Talking to Ourselves: A Novel (2 page)

From then on Dr. Escalante’s tone changed; he unclasped his hands, moved closer to the edge of his desk. I was immediately on my guard, trying not to straighten my hair, cross my legs, not to blink or anything. And, for the first time, we had an honest conversation. He was brutal, direct, and at the same time
respectful
toward me. He spoke to me as an equal, without using patronizing euphemisms. He confirmed nearly all my fears.
Although he insisted that the trip wasn’t the real problem. I was supposed to know everything he told me, and yet hearing it still shocked me. It made me think of Dr. Escalante as an honourable man. After all, they don’t pay him to be that sincere.

When it seemed the conversation was over, one of us, I don’t recall who, made some remark about marriage. Nothing
memorable
. A passing comment. Yet, almost without us realizing it, our conversation was rekindled. And not only did it regain its intensity, it turned more personal. I talked about my son, his uncles, aunts, and grandparents. Escalante spoke of his mother, who died from the same illness he is now attempting to combat. I mentioned the panic attacks that have kept me from sleeping since Mario is the way he is. The doctor confessed that when he first started practising, he suffered from terrible insomnia. And he also told me he was separated. He told me this, I don’t know, with unnerving empathy. I pressed myself against the back of my chair. He glanced at the time and frowned. I sprang to my feet and thrust my arm straight out, so as to shake his hand at a
distance
. He said: I can’t believe how late it is. And then, squeezing my hand: I have to go now. I’d gladly ask you along, Elena, but it’s a work lunch. I told him not to worry, that I should have left ages ago, that I had to do I don’t know what I don’t know where. And I hurried toward the door. Then he added: But we could have dinner, if you like.

“I realised what the feeling was that had been besetting me,” I underline, as I read a John Banville novel with some
trepidation
, “since I had stepped that morning into the glassy glare of the consulting rooms,” when there is an illness in the family, light angers or even repels us. “It was embarrassment.
Embarrassment
,
yes, a panic-stricken sense of not knowing what to say, where to look, how to behave,” until not long ago I loved the mornings, I would get up eager to fill myself with light, and leave for work feeling I was accompanied. Now I prefer the night, which at least has a certain quality of parenthesis,
somewhat
like a sterile chamber: everything appears slightly
deceptive
in the dark, nothing seems willing to go on happening. “It was as if a secret had been imparted to us so dirty, so nasty, that we could hardly bear to remain in another’s company yet were unable to break free,” now Mario is far away but our secret is still here, in the house, “each knowing the foul thing that the other also knew and bound together by that very knowledge,” Mario has left, and that knowledge remains. “From that day forward all would be dissembling. There would be no other way to live with death.”

Today has been utterly disconcerting. Because I’m not exactly drunk; far from it, I never get drunk, but a little tipsy perhaps. Because it’s two in the morning. And because just now, outside the front door, I gave Ezequiel a long hug goodbye and we even brushed the corner of our mouths with our lips. The wine was wonderful, made entirely from grapes harvested at night, or so the sommelier told us, what all of them? Amazing, how can they possibly see the grapes? Truly wonderful, I wrote down the name of the vineyard so that I can order some online, it wasn’t too tart or too fruity, the sommelier was terribly friendly.

Maybe some coffee will clear my head.

In fact, I entered the restaurant determined to tell him I wasn’t going to have dinner with him. That I had thought better of it and regretted the misunderstanding. Of course, it would have been easier to tell him over the phone. But, as it turned out, I didn’t have his private number or his e-mail address. The doctor, I mean
Ezequiel
, it still feels strange calling him that, had hurriedly proposed dinner. He had named a restaurant, a street, a time. And had virtually run away. I scarcely nodded. I didn’t refuse, that was all. I stood dazed outside the office door. It had a sign on it with the full names of all the different specialists and their working hours. His were finished for the day. That was the first time I had paid any attention to his first name. I should call off that dinner. Then I realized I had no way of getting hold of him outside the office. Was that a strategic omission on his part? I don’t think so. But, in short, I had to turn up at the restaurant. It would have been rude to simply stand him up. Him of all people. My husband’s doctor.

How embarrassing, my God, how embarrassing.

Not only that. I even arrived ten minutes early. And he was already in the restaurant. He told me he had had to check on a patient, and as he lived relatively close by, he had decided to wait for me there. I was wrong-footed, because to leave suddenly in that situation would have been like saying: Then you’ve waited in vain, goodbye. What I really wanted was to have arrived first. Seen him come in. Greeted him politely, making it perfectly clear I had taken the trouble to wait for him. Apologized. Paid for my drink and left. That is what I had imagined. But Ezequiel stood up to greet me, he looked very pleased to see me, he was extremely attentive, he told me he had just ordered a bottle of Merlot rarely found in our country. And so I said nothing, sat down, and smiled like an idiot.

From then on everything that happened, how can I put it? acted like an antidote. Every word, every gesture conspired to
block my path and prevent my escape. Ezequiel could have avoided talking about Mario (a clumsy move that would have vexed me and driven me instantly from the table), but he did precisely the opposite. He mentioned him from the very
beginning
, incorporating him into the conversation so naturally that it felt almost as though my husband had arranged the dinner himself but had been unable to come at the last minute. Ezequiel could also have asked me overly personal questions, as though imposing intimacy upon me. But he behaved in exactly the
opposite
way; he was discreet about my life and extremely open about his own. After we ordered the second bottle, Ezequiel could have made overtures, subtly in any case (which at that point I would still have bridled at somewhat), yet he didn’t make the least move. Not even to glance at my cleavage. Which,
although
nothing to write home about, was nevertheless there.

Now that I come to think of it, a man only achieves such a level of restraint if that is what he has set out to do. I mean, only if it is premeditated. My God. In any case, it’s too late now. Not because we have done anything irreparable. But because it’s past four in the morning and I am wide awake. And because I was incapable of telling Ezequiel when I arrived at the restaurant, or during the meal, or as we walked back to the house, or when I heard him say his phone number, that it had all been a mistake, that I would never call him, that I didn’t want to see him. That much is irreparable. Almost as irreparable as having written
my God
so many times. Such an atheist and so drunk.

I look out of the window and I don’t know what to do. Whether to lean out and yell, throw myself head first onto the pavement, or hail a cab.

“She was also something of a feminist, not crazy,” I underline in one of Cynthia Ozick’s short stories, “but she resented having ‘Miss’ put in front of her name; she thought it pointedly
discriminatory
, she wanted to be a lawyer among lawyers.” The
pupils
call us female teachers
Miss
or, at worst,
Ms
. If it comes to that I’d prefer harassment. “Though she was no virgin she lived alone.” What fun
Miss
Ozick has. I remember once, during a dinner, a man asked my sister if she lived alone. In a rare show of humour, my sister replied: Yes, I’m married.

Why did I lack the courage to pursue my academic career?
Admittedly
, the precariousness alarmed me, finding myself on the street at thirty, being the umpteenth jobless researcher,
et alia
. But there was something else. Something around me I could see rather more clearly than my dubious vocation.

Having observed the fate of my former women colleagues, I consider myself sufficiently well-informed to sketch this brief

to be expanded upon below, esteemed gentlemen of the panel, in the hope that it displays some aptitude for synthesis: