by Daniel Quinn
“Here. She thinks I should have spent more time with you here.”
“What good would that have done?”
“I don’t know. I’m just telling you what she thinks.”
“Okay.” He closed his eyes, groping for the thread of the conversation. “So you’re not looking forward to this meeting. Because you think Dr. Jakes is against you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, she hasn’t given me any indication of that, Ginny. None at all. Honestly.”
A long silence.
“What are you trying to say, Ginny? That you don’t want to meet with Dr. Jakes?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You’re not sure about what?” When that produced no reply, he said, “Is it that you want me to come there?”
“Well, yes, I thought maybe we could have lunch here. Then we could meet with Dr. Jakes if—”
“Yes? If . . . ?”
“If you really think we have to. I’d really rather not have to go through all this with her there.”
“Go through all what, Ginny?”
“All our . . . personal business.”
Greg thought for a moment. “All right, Ginny. I can be there by twelve-thirty or so. In the restaurant?”
“Yes. That’s what I’d thought.”
“Okay. See you then.”
He hung up briefly, then asked the operator to connect him with Dr. Jakes.
“Agnes? This is Greg. Do you have a minute?”
“Sure.”
“How do I go about getting a car?”
“What? Why do you want a car?”
“Ginny just called and wants me to have lunch with her over at the lodge.”
“Oh . . . Well. I really don’t think that’s such a good idea at this point, Greg. Tomorrow maybe, but not today. . . Frankly, this has caught me off balance. I’m a little boggled. What exactly was her thought?”
“To tell you the truth, Agnes, she’s a little nervous about this afternoon’s meeting. She has the feeling you’re against her.”
“Against her? Why?”
“She says you accused her of neglecting me.”
“Ah. Well, it’s true I thought it might conceivably help if she made herself a continuous presence in your life here. But you should know me well enough to know that I didn’t accuse her of anything.”
“She may not have used that word.”
“I hope not. Accusation is just not my style.”
“I know. But look. Let me talk to her.”
Agnes’s sigh transmitted itself clearly across the line. “Greg dear, when God was passing out his gifts and came to you, he must have said, ‘Let’s give this one lots and lots of brains but no survival instincts at all.’”
“Why do you say that?”
“Greg, you’re absolutely fearless when it comes to making yourself vulnerable to psychological injury. If I haven’t already told you that, I apologize. You may think this is a wonderfully charming quality in a man, but I definitely don’t. In moderation, sure. But taken to the extremes you seem to enjoy, it’s immature and neurotic and self-destructive. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about here. You just throttle down those kamikaze impulses for another three hours, and then we’ll see where we stand. Okay?”
“Okay, Agnes.”
He hung up, thought for a moment, and then asked the operator to ring Robert Orsini’s room. When he had him on the line he said, “Robbie, I need a favor. Can you get me a car?”
“A car? Sure, no problem, buddy. What’s up?”
The dining room at Griffin’s was Hunting Lodge Plush, with acres of expensive-looking paneling, miles of smoky rafters angled up into a cathedral ceiling, and a stone fireplace big enough to roast a Rolls Silver Ghost in, but what Greg took in was Ginny at a table far away, looking tiny in a chair whose back would reach his chin. She didn’t wave; she saw that she’d been seen, and she watched him without expression as he crossed the room and pulled out the matching chair opposite.
“Hi,” he said.
She said, “Hi,” and he sat down.
He sent her a smile that fell dead halfway across the table, and they both nervously scanned the room for a waiter. When one arrived, Greg nodded at Ginny’s Bloody Mary and said, “I’ll have one of those. Hot.” He looked at her and added, “As punishment.” She raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m AWOL. Dr. Jakes didn’t think it was a good idea for me to meet you here.”
She frowned. “I didn’t realize you were going to tell her.”
“Agnes is all right, Ginny. I’m sure you’re wrong in thinking she’s against you.”
She shook her head and looked down at her drink.
“Isn’t it strange?” he went on. “People who have a drink feel it’s unfair to talk to someone who doesn’t have one.”
