Stories in an Almost Classical Mode (23 page)

The doctor said proudly, “I do not belong to any organized camp. I walk my own path. There is no publicity
apparat
to inflate my reputation. You think I do not get enough recognition? You would like to be prouder of me?”

“Yes,” Ann whispered.

Long after she had left the office each day, she went on speaking to him—until two or three o’clock in the morning, hardly pausing even when she heard Fennie let himself into the house and get ready for bed on the second floor; Ann slept on the third floor, or rather lay awake on the third, too interested in what she had to say to the doctor to sleep.

She said to the doctor, “Last night I dreamed you and I lived alone in a pretty house on a hill. It was in the country. We were very good friends. It was a happy dream.” She giggled. “Can you imagine?” She burst into tears: “I’m overintense.”

He spoke to her of the collective unconscious, of introversion, of the libido, of the superego. They discussed her dreams. They discussed her transference. They discussed her passionate nature.

At first, she could not believe it when she began to lust after the doctor. She felt—he gave her the symbol in a discussion of a dream—the heavy roots of wings enter her back. She talked about Walter, and the farm boy, and Fennie, and it seemed to her the wings beat restlessly, clubbed her about the head. She suffered an erotic concussion.

The doctor said to her she did not understand transference, that she was transposing to the doctor feelings meant for her father: “The incest taboo confuses you.” He said it was all right for her to lust after him—lust was not unhealthy. The doctor said, “You are living out an archetypal pattern in your life.”

When she slept, she slept badly. She dreamed. Even when she did not recognize the doctor in her dreams, he pointed out that he was present: the windows in her dream that she threw herself out of, that she tried to open, were him; his first name, as she knew, was Winthrop.

“It would be nice,” Ann said, staring at the ceiling, “to have a sexual thing with a really perceptive man, a man I could talk to.”

“You are experimenting with one of the modes used by patients to interfere with transference.”

Ann asked, “Am I ugly?”

The doctor said she had a distinctive charm.

Ann took a deep breath. “How ugly am I?”

“You are not ugly.”

“How far am I from being beautiful?”

The doctor said she was asking a meaningless question.

Ann began to cry. “I think I’m too old for decency,” she said. “No man wants a woman as she really is. Men want women to be imaginary.”

The doctor said, “You are under severe tension. The middle years are difficult. Marriages last too long. Well, our time is up. Dry your eyes. I will see you on Thursday.”

She said, “There is a lie in this analysis. You take my money. You make me feel terrible things. It’s like a terrible love affair.”

The doctor said, “Your analogy is not a true one. You do not want to go to bed with me. You want to go to bed with your
father.
” Ann made a hissing noise. “We analysts know that transference is not love.”

Ann said, “You should never have interfered with me. You never intended to be sincere.”

Another day, she said, “If there’s a Hell, there’s a place in it for women like me.”

“Now, now,” the doctor said. “Let’s not exaggerate.”

Ann said, “No one else’s face is real to me. If you loved me, I would never make a scene. I wouldn’t bother you. I wouldn’t get in your way.…”

The doctor said, “Let us examine what you said.
You promise to be good.
Here we have the psychological heart of Christianity: the libido
in a state of longing will promise anything. Christianity represents a great psychological advance over paganism. It reproduces the
family.
It invented romantic love. Is this not why?”

“I suppose so,” Ann said dully.

“Paganism allows to the woman only the god’s
animal
presence. A woman deserves more than that.”

Ann said, with tears in her eyes, “I was happy with Walter.”

The doctor said, “But what does it mean when a woman wants
only
the animal presence?
It means she hates herself and desires to be superior to the analyst.”

Ann laughed; then she cried. She said, “I’m not sure I understand about Christianity. Tell me more about Christianity. You’re such a moral man. You’re a
good
man.”

The doctor closed his eyes and said, “I am so glad you wish at last to meet me halfway.” The next day, he said, “Yesterday we made a breakthrough—we came to an end of childish egoism.”

T
HE DOCTOR
told her she had always been inhibited because it had been dangerous for her as a female child to have feelings. “But now you have been freed. You are ready to be more giving. You have overcome much of your self-involvement. You can be your womanly self—warm and sympathetic.… Tell me,” the doctor said sternly, “you are feeling well? You are feeling happy?”

