The Visible Man (28 page)

We agreed to pay extra attention to our doors and windows, but that was a limited solution; if a mostly invisible man wants to break into your house, there’s no way to stop him. We considered an alarm system with a motion detector, but we didn’t know if Y____’s “motion” was even “detectable.” We tried to outline just how serious this menace was, and we tentatively wondered if Y____ was nothing more than a terrifying nuisance. We also wondered
if any of this was happening at all—what if our collective anxiety was causing both of us to turn every unclear moment into a brush with Y____? I was still rational enough to consider the possibility of being wrong, regardless of how true our feelings might have felt. But John was cracking.

“I’m taking this situation over,” said John. “I won’t let this person infiltrate our lives. I won’t. You say he’s harmless, but I disagree. If he comes back here again, I’m going to deal with him. I’ll hammer him.”

“How?” I asked.

“With this,” said John. He held up a hammer.

I didn’t even know we owned a hammer. I knew we had paintings on the walls, but I had never considered how they got there.

“You can’t be serious,” I said.

“I’m as serious as Truman,” said John. “I’ve had enough. I almost hope he comes back tonight. Violence doesn’t scare me. I’ve seen violence. I’ve experienced violence. I know my rights.” He slid the handle of the hammer into his belt loop and looked straight at me, defiant. He had made his decision. “I’ll knock his goddamn block off.”

So this is what my life had become: I was married to an aging historian who carried a hammer everywhere he went, with the sole intent of bludgeoning an invisible man as punishment for falling in love with me.

Unlike the rest of my life, it was too crazy to regret. I just had to swallow it.

The next two days passed without irregularity. I was still upset and out of sorts, but each day got easier; I started to wonder if we’d all overreacted. John had phoned a security company the day after his alleged collision, but now we weren’t sure it was necessary to schedule an appointment. The more I thought about it, the less hazardous Y____ seemed. Perhaps he was just lonely and I’d become his only friend. Maybe I misled him. Maybe I gave him the wrong impression about my intentions. Maybe I was scared of him only because he was smart enough to do the impossible, and maybe I was punishing him for being different than other people.

These are the kind of thoughts I entertained, because I was just smart enough to be totally stupid.

It was a Thursday. I was with a patient. I can’t write too much about this individual, as she has her right to privacy and I have an obligation to protect that right. However, this patient’s problems were so common they’d be impossible to tag on any specific person: She was an attractive young woman with irrational body issues, she wasn’t sure what she wanted as a career, and she was often devastated by anonymous comments posted on her blog. At the time, I probably had five other patients exactly like her. She talked about her life for forty minutes, I responded with five minutes of commonsense advisement, and she left to go home. The door to my office slammed shut and I began typing a few details from our session into an e-mail addressed to myself. And then, from across the room, I heard the voice.

“She’s pretty awful,” it said.

I was startled, but I was getting used to being startled. I was sick
of being startled. I was more angry than surprised. I took a deep breath and tried to be the adult.

“I can’t believe it,” I said slowly. “I can’t believe you’d do this. I can’t believe you’d interfere with my work. I can’t believe you’d completely disregard what I do for a living. And I can’t believe you’d judge a perfectly nice woman who has legitimate problems, but I suppose that’s just the person you are. I can’t believe you’d come here. Get out. Now. I never want to be around you again. Get out of my office or I’ll call the police.”

“Oh, quit pretending you care,” said Y____. “You can’t fool me. I know you. You’re concerned about this woman?
This
woman? Do you honestly believe either of us learned anything meaningful about her fake life? At least you got paid. I could solve her in two minutes. She has body issues because she has a body. Tell her to cancel her magazine subscriptions. She doesn’t have a career because she isn’t interested in working. People write cruel things on her blog because she’s a lazy thinker who actively courts the attention of self-loathing strangers. These are all things she intuitively understands. Haven’t you noticed how she always answers her own questions? All she wants is a temporary friend who’ll tell her that she’s no different than anyone else, and she knows you have to be that person as long as her father writes you checks.”

“I’m calling the police,” I said, and I picked up the phone.

“Turn on the tape recorder,” Y____ said.

“What?”

“Turn on the tape recorder. Let’s get this on the record.”

It was so like Y____ to make that request. It was so like him to demand indulgence. My microcassette recorder was on the desk. I picked it up and pointed it at him like a handgun. I hit
RECORD
with my thumb. I don’t know why I made such a dramatic gesture, but I did. I’m sure it looked ridiculous, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to shoot him.

I recorded only the next minute and fourteen seconds. This is the only segment of the interaction that isn’t a reconstruction from memory.

[I turned off the recorder. I had to stop giving him what he wanted.]

“Stay out of our house,” I said in the most threatening way I could muster. “Don’t come into our house, ever again. I’m not playing around. Stay out of our house.”

