Having Everything

by John L'Heureux

  “And beautiful.” Maggie smiled at her.

  But Dixie was too upset to notice the smile and got up quickly and left for the women’s room.

  “Is she going to be okay?” Maggie asked.

  “She’s tense a lot,” Hal said.

  “Yes. I should think.”

  “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It doesn’t mean anything?” Maggie looked at him with something like contempt. “Thus spake the psychiatrist?”

  “All right. Okay. What it means is this: one, she’s sensitive about being a second wife; two, she had a few drinks too many last night; three, your sympathy or pity, whatever, has made her bold for the moment and she’s decided to take me on in public. It’s not a role she can handle. She crumbles too easily. Dixie is not what she seems.”

  “I’ll see if she’s all right,” Maggie said, and left the table.

  “Women,” Hal said. “Freud was right.”

  “Maybe you could go easier,” Philip said. “That was a pretty tough exchange.”

  “Maybe I could,” Hal said.

  “So.” Philip toyed with his knife and fork. “How do you like it here? Better than Tufts? The same?”

  “Better, worse, all teaching hospitals are the same. What I like here is the proximity of the city.”

  “Boston? Or New York?”

  “Well, both. But I meant Boston.”

  “Opera?”

  “No. I can’t take opera. Dixie likes opera.”

  “The Symphony?”

  “Sex, as a matter of fact.”

  “Ah, sex.”

  Hal imitated the carefully neutral tone. “Ah, sex,” he said. And then, “I can explain. I’d like to explain, in fact. I’d be curious to hear your take on it.”

  Philip put his hands up, palms out. Not interested.

  Maggie and Dixie returned to the table. Dixie’s eyes were red, but she and Maggie were chatting as if nothing had happened. They sat down.

  “I’d like more coffee,” Dixie said.

  “Me too.” Philip motioned to the waiter.

  “Mmm, yum,” Maggie said.

  “I think it’s just wonderful that they’ve honored you with this Chair,” Dixie said. “You have everything. Maggie, and your kids, and I’m sure you have a lovely home. I think it’s wonderful.”

  “Well, thank you,” Philip said.

  “House,” Hal said, “not home.”

  “Oh, I’m sure theirs is a home,” Dixie said, and she kept on looking at Philip. “You even have a wonderful face.”

  Philip blushed a little.

  “It is. It’s … wonderful.”

  “She likes ‘wonderful,’ you see,” Hal said.

  “It’s kind and it’s strong and it’s—I don’t know—familiar in some way.”

  The waiter, pouring coffee, paused to look at Philip’s face.

  “Familiar?” Maggie said. “I think it’s kind of unique. That nose?”

  “Can we please talk about something other than my face?” Philip said.

  “I’m sorry,” Dixie said. “I didn’t mean …” But she continued to stare at Philip’s face and he continued to blush.

  The waiter finished pouring coffee and left, not bothering to conceal his smile.

  Dixie was staring at Philip still.

  There was a momentary silence at the table and then Beecher Stubbs descended on them, with Calvin trailing behind.

  “Well, there you are,” she said, “just sitting right there with these Kizer people and I didn’t even see you. I was telling Calvin, ‘Calvin,’ I said, ‘have you ever known anybody to get a Chair that deserved it so much?’ And Calvin, of course, corrected my grammar, but it’s true, it’s absolutely true, and I think you’re the most adorable couple at the Hospital. I do. You are. And Calvin does too though he would never say it. You know Calvin. But everybody loves him anyway. They do, Calvin, who could help it? Well, enjoy your breakfast. Oh, you’ve eaten already. Well, enjoy it anyway. And you nice Kizers, you enjoy it too. Never mind us. We’re just going to flit away. Come on, Calvin, we’re keeping them. By-ee.”

  Calvin raised his hand in a vague salute and followed Beecher to the door.

  Hal was about to say something, but Philip put his hand up to stop him. “Despite all that,” Philip said, “Beecher Stubbs is very nice. And smart. And a good friend.”

  “So?”

  “So don’t say it.”

