by Teri Emory
She smiled. “Of course it counts. Do you know anything about Cayuga House?”
I shook my head. “I’m new in town.”
“Cayuga House is a women’s counseling center, just off the Commons in town. This work I’m doing is part of a grant that funds the operation. We have to interview some of the women who have been receiving services. I need someone to conduct the interviews and proofread the report as I write it. I can pay you minimum wage, up to twenty hours a week. Do you think you could start tomorrow?”
__________
I would be married for more than a decade and the mother of two children before I went back to graduate school for a doctorate in psychology, but I consider that summer the start of my career as a therapist. I got caught up in the mission of Cayuga House, which seemed more meaningful than anything I was learning in the painting seminar that had brought me to Ithaca. By chance, I said at the time, I discovered that art history was not meant to be my life’s work. Years later, in my own therapy, I came to see that meeting Sonya may have been a stroke of luck, but leaving art history behind was not entirely a matter of chance. Thinking about art meant thinking about Italy, which meant thinking about Andrew. In a way, I gave up on art so I could give up on him.
Like many of my generation of therapists, I’m skeptical of Freudian concepts, especially about women. But the older I get, the more deeply one of his ideas resonates within me. After all that has happened, I do believe, as Freud did, that the world is full of accidents, but the mind is not.
__________
Jim and I were married on a warm June afternoon the same week he finished graduate school. Sonya insisted that we hold our wedding in the backyard of her house in Cayuga Heights. Jim’s friend Harold, later the architect who would help us design and expand our home in Laurel Falls, was his best man. Both Sarah and Miriam were my maids of honor. I wore an ankle-length white satin dress with diamond-shaped fishnet inserts at the midriff, a crown of daisies around my head, and no shoes. Jim was in a second-hand tuxedo he had picked up at a thrift store in Binghamton, a Day-Glo-orange bow tie with matching suspenders, and Earth Shoes he had coated with black shoe polish. His hair was almost to his shoulders; mine reached to my waist. Before we spoke our marriage vows, the Unitarian minister who performed the ceremony delivered a sermon about the ecological impact of gas-guzzling American cars, the urgency of zero population growth, and the immorality of the Vietnam War. We promised to love and honor, though not necessarily obey, each other. I suppose we’ve done better than many at keeping our word.
Close to a hundred friends and family members were there, applauding when Jim kissed me after the minister pronounced us married. My mother, raised by Methodist parents in a small Iowa town, sat primly through the ceremony, her lips frozen in a polite smile, too baffled by what she saw to say much. My father, Jewish and from New York, liked to think of himself as a sophisticated man of the world, though the world he knew was pretty much limited to Riverdale and the upholstery business he ran with his brother Norman. Dad posed what he thought was a clever question to everyone at our wedding, including the minister: What’s the matter—a hippie rabbi they couldn’t find?
Three friends of Jim’s, recent graduates from the music department at Ithaca College, played acoustic guitars and sang sweet and dignified versions of Beatles, Motown, and protest music throughout the afternoon. Sarah likes to say that I was the only bride in history to walk down the aisle to “Draft Dodger Rag.”
The day after our wedding, we loaded our many cartons of books and a few shabby suitcases of clothes into a small trailer that we hitched to the back of Jim’s Datsun, and we drove to Manhattan to begin married life. Jim had been hired into a management training program at a small brokerage company with offices on lower Broadway. Before I left Ithaca, Sonya recommended me to the director of a community counseling center on the Lower East Side, who promised a job would be waiting for me when I got to the city.
We carted our meager belongings up four flights of stairs to our new apartment, a tiny one-bedroom on First Avenue near 87th Street. We had rented it sight unseen from an ad in the Times, making arrangements over the phone while we were still in Ithaca. The landlord mailed us a lease; we signed it and sold my yellow VW so we could send him a check for the first month’s rent and security deposit. We spent our inaugural nights in Manhattan in sleeping bags on the floor of our bedroom.
