by Joy Fielding
“She didn’t say anything nasty about you.”
“Divorce is always nasty—especially when there are kids.”
“Why did you do it then?”
“I didn’t—it was Kate’s decision. She felt cheated, I think—”
“Cheated?”
They moved so that they were no longer locked in each other’s arms and now sat side by side, two separate entities sitting with their knees up and parallel, leaning forward, their hands moving almost rhythmically to pick at the grass around them.
“Typical story,” he shrugged. “We married right out of college; she worked to put me through med school, gave it up when I graduated. We had a child. I worked hard. I was never home. She was always home. She resented it. Then she resented me. She joined a few women’s groups. Next thing I knew, she announced she was leaving to start a new career—she wants to be a lawyer—and that was that.”
“And Annie?”
“She’s with me. Kate gets her holidays and summers.”
Donna felt her whole body tense. Why you? she wanted to ask. Why did you get custody? Instead she said, “And Kate?”
“She graduates in a year’s time. Actually, I think she’ll make a fine lawyer.”
“You’re not bitter?”
He shook his head. “No. Listen, it was at least as much my fault as hers. Basically, she didn’t see me for about nine years, and when you’re only married nine years, it doesn’t make for much of a marriage.” He paused, throwing a long blade of grass up in the air. “It’s funny, though, how things work out. I mean, ever since she left, I stopped working so hard. I suddenly realized I had a kid to raise, and so now I’m never home later than six P.M. and I always wait with her until the bus picks her up in the mornings. I never work weekends except in emergencies. All the things Kate was after me about when we were married.” He looked at Donna. “Why do we always do things so ass-backward?”
“Why do you have custody?” Donna asked suddenly, no longer able to hold the question at bay.
“Kate thought it would be better for Annie. Law school’s a hard place for a four-year-old. Or even now that she’s a precocious seven.”
They looked straight ahead toward the house.
“You want to talk now?” he asked.
“No,” she answered.
“Why? Don’t you trust me?”
“If I start to talk, I’ll cry.”
They continued to stare straight ahead, almost afraid to look at each other.
“What are you hoping for, a boy or girl?”
“A girl. I already have a little boy. Adam.”
“Any names picked out?”
“Sharon, if it’s a girl. My mother’s name was Sharon.”
“My mother’s name was Tinka.”
“Tinka?”
He laughed. “Picture three little girls, if you will, ages five, seven and nine, arriving by boat from Poland. Their names are Manya, Tinka, and Funka.”
“Funka?”
“See? Tinka doesn’t sound so bad any more, does it?”
She laughed. “What happened to them?”
“The usual. They grew up, got married, had children and died. Except for Manya. She’s still hanging on. I think she’s about eighty-six now—she lies about her age.” He laughed. “In the interim, they changed their noses and their names. Manya became Mary and Funka became Fanny. Only Tinka stayed Tinka.” He smiled and shook his head. “A hell of a woman.”
“Are you an only child?”
His laugh was loud. “Are you kidding? I have four sisters and two brothers. We’re scattered all over the country. From Vermont to Hawaii.”
“I have a sister,” Donna ventured. “She’s living in England now.”
“And your husband? What does he do?”
Donna stood up and wiped the grass off her skirt. She was surprised to see that Mel remained sitting where he was.
“I’m kind of tired,” she said, looking down at him. “I think I better go home.”
“All right,” he said, still not moving.
“Could you give me a ride?” she asked, surprising herself.
He got to his feet very quickly. “Sorry,” he apologized, “I just assumed you had a car.”
“I don’t drive.”
“Oh? Unusual.”
“I used to drive.”
He said nothing.
“If and when you decide you want to talk,” he began, after the silent drive to her house, “you know where my office is. Please come and see me.”
She smiled, opened the car door and crawled out of the small white sportscar. “Thank you,” she said.
He waited until she was safely inside before he drove away.
——
Sharon was three months old before Donna walked into Dr. Segal’s office.
“I didn’t recognize you for a minute,” he said, standing up to greet her. “You’ve changed your hair.”
Donna’s hand automatically moved to her almost carrot-colored hair. “Do you like it?”
He laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s cute.”
“You sound like you mean that.”
“I do.”
“Victor hates it.”
“Victor?”
“My husband.”
“Is that why you’re smiling?”
“What do you mean?”
“The first time you smiled since you walked in was when you said that Victor hates your hair.”
“Am I that transparent?”
“Only when you want to be.”
She smiled again. “The only problem is that I hate it too.”
“The only problem?”
“I also hate Victor.” She suddenly started to laugh, and for the next five minutes her laughter was as strong as her sobs had been some five months before. “There, I said it out loud. I hate him.” The laughter changed abruptly to tears. “My God, I hate my husband. And I hate myself.”
Mel couldn’t have stopped her from talking now if he’d stuck a gag in her mouth and taped it closed. The words raced from her throat, vomited into the space between them. She’d barely have time to clean one story out of the way before her body was throwing up others. All the stories. Her almost six years of life with Victor. All of it, including the night of Sharon’s conception.
