“It’s a very interesting story about the little white elephant,” she says.
“Yes,” I say, taking my diary from her and closing it.
“Do you still have the elephant?”
“Yes.”
“Do you ever make wishes on it?”
“No, of course not.”
“Can I see it?”
“No. I don’t know where it is, and I have to take you home now.”
I take Sara home by cab. Just before getting out, she says, “My mom will be out with friends tomorrow for the whole evening. I want you to visit me at around five o’clock and aerate my fur again.”
“No, I won’t come,” I tell her.
“I’ll be waiting,” she says, and gets out.
The cabdriver looks at me in his rearview mirror with a suspicious frown, I think. Then I go back home.
I have not sent the letter to Henrietta yet, because I must decide whether calling her might not be a better idea.
chapter eight
The following day I skip work again. I must stay home and decide whether I really will confess or not. It’s not a light decision. After thinking about it all morning, I conclude that maybe I don’t need to confess after all, because Sara was obviously not harmed, and I will never do it again. I have no more desire left in me. I can go on with my life.
At two o’clock, however, I start to feel some desire again, and this frightens me. These first twinges of longing slowly but inexorably grow. I feel like Humpty Dumpty, getting closer to hatching. There is a monster within me, a monster of lust, and soon he will come out, and he’ll gladly accept Sara’s invitation to visit her at five o’clock to aerate her fur. I am afraid of myself. J must confine and restrain myself before I hatch. I must enchain myself now, while I’m still ambivalent, still vacillating.
I take down my handcuffs from the bathroom ceiling and bring them to the kitchen. I handcuff my left wrist to the oven door and sit on a chair. I throw the key far into the living room. Minou pounces on it, thinking this is a game, and plays with it, eventually knocking it out of my sight. I will wait like this until Charlotte gets home at five-thirty and unlocks me.
Minou, having finally become bored with playing with the key, sits in the kitchen doorway, contemplating me. She says, I hope I’m not prying if I ask what you are doing.
I swear, sometimes you remind me so much of Henrietta’s doorman, with your smug sentence structures, I reply.
Okay, she says. How’s this: What the hell are you doing?
Leave me alone. I’m hatching.
I see. Let me know when you’re done.
I have almost reached the point where if I were not handcuffed I would visit Sara with no hesitation. I have only a tiny drop of doubt left, a tiny grain of guilt. I say: I’m going to crack at any moment.
That’s useful to know, answers Minou.
Oh my God, it’s really happening. I just felt the first crack.
Is there anything I can do?
I bury my face in my hands. I want Sara, no doubt about it, no guilt about it; I wish I were not handcuffed. I can’t believe I even considered going to jail for sleeping with her. It wasn’t really so very wrong. It wasn’t that dreadful, that horrendous. Let’s not exaggerate. Why do I let myself be so tortured by it? I know I will visit Sara tonight. It may be a bit wrong, a bit undesirable and unbecoming and unpraiseworthy, but it’s not that despicable a crime. I sigh deeply and lift up my head and say, Okay, it’s finished. I’ve hatched.
You have?
Yes.
What now?
I wish you could get me that key.
I can understand, she says.
Will you try?
Cream. Heavy, that is. Every day for a month. In exchange for the key.
Okay, I say.
Minou smiles, lies down, and falls asleep.
You useless piece of catness, I tell her.
Yeah, yeah, attaboy Jeremy, she replies in her sleep.
My only choice now is to wait for Charlotte to come home and unlock me. What will she think when she sees me like this? She’ll want an explanation. Perhaps I could tell her that I was depressed and was testing a theory that says you should lock yourself to a famous tool of suicide to no longer be depressed. One’s forced proximity to suicide tools revives one’s taste for life, I’ll say. Ovens are a classic suicide tool, even though they can’t be used that way anymore, but it doesn’t matter, it’s the symbolism that counts, the connotations that ovens strike up in our minds. Most of this is subconscious, you know.
And Charlotte will answer, “Yes, I know,” because she’s a psychologist and will therefore agree with anything that contains the word “subconscious.”
Five o’clock comes and goes. The phone rings. My machine answers, and I hear Sara, who says, “Knowing you, I bet you didn’t go to work today. It’s five-fifteen, and you’re late. I want you to come and aerate my fur this second, do you hear? I'm waiting.” She hangs up.
I must not let her words agitate me too much. I try to focus my mind on something else.
The suicide tool excuse might be a little too farfetched. I could simply tell Charlotte that I was playing with my new handcuffs and accidentally threw the key too far away. She’ll ask me why I bought handcuffs, and I’ll tell her I thought they would be fun. But she might put more meaning into it than I intended, and she might say, “You’re right, we could have a lot of fun with handcuffs. Let’s play with them after dinner.” This thought fills me with such frustration and disgust that tears well up in my eyes. I angrily pull on the oven door like a desperate child, and it slides right off its hinges, as easy as you please. For a second I wonder if it’s not an optical dlusion. I didn’t know oven doors could just slide off their hinges. You just pull them, and they slide. Presto! If I had known, I would have handcuffed myself to the refrigerator. But right now I thank God for my ignorance.
