by Marco Vassi
He rode out to Shady, which was little more than a scatter of houses given the designation of a town by virtue of the tiny post office, with its own ZIP code, that operated out of the living room of a seventy-year-old woman who'd lived in the same spot her whole life. He turned up Mead Mountain Road and went to the top of the three-thousand-foot mountain, rousing dogs and startling horses.
He stopped for a while at the chapel on top of the mountain, a tiny wooden church built by a renegade Catholic bishop in the 1930s, a cantankerous hermit who, ironically, became a folk hero when the first hippies moved to Woodstock and discovered him. Flattered by the attention, the man began saying Mass once more, but continued to define himself as an apostate, outside the dominion of the church. The chapel commanded a seventy-five mile view and Larry treated himself to an hour of just gazing into that liberating space.
He mounted the bike again and rode down the opposite side of the mountain and into the center of town which was composed of a postage-stamp green sporting a flagpole and a fountain and flanked by an eighteenth-century church and a string of shops and funky boutiques. The main street was crowded by Woodstock standards, the summer people having quadrupled the population of the place.
Larry parked his bike and made the circuit of Tinker Street in a half hour, pausing to gaze in shop windows and nodding to one or two people who he'd seen before and were familiar enough to greet but not to talk to. He found his post office box empty, and after he'd bought rice at the health food store, Ajax and toilet paper at the Grand Union, and cigarettes at the News Shop, he decided to be decadent and had two slices of pizza and a coke at the pizzeria. Then, his errands accomplished, he saw no point in hanging around. If he needed some social context in which to orient himself, this town could hardly provide it. He would have been much more at home in fifth century China.
"At least I don't feel so restless any more," he thought. "Maybe I can get in a good afternoon's sitting after all."
He rode back to the house, took a shower, and spent the rest of the day sitting. This time it went well. The mental and emotional distractions still arose, but he was able to breathe through them, to maintain his center of gravity in the hara, a few inches below the navel, and not be drawn into the machinations of his brain or his liver.
"This is home for me," he thought. "Everything else is confusion."
He sat for an extra period and when he finished it was after five o'clock. Feeling energetic, he went into the kitchen and began cooking rice and chopping vegetables, deciding to surprise Eleanor by having dinner prepared when she arrived. But by six she hadn't returned yet and Larry went out to the swimming hole to have a smoke.
When he got back to the house it was twenty to seven, and there was no sign of her. She was rarely late but he figured that Alec just might be holding them a bit longer than usual, and sat down with a book he was having trouble finishing, a dense study called Letting Go by a French scholar. It was a brilliant work but mercilessly opaque. He settled into the easy chair in the living room and sank into the writing like a heavy stone sinking into deep mud, slowly and inexorably.
By seven-thirty Eleanor still wasn't back.
The next hour and a half passed with Larry getting caught up in spirals of anxiety and anger, a pattern common to everyone in that situation—one doesn't know if the missing person is injured or being thoughtless. When his anger flared, he immediately imagined Eleanor in an accident and became concerned; as soon as he started to worry, he pictured her with another man and got into a rage once more.
When her car finally did pull into the driveway at nine-thirty, three and a half hours late, Larry was both relieved and furious. But when she opened the door and stepped inside, everything he was feeling was simply blown away by her appearance. Her jeans were covered with dirt, her blouse torn in several places, her hair disheveled, and her face flushed. She leaned against the doorframe and sagged sideways.
"Christ," she said.
He rushed toward her and put one arm around her waist, supporting her, and together they walked to the couch where she sat down heavily.
"What happened?" he said, kneeling in front of her. "Are you all right?"
"Now I am. But I could sure use a drink."
He went to the cabinet and pulled out a bottle of brandy that had been left by the owners of the house and, stealing glances at Eleanor, poured a healthy shot into a small tumbler. He brought it to her and she grabbed the glass with both hands and drank half of it in a single swallow, her eyes closed, her fingers trembling.
