Dixie smiled and reached out to touch her, then drew back her hand. “Oh,” she said, “that would be loverly. Simply loverly.”
Maggie shot her a hard look. Loverly.
They had their Cokes and were seated on the patio and Maggie had managed to take her Xanax without being seen, she thought, and now she would find out what the hell was going on with Dixie Kizer.
“You were looking for me?” Maggie said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Dixie’s eyes began to fill with tears. “Philip told me you were taking a course.”
“Philip?”
“Philip. Your husband.”
“I know he’s my husband. Why did he tell you I was taking a course?”
“I guess he thought I should know.”
The woman was an idiot. Very slowly, Maggie said to her, “Why should you need to know that I’m taking a course?”
“Because it would give me an inspiration? Because if I took a course, it might give me self-confidence?”
It occurred to Maggie, finally, that Dixie Kizer must be one of Philip’s patients. She was annoyed nonetheless; Philip had no right to be using her secrets to bolster the self-confidence of a patient, particularly one as idiotic as Dixie Kizer.
“I think you’re just so lucky. Married to Philip and everything. It must be like a dream.”
“Sometimes a dream, sometimes a nightmare.”
“See? And you’re witty about it too.”
Maggie waited. The poor creature was a mess. And suddenly she felt herself opening to her, she wanted to embrace her and say, It’s all right, it’s all right.
“It’s all right,” Maggie said.
“Tell me about your course. I could never get a Ph.D. but I’d love to hear about it.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” Maggie said. Reluctantly at first, but then with a degree of enthusiasm, Maggie told about her years at Harvard, the terrors of the qualifying exams, the discovery that she had a feeling for the form of the novel, particularly the Jane Austen novel. That was before they had made all those movies, of course. It all seemed so remote now. Form analysis of the kind she engaged in was no longer interesting. No longer valid, even. So she was trying to get a grip on the newest criticism, but it didn’t seem to be criticism at all. It seemed to be some new form of writing that rose from philosophy … She felt a moment of panic.
“And I’m older, of course, too old for this,” Maggie said. She reached for her Coke and discovered the glass was empty. Her hand had begun to shake.
Dixie was staring at the shaking hand. She had seen Maggie take a pill with her Coke. “You’re not old,” she said.
“Time to go,” Maggie said, and gathered her books and left.
That night, as they watched the news, Maggie waited for an advertisement and then clicked the mute button on the remote control. “Listen,” she said. “I know you can’t talk about this because she’s your patient, but I want to say something so please just hear me through. It took a great deal of courage for me to go and see that fool Chairman of the English Department and it took me a great deal more to actually go to class today. So I don’t want you telling anybody about it. I regard it as a secret and I expect you to respect that. So please, please don’t go telling anybody else about my private life.”
Philip blushed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes you do. And I know you can’t talk about it because of confidentiality, but what about confidentiality with me, Philip? What about my privacy? Suppose I can’t do it and I have to drop out? Suppose I can’t figure out what the hell they’re talking about and I have to give up? Do you think I want everybody to know I tried to do it and couldn’t? Do you have any idea what that kind of failure feels like? No, you don’t, because you’ve never failed at anything. You just waltz from success to success, getting degrees and jobs and fucking Goldman Chairs, and being a saint to your women patients and a god to all the rest, and you don’t have any idea what it’s like to fail. And then you do this to me. The only thing I’ve got, the only thing, and it’s secret and I may fail at it, it’s very hard, it’s impossible, and you go and tell someone about it! How could you! How could you!”
Philip leaned over to put his arm around her.
“I didn’t do it,” he said. “I didn’t tell her.”
She pulled away from him and ran upstairs to their bedroom.
Later, much later, he went up to her, fearing what he would find. She might be unconscious with pills or booze or, God help us, with both. Or she might be fighting mad, and vicious.
She was sitting in the lady chair by the window, deep into Hegel. Her forehead was creased with a frown and she did not hear him come in. He stood there watching her.
“I didn’t tell her,” he said.
She put her finger on the page to mark her place and, distracted, looked up at him and smiled.
“I don’t know the woman,” he said.
“I’m gonna get this if it kills me,” she said, and went back to her book.
Philip went downstairs, pleased, and guilty.
10
It was three weeks now since the break-in and Philip was dealing with his guilt by writing a short essay on mood swings and manic depression. He had written three pages. It was a very trendy subject, what with all the half-assed talk about the miracle of personality changes effected by Prozac and the other mood elevators. Take a pill and, voilà, you’re an extrovert. Take another and become a talk show host. Take three and become a movie star. The new drugs were wonderful, no doubt about it, but they operated totally within nature. They made the depressions less low, the manic highs less high. But they did not create a new person. They left you with all your free will intact, for good or for ill. As always you were stuck with what you were.
He read through what he had written and saw that it was bad. Ugly prose. Galumphing sentences. A cliché, which he struck out at once. He read it again, slowly, and thought for a while. Then he crumpled the pages together and tossed them into the wastebasket.
He glanced at the clock: time for a drink before bed. He went into the kitchen to pour himself a scotch.
