The Behavior of Love
Page 25
I take in the dark woods of the place, the dim light, the neon signs. The phone rings into my ear, and I can feel Ed here on this same stool, his boys around him, Toby serving his whiskeys and beers. I can see why he came all those evenings after all those hard days. There is a comfort here I never could have provided, an acceptance and a tolerance I refused.
“Hello?” Tim’s voice is anxious, terrified, and I’m ashamed of myself for hoping he might finally be angry with me.
“It’s me.”
“Jesus, Laura. Thank God. Do you know how worried we are? Benjy said you took Beau for a walk four hours ago, and then you just disappeared. He called me at the office in tears. You realize his father is gone, right? And now his mother, too? Where the hell are you?”
“I found Ed.” I haven’t thought past this line.
“Oh, okay. Good. How’s—?”
“He’s all right. He needed to run some errands.”
The signs in the windows buzz. The man down the bar winks again. Maybe he is hoping I take all the men to the restroom with me.
“Errands? What the hell does that mean? Ed goes missing for nearly two weeks and then you take off with the dog, and now you’re telling me you’ve been running errands this whole time? What’s wrong with you?”
It’s a fair question.
“Tim, he’s really sick. There’s no way he’s going to be able to go back to living on his own. He wanted me to drive him to Boulder, and I couldn’t say no, all right?” It is not completely untrue. “We’ll be back in an hour.”
Tim is quiet, and I know his anger is waning, drifting away. His love for me rolls over it, his kindness. I can feel the shift, a whole town away, all those mountains between us, boulders and water. He cannot stay angry. He cannot begrudge a sick man who is losing his independence. He can’t blame me for giving Ed one more afternoon of his choosing.
I will never tell him I chose to take us here.
“I’m sorry I yelled.” Too nice, too kind.
“It’s all right. Will you call Bonnie and Pete? Let them know Ed’s with me. And tell Benjy I’m sorry I scared him.”
“Of course, baby. Be careful driving. It’s getting dark, and you know those roads ice quick. I love you.”
I tell him I love him, too, and I do. It’s not the way I loved Ed all those years ago, not the way I love Ed now. It has none of the gutted need, but it is love all the same.
I thank Toby for the use of his phone, look once more around the bar, memorizing the details, writing them down like Ed’s words. This place was Ed’s. He will probably never see it again.
There are stars overhead when I step back outside, the sliver of a waning moon. A breeze rises, cold and ice-edged, reminding us all that winter is settling in, its breath pinking our cheeks, chapping our hands. A streetlight reflects off the windows of the car, and the Tavern’s neon sign. I imagine Ed behind the lights, head back, cigarette in his hand, calm and happy and tired. I will take him home. We will put him in the shower and loan him some pajamas and tuck him into the guest bed, and tomorrow we will take him to one of the facilities Pete has recommended.
I’m so sorry, Ed.
Goodbye, my love.
I open the driver’s-side door, and the dome light blazes on, brilliant and blinding. It takes too long to register what I’m seeing. There is the seat. There are the cigarettes. There is the lighter. The smells are here, ripe and fetid, but that is all—stains and cigarettes and smells. There is no dog in the backseat, no tail moving, no excited whining.
Ed is gone, and he has taken Beau.
I know I will think about this moment often throughout my life. I will wonder about the impulse that drove me to sit down behind the steering wheel of my car and reach for the cigarettes Ed left behind, the lighter. I will play it over and over, seeing myself from a distance, a woman alone in her car smoking, the red tip of the cigarette rising to the cracked window, the ash dusting away in the breeze. I smoked two cigarettes before I got out and went back inside the Tavern.
“Everything all right, Laura?” Toby was still there, smiling at me.
“He’s gone,” I said. I can hear the monotone of my voice. It is not mine. It comes from somewhere else, a ghosted place, the halls of Boulder.
I know I followed Toby out into the cold night. I know the man at the bar came, too, no longer winking, another guy from a back table. I know we formed a motley little search party, setting off in different directions. I know I headed toward the institution. I know I was cold. I don’t know how long I walked before a truck came up behind me, flashing its headlights. I’d been walking for minutes, hours, days. I’d been walking for years, long enough to grow old, my hair gray, my back hunched, withered spotty hands. I hear the rumble of an engine. I hear a familiar voice, Toby, from the bar. He is saying my name, and my dog is in the bed of his truck. “Laura,” Toby says, his voice raw. “We found him.”
On the other side of Toby, the bench seat stretches long and empty.
Take your time. I hear them over and over, these last words of Ed’s. Take your time.
Chapter 41
Ed walks. He doesn’t know where he is walking.
He beat Laura at pool. Hah!
