Four Wives (18 page)

T
HE STAIRS LEADING TO
the garage apartment were in the back, the last piece of the stone mansion before the start of six wooded acres. And although it was easily forgotten, the woods made up the bulk of her property, spanning twice the size of the lush green lawn abutting the main section of the house, the part she inhabited. That was her domain’the grass, the gardens that flanked it on three sides. It was the landscape she looked at from her bedroom balcony, the peaceful backdrop to her flagstone patio where she liked to read. Standing here at the foot of the staircase, she was about to enter another world altogether’a world that had been calling out to her for days. Ever since that night on the patio, that day in her kitchen. Finally, she was going to answer it.

As she made her way to the top, she could hear his footsteps on the hardwood floor. The smell of incense and the sound of soft music drifted from the small opening in the back window. She stopped for a moment, thinking her presence here an intrusion into this man’s private life. But each step brought new information, the music becoming clearer, a view into his kitchen opening up, revealing dozens of sketches hanging from the wall. She continued up the stairs, then knocked on the door.

“It’s me. Mrs. Beck … Gayle,” she said, when the music stopped. She heard rushed footsteps across the room, then the turning of a lock.

“Mrs. Beck.” He was startled, and unusually self-conscious. Quickly, he began to tuck his shirt, a casual button-down, into draping, drawstring pants. His feet were bare, the shirt partially unbuttoned, revealing parts of him she had never seen’innocuous parts’the tops of his feet, the bones around his neck. Still, had his face not quickly conformed to the serious employee persona he wore in the other parts of the house, she might not have recognized him at all.

“Did you need me early today? “

On most days, Paul took time for himself between the lunch and dinner hours. Working from sun-up to two, then again from five until nine each night, there weren’t many hours left for him to claim.

Embarrassed, Gayle shook her head. “No. I’m sorry to disturb you. This can wait.” She turned to leave, but he reached out, touching her lightly on the arm.

“Come in,” he said.

Gayle took a few steps forward into the narrow kitchen. Closing the door behind them, Paul led her into the small living area. She knew it well, having designed the room herself and overseen its construction. With vaulted ceilings, skylights, and an abundance of windows, it was a comfortable apartment. Still, today it felt like a place she had never been. Standing in the center of the room, she slowly took in the personal effects that had transformed the space so completely.

The furnishings were minimal. A small sofa, a side chair and reading table. Books were piled on the floor, many books, some of them very old. A small CD player sat in the corner, though the music had stopped. And all around her, scattered randomly about, were easels, at least ten of them, each with a sketch drawn in black pencil. They were in various stages of completion, a few being too abstract to identify the subject. But most depicted people, many in scenes that were familiar’the pond at the foot of the town park, the local coffee shop.

“I had no idea you were an artist,” she said, walking slowly through the makeshift gallery.

“I wouldn’t say that, exactly. It’s a hobby. Can I get you something to drink?”

She wasn’t thirsty, but it seemed a good idea’following ritual formalities. “Water is fine. Thank you.”

Paul disappeared into the kitchen, his voice trailing behind him, then through the small opening separating the two rooms. “When I traveled,” he began to explain, “I didn’t have a camera, but there were so many things I wanted to capture. Take with me.”

As he talked, Gayle picked up a thin portfolio of drawings that lay on the floor. She opened it, and began to turn the pages. The pictures were of people, like the others. But the setting was here, her home. She turned back to the first one, looking more carefully at the images before her. The drawing was of a small child sitting in a field. The stone fountain in the distance was unmistakable. The child seemed a stranger, until she studied his face. The jawline, the shape of his eyes. It was Oliver. Most of the pictures she had of her child depicted a smiling, happy boy. Those were the shots that made it from the pack to the photo albums. But this drawing was also Oliver, the way he looked when he was sad, contemplative, as he was so much of the time lately. Tracing the boy’s face with her fingers, there was no doubt that this man had perfectly captured her son.

She turned the pages, recognizing now the subjects in the drawings. Francisco, the groundskeeper, laboring in the hot sun over her garden. Their maid ironing in front of the television, her attention on the latter. She heard the faucet in the kitchen, Paul’s voice still telling of the places he had been when he was a young man, a wanderer. She turned the pages faster, until she found the one she was looking for. There was no landscape, no setting. Just a face. Her face.

“Water,” Paul said, coming through the doorway. “With a slice of lemon.” Gayle was sitting on the chair now, the small portfolio closed and returned to the spot on the floor where she had found it.

“Thank you,” Gayle said, allowing her eyes to meet his.