Ann could not bring herself ever to disappoint him. She said, “Yes. I’m
much
better. You
are
a wonderful doctor.”

Fennie came home two evenings a week to see the children. Ann noticed his exhaustion and said in a voice very like the doctor’s, “Fennie, is something troubling you at this time?”

Fennie said that the Department was falling apart, two of his memos had been sidetracked that week; that the Russians and the English, the left and right wings, and the State Department had factions in the Department. “It’s a mess,” Fennie said dejectedly.

“Fennie,” Ann said, “that’s not very different from what you’ve always said about the Department. We have to go deeper. Let’s try and find out what you’re trying to hide.”

“The Department won’t recover from this mess,” Fennie said. “The end of the war is coming, and no one’s loyal to the Department anymore. Franklyn’s diddled everyone. He’s a disappointed man. He didn’t
make under secretary; he has a grudge. There’s no one to turn to. He’s got everyone lined up. They’re playing footsie with the right wing. The future is being undermined, and there’s nothing anyone can do.”

Ann sat quite still. Slowly, she raised her eyes to Fennie’s face. She was possessed by, if not the spirit, then the style, of the doctor. “There must be a lot of men who don’t like Franklyn,” she said. “Tell me, Fennie, why don’t you form your own conspiracy?”

S
HE SAID
to the doctor, “It’s better if Fennie and I are friendly. It’s much better for the children.” She wondered if the analyst was listening. If he was preoccupied, she did not want to intrude. She became tongue-tied. She said, “I don’t know what to talk about.”

The doctor said, “How is your novel coming?”

“My novel?”

“I’m speaking metaphorically,” the doctor said.

“A metaphor? What metaphor?”

“I am being too abstruse,” the doctor said—patronizingly, Ann thought.

“Perhaps you’ve mixed me up with another patient,” Ann said.

“We must not overreact,” the doctor said gently.

“You have such a healthy ego,” Ann said, and turned her head to the wall.

That evening, Fennie telephoned to say he wanted to stop by the house, to talk to her. “Two days in a row?” she said ironically.

She was sitting on the second floor, in the living room, when Fennie came in, with his briefcase, and sat down and said the suggestion she’d given him had led to complications: “There’s a lot of interest, but we’ve got to have a safe place to talk. You know what the office is like.…” Yes, she did, Ann said; the secretaries eavesdrop, she said maliciously. Fennie wanted to have the men to the house.

Ann said, “Why not?”

Fennie said he was worried that news of what he was up to would leak out and the fat would be in the fire.

“So what?” Ann said. “This is an
honest
conspiracy.” She said, “Publicity might help—the fence-sitters will rally around if they know there’s a lesser evil. People are always on the lookout for a really lesser evil.”

“Analysis seems to have sharpened your wits,” Fennie said.

Ann looked at Fennie. A husband was on the whole a lesser evil than a psychoanalyst; she had no real hope of finding a happy love anywhere.

When she saw the doctor, her feelings for him struck her anew, they were so strong, so unyielding still. She said, “You have to play with people’s minds, it’s all propaganda, love is in the imagination.” She said, “That’s the way it is. Fennie has no mystery.”

She said, “It doesn’t do much good to hold a man’s feet of clay against him. A woman who loves can’t go looking for a lesser evil—she wouldn’t know a lesser evil if she found one.… I’m always trying to grow an apple orchard in a flowerpot.” Her love for the doctor was colored now by hopelessness, devotion, resignation.

She lay still while the doctor said she was worried about acting as a hostess for Fennie. “The incest taboo in your case has become a flirtation taboo. Therefore, social life is impossible for you.”

At five that afternoon, she was at home and heard a car drive up: it was Fennie with a colleague. Ann shook hands dreamily with him when he entered the living room; she let her glance linger; her eyelids drooped with sexuality. It had been a year and a half since she had slept with anyone. Fennie’s colleague smiled, pleased by the welcome he’d received.

Ann said to the doctor the next day, “Last night there were five men at the house. I flirted with all of them. I thought I was exaggerating about their liking me, but two of them followed me to the kitchen and made propositions. Not at the same time. Fennie noticed. He didn’t say anything. He was drunk. After I went to bed, I was thinking of you, I was thinking about analysis. I wanted—I wished I was about to have a—I—” She wanted to say that lust was not the word to describe her desire; she said, “I wasn’t—I wasn’t—I was in a
mood.
” She cried, “I wish you would explain it to me! Women’s desire is so much worse than men’s!”

