by gay walley
He went off in a huff to his bedroom.
The next day she called the shrink. Yes, he remembered her, he said. Yes, by all means, come in at two this afternoon.
Once again she was in his art gallery office. She was holding the red file.
She said, ”You raised a wonderful question about where my grandmother was during the war years. So I had a lawyer search it out. Here is what he found.”
Dr Dazin took the file, put his glasses on, and began to study. He flipped through all the documents. Soon he was reading Daisy’s short testament. In German.
“You understand German?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “And Yiddish. We all have our stories.” He put down his glasses. “You know,” he said, “Every document that comes to me about that war is more mad than the next, and this is now another. This is a particularly gruesome story, as is, I suppose, the aftereffect you told me of.”
She nodded, slightly and rather bizarrely, victoriously.
“It’s okay,” she said. “At least now you know I’m not hallucinatory.”
“And so now,” he continued, and raised his head up and looked out at nowhere, as if at a distant future, throwing off this past of all their parents and grandparents, “whatever I thought was fictional turns out to have been an optical illusion, Duet. The big question is what will you do now?”
“I don’t know. That’s a good question.”
He smiled.
“I guess I don’t know where someone like me fits in. Being deformed, “ she continued.
“Plenty of people are deformed,” he said, “in much worse ways and they live wonderful lives. You study, you marry, you –“
“Marry? Who would want me ? And obviously I cannot have a family.”
“Yes, but you could adopt.”
She nodded, wondering if Paula was really serious about giving up Lars’ baby for adoption.
“Or love a man who has children who need loving. Or love a man who doesn’t want children. What is your profession?” he asked.
“I am a bit lost in that, too. I was in PR but it bores me. I write music but I am self taught so I can never be excellent. Just marginally talented. It has a certain energy, the freedom of the untaught, but still –“
“You are a bright woman,” he said.
She shrugged.
He put his hand to his mouth, as if thinking, then quickly leaned forward. “I need to reflect more on this,” he said. “About where you belong. We need to talk about it.” He began to flip open his appointment book. Not that again, she thought.
Then he looked at her.”And what about your young man, Dr Tremba’s grandson? How do you feel about him now –“
“He lost interest in me anyway –“
The shrink studied her. “Somehow,” he said, “I don’t believe that. I believe you believe that.”
“Well that is how he behaved. I am no longer with him.”
“Where are you now?”
“I am with another man. We’re friends really. I am there, I don’t know why. To think, I guess.”
The shrink looked at her more intently. “Do you love him?”
“ No.”
“And he tolerates it?”
“So far.”
“That sounds more bizarre than your physical condition.”
“You’re wrong. My physical condition cannot change.”
“True,” he said. “But let us not forget that someone with your story would maybe be blinded to what is around her, only focusing on the world through her prism of feeling like a monster. We do not even know what your question is because you have looked thoroughly only through that window. There are other windows you need to look out of. And you will get new questions. But I do know an answer.”
“Yes?”
“You have a responsibility to be happy, to live the life you want and to do the best at it. You have a responsibility to love whom you love. Your forebears earned you that right. It is the only revenge. Make sure what you think about happens.”
He stood up. “It’s time.”
“Yes.”
“Here,” he said. “Come next week at two o’clock again. Wednesday.”
Once again, she nodded, and said, “Thank you.”
And once again she was not sure what she had accomplished.
Thirty two:
When she got home, Maurice was waiting for her. All the painful ride home on the subway, she had decided she was going to tell him she was leaving him.
But once again he seemed rather intense and odd. He suggested they have dinner somewhere special, and she agreed since she wanted to get away from the oppressiveness of the apartment and what she wanted to say.
As they walked he began talking about the Liars Paradox, which apparently had confounded philosophers since Greek times. She listened but she now knew, she was tired of listening.
He said, “I think it’s because I should be younger sexually. You do have a different anatomy, Duet. Perhaps I should be more dynamic sexually to match the dynamism of your body.”
That was the last thing she wanted. She smiled meekly, “Nothing has to change in that area,” she said quietly.
He had two more scotches than usual at a neighborhood bistro and they talked about Sibelius’ sweeping music. Maurice had so many versions of all the symphonies, and she particularly liked The Origin of Fire, she told him, and the Bard and The Ocean. “Where,” she asked, “was the Lashti orchestra from?” “Must be Finland,” he said. After chatting they began walking home in the night. He put his arm across her shoulders to hold her and she didn’t want that physical intimacy, but she allowed it as a consolation prize for what was to come. He turned to her and said, “You are just so beautiful.”
The elevator wasn’t working so they both agreed to walk up the five flights of stairs. It was a warm night and there was not much ventilation in the stairwell. “I’m going to have to take the dogs up and down,” she said grimly, although in truth she was glad for the time alone.
He nodded. “Don’t take too long as there is something on my mind I want to talk about,” he said, his voice straining with the walk up these stifling stairs.
