The Seducers

by Martin Shepard

  “As I see it, there’s a lot I might gain and little that I might lose.”

  He wished she hadn’t put it so well, for he had no desire to rock his professional boat. Still, he had to admit that her reasoning was unassailable, that she was a most attractive woman, and that his reluctance to oblige her stemmed from his putting greater weight on propriety when balancing it against his desire to assist. That image bothered him. And so, last Monday, he proposed that they both think about it until their next meeting, hoping, somehow, that her idea would weaken the more it was considered. But it hadn’t.

  One thing he was certain of. They had to discuss their reactions fully at next Monday’s session. The prospect both excited and scared him.

  The car and its passengers passed the stone monument in Bridgehampton at three-ten. East Hampton was next. At the windmill on the further end of town he bore left, went under the railroad trestle, and headed the few miles north to the Springs. Shortly before he pulled into their driveway, some inner alarm clocks went off simultaneously as first Phoebe, then Liza, awoke.

  Liza seemed surprised when her mother called her back to carry her own things into the house, but she obliged. Phoebe took the wok and blender, Jonas the luggage, and then he returned for the cases of wine.

  He carried them up the stairs to the deck, in through the back door, and set them down on the kitchen floor. Opening a case, he put one bottle in the refrigerator and another, for a quick chill, in the freezer. Then he entered the living room, stood mesmerized by the panoramic view below the cliff of the still blue waters of Gardiners Bay which the wall of glass and screens afforded. Liza brought him out of his meditation.

  “See ya, Dad,” she cried out, skipping past him in her two-piece swimsuit. “I’m going over to Ginger’s house and then we’re going down to the beach.” She was out the door and down the stairs before he could answer.

  The sounds of bureau drawers and closets opening and closing came from the bedroom. Phoebe was unpacking. He hesitated a minute, stepped out of his sandals, and walked silently toward their room. The freshness of the air, the beauty of the Bay, the tranquility of the trees behind his home had buoyed his spirits and his expectations.

  When he reached the door, Phoebe’s back was toward him. She was removing her slacks and was about to step toward the bed where her own bathing suit lay. Jonas slipped quietly behind her, bent over, kissed her neck gently, reached his right arm about her, and cupped her breast with his hand. She turned, smiled politely, and said:

  “Not now. Tonight. Let’s go for a swim before it gets too late.”

  3

  “I feel awkward,” Arlene said, as she took her seat, crossed her legs, and rummaged through her bag looking for a match.

  “Tell me about it,” he replied, holding out his lighter while trying to mask his own awkwardness with psychoanalytic neutrality. He noticed the smooth skin of her right thigh where her skirt rode up, felt an energy flow as she steadied his hand and lit her cigarette, and flashed back to that time, last week, when his eyes sought out the shadows and substance of her clothes-covered flesh.

  “To begin with, I don’t know how to refer to you.” She paused and looked up.

  “Oh?” Jonas automatically answered.

  “Yes. It always bothered me a bit, but since Wednesday it’s become even more of a nuisance.”

  He was glad that she mentioned last Wednesday. It relieved him of the discomfort he would have felt if he had to bring it up. He decided to encourage her story with a stock, “How so?”

  “‘Dr. Lippman’ sounds too authoritarian; too deferential and formal. ‘Jonas,’ our intimacy aside, seems too intimate. And you are my doctor.” She pulled the smoke hungrily into her lungs, held it for some time, let it out, and repeated the sequence. “I think it has to do with some confusion as to what I want out of our relationship.”

  Jonas felt obliged to help clarify Arlene’s confusion. One thing he did not need was a sticky situation with her. Being trained to expect little in the way of his response, however, she went on.

  “What I miss is realness.”

  “Realness?”

  “Yes. Realness.”

  “And this is unreal?”

  “Real, perhaps. But very structured and artificial.”

  “Why do you say that?” he asked, as he twisted, casually, in his armchair.

