Circe (3 page)

"I didn't say that. I only said that the dark woman has no future. I see you on the beach before a storm with the blue-eyed woman."

"When will I meet this blue-eyed devil?"

"Soon."

"It's too bad your eyes aren't blue. I would like to end my days with you."

She laughed. "I thought you were a married man."

"Until I saw you."

"Not too insecure, are you?"

"I never saw the point in playing games. I wasn't very good at them, either."

"You owe me $20.00."

I handed her the money. "Can I buy you a cup of coffee or a hurricane?"

"I'm working."

"You can tell me more about the future. I’m dying to know how many children I’m going to have. And you haven't given me much information on this blue-eyed woman I’m going to leave my wife for and spend the rest of my life with."

"I may need to read the runes to find out all of this. It may be expensive."

"I need to know."

She smiled. "My runes are at my apartment."

It was that easy. I followed her through the maze of streets that led to her apartment with my heart in my throat. Anticipation can be the most potent aphrodisiac. She didn't say anything. Just watching her walk was enough. It was the thought that made her inexorable. It wasn’t her, but the hint of her. The parts of her that were unknown and forbidden. I did not want to wait until we found her apartment and I felt as if I couldn't wait. You have to understand that I was drunk and in those few moments she had become everything I had left behind in Detroit. She was the dank pavement and the cold aloofness. She was without family, without attachment. She required no sacrifice and I could have her without regret. I wouldn’t have to feel guilty for leaving her behind or for bringing her with me. She was the anonymous stranger in the dark.

I pushed her up against a wall in a deserted alley and kissed her with such force that she lost her breath. She was hard. Skin and bone and angles, not soft flesh, like my wife. I felt her arms around me and there came in me a flood that I couldn’t stop. I had her skirt up and her panties down and was done before she could even whisper her name. There was a moment when she muttered something like, "wait until we get to my apartment" or “wait for something." But her hands were in my hands and she kissed me with a fury.

When it was over, she disappeared into the darkness without a word. I leaned up against the wall for a minute and just breathed in deep release. I felt no remorse. I felt only peace. I had done this before. The first time it had happened, I had felt a twinge of conscience, but it had become more dream than reality. I reasoned that it affected no one. It was like masturbation and Pria would never know. I didn't know the women or feel anything for them. They were all easy and had followed me without thought. It was part of a fantasy that helped keep me calm when I was stressed. If no one knew, it wouldn't matter. It was no different than the men who made love to their wives and imagined they were other women. No worse then the men who loathed their wives and masturbated to imaginary women with perfect breasts and thin thighs. At least when I was with my wife, I thought only of her. When I kissed her it was only her I wanted. When she was with me, I was filled up entirely by her image. This was my way of staying emotionally faithful to my wife.

I wandered back to the Days Inn with my hands in my pockets. I took my time. The image of the tattooed woman had completely faded from my mind and I allowed my mind to wander to my internship. There would be two other interns at Circe with me. A woman who had attended the University of Alabama for both her undergraduate and graduate work, and a man who had attended Loyola for undergraduate and the University of Florida for his Ph.D. I had been given their names and telephone numbers so we could work out a carpool. The commute was a beast. Sharing the gas was the only way to make it.

I wished I knew more about them in advance. I had to be the best, and without any knowledge of the competition it would be hard to know where I could really shine. I already knew that my education was much better than theirs. I had gone to Vanderbilt for my undergraduate work and Wayne State for graduate school. These were not Yale or Harvard, but they were better than the competition and I had a perfect GPA with many publications under my belt.

By the time I made it to the hotel, I had a plan of attack for Circe. I was excited and I couldn't focus on anything but work. I had beaten my brothers back and I went to sleep easily and comfortably. No one would ever know about my indiscretion.

My brothers didn't return until five in the morning. They were so wasted that they collapsed on the beds without so much as a word. After about an hour, Jeff got up and vomited twice.

