Leaving Sophie Dean

by Alexandra Whitaker

  * * *

  “So, like, I may regret it, but I’m going to give it a try. Why not?” L’s father, the earth daddy—Sophie tried to remember to call him Jacob now—had invited L to set up shop in the alternative-health-care center where he worked. There was an unoccupied room, and he had asked if she would like to hang her shingle there—once she passed her exam and got a shingle, that is. “I mean, it’s not like it’ll be just him and me, because that would be way too intense. There’s a dozen practitioners there, so it might be cool. Anyway, if it sucks, I can leave, right? And I have to start somewhere.”

  “It sounds great, L. I bet there’ll be a good atmosphere.”

  “And there’s another thing, you know? I can tell that Jacob feels like it’s this big compensatory act, helping me set up my practice. And I’m, like, if I don’t allow him to do something for me, to relieve his conscience in some way, he’s going to keep following me around like this sad-eyed puppy dog. I want him to feel like, you know, we’re even now.”

  “Does it seem like a fair trade-off to you?”

  “Well, let me think about that.” She pretended to consider, her finger under her chin. “Let’s see. On the one hand, he abandons me at the age of four to a drug-addict mother, but on the other hand, twenty years later, he helps me unroll my futon. Hmm. No, it’s not a fair trade-off. But nothing could be. It’s really just so he’ll cut me some space and at the same time be free to, you know, do whatever he needs to do, ’cause I feel like this whole father-daughter/karmic-debt routine is blocking his growth. And for me, basically, it’s a pain in the ass.”

  “It’s amazing how unresentful you are.”

  “Actually, it’s selfishness. Self-preservation or whatever. My time is too precious, and anyway, look at the guy—emotionally he’s three years old. So he didn’t act like a responsible adult? Well, no shit. That was never one of his possibilities.”

  “Doesn’t it make you wonder what your mother saw in him?”

  “Uh, no. No, it doesn’t.” L lifted her chin and raked her hair back from her face. “You’d be asking that question the other way around if you’d ever met my mother.”

  “Oh, L…” Sophie laughed, but reluctantly. L’s childhood made her sad.

  “And he wants to subsidize my rent for the first year, so you see this is a cold and ruthless financial calculation on my part, too. It’s lucky for me, really, that he’s such a fool, and guilt-ridden to boot. If I play him right, I can spin out the free rent to two years. You know, ‘Oh, I can’t afford to pay yet, Jake-O! I’m still finding my way!’” L laughed, and Sophie felt a twinge of sympathy for Jacob.

  “What about you?” L asked. “Where are you going to set up when you’re licensed, So?” She’d taken to calling Sophie “So,” perhaps on the theory that cool people don’t need more than a syllable’s worth of name—and of course the coolest of all get by with just a letter.

  “I’ll work right here. Come and look.” Sophie led her to the treatment room, and L lingered on the way, looking at things and touching them.

  “Your apartment’s fantastic. Is all this stuff yours?”

  “No, some of it belongs to Clement, the landlord or -lady, I don’t know which. Clement is my guardian angel. When I first moved in especially, it was as if Clement had prepared this haven just for me.”

  “Cool.”

  “Look, here it is. My workroom. Not very big, but it’s nice and quiet at least. And light.” She pointed to the stained glass in the top of the arched window. “When the sun shines through there, it’s gorgeous. It looks like heaps of jewels spilled on the floor.”

  “Wow.” L gazed at the floor, imagining that. Then, “You’re going to work from home?”

  “Yes, that was the plan. Why?”

  “There are a lot of wackos around.”

  “Oh, I don’t… Do you really think it’s dangerous?”

  “No doubt about it. This is America, So. Come on, weirdos are, like, our major crop. For export and domestic consumption.” Sophie’s carefully woven plans began to unravel as L continued. “Basically it’s, do you really want strange men coming into your house? You know what ‘massage’ means to a lot of idiots out there. And from the client’s point of view, would you feel good about lying down in a stranger’s house and closing your eyes? The anonymity of a clinic and all that, it’s more reassuring. And for you, too—if there’s any trouble, you have people close by.”