She looked at him coolly. “Are you going out of your way to make me feel awkward?”
Greg laughed and shook his head. “What’s this in my mouth—a foot? God, Ginny, I have no desire in the world to make you feel awkward. I would love to see you relaxed and happy. I would love to see you smile. Believe me.”
“I believe you, Dick.” She gave her head a little shake. “I’m sorry—Greg.”
“Call me Grick. Or Dreg.”
She smiled faintly and glanced up at the waiter as he served Greg’s Bloody Mary. Greg took a sip, winced as the Tabasco bit into his mouth, and gave her a long, serious look. “Who am I really, Ginny? I don’t know. Dr. Jakes doesn’t know.”
She returned his look. “You’re Dick.”
“I see. Is that good? Or bad?”
“Don’t be stupid, Dick. People are who they are.”
Greg longed to say, But you’re Ginny and I wouldn’t hesitate to tell you how good that is. He said instead, “Who is Dick, then?”
“Dick is you, Greg. A sweet guy. An innocent. A man who wears his heart on his sleeve. A dreamer.”
“Go on.”
Ginny sighed. “You wanted to be a writer, Greg. I’ve never known anybody who wanted something so badly. You took writing courses. You read books on writing. You spent two hours every night in your room . . . working.”
“Working,” he repeated dully. “Working on what?”
“On short stories that wouldn’t come together. On novels that never got beyond the first page.”
“Shit,” he said, closing his eyes. “You’re telling me I was pathetic.”
Ginny shrugged, embarrassed.
“I’m not pathetic now, Ginny.” When she didn’t meet his eyes, he said, “I’m not.”
“Why? Because you’re a writer in your dreams?”
“No. Because I know better now. I know I’m not a fiction writer. I wouldn’t even waste a minute on it now.”
“It’s pointless to talk about it anyway, Greg. You can do anything you please. Thanks to my father, you’re a rich man.”
He blinked. “Your father? What’s he got to do with it?”
“You mean they didn’t tell you? It was my father who found out what really happened to you in Moscow, who bullied the State Department into bargaining for your release, who blackmailed them into that settlement after you got home.”
“Oh,” he said. “Tell him thanks for me, will you?”
“What’s that? Sarcasm?”
“No.” He sank back in his chair. “So, I’m a rich man.”
“It’s all yours, Greg. You suffered for it.”
“And you want no part of it?”
Ginny looked away. “There’s no nice way to say this, Greg. Before you left for Moscow, it was all settled. You knew I wouldn’t be there when you got back.”
Greg closed his eyes. “Why, Ginny?”
“Christ, Greg, you can’t ask why a marriage breaks up. The years go by and . . . things don’t work out.”
“Was it me, Ginny? Did I want to end it?”
She shook her head. “It was me.”
“But why?”
“Oh God, Greg. What difference d
oes it make? The sort of life we had . . . the sort of life you wanted, it wasn’t for me. I’m just not cut out for your middle-class, middle-brow, middle-western life.” She made a face. “I’m a bitch. Can’t you settle for that? I’m a bitch and a snob, and I bore easily. Don’t you under-stand? Sweetness cloys. I need more than that. I need . . .”
The words were pouring out now, and Greg heard them clearly enough, at a distance. Somehow the sounds they made seemed to form a tunnel between them; there was a hollowness in their center, and into this space, he whispered, “Are you . . . happy?” He heard himself saying these words, and they echoed endlessly in the tunnel between him and Ginny, but she didn’t seem to notice them. Looking through the tunnel was like looking through a telescope the wrong way: Ginny seemed far, far away, and he could no longer make out whether she was talking or not. Strangely, it no longer mattered; he felt very relaxed and peaceful.
Soon there seemed to be a lot of activity around their table. People darted in and out of his field of vision, but he paid no attention to them. At the end of the tunnel, Ginny had dwindled to a charm-sized figure, and he thought sadly that soon she would vanish altogether.