* * * *

I did feel guilty when I returned home. Pria had gotten rid of all the relatives, cleaned the house and cooked me dinner . She looked like a Hindu Goddess. Just watching her in the candlelight made me regret every other woman I had ever been with. I kissed her hands and held her.

“I need to stop,” I told myself. “I have a problem and I need to stop.” In my mind, I could analyze myself. All the cognitive distortions that had been reinforced by my father’s behavior became perfectly clear. I believed that loyalty to a wife wasn’t necessary for her to be happy because my father had never been loyal to my mother and my mother had always told me, “Sometimes it’s best not to know. Happiness is an illusion. Why not choose the ones you want to keep?” I ran through everything I had learned from my father and mother and how this had impacted my own irrational thinking; and in this two-minute therapy session with myself, I knew I could heal myself instantaneously and never cheat on my wife again.

I don’t know what it was about that night that made me feel this way. I think it was the scent of the curry-laden chicken drifting out of the kitchen. Or maybe it was the way her hair draped her back. It’s funny, the details you remember. I forgot almost everything we talked about that night, but the shade of her nail polish is still as vibrant as the waves crashing before me now. She had perfect cotton-candy pink nails. They were shaped and manicured and flawless. I can still see her tiny feet in my mind, wrapped in pink, strappy sandles. Her shoes matched the color of her toenail polish. She was a woman of details. The napkins always matched the plates and the plates always matched the candles. Her lipstick was always the same color as her polish, which perfectly complimented her pale pink shirt.

“You’re looking at me as if you were mesmerized,” she said as she served me a piece of chicken.

I smiled. “You know I am. You just want to hear it again.”

“I never get tired of hearing it.”

“You’re beautiful tonight and I can not take my eyes off of you.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Are you nervous about tomorrow?”

“No. I think that I will be the best intern by far.”

“You’re conceited.”

“I’m honest with myself.”

“I don’t think there’s a difference with you.”

“I’m not sure if that is a compliment or an insult.”

She laughed. “Neither am I.”

“Does it bother you?”

“What?”

“That I’m confident.”

“No. It’s one of the things I’ve always loved about you. You never hesitated. Every other man/boy, whatever, that I dated always flirted and played games. You walked right up to me and said. ‘You’re the one'.”

“I know what I want.”

“I know, but I would like to see you afraid just once.”

“That’s cruel.”

“No. I think I’m going to put some spider webs in your bed tonight.”

“That’s not fair. You know my weaknesses too well.”

“Lots of them and a big spider. You’re not so confident when you’re asking me to kill a spider.”

I reached out and tickled her. She squirmed and laughed. “I’ll get you if you do.”

“Eat your food,” she said.

“I’ll sneak up behind you and tickle you until you cry.”

“And then I’ll put your toothbrush on the back of the toilet.”

“And then I’ll hide every pair of those stupid little strappy sandals you collect.”

“I’d have to leave you then. You know I love my shoes more than you.”

“I’ve always known that. But you can’t leave me. I’ll tie you up in the closet and feed you only moon pies and the most fattening food I can find until you get so fat you can’t fit out the door.”

She laughed again. “Eat your food. You talk too much.”

After a while she looked up from her food. She was serious. “I’m nervous for you,” she said. “I know you came here for me and I know if things go wrong it will be my fault. I really hope you love this place.”

“I know. You don’t need to worry, Pria. I’m adaptable. I’ll make things work wherever I am. I always do. It’s just another place and it was a worthwhile trade.”

“Is it? You’ll hate me forever if this ruins your career.”

“You catastrophize too much. This couldn’t possibly ruin my career. The worst thing that could happen would be that my career would stagnate, and I can recover from that. Don’t over dramatize.”

“Thank you.”

“I don’t want to hear it anymore. What about your job? When do you start?”

“Thursday. It pays better than the last job.”

“You’re good at what you do.”

“I try to be. I like the atmosphere a lot better. I hate working in hospitals. This rehabilitation center fitness club thing has a lot more of an atmosphere that’s conducive to healing.”

