Lifelines

by Caroline Leavitt

  “You know, the thing was that I divorced Daniel for another reason, for something that had nothing to do with jealousy at all. It was sex. It just wasn’t right; I never really felt that we had a good fit. I mean, we’d walk the streets, looking like lovers and everything, but all the time, my eyes would be sliding back and forth. I kept scanning those long streets for someone else, for a set of eyes that would spark against mine. I’d send out signals, my own charged-up chemicals. I loved Daniel. I really did, but I still wanted another pair of hands to be rubbing my back, any other mouth to be feeding on me. Every single night I’d pretend to be sleeping. I think I must have had a whole continent of headaches and stomach pains and colds. I’d rub my own throat raw just by coughing. I scratched the sound from my throat until I was hoarse. I got good at illness. Sometimes I could just get up in the morning and if I really concentrated, I could make my throat sore, I could give myself a baby of a fever.”

  She traced her neck with her fingers. “I used to wonder and worry why the sex wasn’t good. I mean, I loved him, didn’t I? How come I couldn’t love his body too? Look, you see how we are now, maybe it’s just easier to be friends now that I don’t have to slide into bed with him.” She glanced at Isadora. “Oh God, I didn’t mean to make you nervous. I love Daniel, but he’s just my best friend, not my lover.”

  “The Swimmer,” said Isadora. “Is it different with him?”

  “I feel The Swimmer’s hands on me even when they’re not,” said Allison, rubbing her bare forearms, shivering. “I breathe that one in like air.” She shook her head, she fiddled with the tag end of her braid. “Daniel once told me that my problem was simply an under supply of hormones. He said it could be fixed if I would go see someone.” She sighed. “Know why I don’t bring The Swimmer by that much? I couldn’t keep my hands off of him. I’d want to tear his jeans off and wrestle him down to the rug, animal hair and all. I think it would hurt Daniel, sensing that; I think it might make him feel as though something very crucial was missing in him, something he could do nothing about.”

  When Allison left, Isadora went home. She put three blue candles into the bedroom and lit them so that the shadows blurred along the wall. She fed all of the animals and put them outside, their noises rending the night. She changed the sheets on the bed and spritzed them with cheap perfume, and when Daniel came back into that house, she was pouring wine into jelly glasses. She wouldn’t let him speak. She went over to him and tumbled him down to the floor with her.

  It was nearing fall when Isadora finally bought herself a ticket home, hoping to thwart a visit by Duse. She didn’t like leaving Daniel, but he couldn’t get away. Allison helped her to pack, sitting on the bed, talking about Duse. “God,” said Allison, “how can you not be fascinated with a mother like that? All my mother does is stack recipe boxes along the kitchen counter.”

  Isadora stopped packing for a moment. “So does mine,” she said.

  13

  Madison had only one tiny airstrip for the planes, a small houselike structure for the people waiting for the arrivals, readying for their own departures. There were never more than five or six people waiting, never more than fifteen on the plane. When Isadora landed, her stomach bumpy from the rough flight, she could see Duse’s face pressed against the glass window, she could see Martin poised behind her. They swallowed her in hugs when she stepped out. She was reeling a little, and both their bodies pressing her in, steadied her. They made her sit in the front seat of the car, sandwiched in between both of them, and she heard all of the Madison news in a kind of befuddled stereo. She was glad to see them. The pulse of her love felt strong, regular.

  It felt odd coming back into that house, putting her suitcase into her old room. The house didn’t fit her anymore, it wasn’t sized right. She had grown away from it, and that first night, she didn’t hear any night noises the way she used to; nothing broke up the thick sweet quiet. She didn’t mind answering questions, telling about school, sketching out Ann Arbor for her mother, and the only thing that really unnerved her was when she stumbled upon Duse’s death file, back in the kitchen again, slid against the freezer like a recipe file.

  She spent her days walking, sitting in the kitchen with Duse, and in the evening, she rambled about the neighborhood with her father, matching her steps to his, looking around for the bats. It felt funny being with him again. She had never really been away from her parents, and now the distance she had created made her feel a little strange. She noticed the way he kept fleshing his hand along his scalp, rearranging the hair, and she was startled to see white threading its way through his dark curls.

