by Art Bourgeau
Mercanto followed him into the bar. John opened a bottle of Moretti and put it in front of him, opened a bottle of Lite for himself. When he saw Mercanto looking at it he patted his stomach. "Gotta watch my weight. Guess what, pasta'll put it on you."
Mercanto smiled, and John leaned across the bar. "I hear you got shot. Something to do with that case in the park . . ."
"Where’d you hear that?" Mercanto said, taking a sip of his beer
"Well, you know, people talk. How's Frank?"
"He’s in a pretty bad way . . . That's why I'm here. He isn't eating. Thought some of your good chow might cheer him up."
"Know what you mean, my uncle had the same thing. Tell you what. We’ll make him some nice Zuppa Pavese with a little cheese, some poached eggs, chicken broth. Good for the stomach. Then a little Penne allarrabbiata with some bacon and tomatoes. He doesn't need a cream sauce. It won’t hold up, you’ll see. A little red sauce will be better. It's hardier, stay with him. We’ll make enough for you, too."
He called Dee and gave her the order. When she'd gone he leaved across the bar. "That fellow who was killed . . . used to be a customer here. Nice guy, fixed my glasses for me once . . . Understood whoever did it did him up pretty badly."
"People talking again . . ." Mercanto said. There were no secrets in the Italian community. Everyone you went to school with was either a restaurant owner, a cop, a judge, a contractor, a Mafioso or a doctor, and they all kept in touch.
Mercanto filled him in, including the mutilation John had heard about.
"So what do you think?"
"Right now, I don't know," Mercanto said. "It's the mutilation that makes it so tough. I keep coming back to it. Either it's crazy, or some sort of ritual . . ."
John took off his glasses and wiped them on a towel. "Ritual . . . you mean like in that movie Serpent and the Rainbow . . . God, that picture made me want to throw up."
"That was Haitian. I’m thinking more in the neighborhood of Jamaica, but you've got the general idea."
"Jamaican, Haitian, it's all the same to me. I’ve been to Puerto Rico and the Bahamas, that's all I know. Maybe you ought to check it out."
Mercanto took a pull on his beer. "I am, but it's going to be tough. I’m no longer officially on the case, I’m on sick leave so I have to be sort of careful. And anyway, this isn’t the sort of thing I can waltz into headquarters and start mouthing off about. People are sensitive these days."
John nodded his head and reached for his cigarettes. He started to put one in his mouth, then stopped. "That's the Caribbean, right . . ." When Mercanto said it was, he snapped his fingers. "Maybe I can help you. Bing, bing, bing . . . that museum, you know . . . the Braddon, they’ve got a big exhibit on the Caribbean. We're doing the food for a party they're having. They love us. The whole schmear. . . clams, mussels, maybe four or five kinds of pasta, antipasto, the works . . . I was talking to the director the other day . . ." He rummaged around behind the bar until he found a business card. "Real nice woman. An expert on the Caribbean, I understand."
"Oh . . . ?" Mercanto took the card from him.
"People talk . . . what can I say?"
Mercanto looked at the card. On it was the name Erin Fraser.
CHAPTER 14
SOMEHOW MARGARET made it through the rest of the afternoon after her lunch with Charles, delaying going home as long as possible, and then finding the house dark when she got there. Adam no doubt was "out" for the evening with his Twinkie.
As she went from room to room turning on lights, the emptiness of the house spoke more tellingly than anything they could say to each other. She poured herself a brandy and went to change. Slipped on a long nightgown with an Empire line, but when she saw herself in the mirror the sight repulsed her. The soft material and lace covering her heavy breasts were too sexy. That sure wasn't how she felt. Charles and Adam had seen to that. Tears began, she wiped them away angrily. She chose a shapeless sweatsuit and pinned up her hair. She made scrambled eggs, something her mother always fixed for her when she was sick as a child, then went to a corner of the sofa in the study where she spent the rest of the evening, a blanket over her lap. Vivaldi played on the stereo. About eight the phone rang. When she answered no one was there. The same thing happened a half-hour later. When it happened a third time she turned the bell off.
