Rameau's Niece

by Cathleen Schine

  "Edward?" Margaret said again.

  "But, Margaret..." Lily said.

  Margaret stared at her. She sensed that her mouth was open, that she ought to close it.

  "Lily, how could you do this to me?" she said instead.

  "But—"

  "You hung around flirting with me to get to my husband?"

  But even as she said it, Margaret knew it was a meaningless accusation. Lily flirted with everyone, male or female. She smiled and turned her head cunningly, just so, to show her dimples. She didn't have dimples, but it didn't matter. Her life was a flirtation, from morning till dark. At breakfast, the blushing cereal suspected, hoped, but never knew. At bedtime, its heart pounding, her pillow lowered its eyes, speechless and confused.

  "With you? Margaret," Lily was saying, "you're married."

  "So is Edward," Margaret said. "To me" She was enraged. She had fallen for the wiles of a girl, and they weren't even wiles! "You've betrayed me and ... and all women."

  "Margaret, don't be an ass. Nothing happened."

  "Oh, please."

  Lily put a hand through her hair and sighed. "Nothing happened, Margaret, okay? Maybe it should have," she added, almost to herself.

  Tristesse becomes her, Margaret thought with a mixture of admiration, sympathy, and disgust. As does every other emotion.

  Lily twisted the ties of her bathrobe. "Maybe," she said, then squared her shoulders and looked Margaret in the eyes. "Anyway, what do you care if something did happen? You told me you were finished with Edward."

  "For good reason, as it turns out. And I didn't mean it." Margaret leaned against a chest of drawers painted with yellow birds caught in twisted blue vines. She put her head in her arms. Finished with him? Finished was right. Finished, finito, fini. "But I mean it now."

  "It was nothing, Margaret. Nothing."

  Nothing, Margaret repeated dully to herself. But Lily's words seemed hardly to matter, a traffic report playing on the radio on a day when she was staying home. Observe, Margaret. Observe the roaring in your ears. This is because the blood has rushed there. She lifted her head. The room looks strangely distant, as if you weren't in it. This is because you wish you weren't in it. You shouldn't be in it. Edward shouldn't be in it.

  "I'll have to be satisfied with a flannel, I suppose," said the voice from the other room, which she did hear, with terrible clarity. "Or, better yet, evaporation. Quite pleasant, if somewhat immodest..."

  Edward walked into the room with his sunken chest, her sunken chest, wet above his running shorts.

  "Margaret!" he said, walking toward her quickly, his arms out. "My poor Margaret. Are you feeling better, darling?"

  "No."

  "No?" He bent down to kiss her.

  Was this possible? And to think she had once loved him, had once watched him teach and caught her breath, had once, only moments ago, remembered watching him teach, remembered catching her breath, and, remembering, had caught her breath again.

  She pulled away from him. "You two-timing slime Brit creep," she said.

  "You did have a bad night."

  "Yes," Margaret said. "Yours was obviously a lot more eventful."

  "Margaret, you're being ridiculous," Lily said.

  "Look, Margaret, darling Margaret, wife of my bosom, I'm sorry you've got a hangover, but I see no reason to take it out on me."

  "You don't?"

  "Not really."

  "Then you're stupid. Isn't he, Lily? Lily sees lots of reasons for me to take it out on you, don't you, Lily?"

  "Oh, Margaret," Lily said.

  "Margaret, let's not quarrel in front of your friend."

  "My friend?" she laughed, a snorting sort of laugh.

  "Sorry. Our friend."

  "Sorry. Your friend."

  "My friend?"

  "Look, I don't care whose fucking friend you're fucking fucking."

  "Fucking? I'm taking a fucking shower!"

  "Fuck you," Margaret said and turned toward the door.

  "Margaret!" Lily said. "Listen—"

  I'm done listening, Margaret thought as she rushed for the door. I'm done talking. My senses have failed me. My senses suck.

  Oh, Edward, Edward, snake, reptile, insect, fungus, algae, blue-eyed, silver-haired algae. Margaret stumbled down the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of flights of brownstone stairs from the second floor to the ground floor. Where was the street? Would it ever come? She heard Edward behind her, calling her. She heard his footsteps and ran faster. When would she be free of this house of betrayal and sin? Edward. With Lily. Left alone for twenty-four hours and look what happens. Everything was all right, all right.

  I knew it all along, she thought. Edward has betrayed me. He has forsaken my aging flesh for—for what? For Lily's aging flesh! Oh, the humiliation. To lose him to some exquisite little girl with long hair flicking like a horse's mane, a student drawn to him and he to her, intoxicated with the wine-dark words of Walt Whitman, yes, okay, that's as it should be. Well, it shouldn't be at all. But at least that's as what shouldn't be should be!

  But this!

  On the street, the sun was down, the sky was dark blue, and the breeze blew more refreshingly than before. Fuck you, breeze, she thought.