With Jim’s first paycheck, we bought a waterbed—absurdly large for the room and expressly forbidden in our lease. In those days, “waterbed” was code for frequent and unconventional sexual activity. I don’t recollect anything particularly unconventional, but we did make love at all hours and with the freedom possible only before there are children sleeping in the next room (we might wake them), or phones that must be answered in the middle of lovemaking (it could be the office), or exhausting daytime schedules that keep nighttime passions at bay (maybe over the weekend, okay?).
__________
Friday morning, the day before the party. A crystal-clear memory unravels as I start to awaken. I’m a new mother, being wheeled out of Lenox Hill Hospital with Adam in my arms. A kind nurse—I would have described her as “older” in those days, but she was probably no older than I am now—is giving me advice.
“Okay, New Mom, don’t be starvin’ yourself to try to fit into your old clothes. You’re nursing that baby; you need your strength. Eat when you’re hungry, sleep when the baby sleeps, and for the next six weeks, don’t pick up anything heavier than a fryin’ pan, except for the baby. You’ve got a big, strong husband, and no one’s delivered a baby out of his body lately, so let him do the heavy lifting.”
The clock radio clicks on and my reverie dissolves like sugar on the tongue. I’m no longer at Lenox Hill, no longer a new mother. Back to the future. I open my eyes, remembering that Jim stayed in the city last night. NPR’s Morning Edition bulletins connect me to the world outside my bedroom. It’s Luciano Pavarotti’s birthday. The Paul-McCartney-is-dead craze began on this day in 1969. Yesterday, a judge awarded a Tampa couple joint custody of Fred and Ginger, their trained sea lions. Unseasonably warm temperatures are expected in the Metro area for the weekend.
I sit over a cup of coffee with Carmen, who thanks me again for hiring her son Javier to help set up the house for the party. He’s twenty-two, finishing an associate’s degree in computers at a community college. Javier had a brief wild period when he drank too much and drove too fast, but one DUI arrest was enough to scare him into saving his own life. People say he’s a good kid—smart, nice-looking, wants to make something of himself. People used to say things like that about Adam.
No patients scheduled until next Tuesday. Over the years I’ve learned it’s best for me not to plan on being at work on the Friday and Monday around our fall party. I gave my office manager a long weekend, but I need to spend an hour or so on patient charts at the office today. I figure I can be back at the house by late morning, when deliveries for the party will be starting.
My office is a ten-minute drive from home, in a ninety-year-old, three-story building whose past tenants have included a savings bank, a messenger service, and a detective agency. A primary care group now owns the building and occupies the entire first floor. On the second floor are the offices of Leonard and Roberta Oberman, both speech therapists. Their daughter Emily was a high school classmate of Adam’s. The Obermans came to Adam’s funeral and sent a generous donation to the Laurel Falls High School library in Adam’s memory. But when I run into them in our parking lot or at the sandwich shop across the street, they can’t get away from me fast enough. They don’t know how to answer my friendly questions about Emily. It’s awkward making chitchat with a mother who has lost her son. I’ve stopped trying to engage them; I smile and wave, and I let them escape.
The top floor of the building, less than half the size of the two lower floors, is all mine: waiting room with a partition
ed-off area for Caryn, my office manager; a large alcove for me where I can do paperwork; a therapy room; a former broom closet I turned into a kitchen. I’ve rented this space since I opened my practice, even though Jim has always thought it would make more financial sense to buy something. But I’m used to this place, and, in a contrary way, I like being responsible for the one small aspect of my life with Jim that makes no financial sense.
Caryn has left a neat pile of patient charts on my desk. I am halfway through them when the phone rings. I pick it up, forgetting to let the call ring through to the answering service.
“Dr. Gillian,” I say, still making notes in one of the charts.
“Beth Gillian? Beth Jacobs Gillian?” A male voice.
“Yes, this is she. Who’s calling, please?”