  Sophie felt utterly deflated. “Of course you’re right. I see that. What I don’t see is how I failed to think of it before. I flatter myself that I’m such a good organizer, and then… I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I’d imagined mainly women coming in.…”

  “Well, of course a lot of women practitioners won’t treat men at all, but hey, there are some pretty weird women out there, too—don’t underestimate your own sex.”

  “I just hadn’t counted on paying two rents, is the thing. What if I accept only women clients who come to me with a referral?”

  L shrugged. “It might be hard to make a living that way. You’d miss out on a lot of clients who might be legit.” Then, seeing that Sophie was upset, “On the other hand, sure. Women clients only, referred to you, all by word of mouth—why not? For starters, anyway. Hey, it’ll work out, don’t worry. It’s like a game of bagatelle, right? All the pretty glass marbles are going to roll into their places!”

  “What’s bagatelle?”

  “It’s a game where… all the pretty glass marbles roll into their places!” Having made Sophie laugh, L changed the subject. “Can I see the rest of your apartment? I love seeing people’s houses. I’m really nosy that way.”

  “Sure. But there’s not much more to see.”

  “I think it’s fascinating how the spaces we live in shape our lives, you know? The exterior shapes the interior, so if we change our living space, we change the life we lead inside it. It’s like…”

  “Adam believes that, too. He told me he wants to design houses where people can ‘live and thrive.’”

  “That’s it, exactly! I’d love to see his work. I wonder if I should have studied architecture.… Co tells me I’m a natural, though. At shiatsu.”

  “Co?”

  “Malcolm. We’re having a scene—I can never resist that mentor/acolyte thing, and I’ve always maintained that all knowledge is sexually transmitted, like gonorrhea. And I need a good grade.…” She read Sophie’s face and laughed. “I’m an opportunist, So! What do you expect? That’s what happens to kids like me—we become survivors. Co tells me I have a good touch. He’s the one with the touch, though—wow. Get this.” She dropped her voice. “This is a man whose hand can reach inside you from across the room—right? Now… imagine having sex with him.” After a pause she continued. “This is such a cool place. Can I see your bedroom? Sophie? Sophie.”

  But Sophie was staring ahead unseeing, wrestling with troubling images of sex with a dismantled—or very stretchy—man. “What? Oh, yes.” She showed the bedroom and finally the bathroom, which brought a cry of joy from L. “Look at that amazing tub! There’s only a shower at my place. Oh, and pretty seashells! Do you think I could take a bath? Would you mind?”

  “You mean now? Sure, go right ahead. There are plenty of essential oils and things. Use everything!”

  “Oh, and candles, too. This is going to be bliss.”

  And so the evening ended with them sitting out on the porch, L wrapped up in Sophie’s terry-cloth robe, her long hair wet and her skin gleaming, smelling of soaps and oils from her bath and of the joint she had rolled, both of them chatting until late, pondering the mysteries of the Triple Burner meridian, drinking wine and laughing and watching the moon arc across the sky on the same path the sun had blazed that morning. To Sophie it seemed to be a model dinner party. They should all be like this.

  * * *

  She felt more jaded about it the next morning, however. She had a slight hangover, the bathtub was dirty, there were wet towels on the floo
r—amazing how fast one lost the taste for picking up after others—and she had agreed to let L copy her class notes to study for the exam. L had asked politely enough, and Sophie had said yes; in fact, she’d practically forced them on L—so why did Sophie feel manipulated? When the doorbell rang, she assumed it was L, back for the many things she’d forgotten—her books, her earrings, a scarf, a bag of apples—but when she opened the door—

  “Hi.” It was Henry, all smiles.

