Rameau's Niece

by Cathleen Schine

  Not for the first time, she wondered why anyone would choose to become a dentist. It was not a romantic calling: a dentist did not save lives, the way a doctor did. There was nothing heroic about a dentist. He was necessary, perhaps, but somehow not important. The popular image of a dentist was never a romantic figure. He was a villain, like the dentist in Marathon Man. Or a buffoon, she thought, envisioning W. C. Fields with pliers, leaning over his patient, a woman whose legs began flapping wildly, then suddenly wrapped themselves violently, obscenely, around him. Yes, she would have to discuss that in her essay.

  "My name is really Lipinsky," said Dr. Lipi. "But I didn't want to cash in on my heritage. I wanted to make it on my own. No special pleading."

  Margaret looked at the row of x-rays clipped to the white, lit screen and tried to remember how to flirt. Well, she could just pretend she was Till or Edward. For them, talking was a kind of flirtation, a flirtation with existence, preparatory to fucking its brains out. At the notion of fucking someone's brains out, even existence's, she felt herself suddenly aroused, and frightened in that cold room with Dr. Samuel Lipinsky. She shivered a little.

  "Cold?" asked Dr. Lipinsky-Lipi. He gently laid a rubber-coated, lead-heavy x-ray apron across her shoulders. He had moved very close and stayed there. He likes me, Margaret thought. He likes me, too. Perched on the arm of the dental chair with the lead apron on her shoulders, she was at eye level with his charms of gold dangling teeth, with his white polo shirt, with his chest. He stayed where he was, saying nothing. This was it. This was her opportunity. What should she do? How to flirt? Show interest in what someone cares about? She'd been doing that shamelessly. Was there any aspect of the role of the tooth in Western civilization that she had not touched upon?

  Flattery, passionate flattery, too. That was flirting, wasn't it? But not really a skill within her grasp, flattery.

  "Teeth," she blurted out, "teeth are such ambivalent signs. They smile, yes, but they also bite. They can express friendliness, or they can be weapons."

  She sat sideways on the edge of the dentist chair, and the dentist stood before her, against her. His legs in their loose, soft linen pants were just touching her knees. Had they been touching before? Or had Dr. Lipi moved closer?

  "The dentist's existence qua dentist," Margaret continued in a quick, nervous, strangled voice, "is determined by his relationship to teeth, and so to what teeth signify."

  She looked hopefully into his eyes, then quickly away.

  "If teeth can be used to express friendliness," she went on bravely, "then the dentist's assault on them is a rejection of friendliness." If only Edward were there. He could do this for her. He would know just what to say. "If, however, teeth are weapons, then the dentist's assault is an attempt at disarmament, at castration."

  Dr. Lipi, almost imperceptibly, moved back, just a little bit, just enough.

  "But then the dentist is an ambivalent symbol independently, too," Margaret continued, hanging on to a last shred of hope. "For, on the one hand, he is the enemy, a stranger from outside attempting to disarm his patient, his victim, to strip away the defenses. On the other hand, he is a caring health professional, a healer, relieving pain."

  Dr. Lipi cleared his throat. He stepped away from her. "Precisely," he said. "Precisely."

  Margaret lay in bed watching Claire's Knee on Channel 13 and thinking of Lily's knee, Dr. Lipi's knee, Martin's knee. She turned the TV off, unable to concentrate on French witticisms. I'm not making sufficient progress, she thought. I'm stagnating. That's because I'm suffocating. Because Edward is always here, in this apartment, always around, always talking to me, at least he used to always talk to me, always listening to me when I talked, attentive, bringing me coffee, giving me encouraging kisses when I worked. No wonder I'm making so little progress! He has no consideration. And now, he's never even around! Just because I barely speak to him does not mean it's right for him to come home late, to devote so much time to his students and his sordid little didactic love affairs with pretty girls.

  It was no one's fault. That's just the way it was, irresponsibility and betrayal on his side; the simple search for independence on hers. She would have to stop fooling around and tell him. The fruit was ripe, ready to fall from the trees. Quit standing around in the shade palms up, waiting. Shake the branches, Margaret.

