An Inconvenient Wife (22 page)

“I know nothing of you either, and you hold my deepest secrets.”

“I’m your doctor,” he pointed out, “not your husband. There’s no need for you to know anything of me.”

“What if I want to know?” I asked him, though I had not meant to; I had not even wondered about him before this moment. I
had taken what I knew about him—his castaway Jewishness, the degrees on the walls of his office, his books—and those things
had formed my opinions of him. He had sprung to me fully formed: Where he came from, who he was, had not mattered. But now
I wished to know more. “What if I insist you tell me something of yourself?”

He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “It’s unnecessary. It could even be harmful.”

“How could it be harmful?”

“Should a child know its parents’ secrets?”

“I’m not a child.”

“I should be a mystery to you, Lucy.”

I felt oddly as if I wanted to cry. “I don’t want you to be a mystery.”

“This is not unusual, what you’re feeling.”

“Isn’t it?” I asked bitterly. I could not help myself; I went to stand before him. “Is this what all your patients insist
on, then?”

He looked at me calmly. “Most of them,” he said. “At one time or another.”

I felt an irrational surge of jealousy. “Have you made such strides with all of them? Do you understand all of them the way
you understand me?”

He hesitated. Then he rose and took my arms, holding me loosely, rubbing his thumbs against my silk sleeves. “None of them
are like you, Lucy,” he said, and there came into his eyes a look that made me both afraid and glad. I pulled away from him
and stepped back, though there was a part of me that wanted to stay.

“So in the end, you’re just like William,” I said. “You’re just like my father.”

“I am nothing like them,” he said angrily. I’d never seen him be anything but in control, and though it made him more human,
more of a man, I was distressed by it. I think he saw that. The anger left his face after a visible struggle for control,
and then he was mine again, the doctor I knew, and I was reassured.

“You said I was like your father,” he said. “How is that? Was he a mystery to you?”

“It’s as you said,” I told him. “There are things a child should not know about a parent.”

He took a deep breath and sat down again. “Which do you mean? Do you mean that you’re relieved he’s a mystery, or that there
are things you wish you didn’t know about him?”

“My father is a tyrant,” I said simply. “There was a time, when I was a small child, when he was a god to me. But then I saw
his flaws, and if a god has flaws, how can he remain a god?”

“Most gods have flaws,” Dr. Seth said. “Even your God. He punishes beyond rationality. He changes His mind. He demands sacrifices
to His ego. Like any common man. Science has no ego. It’s rational and logical.”

“Science has all the answers?”

“Yes.”

“So there can be no mystery?”

Seth shook his head. “In the end, all things can be explained.”

“Can they?” I smiled bitterly. “Can love be explained?”

“A change in the brain,” he began, “purely physical reactions. Love is entirely somatic.”

I thought of the way my body had yearned for my husband. Of the way I’d once felt about him, the racing of my pulse, the shortening
of my breath, the excitement I’d felt when he came into a room. “Yes,” I murmured. “Perhaps so. And hate?”

“Hate is learned,” he said with certainty.

That I knew was true. “Yes,” I said. “I learned to hate my father. How easily love turns.”

“In the face of unbearable flaws,” he said gently.

“Is that how you lost God?” I asked.

Dr. Seth smiled. “You’re searching for answers to me again, Lucy.”

I nearly held my breath. “Yes. But it’s such a little thing, isn’t it?”

When I thought he would refuse me, I felt desperate. I could not explain why I wanted to know this so badly, or why it should
matter, only that it did.

Then he said, “Unbearable flaws. Things I could not reconcile. Little injustices.”

I felt a rush so dizzying it was as if he had filled my lungs with his words. “But we all experience that. We don’t all turn
away from God.”

“No,” he said, and then he pierced me with those too knowing eyes. “But we don’t all turn away from life either, do we?”

I was struck by his words. I thought of myself, yielding to my father, to a husband I barely knew. Packing up the Gérôme,
hiding my sketching, buttoning up my passion. Little injustices.

I had allowed William to do this to me. Suddenly it was unbearable, to be so worshiped and untouched, to be denied as if I
were nothing more important than a pretty doll. I wanted a husband who knew me and accepted me. I no longer wanted to hide.
I wanted life.

I said, “You think that I should show William who I really am. You think I should insist against . . . angels.”

“Cupids, I believe you said it was.”

“Angels,” I told him. “I meant angels.”

I went home. Once there, I went to my room and took from beneath the bed my case of sketches. They were crumpled, the charcoal
broken into little bits from how rapidly I’d put them away. Now I laid them upon my bed, smoothing them as best I could, then
I took the pile of them downstairs into the parlor that had once served as my mother’s ballroom. I drew open the curtains
to let the sunlight in, and then I laid out the sketches—some on the upholstered window seat, some on the table, over the
settee. There were so many of them. But of the best there were twenty in all, and when I looked at them, I felt a sense of
accomplishment, of pride, of pleasure.

I stood in the middle of the room, so nervous I could not be still. I touched the sketches, smudging a little here, wishing
I’d thought to bring the charcoal with me so I could fix a line, a shading. I wanted them to be perfect. Dr. Seth had seen
me in them, who I was, what I wanted to be. I prayed William would see the same things. I did not allow myself to think of
this as a desperate attempt to stave off the sense that I was leaving him behind, or the truth of my increasing awareness
that I would never be happy with William.

By the time the sun began to dip low in the sky, I was so ner-vous I could barely contain it. When I heard William arrive
home, my heart beat irregularly. I went to the doorway so I could hear him ask Harris where I was. I heard the butler answer
that I was in the upstairs parlor.

