by Laura Zigman
“Ben just came in here and told me to contact Dr. Goodall. No one’s paid this much attention to this shitty magazine since … well … ever. He wants the next article to run earlier than June.”
“Fuck!” I started to panic.
“Look. Don’t panic. We’ll have dinner at your place tonight and figure it out.”
“But Eddie will be there.”
“Fine. We’ll pick his brain and see if he has any brilliant ideas.”
“So what do you think?” Joan asked Eddie when we were all back at the apartment. “Are men driven by insecurity and low self-esteem? Do they act out of the fog of their own confusion?”
I had told him that she was coming over, and much to my surprise he’d offered to cook—probably to show off his dormant couple skills to someone he could possibly impress.
Eddie looked up at me and Joan and shrugged. He had just stuffed half a stick of butter into the cavity of a chicken and was now rubbing the other half over the chicken’s skin. “Who wants to know?”
Joan and I exchanged glances. “We were just wondering what you thought about that piece a few weeks ago in Joan’s magazine, the one by that doctor you were trying to track down for Diane.”
“I liked her name,” he said.
“Anything else?” Joan said, getting edgy.
“I thought it was interesting, but I think there were a few things that weren’t entirely accurate.”
“Like what?” Joan and I blurted at the same time.
Eddie looked at us and lit a Camel. “Like the New-Cow theory. I think there’s a counterpart to that.” We looked at him expectantly while he took a bong hit off his cigarette. “The New-Bull theory.”
“Yes, we know,” Joan said. “We read the Op-Ed piece too, and I’m sure there are some wild women out there, but you know as well as I do that women don’t cheat anywhere as much as men do.”
“I agree,” I said, and Eddie looked at us.
“Well maybe not as much, but they do cheat,” he said.
Joan squeezed a lime wedge into her vodka and stirred the ice with her finger. “What makes you such an expert? From what I hear you’ve been too busy playing the field to notice.”
Eddie took a sip of Scotch. “Because Rebecca was seeing someone else.”
“She was?” I asked. “While you were living together?”
“No,” Eddie said, pouting like a baby. “After we split up.”
“The answer is: Skinner’s rats.”
It was after dinner, and Joan and I had gone into the living room once Eddie had closed his door and gone to bed. When she didn’t reply, I rephrased the Jeopardy! answer into a question.
“Why do men advance and retreat during a relationship and even after they’ve dumped you?” Like Ray had with me.
Joan sighed and reached for a cigarette. “To get to the other side?”
“Look, I’m sorry if I’m boring you, but this second article was your brilliant idea, remember?”
“You’re not boring me. You never bore me. I would very much like to know the answer to that question.”
“It’s about evolutionary psychology,” I said, then ducked in through the curtain to my room for the file and came back out.
“I can’t believe you sleep in there,” Joan said.
“Neither can I.”
“Then, why don’t you move? Get your own place. Take your furniture out of storage so you can have more than just a futon bed to call your own.” She stopped herself. “Like I should talk. Practically all I have in my apartment is a futon bed too.”
“And leave now? In the middle of my research? No way.”
“Of course,” Joan said. “I almost forgot.”
I sat down and opened the file. “Okay, B. F. Skinner did all these experiments with rats. In one experiment he tested dispensing food to rats via a food-pellet dispenser that had a bar on it that the rats could hit to make a pellet drop down into the cage. The experiment focused on how the rats would react when the predictability with which the machine released the pellets varied.”
Joan exhaled. “Continue.”
“If a rat hit the bar and the food always came, the rat would quickly become bored and lose interest. It was too easy. Too predictable. Hit the bar, food! Hit the bar, food! It wasn’t enough of a challenge.”
Joan exhaled again. And began to study her split ends.
“If the rat hit the bar and the food never came, the rat would get angry and frustrated and also lose interest. It was too hopeless, too discouraging. Hit the bar, hit the bar, hit the bar, no food! Hit the bar, hit the bar, hit the bar, no food! The rat would get depressed and stop trying.”
I reached out my fingers for a drag off Joan’s cigarette before continuing. “But, if the food was dispensed sporadically, randomly, unpredictably, the rat would become frenzied. Hit the bar, hit the bar, hit the bar, food! Hit the bar, hit the bar, hit the bar, no food! Hit the bar, hit the bar, hit the bar, still no food! Hit the bar, hit the bar, hit the bar, food food food! The more randomly the rat was rewarded, the more obsessive it became.”
Joan didn’t move and didn’t blink. “It’s the chase thing again. Playing hard to get. They love that.”
“She hates me, she hates me not.”
“Why is that so damn hard to remember?”
“I know.” I went back to my file.
“What? More?” Joan said.
“Gynogenetic reproduction,” I said.
Joan tried to pronounce the word, but she couldn’t.
“Gy-no-gen-e-tic reproduction,” I repeated. “The method of reproduction of female species that reproduce clonally using their own DNA but rely on the sperm of males from closely related species to spark the formation and development of the embryo.”
“I have no idea what you just said.”