  Hal thought about this. “All right then, tell us about your Chair. What does it get you? In perks, I mean, and in hard cash?”

  “That would be telling,” Philip said.

  Dixie was staring at him still. She had moist dark eyes, he noticed.

  “A Chair’s a Chair,” Philip said. “It’s a nice honor. But it doesn’t change your life. You are who you are.”

  “Yes,” Dixie said. “Yes, exactly!”

  They all looked at her.

  “You’ve had a lot of Chairs, have you?” Hal asked her. “Your academic experience qualifies you to pronounce on the difference a Chair makes in your life? You should have told me earlier, Dixie. I’d have made you my first wife instead of my second.”

  “Stop,” Philip said. “Jesus!”

  “Only kidding. Dixie loves it, don’t you, Dix.”

  “I was agreeing with Philip,” Dixie said. “He said, ‘You are who you are,’ and I was agreeing with him.”

  “Words to live by,” Hal said. “Well, listen, sorry this got a bit rocky. I just wanted to congratulate you two with a little breakfast. No harm done, I hope.” He waved at the waiter. “Gimme that bill, will you,” he said, and the waiter produced it at once. Hal glanced at it, dropped two twenties and a ten on the table, and pushed back his chair.

  In the parking lot, Hal shook hands with Philip and patted Maggie on the shoulder and said, “See ya,” and started toward his car. “What a day! What a fabulous day!” he said loudly, and slipped his arm around Dixie’s waist. They walked on for a moment, but suddenly Dixie pulled away and turned back toward Philip.

  Philip had held the car door for Maggie and was coming around to the driver’s side when Dixie put one hand on his arm and, fixing him with those moist dark eyes, said softly to him, “I know.” And then she was gone.

  “Quel breakfast!” Maggie said as Philip got into the car. Then, noticing how pale Philip looked, she said, “Let’s hope we’ve seen the end of them.”

  TWO

  5

  No psychiatrist would do what he had done. Philip knew that, he knew it well, and he told himself so over and over again.

  Psychiatrists were people, they were men and women, and they had the same problems and failings and virtues that other people had. But they were conscious people, they were reflective and analytical people. They did crazy things, sure, but when they did them, they asked themselves what they were doing, and why, and who was kidding whom. They didn’t just pack up their brains at age forty-five and start breaking into houses.

  For thirty of his forty-five years, Philip Tate had been more aware than most people that the mind plays tricks.

  As a boy he had scared himself with phantoms in the night, creating intruders out of creaking floorboards, shadows on the window blinds, the terrors of sheer silence.

  Later he re-created these phantoms for his little sister, making her cry, convincing her that they were all going to die. Which we are, he said coolly when he was chastised.

  Later still he discovered that the brain has many other functions besides the generating of fear. He was fascinated by the thought that he was thinking, that he was thinking of himself thinking and feeling, and that everybody else could do the same thing. You just had to get there first, especially where emotions were concerned. So he had married Maggie as soon as he finished college.

  As a doctor he had studied the interaction of the brain and body, as an endocrinologist he dealt with hormonal and biochemical mediators affecting the brain and its functions and its malfunctions, and as a psychoan
alyst he explored once again the dark passages Freud had opened to the caves of anxiety and repression and unacknowledged fantasy. He had been psychoanalyzed by a Freudian and later by a Jungian and he had come to agree that everything was sexual in the broadest sense, and therefore hardly sexual at all, except sometimes. He had studied Ferenczi and Rank and Reich, Judith Mitchell and Philip Rieff and Adolf Grunbaum. He had written books on Freud’s Rat Man, and Jung’s Shadow. He was contemplating a study of Adler.

  This was the background he brought with him when he broke into the Kizers’ house.

  He pondered his actions, his motives, even his gestures of that night. He took notes. He analyzed the notes as if they were notes on a patient. He burned the notes. He studied case histories. He read up, yet again, on sociopathy. In the end he came to the conclusion that he was dealing with the irrational. No explanation, no examination would yield more than that. He had done something morally and legally indefensible. It was wrong. It was much more than wrong: it was in essence self-destructive.

