When John lunged for another kiss, I whispered, “Anyone could wander out here and see us.”
“Show me the garage,” he demanded again, his motivations pathetically clear.
I took another step back and craned my neck to try to see into the second-story windows over our heads.
“Why is she so interested in our bedrooms?”
“She’s interested in everything about you and your family.”
“Is she only pretending to like my parents?”
“I think she likes them very much,” he said, voice growing huskier again. “And they like her. Nearly everyone likes her—at first.”
He put his hand against the wall, blocking me again, body moving up against mine—a pocket of delicious heat as he pressed into me, stopping my teeth from chattering. “John, she knows, doesn’t she?”
“She makes wild guesses.”
“And . . . ?”
“And she likes to play games.”
He stopped pawing finally, like a frantic animal that had just wanted one long drink and could now settle, wrapping his arms around me, both of us flat against the house, the rough wall at my back. He squeezed and I squeezed back, feeling simple relief. It didn’t matter how adorable she was, or how long they’d been together. He did not love her even for a moment.
“So why did you let her come?” I asked finally.
“Because she truly wanted to. And so did I. To find any way to spend more time with you. Every second away from the lab, I’m miserable.”
In the hallway, John and Mary made their formal goodbyes—Mary garrulous and repetitive, John reticent and unreadable. At the last minute, he said, “And I’ll see you tomorrow, Rosalie. In the lab.”
Mary and my mother said it almost simultaneously: “On a Sunday?”
I looked at them, and then at John, flustered. This was no ruse, although now that I’d actually met Mary, I was prepared to feel guilty even when we weren’t doing anything wrong. Everything would be harder now that I could picture her charming face and imagine her silver-bell voice. The thing was: we really were scheduled to work on Sunday. We had our second-to-last session with Albert scheduled, and we had determined it should be five days from the last one, just as the last two had been spaced five days apart, and that simply happened to make this session fall on a Sunday. No one else working for the lab seemed to mind.
“See?” Mary said, only to Mother, who had spent plenty of her own Sundays deprived of a husband’s company, when he was off motoring along the coast, inspecting a real estate investment.
Mother shook her head in shared exasperation. “These modern professionals. They lose sight of the important things sometimes, don’t you think?”
Later that night at supper, hours after the Watsons had finally left, we all sat, quiet and listless, since any typical family meal, especially a small one, is bound to seem unspirited after a dinner party. I could have gone without eating yet again, but I didn’t want to give any indication that things were out of the ordinary.
Father looked up, soupspoon halfway to his mouth, deep red broth just at the point of spilling over the spoon’s edge and back into the bowl.
“Lillian Gish,” he announced.
My mother asked, “The film star?”
“That’s who she looks like.”
I glanced to my mother, who did not ask who the she was, who did not pretend offense or even surprise at the sudden eruption, but only turned down her lips, considering. “The eyes and the rosebud mouth, a little. I can see that. Certainly.”
And went back to spooning her own borscht into her mouth.
Chapter 13
The next day early, four of us occupied the warm, dark, crowded room, not counting all the animals, in boxes and baskets and on leashes—plus Albert, seated next to me on the thin mattresses.
I presented a rat. He whimpered and withdrew, his reaction less pronounced than the successful session before.
When the stimulus-response pairing was repeated, the sound of the clanging steel made Albert burst into tears. The subject was given the blocks again, followed by the rat. He played and gurgled a little. Even at eleven months, he was not a highly verbal infant, and when he did coo, it was often at an odd time, when he was distressed. We gave him the blocks again.
A brown rabbit was introduced. This produced a mild negative reaction.
We had managed to see a generalized response, the week prior, to the rabbit and the dog, but we had not yet tried to create a direct response, coordinated with the disturbing sound. We presented the rabbit, and when Albert was in contact with its fur, John clanged the steel rod. In my notes I wrote: Violent fear reaction.
The rabbit was presented again. Leaning, whimpering, not as violent.
Rabbit yet again: Hands held up, whimpering.
We presented the dog. Albert shook his head side to side, keeping his hands pulled as far away from the dog as he could manage.
Another joint stimulation: dog plus clanging steel. Whimpering, violent reaction, up on all fours and trying to crawl away.
John decided we should move to a larger, lighter-walled lecture room—I don’t recall why. Certainly, it was warm and crowded in the original location, with the animals and the filming equipment and the dog now pacing back and forth in its corner. Typically, one would try not to introduce new changes haphazardly, as I understood experimental design, but John said we should change rooms, and we did, moving all of the needed supplies with us.
John, and Scottie with the camera equipment, and Curt with the dog in one hand and a caged rat in another, had already left the lab room and were moving down the hallway, voices fading. Georgie stayed back, arms loaded with a box containing the steel bar and hammer, Santa Claus mask, and some other effects. I went to help, reaching for a piece of cotton wool that was slipping off the piled items in the box, and when my face was close to hers, she made a quick quarter turn, shoring up the box in her strong arms, and said, “He’s been happier the last few weeks. Have you noticed?”
