Duane's Depressed (50 page)

Nor did he mention it to Bobby Lee, who was so deep in the doldrums that he would have been unlikely to be moved by any troubles other than his own. Jennifer and her mother, in what Bobby regarded as a conspiracy of silence, had secretly drawn up a list and sent out wedding invitations.

“The trap’s closing—the trap’s closing,” Bobby Lee muttered, to anyone who would listen.

“You don’t have to get married if you don’t want to. I don’t care how many invitations they’ve sent out,” Duane said.

“I don’t know—some of the people they’ve invited live as far away as Missouri,” Bobby Lee said, as if that fact alone sealed his doom.

“You better stand up for yourself now,” Duane warned. “If you don’t you’ll be changing diapers when you’re ninety.”

“I won’t make no ninety,” Bobby Lee said. “If I even make eighty-six I’ll be lucky.”

“Okay, but you still may not feel like changing diapers,” Duane said.

He poked around in his garden for most of the morning, doing a little watering and hoeing, pulling up a dead plant here and there, picking a few tomatoes. He had begun to leave a bushel basket of tomatoes out by the road every day—always, the basket was empty by nightfall.

Where Honor Carmichael was concerned, he told himself, he should just give up. He could not have what he wanted, which was Honor as a lover. She had a companion and seemed to be living happily with her. The fact that her companion seemed to him a spiteful little person didn’t mean anything. In houses all over Thalia men and women were living more or less happily with spiteful and quarrelsome mates. Karla had exhibited no shortage of spite, and yet he had lived happily with her for four decades. The ways in which people got along, or didn’t, were unfathomable, at least to him.

All morning he wavered about whether to keep his appointment. On impulse he went to the bank and drew out ten thousand dollars in cash. He made sure he had his passport and his reading glasses. Then he pedaled to Wichita Falls and stopped at a travel agency. He thought he might just leave—he might do what he had been telling himself he would do for two years: go to Egypt, see the pyramids. The summer was almost over, his garden almost gone. In two weeks it would be time to plow it up.

The travel agent, a skinny woman in her seventies with a lot of blue hair, quickly sketched out his options. He could go Wichita Falls–Dallas–New York–Cairo, or Wichita Falls–Dallas–London–Cairo, or Wichita Falls–Dallas–Paris–Cairo, or Wichita Falls–Dallas–Frankfurt–Cairo. Which would it be?

Duane didn’t know, couldn’t choose. The important thing was that he knew he could get to Cairo quickly, once he decided to go. The planes, as the travel agent assured him, flew every day. He wavered until the lady grew impatient.

“Duane, do you want to travel, or do you just want to sit there and daydream about the land of the pharaohs?” she asked.

“Oh, I want to travel—I just have to talk it over with my wife first,” he said.

“Oh goodness, I’m sorry,” the agent said. “I didn’t know you’d married again.”

“I didn’t—I meant my old wife,” he said.

He left the lady looking puzzled, a mass of travel folders spread out on her desk. He had mentioned his wife mainly to back the lady off, but in fact he still had occasional little dialogues with Karla—it was just that when he had the dialogues he spoke both parts. Where Karla was concerned, he felt sure she would approve of his trip. Anything to break his ridiculous fixation with Honor Carmichael would be fine with Karla.

He arrived a few minutes early for his appointment, very nervous. Nina was the receptionist.

“Oh hi,” she said. “I’m sorry I ran off last night without saying good-bye. Reuben Orenstein really pisses me off. You sat through the whole evening without saying a word.”

Duane didn’t tell her that that was how he wanted it. He poked through the magazines, trying to find the one with the article about the pyramids—it didn’t seem to be there.

Honor smiled at him when he came in. To his surprise she was wearing a white doctor’s smock over a blue Western shirt and Levi’s. She had on boots.

“I know—mixed messages today,” she said. “Am I a doctor, or am I a cowgirl? Jake Lawton talked me into letting him show me his precious longhorns, but then there was an emergency at the state hospital and I had to rush back.”

“I almost didn’t come,” he admitted—he felt a need to say it.

“Then I guess that’s what we’ll talk about—why you almost didn’t come,” she said, motioning toward the couch.