  “Because of these questions of yours, for instance.” She looked steadily at his face, trying to gauge the effect her words had upon him. Extinguishing her cigarette, she lit another. “I think that a real exchange of thoughts and feelings would do more for me than this one-way pattern we’ve been using.”

  Perhaps it would, he thought. If anyone needed a lesson in giving and taking, sharing and exchanging with others, it was she. But that was not his thing; not the way he had been trained. He didn’t know the rules of professional informality if, indeed, there was such a thing. And so his response begged the issue she raised.

  “There’s time for that later. Right now, we’re here to get to know you better,” he said in his most definitive tone.

  Even as his words were out, he was struck by their absurdity. Did he not already understand her? Certainly so—as well as any human being can know another. If he had any doubts on this score he never would have allowed himself to sleep with her.

  Just what did he know? He knew that her mother died when Arlene was four and that her father, a harried taxi driver, saw no alternative other than placing his daughter in foster care. Jonas empathized with her confusion and feeling of not having anyone about who cared as she shuttled, periodically, from home to home.

  Friendships were terminated before they blossomed. Each adult set rules and disciplines that varied greatly from the ones she had before. Arlene had no place she could call her own; no furniture, no room, only a few stuffed animals and a wardrobe that fit into a small cardboard suitcase.

  One night, when she was nine, a drunken foster father woke her up and accused Arlene of taking his wallet. Despite her tearful denials he made her take her pants down, put her across his lap, and administered a sadistic beating. Turning her over upon her bed, threatening to kill her if she cried out, he rammed his fingers between her legs. She felt she would die from the tearing, wrenching pains, but uttered no sound. Then he unzipped his fly, pulled her head against his enormous erection, and made her “lick it and kiss it if you know what’s good for you.” She gagged and threw up over her bedclothes moments after his gummy discharge filled her mouth.

  The following day, when she told her foster mother what had occurred, the woman called her a liar and slapped her across the face. After that she refused to go to any other homes and remained in the orphanage until she was fourteen when her father, now remarried, arranged for her to live with him.

  By then she had turned into a very private and mistrustful person. She took personal satisfaction in her academic achievements, completed high school at age sixteen, and won a scholarship to the University of Chicago, where she majored in English. Graduating at nineteen, she returned to New York and took a copyediting job at McNaughton’s, a prominent trade publisher. At twenty-two, she became the youngest person ever appointed as an editor.

  Freud claimed that satisfaction came when one could work and love. Work, for Arlene, was no problem. Love was. Twenty-seven years old and all she had to show for it was a dozen dates with five different men, one of whom saw her four times.

  The fact that men found her attractive only added to her woes. Time and patience were needed to dissolve her defenses, melt her reserve, allay her anxieties. Given the ready availability of other women, these qualities seemed in short supply. If she were not willing to experience an affectionate caress there were no future calls. Perhaps, if she explained her reasons, they might have been more understanding. But she could not, for she was mortified by her past.

  Nor did she enjoy the few dating experiences she had. At best they were test situations she could have done without. Her b
ody went rigid if she was touched, her sensibilities were offended when anyone suggested she was “uptight,” an inner rage was provoked when one man once accused her of being a dyke. Dyke, indeed. She trusted women little more than men.

  But Jonas Lippman knew her. In spite of her statement that talking didn’t help, she felt at ease with him and revealed more of herself than she ever dreamed she could. And while she openly protested his evasiveness, she secretly appreciated his passivity. She liked him. A lot. But she dared not tell him this just yet.

  Jonas continued to feel uneasy about their past Wednesday’s meeting and so he questioned Arlene about her reactions since then. It was one thing to have a rationale for their coming together. It was another to verify the validity of the theory.

  How had she been feeling since then?

  Much better, thank you. More optimistic about her ability to overcome her negative conditioning. She had bought a pair of silver hoop earrings on Thursday night after admiring them in a craft shop on MacDougal Street. That was certainly different. It was her first jewelry acquisition in a year and a half. Look! She was wearing them now. She tilted her head and with her right hand pulled her hair back. Did he like them? He felt it was appropriate to nod affirmatively.