I rush to the living room to get the key to unlock myself from the oven door, but it’s not there. Minou must have played with it until it got knocked somewhere unreachable. I look for it but can’t find it, and I’m getting so impatient to see Sara that I finally just leave my apartment carrying the oven door like a briefcase. I feel quite embarrassed to be visiting Sara like this, for it will make me seem desperate and pathetic, but oh, well, whatever points of attractiveness I will lose by showing up with the oven door I can try to regain by concocting a witty explanation for it. If Sara, due to her young age, believes it, all the better.
When I arrive, Sara is wearing a white terry-cloth bathrobe, and though her face is hidden by the Mickey Mouse mask, I can plainly see that she seems truly taken aback.
“You’re staring at my oven door,” I remark.
“What’s it for?”
“It’s just a trinket I bought for myself, a trivial ornament of little value called an Imitation Handcuff Bracelet, to which one can attach various charms of one’s choice. Today I happened to choose this nice faux oven door. Next week I might add to it a refrigerator door. It’s a pleasingly masculine bracelet because, as you can see, the charms are not overly dainty or delicate.”
“Poor Jeremy. You tried to resist me, didn’t you? I told you it was useless.”
And she throws herself in my arms, and I hug her and kiss her neck. She yanks off her Mickey Mouse mask and flings it across the room in a gesture of complete liberation, and I yank up my oven door to shield my face from the sight, but unfortunately I can see her through the little window. Sara approaches me and kisses me on the oven door. I force myself not to feel horrified by her youth. But what is finally even more striking than her youth is the fact that her features are no longer frozen in a tight Mickey Mouse smile. Her face floods my eyes with expressions of her thoughts, almost as though I can read her mind. She seems quite changeable and serious compared to the paralyzed hilarity I had gotten used to.
She takes my hands and lowers my oven door the way a man might lower an Egyptian woman’s veil. She kisses me
on the lips, softly at first, and then ravenously, which is understandable considering we’ve been so deprived of kissing each other’s faces.
We lie down, me on my back, and try to make love, but I am unable to become aroused because I can’t bear the sight of her face, which is so immediate and overpowering, so pure and undiluted. Feeling somewhat embarrassed, I pull the oven door over my face. Although I can still see her through the glass, I am able to deal with this maskless reality because we are protected from one another by the pane which prevents us from touching each other. The glass squishes my cheek, and crushes my nose to the side, but it comforts me, it relaxes me, it enables me to make love to her. I stare at her with one big eye as my breath fogs up the window. She knocks on the glass to get my attention, which she already has, and shouts to me in the oven, “Is it strange for you to be squashing your face with your charm, or do I just still have a lot more to learn about sex?”
I don’t reply.
Afterward, when I’m getting ready to leave, Sara says, “Mom will be out tomorrow evening again. You can come at five and aerate my fur.”
“No, I won’t come.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
I go back home, disgusted with myself for having slept with Sara a third time. And what will I tell Charlotte when I get home? How will I explain to her this oven door attached to my wrist? Perhaps I could tell her I accidentally picked it up instead of my briefcase when going to work this morning, that I was just absentminded. Terrible lie. I don’t know what I’ll tell her.
When I get home there’s a note from Charlotte on the living room table, saying she had to go out for dinner and that she’ll be back later. I’m so relieved. I scramble all over, looking for the key, and finally find it under the radiator. I unlock the handcuffs and slide the oven door back on its hinges.
I skip work again the next day. I stay home, sit on my couch, and think about what I should do. Eventually I handcuff myself to the refrigerator. After a while, I hatch. Hatching can be repetitive, I’ve discovered.
At five-fifteen Sara calls and says into my machine: “Why are you late today, Mr. Acidophilus? I know the way your mind works, and I’ll bet you anything that you are handcuffed to the fridge right now. I checked the door of our fridge to see if there’s any way you can escape, and I think your only chance is to unscrew the handle. If you do not succeed, then just wait for your girlfriend to get home and think of a good excuse to give her as to why you’re attached to the fridge. Then erase this message, for the tape will not self-destruct like in Mission: Impossible, and come and aerate my fur. But don’t bother coming if you’re carrying the fridge door. It’s just not worth it.”
I can’t unscrew the fridge handle because I placed all the screwdrivers and knives out of my reach.
Charlotte gets home. She comes into the kitchen and looks at me with great surprise, then walks up real close to make sure her eyes aren’t fooling her.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“I’m on a special diet that uses reverse psychology. It says that you’re supposed to handcuff yourself to the refrigerator. It tries to disgust you with allowance and freedom and permission, making the forbidden fruit no longer forbidden. The motto is: ‘You want it, you’ve got it, now get sick of it.’ ”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. And it says that it’s not enough to merely yield to the temptation; you must lock yourself to it. With this diet, instead of locking the fridge, you lock yourself to the fridge. Most of this is subconscious, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” she says. “But it’s weird psychology.”