Larry studied her. Now that he knew she was all right, he could stop being worried and pay attention to what was actually going on. Eleanor was obviously in a state, but not so much so that she'd lost the ability to make a dramatic entrance. For the third time in two days he had the uncanny feeling that she was acting for his benefit. And it was not something so straightforward as her lying to him; rather, she was attempting a role that was more complex, that involved other factors beyond mere deception. But he couldn't imagine what that might be, and had to remind himself that he was subject to vivid projections and could not entirely trust his perceptions or judgments.
Eleanor finished the brandy, gasped, fell back onto the sofa, and sighed. "Now I could really use a cigarette," she said. "I'm glad there are none in the house."
Larry turned and moved around the low table to sit in the easy chair across from her. He was tempted for an instant to take the pack out, to offer her one, but then he would have one himself and he felt it would be too weird for both of them suddenly to be smoking together again, giving the scene the ambiance of more than a year before.
"What happened?" he asked when he'd sat down.
Eleanor shook herself and looked at Larry directly for the first time since she'd entered. "Oh my poor darling," she said, "You must have been worried."
He almost said, "That's the worst delivery you've ever had on a line," but instead replied, "I was upset, but that's all right. What happened to you?"
"Oh," she said, as though suddenly aware that she needed to give some accounting of her whereabouts. She took a breath and went on, "I left Alec's a little late and a few of us went to the Pub for a drink. I figured I'd get home about seven-thirty, but I had three martinis and we got into a discussion about one of the exercises we'd done this morning, and when I looked at my watch it was already eight." She looked at him pointedly and added, "If we'd had a phone I'd have called you," this last remark referring to the fact that it was Larry who insisted that they do without one for three months.
"Anyway," she went on, "When I started driving back I realized I was looped and even weaving a bit. When I got past the wooden bridge at the bottom of the hill I took a wrong turn."
"How could you do that?" he asked. "There's only one road and it goes right past our turnoff."
"I don't know. It was dark, I was drunk. The point is that I did it, and all of a sudden I was on a dirt road in the middle of the woods not knowing if it led to a house or what. And then the car stalled."
"Fantastic," Larry interjected, the sarcasm strong in his voice.
Eleanor ignored his tone. "That's not the word I used," she said. "The thing just went dead and wouldn't start again. Can I have some more brandy?"
"Haven't you had enough tonight?"
"For God's sake don't give me a tolerance lecture now!"
"O.K. Brandy coming up." He went to the cabinet and poured her another double. He watched as she sipped it. His feelings were in turmoil and he couldn't have described his state of mind. He was fairly sure that Eleanor was lying, but couldn't figure out why she'd come up with such a clumsy tale. Then again, it might be true, in which case he was getting excited over nothing.
Eleanor looked at him over the rim of her glass. "I panicked," she said. "I don't know why. The booze, partially. And we'd been working on violent scenes all day. But I got spooked. I was completely alone and it was pitch black in the woods. I couldn't even see any stars. I kept the headlig
hts on for a while but was afraid of running down the battery. And then I began hearing noises, and I became convinced there was a man out there in the darkness, watching me, waiting to drag me out of the car, rape me, kill me.
"I couldn't just sit there any more so I got out and started walking back to the main road, sure I was going to be attacked any second. I must have really been crazed because I decided to leave the dirt road and walk through the woods so the man couldn't get to me as easily. And then I started running, and completely fell apart. I tripped a dozen times and ran into branches and bushes.
"Finally, I got hold of myself and sat down and had a good cry. And when it was over I was all right. Still a little scared being alone in the woods at night, but not out of my gourd. I made it back to the car and when I turned the key the damn thing just started right up." She laughed, a bit hysterically. "Isn't that something? The sonofabitch just kicked into life."
She finished the rest of the brandy and he saw that she was indeed very drunk. He watched her as dispassionately as he would a woman on a bus. "That’s quite a tale," he said.
"A tale you call it. You think I made all that up?"