Silence. I put my pen down. “Hello?” I hear him inhale.
“Ciao, Bella. Stai bene?”
“My God. Andrew?”
“Did I catch you in the middle of a miracle cure?”
“I’m alone here today. How are you? Where are you?”
“I’m in New York.”
“In the city?”
“Yes, at a conference. I’m staying at the Carnegie Grand.”
“Did you call my house yesterday?”
“Twice. I hung up when I got your machine.”
“Welcome to the modern age. We have Caller ID. I saw the name of your hotel.”
“Sorry I didn’t leave a message. I chickened out. Then I called again a little while ago. Your housekeeper said you were at your office. I took a chance . . . “
A chance.
“Beth, do you think I could see you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean see you, meet you in the city. God, I know how insane this must sound to you, but I need to see you.”
Need. “Can you tell me why?”
Silence.
“Andrew?”
“I’m having a bit of a crisis . . .”
“What kind of crisis?”
Pause, and then, “It’s hard, over the phone . . . I know I’m asking a lot. You can’t imagine how long I’ve thought about whether I should call you.”
“I guess I don’t understand, why me? After all this time?”
“Because I need to talk to someone who knows me but won’t judge me. And you, Bella, are the least judgmental person I have ever known.”
Something primal in his voice makes me ask, “How long are you in town?”
“I fly back to California on Wednesday.”
“We have something—something important happening at our house this weekend. Can I call you back?”
“Could I see you on Monday? Oh, you’re probably working . . .”
“As it turns out I’m off on Monday. But Andrew, I have to think about this.”
“If you can’t see me, I’ll understand, really I will, but I don’t want to talk about it on the phone anymore. Don’t call me, just come if you can. I’ll be in the lobby of my hotel at ten on Monday morning. Look for me at the coffee bar near the reception desk. I’ll have a cappuccino waiting for you.”
“I hope you understand, I can’t just say yes right now.”
“It helps just hearing your voice. But come if you can.”
“Take care, Andrew.”
“Ci vediamo, Bella.”
As soon as I hang up the phone, I relocate everything I know about Andrew to my emotional waiting room, the part of my brain that is disconnected from my feelings.
I concentrate on finishing the work on my desk. I make a list of the stops I have to make on the way home: Pick up Jim’s jacket from the tailor. Drop off overdue videos. Gas up the car. I won’t think about Andrew, won’t let my heart say his name again until after the party.
I’m expert at this . . . compartmentalizing. It’s how I manage my memories of Adam. Put them in the waiting room, call out to them one at a time, as I can bear to face them. It’s a game I play well, a sort of sleight-of-mind. Now you think it, now you don’t.
It’s how I survive.
PART II:
Chances and Choices
Sarah:
Between the Lines
“There’s something happening here.
What it is ain’t exactly clear.”
—Stephen Stills
As if Mondays weren’t bad enough, facing five new, excruciating days at Tri-Tech, Joey has decided we now need mandatory 8:00 a.m. meetings to start the week. He got the idea from listening to an audiotape course called Finding Your Inner CEO, from which he has already learned the importance of generating (or having his assistant generate) elaborate agendas, tortuous spreadsheets, and four-color Gantt charts to accompany his every move.
This past Monday, Joey and his assistant, Sally, were whispering nose-to-nose when the rest of us filed into the conference room. We dutifully took our places: Lawrence and I—Tri-Tech’s only vice presidents—as well as the company’s ten directors and senior directors, sank into the high-backed leather chairs around the table. Everyone else crowded into the two rows of molded plastic chairs that lined the edge of the room. Sally surveyed the group with a knowing air, tapping her fingers on her color-coded folders, whose contents were a secret to everyone except her and Joey. Sally has worked for Joey since the birth of the company in his garage, and she understands that in a small company like Tri-Tech, knowledge is power.