There was a brief silence, a slight but distinct hesitation before Paul sat on the sofa across from his employer, and Gayle sensed the same discomfort that had recently come between them.

“So, what can I do for you?”

“I wanted to explain about the other day … when you came in and …,” she started to say. But Paul interrupted her.

“You don’t have to explain.”

“Yes. I do. I want to. It’s been on my mind.” Gayle paused, looking at the ceiling, trying to find the words that would say everything, and nothing.

“Really, you don’t have to.” Paul saved her once again.

Gayle nodded, wondering now if the closeness she’d felt between them that night had been entirely of her own making, and tolerated by him as nothing more than an obligatory indulgence.

“I won’t keep you then,” she said, suddenly self-conscious. She got up from the chair and turned toward the kitchen door, and the safety of the world that waited just outside. Paul stood as well, shadowing her movements closely’more closely than he did within the walls of the main house. She could feel him now, not as the steady fixture that comforted her throughout the day, but instead as a live, unpredictable entity. And it made her stop.

“Can I ask you something?” she said, turning to face him.

He was surprised, but he didn’t back away. “Of course,” he said.

“How have you lived alone for so long?”

“I’m not alone.”

“I mean, without attachment. How do you live without a permanent attachment? A wife, children?”

“Ah,” he answered, now aware of the real question. “I was married, once.”

It was Gayle’s turn to be surprised. She had never thought to ask, and he had never mentioned it. How selfish she had been all these years’going on and on about herself, and never inquiring about his life, as though he existed solely in relation to her.

She studied the sadness in his eyes, and he allowed it to be seen.

“Not much in life is permanent, is it?” he said.

“Can I ask what it was like? Your marriage?”

Paul shrugged, seemingly unsure how to answer. “Immature, I think. We were young. I didn’t know what I wanted then.”

“Were you happy, though?”

“Yeah. I guess I was for a while. But I found marriage difficult. I was changing, she was changing. We started wanting different things.”

Gayle moved toward the door, not sure of what to say next. “I should go,” she said, and this time it was Paul who stopped her.

“Wait,” he said, reaching out for her arm. “What did you come here to tell me?”

Gayle looked away. “Nothing.”

But he did not back down. He took her right hand in his and exposed the small cuts on her palm that were almost healed.

Standing in the doorway to the kitchen, Gayle stepped back until she felt the hard wood against her shoulders. She leaned into it, wishing it would give way and swallow her’taking her from this place and back to the house she could see through the window.

“How much do you know?” she asked. In his face it became clear that her question had given her away, or at least confirmed the evidence he surely had gathered over the past few weeks’if not from years of living in such close proximity to the catastrophe of her life.

“What do you want me to say?” he asked, his demeanor uneasy.

“Please.” Her voice was quiet and pleading as she pressed him. He
had
to understand.

Paul looked away for a moment, calculating the decision. When he looked up again, his expression was definitive. She had openejd this door and he was charging through it.

“OK,” he said in a gentle tone. Then he continued, speaking slowly and with compassion.

“I know about broken glass. I know about pills and head shrinks with bad advice. I know about two women possessing one body, and a scared little boy. I know about fear. And I know that I’m not the only one who lives alone in this house.”

There.
He’d done it’listed her crimes. Gayle was flustered. The blood flooded her cheeks. She watched his hand as it moved slowly from his side to her face, the back of his fingers gently pressing against her skin.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

She moved away, walking into the kitchen to break the connection. “It’s hard for him. At the office, living here. There’s no measure of a man beyond his income’how well he provides for his family,” she said, surprised at her need to explain her husband. “I make that impossible for him.”

Paul remained in the doorway. “Is that what they’ve been telling you?” His voice was calmer, but there was an urgency that lingered just below the surface.

Standing at the sink, Gayle turned to face him. “I think if I were a stronger woman …”

“Don’t do that.”

“You don’t understand.”

Gayle shook her head vehemently. But Paul wasn’t letting go. “You grew up with it, didn’t you? It’s familiar. That’s why you can’t see it.”

The presence of the truth overwhelmed her, and she felt herself gasp for breath. Never had she spoken of the rage in her childhood, carrying it about like a cancer beneath her skin. Avoiding it, ignoring it, trying in vain to belittle it with indifference. It had been a substantial undertaking, not just in her present situation, but throughout her life. And she could hear now the sound of her mother’s voice, the red heat that would seep from the woman’s body in those moments when she lost control, burning into Gayle the scars that no one had ever seen before.