There was no doubt about whom she was speaking, but as for the why of her comment, it gave me only a tight-chested feeling, as though she was on some fishing expedition, had just hooked me, and was slowly reeling me in. Her wide hip blocked me from squeezing past. There was no easy way to get around her or to leave the awkward conversation behind. “He’s happy with the Albert study,” I said, trying to sound both matter-of-fact and firm.
“Is he?”
“Certainly. The ease with which he has conditioned a fear response provides a challenge to Freud’s primacy of love.”
“Of sex, you mean.”
“Yes, love and sex. Erogenous reactions. Still important, but not everything, and not the way Freud frames it, connecting it with suppressed fantasies.”
“Hmmmph.”
“Anyway,” I said, trying to sound brisk, stepping closer to her with an intention to get through the doorway if she would only step aside, “I think he’s more than satisfied with the project so far.”
It was an odd time to say it, since John had started the day with a cloud hanging over his head. Just in the last five minutes, his mood had soured further, based on Albert’s inconsistent responses: turning away, whimpering, not crying at the moments we thought he’d break down easily. We had only one subject, after all, and with that single subject, we had only limited time remaining.
Georgie said, “Mrs. Watson used to be his lab assistant here, you know. There’s a paper somewhere around here, with her name on it, next to his. An actual published scientific paper.” She took another step, into the doorway, and leaned against the frame with a deep sigh, face turned toward me, over her shoulder. “She did exactly what you do now: catching the babies, writing up the notes, head-to-head with Dr. Watson, the two of them chatting up a storm. But not anymore.”
I’d always pictured Mary off e
lsewhere with society interests, her own hobbies and affiliations, pointedly uninterested in John’s work, except for the money it brought in and the higher status it engendered. It didn’t do any of us any good to imagine Mary as she was then, or even to understand her as she was now. It didn’t help me, certainly.
“Maybe she got tired of helping,” I said.
“No, I think she liked it quite a bit. She had a scientific mind, no surprise. Awfully smart. And pretty, too. Reminded me of the film star with the little heart-shaped face, what’s her name?”
“Well, Mrs. Watson must have been less busy then.”
“She was more busy. The children were younger.”
“If they were so young, maybe she welcomed the break,” I said. “Do you need me to take that box?”
“Just resting a moment.”
“I think we’d better catch up with the others, don’t you?”
Georgie gave a little heave, boosting up the box again. “Oh, it’s a bit heavy for you, dear. Just come along behind.”
Come along behind. It can never be a surprise for a younger woman to know she’s following in someone else’s footsteps: Vida Sutton’s, Mary Watson’s, nurse Essie’s. And for some reason, other women want you to know it—want to prove you’re not getting away with it, stepping on some other woman’s shadow.
When I got to the larger, lighter-walled testing room, John looked cross.
We ran through the paces again: rat, rabbit, dog, rat again. Albert, looking placid if increasingly tired, watched them scurry, sniff, and hop past him in turn, avoidant but not highly bothered. We had less evidence than we’d had before today. The generalization hypothesis was key, but now he wouldn’t even cry at the sight of the rat, the original animal in the stimulus-response pairing.
The rat and the rabbit were back in their baskets, but the dog was still free, snuffling at the bottom of the closed door, tail wagging, and then jumping up to scratch and be let out. Somehow the lead had gotten unclipped. John waved a hand toward Curt, and Curt stepped closer to the dog and squatted down, wrapping his arms around the animal like a harness, scratching behind one of its ears to get it to settle.
Scottie was still running the camera, but he backed his face away from the eyepiece, as if he expected John to say we were done for the day.
“Freshen the reaction,” I said, feeling irritable. “Pair the rat and sound again.”
John pulled the thumbnail he’d been nibbling out of his mouth. “Again, you think?”
“Yes.”
John looked at me with gratitude, like a boy who’d let his balloon slip from his grasp only to have a bystander leap up and catch the very end of the string. Everyone else wanted to go home. “Georgie,” John said, “the hammer. Quickly please.” She’d been leaning against the wall and now she pushed off with her rump and bent over to retrieve the objects from the box and present them to John. I took the rat out of the basket, dropped it along the edge of the mattress, and gave it a further nudge, pushing it toward the open gap between Albert’s legs, but he barely seemed to notice. He kept forgetting his fear. Then he needed a reminder.
I wanted the noise to be loud. I wanted the shrill clang to clean out the room—the sense of disappointment, last night’s awkward dinner party, the lingering ghost of a certain previous assistant. I wanted most of all that little Albert would cry, as he was supposed to cry, so we could get on with things.
John, with the hammer in hand, cocked his right arm. At the moment Albert leaned forward, reaching out an exploratory finger, John struck the bar.
The clang sounded. Albert startled.
The rat was presented again. Whimpering, pulling away, hands up.
The blocks, again. Played.
The rat, again. Whimpering.
The rabbit alone, without the sound. A stronger reaction. But not strong enough. Whimpering.
Twenty-three presentations of animals and objects; whimpering and shuddering, hands up and hands back, tears and recovery, pulling away and reaching out, brief curiosity and violent aversion, acquiescence, recovery, and the clang-clang-clang-clang of the steel bar. My head throbbed.
“The dog, again,” John said.