That’s funny, she thought. So do I have something to talk about.
She grabbed the leashes, as soon as they got into the apartment. The flurry started and they raced down the stairwell. At the bottom landing she put their leashes on them.
They walked in the night and she prayed for the strength to tell him, to tell him that she was going to go back to her apartment. That she needed to be alone. After all, that was her birthright. She climbed back up the stairs, watching the dogs’ back legs carefully for signs of hip displacement and opened the door to their apartment.
That was when she saw him lying on the floor. She ran to him but he was out cold. She called 911 frantically because she could never lift his weight and then ran to the bathroom to look for any heart pills or something she did not know he needed. That’s when she saw a new bottle, a bottle of Viagra, that was almost empty. He’s taken a mega dose. Because of my body. My god. What an idiot.
At that point the paramedics came and lifted him away. She gave them the bottle, silently. They noted it.
She went in the ambulance with him to the hospital but his head was underneath oxygen and he seemed to be unconscious. They said his heart. His heart had failed. They were trying to resuscitate him. She pulled out his cell phone and searched for the number of Adele.
“The doctors are working on him,” she said into the phone, not optimistically. “I thought you should know.”
She waited alone in the waiting area, numb.
The doctors came out. They were somber. As soon as she heard “a fatal heart attack,” she stopped following their report and stared mutely at their melancholy faces.
She got home and began packing. Tomorrow, in her own home, she would figure out what to do, when she was in less shock. She hadn’t cried, hadn’t really felt anything. It seems, she tho
ught, I can be as cruel as the Trembas.
She looked down at the dogs who were studying her. She picked up their leashes to immense jumping up and down and began to walk toward the elevator. She would ask the taxi driver to help with her bags. She would give a beautiful funeral for Maurice. Full of Mahler’s music. His favorite writing. Dostoyevsky quotes. But she was unable to really focus on any thought for long.
The cab began the rolling meditative ride up the Hudson River Drive. She decided to call Paula.
“Guess what? Maurice had a heart attack.”
“Oh My god.”
“He’s dead. ”
“No.”
“It’s awful. I’m going to sleep in my own home. I should have gone back there months ago.”
“Wow. I’m so sorry. Shall I come be with you?”
“I don’t know, Paula***. I just don’t know anything.”
“I just got bad news too.”
“Lars?”
“Lars is definitely going to jail. The baby is fine. I found a home for him.”
“Him?”
“I checked.”
“Paula don’t do it. Keep the child.”
“No way. But here’s the clincher. Lars just got married.”
“Married? To whom?”
“Some woman from Denmark he’s been seeing all along.” Paula started crying. “All along while I was sleeping with and loving him.”
“Oh Paula I’m so sorry.”
Paula kept on sniffling, “He’s making such a mistake. Another one. He probably doesn’t even love this woman…”
“Let’s go out,” Duet said, “let’s go have a martini right now. In honor of Maurice and to put a pox on Lars’ marriage.”
“Where?”
“I’ll meet you at the top of the Gramercy Park Hotel.”
“Okay. “
Once she got home, she could not believe how relaxed she felt. All her old belongings. Her desk. The piano. Oh my God, the Bose system Maurice had bought her.
Duet dropped off the dogs, and went into her old bedroom and picked out a black t shirt, a black skirt, high heels . She put her hair up and gave each dog a treat, promising them she’d be back later. For some reason, she felt purged, sad, but strangely anew.
The bar had rattan chairs and sexy waitresses and a view of the city. Plants surrounded them and the whole effect was sensual and imaginative. Because it was so late, it wasn’t too busy. Paula and she sat down at a table. Paula, as always, looked beautiful, but now she filled out a paisley mumu. Duet took awhile choosing a cocktail. Some martini with lychee in it. Paula had stopped drinking while pregnant.
The waitress with full pillowy lips and a big smile delivered the drinks and Duet rued that she could not be twenty one anymore.
“Let’s toast,” Duet said, changing her mind, and turning to Paula, “to Maurice and perfect music wherever he is and to new beginnings for you.”
“Duet, I hate to tell you this but you don’t seem too depressed. Maybe you’re in shock.”
“I don’t even know.”
“You wanted to leave Maurice, didn’t you?”
Duet nodded. “I did. But he did it for me. He left me.” And then she began to tell Paula the whole story about the Viagra, leaving out what must have been Maurice’s rationale. Once she finished, she looked guiltily at Paula. “It’s awful isn’t it. He might have wanted to die because he knew I didn’t love him.”
“He took those pills,” Paula said. “You didn’t make him. It does sound a bit like a death wish to me. It really does.”
Duet said, “I don’t know. It sounds like a desperate wish at any rate. I remember Oskar once joking that there’s a thin line between fragility and indestructibility. In this case he was wrong. Although in my case he is right.”
“You still think about Oskar, don’t you?” Paula asked, leaning forward, putting down her milk.
“Yeah. I guess I’m an idiot, too, as well as a harbinger of bad luck.”