He needs to see Pen. She is still his girl. He’ll see her soon.
But, Laura?
He will read a new book with Pen. He will—the words in his head swim, billowy and loose. Their meaning slips. The words become debris, floating on white. Twisted shapes, driftwood.
Ed blinks in confusion.
He reaches down for his dog, and he feels Beau’s soft head under his hand. Good dog.
The pain is familiar, but he doesn’t recall it, that long-ago day in some long-ago spring fogged out by blood and surgery. It exists in another life, that one from before, when he was a behaviorist deinstitutionalizing the state, some success, some failure, a broken marriage. Where is Laura? And Ben?
He pats his leg. Come, Beau.
The pain comes for his temple, just as it did before.
He’ll take the dog outside. “Come on, Beau.” They are not words. He can barely hear Beau’s whining.
Night has come, suddenly dropping out of the sky, and now there is ice at his feet, cracking and busting loose, and there is water, a quiet rumbling. Laura is teaching an art class. Pen is reading poems. Ben is a growing boy. They will build a tree house together, with a drawbridge to keep out danger.
His head hurts. There’s a churning sound.
It is wet and cold and warm and bright. It is spring, and it is winter. Cold and frozen, but nearly blooming, soon.
His son is a strong boy, and they will fish together with his friend Pete and Pete’s own sons. Laura is a painter, his wife. He sees her disappear, a ghost. Little Ben raises the rope ladder to his tree house, barring Ed’s entrance. Penelope presses against him. He holds her face in his hands.
Ed stands in every place, all those doors in his head thrown wide open. He stands with Watson and Skinner, Pete and Penelope, Laura and Ben and Beau. They are all risen, resurrected. The Sunlight Man. Gilgamesh. Let us all be kings. The pain blazes, whittling, chipping. A beautiful girl touches him in a shower. His wife dresses him in a bathroom. He closes his book, rises from his chair. Water rises to his knees. Black dog, come here. A door. A library. A deck where he’ll fall, a river where he’ll wade and kneel and lie, eyes on the star-flamed sky, feet in broken shoes, a tug and a whine behind him. The stars blossom overhead. The dog comes, again and again, and Ed curls against his warm back, protected from the cold.
Acknowledgments
The idea for this book was born during a long conversation with my husband on a cross-country road trip from Austin, Texas, to Helena, Montana. It’s impossible to number all we’ve worked through on those long drives, and I am thankful for the time.
As ever, I’m grateful to my parents, John and Debbie Reeves, my aunt Terrie Reeves and my uncle Wil Radding, my grandmother Therese Reeves, and my sister, Anne. Additionally, I’m
thankful for the extended family I’ve found in the Comptons and Swensons. Their love and generosity are deeply embedded in this story.
Though they have very few things in common in the final draft of this novel, my late father-in-law, Mike Muszkiewicz, was the original inspiration for Edmund Malinowski. Mike was a behavioral psychologist, and like Ed, he suffered an aneurysm in the prime of his life, and then a stroke during the subsequent surgery. I never knew Mike before that event, and I often envied the people who did, which—I realize now—was an affront to the man he’d become. That man—the only Mike I knew—was the one to show me the heart of this book, the one to teach me about unbreakable bonds and the lengths we go for love. He also taught me about joy. Give that man a full tank of gas, a pack of smokes, a cup of coffee with his son, and a wide-open Montana day, and he was the happiest man alive. He had the most incredible laugh. He made an amazing pot roast with equally amazing mashed potatoes. I miss him greatly, and I am honored to have known him exactly as I did.
I’m indebted to the fathers of behaviorism, specifically John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner. Watson’s Behaviorism and Skinner’s About Behaviorism were critical texts in the research of this book. I’m immensely grateful to the Montana Historical Society for their digital archives. MHS made it possible for me to read copies of The Boulder Behaviorist, decades of the institution’s annual reports, and the full description and history of the Boulder River School and Hospital. Though that location becomes fictional in the context of this novel, the historical record proved invaluable to its creation.
My thanks go to my agent, Peter Straus, who remains an unflagging advocate. My editor at Scribner, Daniel Loedel, remained eternally patient with the (seemingly) unending revisions this book required—thank you for sticking with it and me.
I’d like to thank all the incredible friends who continue to support me in this mad pursuit. Special thanks go to Fiona McFarlane, Maggie McCall, Bethany Flint, Melissa Case, Jill Roberts, Loren Graham, Jaclyn and Eric Mann, Kelley and Nate Janes, and Cristina Mauro.
I’m honored to get to work with the incredible students, staff, and faculty of Helena College.
