Broadwater put out a cautious hand, as if he had no intention of helping at all.
“I can barely move,” he said. “Who’s this? He better be a medic.”
The doctor placed his valise down on the floor and opened it, extracting his stethoscope for an examination.
“I’m Dr. Spritz. Can you tell me where it hurts you?”
“My back. I’ve thrown it out. When I move the pain shoots into my groin.”
“It could be psychosomatic,” said Broadwater.
“Sit on it,” said Eastman. The sight of Broadwater after ten years was like a punch to Eastman’s stomach. He became enraged, forgetting the men had come here to help. “You should have published my poem, you son of a bitch.” Eastman tried to grab Broadwater but winced from the pain as soon as he tried to move.
“Do not move, please,” said the doctor, lifting Eastman’s shirt. He placed his cold stethoscope on Eastman’s chest and listened to his heart.
“Am I broken, Doc?”
“Quiet,” said Spritz. “Have you had the trouble with the back before?”
“No. Most of the year I’m in good shape. Summers I tend to gain a little weight.”
“What’s wrong with his eye?” Broadwater said. Eastman’s eye was half closed and red from the impact of the phone.
“The phone came down off the desk and hit me while I was trying to answer your goddamn call.”
“Okay. Don’t get so excited,” said Broadwater. He shuffled through the papers on Eastman’s desk.
“Where are you from, Doc?”
“Germany. Dusseldorf. Have you gained weight recently?”
“Twenty-five pounds, give or take. Like I said, I let go a little in the summer.”
“You still have your place on the Cape?” asked Broadwater.
Eastman ignored him. The house, a dune shack on Cape Cod that he had expanded into a two-bedroom, was being rented by a former colleague of Penny’s, a professor of Oriental studies, because the endeavor had become unaffordable. The only reason they didn’t sell was because of its historic literary value (Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams—dune-goers all). Eastman himself had written a good portion of a novel there, before the renovation. But it was a horrible investment that would soon be overtaken by the ocean. His place on the Cape was not a topic fit for discussion.
“We’re going to sit you up, now,” said the doctor.
Broadwater snickered. Eastman shot him a scowling look. The doctor left the room to look for a few pillows. He returned with the large decorative shams from the living room. The fabric had been picked out by Penny when they had the living room furniture reupholstered. Spritz placed the pillows at Eastman’s side and indicated to Broadwater that it was now time to prop him up. “On three?” said Broadwater. The doctor acknowledged and counted off. “A one, a two, a three.”
They lifted Eastman’s heavy upper half as he yelled something incomprehensible. The doctor quickly propped him up on the pillows and allowed the patient to settle into the pain.
“Maybe we should pull up his pants?” Broadwater said. Then he came in close and spoke into Eastman’s ear: “Eastman, do you want your pants on?”
“I’m not deaf, you idiot.”
“Bring him some water, please,” said Spritz.
Broadwater went to the kitchen to fetch a glass and Spritz went into his valise for some sedatives.
“I’m a great admirer of your books,” Spritz said.
“That’s nice of you to say.”
His career was the furthest thing from his mind. He would banish all of his success if Penny would just come back to him.
Broadwater returned with the water and the doctor gave Eastman the sedatives. He slugged back two with the water.
“What was this you mentioned on the phone again?” asked Broadwater. “Something about a unicorn.”
“I was in pain, I barely remember.”
“You said ‘My unicorn has left.’ You went on and on about it.”
“It was pain like I have never felt. Excruciating pain.”
“You do know that unicorns don’t exist. You do know that?”
“I was hallucinating from the pain. That’s how bad it was.”
“How is it now?” asked the doctor.
“I think the pills are working. You better leave the bottle. There’s money in the top drawer. Take what you need.”
“That’s not necessary. I’ll write you a prescription.”