  Lying in his arms after making love, tracing his profile with her finger, she found it hard to remember what she had objected to about his trip or why she had been upset that he had a child. It was marvelous that he had a child—unthinkable that he should not. All the same, it was time to talk.

  She waited until they got up to make brunch. “Adam’s selling the house, Henry. He wants to move closer to me, for the boys’ sake.”

  He nodded and turned on the coffee grinder. She winced until its gritty screeching was finished, waiting for some comment, but none came. “Do you think that’s a good idea?” she prompted.

  He looked at her in surprise. “Do I think it’s a good idea?”

  She felt irritation but spoke lightly. “Yes.”

  “Do you think it’s a good idea?”

  “I want to know what you think.”

  “But I don’t…” He shrugged.

  “You have an opinion—you must. Does it seem like a good idea for Adam to move into my neighborhood? Just say yes or no.”

  “How can I, when I don’t know how you feel about it?”

  “But I’m asking how you feel.”

  “Well, I guess it would be more convenient for you.”

  “That’s a thought, not a feeling.”

  He began to slice a pineapple. “I have no feeling about it, Sophie. If you mean am I jealous, no. As I understand it, you prefer me to him. If you don’t, you should tell me.”

  Sophie brought out the question that had been tormenting her. “What if all this were merely a sort of sabbatical, Henry, and my marriage were meant to resume now?”

  “In any case, it wouldn’t matter to me where he lives.”

  “You know…calm is one thing. Callousness is another.”

  “What? I don’t care where he lives, Sophie. How could I possibly care what address he has?”

  “What if he moved in here?”

  “But that’s cheating.”

  “It’s not! It’s the whole point!”

  “It’s cheating because then the issue becomes who he lives with, not where he lives. I didn’t say I didn’t care who he lived with, only where.”

  “So you do?”

  “What?”

  “Care if he lives with me!”

  “Is that what you want?”

  Sophie dropped her face into her hands.

  “Listen,” he said. “Do you want to go back to your husband?”

  Her reply was a muffled no, followed by a sentence that was longish and mournful-sounding, but too indistinct to make out.

  He pulled her hands gently away from her face. “What was that?”

  She lifted her face and met his eyes, feeling suddenly calm. “I guess, Henry,” she said finally, “that I need more of a game plan than this. You, me, us, and what’s going on. What are we, Henry? Friends who sleep together, or lovers, or a couple, or what? What’s the plan here?”

  “Plan? There’s no plan. Just tell me this. Are you happy with me?”

  It had the sound of a trick question. “Ye-es,” she said cautiously, but when she realized how rude that much hesitation sounded, she added, “Yes, of course I am. Very happy.”

  “I am too. That’s all that needs to be said. I don’t care to assign a word to this. You think a label will be some kind of refuge, but I think it’ll be a cage.”

  “But what are we moving toward? What are we hoping to do together one day? I need a game plan—a flexible game plan, of course, but I need some kind of structure and not just this nebulous…” She made big vague gestures to fill in for the words she couldn’t find.

  “You need a game plan. Okay, how about this? Our game plan is to have no game plan.”

  “No,” she said sternly. “That won’t do. Because no game plan is no game plan, and I just said I needed one.”

  “All right, then, listen to this. We’re both happy, so we continue as we are, until you or I, or both of us, want a change of some kind, and then a change will come about. I don’t need to say that what kind of a change is unknowable—we might split up, have a baby, or whatever. There’s no point in trying to throw words at the future—it’s senseless, just tossing pebbles down a well. I don’t like promises. They’re hot air, usually used as persuasion, usually for gain. But listen. Right now—the future is unknowable, agreed?—but right now I’m willing to try to bring about, or adapt myself to, any changes that become necessary or desirable. And that’s as much as any person can honestly say to another. If I were to tell you I’ll never leave you, that might turn out to be a lie. It’s crazy to think that a fabric of lies is going to serve you as a safety net. I won’t lie to you, not even to make you happy. I refuse.”