  “Anything else?” he asked, wanting more reassurance. “Any other …” he groped for the proper word, “… different reactions?”

  “Yes,” she hesitated, looking down at her feet, which she nervously uncrossed. “I met somebody on Friday.”

  She pushed off her sandals, raised her legs to the chair, moved them under her and smoothed the edges of her skirt. It sounded almost too pat, and so he pushed her for details.

  A man moved into the apartment next door that day, came by at night to borrow a cup of sugar and introduced himself. He was Jonas’ age, if not a bit older; name of Al Newfield. The next night he invited her out to see The Passenger, which she loved, and afterward they went for coffee. He was pleasant to talk to and while she didn’t know much about him, she did discover that he was a lawyer.

  Jonas felt a rush of satisfaction on hearing this news; happiness for Arlene, proud of his work with her, along with a trace of another emotion that he could not quite recognize as jealousy. Desirous, though, of clearing up the ambiguities of their intimacy, he returned to inquire about her physical response on Wednesday.

  Was there pleasure? Did she experience orgasm? The clinical detachment of his queries seemed unreal to him. They were valid enough for therapeutic exploration and were certainly questions every man wondered about after making love to a woman. Yet his desire to hear affirmative answers embarrassed him.

  “Yes,” she felt pleasure, but “No,” there was no orgasm. It pleased her that there was neither pain nor revulsion although she was aware of cutting herself off as her satisfaction increased. Also, of feeling unappetizing when he attempted to go down on her. But she thought it was a great beginning.

  A low buzz sounded in the office. Jonas stood up, walked over to his desk which stood beneath the bookshelves, and pressed a button that admitted his next patient to the vestibule. It was nearly eleven-fifty, time for this session to end. Arlene Lewis unfolded her legs and reached down for her sandals.

  “I would like to sleep with you again this Wednesday,” she said, fastening her footwear. “I think there’s even more pleasure I’m capable of feeling if I can learn to relax.”

  Although Jonas hadn’t intended more than one intimacy when he agreed to the experiment, her request did not surprise him. A memory tape rewound and played back his celibate weekend. Phoebe’s periodic headache caused her to deny him on Friday night. On Saturday the Kauffmans came to dinner. Between the four of them they consumed three bottles of wine. Their company left by midnight but they both fell sound asleep moments after slipping into bed. The sailing mishap occurred on Sunday.

  He took Liza out for a four P.M. sail in light wind, despite Phoebe’s warning that they must start dinner by five-thirty in order to attend a seven o’clock film at the Old Post Office Cinema. Six hundred yards offshore the breeze died and he and his daughter sat, becalmed in their day-sailer until six-fifteen, when a passing power boat towed them in. Dinner was late, the film was out, Phoebe irate, and he was once again in her doghouse.

  As he edged toward the office door he thought of this insane paradox: of having a hands-off wife and a sexually interested patient. His decision was not long in coming. It had, after all, gone well last week. If Arlene could achieve complete satisfaction—could know a full orgasmic response—what better gift could he give her?

  “All right,” he said.

  Arlene unzipped her bag, took the half-empty pack of cigarettes from the small wooden end table alongside her chair, placed it in her pocketbook, and arose. As Jonas turned the doorknob, she asked:

  “About the realness. You said there was time for that later. There’s one question I’d like you to answer now.” She looked at him imploringly. “Did you enjoy me?”

  “Yes,” he blushed as he opened the door to let her out. “I did.”

  4

  Phoebe parked the car on the gravel path by the southeast side of Sam’s Creek, alongside a rusting-out badly dented yellow Chevy van. Two shoeless black women sat on the concrete pilings below the short white-railed bridge that spanned the fifteen-foot channel separating the Creek from Mecox Bay. Both had bamboo fishing poles which, flicked out, periodically rewarded them with small bony flounder from the brackish waters. An eight-year-old boy in an immaculate white shirt and ragged denim shorts stood by the shore, his right hand holding a crab net while his left tugged at a line tied about a fish head.

