. In bed with George was one thing, but over lunch at the Museum of Modern Art? No, this would never do.

  Gabrielle was upset: she said she was going to give in and have chocolate cake for dessert.

  “You might as well bring one for me too.”

  As we dug into the gooey frosting, I said, “I feel much better seeing you eat.”

  “Why, do you like to see me fat?”

  “No, I like to see you uncontrolled. Gaby, I have a great idea. Take the afternoon off. We’ll go to the beach. You can pick up your lint tomorrow.”

  “The beach! It’s freezing.”

  We both looked up at the unpromising sky. “It won’t rain, though. This is the best kind of day to see the ocean.”

  We went uptown to get my car (Victor’s car, technically, and its farewell jaunt with me at the wheel), even though the indestructible green Volkswagen bus was parked less than half a mile away. Gabrielle did not drive. She did not ride a bike or ski, either. She no longer did anything that required traveling linear distances. She was superb at tennis, where you perform cunning maneuvers in a box.

  There were more people on the boardwalk than I expected to find: mostly old people in slow pairs, taking the salt air, and a pack of kids on bicycles making the ancient planks grunt beneath them. Down below, the expanse of sand was dotted by soda cans and crumpled paper wrappers; the sea was greenish-black like an old crepe dress, with the breaking surf a crocheted collar; in the sky, gray shifted over gray, and way off on the horizon was a dark ship. From the cold railing of the boardwalk I might have measured just how far off, had I needed to. After Thales of old, that spacy, inveterate bachelor who believed all things had their source in water, I could have measured the angle of my line of vision to the ship, then rotated that angle around and projected a line that would touch earth, who knows, maybe not far from where I lived.

  “It’s terribly windy,” said Gabrielle. Her hair was blowing everywhere, in her eyes, her mouth. She laughed and dug a barrette out of her bag to clip it back.

  “Do you mind it?”

  “Not really.”

  “When I was a kid and we went to the beach in the summer, I used to want the air to be very still, no wind at all. It can’t be—there’s always wind at the edge of the sea. Once in a great while for a few seconds it would stop, I could hear it stop, and I wished it would stay that way. But over on the bay side of the Cape, where my sister liked to go, it was very still. Not a stir in the air, sometimes. Some days hardly a ripple in the water. When we studied those Eleatic philosophers in school, that’s what I was reminded of, those windless static days at the bay. And those few seconds at the ocean, that never lasted. Do you wan
t to go down?”

  “All right,” she said.

  We took off our shoes and walked down a rickety flight of stairs. There were no other people on the sand.

  “I used to look at the beach from the top of a high dune and I saw three broad stripes. The sky, the sea, the sand. It was all so harmonious. I loved it.” I smiled at her, huddled in her jacket, hands deep in her pockets. “I must have had the same sense of infinity and order that the Greeks were after. And it did seem static. Even the ocean, because that constant movement is really only one impulse, repeating infinitely. Did you ever have those sensations?”

  “Yes, but not back then. We went to France every summer, to those green and rust-colored villages where we had family. It was all very close and cozy. Even the sky seemed low.”

  We sat down some yards from the edge. “I still have those absurd feelings about harmony and beauty and order,” I said. “I expect to find them somewhere, holding up the world. Hah! That’s one of the perils of a happy childhood. I’m sure Nina doesn’t have any such expectations. It’s like those principles you were brought up to feel were unalterable, and even though you’ve gone beyond them in your thinking, they’re still in you, and you can’t help measuring things against them. And when I see that the world is otherwise, I’m as stunned as a child. Music has harmony and beauty and order—it’s the only place.”

  “You’re lucky to have that. You were right, the sea is wonderful on this kind of day. Almost black.”

  Just as she spoke we heard garbled voices moving on the wind, then felt a rush of air. A group of eight or ten pale bodies in black bathing suits ran past us. Big sturdy bodies, men and women both; monumental, like Picasso’s bathers. They dashed through the surf and gamboled in the breakers like overgrown children. The mood of the sea was rough but not dangerous. We watched, astonished.

  “Who are those strange creatures?”

  “They must be the Polar Bear Club,” Gaby said. “Remember Esther told us about them? That time she came with Ralph. They swim all year round, in any weather.”

  “They are definitely a disturbance in the field.”