“I’ve never been in your house,” said Y____ (or words to that effect). “Why do you think I was inside your house? I don’t even know where you live. What’s your address?”

“Stay the fuck away from our house! Jesus Christ. Are you deaf? Stay away from this office, and stay away from me.” I was losing my
handle, so I took a few breaths and tried to become the person I was supposed to be. “You can’t come into our house anymore. You just can’t. My husband will hurt you. He’s more upset than you realize. This is not a funny situation or an interesting situation or whatever type of situation you want to pretend that it is. This is serious.”

“Your husband will hurt me?
Your
husband,” said Y____. “Does he intend to shoot me with a musket?”

“Don’t come into our house. I’m begging you. What do I need to do to convince you to stay away? Do you need me to start seeing you again professionally? If I
have
to keep seeing you,
here
, in my office, I will. But stay away from the house.”

“So you
do
want to spend time with me. That contradicts what you just said, Victoria. Are you sure your thoughts and feelings are the same? Because you never think mine are.”

It was no use. There was no way I was going to convince Y____ of anything, and all he was going to do was contradict everything I said in a desperate attempt to keep us talking. In his mind, that was the only way to keep our relationship from ending. As I listened to his regressive arguments, I had a flashback to my freshman year at Davidson: I remembered how impossible it was to break up with my boyfriend from high school, and how he seemed to believe that starting a nightly fight over the telephone was not terribly different than being together as a couple. I realized this had already gone way too far, and the only remedy was to detonate every bridge we’d ever crossed. I chose the nuclear option. I told Y____ that I loved my husband, even though our marriage was not perfect. I told Y____ my interest in his life was solely a product of what he’d done scientifically (and not remotely related to his qualities as a man). I flatly told him, “You’re not a good person.” I explained how I was not physically attracted to him, and that it was no coincidence he had to be invisible in order for me to spend time with him in public. I said I sometimes enjoyed talking with him, but not enough to put up with his thoughts and actions. I said that I didn’t want to know who he really was, because that person was probably worse than the person he was pretending to be.

I could not see how these words affected him. I could not see his face. But I knew. I could see him, in my mind.

After I finished my speech, there was a wordless gap that felt louder than the conversation. Eventually, I heard a few scrapes from across the room (he must have been sitting on the floor against the wall and was finally standing up). For a moment, I thought he might just walk out without saying a peep. But that, of course, is not his way. He had to say something. He couldn’t stop himself.

“I was too kind to you,” he finally said. “You liked me when I insulted you, because you like men who treat you like shit. That’s your problem. As soon as I started treating you like a real person, you lost interest. I know I have problems, but your problems are worse.”

With that, the door to my office unmagically opened and unmagically closed. “Are you still there?” I asked aloud. I had to make sure he was gone, even though I’d never truly know. But I received no response, and I took that at face value. It was an agonizing brand of relief; I felt sick, but I also felt better. It was over. I really believed that. I don’t know why, but I did. I guess I’ll always be an optimist, even if that makes me a fool.

What happened on the night of September 18 is, for understandable reasons, painful to re-create. Though the event lasted only minutes, it’s become the central fracture of my existence; I now see my life as having two distinct halves. It will probably seem that way forever. I hope I’m wrong about this, but I doubt it.

Whenever I’ve anecdotally described what happened that evening to other people, they inevitably ask the same question: “Did it seem like a movie?” I know exactly what they mean by this, and I understand why it’s something they’d ask. Our exposure to media makes everyone believe they can conceptualize certain popular impossibilities; by now, we’ve all seen so many “invisible man” movies that we assume we can imagine the unimaginable. But that’s not how it was. It wasn’t like a movie, except at the very end. So my stock answer to the question is this: “Not at all, except when it was.” This allows people to laugh at something that isn’t funny.

After my disturbing office conversation with Y____, I counseled two more patients and returned home. I immediately told John what had transpired. He was not surprised. When I told him that things were really over and that I might have (finally) hurt Y____ in an irreconcilable way, he scoffed. “We’re installing a motion detector next week,” he said. “The security people are coming Monday morning. I’ve already scheduled an appointment.” John knew less about Y____ than I did, but—in many important ways—he understood him better.

The early part of our evening was fine—uncharacteristically idyllic, to be totally honest. I made chicken stir-fry. John and I did
the dishes together. I asked John if he had any work to do, but he said, “Not tonight.” We took a walk around the neighborhood as the sun went down. After we returned, we watched a documentary titled
Visions of Light
on IFC. I think we went to bed around eleven p.m. We both read for an hour and fell asleep. As I drifted away, I remember being pleasantly surprised by how little I’d thought about Y____ that entire night. It really seemed finished. My mind was clear. Sleeping was easy.