  She visited him once at his office, for a teeth cleaning. She read the magazines (she never had money to buy all she wanted in Ann Arbor, and her choices—the glossies, the trash—embarrassed her because there was always too much of a chance of running into someone she knew. Daniel sometimes would buy them for her, setting them high up in a cupboard so the cats couldn’t chew the pages).

  He cleaned her teeth quickly. During a lull she asked him if he still hypnotized his patients. He stopped working, wiping his hands on a cloth. “Do you?” she said.

  “I stopped,” he said simply.

  “You did? But why? It always seemed like such an innovative wonderful thing to do.”

  He leaned against the counter. He said it was because of Duse. “Her clients started coming to me. But not because they thought I was a good dentist. That would have been all right. But because I was married to Duse, because some of what she did might have rubbed off on me somehow. I took them on at first. They’d perch in the chair, waiting. I didn’t notice anything, not at first, I was just so delighted that they actually asked to be hypnotized, that I didn’t have to go through that whole rigamarole about why it was healthier for them to be put under than to get their faces all puffed out with Novocain. I thought they were enlightened. But they took the science right out of hypnosis; they managed to make it as crazy as they were.” He sighed, he ran his hand along his hair.

  “I let my patients choose where they want to be when I put them under. I figure if I’m drilling their teeth, what do I care if they choose to loll on some hot beach or swim in a lake—why not? Well, I got this one woman who wanted me to hypnotize her into her past life. I thought I had heard her wrong. I asked her to repeat what she had said, and then she started explaining how she had read where you could be hypnotically regressed back into another lifetime, how you could even relive it. She wanted me to tape it so she could hear what she said, she even brought her own tape recorder with her that she set right in her lap. Well, that taping business irritated me. I told the woman I wouldn’t do it, that I would hypnotize her into a forest, a park, a beach, but that was that; I just didn’t do that other stuff. That was it. She got up. She said she didn’t give a damn how many of her teeth were rotting away, she wouldn’t sit for two minutes in a chair with a Neanderthal like me.” He snorted. “It happened again, a few other times, and then I told Duse to please, please, please not tell her clients to come to me when they needed a dentist. She was angry. She thought I was accusing her of something, and then she said that you could never really stop people from doing what they wanted to do, and that she could tell her clients not to come and see me until she was blue in the face, but they wouldn’t hear her. I could always be found, Duse said; there was the yellow pages, wasn’t there.”

  “That made you stop?” said Isadora. “I remember how you put me under for a few dates, how I loved that, and how mad I was at you when you stopped. You can’t stop hypnotizing your patients, though. All of your clients can’t come from Duse.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I doubt everyone now. I used to really love it when I got a new patient. I showed off. I made myself be extra delicate with the tools, extra smooth with my hands. I tried to move them as if drilling teeth was some ballet and I was the principal dancer. I talked, I tried to know my patients, but now I’m wary. I hate it that I’ve gotten that way, but I am. I
can’t even relax until it’s time for me to drill, time to ask if they need something for the pain. If they say no, or Novocain, then I relax, I’m fine again, but I tell you, Isadora, something clenches right up inside of me if they ask for hypnosis. I brace myself for all that talk about past lives. I used to love putting people under, I used to pride myself on what a science it was.”

  They were interrupted by the dental assistant, who smiled at Isadora and said that for just a moment she had thought it was Duse sitting in that chair. “No one else has hair that long and that red,” she said, and then she told Martin that there were a few patients waiting for him, and one was impatient with pain.

  “I’m finished here anyway,” Martin said. He took Isadora out front, one arm looped about her shoulder, and said that he would see her at dinner. She passed the waiting room and she watched his face when he stepped into that room. Three women were in chairs, two of them hunched toward one another, talking in voices so low and blurred that you couldn’t catch the sense. Martin, though, was suddenly suspicious. He asked if they had an appointment, and it wasn’t until he had pulled names out of them, until he knew exactly who had referred them, that he relaxed again, and then he waved Isadora goodbye.