She felt the tears come, and she didn’t hold them back. She couldn’t have. Instead, she looked at Paul and told him. “My mother,” she said, watching him carefully as though the weight of her words might somehow destroy him. But he was still standing there, his face steady.

Gayle took another breath, wiping the tears from her cheeks. She smiled out of sheer reflex, and was, in the end, not able to say any more.

Moving closer to her, Paul reached for her hand and pulled it to his chest. “You didn’t deserve this,” he said.

He wrapped his arms around her then, and she let her body fall into his, accepting his embrace. Strong hands stroked her hair, caressed her back, and she let him hold her longer than she should have, until the sound of Celia’s car in the driveway jolted her from the moment.

“I have to go,” she said, abruptly pulling away.

Paul followed her as she rushed to the back door. “Gayle!” he called after her. She was halfway down the stairs before he could get the words out.

She stopped then turned to face him, still wiping the tears from her face. “I’m fine. Really. I’ll be fine.”

Leaving Paul on the landing, she hurried down the stairs, around the side of the garage to the driveway. Celia was pulling up with the groceries. She stopped and rolled down her window.

“Aren’t you getting Oliver from his swim class?” she asked, her voice scolding. It was almost five.

Gayle rushed past the car to gather her keys from the house. As she ran into the mud room, past the jackets and shoes and their other belongings, she felt a strong disconnection. Her body was moving, grabbing the keys, hurrying back outside to her car. But part of her was not there. Part of her was still upstairs, over the garage. On the other side of the world.

Standing in the driveway with a bag of groceries, Celia watched her. But Gayle avoided her discerning eyes.

“I’m going now,” she said. Then she pulled away.

“W
HAT ARE WE DOING
here?” Love asked, though it wasn’t really a question. She knew where she was, and why she was sitting in the hallway outside the office of Dr. Keri Luster.

Yvonne did not look up from the literature she’d been poring over since they arrived. She was at home in this place, on this little planet from the universe of alternative medicine. The smell of herbal candles, the little sand garden with the rocks and doll-sized rake on the table, and of course the barrage of pamphlets explaining why Western medicine was one giant conspiracy to sell pharmaceuticals. All of it spoke to the L.A. earth mother in Yvonne.

“It says here that one of the founders of sensory work suffered from debilitating back spasms. She discovered the methods while trying to find a cure.

“Great.” As usual, Love wasn’t buying any of it. She was, after all, married to a medical doctor. Scientific studies, clinical tests, and pills were the way to go. Maybe, if pressed, she could get her head around traditional psychotherapy’talk about your problems, understand your issues. This was in another realm. Connecting her back pain to something going on in her head was as asinine to her as it was insulting.

“It’s all about the mind-body connection. It makes perfect sense.” Yvonne was bubbling with optimism.

“It’s completely out there, Mother. Even for you.”

“And using leeches to cure disease’that was rational?”

“That was like a hundred years ago.”

“And a hundred years from
now
sensory-motor therapy could be the standard for treating illness.”

Love sighed. “Thankfully, I’ll be dead by then.”

“Love!” Yvonne was exasperated by her daughter’s cynicism, and Love could almost hear her thoughts. This was going to be it’the answer they’d all been searching for since the fall. Yes’the evil medical community, with all its sophistication and wisdom, had failed to come up with a damned thing. And she wasn’t wrong on this point. Lupus, Lyme, cancer, and a whole host of other diseases had all been ruled out. Disc trauma, muscle tear’also eliminated. They were down to Love’s muscle-strain theory, though Bill insisted this was wholly inadequate to account for the intensity and duration of the problem. He had his own theory’some mystery virus that had settled in her tissue and was making plans to attack her entire being. No one could agree, and this was playing right into Yvonne’s hands.
That’s right,
she now reasoned.
When in doubt, the doctors make something up.

Back and forth they had gone, testing, hoping, researching and arguing. It had become unbearable. So Love had come up with her own plan. She humored her husband by going for tests. Now she had to find a way to appease her mother.

Love looked at the woman’
really
looked at her. The wide eyes, the knowing smile. It was all coming back to her’the wacky world of Yvonne Welsh. She had tried it all through the years. Menstrual cramps? Acupuncture. Headaches? Meditation, aromatherapy, shiatsu massage. Got a cold? A cleansing fast followed by vitamin supplements that make you shit all day for several days. Yvonne was always immersed in some time-consuming (and usually expensive) regimen, and Love had come to hide her ailments just to avoid the treatments her mother would subject her to. Was it any wonder Dr. Bill Harrison had been so appealing? God bless Motrin.

But this was making the woman happy. Perhaps it would even buy a few days of peace.