And lastly, as ever, I must thank my family. Margot, you continue to inspire me with your unflinching discipline and staunch loyalty. Those who have earned your love are lucky indeed. Hannah, the breadth of your compassion for others astounds me, and your passion for the things you care about motivates me to follow your lead. Luke—what can I say? This book wouldn’t exist without you, and I certainly wouldn’t have been able to write (and rewrite and rewrite) it without your continued love and support. Thank you, for everything.
A Scribner Reading Group Guide
The Behavior of Love
Virginia Reeves
This reading group guide for The Behavior of Love includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
Introduction
Dr. Ed Malinowski believes he has realized most of his dreams. A passionate, ambitious behavioral psychologist, he is now the superintendent of a mental institution and finally turning the previously crumbling hospital around. He also has a home he can be proud of and a fiercely independent, artistic wife, Laura, whom he hopes will soon be pregnant.
But into this perfect vision of his life comes Penelope, a beautiful, young epileptic who should never have been placed in this institution and whose only chance at getting out is Ed. She is intelligent, charming, and slowly falling in love with her charismatic, compassionate doctor. As their relationship grows more complicated, Laura also starts working at his hospital, and Ed must weigh his professional responsibilities against his personal ones and find a way to save both his job and his family.
A love triangle in one of the most chaotic, compustible settings imaginable, The Behavior of Love is an incredibly compulsive, poignant exploration of marriage, lust, and ambition from one of America’s great young literary talents.
Topics and Questions for Discussion
1. The epigraph is a portion of Robert Frost’s poem “The Oven Bird.” What meaning can we extract from this? Why do you think the author selected it to preface this novel?
2. This novel is set in Montana in the 1970s. In what ways, can the reader perceive the Montana landscape throughout the novel? How does the sense of time and place affect this story?
3. The novel alternates in perspective between Ed and Laura. How does this affect how the story is told? How does it reveal each character’s interiority and their understanding of their spouse? Does seeing both perspectives help the reader see more deeply into their marriage?
4. Penelope describes her first seizure on page 27 and explains that her family thought of her as “sick.” What does this reveal about societal understandings of illness in the 1970s? What does it say of the era that Penelope was institutionalized in the first place?
5. On page 54, Laura proclaims that she thinks it is easy for him to choose “patient over wife.” How do you think Laura conceives of Penelope? Does she think of her primarily as a patient? What are other ways that Laura thinks of her initially? How does this perception alter over time?
6. Laura classifies Ed’s relationship with Penelope as a betrayal, “whether or not it was physical” (page 94). We, the readers, know the extent of their relationship. In what ways would you say has Ed betrayed Laura? How do you think Ed would consider that he has transgressed, or if he has transgressed?
7. After she is transferred, Ed notes that Penelope has since turned eighteen and that their relationship “wouldn’t be celebrated, but it wouldn’t be illegal either” (page 120). It is one of the few times Ed fully acknowledges their age difference and the threat of either legal action or social judgment. How do you think Ed conceives of the power dynamics between the two of them, both in terms of age and in terms of their original doctor-patient relationship? How are we, the readers, meant to understand their relationship?
8. After Laura has left him and Penelope has found a boyfriend, Ed mentions that he misses what he calls “the complicated days when he had both Laura and Penelope. Wife at home. Patient at work” (page 170). What does this say about the sort of love Ed is looking for from women? What does this say about how Ed views the women in his life?
9. On page 237, after they are separated, Laura is told that she must stop taking Ed’s calls. Her friends tell her: “We have to retrain him. You can’t indulge this behavior.” In what ways, does this suggest there is a science to relationships? How do we see Ed and Laura train each other to be together? How to be apart?
10. In the end, Laura reflects on Tim and Ed and her very different partnerships with each. She says of her love of Tim: “It has none of the gutted need, but it is love the same” (page 285). How is Laura’s relationship with Tim different from her relationship with Ed? How does the author want us to understand her two marriages? What do you think the author suggests makes a successful marriage?
Enhance Your Book Club
1. Poetry is a central component of Ed and Penelope’s connection, and Penelope eventually takes a class on Eliot, Auden, and Thomas, specifically citing Thomas’s “Before I Knocked” as her favorite. Share one of your favorite poems by the many poets admired in this novel.
2. Read Work Like Any Other, Virginia Reeves’s debut novel, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize.
More from the Author
Work Like Any Other
About the Author
© SUZANNE KOETT
VIRGINIA REEVES is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. Her debut novel, Work Like Any Other, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and Booklist named it one of their To
p 10 First Novels of 2016. Virginia lives with her husband and daughters in Helena, Montana. The Behavior of Love is her second novel.
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Work Like Any Other
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Virginia Reeves
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