“You make people better, not the environment.”

“Unlike you, I try to be humble.”

“You’re the best physical therapist in Mobile.”

“How would you know?”

“I know everything, remember?”

She laughed. Her laugh had the timber of music, perfect and lovely. I smiled, taking her face in my hands. She made love like a melody. The symbol of everything perfect in my life. Of everything good I had ever done. It washed away all that had come before it like some old Catholic Sacrament. Like baptism or the last rites.

CHAPTER 2

It listens now, and practices at night.

William Stafford

Ehwaz
– Movement

There were three of us that first day. We all crammed into Andy’s beat-up VW Bug. We sat stiffly, stuck to the decrepit leather interior of the rusty vehicle. Andy, a chunky woman with red hair, was the most gregarious psychologist I had ever met. Although I knew her to be in her thirties, her naiveté hid her age. Softness covered the wisdom that was expected to come with time. She smiled eagerly and our first commute to Circe was colored by her never-ending babble.

John, a short man with dark skin and hair, appeared to be more like someone I could relate to. His shyness camouflaged his social nature. He laughed a lot and chewed his nails incessantly. He didn’t talk a lot. He listened and watched. When he did speak, the words tumbled out of his mouth in a rapid flutter of nervous energy. He spoke with a cacophony of ums and pauses and he shifted nervously. The most important thing to me was that he didn’t talk too much, nor did he pester me with questions about myself. He left me in peace.

That first commute was uncomfortable. None of us knew what to expect, and we were all uneasy with each other. We knew the internship would be difficult and competitive and we did not know how to react to each other, knowing we were our only support and our only competition. The drive was long and haunted by stretches of endless deserted road. Fog encased the concrete and the woods around it. The peacock emerged from this landscape. It stood perched above the old gate like a guardian or gargoyle, watching us approach. Andy gasped when she saw the bird. She prattled on endlessly about its powerful symbolism and majestic history. I found this offensive. I felt as if her speaking ruined my own enchantment. She stole its beauty from me.

“Have you ever seen anything like that?” she said. “A peacock at a mental institution. In the fog. I like this place already.”

John and I were quiet. “What do y’all think? Isn’t that amazing? I always imagined Circe to be some ugly collection of cinder blocks in a blackened field.” Andy leaned forward and peered through the fog at the building that had become visible before us. “That is beautiful,” she said. “How old do y’all think it is? It looks ancient. A hundred years old or something. What do y’all think?”

We remained quiet. “I don’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings, but y’all are some of the most boring conversationalists I’ve met. Don’t you have any opinion on what’s ahead of us?"

“I’m not a morning person,” I responded coldly.

“Neither am I, but we are going to have some long days if we don’t at least try to get to know each other.”

 “I’m not a very talkative man,” I responded. “I don’t like personal questions.”

“What personal questions?” Andy appeared offended. “I asked you if you thought the building was old. How is that personal?”

“That particular question wasn’t. But you asked me about my parents earlier. That was a personal question.”

“You think that’s personal?” She was incredulous. “Fine, forget it. We can sit in silence for the entire car trip every day for the next year.”

John spoke for the first time in twenty minutes in response to this. “It’s alright,” he said firmly. “You can ask me personal questions. I don’t mind.”

Andy smiled at him. This soothed her. He looked at me a minute later and said, “And we’ll leave you in peace. Mornings are hard for my girlfriend too, so I know that some people just don’t like to be bothered in the mornings.”

Andy pouted a little as she said this. We pulled up to the front of the building a minute later. The three of us approached the building in silence. Security buzzed us in the back door and we were quietly invited in to meet the supervisor of the psychology department. She greeted us warmly, shaking each of our hands. Her name was Lydia Babcock and we all called her Dr. Babcock.

“Welcome to the acute ward of C.R.C.” She articulated each letter clearly, as if dispelling the magic. “The entire department is excited to have all of you as part of our team.”