by Mirvis, Tova
In the morning, only partially awake, he rolled toward Claudia’s side of the bed, remembering how the previous week she had turned to him with an intensity that took them both by surprise. Usually the sight of her made him feel only inertia—every day, every feeling, the same. But in a matter of seconds, she had pulled him on top of her, wrapped her legs around him, pressed him deeper inside her. At first he had wondered if she was awake, or if in her mind he was someone else. For those few moments, they managed to defy the paradox of familiarity, of seeing someone so much you didn’t see him or her at all. He had been reminded, however briefly, that you could never really come to the end of another person.
A few hours later, they’d become the same people as always, which was why he’d preferred to leave unmentioned the passion that had come over her. He was certain that discussion would diminish the memory, equally certain that those who wanted to share everything with their partners, who defined intimacy as full access, did so at their own peril.
Claudia still wasn’t by his side, and jarred by her absence, Leon went looking. The door to her office was partially open, which he took as a sign that he wasn’t entirely unwelcome.
“Have you been in here all night?” Leon asked. Claudia’s normally neat desk was cluttered with manuscript pages. A plate of desiccated chocolate cake sat in front of her.
Her lip was smudged with chocolate, and Leon reached to wipe it off. When she pulled away from him, he felt a stab of anxiety that she wasn’t annoyed at him only for hiding what Emma had confided. She knew, somehow, about Nina.
“I’m famous,” Claudia said, handing him the Times article. “I don’t think it makes anyone sound very good, but I suppose the café owner thinks there’s no such thing as bad publicity.”
“You look very focused,” Leon said as he scanned the article, reading of the mothers’ outrage at being so publicly shushed, then the café owner’s description of the “spoiled moms” who frequented the café.
“These mothers think they know it all,” she said, but he was barely listening. At the sight of his patient’s picture next to Claudia’s, he wanted to laugh, then scream. His world was tied too tightly around him, yet he could reveal nothing. His wife, his patient: their worlds could intersect, but for them at least, those lines would cross unnoticed.
“I sound fairly curmudgeonly,” Claudia said.
“No, just tired of the noise,” Leon reassured her, though she did sound more caustic than he would have expected. On full display, in the article and on her face, was the anger that he knew was directed, in large measure, at him. At the sight of it, so long in coming, all he wanted to do was duck.
“I should have Emma show it to Nina. She probably knows some of these moms,” Leon said.
“Nina?” Claudia asked.
“You know. The woman Emma baby-sits for,” Leon reminded her. Though they jointly accused one another of having faulty memories, in his case it was because he wasn’t paying sufficient attention to have noticed in the first place. For Claudia, it was a willful attempt to shield herself from sustained involvement with people she didn’t know. Though he didn’t know how to do it, he felt the urge to rouse her, him, all of them, from this disconnected state. He marveled at his impulse to mention Nina. If he were to tell Claudia what had happened, it would shatter what remained in place between them. The words lined up inside his mouth, waiting for a nod of permission, and then out they would march, small soldiers bent on attacking the stable foundation of their lives.
“Nina knows you, actually,” Leon said. “She was your student, at Columbia. She loved your class.”
“How do you know her so well?”
“Apparently she once went to talk to you about going to graduate school. I ran into her in the neighborhood,” he said, inching his way closer. I ran into her in this very apartment, he would say. While you were in the library, while you had no idea where I was. And then, what would be left behind? He didn’t want to think of the pain that would come a few moments later; all he wanted, for that one instant, was the razing relief of the truth.
“That was a long time ago,” she said.
“Yes,” he agreed, feeling a rush of sadness. “It was.”
Claudia ignored the pained look on his face—as always, they made it easy for one another to retreat to separate corners. He felt a terrible surge of regret—not for any one decision he’d made but for the way they had all accumulated, bringing him to this moment where he was trapped by his own self. He didn’t have it in him to start yelling—what true complaint did he have? Only that he could not stand in this room with her any longer, could not bear a silence so laden with disappointment and anger, hers and his own.
He fled her office, the apartment, and went to his car. In this space, which he regarded as a home as much as any other place he inhabited, he would once again become immune to unwieldy emotion.
After he’d been there an hour, or maybe two, Nina walked by and knocked on the window, as though he’d summoned her.
“Nice place,” she said, and he smiled at the sight of her. Anyone looking at them would surely know. No one smiled so widely without good reason. No one had reason to look so pleased. She’d told him that when she was with him she felt the space inside her chest widening as though suddenly able to take in more air, and he understood what she meant. He saw her not as she looked among other people, her face coated in a responsible maternal cast that required enormous effort to hold in place. Instead she looked as she had when she was beneath him, flushed pink, her long dark hair strewn against her bare shoulders. In those moments, her whole face opened up into relaxation and her body was both alight with energy yet calmer than he had seen before.
“Have a seat,” he offered.
“Where can we go?” she asked, getting into the passenger seat.
“Anywhere you want,” he said.
“How about as far away as we can?” she said.