After a time, a voice at his side repeating his name again and again intruded itself into his consciousness. He looked up and said, “Oh, hello, Dr. Jakes. What’re you doing here? Of course I’ll come with you.” Greg laughed, because he hadn’t actually heard her asking him to come along. In some strange way, the question had appeared as an intelligible ripple in the tunnel in front of him.
“But I got it right anyway, didn’t I?” he said, pleased with himself.
The ripple in the tunnel said, “You got it right, Greg.”
“Dick,” he said, laughing. “You can call me Dick.”
“All right.”
“And you don’t have to hold me up, you know. I can walk by myself.”
“I know,” the doctor said gently, leading him out of the dining room.
Back in his room at the sanatorium, the tunnel was quaking in a way that filled Greg with dismay, and he whispered, “Don’t cry, Ginny. Don’t ever cry.”
But the quaking went on, overlaid by the angry vibrations of the psychiatrist’s voice, directed (Greg somehow knew) to Ginny. “There’s nothing you can do, you silly, willful child. Do you imagine I would have asked you to come if I’d thought you intended to destroy him?”
There was a painful disruption in the quaking, and Greg knew Ginny was speaking in the midst of her sobs, but he couldn’t make out the words.
“That can’t be changed now,” the doctor snapped. “Go away and strangle on your guilt while I strangle on mine for my own ineptitude. Please, Mrs. Iles . . . Nurse!”
The quaking in the tunnel began to subside, and he whispered, “Don’t strangle.” And then the surface of the tunnel became perfectly smooth for a long time.
Greg, sitting in front of the window, stared out at the beautiful blue hills.
After a while he realized that Agnes was sitting across from him and saying something. She was saying, “You’re going to be all right, Greg. You’re going to be fine. Soon you’ll be living on Lake Shore Drive and having a wonderful time. Do you remember Lake Shore Drive?”
“I remember.”
“You’d like to live there again, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You will. You’re going to be fine, Greg. Whether you know it or not, you’re a very strong person. Very resilient. Nothing can daunt you for very long. Did you know that?”
“Yes, Doctor. Don’t worry.”
“Will you have dinner with me this evening, Greg? I’d really enjoy that.”
“Sure, Doctor.”
“Shall I ask Robert too?”
“Whatever you say.”
“Perhaps better just the two of us, eh?”
“Whatever you say, Doctor.”
After the long afternoon and evening, Greg hung up his clothes, put on his pajamas, and slipped into bed. Staring up at the ceiling, he listened to the distant murmur of voices from the dining room and the endless racket of the crickets outside. Finally, not tired, not sleepy, not anything, he fell asleep.
And woke up the next morning, shaking uncontrollably, in his own bed, in his apartment on Lake Shore Drive.
PART
THREE
XXIII
GINNY!” GREG SCREAMED. “GINNY!”
She came running out of the bathroom, wearing one of Greg’s shirts, and threw herself on top of him. “What’s wrong?” she shouted, to make herself heard over her own name being shouted again and again. She wrapped her arms around him, as if trying to hold in his violent trembling. “Greg! Tell me what’s wrong!”
“For Christ’s sake, Ginny, what day is it?”
“It’s Saturday, Greg. What else would it be?”
He covered his face with his hands and groaned. “God, Ginny, don’t go away.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Greg. I’m here.”
He put his arms around her and pressed her against his chest. “Never again,” he said. “I’m never going to sleep again. I’m not kidding.”
“What happened?”
“I had a dream.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “The most horrendous nightmare of all time.”
By the time he finished telling it, Ginny was sitting cross-legged beside him looking into a mug of coffee. Greg was puzzled by her silence and asked her what was wrong.
She glanced up and shook her head. “It’s my fault. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Ginny. How could something that happened inside my head be your fault?”
“You’ll see, I’m afraid.” She slid off the bed. “Get dressed. There’s something I have to show you.”
“Where?”
Ginny headed into the bathroom. “At my place.”
His other questions she ignored.
A few minutes later, when they were inside a cab and on their way, he asked her what it was all about.
