“Poor Dixie,” Maggie said across the table. “You should have some wine.” Her speech was slightly slurred. “You look so pretty,” she said, “in virginal white.”
Dixie looked at her.
Philip said nothing, but continued to stare at Maggie. Hal too turned toward Maggie, interested in what might happen next.
“Philip is frowning,” Maggie said. “Philip doesn’t approve of my conversation.”
“Oh,” Hal said, “is Philip uptight about the word ‘virgin’? Or is it something else?”
In their private little conversation before dinner, Hal had asked Philip, frankly, man to man, how he felt about sex, about—in fact—rough sex? No? Not even academically? No. Period. It has a spiritual quotient, Hal said, it’s not what you think, I could explain. Not interested, Philip said. Hal raised his left eyebrow and laughed. Now, as he waited for Philip to respond, Hal again raised his left eyebrow, ready to laugh or mock or, Philip realized, to say absolutely anything, no matter how embarrassing, no matter how obscene.
“Well?” Hal said.
Philip shook his head and said nothing.
“Not a word to say? Were you this taciturn at lunch with my virginal wife?” Hal stared at Philip, smiling.
Philip glanced over at Dixie and then turned back to Hal.
Maggie looked from Philip to Hal and then to Dixie.
“My secretary saw you together. A clever girl, that.”
Nobody could speak. The others at table waited for something terrible to happen. There was only silence.
“More wine,” old Gaspard said, “that’s what we need.”
“More wine,” Maggie said, “exactly. Do you know that poem?
I hail the fool divine,
Who first discovered wine.
Like Leda he knew
Exactly what to do
In case of assault by a swan:
Hang on!”
She recited it well, with a nice pause after ‘swan’ and a bravura delivery of the last line. Everybody laughed, even Philip.
“I’ll have some wine,” Dixie said suddenly.
“We must have lunch, you and I,” Hal said to Maggie, “since everybody’s doing it. You can recite poems to me.”
“I will have some wine,” Dixie said, and gave Hal a defiant look.
“Don’t look at me,” Hal said, “I don’t care what you drink. Who knows—it might even help.” And to Maggie he said, “Tomorrow? For lunch?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“I’ll call you,” Hal said.
“This is an excellent wine, I think,” old Gaspard said. “I got it at Bottoms Up. It’s nine ninety-nine the bottle and a very drinkable chardonnay. I’ve had good chardonnays and I’ve had excellent chardonnays, and in the end, you know, the distinction lies primarily in the palate.”
“In case of assault by a swan,” Hal said, “Hang on.”
“I think this is a good chardonnay,” Roberto Fiori said. “I wouldn’t call it an excellent chardonnay.”
“I think it’s excellent,” Maggie said.
“I don’t agree,” Roberto said, and they all began to relax a little as the discussion moved inevitably in the direction of wines they had known and loved. They talked and they talked and all the while they drank the good-to-excellent chardonnay.
Philip and Maggie did not talk on the drive home. Maggie had drunk a great deal too much and she had passed through her exhilarated phase to a moment of sheer giddiness and now she was muddy and lethargic, vaguely offended at something to do with Husserl and eager for a pill that would let her go unconscious.
Philip was angry and worried and a little drunk as well. He could not make sense of what had happened at dinner. It was a hopeless muddle, a series of hostile exchanges between him and Hal Kizer, between Hal and Dixie, Dixie and Maggie, Maggie and himself. It had simply happened. It had blown up out of nowhere. They were chatting at table and suddenly, like a Pinter play, all civility was peeled away and naked, poisonous aggression was laid out on the table. A four-way assassination.
Well, he was done with this madness. Altogether done. He would salvage whatever he could of his marriage, his sanity, his fucking life. Right now what mattered to him was his wife. He would care for her. He would love her back to health. He would recapture those days before the goddam Goldman Chair, when he and Maggie were content merely to have everything. He’d do it. He would. Consider it done.
They reached home and he helped Maggie up to bed and tucked her in.
“Good night, sweetheart,” he whispered.
She took his hand and crushed it against her breast. She seemed fully aware now. She began to cry, softly at first and then with loud racking sobs as if she might never stop. He sat on the bed and held her and after a long while she stopped.
“Okay?” he said. “Are you okay now?”
“I’m okay,” she said, and turned her face to the pillow.
“Can I get you anything?”
“I’ll sleep now,” she said, and closed her eyes. When he left her and went downstairs, she got up and took a couple Xanax. She stood before the mirror looking at the wreckage. “You’ve never even read Husserl,” she said, her mouth twisted in disgust.
“I’ll be going to Boston,” Hal said as he pulled into the driveway.
“So go,” Dixie said.
“I’ve gotta change,” he said. “I like loose clothes for the trip back.”
“You’re sick,” she said.
“I’m sick? I’m sick? I’m not the one having secret lunches with Phil Tate. So what’s the story? Are you seeing him?”
“Seeing him?”
“As a patient?”
“Maybe I’m seeing him sexually. Have you ever thought of that?”
“My little titmouse? I don’t think so.” He thought for a moment. “What did you tell him about me?”
“Nothing.”