I ask her to please unlock me. She gets the key and does. I go to the answering machine and erase Sara’s message. I suddenly realize that I will not visit Sara tonight, because Charlotte’s mere presence is arousing my shame and stirring my conscience be yond my tolerance, not to mention the fact that this same mere but proper presence of hers always has the curious ability to moderate my sensual appetite in a fascinatingly implacable way to put it mercifully.
The next morning I’m sitting on my couch, knowing that I will want to see Sara again, knowing that I’ll have to handcuff myself to the fridge again, and I decide that I cannot face another day of being chained like a creature with rabies.
I pick up the phone and dial Henrietta’s number, knowing it’s the only solution and not allowing myself to think about it for one instant.
Henrietta answers.
“There’s something I must talk to you about,” I say.
“Oh, yes?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“Something happened in Disney World.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Something bad that will make you very upset. Something bad happened to Sara.”
“She seems very happy. What happened?”
“I did something to her.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“What?”
“I must have been insane at the time. I must have lost my mind. We got along really well. She was very nice to me and very affectionate, and I lost control. We had sex.”
“I know. Thank you. She wanted to for a long time. She had a crush on you from the first day she met you.”
I pull the receiver away from my ear, and I stare at it. I put it back to my ear and I say, “What do you mean?”
“Don’t worry about it, Jeremy. You did nothing wrong.”
“I had sex with your eleven-year-old daughter at Disney World!”
“Don’t shout. It doesn’t matter. I’m all for it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this right away? You knew I’d be feeling guilty and living through hell, waiting for the police to knock at my door, and then trying, but failing, to resist your daughter’s repeated attempts at seducing me. Why didn’t you tell me right away when I got back?”
“I didn’t want to invade your privacy or make you uncomfortable if you didn’t want to talk about it. But obviously you do want to talk about it, so we will, but when you’ve calmed down. You can come see me this evening, and I’ll explain things.”
“I don’t want Sara to be there.”
“Of course.”
She hangs up. I remain sitting on the couch. Charlotte walks toward me slowly from the bedroom and says, “You had sex with an eleven-year-old girl?”
I stare at her. I had forgotten that this was Saturday and that she was not at work.
“I overheard the whole thing,” she says. “It is horrifying. I’m going to tell your mother.”
“Why my mother? Why not the police?”
“Because it’s family business.”
She heads for the phone. I step in front of her.
“I can call from anywhere,” she says.
“I don’t want you to call my mother.”
“Yes, I will, darling. It’s for your own good.”
I feel all the rage toward her that has gathered in me over the months. The drop that overflows the glass. I give her a tremendous slap, with the intention of knocking her out.
She is on the floor, motionless. I feel guilty immediately. I feel I am sinking to greater depths, first by having sex with an eleven-year-old girl, then by purposefully knocking out my girlfriend. What am I going to do with her now, kill her? It wouldn’t surprise me. And yet the slap has made me feel much better. Some of the rage is out of me.
I kneel beside her. She lifts her head.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “You can call my mother if you want to. I’ll call her.”
I pick up the phone, but she prevents me. “It doesn’t matter,” she says.
Things seem to return to normal. Charlotte goes out shopping. An hour later my mother calls me.
“Charlotte told me everything.”
I can’t believe it.
“I can’t believe it,” she says. “You had sex with Sara when we were in Disney World?”
�
��Charlotte called you?”
“Yes, thank God. You must be punished.” She hangs up.
I will break up with Charlotte. I can’t stand her anymore. I will make her leave my apartment.
I go and see Lady Henrietta.
I ask her, “How could you approve of your daughter having sex at eleven years old? No mother accepts that.”
She answers, “I’ve always been very open with my daughter, and she’s very open with me. I’ve encouraged her to talk to me about whatever she wanted, about boys she had crushes on, about what types of relationships she hoped to have with them.
“I am for children’s sexual liberation,” she goes on. “Why should it be wrong for children to have sex if they feel like it? What right do we have to prevent them? But of course, they must feel like it. That’s what determines the line between children’s sexual liberation and child molestation. I am as strongly opposed to the latter as I am in favor of the former. I wanted to have sex when I was twelve. But I didn’t, because society said it was wrong, and I thought: Society must have a good reason for believing children should not have sex, a good reason that I don’t understand because I’m too young. But in a few years I’ll understand it, and I’ll be glad I waited.
“I remember lying in bed,” she continues, “when I was thirteen, wondering how I’d be able to wait until the acceptable age, which I thought was around eighteen. The thought of waiting five years was hell. When I was sixteen, I almost did it but decided not to, because it was not quite the acceptable age. I still didn’t know why I shouldn’t do it, and I thought I must still be too young to understand. I am now thirty years old, and I haven’t yet discovered the reason why I had to wait until I was eighteen to have sex, and I’m angry about it. I decided not to make my child go through that nonsense. Everyone is different. Some people don’t find the idea of sex pleasant until they’re nineteen or twenty. Some never find it pleasant. Others want to start when they’re even younger than I was. And I’m not talking about innocent curiosity here. I’m talking about full-fledged sexual excitement, identical to what adults feel.”
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