Eve let out an enormous sigh. “Of course not, Hank. Neither of those things. And I didn’t have an orgasm if that’s any consolation. You are much livelier in the sack than the doctor here.”
Eve, who’d never said the word “orgasm” in public before, opened the refrigerator, took out an apple and offered it to Dr. Cox. When the doctor shook his head, Eve took a bite. “I’m starving,” she explained. “Sex makes me hungry.”
“I know,” Hank said. “But usually it’s pastry. Quite an appropriate item of food, Eve. An apple? Practically a cliché.” Eve looked at the apple and shrugged. “Now me, I like to drink when I see things like—like what I saw. How long has this been going on?”
“Nobody doubts it,” Eve said, nodding toward the glass in his hand. Her mouth full of apple, she asked, “Does Mrs. Murphy wash the fruit before putting it in the fridge? I suddenly can’t remember.”
She stuck the apple under the faucet and turned it on hard. The water hit the apple and splattered the counter. Absentmindedly, Eve slid her forearm across it.
Hank finished his drink, slammed the glass down, and reached for the bottle. “Things started out badly and have only gotten worse here. And you’ve splashed water all over the backsplash as well, Eve. Can your arm sop that up, too?” When his wife didn’t blink, he repeated it. “Eve, you’re making a mess, and Mrs. Murphy isn’t here to help you out.” When his wife looked confused, he added, “A mess with the water. Turn the goddamned water off.”
“Well, isn’t that the point of a backsplash? Where the name comes from?”
Eve turned the tap hard enough to make the pipes scream. The three of them stood frozen, having lost any sense of who should speak next or what should be said.
“I’m not in the mood for cleaning up after you today.” Hank took a large sip of his second glass of Scotch in ten minutes. “And it’s not Mrs. Murphy’s day, as I said.”
“Like you once did such a thing! Cleaned up after me or anyone else.”
The apple was sour. She remembered liking sour apples when she was pregnant with Christine. Well, she wasn’t pregnant now, would probably never be pregnant again. Hopefully. She tossed the apple in the trashcan.
“I’ve done nothing but mop your messes for the last fifteen years.”
Hank’s eyes were venomous, making her even angrier. When you considered what she’d put up with in the matter of his sexual liaisons, it was infuriating. He had had ten women to her one man. And what a man to choose for her first foray into an affair. She felt deeply embarrassed she hadn’t taken the care to find a man worth the resulting situation.
“You’re not here often enough to comment, Hank. This is the first time I’ve seen you in days.”
They stood like warriors on a battlefield, their words fired across linoleum instead of bare earth.
“Excuse me,” Dr. Cox interrupted. “Let’s get back to the subject at hand. As for our recent sexual encounter,” he continued. “I deliberately kept things low-keyed. During the sex, I mean,” he added, looking at their confused faces. “We needed to get past it—this need of Eve’s to have sex—before moving on to the real issues. It’d become a real impediment to any meaningful therapy. This wish to get naked and fuck—a situation female patients sometimes experience with a male doctor—it gets in the way. But it’ll never happen again.” He looked at Hank as if the matter was resolved. “With Eve, that is. We’re ready to move on.” He repeated it more forcefully, in case the pair had been unfocused the first time he said it. “Ready to buckle down to the hard work necessary to make Eve a functioning wife and mother.”
“You are a colossal ass,” Hank said. “Really a world-class idiot. And you’re damned right it won’t happen again. I have half a mind to slug you right now.” He paused for a second. “Hey, I wonder if you bedded ole’ Jeff’s wife too.”
“Now you can see what I mean about him always wanting to talk about sex?” Eve told Hank. “You probably thought I was exaggerating and here I wasn’t telling you the half of it. I didn’t mention the constant invitations to disrobe in his office for one thing. Strike the word invitations and make that demand. He demanded it.”
“You screw my wife and expect me to keep paying your bills?” Ignoring Eve, Hank shook his head and took another swallow of his Scotch, wincing. “You’re finished screwing my wife or probing her head unless Eve can afford pay your fees out of the money she’s stolen at my store. Did you charge for the sex or merely the therapy?”