Albert put his hands up, without crying, as the dog was dragged by its leash, forcing subject and stimulus into close proximity. Then, just when the dog’s face was near Albert’s face, it strained against the leash, snout only inches away, and barked. Too loud; too close. Everyone in the room jumped. Georgie cried out. I pushed an arm out to protect myself—myself and little Albert—while the dog got in several more aggressive yaps.
“Get him,” John yelled again. “Grab him. The dog. Grab him, damn it!”
Albert had fallen completely to one side with arms and legs splayed in a rictus of abject terror, like a marionette swiftly clipped from its strings. With the barking still echoing off the room’s walls, I pulled him toward me. I felt his hot, shuddering body, face and chest slick with tears, dampening my own shirtfront. His fear was so acute, he couldn’t get a breath. His sobs were airless, soundless contractions, silent trembling cascades of mucus and tears. Only after Curt had hooked a finger under the dog’s collar and pulled it out of the room did Albert finally get a solid breath into him and manage to push it out in a series of shuddering gasps. His small fingers, the untrimmed nails surprisingly sharp, gripped me, and his hot face burrowed. When he finally backed away for one deeper breath, his neck softened. He tilted his face up, looking up at me through puffy, slitted eyes. Whatever he saw—no mother, I; no great supply of nurturing sympathy in this face—did not reassure him. More intelligence than I’d ever seen in his gaze so far, sizing me up accurately and making his decision—that I wasn’t to be trusted, but that I was all he had.
Then he fell forward again, turned his head, and pressed it flat against my chest, surrendering to the meager comfort he could find. The breaths came, alternating between smooth and ragged, until they were all even and shallow. A few minutes later, he was asleep.
Meeting her had changed everything, and—I suppose—nothing. At the very least, it was more complicated now, as a clever woman like Mary, who had been through some of this before, would know and use to her advantage. At times I questioned all that John had said to me—that their marriage was essentially over, that he’d never really loved her. She’d said, according to him, that her feelings for him were “anesthetic.” Occasionally I doubted what he was telling me, but far more often I believed what he said, recognized her manipulations, and felt more sympathy for him than for anyone. “One of the only honest men you’ll ever meet,” he’d said about himself. And I thought that was probably true. He was honest to a fault. And consider the person I’d admired before him, Mary Cover: honest as well, brusque to the point of insensitivity. I was consistent in my tastes. I was also reaping what I had sowed.
With the fifth Albert session completed, we had some variation in our lab schedulings. John had decided that our final test on Albert should be in thirty-one days, to ascertain whether the conditioning had continued having an effect, unextinguished by the passage of time. The baby’s mother was finishing her wet-nurse contract and would be free to leave the hospital, where they both lived and she worked, a month from now. We might not see him again. In the meanwhile, we had to wait to conclude the experiment, as we seemed to always be waiting, biding our time.
“I can’t wait any longer. We need a hotel,” John said to me in a low, throaty whisper one day in March.
We avoided the Regent and went to another elegant Baltimore hotel instead, in the middle of the week—in the middle of the day, in fact, leaving minutes apart, claiming we were going to Homewood Campus—and I will refrain from delivering the blow-by-blow description except to say that we went the first time without consummating our union. When we pulled the blinds, the room went dark, and John put on a lamp, and though I tried to undress in a casual way, he noticed m
y slight shyness, my turning away as I lifted my camisole over my head, and instead of being charmed, instead of taking me in his arms and whispering encouragement and pulling me under the sheets and letting me take off the final layers with some modicum of privacy, he chose to make a point of it. A rather obnoxious, unyielding point.
He asked me to stand in front of him, to unclasp my brassiere, to continue standing as he looked at my breasts, and slowly, almost too teasingly fondled them, and each time there was something that displeased him—some flinch from a too-ticklish touch, some drop of the head. I was excited too, terribly excited, but I was a virgin, for goodness’ sake, and he was controlling every move. And that damn light: he hadn’t been kidding about being afraid of the dark. It was close to a phobia with him, because of some Southern mammy, a person who had helped his Mother from time to time—which I took to mean she had locked him in a closet or a cellar for being naughty, once too often. Conditioning, indeed.
The better I knew John, the more I knew about his many conflicted feelings about his childhood: not only his resentment of his father, but his confusion about his mother, who had loved him above all his other siblings, and expected the most of him, and—he refused to provide any more details—was more intimate with him, more smothering than any mother should ever be, in his opinion. He had an absolute terror of incest, especially mother-child incest, as well as homosexuality. He didn’t particularly want to talk or even think about any of that, and I, standing shivering in my undergarments, struggling to please him sexually, didn’t want to think about it either.
In the lamp-lit hotel room, I couldn’t tell which he wanted more, to see me naked or simply to avoid the darkness. I’m not sure that even he knew. For a brief moment, I thought nostalgically about those college boys who would have gladly accepted a hand under the sweater, a strategic opening of the trousers and lifting of the skirts, which in those days were as thick as theater curtains, leaving both parties essentially clothed. I thought longingly of the quick grope that would get things quickly finished—sometimes, before the female of the pair even knew things had started. A streak of messy wetness here or there, but at least the groping was over, and no harm done.
Behave Page 14