“Do you have some kind of fascination with unicorns, Eastman?” asked Broadwater. “I mean, if you were hallucinating from pain, as you say, and you saw this mythical animal . . . I’m just thinking out loud. It comes from Greek mythology. Zeus was nursed by the she-god Amalthea. She was half a goat. In Christianity the unicorn became associated with Christ. Only you’re not a Christian. She makes an appearance in Hebrew Scripture. A biblical beast. But then, your Jewish heritage doesn’t interest you either. Were you having a vision?”
Eastman ignored Broadwater’s musings. “Can we just leave it as a lapsed moment to be forgotten?”
“Astrology?” Broadwater snapped his finger. “Were you born a Capricorn?”
“I’m an Aries. It’s bullshit.”
“When was your wife born?”
“Stop this.”
“January? February?”
“Sure.”
“Capricorn. Your wife.”
“Enough.”
“Penelope. Capricorn. Unicorn. Your wife was not here to help. You were in pain. You were hallucinating, as you say. Tears. Your wit’s end. Penelope, your wife, she’s your unicorn.”
“I’m at my wit’s end now. And if you don’t shut up, I’m going to come over there and snap your neck.”
“It is a goat, the astrological symbol,” said the doctor, “not a unicorn.” The two men ignored him.
“You said something else to me,” Broadwater continued. “On the phone. My unicorn, you said. She’s gone.”
“Doctor, I’ll pay you five thousand dollars if you coldcock this man in the face.”
“So much violence. Enough, you two!” said Spritz.
“Hmm. But you said she’s at your mother-in-law’s. So that’s it. She left. She’s gone. Gone away to her mother’s. Not much of a mystery.”
Eastman was not full of rage. If he was not laid out, yes, it’s true, he would have resorted to violence. To slugging Broadwater in his mouth, perhaps wrestling him to the ground, neutering the man he had already humiliated over the phone. But Eastman was not full of rage. Broadwater, running his mouth, had pushed a button in Eastman so deep that it shut off any emotion he could feel, and instead he felt emptiness, hollowness, darkness.
“So,” said Broadwater, “how are your children?”
3.
The two men were gone now. Broadwater, the Dusseldorfer Spritz. Once the pain medication set in, they were able to help him on his feet and took him upstairs to bed. They set him up with a pitcher of water, crackers, a jar of peanut butter, country jam, a rounded spreading knife. No sharp objects, he instructed, lest he resort to suicidal thoughts once again. He wasn’t at the stage to consider the children, because he was not giving up. He was still possessed by the missing variables in Penny’s equation.
There were always signals when dealing with the disruption of two mates—lovers so confident and set in their ways and in their bond that they neglected to talk about the particular ailment until it shaped itself into a cancer and spread. Decisions were put into question. Signs manifested.
But what were the signs? And was he too self-absorbed to notice? Had his Penny been hiding her discontent? How could he have been so clouded to overlook her unhappiness?
Weeks ago, in the very bed where he now lay dormant, there was an incident during their lovemaking. Penny had been away for a weekend co
nference in Boston, leaving Eastman in New York to care for the boys. It was their routine to fuck on the night when one returned, even if it wasn’t particularly desirable. That night she began by sucking his cock for a short period, and once he was hard enough, she got on top to ride him. He grasped for her breasts, but she pushed his hands down in a way that could be described as irritable. She then held his hands against the mattress. Eastman didn’t think anything of it. He liked to be dominated, he encouraged it. But the restraint seemed out of place during this routine fuck. His hard-on began to recede as she continued to thrust atop him. That’s when Penny uncharacteristically guided one of his hands to her throat. Her neck was long, like her torso. On it she wore a pendant he had given her many years ago for her birthday, a jade stone on an elegant gold chain. Eastman did not think anything of the movement and returned his hand to one of her breasts, but she reached for his hand again and placed it at the base of her neck. He did not know what to do. Could he be so prudish to shy away from what she wanted? He had once been eager to try everything, to fuck however he pleased, however she pleased, and he, in fact, thought of himself as a man who had tried everything. At his age, he knew what he wanted from sex. To come inside her mouth or her cunt (usually from behind), and if the mood struck them both as it did a few occasions a year, inside her anus. So he casually left his hand there as she