It occurred to her that her life was like one of those tapestries Loring had described, only in her case a key thread had come undone and the whole thing was unraveling around her. It hurt like hell.
Could it be that good for Adam with his nineteen-year-old? She had never denied him anything sexually. What could this girl do that was so different, so much better? (Besides being younger, she thought, and dismissed it.)
And how could Charles so cavalierly dismiss her relationship with him, or at least seem to . . . didn’t the years count for anything there either? Or was he like Adam, looking for new, more desirable subjects . . .
Several times during the evening she had looked at the phone, sure that it had rung again and again, even though the bell was off. Was it a crank call, as Adam claimed? Was it the girl — but Adam was with her, wasn't he? Was it Loring, was he trying to tell her that she had somehow failed him, too?
Had she, in fact?
Around midnight she gave up and went to bed but she couldn't sleep. Much later Adam came home. She was still awake but pretended sleep. He got into bed, and she waited, hoping that he was drunk, that that was why he was out. If he'd only touch her, even roughly, that would be fine, just as long as he touched her. He didn’t.
* * *
In her office next morning she heard the bell announcing the next patient. Loring. She touched her hair, adjusted the collar of her blouse, annoyed that she looked like she felt, exhausted. When she opened the door Loring looked exhausted too. Strangely, it made her feel better.
Loring caught her half-smile. just like his mother when she'd come to his bedroom that night to try to explain what he'd seen her doing — an it's-our-secret kind of smile. "Sometimes men need to . . ." she'd said as she sat on the edge of his bed. He remembered her smell. He thought he smelled it now as he went past Margaret.
His coldness didn't surprise Margaret. After that scene when she sent him away she expected it. What surprised her was its intensity, almost like an aura around him.
She followed him into the office and sat down behind her desk, automatically reaching for her cigarettes, lighting one as sort of an unspoken communication between them. As usual, his eyes followed her movements.
He said, "It's Marguerite, not Margaret."
Puzzled, she knew better than to ask. Wait, she instructed herself.
He looked at her like he was seeing her for the first time. Today her hair cascading down onto her shoulders, her gold hoop earrings, the blueness of her eyes did not move him.
"Marguerite was the woman Faust sold his soul to the devil for. . . not Margaret."
At least his words didn't signify outright rejection, as in "I-don't-like-you-anymore,-I-don’t-want-to-see-you-again." A more subtle shift was going on, more like she wasn't worth what he had thought. And had betrayed him. . .
She tried to accept it professionally. It was altogether natural after what had happened. "I understand that you’re angry with me for sending you away. Shall we talk about that?"
Loring looked around the room. It felt hostile to him. No longer were the blues and grays their cave, their fort together.
"What's to talk about?"
"How did you feel when I told you I couldn't see you?" When he didn’t reply, she said, "Were you angry, hurt?"
When he looked at her he drew back slightly like he was farsighted and trying to get her into focus. "I don’t get angry. I don’t make scenes. I just get things done."
She drew on her cigarette. An interesting response. His denial of his anger again confirmed it, though he wasn't unwilling to acknowledge it openly. "By getting things done, you mean get even?"
&n
bsp; He shook his head. Sometimes talking to her was like talking to a child. "No, that's not what I mean. Getting even is living in the past. By definition the best you can expect is to regain status quo, but in so doing you waste a lot of time and energy that could be directed elsewhere, so you never get even, you’re always behind."
He was enjoying the lecture, she thought. Reversing roles.
"Go on," she said.
"What I'm saying is that life is made up of self-contained incidents, like a fight. When one incident is over you add up whether you won or lost and move on to the next thing. The key is to not look back."
She’d never heard a patient give a more telling definition of sublimation. "Is that what you intend to do now. . . move on, pretend that what happened between us never really happened?"