He had left the car parked in the driveway. Nothing deliberate about that; he just hadn’t felt like putting it in the garage. Yes, yes, he knew what he’d say if a patient told him that. Still.
Maggie had been doing well in the past week. No drink to speak of. He couldn’t be sure about the pills. She was sleeping lighter, of course; that was to be expected if she was truly off the booze. Some mornings she was awake before he was. Did she know about his night rides?
When Calvin Stubbs had told him to do something for Maggie, that even Beecher had noticed her drinking, Philip said yes, yes, he was doing what he could. But he was doing nothing except waiting and hoping. Going back for her Ph.D. might be the answer. He hoped.
Maggie had said nothing about school since the blowup over Dixie. She studied all the time, compulsively, and he tried to draw her out on what she was reading and how classes were going. Finally she told him he could read one of her papers, but not now, later, she’d tell him when, and in the meantime would he just stop pressuring her! Yes, he said, yes, okay.
He looked out at the car parked in the driveway. He could go for a little drive.
He finished his scotch and went upstairs. Maggie was sleeping soundly. He stood in the doorway looking at her. She was beautiful still, young enough to do anything she wanted, smart, talented, and yet she could not come out into the real world and play. She had all the instincts and angers of confirmed feminism but no self-assurance. She was one of the wounded, the damaged. Was he responsible?
Why, he wondered, had she loved him in the first place?
He knew why he had loved her. She made him laugh, she made him feel like a normal, sexy, attractive male, she made him feel he mattered. He could tell her anything, everything, and it was all right. But of course he hadn’t told her everything. He hadn’t t
old her about breaking into houses.
She was still sleeping soundly. He could go downstairs and get in the car and drive over to the Kizers and … and what? Look around. Flirt with disaster. Tempt the gods.
Why not, really?
Why not.
He closed the door softly behind him and made his way across the lawn to the driveway. He was at the car, key in hand, when he noticed a small dark MG across the street, parked one house down. In this neighborhood almost nobody parked on the street. Nor did he recognize the car. As he stood there looking, it seemed to him there was someone sitting behind the wheel. He walked down the driveway, slowly, and as he moved across the street toward the car, the headlights snapped on and the engine turned over and the car lurched suddenly and started up. Philip stared as it took off, weaving crazily down the street. He was still staring as the driver made a slow U-turn and drove back toward him and came to a stop. He approached the car. It was, of course, Dixie.
“Hello,” he said.
She rolled down the window but she did not look at him.
“Hello,” he said again, more softly.
“You must think I’m crazy,” she said, still not looking.
“Are you okay?”
She turned to him then, her eyes huge, frightened.
“I’m sorry I upset you by … what I did,” he said.
He said, “I didn’t mean to. Upset you.”
And he said, “I didn’t know you’d be there.”
She gave a sort of laugh. “I live there.”
“I thought you’d be asleep.”
“I never sleep.”
“Well, I’m sorry.”
She said nothing for a while and then she whispered something he couldn’t hear.
“What?”
“I’ve waited. Every night since.”
“No,” he said. “No.”
“I have.”
“We’ll have to talk. I’ll have to explain. It’s all my fault.”
“You think I’m a fool, don’t you?”
“No, it’s my fault.”
“I am though. I’m a fool for coming here like this. I’m so ashamed.”
“Please,” he said. “Please listen.”
“I could kill myself. I should.”
“Listen to me, Dixie,” he said, but the sound of the engine drowned out his voice and he stood there in the middle of the street watching the MG disappear around a corner.
He went inside the house and had another drink. He thought, and thought some more, and then he went upstairs and got into bed.
“Did you go for a walk?” Maggie asked.
“Just a little one,” he said, and they lay side by side for a long time before either of them fell asleep.
The moment he saw her in that car, fearful, desperate, Philip knew what he had to do. He had to put the blame where it belonged, on himself, and he had to urge Dixie to get a good therapist and tell him or her everything, and he had to act immediately. He phoned her the next morning and invited her to lunch. He was determined there would be nothing clandestine about this and so he arranged to meet her in the hospital cafeteria. If people made comments, well, let them. It was best that he say what had to be said in the most public place imaginable, with doctors and nurses and staff all around them. Her life was at stake and he would simply have to risk his own. He had brought it on himself.
Now they had finished eating—neither had eaten more than a few bites—and Philip leaned forward and made his little speech.
“This is an apology, Dixie,” he said, “although I realize no apology is possible or adequate. I did something foolish and irresponsible and—there’s no other word—absolutely crazy. Crazy. I let myself into your house in the middle of the night, no, I broke into your house in the middle of the night for no reason on earth except some part of me wanted to do something … wrong. Something forbidden.”
“Something criminal,” she said.
“Something criminal,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “Sometimes I want to kill.”
He stared at her.
“Why did you do it?” she asked. “Was it …?”
“It was crazy,” he said. “That’s all, it was just crazy.” They were silent for a moment. “Well, I’m sorry.”
She smiled and said nothing.
And then, though he wanted not to, he asked, “Did you tell Hal? Does Hal know?”