“But you told Beecher Stubbs something. What? Everything?”
“Almost nothing.”
“Not that I care, really.” He thought for a moment. “And it doesn’t matter what you tell Phil Tate, you know, because I’ve already told him myself. You don’t believe me? Tonight, before dinner, I took him aside and I asked him. He says he’s not interested, but I don’t believe it. I think he’s like you and just afraid to let go. Look at his mouth sometime. It’s wide. And just enough of it. The mouth is the giveaway. You’ve got the same mouth.”
They were sitting in the car and he was looking at her.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, and slid his hand up her thigh and rubbed his thumb against her crotch. “You could come with me. Theda would love it. Live a little.”
“You disgust me,” she said, and got out of the car.
Hal followed her inside, showered, and changed his clothes. He put on a gray sweat suit he kept for jogging and for the sex seminars. He pushed his pelvis hard against the bureau. What an interesting phenomenon: pain that is pleasure. Just think of it. Dixie didn’t know what she was missing. When he was ready to leave, he leaned into the sunroom and said, “Sure you don’t want to come?”
By way of answer Dixie turned up the volume on the TV.
And so he was on Route 93 to Boston, dressed for the occasion, feeling fit and fuckish. And why not? He was a young man in his prime, a good doctor, a good psychiatrist with a rich and beautiful wife and a sincere interest in getting to the bottom of who he was. He was committed to this: finding ecstasy and finding himself within it. It was what the medieval mystics were after, and some of them had actually clued into it, whether or not they understood what they were really up to. Constance, for instance, or whatever her name was—a saint, fifteenth or sixteenth century—anyway, she lived on almost no food at all and drank no water and she washed the floor of her cell with her tongue. Your tongue, Constance? And did it feel good? All that dirt and shit on the floor? And how does this feel, Constance? He’d like to put his whole fist up inside her, lift her off the floor, and then toss
her onto the bed. He’d lick the blood off her. He’d pry her open. He’d invent new ways to surprise her. And she’d love it.
It was ecstasy, that’s what they were after. Everybody was. Nirvana. Heaven. The ultimate.
“We can’t do this,” Philip said. “You know that.”
Dixie had telephoned and said she needed to see him.
Philip had been standing over the phone half expecting it to ring, and when it did ring, he snatched it up at once. He laughed nervously. In a movie, he thought, this would be the moment at which everything turns fatal. But this wasn’t a movie.
“He’s gone again, to the city,” she said, and when Philip didn’t reply, she added, “and he struck me.”
“Struck you?”
There was silence on the line.
“What do you mean, struck you? Physically? He hit you?”
“He always does,” she said. “Always.”
Philip was all business now. “You should report this at once,” he said. “To the police. Call the police right now and make a formal complaint.”
Silence again.
“Do you hear me, Dixie?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“You need to talk to the police. Tell me you’ll do it. You’ll call them.”
He could hear her breathing.
“Dixie?”
“He didn’t hit me.”
Now Philip was silent.
“He hurt me, but he didn’t really hit me.”
He remained silent.
“I lied. Are you angry with me?”
“I thought we straightened this out at lunch, Dixie. What we did was wrong. What I did was wrong. I’ve got a wife and family and you’ve got a husband and we can’t cause other people—”
“I’m going to take pills,” she said, interrupting him. “I’m going to take too many pills.”
He waited and she waited.
“I can’t be part of this,” he said. “I won’t be.”
“It’s your fault. You can go to hell.” She slammed down the phone.
A half hour later Philip drove by the Kizers’ house to see if everything looked all right. He didn’t know what he expected to see. No lights were on, but what did that mean? She might have taken an overdose of something, she might have slit her wrists, she might have just gone to bed to sleep it off. His first thought had been to notify the police, and he thought of the police once again, but what could he say to them? Maybe she’s taken pills, but maybe she’s just sleeping, and wouldn’t you like to break down the door and find out?
He parked the car and went around to the back. The key was on the ledge. He let himself in and went to the sunroom.
“I knew you’d come,” she said.
He sat down in a wicker chair a little distance from her.
“I knew it,” she said. “I knew it.” She knelt at his feet and pressed her head against his chest. She began to cry.
He let her finish crying and then he held her away from him. “Get up, Dixie. Come. Come.” He led her to the chaise longue, where she sat down and made room for him, but he returned to his chair. He sat forward, his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands.
“Are you angry?” she said. “Why are you angry?”
He took his hands away from his face and looked at her.
“You’ve got to listen to me,” he said. “We talked today at lunch about what happened between us. Right?”
“Yes.”
“And we agreed that what we had done was reckless and destructive and that it could not happen again. It must never happen again. Right?”
“Yes, but you’re here now.”
“And I urged you to see somebody. To get some counseling.”
“But I had to see you.”
“Let me finish. I urged you to talk this over with a psychiatrist. Not with me—because I’m part of the problem—but with somebody you trust and like and who cares about you.”