  She would have to leave Edward. She'd already put it off too long, out of inertia, nostalgia, whatever. But you're a big girl now, Margaret, she thought. You're a big grown up girl with an inquiring mind and a roving eye.

  She looked forlornly around her bedroom, at the curtains, the toppling pile of books, the chest of drawers, the basket overflowing with dirty laundry. But our dirty laundry will mingle no longer, she thought. She began to cry.

  When Edward went out to run, Margaret called Richard at his house in the Berkshires and woke him up.

  "It's Sunday morning," he said, his lovely voice heavy with sleep and with sadness at being awakened. "Early Sunday morning."

  "Can I stay at your apartment for a while? I won't bother you. I need a place to go."

  "Don't you have a mother?"

  "Come on, Richard. It's important."

  Reluctantly, and only because he himself would at least be gone for several days and wanted at that moment to go back to sleep, he agreed and arranged with a neighbor to give her the keys.

  Hurriedly, so she wouldn't weaken and change her mind, Margaret wrote out a note to Edward. It said, "I can't stay here. I need some peace and quiet and isolation to finish this book. Without having someone around all the time. You're never home. So you won't mind if I leave. I will be staying in Richard's maid's room. Margaret." There! She had done it. She had left Edward. She quickly packed a box of books and papers, a small suitcase, and took a cab across town.

  Margaret got the keys and lugged her stuff, as she had been instructed, back to the maid's room, a dreary slot painted yellow in a misguided attempt to cheer it up.

  "You know," Lily had said on the phone, "you were always like this in college, dumping guys for no good reason, but you were also with them for no good reason. But this is not college, and Edward is different. Be careful, Margaret. He might not take you back."

  "I might not want to go back."

  Especially when I can stay here in this charming little hideaway! she added now, to herself. She stood on the threshold of the maid's room. Inside was a sagging cot, a sink, and a wastebasket.

  Margaret dropped her box and suitcase with a thump, set up a card table that took up almost the whole room, and put out her books. Rameau's niece didn't have these problems, she thought. She just motioned to the gardener, and he did as he was told.

  Edward. She had left him. Just an hour or so ago. This, this is what they mean by a heavy heart, she thought.

  Margaret tried to make herself comfortable in Richard's apartment, although she knew just how uncomfortable her comfort would have made him. As uncomfortable as it made her. She was in a forbidden place. She was on the wrong side of his desk.

  She walked from room to room almost on tiptoe, almost afraid, furtive, glancing at the furniture and the pictures, then sneaking back to her own squalid room. The apartment, as much as she could see from the corner of her guilty eye, was decorated with piles of books and a few pieces of nondescript furniture and some Audubon prints that she was sure were real and dozens of large, old, loudly ticking clocks.

  It was very clean, Richard's apartment. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. The clocks rattled and clattered. Maybe I should just stay here, she thought. Live with Richard. He could devote himself to me. A life of forever-unfulfilled pedagogical, sexual tension. Editing, editing me from morning till night. A life of flirtation. An exquisite life.

  But Richard could not be depended upon for a lifetime of editorial flirtation. Richard had other fish to fry, uncles and other writers and friends and boyfriends and assistants and a mother and sisters and brothers to fry. A grandmother, too, no doubt, to fry.

 
; The horrible clocks began to chime and bong. They were everywhere. They hung from the walls. They stood on the floor. They perched on the countertops. Margaret tried to count the chimes, but there were so many clocks calling out from so many places that their hollow rhythmic noise blended and swelled into one awful, echoing voice. No, she could not stay here for very long.

  What time is it, anyway? Margaret wondered when the noise had subsided, for the only room without a clock was the maid's room. She looked at her watch and saw that it was still only eleven. I have miles to go before I sleep, she thought. Sleep with whom, though? Sleep with whom?

  Forget Richard and his horrible house of clocks. She must clarify the three propositions. Which one represented reality? Experience must teach what reason cannot.

