Crossings (20 page)

 

I KNOW I'VE AVOIDED talking about My Therapy.

Her name was Miss Haggerty but I called her the Nut Lady.

‘Well? What does the Nut Lady have to say for herself?' Mik would say.

‘She says I want you to do me in.'

‘Yah? You tell her how you do
me
in?' And he would laugh.

‘What does your Nut Lady say about your progress?' the producer would say.

‘She says I write out my anger. She says my writing enables me to avoid expressing anger in real life.'

‘You tell her to keep her Freudian mitts off your work!' And, ‘You tell her to keep her analysis confined to your mental aberrations and to eschew literary criticism.' And, ‘All writers are nuts. Just take care she doesn't cure you.'

‘How's the Nut Lady?' Jocelyn would say.

‘She says I've got this mother complex about you and Francie.'

‘Well, she sounds pretty cuckoo, but she might be right there.'

Grace got her fourth degree and went to work at the clinic. Her office was right next door to the Nut Lady's. Or, I think it was.

‘But, she's quite short, Vicky,' Grace said.

‘She is not, she's huge, she's ten feet tall,' I said.

‘Oh Vicky.'

‘She's tall and she always wears elegant clothes and her apartment is never in a mess. I know the type.'

‘She is
not
tall,' said Grace. ‘She's about your height. And she's got one of those horrible sweaters, white with embroidered flowers?'

‘She doesn't! She wears Italian knits, absolutely plain, and all from Marty's at 200 per.'

‘Oh Vicky, you're so funny.'

Grace says to me, last week, ‘Aren't I in your book?'

‘No, it's all about me. A big ego trip. You're there, but shadowy. The perfect lady. You and Terence.'

‘Terence! What a good name for him.'

‘I can't write about you.'

‘Why not? Why don't I get a part?'

‘I don't know you well enough.'

‘You've known me twenty-three years.'

‘That's why,' I say.

Grace was always perfect to me. Like her name, gracious, perfect, good. I was certain that
if
Grace had orgasms (which she
wouldn't
), they were lyrical affairs, having nothing to do with sweat or stink or maroon wrinkled lips.

I'm telling her about last summer and how, in twenty feet of clear blue Aegean, the wine steward started to masturbate himself with my feet.

‘Good heavens! Your feet! What were you doing?'

‘Lying on my back, trying not to drown!'

‘Good heavens! What did you
do?
'

‘I said to myself, What would Grace do if this happened to her?'

‘Ooooh?' on a half-rising resentful note. ‘And what
would
I do, did you decide?'

‘I decided you wouldn't have got in the situation in the first place.'

‘I don't know about that. But feet—no, feet aren't my fetish really.'

‘I guess they were the wine steward's.'

‘Apparently. So what happened?'

‘I said “
Parakalo
.” And then I said “Stop!”'

‘What does that mean?'

‘It means “please.”'

Grace laughs. ‘It looks like you learned the wrong phrases from that book. Isn't there one for unhand me? Or unfoot me?'

‘Yeah, I just learned all the polite ones.'

‘So what happened?'

‘Well, he wouldn't stop, he just went on treading water like mad, so I kicked him.'

‘Good heavens!'

‘Yeah, he almost drowned. It was an awkward position to kick from. I got him right in the balls.'

She said to me once, ‘You always make yourself the clown. You always did. Even in the hospital, you made jokes about the bed pans and the enemas.'

‘Jesus, don't read my case history, Grace,' I said that summer.

‘No, I won't. Why not?'

‘You're in it. I'm jealous of you.'

‘Whatever for?'

‘Ah, you and Terence, you're so perfect. Every time I go to your house, I think I'm going to break something.'

‘Break what?'

‘The thermostat or the fridge or something.'

‘Don't you know, I'm jealous of you?'

‘Of me?' I feel frightened.

‘I always have been.'

I think of her that year, when she came to school, new and scared. She lived with her mother and father, just down the street from Grandma's. In the mornings, her mother kissed her father goodbye. Grace had a yellow cardigan and a yellow-y plaid skirt, to match. And a pearl, one pearl, on a thin gold chain. Someone had given me a red and white sweater, with antelopes running madly all over it. And a green skirt. I looked like Christmas all year round, very hardy hand-me-downs, last forever. I was back with my mother then, by hook or by crook, mostly crook.

‘I'm jealous of you because you act out,' said Grace.

Once, in second year, I pretended to be a homo and stroked her leg. She leapt away with a shriek and I flushed all over.

Years later, she said, ‘Do you remember that time?'

‘God yes.'

‘We were both so scared.'

‘It was you who yelled.'

‘If I
were,
' said Grace, ‘I don't know anyone I'd like better.'

‘I thought I was, that day,' I said gloomily. ‘I came over all queer.'

We laughed.

‘You see, I love you.'

‘I love you too,' says Grace.

And, ‘So? Why aren't I in your book?'

Ah hell.

‘Joyce says she could write me up in a minute.'

‘Joyce writes everyone up in a minute.'

And that summer, ‘I couldn't read your case history,' Grace said. ‘Who would I tell
my
troubles to? I couldn't start treating you like a patient. Good heavens. But you really should stop calling her your Nut Lady.'