Paula rubbed Duet’s shoulder lovingly.
“I feel awful, too,” Paula said. “Can you believe Lars marrying someone else? And me like this?”
Paula pointed to her enormous stomach. “Not to mention, when Lars spoke, he played the truth like
a game of 3 card Monte.”
Duet smiled. “ Very cute, Paula. But I wouldn’t say it would have been a rewarding marriage if you had married him. You can’t really say he’s able to offer you a lot right now. Paula, you’re beautiful, smart, giving. You know how to be a wife. You’re a catch. Go meet someone, when you’ve had the baby, who suits you in that way and have the baby with him.”
Paula nodded uncertainly, then she said, “Oh come on. New mother looking to date. Give me a break.”
“Lots of men want to have children in their lives.”
Paula changed the subject. “Their own. “ She hesitated. “I’ll ask the Masters. What are you going to do now?”
“I dunno.”
Duet wondered if she should offer to take Paula’s baby. Could she afford it? She couldn’t right now. She’d think about this when she got more calmed down, she decided. Two dogs and a baby? Maybe she was more suited to that than a man.
And, because each of them did not know exactly what they were going to do, they began gossiping about the very solvable problems of the other people they had known in their office.
Two weeks later Duet played the machine when she got home from walking the dogs. David’s voice seductively called out.”Call your husband,” he said. “At least the one not in New York.”
Thirty three:
A day later she called David but there was no reply. She had been debating going up there to see old friends anyway, now that she was alone. Even if she didn’t see him, she had enough friends to stay with.
Once again she was on the bus to Massachusetts and then onto the train to Cape Ann. She didn’t know where she’d stay, she couldn’t afford a hotel, so she decided when she got there to try him again.
This time he picked up the phone when she called. “I’m at the train station,” she said. “Here.”
“Really?” he asked, delighted. “I’ll be right over.”
“Where are you?” she asked.
“At the chipping green,” and then he hung up before she had a chance to tell him she could wait till his game was over.
He drove up in a new Jaguar.
“What is this?” she asked.
“Just bought it. A deal.”
She smiled and put her bags in the back seat.
“Hungry?” he asked.
“No,” she answered, while looking out the window at the sea, the fishing boats far out on the horizon, the sailboats careening on their weekend excursions.
She studied the fishing boat pulleys running off the masts and she said, “Did you know those pulleys are called birds?”
He shook his head and kept driving. “Where are you staying?” he asked.
“Your place.”
He shifted the car into gear.
She couldn’t get over his tall handsomeness in a blue sweater, beautiful shirt, khakis, as he drove his blue Jaguar. “You can drive this while you’re here. I have a truck,” he said, “so use my car to get around.”
Then he pulled into a gas station and stopped the car. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“Start driving it now so I can teach you,” he said, and so they switched seats and soon she was driving his new pride and joy. They arrived at his house on Fort Square, which he owned, on the water, overlooking the sea and some fish plants and they tried to get her hooked up to his internet but it didn’t work and he called his computer guy who said to use webmail to send out, since that was all that worked, and then they went to the bedroom. He gave her a series of presents he had saved up for her from trips and had never given her. A pair of heels, a couple of blouses, a jacket, a necklace. None of them were really her style but she tried to like them. In the meantime, she wore the heels.
&nbs
p; She got into bed and then he came to bed, complaining about his knee, his back. He wore a t shirt that said Hold the Fort, and nothing else. This body she knew so well. She cuddled with him but she could see he did not want to make love. Was it because she was a freak? She would talk about it with him another time. Some part of her thought, Maybe, maybe I should begin a life here with him. So he is not intellectual, so I would be out of the mainstream but it would be a new life.
She noted that there was no word ever from Oskar. If he loved her, he would write. But then she was not writing him either. She was waiting for something specific to say. Oskar had held more mental sway over her, but David knew how to be a husband. And she needed a husband.
In the morning, he got up and made breakfast and went off to play golf. She went to have breakfast with old friends from her past. It was good to be with all of them. They wanted her to settle down with David. Make a life with someone. It had all been too much. Maurice’s dying. Oskar’s rejection. David, her friends reiterated, was good to her. The only one who had been good to her. Take my car, he said. You have to love a man like that.
Later David called and said, Meet us for a drink at the golf club.
So she sat out on the country club porch overlooking the greens and the sea and the handsome men sat recounting each stroke at each hole and she said, “How come you don’t pay as much attention to each sentence your women utter?”
They laughed.
One of the men said, Duet, you look great.
David did not say it.
When they got home from the golf course, he took a nap but it was eighteen holes in the sun. This would be what normal life would be like. This being ignored. This is what happens when you live with them.
The next morning Duet was off to see friends and so David felt freer. He was off to yet another golf game. Yesterday she had ridden round a course with him and watched him make some shots. She joined him on the putting green. “If you get that in one stroke,” he said, “I will marry you.”