“Scientists could never understand why a male would engage in sex without the possibility of siring offspring. Producing sperm is a very big expense metabolically, and mating in general is dangerous—and males, of course, aren’t exactly known for their altruism. But what they’ve found is that when male fish called sailfin mollies mate with the females of a related but gynogenetic species called Amazon mollies, the males become much more attractive to the females of their own species.”
I paused. “You see,” I continued, “the Amazon mollies look enough like female sailfin mollies to convince the female sailfins that when they see a male sailfin courting and mating with an Amazon, what they’re seeing is a sailfin mating. And the females are attracted by sexually successful males. Therefore a male sailfin that bothers to help a female of another species reproduce ends up with a surplus of females for himself.”
Joan stubbed out her cigarette and recrossed her legs. “Too confusing. Are you saying that Jason got involved with me for the express purpose of attracting someone else?”
“More like Ben staying with you to attract other women. Or Ray staying with Mia to attract me. Or George Costanza wearing a wedding ring. It’s kind of like there’s something in it for them if they appear to be domestic—if they appear to be attached to another woman.”
“More sympathetic. More comfortable or experienced at being a couple.”
“Right.”
Joan sounded relieved, and then she sounded excited. “You had me worried for a minute there, but that’s our second article.”
“You think?”
“Yes, I think. And I’m going to leave now before you miss your flight back to the Institute.”
RAY’S OLD-NEW COW
On the 5th of September, 1379, as two herds of swine, one belonging to the commune and the other to the priory of Saint-Marcel-le-Jeussey, were feeding together near that town, three sows of the communal herd, excited and enraged by the squealing of one of the porklings, rushed upon Perrinot Muet, the son of the swinekeeper, and before his father could come to his rescue, threw him to the ground and so severely injured him that he died soon afterwards. The three sows, after due process of law,
were condemned to death; and as both the herds had hastened to the scene of the murder and by their cries and aggressive actions showed that they approved of the assault, and were ready and even eager to become particeps criminis, they were arrested as accomplices and sentenced by the court to suffer the same penalty.
—E. P. Evans
The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals
If this were a scene in the screenplay of my life, some twenty-three-year-old studio executive would make me take it out.
“Over the top,” they would have pronounced.
“Too obvious.”
“Too deus ex machina.”
“You can do better.”
But I didn’t make it up. It’s true. And it would definitely be restored in the director’s cut.
It really happened.
And because it really happened, it became, as we embittered loser monkey scientists like to say, material.
The day I’m referring to is the day that I saw Evelyn walking down the hall at work wearing Ray’s shirt.
The light-blue-and-white-striped long-sleeved T-shirt.
The one I had bought for him on a warm Sunday afternoon in late August the weekend after we’d seen the apartment in Chelsea.
It was just about a week after my second article had appeared, and I was finally starting to enjoy the media buzz it had generated. That Friday morning I had awoken with an unusual amount of vim and vigor, and I had raced to the office propelled by the private and premature self-congratulatory belief that my homegrown form of therapy seemed to be working:
I, Dr. Marie Goodall, was a Nobel-Prize-worthy genius. Maybe Larry King would agree to interview me in disguise. Or, better yet, Barbara Walters.
That’s when I saw the shirt.
I will never forget standing there in the hall watching Evelyn walk toward me in that shirt, and how I nodded good morning to her as if nothing were wrong, and how I made myself start walking again before she noticed that my insides were caving in. Whatever progress I had made drained out of me suddenly and completely.
She was wearing his shirt.
I couldn’t think about the rest of it yet.
I sat down at my desk.
My hands were shaking.
Adrenaline was coursing through my body at lightning speed, and I was afraid I might faint or that my heart would explode. I stood up and shut my door, and then I sat back down at my desk and stared at the phone.
An hour later I picked up the receiver.
And dialed Ray’s extension.
We made small talk for a minute or two, and then somehow I think I finally said, Evelyn is wearing your shirt. The shirt I gave you, and he said, I know, and then I said, Are you two seeing each other? and he said, Yes, I guess we are.
We were silent. How long have you known? he said, and then, to save face, even though by that point I didn’t have much of it left to save, I said, For a while I guess, but I was never really sure.
So, do you hate me? he asked, and I said, I don’t know, I don’t think so, and then he said, I’m glad. I would hate it if you hated me.
He made a joke then, or maybe I made one, I’m not sure which now, and sometime after that we hung up. I remember staring at the phone and watching it ring a little while later though I couldn’t hear it, and that Carla came to my door and told me Joan was holding.
I watched my hand pick up the receiver, and then I felt my lips moving as I told Joan what had happened.
“Jesus,” she said.
“I feel like I’m going to throw up. Like I’m … Like everything is …” I had no idea how to finish the sentence, so I didn’t.
“Jesus,” Joan said again. “What are you going to do?”
The nausea passed, but a deep, crushing feeling that I was rapidly losing ground—that I was regressing and that a major setback was imminent—replaced it. “I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t talk right now.”