continued to ride him, and he held her gently by the neck, keeping her aloft, as it were. Her long thrusts transitioned into tight squirms, a sign she was getting ready to do her final push into orgasm. “Do it,” she said. “Do what?” he said. “Squeeze.” “Squeeze?” He removed his hand from her neck and placed both hands on her ass where he proceeded to squeeze. She became irritated with him. She took his hand once again and placed it directly on her throat, not at the base of her neck any longer, but over her larynx. He was sure now of what she wanted. And as if it couldn’t be any clearer, she said, “Choke me.” Would he get any pleasure out of this? Strangling his unicorn? But Eastman did what she asked. He squeezed. And as he squeezed his cock expanded to its full capacity. Yes, he had a raging hard-on from this violent fantasy of hers. Eastman was afraid of this. Therefore he loosened his grip and merely kept his hand on her neck. “Harder . . . Choke me! Fuck me! Choke me! Fuck me!” “Penny,” he said. But at the risk that she would stop fucking him, he tightened his grip, felt her glands, throat, muscle, the parts beneath her delicate surface. Her panting was silenced and she fucked him harder. He was stifling her from the neck up. Was this the passion she wanted? Her beautiful flushed cheeks began to turn a purple of sorts. She opened her mouth as if she were to dry heave. She couldn’t breathe. He loosened his grip slightly, retaining some pressure, lax enough so that she could breathe. “Tighter,” she said once she caught her breath. And he did, only his hand was tired, so he placed two hands upon his Penny’s throat and tightened. She was being strangled (Eastman, the strangler), and as she took pleasure in this erotic asphyxiation, she rubbed her clit rapidly, harder and with more purpose than he’d ever seen, and she burst into an aching orgasm, still with his cock inside her, though he was unsure whether she needed it. She sat on top of him for a moment and refused to look into his eyes. She collapsed on his sweaty chest; his erection receded. And then she rolled off him onto her side of the bed. She had no intention of finishing him off. The two of them didn’t speak, nor did they speak about it in the days and weeks that followed.
He had no appetite. When had he eaten last? He didn’t know. He felt as he did when he fasted with Penny, like on their trip to India in 1965. They stayed on the grounds of an old temple that a healer put Penny in touch with. They took a bus that traveled on dirt roads from Bangalore to Mysore, through impoverished shantytowns, children barefoot and begging wherever they stopped, all the way to the ancient temple on the hill. The stench of garbage would carry over the gates of the temple and breach the sacred grounds. Penny had been practicing yoga under the guidance of a Rupert Vaz, a healer to the upper echelon of Manhattan. She was successful in getting Eastman to follow her all the way to India. He thought of her yoga as a quick fad popularized by the Beatles and movie stars, though he enjoyed watching Penny bend over in her underwear at home, doing leg splits on the hardwood floors that made her ass look like a puddle of dreams. There was also a bit of jealousy in him, and so when she went to study with Vaz, he thought no one man would get to see her spread-eagle without Eastman in the room. So they practiced a few months together. There was sexual energy in yoga and Eastman felt it a good match for his creativity, health, mind, and phallus. Then a weekend in India. Mysore. They fasted, meditated, stood on their heads; by the end of the day they were too tired to fuck. Candles kept the garbage stench at bay. He liked living in his Indian garb, the roominess of a white bed dress. He experienced the delight of what it must be like to be a woman in women’s clothing.
The lack of food provided clarity. Eastman could move from memory to memory without overlapping anxiety. He strained to locate the course of their problems, which he believed was locked inside his memory, and only then would he eat and allow himself to rest.
He thought back to the night in question. Penny, standing in his study, confronting him about their happiness. She had come in guns blazing, late that night for dinner. He thought they would go out once she arrived. She was not herself, entering the house late, transformed, a devious bitch, possessed by the idea to flee his hold. In the kitchen she took a meek but accusatory stance. She had told him earlier in the day that the boys would be at the Stevensons’, a lie. She had taken the car and driven them all the way to her mother’s in New Jersey. His own children knew the score before he did.