Yvonne spoke as she read. “Dr. Luster has a booming practice in Hunting Ridge. Doesn’t that say
something?”

“Sure, Mom.”

“We were lucky there was a cancellation’she’s booked for months!”

The door opened and out came a mother with her daughter. The girl was around six, maybe seven, and Love wondered what could possibly be so wrong with someone so little. No matter’it was their turn. Yvonne patted Love on the knee.

“Time to go.”

She helped Love to her feet, then braced her as they made their way into the office. Dr. Luster was waiting.

“You must be Love Welsh!” she said, extending her hand. She was a small woman, maybe five feet, with a round figure and china white skin. Her gray hair was pulled up in a clip, exposing dainty diamond stud earrings. Her clothing was casual but oddly preppy’mid-calf khaki skirt, button-down oxford, leather loafers. She seemed lost in the 1980s, and all of this fed directly into Love’s theory that the woman, and her practice, must be out to lunch.

Even so, Love greeted the woman politely and followed her to the treatment area. It was a pleasant room, brightly painted and cluttered with toys in one corner and a soft examination table in the center.

“Why don’t you lie down while I go over a few things. I can sense that you’re in pain.”

Love smiled.
What was your first clue?
she thought to herself, though Yvonne somehow heard it and pinched her lightly on the arm.

“OK,” Dr. Luster began. “So I assume you had a chance to read some of the literature outside?”

“Yes,” Yvonne answered for them.

“So you know that what I do is a blended approach. I have studied many methods’Hakomi, Rubenfeld, among others. I like to focus on integrating past traumas into present feelings so they can be released from the body.” She leaned over the head of the table and laid her palms on Love’s forehead. “You see, trauma that is not assimilated or acknowledged is held in our bodies, resulting in energy blocks that can cause tension, imbalance, and quite often pain. I use the body as the point of entry to treat this’to release the emotional pain so the energy can flow freely as it was meant to.”

Love’s eyes were closed, but she rolled them anyway. Standing beside her, Yvonne was intrigued. This was everything she had always believed about the human body’the intricate connection between the physical and emotional. The body and mind. And now it was actually a field of practice.

“So what do you need to do?” she asked.

Dr. Luster smiled warmly, reassuringly. “I’m just going to do some body work on Love. I will ask questions and talk to her, and while I do this I will place my hands on different parts of her body to see how they react. If we can find where the trauma is being held, we can help to release it as an
emotional
feeling’freeing the body of physical pain.”

Yvonne nodded.

“Does that sound OK to you?”

Love shrugged. “Sure.”

Her answer was quick and riddled with indifference. Dr. Luster took a long, cleansing breath.

“Have you worked on your body before’massage, acupuncture, anything like that?”

Love looked at her mother. “You could say that.”

But Yvonne refused to be embarrassed. “I am a strong believer in the mind-body connection.”

“That’s good. Then why don’t we begin?” Dr. Luster directed Yvonne to a small wooden chair in the corner of the room. Then she asked Love to roll over onto her stomach.

“Are you ready?”

“Sure,” Love said.
As ready as I’ll ever be.
She was telling herself to relax and get through the session’how bad could it be? It wasn’t shock therapy. Still, something inside her was growing uneasy.

Dr. Luster asked Love to raise her right arm into the air and try to resist her attempt to push it back down to the table. “I will apply some pressure’ see if you can hold firm.”

Then, with her eyes closed as though she were summoning ghosts from Love’s past, Dr. Luster began whispering things to Love, each time pushing against her arm.
I am a child … I am safe … I am not safe … I am scared.
Love’s arm broke its hold and was pushed to the table.

“You see,” Dr. Luster explained, “when your muscles can’t hold, that tells me there is a break in the energy forces within your body. The energy gets blocked by the negative reactions your body is holding when these thoughts are introduced.”

She continued with the left arm. /
am seven … I am nine … I am eleven … I am thirteen.
Again, her arm released.

They continued this way for close to twenty minutes, Dr. Luster mumbling things as she tried to push Love’s arms and then her legs back to table. She touched Love’s stomach, then reached underneath where the pain was, letting Love’s weight fall against her hands, whispering statements that were at the same time generic and intensely personal. Things about her father, her mother, her children, lovers, friends, self-esteem, guilt, shame, and regret. Each time she broke the hold, Dr. Luster let out a little sigh’an
aha!
that was growing more and more annoying to Love. Wasn’t there a more precise way to measure the body’s energy blocks? Some sort of electromagnetic detector with special probes that could be attached to the skin? Wouldn’t that be more scientific than pushing her arms and legs to the table?