  Duse told Isadora that she had canceled all of her clients because of the visit. “They can just get along without me for a while,” Duse said. She clasped Isadora’s hand, she said she wanted to read it. “I’ll do like I do with your father,” Duse warned. “I’ll creep right into your room at night and read it despite you.”

  “Oh, you will not,” said Isadora. She smiled.

  “Well—” said Duse. “Just let me see if you still have your star.”

  Duse kept up a patter of conversation when she took Isadora’s hand. She distracted her with questions about Daniel, about school. It wasn’t until she stubbed her finger into Isadora’s hand that Isadora jerked her arm back. “You still have it,” said Duse.

  “You getting along okay with Martin?” Isadora asked suddenly.

  “Of course I am. What do you mean?” said Duse. “He’s my destiny.”

  “Oh,” said Isadora, thinking, “as if that explained everything.”

  Isadora stayed only four days, and during that time, she called Daniel once. Duse was outside thonking wood clothespins into her wet line wash, and Martin was at work, so Isadora had the whole quiet kitchen to herself. She told Daniel she was having a good enough time and that she missed him, she was anxious to be home. “It is home to you now, isn’t it?” he said, pleased. When she hung up, she felt disconcerted, as if a piece of her center were missing. She got up and wandered about the house, trailing her hand along the cool white paint. It really wasn’t her house here, not anymore.

  She went into Duse’s room and dragged out the old photo albums, the prints that never made it into the picture gallery. She was peering at all those old prints, sprawling them across the length of bed. Her face was everywhere. She could see herself growing, taking on change with each exposure. There were no childhood pictures of Duse except for the paper-paged ones Duse had drawn in herself at five. She was looking at those when Duse came in, slanting her body over Isadora so that she, too, could see. “I remember drawing that,” said Duse. “Oh God, how I felt. I created myself back then. I had to. But you—Baby, you—I made sure you knew exactly who it was that you were.” Isadora looked up sharply at Duse. “I did it because I loved you,” said Duse. She was waiting for something—Isadora could sense it suspended in the air they were breathing. She watched Duse; her mind flickered back to the yellowed photos of Duse when she was pregnant, when she was carrying Isadora, her face mysterious and knowing and completely unknowable.

  “Well,” said Duse, in sudden brisk motion again, going to the window and peering out. “Your father should be here soon and we can zip you back to your plane. Want to stop and get some donuts to take back? You can eat yourself silly on the plane.”

  “I love you,” said Isadora. As soon as she had the words out, she saw the way Duse’s whole body relaxed, how it softened. “I know that,” said Duse. “I’ve always known.”

  Isadora was back in Ann Arbor, just resettling into her routine of classes and Daniel, when Duse called to tell her she had been invited to another talk show, this time a national program called ‘Tarty Living,” aired at midnight. “I hate those things,” said Duse. “I’d be one of six guests, all of us stuffed into one drab half hour format. Singers, comics, a cook, an actress with a stuffed potato for a brain. The host is slick and glib. Why should I go at all? Martin isn’t exactly thrilled.” There was a patchy kind of silence. Isadora could hear Duse’s breath as it traveled through the wires.

  “Still,” she said. “I’d have a real chance to clarify some of those stupid rumors about the Rearson child. That’s why they want me on, you know. The man who called told me they had a yellow file of my press clippings, and he said it might be fun. Fun,” she snorted. She was tired, she said, of the way everyone misinterpreted everything. She wasn’t the eighth wonder of the world, she wasn’t anything but her own self. She had nothing to do with anyone else.

  “Martin thinks you do,” said Isadora. “He told me he won’t hypnotize his patients anymore because they want him to do something mystical with it. They think he’s like you.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Duse. “Nobody thinks that, nobody. That’s just Martin being paranoid and stupid.”

  She couldn’t tell Duse what to do, and besides, Duse had never listened to anyone. “You’d watch me, wouldn’t you?” said Duse, and her voice was so pleading, so full of need, that Isadora said yes, of course she would, yes.

  Isadora told Daniel about the show. “We don’t have to watch,” he said.