“He keeps trying to make up for it, I guess,” Donna was saying. “He’s very attentive; he’s always making a big fuss about Sharon—he’s very good with her. He helps out a lot. He’s always buying me little presents, taking me out to nice places for dinner. He never tries—” She looked at Mel to see if he understood what she was about to say without her actually having to say it. He did. She continued. “But even when he puts his arm out to help me out of the car, it makes me want to be sick.”
“Maybe because you don’t need any help getting out of the car.”
Donna looked up into Mel’s chocolate-brown eyes. He was sitting on the edge of his desk; she was sitting about a foot away. She swallowed hard, as if she were trying to digest what Mel had just said. “He makes me feel so inadequate,” she said, looking around the office. “At first it was kind of nice having someone take charge, make all the decisions. But after a while it—you know what it does to you?” she asked, coming up with the answer for the first time, herself, in precise verbal terms. “It turns you into a child again. It robs you of your adulthood. After a little while you start to act just the way you’re being treated—like a child! You become totally dependent. I’m thirty-two years old! I have two children. I shouldn’t be dependent on anyone but myself. I don’t understand how this all happened to me!” She groped for words, her hands at her neck. “I can’t breathe! He doesn’t give me any air. He decides everything; he questions everything—the most minute, stupid, inconsequential little things. He has to be a part of everything.” She threw her hands up in the air. “And you know what’s really frightening lately?”
Mel walked around behind his desk. “What?” He sat down on h
is chair.
“He thinks everything is getting better between us. He thinks there’s hope for us! He said so this morning. ‘We don’t fight anymore,’ he said. ‘You’ve learned to compromise. I actually think you’re starting to grow up. Except for what you did to your hair, of course!’” She screamed. A simple, loud, straightforward yell. “Compromise! I hate the word! You know what compromise means, Dr. Segal? It means giving in. The reason we don’t fight anymore is that a year ago I decided I’d never fight him again. I just go along with whatever he decides. That’s his idea of compromise. If I say blue and he says green, so I turn around and say green, then we’re compromising.” She stood up and began pacing. “ ‘Growing up,’ he said. I’m starting to grow up! I’m starting to die! Is that the same thing? His idea of a grown-up is an obedient child. That’s all I’ve become. Except that like most children who spend all day obeying their parents, I’ve become spiteful, resentful. Mean. It’s like if I can draw blood, I know I’m still here. Is this making any sense at all?” She stopped pacing.
“Probably the best sense you’ve made in six years.” He got up and moved toward her.
“I just feel like I’ve lost control of my life. I’m always sick. I’m afraid to do anything because I might make a mistake and do the wrong thing. I’m afraid to say anything, to have an opinion because it might be the wrong opinion.” She shook her head. “I’m afraid to be myself because I haven’t a clue where I went.” She paused, looking up into Mel’s kind face. “The only time I feel at all in charge of what I’m doing is for a few hours in the middle of the night.” Mel looked at her quizzically. “I put on a little cotton cap and get out my bucket and mop and pretend I’m Carol Burnett. I clean that fucking little house until it glows.”
Dr. Mel Segal laughed out loud.
“You’re not offended?”
“By what?”
“I swore. I didn’t mean to.”
Mel obviously had to rethink what she had said. “Fuck?” he questioned. “You call that swearing? My seven-year-old uses worse language than that.”
“It doesn’t bother you?”
Mel shrugged, indicating it didn’t.
“Victor would hate it. He doesn’t even like me to swear.”
“I have seven words to say to you,” he said, counting them silently on his fingers.
“They are?”
“Leave that motherfucking son-of-a-bitch.”
The room was absolutely still.
“I can’t.”
“Why, for God’s sake? Can you name me even one positive thing about the man?”
Donna moved away from Mel and began pacing the room again relentlessly. Then she stopped. There was a question mark in her voice. “He’s good in emergencies?” she volunteered.
“How many emergencies have you had lately?” Mel leaned back against his desk again. “Donna, anyone can rise to an emergency. It’s the day-to-day business of living that gets you, the little things. He’s killing you.”
Donna shook her head. Now that someone was finally on her side, finally saying the things to her out loud that she had been saying to herself in silence, she found herself in the weird position of trying to defend the same man she had been prosecuting.
“It’s not all his fault. I mean, I know I’ve made this whole thing sound like it’s all his fault, but you have to remember you’re only hearing my side of the story. I haven’t exactly been an angel. I’ve said terrible things to him in front of other people, insulted him, hurt him. I know all the vulnerable spots, remember. I know just where to stick in the pins!”
“Why are you making excuses?”
“Excuses?”
“For not leaving him.”
“We have two children!”
“You think they’re benefiting from the kind of example you’re setting? You want Sharon to grow up into a Barbie doll? You want Adam to get his idea of what love is all about from the two of you?”
Donna’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m afraid he’ll take them away from me! Don’t you understand? I know Victor. If I try to leave him, he’ll take my babies away from me.”
Mel walked over to Donna and surrounded her with the steadiness of his body. His arms engulfed her, pressing her to his chest. His voice was soft. “You can fight him, Donna. You used to fight him. You can do it again. If you don’t, you’ll be losing a lot more than just your children.”