Eve stared at him in alarm. So this was what sent him home midday. He’d found out about the paltry money she’d taken and was going to make a big deal about it. It’d be like the brouhaha over the payoffs to the mailman all over. She began working on her story, regretting she hadn’t given it more thought earlier. Planning ahead for situations like this was not her forte. It just never occurred to her she’d get caught. Either with her hand in the till or at having sex with Dr. Cox.
Dr. Cox responded at once. “Jung slept with a patient, you know. It’s not unusual. And in my case, I did it only to be able to put the issue behind us. So long as Eve was fixating on the possibility of a romance…”
“Oh, give me a break. Not romance, Dick. Sex. For god’s sake, you’re no romantic figure.” Eve wiped her hands on a towel and opened the fridge door again. Maybe there was something sweet in the back. “But that’s true, too, Hank. Now I’ve slept with Dick once, I won’t need to do it again. It was nothing special. Switching to some new doctor is too much trouble at this point.”
She’d grown sick of her doctor’s intimations she’d begged for sex and remembering what had transpired upstairs, she realized again, it hadn’t been so hot. And she hadn’t begged for it. At least, not at first. And the other situation—the more important one—had that damned Debbie ratted her out? This was where her mind wanted to go, but there was this thing at home to deal with first.
Fifteen minutes into her first visit some weeks earlier, Dr. Cox said, “Nothing’s off-limits in my office, Mrs. Moran. If you want to take off your clothes, for instance, and sit naked on my couch, I’m okay with it.”
He punctuated this statement with a little smirk of a smile she’d come to know well. Was this guy kidding? She could imagine making embarrassing sounds whenever she moved. Leather furniture in public spaces seemed designed to assert control. It was slippery, noisy, sweaty, cold. Not a good spot for a naked body. Not that she had the least interest in fulfilling his fantasy.
He had to be well over sixty. Bushy hair sprouted from his nose and ears. The hair on his head was steely gray, and he wore a gray suit. A portrait of his family sat on his bookshelf. The children were teenagers, but one wore an “I Like Ike” button, dating the photograph back at least fifteen years.
“Maybe later—when we know each other better. If at all.”
“The thing is,” he continued, ignoring her sarcasm, “we want an uninhibited workplace here. And yes, I do consider this office a workplace.” He waited for a response and when he got none, continued, “You can cry, you can sit silently, you can do whatever you like. It’s the establishment of trust I’m interested in. We need to form a bond. Until such a thing happens, no progress will occur.” He linked his fingers and put his hands behind his head, stretching. His fingers were chubby but nicely groomed, perhaps professionally manicured. “We can’t begin efficacious therapy until we reach a plateau of trust.”
Eve nodded, having heard all of this before. Well, maybe not the bit about getting naked, but the rest of it: the stuff about trust and bonds and progress. The bit about workplaces and plateaus. The lingo of modern psychiatry. It was total shit. Crappola—except for the electric shocks. That delivered an incontestable message.
After the initial surprise, the first session continued much like the ones at The Terraces, the place using talking rather than shocking to solve problems. She felt in control, knew she hadn’t given him anything to use against her—yet. Session Two and Three went smoothly, too. The words “get na
ked” continued to run in her head along with fantasies about sitting on his couch with nothing on but her heels. She wasn’t exactly attracted to him. But she wasn’t exactly not. She was one complicated broad, she thought.
Session Four. Another surprise attack. He met her at the door and kissed her passionately, sticking his tongue down her throat, rubbing himself against her. It both turned on and repulsed her. His tongue was shockingly cold and she wondered if he’d iced it.
“Do you have a refrigerator in here?”
Nodding, he gestured to it like she was asking for a Coke or a Popsicle, and then took his usual spot, notebook in hand. Had it happened? Was he a predator? She’d heard of such doctors at The Terraces. Doctors who preyed on patients too undone by drugs or shock or their illness to defend themselves, too witless to register a protest, too flattered to see the onslaught as inappropriate behavior.