He looked at the couch, again seeing her there with that look on her face when he opened the door. "It happened," he said through clenched teeth.
"That’s right, it did. What's important is how you felt when it did."
He turned to look at her. "You're starting to sound like a nag. I'm trying to explain things to you. One intelligent person to another. Why do you always insist on trying to personalize things when there's really nothing between us to personalize?"
His words had an effect. She understood at least some of his anger, but she needed a moment to regain control. "What happens here between us is not clinical. You can’t progress by denying it. Life isn't a series of small compartments. Sometimes they spill over, sometimes it’s messy. That's what .we’re here to deal with. Now tell me how you felt."
"There's nothing to talk about."
God, like Adam and Charles to her. "Yes, there is. You're angry you're trying to shut me out. This is not something that happened fifteen or twenty years ago, this is fresh, and we are going to talk about it." She paused, needing to get her own emotions under control. "Now once again, what did you feel when I told you I couldn't see you?"
The way she said it, the tone, had the crack of a whip in it.
He gripped the arm of the chair. White showed around the center of his eyes. His heart was pounding. It wasn’t Margaret in front of him, it was his mother sitting there. "That you were a whore . . . satisfied!"
"Why?" she asked, although it didn't surprise her. What he was saying fitted with his earlier remarks about women. Two categories — madonnas and whores. No middle ground where most real women lived . . .
Mother was still in front of him, smoking, that knowing look on her face. "No . . . that's not right, I didn’t mean that."
"I think you did. What makes me a whore . . . that you saw me with another patient . . . that I was rejecting you . . . or that I had the capacity to care about more than one person?"
He looked at the couch again. "You enjoyed it . . ." he blurted out, thinking how his mother wallowed in the excitement of it, hating her for it, wanting to be part of it.
"And I betrayed you by enjoying it," she said. "Would you have felt differently if the patient you saw me with was another woman instead of a man?"
"I don’t know. How should I know?" It was less a challenge than a cry for help, for an ally.
Margaret sensed this and moved to reassure him. "What you felt is normal. What happens here, the feelings we share and explore, it’s natural to feel jealousy or anger or both at the sight of me with another patient. There’s nothing wrong with that. All I wanted you to do was to express those feelings. Being angry doesn’t make me think less of you. On the other hand, I have a full practice. There are others who have a claim on me and my help. That's why I couldn’t allow you to interrupt, and intrude on one of those patients’ time."
He turned and looked at her. His mother wasn’t there. How could he even have thought that? It was Margaret, and she looked tired. Wrong to think badly of her. Margaret was beautiful, the way her hair caught the light, the way it lay on her shoulders, her only jewelry the wide gold hoop earrings he'd seen her wear before. Her blouse was open at the throat. He let his eyes travel down to her breasts. His own nipples began to tingle as he looked at the outline of her breasts under her blouse. He knew how he would touch them. Gently, softly, stroking them, letting the warm good feeling take her over . . . He thought about her husband. Even though she’d never talked about him, he was sure she had one. He thought about what she felt when he made her do it . . . hoped it wasn't the same as with his stepfather . . . that he was gentle and respectful. Never mind, even if he was, Loring knew he hated him.
Through his thoughts he heard her say, "When you came, there was something you wanted to talk to me about. What was it?"
Her words drew him back to the present. "My dream . . .I came to tell you about it." When she didn't speak, he quickly added, "You always want to know about them."
"Yes, tell me about it."
"It was one of those dreams that was so real you thought it was actually happening. You know how sometimes you have nightmares like that. That's how this one was . . ."
What was the best way to tell it? "I have a chair in my house, a club chair, and I dreamed I woke up in it . . . I often take naps in it . . . but this time I didn't know how I got there. When I looked down my hands were covered in blood. I stood up and looked in a mirror. My face was covered with blood, but I wasn't cut anywhere. No signs of violence. Nothing was out of place. Just me, covered in blood." He waited.