  Reaching for her bag, Phoebe took out a large towel and her string bikini, hunched down behind the wheel, and began to change to her swimsuit. The party of fishermen and crabbers, framed by the tall swamp grass, paid no attention. They were, she assumed, the family of some farm laborer.

  The old woman, smoking a corncob pipe, wore a loose-fitting faded calico print dress that might have been fashionable twenty years ago. Donated, no doubt, by some Southampton matron to the local black church. White tennis socks completed her ensemble. The younger one wore a straw hat, green satin blouse, and tight-fitting navy slacks that only emphasized her chunkiness. Three generations, Phoebe thought, as she opened the door of the Mercedes and got out. At that moment she would have gladly traded her sophistication for their serenity.

  The gravel hurt her feet as she walked up the path toward the main road. She could just as readily have gone back to the car for sandals since she knew that the sun-baked blacktop of Job’s Lane would be equally uncomfortable. Yet she appreciated the uneven stones and the hot asphalt. Real pain was a welcome relief from the anguish of indecision; of trying to chose between Jonas, Carlo, both, or neither.

  One hundred yards further was Mecox Beach. It was a fair drive from the Springs but well worth it. She was not likely to meet anyone she knew; more likely to walk undisturbed and seek the calmness that had eluded her these last several months.

  Eleven days to go before Jonas joined her for his summer vacation. Two working weeks of respite from him. Would she use them to come to any conclusions? Make any decisions? Or would she continue biding time?

  Phoebe lowered her head as she drew alongside the elderly parking lot attendant—avoiding the cheerful greetings he gave all comers—passed two dozen or so empty automobiles that were parked in the lot, and walked up the scorching white sand dune between wire-bound wood fencing.

  The beach was lovely; the water deep blue, the sky cloudless, with a slight sea breeze breaking the heat of the Tuesday morning sun. A cluster of swimmers radiated around the lifeguard stand on her left. Phoebe turned right, walking, skipping, running down to the water’s edge to cool her burning feet. She stood still for a moment, the waves breaking about her calves, then leaped forward over two large swells and dove gracefully into the third. Emerging beyond the breaking point, she swam fifty yards offshore, paralleling the deserted strip o
f beach, and continued her swim for another fifteen minutes. Eventually, fatigued and bored, she rode the tide back in to shore.

  She sat on the slope that led from the ocean, regained her wind, rested her muscles and watched the water’s rise and fall; great power seeking its proper level. And what was her resting point to be? Indeed, would there ever be one? Like the tides she vacillated. Unlike them she felt she lacked power. Correction. She had power over Jonas. That he gave her and she couldn’t forgive him for it. It only made things worse.

  If she had no goal, no force, no direction and he felt intimidated by her, was he not even less effectual and more pitiable than she was? A large wave broke over her legs, splashed to her midriff, and dampened the contempt she felt for the two of them. Arising, she began to walk.

  Three-quarters of a mile further west was Cameron Beach, where another group of bathers gathered around the not-so-wary eyes of another young lifeguard. A college boy, no doubt, on vacation, working on his tan, more interested in watching the shapely young women on the sand than portly or aged swimmers. But at least he was working, earning his keep, doing as he chose. That was more than she could say for herself.

  A shrill squawking sounded overhead. She looked up, saw two—no, three—terns hovering ten feet above her. Like flying sentries they followed her path and when she turned toward drier sand, dove, bills down, passing inches above her head in threatening anger. Phoebe stooped, picked up a handful of sand, and threw it at the next dive-bomber, hoping to scare it off. But the screeching only increased and reinforcements came from the distant dunes to aid the small patrol. They were, she knew, protecting their nesting area. And what was she doing with hers? She moved back to the water’s edge out of respect for their fierce determination and singleness of purpose.