“And then what happens once you get there?” he said.
“I don’t want to think about that. I’d rather pretend that whatever comes next doesn’t exist. That’s what I’ve always done,” she said, and hesitated. “I never thought I was the kind of person who would do this.”
“I don’t think you know yet what kind of person you are. I don’t know if any of us do.”
When she smiled, he wanted to bask in the interest and attention she turned upon him. Sometimes a patient gazed at him adoringly, and the mood in the room shifted, an erotic presence making itself known. There was pleasure, undeniable, in being wanted in this way, yet he knew, of course, that what those patients imagined had little to do with who he was in real life. Their longing was mere projection, composed most prominently of longing itself. Even when he felt the tide of his own arousal, he knew where the boundaries lay.
With Nina, those lines had ceased to exist. It was not the idea of her, not what she represented. He couldn’t explain with enough precision to make anyone else understand why he was so drawn to her. But why was it necessary to offer rational explanations for everything, especially this? He was tired of the internal voice that analyzed his every move. For once, he wanted to submit himself to life’s unknowability, to give himself over to confusion and exhilaration, worry and arousal, guilt and happiness, the messy pile-up of feelings in which nothing fit neatly together and there was always too much at once. He saw into her wild inner plain where she was struggling to free herself from the press of obligation and expectation. It was this fluttering, flapping part of her that stirred the one inside him and made him want to hold her tightly and say, “Take me too.”
“Let’s drive,” she said.
“The bridge or the tunnel?” he asked, because then the whole world would await. With no time to go that far, he instead drove uptown along Riverside to the top of the park where the odds of knowing anyone were lessened. If he looked to one side, all he would see were the grass and trees of the park, then the stone walkways that led to the river. The George Wash
ington Bridge was visible just ahead. If only they had a kayak, a motorboat, a cruise ship: off they would sail.
He dangled his hand, lightly grazing Nina’s leg. It was not going to be only that one time after all. He stroked her thigh. He was already starting to lose sight of the path back home; anything dropped to mark the way back was becoming obscured in his mind. Shielded inside his car, safely beneath the line of the windows, his hands could roam across her thigh, to her knee, unseen. All he thought of was the feeling of his hand on her leg. His other hand came to life as well, on her waist, brushing across her breast. Wasn’t he supposed to pull away, tell her, “We need to stop”? Wasn’t he supposed to remind her in a serious yet kindly voice that they had responsibilities, commitments? He put his hand on her face and brought her toward him and kissed her. When she kissed him back, he allowed himself to fall into the well of his feelings without knowing where he might land.
Hearing the distant honk of cars, he looked out the window and the rush of feeling came to a halt. A familiar figure crossed his line of vision. At the edge of the park, was that a patient staring at him? He’d imagined himself to be so far away, not in another neighborhood but on another planet. Squinting, he tried to be sure, to will her away. He remembered the fantasies this patient had confided, that she would see him on the street and interact with him outside of the office. The wish had surprised him little, but now he worried she was actually following him. He had none of the compassion he felt in his office. There was no escape, not from this patient, not from anyone. His patient had done nothing wrong, yet he was reacting as though she’d banged on his bedroom door in the middle of the night.
“Are you supposed to be incognito here?” Nina asked, pulling away, her face reflecting his discomfort.
“It’s not a very good hiding place after all,” he said.
“Who are you trying not to see?” she asked.
“It’s not important.”
“Was it a patient?”
“Even if it were, what can I do? If someone brings it up in a session, I just turn it around and ask what it means to them,” Leon said. “Everywhere I go, I get to be the therapist who stays safely out of sight.”
“And is that what you want to do?” she asked. Those round blue eyes, so open and waiting: she had a way of staring at him as though daring him to say more, as though her words came with hooks attached and could grab hold of all she wanted to know.
“Who am I kidding? It’s not possible anyway,” he said. He brushed her cheek with his hand, he wrapped his fingers in her hair. He looked out the car window again. If it had been his patient, she was gone. But if not her, then someone else could have seen them and know. Sooner or later, someone would always know. Fifty blocks from home or five hundred, privacy was generally an illusion. As much as they worried what it would mean to be caught, surely in some small conflicted place inside each of them, they also wanted to be found.
Emma was surprised to see Steven’s number on her caller ID. Until recently, he’d never called during his writing hours; he didn’t answer his phone and was annoyed if she dared to knock on the bedroom door.
“I can’t. I’m baby-sitting in half an hour,” Emma said when Steven asked her to meet him in the park. She wished someone had told her earlier that all she had to do was retreat and he would come in chase.
She veered from one feeling to another. She wanted to leave him, she wanted to stay and try again. She began to doubt even her own doubt. The worries of the past few months were a mere aberration, little more than the byproduct of having made a firm decision for her future; the terrible fear of the past few months was the belated recognition of what she knew to be true. “Take it slowly,” her father had advised. “You don’t have to make any decisions yet. You can find your way, as slowly as need be.”
“But what if I do that and I still don’t know?” Emma asked.