He did not come up right away. First he went to pour a drink, and then I heard the heaviness of his step on the stairs. Then
he was at the door of the parlor, looking in with a puzzled expression and saying, “Lucy? What’s going on?”

I should have realized then. I should have hurried him from the room and swept up the sketches and kept them secret. I should
have known by looking at him that the day had been hard, that he’d suffered disappointment, that he was weary. But I rushed
to him, pulling him into the room, saying breathlessly, “William, I’ve something to show you.”

I pulled him so impatiently to the drawings on the table that his drink splashed over the side of his glass, smearing the
charcoal. It was a sketch of Washington Square, and in dismay, I grabbed my handkerchief and dabbed at it, trying to make
it right again, and when it was not, I cried out, “Oh, but now it’s ruined!”

William pulled it away from my ineffectual patting and said, “What’s this?”

“It was Washington Square,” I said.

“I can see that,” he said. Then it was as if he was just noticing the others. His gaze swept the room, alighting first on
one, then another. I stood there while he took a slow turn about the room, looking and looking, so silently. I felt an overwhelming
sense of pride that was so elating I could only stand there, waiting for him to see, to know.

“Who did these?” He was bent over the ones at the window seat, staring at them intently.

“I did.”

“You did?” He straightened and stared at me so incredulously that I had to smile. I rushed over to him and grabbed his arm
in my excitement.

“Yes, yes. I did them. I’ve been working on them since the start of February—months now—you can’t imagine how much I’ve loved
it. It’s starting to be quite colorful—I was hoping to get some paints, and then you would see—”

He was still staring at me, but his incredulousness had faded. In its place was a distress that completely stole my words.

“You drew these?” he asked slowly.

“Y-yes.”

“You?”

“Well, yes, William.” I reached around him to pick up the nearest one, but he grabbed my wrist, keeping me from reaching it.

His words were too careful. “I thought you were forbidden to paint again.”

“I haven’t painted. It . . . it’s charcoal.”

He shook my arm impatiently. “You were forbidden!”

“By my father,” I said, “not by my husband.”

He sighed and went to the window seat. He stood looking at the pictures, and I saw a deep sorrow in him before he swept up
the drawings and crumpled them in his hands.

I cried out and ran to him, reaching past him, trying to save them, but he wrenched away from me. Before my eyes, he tore
the drawings into bits and scattered them over the carpet. I raced before him to save the others, but I tripped over my skirts,
falling against the settee, and could only watch helplessly while he destroyed those as well. He took each drawing and tore
it until the floor was littered with bits of paper, and when he was done, he came to stand before me, his chest heaving as
if he’d just come from the athletic club.

“Where are the rest?”

I buried my face in my arms. “There are no others.”

He jerked my arms away. “Where are they?”

“I tell you, there aren’t any.”

He was gone before I could finish. I heard him on the stairs, and in horror I knew he was going to my bedroom, where he would
see how many there were.

I ran after him, barely seeing Moira, who stood trembling in the hallway. I lifted my skirts and rushed up to my bedroom.
William was already inside. On my bed was my case, the box of charcoal, the pile of sketches. William took them up, and I
launched myself at him, grabbing his arm.

“Please, William. Please don’t . . . let me explain.”

“Explain what?” he asked impatiently. “Explain how obsessed you’ve become again?”

“No, no. You can’t take this away from me. Not now . . . Oh, please, William.” I pushed against him, trying to take his face
between my hands, to keep him still, but he would have none of me. He pushed me away so roughly I fell, and then he threw
the case into the fireplace. The fire caught and leaped, consuming the case, the papers; they curled into ash, the smoke filled
the room.

Then he turned to me and said, “It was Seth who told you to do this, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?”

Teary and stunned, I shook my head. “You don’t understand.”

“I understand enough. I told him how ill this made you before. You won’t be seeing him again.”

“No,” I said, crawling to my feet. “No, William, please. You can’t do this.”

“You are my wife, and I know what’s best for you. And this”—he motioned to the fire, to me—“this is clearly not it. Painting,
again, for God’s sake. He must know what will happen.”

“William, please.”

He twisted away, and I slumped against the wall, blinded by tears.

“I’ll send a messenger to him tonight telling him that I’m ending your treatment.” Then he gave me a terrible, pitying look
and said, “This is for the best, Lucy. It’s all for the best.”

He closed the door, leaving me in the smoky room with the ravenous, crackling fire, and for a moment I could not move. I could
see nothing but that my life was over, that I was a prisoner forever.

Without thinking, I grabbed my cloak and my hat and ran from the house.

T
here was only one person I wanted to see.

As I reached Broadway, I saw an oncoming stage. I hailed it and felt an overwhelming relief as it stopped and the driver said,
“Climb aboard, ma’am.”

It was awkward to make the step, and the stage started even before I was inside, so that I nearly fell into the lap of a businessman
who was engrossed in his newspaper. I mumbled an apology and slipped into the seat beside him, clasping my naked hands together.
I had forgotten my gloves.

There were three other men aboard, all dressed like businessmen, and they spared me only a glance before politely sliding
their attention elsewhere. We tried not to bounce into one another as the stage made its uncomfortable way down Broadway.

A small gong sounded, startling me. The men were all moved to action, each reaching into his coat pocket and pulling out a
coin, then tossing it into a small basket lowered through a hole in the roof. The fare. I’d forgotten the fare.

“How much is it?” I asked.

“Ten cents,” said the man with the paper.

I made a show of reaching into the pocket of my cloak, of pulling it aside to search for a purse, though I knew already there
would be no money. Shopkeepers sent the bills directly to my husband.