“What do you mean by that?” the doctor asked.

“I don’t know. I thought you might explain it to me.”

The doctor said, “Freud remarked toward the end of his life that he had never been able to discover what it was that women really wanted.”

Ann laughed dutifully because it would please the doctor. She said, “I slept with Fennie.”

“Did you do it to punish me?” the doctor asked.

She said, “I don’t know. Maybe. All the doors in the house were open, to catch the breeze. I heard the children; I heard Fennie tossing—he was
making noises in his sleep. He called my name. At least, I think it was my name. It could have been a kind of snore—‛Ann’ or—” She imitated a sound, stertorous
n
’s, drawn out. “I know the body and mind are one,” she said loyally, “but it wasn’t like that. It was a—a bodily thing.”

She climbed out of bed and stood. She tiptoed to the second floor; she whispered, “Fennie, what is it?” She said to the doctor, “He didn’t answer. He really was asleep.” She said, “I felt like giggling but I analyzed my emotions and decided I was nervous and didn’t really want to giggle—I made myself stop and think about my motives. They seemed all right. I thought, Everybody else does what they want. He didn’t misunderstand. He was asleep at first, and then he was only half awake, and when he really woke up he didn’t talk. I don’t know if he ever was really awake. Yes. He was. Afterward he said, ‘What do—’ No. He was grammatical. He said,
‘To
what do I owe this—’ ” She thought, she strove to recall his speech. “ ‘—this token of affection?’ And then I did giggle a little bit.” She laughed, coaxingly. She said quickly, “I’m sure I did it a little to get even with you. And besides, I was starved for—for
that.
” She said, “I don’t know why I use euphemisms with you. I never used to use them.”

The doctor said, “You are not rebellious anymore.”

She said, “I don’t want to sleep with strangers—there’s no room in my life for strangers.”

The next day she said, “You know what I feel like? I feel like a sea gull. I’ve had to fly for years and years in a storm, but now I can rest. I’ve found help. I’ve found you. The steep waves won’t drown me.”

The doctor said, “What a lovely image for the stage in analysis you have reached! It projects so beautifully your wish to spread your newly strong wings and fly into maturity.”

Ann was silent. There was no end to what that son of a bitch expected of her; now that son of a bitch wanted her to be cured.

One night Fennie said, “Are you ever coming to visit me again after I’m asleep?” Ann said, “Why don’t we talk things over, Fennie?” But Fennie said she should save her words for her analyst. He was abrupt in a not very bitter way. He and Ann went to bed together. Ann said, “My own, my very own Fennie.” He stiffened; he seemed put out. Ann said in a comradely voice, “My pal Fennie,” and he relaxed.

She said to the doctor, “What I have is, I have a lot of nothing!”

The doctor did not comment. She could not see him. He was only a presence.

She cried on the streetcar going home.

She played with her children for a little while and then sent them upstairs with the maid, a Norwegian refugee girl. Fennie was bringing more men home. He was in one of his most bastardly moods. He came down to the kitchen to get ice. Ann was making sandwiches. She said, “Don’t get overexcited. Nobody wants to deal with an overexcited conspirator.”

“Get off my back,” Fennie said.

He went upstairs. Ann sliced tomatoes for the sandwiches; the tomatoes looked like fat, malformed hearts. It was going to rain. Outside, the wind puffed and rustled, fell silent, started up again. Ann rushed out into the backyard; she uttered a muted, gooselike honking, an
onh, onh, onh,
a sound that harmonized with the wind, half humor, half breathlessness. She gathered up two dolls, some tin teacups and saucers—dime-store toys her daughters played with. The light was strange and pure; Ann thought of it as a mystic butter spread on the earth’s bread. From the house came the sound of Fennie shouting. Ann hurried inside, dropped the toys into a box; she hurried in the kitchen; she gathered the sandwiches already made and piled them on a plate. She hurried down the dark hallway and climbed the stairs to the living room. Fennie was still shouting. To control her fright, she pretended the living room was full of psychoanalysts.