  “What will we do, lie?” said Isadora. “You hate lies, you said you did.”

  “We won’t have to lie. We’ll go to a movie, say we were out. We’ll eat five dozen cupcakes, and say we were sick.”

  “You keep rounding all my corners, don’t you,” said Isadora.

  “I try,” said Daniel.

  He did make it easy for her. He peeled all the animals from the couch and brushed it free of animal hairs, using the length of his sleeve, dappling it with dander. He set up the TV so she could see it from a variety of angles, and he made them both somemores, graham crackers gluey and white with marshmallow, sticky with melted chocolate. He unhooked the phone and they watched the tag end of a cop show while Isadora fidgeted. Duse had told her that Martin was going with her, flying up to New York and sitting in this special room they called the Green Room, watching her right on the monitor if he wanted.

  Isadora hadn’t watched television since she had left home. She did it for her own protection. All she had to do was turn that thing on, watch ten seconds of a soap opera, a game show, even a movie—and she was hooked. She would jump when the phone rang to twist off the sound because she didn’t want anyone, even a salesman, to know she had been watching “Love of Life.” When she moved into Daniel’s and saw his TV she made him push it into the closet so she wouldn’t see it, so she couldn’t be tempted.

  The TV show with Duse really took her by surprise. As soon as she saw the host, she felt a sting of recognition. She was embarrassed for her mother. She remembered the hair on him, the way it was so oiled she could see the lights mirrored in it. The man himself was like a slip of oil; his words sloshed into one another and his whole manner was insinuating. He kept raising his brows until Daniel asked Isadora if that man had a twitch.

  “Don’t look like that,” Daniel said. “Everyone’s probably asleep or watching the news or making love.”

  “That’s an idea,” said Isadora.

  The first guest was a female comic. She wasn’t very funny but the audience was roaring. The sound of all those hands banging against one another swelled up, drowning out some of the punch lines. “Holy Jesus,” said Daniel, shaking his head.

  Duse was the second guest. She came on after a shampoo commercial. She was seated
, her hair in one long tail over her shoulder, the ends ruffling into her lap, and she was wearing some kind of simple, sleeved dress. “I bet it’s bright orange,” said Isadora. It was then that she noticed her mother’s hands, the way they were gloved up to the elbow in black, and even as the announcer was giving Duse’s background, Duse was peeling those gloves off, finger by finger, as if she were doing a slow strip, and all the time she kept her eyes focused on the camera. Isadora was mesmerized.

  When Duse spoke, she spoke in a near whisper. The man had to lean forward to catch her words, and gradually, he made his tones match hers because he just couldn’t bring her up to his level and he had to have things even. He crouched toward her. Duse didn’t say very much. She told how she knew palms, how she knew people through their clothing, and the host interrupted to say that he, too, could tell Woolworth’s from Saks. Duse didn’t even smile. She told about the Rearson child and then she read the host’s hand, telling him mundane things about his life, how he might travel. He interrupted her to ask if she couldn’t do better than that, if she couldn’t give him and the audience some “real meat.”

  “Meat—” said Duse. “It’s your palm. All I do is read it.”

  He straightened, irritated, and then he asked her if anyone else in her family was like her. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “No one is ever like anyone.” Then she said her daughter was at school and her husband was a dentist, and she didn’t even bother to mention their names. She acted as if that host didn’t have any right to hear them.

  “That’s it?” he said, and when she just looked at him, her eyes chilling, he signaled for a commercial.

  “Oh boy,” said Isadora. “That’s one guest they’ll never have on again.” They waited for a commercial to trail back into the show, but when it did, there was a new face that looked out at them. Daniel gently pushed in the off-button with his toe.

  Isadora was buoyant. Every once in a while Duse could touch her. She remembered that time with the Rearson kid, the way Duse had told the papers, the hungry phone callers, that she hadn’t done anything, that they could believe whatever they wanted but it wouldn’t change her truth. That woman never pandered to anyone. She was never anything but Duse. Isadora glanced at the clock. She’d give Duse a few hours and then she would call.