‘Why?'

‘For one thing, she doesn't like it.'

‘But she's the lady, I'm the nut.'

‘I don't think she quite sees it that way.'

‘I know, it's part of my defensive mechanism,' I said.

‘Well, it is, isn't it?' Grace believes in what she calls ‘the introduction of reality.'

Of Mik she said, ‘He's terribly
male,
isn't he? He exudes a sort of virility.' But when they came over, Grace and Terence, we all sat around making polite noises at one another.

‘You never said anything, about you and Ben,' she said.

‘I couldn't. If I'd said one thing it would have all smashed. I mean, it wasn't a virtue. It wasn't the good old upper-lip bit. Other people natter and complain but that's because the fabric's strong. They can pull all they please. But with us, it was a crystal vase, our marriage. One flaw and the whole thing shatters into pieces. I didn't say anything to anybody because I didn't say it to myself. I never admitted anything. Sometimes, when I was writing, I'd get close and then it scared hell out of me. It's like, in the writing, if you don't watch, you tell the truth and then, you're right there on the edge, and it's all blackness. And I'd draw back, even in the writing.'

‘Yes,' said Grace, ‘we were going to have the perfect marriage too.' But this was years later, when she divorced Terence.

Last week, Grace says, ‘You know, when you told me, finally, that all those years you were faithful … seven years? Was it seven years?'

‘My god.'

‘I couldn't believe it. The way you went on. You and Ben. The way you talked about free love all those years. I thought you two were having a gay old time. I thought you were both really whooping it up. And then when you told me you'd been faithful!—It was very provocative, intellectually. It was provocative,' she laughs, ‘in all sorts of ways.'

I don't pursue this. ‘Yes, well, we never talked about anything real, did we?'

‘We thought it was real.'

‘Oh yes,' I say, ‘we were all so bloody honest.'

‘Weren't we?'

She lives with a tall blond psychiatrist now. I say to him, ‘Jake? Tell me. Did you ever fight with your wife?'

‘Hell no,' says Jake. ‘Christ no. We were terribly
nice
to each other. We were terribly
reasonable.
We sat down and discussed our problems like two rational human beings.'

‘And with Grace?' I say.

‘Oh that bitch,' Jake says. ‘I'd like to kill
her
twice a week.'

Grace, who is half-listening in the other room, calls, ‘You almost
did
once.'

‘That's right,' says Jake, ‘and I'd do it again too.'

Grace comes in, slim, elegant, and lifts her cheeky face to his. ‘Vicky said you'd never apologize. She said you were in the right. She's as bad as you are.'

‘I
was
right to slug you,' says Jake, looking pleased with himself.

‘It's because Jake
knows,'
I say in my Eeyore voice.

‘Knows what?' she says, but she is laughing at him. Their bodies fill up the room. You need a lead shield for the radioactivity.

‘What it's all about.
Sex.'

‘What
is
it all about then?'

‘Killing,' I say, gloomily.

‘That's right, Vicky,' says Jake, ‘let me get you another.'

 

THE NUT LADY SAID TO ME, ‘Why someone like that?'

‘Well, I can't destroy Mik. He's been destroyed by experts.'

‘And he has such a charming record of mayhem.'

‘Yes, it's really quite promising,' I said.

‘And this man he's supposed to have killed?'

‘I expect they were lovers.'

‘You seem to have that on the brain.'

‘Yes, I seem to pick them, don't I?'

‘He doesn't sound homosexual. Mik.'

‘Well, he's got quite a thing going with his buddies from Ortona. And he was, too, in the Pen.'

‘Is your ex-husband still coming around?'

‘Oh yes.' Long-suffering.

‘Why?'

‘He's doing a head of me. My hair turns into snakes. Medusa.'

‘I didn't take an Arts degree. You'll have to explain your references.'

‘Medusa's one of the gorgons. One of the three sistie uglers. Her face turns men into stone. She had snakes for hair. And Perseus killed her by looking into a mirror to do it.'

‘The three sistie uglers. That's what you call yourselves, isn't it? You and Jocelyn and Francie.'

‘Yes,' I say, surprised. I was surprised. She had a damn quick way with her sometimes, my Nut Lady. ‘But Ben doesn't know. I mean, it's all very Jungian for Ben.'

‘Why do you let him come over?'

‘Well, I can't stop him, can I?'

‘Why not?'

And, ‘How about Paul? Does he still come over too?'

‘Yes.'

‘You play them all off against one another very cleverly.'

‘Do I?'

‘Yes, like you play me off against your producer. You manipulate very cunningly. He phoned me about the therapy, you know. Said it was affecting your work.'

‘My stories don't have anything to do with me. I make them up. After the last one, when you said that, you know, about the mother, I couldn't write! You made me stop writing!'

‘I simply said that the hostility you feel toward your mother …'

‘I am not angry at my mother. That was someone else. In the play.'

The Nut Lady sighed, and looked at her desk clock.

‘I'll be going away for a month. In October.'

‘Good for you.'

‘I thought I'd give you plenty of notice.'

The time was up, so I said, ‘How do I manipulate
you
?
'

‘You make me laugh.' And she smiled. ‘I wonder how you're going to punish me.'

‘Punish you?'