  MARGARET RAN EAST through Central Park in the dusk. Edward was no longer behind her. I've lost him, she thought. In every sense of the word. Now I will be mugged and killed. That will show him. That will show everyone. How dare he? He's my husband. How dare she? He's my husband.

  That Edward might be fooling around with his pretty little students, while a proposition quite certain in Margaret's mind for some time, was nevertheless something for which she really had not the slightest shred of evidence. It was just a truth, a fundamental pillar of her belief system, a given, a fact, a fate. Her fate. But this! This was real!

  Margaret realized she was panting with anger, like a dragon. Through her nose. That swine. No wonder she'd left him. She stopped running, walking quickly, though, and far, and after three-quarters of an hour she knew where she was walking to, because she saw it before her.

  The home of Dr. Samuel Lipi rose above her, tall, modern, circular, just the sort of home Dr. Lipi should have. He had pointed it out to her proudly as they left his office together one evening, and she had wondered if he had a circular bed.

  She rushed into the building. "It's an emergency!" she said to the doorman, aware suddenly that she was flushed and out of breath, that she was talking to herself and still panting through her nose like an angry dragon. "An emergency!"

  The elevator brought her closer and closer in a sickening rush, jerked to a halt, and deposited her, staggering, with blocked ears, on the twenty-eighth floor. Twenty-eight, she thought. Aha! Aha, what? She didn't really care.

  She stood for a moment and looked around, trying to calm down. Then a door down the hall opened, and Dr. Lipi's handsome head poked out. "Margaret?" he said. "Is that really you? What is it? The inlay?" He looked at her with concern and held out his arm. "Come in. Come in. Welcome to my little cave."

  She looked around and realized that when she had imagined a circular bed, she had snobbishly underestimated him. His apartment was furnished in expensive Italian pieces, so contemporary a few years ago that they were now already dated. All the walls had been knocked down so that it looked like a loft, a tunnellike low-ceilinged loft.

  Margaret could not yet bring herself to look at Dr. Lipi himself, so she gazed out his window at the city, the nighttime skyline softened by a pearly gray cloud of damp June filth. The ceiling loomed just above her head, it seemed, as close and intimate as a large hat. In her ceiling hat, up so high, looking down so low, she felt queasy and weak. She had to sit down. She turned. Dr. Lipi was watching her. She saw a black couch with large leather cushions. She went to it, lowering herself carefully, closing her eyes for a moment, then opening them suddenly, feeling strangely vulnerable.

  "It's not the inlay," she said.

  Dr. Lipi was not wearing his wh
ite shirt, she noticed, which disappointed her. He was wearing a blue T-shirt. Didn't anyone understand anything about erotic fantasy anymore?

  "It's not even an emergency."

  An Englishman would have known to wear a white dentist shirt. Always. Just in case someone should drop by. Even if he wasn't a dentist.

  "It's not even about my teeth."

  Why, the English liked women in little maids' uniforms, didn't they? Well, not Edward, actually, thank God.

  "You're out of uniform," she said.

  He smiled, then turned toward a large mirror as if to make sure.

  Margaret followed his gaze. Well, she thought, looking at his beautiful reflection, maybe we can do without the white shirt after all. He was wearing shorts, tight-fitting gym shorts. She stared at his bare legs, at his bare arms.

  "Nice place, Dr. Lipi," she said, not taking her eyes off his body.

  "Sam."

  "Sam. Right."

  "I'm glad you like it, Margaret," he said. "And I'm glad you're here. Whatever the reason, Margaret, I'm glad you're here."

  "You are?"

  Dr. Lipi went over to a platform in one corner of the large room that seemed to be a kitchen, a kitchen so streamlined and technologically advanced that it could, with few alterations, have flown to Paris in under four hours.

  "Are you really all right, Margaret? Do you want a drink?"

  "Don't I look all right?" Margaret said.

  "Well, yes, you look wonderful, you always look wonderful, I just meant, well, you know, you come over and say it's an emergency, and I guess you look as though you don't feel all right..."

  Margaret sighed. "You're right," she said. "I'm not all right. I needed some company. And no thank you. I don't drink. Ever. Again."

  Dr. Lipi took a beer out of the refrigerator for himself and stood on his platform and looked down at her, across at her, looked at her for a long time. He was uncharacteristically silent. No mention of the dental pulp chamber or the mechanics of mastication.

  Well, well, well, Margaret thought. Good. So drop dead, Edward. Pleasure, Edward, is the only thing desired. Therefore, pleasure is the only thing desirable. I desire Dr. Lipi, Edward, therefore he is desirable. If he is desirable, he is pleasure, therefore he is the only thing desirable. Right?

  She carefully watched the muscles of Dr. Lipi's thighs as he walked toward her.

  Right.

  "Margaret," he said, approaching slowly.