Duane lay down. He felt nervous and began to hyperventilate. Honor started to sit down and then went to the door.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I’ll only cheat you of a minute or two. I can’t think in these clothes. I keep thinking of the Lone Ranger, for some reason. Whatever your problems, I don’t think you’re the Lone Ranger.”

In less than five minutes she was back, wearing a green blouse and white skirt.

“That’s something I guess I ought to talk to
my
shrink about,” she said. “I can’t function as a psychiatrist unless I’m dressed like a psychiatrist. What does that say?”

Duane didn’t answer—though seeing her in cowboy clothes
had
jangled him a bit. Seeing her in normal clothes relaxed him; more than that, life seemed to swing back into perspective. He stopped feeling quite so weird.

“Tell me why you almost didn’t come,” she asked.

“I feel embarrassed about last night,” he said. “Real embarrassed.”

“You mean you were thinking of abandoning your therapy altogether because you tried to kiss me and I didn’t let you? Is that right?” she asked.

“I guess,” he said.

“Now do you see why I said I had crossed the line?” she asked. “You hadn’t been a patient in such a long time that I wavered and asked you to join the reading group for one evening. But I was wrong. You still
were
a patient, and I should have left it at that.”

“I think it would have come to the same thing, sooner or later,” Duane said.

“No, I disagree,” Honor said. “Context very often determines not only how things happen but what happens. In this office I’m your doctor. That may not be what you want, but I think you respect it. What you did last night, in a different context, was normal. We were sharing a friendly moment, you were attracted, you tried to kiss me. It’s not unheard of. Jake Lawton tried to kiss me in the barn this morning, for that matter.”

Duane wasn’t surprised. He had seen the doctor eyeing Honor, the night before.

“What’d you do?” he asked.

“I socked the old fart in the kisser—cut my knuckle on his
tooth,” Honor said. She held her hand in front of his face—there was a small cut on the knuckle of her middle finger.

“It wasn’t the first time Jake’s misbehaved,” she added. “That’s why I felt I had to be emphatic—not to mention that I was mad. But you were very nice. I don’t expect to have to slug you and I would be sorry to see you abandon your therapy just because you’ve run into a little rejection. That would be smallminded, and I don’t think you are small-minded, Duane.”

Duane didn’t immediately answer. He lay on the couch, looking at the tall green plant in the corner of the room. He wished Honor would talk some more. He liked the sound of her voice, and the reasonableness and courtesy of what she said. He felt she liked him and believed she could help him. Now she was asking to be allowed that opportunity. Everything she said was reasonable. He was sixty-four. He had had a sex life, he thought a fairly good one. Was he really ready to put Honor out of his life because he couldn’t sleep with her?

Still, there were his feelings, and they were strong enough to have kept him awake most of the night.

“I think I can do this but it’s tricky,” he said. “Maybe too tricky.”

“And it’s because you’re in love with me that you think it might be too tricky?” she asked.

“I am in love with you and that’s going to make it tricky,” he said.

“All right, so it’s tricky,” Honor said. “Had you rather deal with something that’s legitimately tricky, or would you rather just ride your bicycle, sit in your cabin, walk your roads, and be bored for the rest of your life?”

Duane didn’t answer. He felt tired and confused.

“I don’t think this feeling arose just because I invited you to a garden party,” Honor said. “I hadn’t seen you for over a year. If you’re in love with me, when did it start?”

“Way back,” Duane said.

But when he tried to think exactly when he had begun to suspect he might be in love with Honor Carmichael he could not really fix a date. He remembered that he had had a sexual dream, and that Honor was the woman in it. But he didn’t want
to talk about that with the doctor. In his mind he grew more and more confused about how to think about the woman sitting behind him. In his mind he thought of her as Honor, but she was also Dr. Carmichael. He didn’t know whether it was proper to be on a first-name basis with your psychiatrist. She had not invited him to call her Honor. But Honor was how he thought of her—he thought it was a lovely name, and one that fit her well.

“Would you try to back up just a bit?” she asked. “Let’s wind the reel backwards until we reach a time when you
weren’t
in love with me. Will you try to do that?”

“All right,” he said.

“You were married—would you say happily?” she asked.

“Happily,” he said.