  But Sophie’s mind had snagged on something a ways back. “‘We might split up,’” she echoed dully, “‘have a baby… or whatever.’ You’re calling that a plan?”

  “Or whatever, yes,” he said crisply. “That’s all I can offer, because that’s all there is. Anyone who offers you more is lying, as you saw very clearly with your husband. Think of it, I’m offering you all there is—everything in the world.”

  “And nothing.”

  “Of course. And nothing. That’s thrown in, too. Everything, including nothing.”

  “So—sorry—just to sum up: You’re saying you’ll stick around until you don’t feel like it anymore. Is that right?”

  He smiled tenderly. “Well, of course I will! Won’t you?”

  “Oh, Henry, Henry.” She clutched her hair with both hands and laughed. “Maybe we’d better call this thing off.”

  He studied her face. “Well, all right,” he said at last.

  “‘All right’? Just ‘all right’?”

  “Well, of course it’s all right, if it’s what you want. How could it not be all right?”

  “You see? You see? This is proof to me that nothing’s going on here.”

  He slid the pineapple off the cutting board onto a plate and set down the knife. “All right.”

  “Please don’t say ‘all right’ anymore.”

  “I won’t. And I’ll go.” He wiped his hands on a towel and faced her. “But first I want you to agree with me that the reason you no longer want us to be lovers is that I refuse to promise the unpromisable. Do you agree that’s the case?”

  “Yes, yes. Henry, look, I don’t doubt you’re right—about everything. Why should I need a label? I know that everyone has to play it by ear.… I know there’s no other way, really. But I don’t know how to function like this. Remember, just a short time ago I was still a suburban housewife, trudging around supermarkets, smashing my shopping cart into my car. I’m changing, and fast, but this is still too…” She made circles with her hands again, searching for that elusive word. “For me. Maybe one day I’ll be more…” She dropped her arms to her sides and shrugged. “Maybe not.”

  He took her face between his hands and kissed her. “Until the day this is no longer too… and you’re more…, then.” They smiled at each other. “Come on, breakfast is ready.”

  “I like you more than anyone,” she said, pouring the coffee.

  He flicked open his napkin. “I know.”

  They ate peacefully, and when he had gone, she sat for a time listening to the new quality of the silence in her apartment.

  * * *

  Over the next days, two letters from Europe appeared in Sophie’s mailbox. The first was addressed to Miss Szabo in an even, sloping hand, and the sender was A. R. Clement. Her heart beat faster as she fingered the thick, creamy envelope, wondering what her gu
ardian angel had to say to her. She decided to savor the suspense until she was sitting comfortably in front of a cup of cappuccino, and then she opened the envelope and unfolded the one expensive sheet of writing paper inside. She read quickly first, then again slowly, her excitement draining away. It was merely a nicely worded query as to whether Miss Szabo thought she would be renewing her lease, recognizing, of course, that she was under no obligation to decide so soon. But if by any chance she had already made up her mind, Clement would be glad to know, as some future plans would be contingent upon Miss Szabo’s decision. That was all. There was no clue as to the writer’s sex, the handwriting indicating a good education and an appreciation of beauty, but not gender. Age? Well, probably not young; the grammar was too good. The return address was Abruzzi; Clement was in Italy, traveling or living. And it seemed that now even Clement was pressuring her to make up her mind about where to live.

  The second letter came from Felicia, her former mother-in-law in Kent, mocking her lack of sophistication and her puritanical attitude and telling her to forgive the poor boy, who had been naughty, certainly, but boys will be boys, and really we love them all the more for that—a letter so spectacularly vile that it deserved to be preserved and studied by teams of learned professors, but instead it wound up in an anonymous municipal trash can. A pity, really. Sophie counted the people who would like her to move back in with Adam: Adam, Adam’s mother, Sophie’s mother, Milagros probably, Marion certainly.… Not that it mattered what other people wanted, of course. Or did it—when those people were Matthew and Hugo?