“My children are everything.”
“No,” he said, pushing her away from his chest but keeping his arms resolutely around her. “They’re a large part of your life but they are not the sum total of your life. There is still a person in there named Donna who exists quite apart from everyone else.”
Donna shook her head. “No,” she said. “I told you. I lost her a long time ago.”
“No, you didn’t,” he said, looking above her eyes to the top of her head. “Anyone who can color her hair bright carrot-orange has not totally abandoned her claim to individuality.” They both tried to smile.
“Is that what I’m doing?”
“I’m not a psychiatrist.”
“What are you?”
“A friend.”
She lowered her head and let him hug her against his chest once more.
“Thank you,” she said. “I think that’s what I need.”
TWELVE
Donna sat with one arm around Adam and one hand on Sharon’s tummy. They sat on the sofa in the far bedroom, a room which served as a den by day and had about a year ago been turned into Donna’s bedroom. The blue print sofa was a pull-out bed, and Donna now sat in the middle of it, Adam to her left and Sharon lying squealing on her back to her right. Every now and then, Adam reached over Donna’s lap and pinched his sister’s toes.
“Adam, don’t do that.”
“I don’t like her.”
“That’s fine. Just don’t hurt her.”
“Tell her to be quiet.”
“She’s not making any noise. You’re the one who’s talking. Now, do you want to watch Sesame Street or not?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. Then watch.”
For several seconds Adam’s gaze returned to the television in front of them.
“I don’t like her,” he said again, stealing a furtive glance in the baby’s direction. “I don’t want to look at her.”
“Then don’t look at her.”
He stood up and walked over to the baby. Sharon’s eyes followed the path of her older brother. Donna sat ready for any sudden moves. “I don’t like you,” he said loudly. “I will never like you. I don’t love you. I will never love you.”
“All right, Adam, that’s enough.”
The litany continued.
“Not when you’re bigger. Not when you’re older. Never. Ever.”
“All right, Adam, I think she got the message.”
Adam turned to go back to his seat. On his way he managed to bring the palm of his hand down hard on the baby’s forehead. Sharon looked startled but did not cry.
“All right, that’s it,” Donna said, flipping the remote control unit on the large color TV and watching Big Bird disappear. She picked Sharon up and carried her into her room, putting her on her back in her crib, and starting the musical mobile over her head. Sharon cooed and wiggled her appreciation. “You’re such a sweet thing,” Donna said, patting her daughter on the stomach. The child never cried. She couldn’t have hoped for a better baby.
“And now, you,” she said, returning to the den where Adam was screaming and frantically trying to find his way back to Sesame Street. “Give me the remote control unit. Come on, Adam, you’ll break it. That’s right. I want to talk to you.” She sat the crying youngster on her lap. “Stop crying. Come on, honey. I want to talk to you.” Adam stopped his squirming and stared at her; his piercing blue eyes exact replicas of his father’s. “I love you,” she began. “You know that. I love you more than anything in the world.”
“Don’t love Sharon,” he begged.
“I do love Sharon.”
“No!”
“Yes, I do, honey. That’s a fact of life you’re just going to have to get used to. She’s your sister, and she’s here to stay. Now I know that’s not an easy thing to accept when you’re three years old, but that’s just the way things are.”
“But I don’t like her.”
“That’s fine. You don’t have to like her. But you can’t hurt her. Do you understand that? She’s a baby and she can’t defend herself. Would you like it if someone bigger came up to you and hit you on the head?”
He felt his head. “No,” he answered.
“Well, she doesn’t like it either. So, no more hitting. Do you understand?”
“Yes. Can I watch Sesame Street now?”
“On one condition.”
“What’s condition?”
“A condition is the basis of an agreement.” She stopped. Oh sure, wonderful explanation to give to a three-year-old. Clears everything right up. “Let me put it this way—You can watch it if you let me bring Sharon back in here, and no hitting.”
Adam gave the matter serious consideration. “All right,” he said. Donna lifted the boy off her lap and put him in his original position on the sofa, then she stood up and walked to the doorway, flipping on the TV as she did so. From her position at the door, she heard Adam mutter as Big Bird snapped back into focus, “But I don’t like her though.”
Donna smiled at her young son. You better relax, she wanted to tell him. It doesn’t get any easier.
——
Victor had been trying not to say anything about her hair for more than an hour. Donna could actually feel the effort involved. She found herself enjoying each minute, knowing he was dying to tell her what he thought of it. She could see the questions as they formed behind his eyes—“For God’s sake, Donna, what did you do to your hair this time? You know I’ve always hated black hair unless it’s natural. Otherwise, it looks so phoney. What are you trying to do to yourself anyway? You want to look like Wonder Woman?”
What was the matter with her? What was happening to her? Donna felt herself begin to panic. What had she let happen to herself? Was she really the kind of person whose only enjoyment came from watching another person’s pain? Had she really turned into that kind of a monster? Better someone else’s pain than my own, she heard herself respond. “I think sadism is so much healthier than masochism, don’t you?” Jesus. When had she said that? The party. The night of Danny Vogel’s party. The night—