"Actually I don't. If you were going to invent a story as to why you were late I'm sure you'd have come up with something less complicated." Larry wasn't sure he believed that, but he was being led by his words, not choosing them.
"Why would I want to make up a story?"
"To cover the fact that you've been seeing another man?" he said, turning the statement into a question, keeping his tone light, and amazed that he was saying such a thing.
Eleanor stood up, swaying slightly. If she'd been startled by his oblique accusation, she gave no sign of it. "Boy, big help you are," was all she said, "Here I am all traumatized and you're having one of your mak ... mak ... whatever the hell they are." Then, abruptly, she yawned, and stretched sensuously, her body bulging and flexing. In her tattered state she looked like one of the disreputably succulent maidens in the Li'l Abner cartoon. "I'm going to take a bath," she announced.
"Don't drown," he said.
"I'm not that looped," she replied, her voice suddenly very sober and matter-of-fact. And when she walked off toward the bathroom her steps were firm and steady.
When she'd closed the door behind her he took out a cigarette and went out into the woods to smoke. "Maybe somebody will jump on me," he said to himself as he leaned against a tree and lit up. As the forest worked its spell on him he wondered if the real issue wasn't zen versus marriage or meditation versus sex, but nature versus people in any form. It occurred to him that perhaps the best thing to do was establish a hermitage, away from monks as well as women. "Out here," he said to himself," none of it matters, not Eleanor, not me, not all the Buddhas who ever farted into their pillows."
Through the trees he could see an edge of the house and the bathroom window, now showing a dim light from the inside. Eleanor had lit a candle for her bath, and he pictured her stretched out beneath the bubbles she always used. An atavistic impulse ran through him and he imagined himself stalking back into the house, kicking open the bathroom door, yanking her out of the tub and spanking her bottom until it was red, for all real or projected infidelities, and then taking her savagely on the bathroom floor, right next to the basket with the torn panties. In the fantasy he was a lumberjack, axe over his broad shoulders, bursting with vitality and seeing women as nothing more than wenches for quenching his lust. He took a deep breath and puffed out his chest, milking the image for all he could until an inner voice snapped the mood, so sharp that he was as startled as if a New York cab driver had suddenly honked his horn in Larry's ear. "Stop kidding yourself," it said. "You're a middle-class intellectual playing oriental games. Your old lady is sick of it and making it with somebody else and it serves you right."
"Don't believe it," another voice said. "You're a man whose trying to break out of the culture he was born into, heroic for trying something radically different. And your wife is insecure about it and trying to drag you back into her way of life."
"Which voice is right?" Larry said out loud.
"You decide," said a third voice in his head.
"But who am I?" Larry said to the night.
There was silence.
Larry knocked the flame off the tip of the cigarette, ground it out, and field-stripped the remaining butt. "This is great," he thought, "I'm standing out in the woods arguing with myself. I must really be getting batty."
As he started toward the house he glanced at the bathroom window again and saw the shadows of the candle flame dancing on the glass, and without consciously deciding to, he walked toward it. Once there, trying not to make noise, he leaned forward and looked inside.
Eleanor was lying in the tub under a blanket of bubbles. Her hair was loose and floating, her nipples rising up from the foam, her feet wide apart resting on the far rim. Her eyes were closed and her mouth open. Her hands weren't visible but it was obvious they were in slow and regular motion. He couldn't see the details, but he knew that Eleanor was masturbating, fingering herself gently as she relaxed into the wet heat of the water.
Her whole attitude was one of peacefulness. She was not a frustrated woman seeking release but an already satisfied one recalling a former pleasure. If the scene in the bathroom had been a movie with subtitles explaining the action, Larry was sure he'd read that the leading lady was dreaming about a recent experience with some man, and obviously not the bald loony peering in at the glass.