“You can push him harder, see what there really is between you. Tell him what you need. He might surprise you,” he said, then sighed and looked as confused as she felt. “I don’t know, Emma. Sometimes I think the goal is just to endure. It might not sound pretty, but for most people I suspect it’s the truth.”
Trying to heed his advice, however tentatively it had been offered, she’d been moving back and forth between apartments. She was no longer sure what she was referring to when she said “home.” But having two homes made her lonelier than when she’d had only one. If she weren’t baby-sitting, she’d have no idea what to do with herself. When she was with the kids, the future was so far off as to appear fantastical. For Lily, little existed beyond the need to be held and fed. Even Max’s worries were cloaked with the shimmer of unreality. Sometimes she imagined that the kids were hers and she felt a momentary burst of clarity. For Nina, there was no doubt that she was wholly needed. If she had kids, she wouldn’t have to finish her dissertation. She would have a ready-made excuse for every failing. She would always have something to show for herself.
“Bring them with you. I love kids,” Steven said.
“Since when?” Emma challenged him.
“Since right now,” he said.
After picking up the kids, she met Steven in Riverside Park by the dog run. She introduced him to Max and Lily, and he immediately adopted the overly friendly voice adults use to mask their discomfort with kids. Emma set Lily down on the ground, where she tried to consume a mouthful of leaves. But Max refused to come out of the stroller.
“Max, it’s fine, I promise you. The dogs are playing. They’re not going to bite you,” Emma assured him, crouching in front of him. She and Max were dressed in matching shades of orange, and she was wearing a plastic bead necklace he’d made for her.
“Is he always this afraid?” Steven asked.
“It’s not just dogs. It’s balloons, the subway, any kind of noise.”
“He’s in the wrong city.”
To Emma’s surprise, Max listened to her. He sat next to Lily, and she and Steven sprawled on the grass beside the kids, staring up at the leaves which would soon change color. Until this year, the arrival of fall had always kindled her schoolgirl’s pleasure in new pencils and blank notebooks, as though every year life really did start anew.
“This could be us in a few years,” Steven said.
“You wouldn’t say that if they were crying.”
“How often does that happen? Come on, Emma. I’m serious. I miss you. Let’s get married. Let’s have kids.”
“Now?” she asked.
“What are we waiting for? Let’s do it,” Steven said, tracing circles on her palm. “I’m here for you, Emma. I really am,” he said, as he leaned closer so that their foreheads touched and their eyelashes fluttered against each other’s skin. If the kids weren’t here, he’d roll on top of her, and she’d be unable to resist. He’d press her down until there was no thought of going anywhere.
She wanted to believe he better understood her. She wanted to listen to him, even though she could see the flaws; to hold on to the fantasy of how it might be even if she knew all the ways in which it would be pierced. Against the backdrop of trees and sky, Emma saw what her life could one day be. She would resume work on her dissertation, and begrudgingly it would open itself to her again. She would set a date for the wedding. She would have children of her own. Her urge to run would fade. Her need for something more from Steven might not ease, but she would learn to live with some parts of herself unfilled.
Steven was waiting, but instead of meeting his eye, Emma looked toward the dog run where a man threw a stick. Immersed in conversation with a fellow dog owner, he didn’t notice his dog’s escape through the open gate.
Off-leash and unfenced, the dog bounded out, ran toward them, and jumped around Max, who started screaming.
“Stand still,” Emma called to Max, who had begun to run. Lily started to cry as well, and Emma wondered if this was when she was supposed to swoop both kids to safer ground. Or call Nina and say, “Your kids are screaming, can you
please come get them?”
“Hold Lily,” Emma said to Steven. He took Lily reluctantly and shuffled her from one hand to another. Imitating something he’d seen on TV, he held her over his shoulder while patting her back. When Lily continued to cry, he lifted her high into the air, brought her back down, lifted her up again, until finally she began to laugh. He was incurring the risk of being vomited on, but she was happy to let him take his chances.
Max continued to shriek until even the dog was stunned. Emma wrapped her arms around Max, forcing him to be still. The dog stopped running, came up to her, and with his panting pink tongue, he licked her cheek. When she laughed, so did Max.
In the distance, a man was calling, “Churchill,” and hearing his voice, the dog began to bark. Exchanging freedom for love, the dog returned to the fenced-in plot of grass, where his owner hugged him. With Max in her arms and Steven and Lily beside her, Emma lay back on the grass, watching the people pass in all directions, strangers alone and in pairs, until she startled and sat up.
Along the path, her father and Nina were walking, and for a moment Emma assumed they were in search of her and the kids, both in possession of a parental sensory device that sounded when their children were in need. From her spot on the nearby grass, Emma waved but they didn’t notice. She was about to call their names, but she stopped, because even from where she was sitting, she could sense their degree of familiarity. Nina was laughing at something her father was saying. When she said something in response, his face had a look of immense absorption, which Emma was accustomed to seeing, though rarely in relation to her.