The Uses of Enchantment (10 page)

She said nothing. For ninety seconds, I waited for her to speak. She did not speak.

I brought you some literature on hypnosis, I said to her. I handed her a pile of Xeroxed articles.

She flipped through the pages without comment.

Is there any particular place you’d like to begin today, I said.

She shook her head.

We don’t have to talk about you, I said. You can tell me something notable you’ve observed since we last met.

No response.

Sometimes what a person notices can say a lot about that person, I said.

Mary rumpled her nose. Coughed.

You have bowlegs, she said finally. If I were you, I wouldn’t wear tights. It calls attention to them.

These are ski pants, I said. I cross-country skied to the office today.

I wouldn’t wear them, she said. Ever again.

Mary pulled harshly on a gold hoop earring, distending the lobe.

They’d be nice legs if they were straight, she persisted. Did you ever wish for that? Did you ever think your whole life would improve if only your legs were straight? My jeans are wet.

She stood and unbuttoned her fly, exposing the elastic waist of her long johns. Wriggling and kicking, she removed her jeans and slung the jeans over the radiator. She walked to the bookshelf—maybe interested in the books, possibly more interested in providing me with an adequate opportunity to examine her lower body. I attributed her exhibitionistic behavior to her relationship with her father; many girls who experience formal and unaffectionate relationships with their fathers—“rigid boundary respecters”—will often look to other paternal figures for a purely sexual validation that, in their minds, compensates for the emotional economizing they experience at home.

Mary withdrew a layman’s 1948 book about psychiatry (
You and Psychiatry
, by William C. Menninger and Munro Leaf).

How’s your appetite, I asked her.

I have some disinclination for food, she said, opening the book.

Disinclination, I said.

Disinclination, she said. That means I’m not hungry, right?

That’s what it means in this context, I said.

Silence.

Are you familiar with Mr. Leaf, I said.

She was not familiar.

He’s also the author of
The Story of Ferdinand
. It’s a famous children’s book about a bull.

That explains why there are a lot of entries under sex, she said. Have you ever read Mantegazza’s
Physiology of Love
?

Have you?

K gave it to me, she said. She coughed.

Who is K, I said.

She coughed again.

Can I get you some water?

She shook her head, coughing into her palm.

No, she croaked. I’m fine.

I wrote
K
in my notebook. I underlined it four times.

She pushed her fingers into her Adam’s apple, massaging it in small circles.

“Sex, education about,” she read from the book’s index. “Sex, psychoanalytic meaning of.” Sex has a different meaning in psychoanalysis? “Sex, adjustments in marriage.”

She raised her eyebrows, flipped to the referenced page, walked slowly back to the couch.

“Successful marriage blah blah…Through the ignorance or selfishness of the husband or the shyness of the wife or both, the wife never achieves the satisfaction of a climax to sexual intercourse—an orgasm. Often neither partner knows that she should!”

There really is an exclamation point, she said. I don’t want you to think I’m mocking your profession. “Another restraining force is the strong indoctrination of girls in childhood of the attitude that sex is naughty and dirty. Too many wives, intelligent ones, too, believe that sexual relations are part of their ‘marital duty’; they must give their husbands satisfaction, even though they feel that it is not ‘nice’ ”—quotes there—“for them to have comparable pleasure.”

She closed the book and clutched it vertically between her knees.

Does that seem at all true to you, I said.

Does what seem
at all true
.

Have you been taught that sex is naughty and dirty, I said.

She shrugged. Then: I’m here, aren’t I?

Yes, I said. You are here.

Not because I want to be here.

No?

It’s my mother’s idea, she said.

Not your father’s.

My father thinks you’re probably more of a mental case than I am. Not you specifically. You as in all of you.

What do you think? I said.

She shrugged. Jury’s still out, she said.

I’d like to return to your mother, I said.

Mary confessed to me that her mother was fanatical about virginity. This had been true even before Mary had disappeared. Her sister Regina, she told me, suffered from anemia due to frequent menstruation; it was recommended by a doctor that Regina be put on the birth control pill to modulate her cycle, but her mother had refused, fearing (according to Mary) that her daughter would now feel free to experiment sexually in ways that had formerly seemed too dangerous, given the risk of pregnancy.

How old was Regina, I said.

Mary couldn’t remember. Twelve or thirteen, she speculated.

Perhaps your mother was simply unable to admit that her daughter was becoming a woman, I said.

She preferred that Regina stay sick than that Regina should get better, Mary said.

But her resistance could also be viewed as her attempt to protect Regina from the pains of adulthood.

Mary scowled. Just because she’s paying you doesn’t mean you have to take her side.

I’m trying to suggest there are fuller, oftentimes contradictory dimensions to every family conflict.

I had a dream, Mary said, changing the subject. It was nighttime and I was asleep in my room. I woke up and K was standing over me. “The house is on fire,” he said. He rushed me out of bed and wrapped me in a coat. “We have to go and wake your sisters,” he said. My sisters were asleep on the first floor, just past the dining room. Then my mother ran into the room and said, “We must save my jewel case!” She didn’t seem to mind that the house was on fire. K got really mad at her and said, “I will not risk the lives of my three children so that you can save your stupid jewel case.” We all ran outside, and then I woke up.

What do you think this means? I asked her, thinking that she’d settled on a very traditional subconscious symbol for female genitalia, typically represented in dreams by boxes, jars, bottles, coffins. Ships. Snails. Churches. Books.

The jewel case probably refers to my vagina, she said.

That’s one interpretation, I said.

Does that embarrass you? she asked. That I said
vagina
?

Does it embarrass you?

J’appelle un chat un chat
, she said. And don’t you think it’s notable that my mother wanted to save the jewel case, but K didn’t want to save the jewel case?

Do you think it’s notable?