  Yet he had done it.

  And he wanted to do it again.

  6

  It was Sunday morning and Cole was about to leave for Baltimore after his long weekend with the family. The visit had gone well despite Philip’s nervousness and Maggie’s reliance on pills. There were no family quarrels, no awkward moments. Best of all, the weekend was almost over.

  Cole and Philip were still seated at the breakfast table. For this last morning, Maggie had made them pancakes, Cole’s favorite, and sat with them while she drank a cup of coffee. They chatted about Cole’s first year at med school, his grades, his summer research assistantship. Philip asked questions and Cole answered them, slowly, thoughtfully, as if Philip were his academic adviser rather than his father. They finished breakfast and the review of Cole’s career at exactly the same time. Maggie excused herself and went upstairs to bathe.

  Cole waited a moment and then pushed his chair away from the table and looked at his father.

  “Mother’s worse, isn’t she,” he said.

  Philip raised his eyebrows and said nothing. Cole had been named for Maggie—Cole was her maiden name—and they’d always been especially close. Philip was no longer jealous of this closeness.

  “What is it?” Cole asked. “What’s going on?”

  “Is something going on?”

  “Father.” Cole’s voice was sad. “I’m twenty-three years old. I don’t have to be told that something’s going on.” He waited. “She’s drinking—a lot, I suspect—and her eyes have that pillhead look. And she moves like a fucking somnambulist.”

  “Watch your language.”

  “My language isn’t the problem, Father.”

  “Do you think she’s unhappy?”

  Cole laughed, an ironic snort.

  “Because of me, do you think? Because of our marriage?”

  “Can she teach like this? Does she meet her classes? Grade papers? Does she function?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course. But now that school is over, she doesn’t have to worry about meeting classes or grading papers and she can just … I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what she wants. I … don’t know.”

  “Father, look at me,” Cole said. “Is it problems with sex? It’s been my experience that most problems in marriage begin with problems in bed. I know it’s not easy to talk about, particularly with me, but if that’s the problem you’d better face it. And soon.”

  Philip looked at him. His own son, talking to him this way about sex. Cole barely knew about sex. He was only twenty-three and maybe he knew about fucking, but he didn’t know about sex.

  “Father?”

  “I’m forty-five years old. I’ve fathered two kids. I think I’d know if there were a problem in bed, Cole.”

  “Would you? In your own bed? I know you’d be very helpful if the problem were the Stubbses’ or the McGuinns’ or the Fioris’, but would you recognize problems in your own bed? It’s been my experience that people who are expert with problems of other people are terrible with their own.”

  “That’s been your experience?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “And would you mind telling me exactly where all this experience comes from?”

  Cole looked at him, uncomprehending. “I’ve had relationships,” he said, “with women and men. I’m another, separate adult, Father. I’m not just an extension of you.”

  Philip, stunned, said nothing.

  “And I happen to know that failure in relationships always shows up first in bed.”

  “Does it indeed?”

  “It does.”

  “You sleep with women and men? Jesus Christ!”

  “It’s no big deal,” Cole said. “One has to experiment.”

  “One has to. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

  “The point is that Mother is deeply, deeply unhappy. And I was simply asking you if there was trouble in bed. That’s all. I was just asking a simple question.”

  “Well, there isn’t. Trouble. In bed.”

  “All right. Fine. I was just asking.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Fine. Case closed. It’s just that your generation has a lot of problems with sex and booze. They seem to go together.”

  “That’s been your experience too, has it?”

  “Be defensive all you want, Father, but the fact is that Mother’s got a problem you’re not dealing with.”

  They sat in silence for a while.

  “Well, she’s got to see somebody. A shrink or a … somebody. Get her to see that new guy, Kizer.”

  “He’s an ass.”

  “Get her to see McGuinn then.”

  “Mm.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes!”

  Cole looked at his father for a long moment. For the first time he noticed the signs of age in his face. He looked exhausted.

  “I’m glad about your Chair,” Cole said.