“Let me do this my way, Greg. Believe me, all your questions will be answered in an hour.”
So they rode downtown in silence, like strangers sharing a seat on a bus. Once inside her apartment, Ginny disappeared into her bedroom and returned clutching a videotape cassette.
“What’s that?” he asked.
She shook her head and sat down on the sofa across from him. “I’m going to tell you the story of my childhood,” she said.
He blinked at her, astonished.
“It’s strange,” she began, “the way children adapt to what’s happening around them. No matter what it is, they assume this is the usual way life is lived. At least I did. I assumed that all men were like my father, that the role of men in the world was to make life hell for everyone around them.”
She closed her eyes, then shook her head as if rejecting what she saw. “My father was a spectacular-looking man when he was young. He had a profile like John Barrymore’s and he wore his hair long, so that he looked like a poet. I haven’t told you his name, have I? Franklin. Franklin Everly Winters, and God help anyone who dared to call him Frank. He shouldn’t have married my mother. He shouldn’t have married at all, but in those days I guess one did.” She looked up and said, “I’m sorry. I’m not telling this very well, am I?”
To Greg she seemed to have lost about ten years of her life, becoming an uncertain, fragile seventeen-year-old.
“Tell it any way you like, Ginny. I’ll follow it.”
She nodded and went on. “He was a womanizer—the only one I’ve ever known. I’ve known married men who’ve had affairs, and I’ve heard about them from a lot women they’ve had affairs with, but none were like him. He was like an alcoholic with women—he couldn’t stop with one. He’d swallow one and go on to the next. And of course there was nothing subtle about it. He couldn’t be bothered to hide it to spare my feelings or my mother’s feelings. He was one of the wonders of the world, and it was unthinkable that he should be the exclusive property of
any one woman. He thought it was very petty of us not to rejoice with him over his conquests.
“We lived out in the country about thirty miles north of Albany, in a house that had been in his family for three generations. Not that Franklin was around that much. He spent most of the week with the fashionable crowd in Manhattan. He knew everybody, or claimed to: Thurber, Tennessee Williams, Elia Kazan, Jackson Pollock. I’ve forgotten most of them, but they were names you saw in Time magazine every week. Mother and I lived out in the country and tried to pretend that Franklin was a distant relative who spent an occasional Sunday with us.”
She looked up. “This begin to sound a little bizarre to you?”
“A little,” Greg admitted.
“Anne—my mother—never talked to me about it, but I knew she wanted to divorce him. I heard them discuss it when they thought I wasn’t around. Franklin wouldn’t consider it, saw no sense to it, since he was perfectly content with the present arrangement. Anne had the grounds for a divorce, of course, but he made it clear that if she tried to use them, he would . . . He said, ‘I’ll see to it you spend the rest of your life repenting it.’ And he would have. He was a man who never forgot a slight, never let go of a grudge—and was proud of it.
“I always felt I wasn’t quite real to my father. He’d bring me out to show round like a beautifully made and expensive toy he’d acquired and then, having impressed everyone with his cleverness, he’d put me away again with complete indifference, as if I really were just a doll.”
Ginny paused, staring at a space beyond her knees, and then went on with a sigh.
“One winter, when I was sixteen, he came down with the flu and spent a whole week with us. It was a miserable week. He hated being sick, hated missing out on all the fun—and took it out on Mother. Friday night rolled around, and I was all excited because I was having a real date. I don’t even remember the boy’s name, but we were going to a movie in Saratoga Springs. While I was getting ready, I crossed the hall in my slip to go into the bathroom, and Franklin saw me from his room at the end of the hall. He came charging out, grabbed my arm, and said, ‘What the hell are you doing in that getup?’ I told him I was getting ready for a date. He said, ‘A date? You’re not going on any dates at your age, young lady!’ Then I told him Mother had let me start dating when I was sixteen. He looked thunderstruck, because I really don’t think he knew how old I was. He told me to go back to my room and get out of those clothes, because, whatever my mother said, I was not going out.