“Yes, yes, but—”
“No, listen. Therefore, cruel as it may sound, you can’t call me up and say Hal has struck you or that you’re going to take an overdose of pills. That’s a cry for help, but you’re crying to the wrong person. I can do nothing for you—I’ve made that impossible and you’ve made that impossible—and you’ve got to go to somebody who can help. You need to talk to a therapist about your unhappiness and what went on between us and whatever is going on between you and Hal. But you can’t talk to me about it. I’m useless to you. I’m worse than useless.”
“But I love you.”
“No you don’t. And I don’t. And this is the really hard part, so please listen. If you call me and threaten suicide, I’ll do the thing I have to do—professionally, morally—I will have to. I’ll call the police and ask them to send an ambulance. And I won’t come. I can’t.”
“You’re like all of them. You’re cruel. You’re like Hal, only worse. At least he doesn’t pretend to love me.”
“I have to go.” He stood, but before he could take even one step she was on her knees before him, her face pressed against his crotch, and she was saying, “Please, oh please, I’ll let you do anything you want to me, you can hurt me if you want, you can—”
He pulled back from her, lifted her to her feet, and sat her again on the chaise longue. “Stop,” he said. “Stop it.” He held her there, away from him, his hands on her arms. “I have to go,” he said, and his voice was very cold.
He left quickly, without looking back.
Hal Kizer ached all over, but particularly between his legs. Theda had tied him up with a rough hemp rope, around his ankles first, with his legs spread a good three feet apart, and then around his genitals and up tight through his ass and around his waist and then out to his wrists, also spread a good three feet apart. It was a kind of Sadean improvisation he had thought up himself; any struggle whatsoever, any movement of arms or legs simply tightened the rope around his balls, roughly, hairily, and made him harder and hungrier. And then she played with the knife, there, and there, and that magic spot just under his balls. She wouldn’t cut him, even though he asked her to, not even a little. Just a nice loose play with the knife, tickle, tickle, and he writhed and the rope cut into him and he could feel his brain tumble over into blackness. In the end he nearly went unconscious. He felt himself teetering there on the edge of something black and then a blinding flash and another and then he came. It was heaven.
As he drove along 93, the stars bright and the night air cool, he put his hand, tenderly, to his crotch. The skin was raw there and felt good. How he loved this: he was exploring the limits of sexual endurance, finding the point beyond which there was nowhere to go.
Dixie could be in on this if only she would let herself go. So could Philip Tate. He let his mind dwell on Philip Tate. Was he attracted to Philip, sexually? Interesting, enigmatic Philip Tate. The next Dean of the Medical School, no doubt. Unless, of course, that wife sabotaged him. With drink. Or pills. They all had their dirty little secrets. And what secret was he hiding, the decorous Philip, the wonder boy?
He turned on to West Border Road. He was almost home.
Perhaps because Philip was on his mind, Hal Kizer thought for a moment that Philip was the driver of the car that pulled out of Woodlawn as he pulled in. It was a car like Philip’s and the maniac behind the wheel was doing fifty at least, but Philip was not the type for midnight rides. Philip was tucked up in bed, no doubt, with his uptight wife, thinking pious thoughts about marriage and children and the joys of the Deanery.
Hal pulled into the drive and sat there for a moment, resting. It had been a long day, but a good one.
THREE
12
Philip had resolved not to tell Maggie about his one-night fling with Dixie Kizer—he knew that telling her would be foolish, he knew it would ruin everything—but he did tell her, and afterward there was fierce silence between them.
It happened this way. Maggie had written a short paper on Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall,” a s
tructural analysis in which she demonstrated that meaning in the poem was not Frost’s nor the reader’s but the product of shared systems of signification. She was not happy with the paper because she felt it was mere logic-chopping that produced nothing new or vital about the poem. She rethought it and rewrote it. And rewrote it a third time. Finally she gave it to Philip for his criticism. Reluctantly, he read it. He confessed he didn’t understand a word of it but told Maggie to hand it in anyway and see what the hot professor had to say. So she did. Phoebe Ritson had reservations about Maggie’s argument—it smacked just a little of Wellek and Warren—and she made suggestions for a substantial revision, but she nonetheless gave the paper a grade of A minus. Maggie was jubilant and to celebrate she and Philip went out to a splendid dinner. They had a bottle of good merlot, and that night they made love, and they slept—for the first time in a long time—in one another’s arms. In the morning, at breakfast, Philip confessed he had slept with Dixie Kizer. He assured Maggie it had happened only once, that he and Dixie were both drunk, that it had never been repeated. “Don’t say anything more,” Maggie said. “I have to think what this means. For me. And for us.” He was sorry, he begged her forgiveness, she must understand that it meant nothing, nothing. “To you, it means nothing. But to me?” He said he was sorry. “And to Dixie?” He said again he was sorry. Again he begged her forgiveness. He knew it would take time. “It will take more than time,” she said. “It will take a whole new relationship. If I am able to forgive you. If I do decide to stay with you.” That’s when the silence began.
As days passed and she thought about the affair, Maggie was surprised to find it upset her less than she would have expected. He had been unfaithful. He had betrayed her. She told herself he had lied and cheated and she hated him, but she recognized her indignation as melodrama. She knew he loved her. She knew he was shattered by what he had done. She knew, since he had promised, that he would never do it again. Philip was a very simple man, really. But she was silent and let him stew.
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