“I’m leaving you, Alan,” she said.
He thought he heard wrong, and so he said to her, “But where do you want to go to dinner?”
“You didn’t hear me, Alan. I said I’m leaving you.”
He demanded why, and the usual stock answers that he had once heard from Barbara came tumbling out. She didn’t have a good enough reason and so they accused one another, unleashing the history of their infidelities. Infidelity, in Eastman’s eyes, wasn’t a sound reason to split up a marriage. He had his share of affairs over the course of their ten years, but in Penny he had met his match, and that night it came out that she, too, had her own set of lovers. A colleague in the Anthropology Department, before Toby, their first child, was born. A subway musician, a busker, who found her irresistible. And then Rupert Vaz, the yogi healer, who could do a full split on the floor. He suspected that limber devil, but he could never confirm it. Eight in total, she had said. Eight in ten years. Double his number. He knew about some of the men before, it wasn’t news. They didn’t bother him for more than a few days at a time because she was his. Plus nothing carried on for too long. He understood those moments when a partner strayed, for he had placed himself in similar circumstances, with other women. Monogamy was an insincere ideal, though he had always wanted it. So what were a few sour nights in a decade?
“I’m not leaving you because of your behavior, Alan. I knew who you were when I married you. You had your reputation. I saw the way women treated you. All those little publishing whores.”
“Then why, Penny?”
“You’ve fallen out of love with me. Don’t you see?”
“That’s completely false. I do, in fact, love you.”
“In fact? You’re confirming a forgotten feeling. You’re no longer passionate. Not about me. Not about anything at all.”
“That’s nonsense. I feel passionate about plenty. Our children, for one.”
“But you won’t fight for me. You lack the passion to do it.”
“I am fighting. What the hell do you call this?”
“No. You’re not fighting for me, Alan.”
“If it’s a counterattack you mean, that is because you’re ambushing me, Penny. I’ve had no idea how you felt, you’ve given me no notice.”
“You’re blind
.”
“Do you still love me, Penny?”
She didn’t answer. He took her hand; she pulled it away. He held it with both hands, trying to communicate his desire for her. He was telling her the truth. She looked to the floor, her hands cold. If it was another man, he suggested, they could try an open marriage for a period, to keep up appearances for the children. He knew what divorce was. His first daughter, Helen, now nineteen, he hardly saw. She grew up with Barbara and her new husband in Mexico. Divorce would estrange him from his boys. He didn’t want a repeat of what he felt he’d done to Helen.
Penny dismissed the open marriage. Referring to the infidelities, she said, “That’s what we’ve already had, isn’t it?”
No, he didn’t want the open marriage either, of course not. I want you!
“Prolonging this into an open marriage will only delay the inevitable,” she said.
“And what is the inevitable?”
That is when he knew there was another man. Someone who had stolen Penny’s affection, love, mind, and body. Stolen it from him when he was at his weakest and least attractive.
He wanted a name. “What’s his name?”
After all the honesty about the affairs that they had confessed, she was now lying to him. She wouldn’t tell him who it was, or how it happened, because she was ashamed. He saw this clearly now.
“There’s someone else,” he said.
“There isn’t.” She was a terrible liar, unable to hide from her desires. Then she admitted, “There’s the idea of someone else.”
“So what we’re talking about is that you’ve fallen out of love with me. And you stand here accusatory, blaming me, when it is you, after all.”
“You won’t fight for me.” She was in tears. Again, she stuck to her lie, that another man was just an idea. But Eastman knew differently.
“Mother of my children, I’m not going to beg you. But it’s not me who isn’t fighting. It’s you. You quit fighting. Remember that. When you’re sucking his dick, whoever he is, I want you to remember that.”
Eastman Was Here Page 3