"How many times have you had this dream?"
"Three. Once after that day in the fitting room, and twice since then."
"Did anything out of the ordinary happen to you during the last few days?"
He didn't answer immediately. He didn't want to tell her about Wiladene forcing him to take Erin to the party. He knew there was nothing wrong with it, still he didn't want her to know. "Nothing except what happened between us," he finally said.
"Think back. What else did you do in the dream? Did you walk around, go outside, shower. . . what?"
He shook his head. "No, that’s all. I just got up and looked in the mirror."
"In the dream what were your feelings when you saw yourself like that . . . covered with blood?"
"I don't know . . . I guess afraid . . . afraid I'd done something wrong . . . the blood, I mean. Yes, that was it . . . fear. I was more afraid than I can ever remember, and I kept wondering what was happening to me."
"I don't think you need to worry. Was that the only reason you came?"
He was silent for a moment. Should he tell what else? About how he felt about her? "It was the dream . . . and to see you."
There, he’d done it. He’d made the crossover. He’d given himself to her.
Clinically, of course, it was transference. But still, his admission touched her. She knew how hard it was for him to make, a man who trusted so little.
"Thank you," she said, and he promptly took it as a sign. He watched her draw on her cigarette and exhale. Her movements pleased him. He could feel the burn of the smoke in his own lungs.
"Now about your dream," she was saying, now talking to him as an equal, a colleague. "Jung described man as a symbol-making animal. The blood in your dream, being covered with it, could mean several things. For instance, blood symbolizes family unity. We are blood-related, as people like to say. Blood covering you could mean that because of your sister's wedding you are being drawn back into an unpleasant family situation, forced to be a part of things you don't like . . . the way, for instance, you didn't like what you saw when you opened my office door. The fear you described came when you woke up in your dream and imagined some terrible deed was done."
She paused again to draw on her cigarette, giving him time for what she said to sink in.
When he said nothing, she went on. "Blood also can symbolize conflict. A fight for control, against losing control. Which can be very scary. The issue of control is one of the most difficult a therapist deals with. Its counterpart is trust. For therapy to work, a patient needs to trust the therapist enough to give up some of that control. And as I've
said, that can be terrifying to some people."
He said nothing.
"You're my last patient today, so I have a little extra time. I'd like to go back to the moment you opened the office door and saw me with the other patient. Try now to tell me everything you felt about it. Remember about trust. And that I’m not your adversary. I care about you. I’m the person you can say anything to."
"I can’t."
"Is it because I’m looking at you?" she said. He started at her words. Her perception startled him. The blue of her eyes told it all. She knew everything he was thinking. They were transmitting feelings through the air.
"Yes," he admitted.
"I want you to lie down on the couch. That way we won't be facing each other, and it will relax you — "
"But I want to see you."
"This time it would be better if you didn't. I want you to be able to clear your mind and let everything come out, without distractions."
The soft voice was caressing, it was like she was hypnotizing him. In her power, that's how she wants you. It frightened him until it dawned on him that he didn't care. The idea of giving up control, of her making the decisions, of him doing whatever she wanted seemed suddenly appealing. He went over to the couch and stretched out on it. Immediately his senses seemed heightened. Through his clothes he imagined he could feel the man he had seen on it, like sweat through the fabric.
Behind him he heard the rustle of Margaret's nylons as she came near and sat down just out of sight. The sound of her gave him goose bumps.
"Are you comfortable on the couch? Tell me how you feel now?" she said softly.
He smiled. "Like the fucking Rose of Shannon," he heard himself say, and was astonished. He couldn't believe he had said that word in front of her. But it felt delicious when he did.
"Good," she said, and he was sure she meant it, that she was smiling too. "Now start at the beginning and tell me everything you felt."
"When I opened the door and saw you sitting there . . . you looked guilty . . . like I'd just caught you doing. . . something."