  She went into Richard's room, sat down on his bed, and looked at some magazines—gray quarterlies, a Publishers Weekly. She flipped through, shyly looking up at Richard's bedroom now and then, a pleasant, simple, white bedroom with far too many clocks. Hickory dickory dock. Her gaze retreated to the magazine, and something there caught her eye. An ad. An ad for a book by Art Turner. Art Turner? Her Art Turner? He had finished and actually published this famous book? The long-awaited work of his entire adult life was available between two cardboard covers, available to the scrutiny and scorn (scorn, surely) of the public, to the scrutiny and scorn of her, Margaret, his beneficiary and secret sworn enemy?

  Of course, Art had spoken of his book being almost finished, about to come out. Months ago, when she'd last seen him. But he'd been doing that for years, for as long as Margaret had known him. Margaret grinned helplessly, malevolently. It is not enough that I succeed, said someone, someone French. My best friend must fail. Art is a monster and must fail, and he is not even my best friend.

  Margaret went into her new home, the grimy rectangle, which, she now noticed, had a mop and bucket in the corner. She listened to the clocks, rattling like a drawer of tin pots. She went to the window and looked down eight stories at a dog straining at its leash, dragging a young woman on high heels, and Margaret could see the heels clicking, for she could not hear them from that distance.

  Margaret went into the kitchen and thoughtfully ate a jar of preserved peaches she was sure Richard was saving to give to someone else. Today, she thought. She would begin to experience, to know, today, and she would begin with Martin.

  "I will take you to Katya Kabanova," he had said, calling her when he returned to New York. "You will read the synopsis. You will see, you will understand, you will understand everything. Then I will take you back to my client's house. My client and friend. He is away in the country while I install my electronics. I will take you home with me there, and you will hear Katya Kabanova on a recording. You will hear, and you will understand everything."

  At Lincoln Center, Martin stood by the fountain, holding a small nosegay of violets.

  Margaret's heart beat faster. I must be in love. No one brings you flowers unless you're in love with him.

  "Marguerite, my darling girl." He kissed her, first on one cheek, then the other. The feel of him, and the scent, reminded her of the airplane, when he was a stranger, silent and sprawled across her, his face buried in her breast.

  "You are so kind to accompany me on my little visits here and there, and so I bring to you these flowers."

  Margaret held them, wondering what to do with them during the opera, and thanked him, taking the opportunity to kiss him again, lingering there against his cheek, against him for a second too long, then self-consciously pulling away.

  Maybe I can check the flowers, she thought.

  "Again you have forgotten the book for my father? Marguerite, you are impossible. But at least you have not forgotten me, my friend. Ah, this is really something, to hear such singers today."

  They sat down and Margaret put the flowers under her seat. When she sat up, Martin leaned close to her and put his hand on hers. His long eyelashes were half lowered, his lips drawn together in a slight smile.

  "Marguerite," he whispered, in a voice almost teasing, "you have forgotten the keepsake for my father. But I have not forgotten you. I have for you a surprise."

  Margaret waited as he rummaged in his jacket pocket. Something small. Jewelry-small? No. She watched as he pulled out two triangles of leather attached to elastic straps. They looked like tiny G-strings.

  "You like these, Marguerite? For increased pleasure? You will wear them? A friend designed them, asked me to try them out for him. I do not force you. Some people do not like them."

  What are these Belgians into? Margaret thought. Wear them? Wear them where? "Where do you wear them?"

  "Here. Wear them here, now."

  In Lincoln Center? Unhappily, Margaret watched the miniature G-strings dangle from his index finger.

  "What I meant was, how do you put them on?" she said finally.

  "Oh!" He smiled in a paternal way. "On your ears, Marguerite. On your lovely little ears."

  He tenderly strapped the triangles, like little hoods, around the back of her ears. The hall sounded suddenly louder, deeper. The cellos, tuning up, resonated and echoed, and Margaret realized that the little devices were innocent enough, some kind of listening aid, gadgets devised by a high-end hi-fi fetishist.

  "Horrible," she said.

  "Yes. Horrible. But some people like them. More bass. They like to adjust the concert hall!" He began to laugh, real, bursting laughter, repeating, "To adjust the hall!"

  Margaret looked away, embarrassed by his uninhibited laughter. But, she thought, it could have been worse. At least he had not wanted to make love in the orchestra section of the Metropolitan Opera House using tiny leather and elastic triangular sex aids.