“Listen to me. Don’t do anything stupid, okay?”
I was silent.
“Jane? I’ll call you later at home. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said finally, and hung up.
Then I closed my door and proceeded to smoke myself through the next six hours.
At the end of the day, after everyone had cleared out for their summer beach weekends, Eddie stuck his head in my doorway.
“Are you ready to leave?”
I looked up at him. “Leave?” I thought for a second or two. “No, actually. I have a few things to finish up. I’ll see you at home later.”
“I probably won’t be there.”
I said nothing.
“Are you okay?” Eddie asked.
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“You look …”
“I’m just tired,” I said. “Long day. Long week.” I lit a cigarette and started shuffling papers around on my desk. “I’ll see you later.”
After an hour I went into Ray’s office and ransacked his desk, went through his drawers, through all his papers, and when I found no traces of Evelyn, I ransacked Evelyn’s desk.
Did I say setback? This was more like a psychotic break.
And there, in the back of her top drawer, where she kept pencils and pens and loose change, I found her date book from the past year. I took the date book back to my office and shut the door, and then I sat down and flipped through the pages, back to the fall before the January that Ray and I had met:
September.
October.
November.
Haircut.
Gym.
Parents in town.
December.
January.
February.
Dentist.
Chiropractor.
Ballet.
March.
April.
May.
Dinner with R.
Bike ride with R.
Movie with R.
June.
Dinner with R.
Central Park with R.
Mercer St.
I felt my mouth drop open. They had been seeing each other before us—right before us, I realized. Right up until the night before the hair imitation.
I continued flipping the pages:
July through October (while Ray and I were seeing each other and right after we stopped).
Nothing.
November.
December.
Nothing.
January.
Weekend at R’s parents.
February.
March.
April.
Picnic.
Yale w/R for reunion.
Weekend in Montauk.
They had been seeing each other all year—all year, those motherfuckers!—going to movies and reunions and fucking Montauk while I had been moping around Eddie’s apartment, with my different kinds of sadness, reading all those fucking books on monkeys!
But it didn’t make sense.
Evelyn wasn’t a New Cow: She was technically an Old Cow.
Like Mia.
Like me.
Only he had stayed with Mia and gone back to Evelyn.
Unlike me.
I couldn’t think about that now—the idea that the New-Cow theory was invalid—so I xeroxed the relevant pages of Evelyn’s date book, returned the date book to her desk, grabbed a few accordion files from the supply cabinet on my way out, and went home, still boiling.
I emerged from the subway downtown and stopped at a liquor store around the corner from the apartment to pick up a pint of Jack Daniel’s. I opened the bottle and took several gulps from it before I’d even gotten home, and then, once inside, I continued to swig from it as I paced from the living room through the hole in my wall and back out again, trying to figure out what to do next.
I got my notebook.
MOTHERFUCKER! I wrote in big block permanent-black demented letters, like that inscription to Eddie in the commitmentphobia book, and recounted the day’s events in increasingly illegible handwriting.
Joan called several times while I was writing, leaving frantic messages on the machine wanting to know how I was and where I was, but I didn’t pick up the phone. I couldn’t talk yet. All I could do was drink and pace and write, trying to fit the smooth little pieces of the scenario back together: whether Ray had left me for Evelyn or had just started seeing her afterward because he was lonely; whether they’d been seeing each other for a while or it had started recently—and what the deal was with Mia. Whatever the correct scenario was, I couldn’t get over the fact that not only were they sleeping together but I, Dr. Marie Goodall, had not known.
But the most devastating part of it was that my research had obscured the biggest truth of all: that Ray had moved on—to someone else—and I had not.
I went into my room and picked up the manila envelope off the floor and dumped its contents onto the bed. Papers, photographs, poems, stupid little seaside souvenirs Ray had given me fell onto the blanket. For a minute I was tempted to throw it all out the window into the alley.
But I didn’t.
I wouldn’t.
It was evidence: evidence that our relationship had existed; evidence that I hadn’t been crazy—at least not then.
I opened one accordion file and put all the papers and photographs neatly into it and marked the front “EVIDENCE” in big black letters. Then I went to my desk and took all my notes—all my scraps of paper, all the xeroxed pages from books, all the newspaper and magazines articles, the list of Eddie’s girlfriends, all my notebooks and case files, and the pages I’d copied from Evelyn’s date book, and put them into two other accordion files marked “PROOF.”
I stared at the accordion folders.
Then I grabbed a yellow legal pad from my desk.
Like a drunk, determined “F. U.” Bailey, I addressed myself to the task of assessing damages with surprising clearheadedness, given my elevated blood alcohol level. And then I passed out.
JANE GOODALL V. RAY BROWN
Settlement Suit in Favor of Plaintiff
Defendant Ordered to Pay the Following Damages
Compensatory Damages:
To compensate for expenses incurred as a direct result of emotional and psychic injury:
Liquor:
1 pint Jack Daniel’s sour mash bourbon per week @ $7.50 per pint 390.00