My body … my person … my space … I am fifteen … I am twenty-one.
Yep’Love was an easy patient. Every year since her birth had been difficult. Her warped intelligence had made her a problem child, thinking things before she could physically speak. She was chronically bored and frustrated until she was “diagnosed,” and then she was bombarded with knowledge that she pressured herself to grasp. Pick a year, any year, and Love could think of something that had been terribly dysfunctional. She wasn’t in denial about it. She thought about it all the damned time. If her body was still holding on, what could she possibly do about that?

Still, she felt unnerved as Dr. Luster continued’her voice soft and even, inviting the emotions to come to the surface. It was the last statement that caused a tear to roll down Love’s face.

I am at peace with myself.

“We’re almost done,” Dr. Luster said. She walked around to the head of the table again and pressed her palms to Love’s face. She brushed the tears away without saying a word about them, then placed her ringer tips on Love’s temples.

“I’m going to say some reaffirmations, then we can talk, OK?”

Love nodded as she fought like hell to pull back the tide.

I can be at peace with myself and my past. I can feel the pain from what happened to me and let it go. I can be well again.

The doctor paused for an interminable moment. Then she drew a long breath and returned to her normal voice.

“There. All done. Why don’t you sit up and I’ll tell you what I found.”

Love climbed off the table and joined her mother in a chair by Dr. Luster’s desk. She could feel the flush on her cheeks and prayed it had gone unnoticed.
Almost finished,
she told herself.
Keep your shit together.

“So,” Dr. Luster explained again, “what I was doing was called muscle testing. You see, when I said something that triggered a subconscious emotion, the energy was blocked and you were unable to hold firm. I was able to push your arm or leg down. The body is amazing’it holds the truth about each of us.” Her face was lit up with the wonder of it all, and Love was thankful for the comic relief. Casting her most cynical light over Dr. Luster, she could feel herself returning to reality. To the kids, the house, Bill. Even the pain. A return to a life that was far too full to dwell on her displaced emotions.

“Your mother told me that you fell?”

“I was carrying both kids.”

“And your muscles couldn’t hold strong,” the doctor continued in an earnest voice, almost as though she were desperate for Love to understand. To believe. “You have suffered great trauma in your past. I’m sensing something in your early teen years. It has to do with a man, and I’m sensing something physical as well as emotional. Also, I got something when I spoke of your father. I’m not sure if it is a separate trauma’perhaps a developmental trauma rather than a particular incident. In any case, your body is holding on to these things.”

She paused then to let it sink in. “I’m guessing they were not assimilated, or properly felt, at the time and now they are living inside you’physically. I think there is more, much more’enough to make you fall’and now the pain has no place to go. But we have done what we can for the first session.”

Yvonne sat quietly, though her heart was in her throat. Wasn’t that what she’d wanted? To prove that Love’s illness was linked to some kind of depression, something that wasn’t going to do her in? She thought about the letter, the book that sat untouched next to Love like a noose waiting to be tightened around her neck. She believed in this, maybe too much. Maybe that was why Dr. Luster’s treatment felt so dangerous.

Dr. Luster waited for some elaboration on the traumas she had identified to see if she was right. But Love was silent, her mind shut down now as she waited for this to be over.

Yvonne cautiously pushed forward. “So what do we do next?”

“Well, I’d be happy to work with you. We can do more body work to integrate the feelings’to give them a proper home by attaching them to the events. We would do more muscle testing and perhaps talk about whatever events might be the source of the blockage. I can see if I have any cancellations this month’try to fit you in?”

Love looked nervously at her mother.

Yvonne sighed. “Why don’t we call you? I don’t think Love brought her planner.”

Love shook her head. “No’no I didn’t. We’ll have to call.”

Dr. Luster smiled. She’d seen this before. They weren’t ready.

“That’s just fine. I wish you luck with your pain.” Her voice was kind and warm. She shook their hands and saw them to the door.

When they were down the hall, Yvonne stopped walking.

“I think you should come back.
Alone
next time.”

Love was quick to respond. “No.” She had agreed to one session, and that would have to be enough for her mother.

“But what if she’s right? She knew all those things’things about your childhood …”

“That’s what these people do, Mother! Every thirteen-year-old girl has trauma about men. It’s puberty! They tell you things that are just specific enough for you to tie it to your own life, but it’s really stuff that happens to everyone.
Oh, I’m sensing something when you were an infant
’
birth, maybe.
It’s a trick.”

“And what if it’s not? What if all of this is about that night … ?”