  Philip smiled at him. The Chair. A week had passed since the Chair dinner at Aspergarter’s, and the break-in, and the breakfast at Town Line. He had not heard a word from Dixie Kizer or from Hal or from the police. “I know,” Dixie had said, but then nothing further. No phone call. No visit. No cryptic note left in the mailbox or slipped under the door or pinned to his office bulletin board. None of the things he had feared. Maybe he had misheard what she said. Maybe none of it had ever happened at all.

  “You done good, Father,” Cole said.

  Maggie appeared, smiling, all in white.

  “C’est moi,” she said, and did a pirouette, “the wife of the Goldman Chair.”

  Philip felt very tired.

  Emma was home for an overnight visit. She had intended to stay the whole week, she explained, but the professor in charge of the dig had suddenly scheduled an orientation meeting in Los Angeles, so she would have to leave on Tuesday morning. It was a bummer, she said. It was all very complicated. The truth, however, was less complicated than appeared. For weeks now she had been sleeping with the professor in charge of the dig and he had invited her to Los Angeles for a three-day fling at Disneyland and she couldn’t bear to pass it up. He was fifty years old and terrific fun. She lied only because she wasn’t sure her parents were sophisticated enough to swing with it. And she didn’t want to upset Mother … because … well.

  Maggie took her shopping in the morning and Emma dutifully trailed her through Bonwit Teller and Neiman Marcus and Ann Taylor until she couldn’t stand it anymore and insisted they go to Eddie Bauer, where she bought a great pair of hiking boots, two pairs of jeans, and a dozen white cotton tees. They don’t wear pumps on a dig, Emma explained. The tougher the shoes, the better. White tee shirts could be changed three times a day, if necessary, and jeans were perfectly proper attire for wherever they might eat. They were going to an island with no name. There were no restaurants. There were no houses. They would sleep in tents. She didn’t need anything dressy, thank you, not anythi
ng. But then she relented and let Maggie buy her a Hermès scarf, red with a thin gold band around the edges, and suggested they have lunch at Neiman Marcus. She knew that would make Maggie happy.

  “You look really good, Mother.”

  “For an old girl,” Maggie said.

  “You’ve got wonderful color. And you don’t look tired at all.”

  Maggie said nothing.

  “I mean …”

  “What do you mean?”

  The waitress came and they ordered iced tea and a salad.

  “I’m really excited about this dig,” Emma said. “It’s a chance to really get into the field and learn something. I’m only a sand-sifter, of course, but that’s how you begin, and Bubby—he’s the professor in charge—Bubby thinks I’ve got what it takes.”

  “Bubby?”

  “Robert Winfield is his name, but everybody calls him Bubby. He’s cool.” She reddened a little. “He’s dreamy.”

  “Dreamy?”

  “Handsome. And, like, really sexy.”

  Maggie thought for a moment and then decided to say it. “You like this man a lot? How old is he?”

  “Oh Mother, he’s fifty, for God’s sake.”

  “Still.”

  “It’s archeology I love, Mother, not men. There’s nothing to worry about. It’s just exciting. I mean, it’s so exciting. Haven’t you ever felt that something was so exciting that nothing else mattered?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then you know.”

  “Yes, but I married him. He’s your father.”

  “No, I mean work. Study. Like your Ph.D.”

  This was something Maggie never talked about.

  “Can I talk about it? Just a little? Mother?”

  Maggie had been at Harvard studying for a Ph.D. in English when she married Philip and decided to drop out, just for a short while. It was a perfect time for a break. She had already passed her comps and she could continue to read toward her dissertation and she would go back as soon as Philip finished medical school. It was a temporary thing. They needed the money and she needed a rest from the Ph.D. grind: all those years spent on Jane Austen. Meanwhile she got a secretarial job. When Cole was born she put aside her work on Austen, and when Emma was born she gave up all thought of finishing the Ph.D. She had a private bonfire of her dissertation notes—nothing dramatic, just a quick afternoon fire in the back garden—and became a full-time mum. God knows, it took full time and more. Now, with the kids away at college, she taught Freshman Composition at U. Mass. Boston. They hired her, she suspected, because of Philip. Everybody knew Philip.