  Margaret turned to the synopsis. "Well, what do you know?" she said several times as she read. "What do you know?"

  The awful woman in black was Katya's mother-in-law. Katya's husband was pussy-whipped by his mother, who also constantly criticized Katya. The other young woman is the housemaid. Katya falls in love with a man who is hollered at by an uncle who controls his inheritance. When Katya's husband goes away on a business trip, Katya goes into the woods with her lover. When the husband comes home, Katya insists on confessing to him even though he doesn't want to know. He wants to forgive her; the mother-in-law doesn't want him to forgive her; the lover is sent away by his uncle. Katya jumps into the Vltava and drowns.

  Margaret, listening to the strung-out, taut romanticism of the music, the hysterical, neurotic horn bleats as Katya plunges into the waters of oblivion, nodded her head and thought, Yes, this is just like my life. Should I go back to Prague and jump in the Vltava?

  The lights came on and she wiped a tear from her eye.

  "No dead baby," she said to Martin.

  "No, the dead baby is in Jenůfa"

  "Ah."

  "This is how I knew, you see? On the plane."

  "Ah."

  The plane. Prague. That was where it had all started. If only Edward had come with her. Then this would not have been necessary. She would not be here now, in a taxi, on her way to her ruin in a rich man's brownstone.

  Martin was a large man, and his leg, in beautiful dark green trousers, was touching hers. Her skirt had ridden up. She did not pull it down. She shifted a little to get comfortable. Martin looked down at her leg. He looked at her leg, then at her, then out the window. She thought she heard him sigh.

  Edward does not exist, she thought.

  But if he does not exist, how come when I ask the question, What is it that does not exist?, the answer is Edward. It's Edward. Doesn't this confer some sort of existence on him? In other words, doth the lady protest too much? Or is it just that logic makes no sense?

  "You are very quiet," Martin said.

  Margaret pointed to her throat. "Laryngite," she whispered.

  "You are thinking of the trip on the plane," he said. He blushed.

  Margaret lay on the low couch, a soft, deep couch. How had she gotten there? In the taxi
. Up the stairs. A living room with Alex Katz cutouts and wooden Venetian blinds. Up the stairs again. A music room with a piano, a plant, a worn Victorian couch, and two speakers, each one the size of a toll-booth. Wine on a low table. Another couch. (You must sit on this couch, said Martin. In the middle. The sweet spot! To get the full effect. Oh, yes, she thought. The sweet spot indeed. The full effect!) Martin, plugging and unplugging, soldering, twisting a screwdriver, yanking a wrench, draping cables, thick cables, cables as thick as, well, as thick as dicks. Margaret burst out laughing.

  "It's almost ready," Martin said, looking at her, red in the face. He had already said "It's almost ready" several times. She had drunk the wine. Nothing to eat. Just this wine. Just like France. A man muttering in French and wine. In France with Edward, there had been only Edward. Now there was no Edward. Edward did not exist, except logically, of course. Good-bye, Edward. Bonjour, Martin.

  Margaret lay on her side and gazed at the antique Chinese carpet. What Eastern despot or Western imperialist trod this rug before it ended up here? Martin's crepe-soled shoes went by, the cuffs of his beautifully draped pants swinging jauntily. Margaret lolled on the soft pillows of the sweet-spot couch. Quit caressing your tube amplifiers, Martin. Quit pacing. Thank God, Edward doesn't pace. Pacing makes me dizzy. I'm dizzy, Martin. Dizzy with drink. Dizzy with desire.

  "Records," Martin said. "You must play records. CDs, they are shrill, an evil invention, a conspiracy."

  She reached lazily down to one foot, took off a shoe, and threw it at him.

  "I'm drunk," she said.

  "Well, now at last I'm finished," he said, putting away his tools. "Now, we try my equipment, yes?"

  Your equipment, Margaret thought, as the sounds of Katya Kabanova came on. Yes, what about your equipment? God, when did I become such a vulgarian? she wondered. Well, I'm only seeking the truth, seeking the good, seeking happiness. The good is happiness. The rational and appetitive, together, seek happiness. The rational is appetitive.