The hair in his nose, on display as she gazed up at him, kept her grounded. So she pursued it.
“What about the kiss? You know. What just happened?”
He shrugged—acting like it’d been nothing more than a handshake.
“Have you had any difficulty with frigidity?” he asked her a few minutes later. “Do you get wet when you think of sex?” He was eyeing her crotch openly.
“I’ve been married thirteen years, so I’ve been around the block.” She sounded like a hooker on Broad Street. She was losing ground now. The tips of her fingers were hanging onto an increasingly unstable spur.
“And you haven’t been with another man in all that time?” She didn’t answer. “Never wanted to try something—someone—new?”
“Newness is overrated.”
He had a point though. Why all this fidelity when Hank was a cheater? Had she been too busy accumulating possessions to have other men? Was junk her sublimation?
It went on like this: sexual moves, embarrassing questions, subsequent denials that anything unusual took place. He put a hand on her breast and when she squirmed away, he asked her a humiliating question, bound to provoke hurt.
“So your husband bags a new woman every few months. Does he make sure you find out?”
Did Hank leave hints? She wasn’t sure but shook her head. Hank was not about confrontations. He’d be delighted to assume she’d never questioned his faithfulness—proud that he had been clever.
The overall effect of Dr. Cox’s therapeutic style was she quickly wanted to sleep with him. He gave every indication of being someone who’d sweep her away. Someone who knew the intricacies of sex better than Hank. He was a medical doctor after all—not just a shrink. He’d spent years studying the body before he moved onto the mind.
Despite all the shrinks she’d talked to, no one had ever spoken about sex quite this openly before—never put a move on her. No one gave her signs she was attractive. No one had tried to seduce her since Hank, in fact. The one or two men she dated during her recent banishment hadn’t meant a thing to her. And before them —nothing. Why didn’t men hit on her more often? Had she neglected her looks in pursuit of her junk?
She began to think about little else. Standing behind the counter at the shop in Hatboro, lying in bed alone most nights, watching TV, fixing Christine a snack, it was all she could think about. So she made a tentative move.
“I’m not sure if that’s a good idea,” Dr. Cox said when she put her mouth on his one day. His lips were drier than a snake’s would be if a snake had lips.
“Come on. You’ve been pushing me in this direction for weeks.”
She was both outraged and embarrassed. But for some reason, she wasn’t surprised. Perhaps it was her. Maybe she’d invented his seduction—his hand up her skirt, his breath on her neck, his tongue down her throat. Were these actual incidents or fantasies? “If you think it’s a bad idea…”
“Let me think about it,” he said hurriedly, splaying a hand across his chin in contemplation. One finger caressed his lips.
So Eve had become the predator. Was this his plan?
Half-an-hour later when their session was finished, he edged her onto the sofa, pushed up her skirt, jerked down her panties, and entered her, one knee on the floor. It was rather how she’d imagined her parents making love, without prelude or romantic gestures. It was rather painful. He appeared satisfied, however, and walked into the bathroom.
“Can we try this again?” she asked when he returned. It’d happened too quickly to take it in. “I don’t think I was at my best.”
“The cleaning woman will be coming in,” he said, reassembling himself quickly.
“A hotel?”
He put a finger to his lips again. “What about your house? You said your husband’s not home much.” She nodded. He cleared his throat. “You do understand such an act would be part of your therapy and not a romantic overture.”
“I need to get it out of the way,” she said, licking her lips. “So I can stop thinking about it. Fixating on it.”
“I see. Well, as your therapist, I won’t think of it as having sex with you, Eve.” He rubbed his chin again. “I do think such an encounter… perhaps two… may deepen the level of our relationship, the level of trust. Do you think you’re ready to go there? Explore that area of your sexuality?”
“Whatever,” Eve said, already planning it in her head. And, of course, it turned out to be the disaster you’d expect.