Raymond Albano rushed to grab the seat on Joey’s left, the chair facing Sally. Raymond came to work for us fresh from the PharmD—pharmacy doctorate program—at Rutgers. Joey hired him when Tri-Tech’s main competitor, The Edward Saylish Health Marketing Group, put a full-time medical director on staff. In his days as a prosthetic limb salesman, Joey shared his territory with Ed Saylish. Though the two haven’t seen each other for years, the feral rivalry born in their Pittsburgh-to-Binghamton days flourishes to this day. Joey went berserk when he heard that his arch enemy had hired an employee who could be introduced to clients as Doctor Somebody. Tri-Tech can’t afford a physician. We got Raymond Albano, PharmD, instead.
Raymond and Joey are perfectly matched. Raymond can hardly believe his good fortune at having landed a position with such an impressive title right out of graduate school, and he admires, respects, and reveres Joey. Joey can hardly believe his good fortune at having persuaded a PharmD to join Tri-Tech for the price of a senior director’s title and a piddling salary, and he considers himself fully entitled to Raymond’s admiration, respect, and reverence.
I watched as Raymond uncapped his fountain pen, turned to a fresh sheet on his legal pad, and looked expectantly towards Joey. Sally circled the room, handing out copies, from her blue folder, of the two-page agenda she had prepared for what would probably be a five-minute meeting.
“Savant Pharmaceuticals has a new CEO,” Joey began. “The whole New Jersey operation is about to be restructured. Doc Shortland has been promoted and is moving to Switzerland. The official announcement will probably be made next week, but Shortland called me over the weekend. He wanted me to hear the news directly from him.”
I could imagine the conversation: Shortland’s torturing Joey with false modesty about the promotion, Joey’s pretending to be happy for him. In front of Tri-Tech staff, however, Joey positioned himself as an insider, a peer in the highest echelon of corporate power.
“Shortland told me in confidence that Savant made him an offer he can’t refuse—he’s gonna head up Savant’s European territory,” Joey continued. He was twirling a rubberband through his fingers, his creepy Captain Queeg-like habit. “I’m meeting with him tomorrow to strategize about the changes at Savant. I’ll let you know if there are any take-aways from that meeting. Questions?”
No one said anything. Raymond was scribbling furiously. I did have a couple of questions, which I kept to myself: Is “strategize” a real word? Who invente
d the use of “take-aways” as a noun? Who in this room would appreciate Dorothy Parker’s famous observation about Switzerland? (“The Swiss are a neat and industrious people, none of whom is under seventy-five years of age. They make cheeses, milk chocolate, and watches, all of which, when you come right down to it, are pretty fairly unnecessary.”)
Red folder in hand, Sally took her position in the doorway to distribute the handouts as the crowd dispersed.
“Sarah, stay for a minute, will ya?” Joey called to me.
“What’s up?”
“You used to teach French, right?”
“Uh, yes,” I said cautiously.
“I thought so. Shortland was telling me he has to learn French in a hurry. I guess he’s going to need it in the new job. I think he already speaks Swiss, but not French.”
“You mean German?”
“Whatever. Shortland remembered talking to you about Europe at the meeting in Palm Springs last year. He had a cast on his arm, couldn’t play golf, so you were stuck babysitting him for the afternoon.”
“He’s smart, and he’s not bad company when you get him away from Savant.” Or away from you, Joey, I wanted to add.
“I can put up with anyone who gives us so much business. Whaddaya think, can you teach him to speak French in a month?”
“What?”
“He can’t go to classes, like at a school or anything. He needs lessons at times that are convenient for him. Can you do it?”
“I’ll need to talk to him first. It’s not like teaching someone to drive a car. Learning a language is—”
Joey interrupted me. “Make yourself available to him,” he said.
“I’m a little concerned about my workload as it is. If I have to be at Savant so often . . .”
“It’s only for a limited time. And I’ll see to it that your bonus this year reflects the time and effort you’re putting in on this.” He checked his watch. “You should probably get to Shortland right away.”