He was about to turn and leave when another of the powerful images that had started the morning before erupted in his mind. He sees Eleanor leaving the group at the Pub, and ten minutes later one of the men gets up to go also. It is done very discretely, but the others at the table exchange knowing glances. Larry had to grip onto the windowsill to fight a wave of vertigo when he realized it is not the same man he'd seen the past few times, and the possibility occurred to him that Eleanor was not only having an affair, but screwing around in general.
In his head, the fantasy ground on inexorably. Eleanor and the man meet at a deserted spot. They get out of their cars and go into the woods. Eleanor stands against a tree, her breasts and hips thrust forward. The man spreads a blanket on the ground. She walks toward him, smiling. This is the first time with this man and she's excited by the newness of him. They embrace and kiss, and then she whispers in his ear, "We can't take too long, my husband is expecting me."
Larry blinked. The bathroom window was beginning to steam over and the actual woman lying in the tub was becoming indistinct, even as she began moving her hands more quickly, her face becoming taut, her mouth opening into an O, her toes curling. At the same time, superimposed on that reality was Larry's fantasy, or his peculiar perception of another reality, that of Eleanor lying on the ground, her movement and expression the same, except that instead of her fingers it was the rough, insistent movement of a man bringing her to orgasm.
Larry turned from the window and lurched away. He took a few steps and then caught his foot on an exposed root, stumbled, and fell face forward, cracking his shin on a sharp rock. The pain was unbearable and he curled up like a foetus, holding the injured part in his hands until the sensation subsided and became only mildly excruciating.
He lay there for several minutes, making no sound, and when he did make a noise it was to whisper, "Hurt, hurt you bastard, Hurt!" After the mental and emotional confusion and anguish he'd been going through, pure physical pain came as a relief, something he understood and could deal with.
And then, without warning, he began crying. His eyes moistened, and tears began to flow, and finally he started sobbing, hoarse panting barks and moans that sounded like no animal who had ever walked those woods. He couldn't have said what he was crying for because in those moments his sense of self disappeared. And he only came to when he felt Eleanor's hand shaking his shoulder. She was kneeling next to him, a bathrobe over her shoulders, her expression a mixture of concern and contempt.
&nb
sp; 6
When he got to bed that night, after a shower, after assuring Eleanor for the fourth time that he was all right, he slept almost not at all. It was clear to him that he was coming apart at the seams and had nowhere to turn for help. Even if he'd been in a monastery, the only advice or instruction he'd get from a master would be to increase the pressure, to sit longer and harder. He remembered how, during sesshins, after twelve or fourteen hours of sitting, many people then went on to spend the entire night on their pillows, cross-legged and rigid in the chill darkness of the zendo, pushing themselves to the edge of a breakthrough. As it was, his only support now was Eleanor, and he could not confess his suspicions to her, expose his weakness. She would comfort him, to be sure, but would also lose whatever little respect she still had for him. And what if she confessed an affair, or a streak of promiscuity, could he handle that? And what if she lied? Would he know? More importantly, he'd despise himself for not being able to get through the crisis of doubt to which his practice had brought him without crying on a woman's shoulder. Of course, he wasn't presently doing much better than that, lying on the ground and sobbing like a lunatic who's been locked out of his asylum, but at least he'd maintained some integrity of vision, and not made himself even more vulnerable to a woman who might be turning him into the town cuckold.
By the time the first birds began to stir, Larry had begun to drift into a hypnogogic trance. All the contents of his mind rose sluggishly from the bottom of his brain and floated up and down the dream canals of consciousness, like indolent fish in a lazy current. Then, all at once Larry was dreaming of fish, goldfish that gradually grew larger and rounder and darker, until they looked like meditation pillows, whose faces were all those of Eleanor in a score of guises, laughing, scowling, thinking, reflecting the voluptuous flushes of orgasm. And when dawn had played its hand and the sun had appeared, Larry woke up. He felt completely refreshed, without confusion or fatigue. Like a madman or a genius, he'd awakened with a new idea, an equation the simplicity and daring of which was breathtaking.