“Well, but even so you were sufficiently depressed that you walked off and began to live in your cabin,” Honor said. “Yet as I recall you didn’t seem to regard this as a criticism of your marriage. It reflected a more general dissatisfaction, right?”

Duane began to feel very tired. The lassitude that had hit him the first few times he had a therapy session with Honor suddenly came over him. Why was the doctor talking about the past, talking about his marriage, trying to pinpoint the time when he had fallen in love with her? Probably she didn’t take the fact that he was in love with her seriously at all. Many of her male patients probably fell in love with her, or thought they did.

From overwhelming lassitude Duane sank into hopelessness. He regretted ever coming to Wichita Falls to keep the appointment. Why hadn’t he just got on an airplane and flown away? Why did he have to think about his marriage? He wanted to forget Karla, so he wouldn’t miss her. Now he would have to learn to forget Honor as well. If he could forget her, then he wouldn’t yearn for her and be unhappy all day.

“I shouldn’t have come here,” he said. “I can’t do this. I should have gone right on to Egypt. I started . . . to leave . . .”

Then his lungs seemed to swell, his eyes to tear up. A storm rose in him—it arrived before he could move. He made a motion to get up from the couch but he was too tired, and then he was crying—crying, crying, crying. He was silent about it, but his chest heaved and tears poured out of his eyes, ran down his
cheeks and down his neck, wet his collar. He cried so hard that it seemed as if his whole body was crying, that tears were coming out of his pores. It was as if all the sadnesses he had ever felt, and those he had not known he was feeling, had suddenly turned to water, had become tears, a bath of tears, a waterfall of tears, pouring out of him and, it seemed to him, pouring on him.

In the midst of his crying he tried to get up and leave but Honor Carmichael calmly put a hand on his shoulder and pressed him back down.

“No . . . no . . . don’t fight it,” she said. “You’ve probably been fighting this since your father died, and that’s a long time. Now you need to let it come. Just lay there and cry.”

Duane obeyed—he had no control over the flood of tears. The whole front of his shirt was wet. When he put his hands to his face it was like putting them in a stream.

“It’s all right, Duane,” Honor said. “Just let it come.”

He cried, he sighed. Once he stopped and felt the tear storm was over, but then started crying again. He had no idea how long he had been crying. Surely he should try and stop—Honor had other patients. His hour must be up.

When he tried to say that, Honor just said, “Shush. You don’t have to leave. Nobody’s coming. Just cry until you stop.”

At first she offered him Kleenex, but when she saw that tissues were going to be inadequate she stepped into the bathroom and got him a small hand towel.

“You look like you’ve been in a washing machine,” she said. “I think I better loan you a T-shirt.”

“I’ll dry when I go outside,” Duane said. “It’s hot.”

“I had a feeling this storm might break,” Honor said. “That’s why I gave you the last appointment of the day.”

Duane sat up and looked at her gratefully.

“How could you know it was coming?” he asked. “I’ve never done nothing like this. Not when my wife died. Not when my mother died.”

“Psychiatrists don’t know everything, but we do know some things,” Honor said. She wasn’t bragging. She just stated it as she would state a plain fact.

“I better go home,” Duane said. “I’m weak as a kitten.”

“If that’s true, how do you expect to
get
home?” Honor asked. “I’m not sure it’s safe for you to be cycling around right now.”

Duane didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure, himself, that he could ride home.

“Here,” Honor said, handing him his passport.

“But how’d you get it?” he asked.

“Duane, your whole shirt is soaked,” she said. “I slipped it out of your pocket to keep it from getting wet.”

Rather somberly she walked him to the door of her house. When Nina started to say something Honor stopped her with a look.

“You’re a tricky one,” she said, when they were outside, standing on the sidewalk, not far from the spot where, just last evening, he had tried to kiss her.

“What do you mean?”

“You had your passport with you,” she said. “You meant to slip away to Egypt and give me no chance. That possibility occurred to me last night. I was actually a little surprised when you showed up today.”

“Give you no chance to what?” he asked.

“No chance to help you understand why you’re sad,” Honor said. “Please don’t do that. Don’t slip away just yet. Those pyramids have been there a long time. They can wait, but this can’t. Please come back tomorrow. It would be good if you could at least give me a few more days.”