“I thought it must be a dream,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
“Hal’s at a conference. In Denver.”
Philip knew that.
“And yourself,” he said, “are you all right?”
“I’m all right,” she said.
“I mean, you struck me the other night for instance, at the Apergarters’, well, as tense? Is tense the right word?”
“I don’t sleep well, and sometimes I have a drink before bed to help me sleep, and …” She looked down and her face went pale and he wanted to reach over and touch her.
“Maybe you should talk to someone? See someone. Do you think?”
“A shrink, you mean?”
“Well, yes, or a clergyman or a doctor. But someone.”
“I’m done with shrinks.”
“Well, think about it.”
“You’re very kind,” she said. “You are. Truly.”
They looked at one another, embarrassed suddenly, and Philip got up. “You were good, Dixie,” he said, “to come in and have lunch with me. And to listen to me fumble through an explanation. And I hope this puts the matter to rest. Okay? I hope so, at least. I feel I owe you something more than an apology, so if there’s anything I can do for you, ever, you must feel free to ask.” His voice went on and he half listened to it and marveled yet again at the power of the brain to be both present and absent at the same time, to produce words that expressed all the right and necessary things while pondering the question, Is this pity or love I feel and does the difference matter?
“Awfully nice seeing you,” he said.
“Very nice,” she said.
And they shook hands.
It was only a little after midnight when he stood outside the door and felt above the ledge for the key. He didn’t need it. The door had been left unlocked. He passed through the entryway, the kitchen, the dining room. He paused. His breath caught in his throat and his heart began to beat faster. He entered the living room and moved to the piano and beyond it. Dixie was out there, lying on the wicker couch.
He stood in the doorway and looked at her. She sat up on the couch but said nothing.
He moved toward her, sat down, and kissed her lightly on the lips. She returned his kiss. They sat with their arms around one another, sad, silent. She was shaking.
“I’m not very good at this,” he said.
“Neither am I,” she said.
And so, incredibly, they made love.
11
Hal poured himself another cup of coffee. He had made his breakfast—scrambled eggs and sausage—and he had eaten it, rinsed the dishes, and stacked everything in the dishwasher. Now it was coffee time; time to think through his day.
Patients in the morning, three of them, each touching in his own way. First he’d see James, sexual dysfunction masquerading as manic depression. Then Edgar, whom he had seen twice and who so far had not spoken. It would be fun to get him talking finally. Then Cato, the real thing, with highs that were so wild and exhilarating he wouldn’t let go of them, not even to be sane. Of course, the lows were so low that they were bound to end in suicide eventually, but try convincing Cato of that. Hal envied Cato those highs; he couldn’t help it. He loved his work. If only people could accept themselves and enjoy it, there’d be a lot less misery in this world.
Lunch with the residents. They did a lot of sucking up and they made wild attempts to get his attention and hold it, but still they were good kids. He’d have to watch himself though, because he knew all that sucking up was bad for his ego. It wasn’t right to trade
on their need to impress. He hated to admit it, but more than once lately he’d caught himself pontificating, not an attractive quality.
Not attractive either to light out at Dixie whenever they were in public. Why did he do that? He made a mental note.
Business meetings after lunch and more futile attempts to slash the budget. A proposal to consolidate off-campus and on-campus clinics. New computing systems to replace clerical help. Oh sure, good luck. Every time they tried stuff like that, they ended up doubling the size of the staff. Then he’d have some research time—a good afternoon stretch of three or four hours—then a shower, a drink with Dixie, and the obligatory dinner at the Gaspards. Poor old Gaspard would repeat all his daughter’s molestation charges and refute them one by one and then start all over again. He’d ask for advice and not listen. He’d ramble and denounce and drink. And then they’d all be able to go home.
And then. And then. Off to Boston for a sex seminar with Theda. Do me, do me, like you done done done before. If only Dixie could realize this wasn’t just kinky; it was serious stuff; it was taking him somewhere important. It could be sweeter than anything she ever imagined. Sweet.
Inspired, he rinsed his coffee cup and put it in the dishwasher. He went to the cabinet, took down the jar of maple syrup, and dipped his index finger in it. He went upstairs to Dixie. He’d show her how sweet.
She was sleeping with her face turned toward the door. He approached the bed, and with his left hand he pulled the sheet down from her shoulders. Lightly, carefully, he lowered the strap of her nightgown until her right breast was exposed. It was perfect, beautifully shaped, with great tone. She was, in looks at least, a really sexy woman. He rubbed the maple syrup on the exposed nipple, making circles, tracing the lines and ridges, slowly. Dixie opened her eyes and looked at him. He smiled at her. She was startled, but she did not move. She watched what he was doing. He lowered his face to her breast, lapped at the nipple, softly, then eagerly. He looked up at her and smiled. “Sweet?” he asked. He lapped the nipple and then he grazed it with his teeth, lightly, a puppy nip, and lapped it again. He bit down, just a little, barely at all, and he was going with the moment, he was hard now, it was good now, and it was going to get better. Another little bite. And then she ruined everything. She screamed and tried to push him away. She began to cry.
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