Between my tenth and twelfth birthday, my parents split three more times. We stayed in a motel in Atlantic City for a summer. Mother landed a job at the first casino there, Resorts International. Nothing to do with the gambling operation, however. They would’ve looked into her past too closely if she’d applied for that type of position. Nothing glamorous or well-paying. She may have been a waitress or a hostess. She didn’t talk about it much. The hours were few; the pay bad.
We stayed with my grandmother several times. We rented cheap rooms from time to time, and spent three nights in one of those storage units. Once we found ourselves on Aunt Linda’s steps. She had a place of her own by then. Mother used the interlude to disappear, figuring I’d be happy with Linda for a few weeks. And I was.
Later I found Mother spent some time in jail over those months. She’d forged a check, got caught with her hand in the till. She was always able to talk her way out of it, to make it look like it was more trouble than it was worth to prosecute. It was too cruel to trouble a single mother over trivial matters. Cy Granholm made his first brief appearances, always skilled at framing a defense on the spot. A night or two in jail certainly. Perhaps thirty days once.
Despite the fact these were hard times, Mother held herself together pretty well. She always denied it, wouldn’t believe it when I told her this later, but she functioned best without a man in her life. Looking for a man, holding on to one, hiding things from one, all of this was a lot of work. A new man introduced new desires, schemes, risks. Still, she found it hard to be without one for long. One night she even murdered Jerry Santini but that’s a story you already know.
When I had the patently incorrect idea her romantic life was behind her, Mickey came on the scene.
Mother and I sat facing each other across a tiny kitchen table. Space was so tight our knees touched, making little kissing sounds from time to time. Although my legs were skinny, my knees had excessively large knobs that tapped on hers every few seconds. Mother’s legs, on the other hand, were tan and shapely enough to draw the eyes of men. Her legs, and similarly attractive features, earned her a second husband: Mickey DiSantis.
The great, and still-to-be answered, question was why she wanted him; why we were stuck in a tiny house in the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia with this guy—this man quite a bit like Jerry Santini—the one she’d knocked off. We no longer talked about that incident, and I’m sure Mickey never hear a word about it. Sometimes I wondered if I’d imagined it all—if those visits to Dr. Bailey hadn’t been a sort of fever dream. Whole sections of my life—our lives—were forbidden topics. No, more than forbidden. They’d vir
tually disappeared once we moved into Mickey’s. There was no one in my current life who wanted to hear about my past. There was no past; we lived in the moment. Mother had reinvented us time and again. And would forever, I feared.
Things had taken a less glamorous turn with the current reinvention, and I couldn’t make sense of it. It was as if Mickey DiSantis had put a spell on her. My grandmother, so anxious to have us settled with a respectable man, disapproved of him on sight and more so in the weeks following their first meeting. She’d begged us to stay put when we’d moved out of her house nine or ten months before.
“Quite a step down from Hank,” she said repeatedly. “Used cars. Couldn’t he at least sell new ones? What kind of people buy used cars?”
This was a bit of a stretch as a criticism—Grandmother was driving a car from the late fifties—when she drove at all. I could’ve given her more information to use against him, but I was biding my time, waiting to see what happened next.
Mother refused to discuss Mickey’s faults. Some form of blackmail must be involved. What did he have on her? What had he seen her do in the foyer of Gimbel’s?
With a little effort, she could’ve gotten my father back, but instead, here we were stuck with Mickey. I was beginning to lose respect for my mother. My awe of her was declining and would never resurface in full bloom again. With the possible exception of my father, she’d chosen a motley assortment of men.
Mother’s fake capezios were aqua, which she claimed was one of the better colors for showing off a tan. I watched her feet under the table, as she slid the shoes off and on. Mother’s feet were at least a size seven, too big for her tastes. So she bought a six or six-and-a-half and suffered. The shoes revealed a half-inch of swollen toe flesh, which she claimed drove men wild. Too-small shoes pumped out more toe décolletage than the proper size would.
Concrete Angel Page 15