Perhaps because he knew there was nothing left to save, she said.

Metaphorically speaking, then—you think the jewels had been stolen?

You want to know if my jewels have been stolen, she stated.

This is what you’ve just implied, I said.

But you want to know, don’t you? About the jewels?

If you want to tell me, I said.

She stared out the window.

I think some jewels might be missing, she said.

Perhaps you should report this theft to the police. Give them a specific list of what’s been taken from you.

But what for? Her eyes receded under her lids; her nose grew even redder. She started to cough.

I offered her a tissue.

Something keeps tickling the back of my throat. It feels like a very long feather. Rubbing at the back of my throat.

How about some water, I offered.

I opened the office door—the bubbler was in the waiting room—and ran into my suite mate, Rosemary Biedelman.

Who was that? Mary asked when I returned. She comes to my school sometimes.

Rosemary Biedelman. She does pro bono counseling with troubled kids at the local schools.

Troubled
, Mary said skeptically.

Sometimes trouble isn’t so hard to spot, I said.

Those are the least troubled troubled people.

How’s the throat? I asked.

Still tickly, she said. She took a sip of water.

Should we talk about what’s missing from the jewel case? I asked.

Her brows clenched.

I don’t see what the point is, she said. What’s gone is gone.

The question is, I said, whether or not what was stolen was never there to begin with.

That sounds like stupid shrink talk to me, she said. So don’t you want to know who K is?

My end-of-session alarm sounded.

Yes, I said.

Good, she said, gathering her coat. So do I.

What Might Have Happened

T
he girl and the man sat opposite each other in a black vinyl booth. The girl ordered the fried shrimp basket. The man ordered a coffee. They didn’t have much to say to each other. This made the girl feel more comfortable, more in control.

You’re not much of a conversationalist, she said.

Never have been, according to my ex-wife, he said. He picked a creamer out of a small dish of water that used to be a small dish of ice. He held the creamer directly in front of his face as though he’d never before laid eyes on a creamer.

And another thing, he said. I used to be lactose intolerant.

He peeled back the paper top; he dumped the cream into his coffee.

The girl’s food arrived. She offered the man some shrimp. He nibbled at one clinically.

I used to go into shock, the man said. My ex-wife told me recently about the time I almost died at her niece’s wedding. We were sitting at a table next to a businessman my ex-wife wanted to impress—she’s a stock analyst—and there was shrimp in the chicken bisque. Why would there be shrimp in the chicken bisque? My throat closed up and, in my panic, I dumped my bisque in the businessman’s lap. Fortunately, there was a doctor at the next table with an EpiPen.

Wow, said the girl.

My ex-wife admitted to me that it was one of those moments in our marriage where she found herself hating me and wishing she were married to somebody else, because her life might have been completely different and in a good way different.

The man paused, took another bite of shrimp.

She tells me a lot of these stories in which she quietly suffered, he said. It’s part of some women’s therapy group she’s involved with. “Reclamation therapy” it’s called. She gets to take her story back from me.

You took her story? the girl asked.

Apparently I committed acts of domestic narrative abuse, the man said. Which is more damaging than just beating up a person. Regardless, spending time with me is very cathartic for her.

She wants to be forgiven, the girl said.

No, the man said. She wants recognition. She’s never been able to tell anybody about these terrible thoughts of hers, and on a certain level she’s proud of herself because it is absolutely not at all the way a Phi Beta Kappa Radcliffe graduate should think. She believes it makes her unique.

Hitler was unique, the girl said.

Are you studying Hitler? the man asked.

We’re studying Freud, the girl said.

For a science class?

For English, the girl said. My teacher says that Freud is the greatest novelist of the twentieth century.

Huh, said the man.

I had to write a paper about this girl who was hysterical.

How’d it go? the man asked.

I got a B, the girl said.

That’s not so bad, the man said.

A B from this teacher is like a D from any other teacher, the girl said. But I didn’t really follow the assignment. I wrote a story instead about a young girl who’s being chased by a man who burned her house down and killed her family, including her, or at least that’s what everyone thinks. But she’s still alive and the man is chasing her.

Sounds like a morbid story for a teenager to write, the man said.

I based it on a book I read as a kid. Or at least I think I read it. I’ve never been able to find the actual book. Sometimes I wonder if maybe I just made the whole story up myself. I mean, who would write a kid’s book about an arsonist who kills a whole family and then tries to kill a little girl?

I read once that a decent percentage of children’s book writers in fact hate children, the man said.

I wonder if she knew something, the girl said. Do you think maybe she knew something she didn’t know she knew?

The real question is, the man said, pointing a half-eaten shrimp at her, if she has to be reminded that she knows something, does she really know it?

Maybe she blanked it out to save herself, the girl said. She knew if she knew this thing, that someone would try to pry it out of her.

Dessert? the man said, yawning.

Are you tired? the girl asked.

Prohibitively, the man said. I haven’t slept for two days. Chronic insomnia.

Really, she said. From the amnesia?

It’s a not unusual side effect of head trauma, he said. The brain is too rattled to doze off. A primitive response. Imagine the cave man who wanted to prevent his head from being bashed in by a rival. Insomnia was his friend. This is what I tell myself: insomnia is my friend.

The girl ordered pie, the man a coffee refill and a vanilla malted. By the neon pink clock over the cash register, it was five minutes to nine. Her parents would be home soon. They used to check on the girls, especially in the early days when they first began leaving them home alone without a babysitter. But by a certain age their safety seemed guaranteed. The girl had lain awake at night after her parents had returned home from a dinner party, she’d heard them switching off the downstairs lights and running water in the kitchen. She’d heard them come upstairs and shut their bedroom door without looking into their daughters’ rooms. Soon the house would be dark and quiet; soon she could hear the muted snores her father made after he’d been drinking.