  Observe and clarify through logic. He has slim, strong legs, practically hairless. Does he have them waxed or what? Why are they so tan? Observe, observe, Margaret. She stared at his thighs and then, helplessly, at his crotch. Ah, and from what I observe, I can logically deduce a great deal. This proposition really is a proposition. This is not a joke. This is no longer a joke.

  He stared at her in a way she could not mistake and said her name again.

  Why, we don't need uniforms, after all, she thought.

  He stood before her in his Michelangelo pose, the beer bottle dangling by the neck from his slender fingers with their dentist-clean fingernails. She looked up at him, unable to speak, unable to move.

  So there, Edward, she thought. You see, pleasure is a state of the soul. And to each man, that which he is said to be a lover of is pleasant. Are you pleasant to me, Dr. Lipi? As pleasant as Lily was to Edward?

  She continued to stare at him, speechless and without any thought of what to do next, or even that there was a next. He looked back at her, and for a moment she thought he would begin to explain to her what they were about to do, with special emphasis on the role of teeth in foreplay. But all he said was, "Margaret, you understand me."

  You? she thought. What do you have to do with it? It's not you I'm trying to understand.

  He reached out and held her arm tightly. He took her other arm too and pulled her up. He was standing so close to the couch, to her, that she had no room to stand, no way to keep her balance. She felt his chest against her, the gym shorts hard against her. She tipped and fell back onto the couch. He stepped back and pulled her to him again.

  Margaret, her face pressed against his smooth cheek, thought, Perception must be in some degree an effect of the object perceived. The object perceived is hard and muscular. The object's hands are pressing into my back. He is rolling slightly, rolling his hips, backward and forward.

  He pulled off his own shirt and unbuttoned hers. His hands were on her breasts. Her flesh against his flesh. He was kissing her neck. He kissed her on the lips. This was no longer a reflection in a mirror, not a copy of which she could have only an opinion but not knowledge. This was an actual form, of which she could have knowledge.

  Slipping her hand beneath the elastic waistband in the front of his shorts and running it admiringly over the form inside—a gesture to the activity of clarification—Margaret gained knowledge of it, gasped, and bit her lip.

  The soul is like an eye; when resting upon that on which truth and being shine, the soul perceives and understands, and is radiant with intelligence.

  But then, like an unexpected cold, damp breeze, a sudden quiver of revulsion passed through her. Dr. Lipi? Connoisseur of the curve of the lower dental arch? A droning stranger who now had his strange arms around her? What was she doing? What could she have been thinking of?

  When resting not on the truth, but on a mere copy of the truth, the soul goes blinking about, and is first of one opinion and then another, and seems to have no intelligence.

  So this is probably not truth, Margaret thought, pressing her lips to his neck, running her hands over his back. It can't be, can it? Pleasure, yes. But also the distinct opposite of pleasure. I hardly know this man. He's my dentist, not my lover. I am disgusted, actually, with this absurd man who has wrapped himself around me, not without encouragement, I admit, but still—if I am disgusted, and I am, then Dr. Lipi, logically speaking, cannot be the only thing desirable, can he? He cannot be truth.

  "I'm sorry, Dr. Lipi." She stepped away.

  Fool, she thought, looking at him in all his considerable glory. Margaret, you're a fool. Who cares if he's an idiot? And a stranger? Men sleep with idiots and strangers all the time. Yes, but I'm not a man. If Edward wants to sleep with nubile idiots with long silky hair and nearly middle-aged former-lesbian idiots with short black, tousled hair, that's his problem. Dr. Lipi, Dr. Lipi, if only the reality of you had not interfered with the idea of you, the idea of you as mere physical being. You are a mere shadow of yourself, Dr. Lipi.

  "Margaret, what's wrong?" He put his hand gently on her face and stroked her cheek. "Don't clench your jaw, darling," he whispered. "Your lovely jaw."

  His voice startled her. He stood before her, magnificent and now quite naked, his clothes in a puddle at his tanned feet. Oh, fool, fool. Look at this gorgeous creature, as beautiful as any statue, a man of truly heroic proportions. But statues, bless them, do not speak. And Dr. Lipi does speak. And when Dr. Lipi speaks, I remember that he and not just his perfect body and overcharged eyes exists. I remember that Dr. Lipi's personality is one of his parts.

  "Margaret," he said, taking her hands and putting them on his flat stomach, then pushing them down, and then down some more.

  On the other hand, she thought, "Dr. Lipi," after all, is just a name, a linguistic convenience. There is no Dr. Lipi over and above his various parts, and Margaret contemplated his various parts with increasing interest and enthusiasm.

  This is not real, she thought finally. This is just an illusion of perfection. But what an illusion! She held the illusion. Dr. Lipi's hands were pushing down her jeans. The illusion was pushed between her legs.

  "This is just an illusion," she said.

  "Yes. It's all a wonderful dream."

  MARGARET LAY on Dr. Lipi's bed and looked out the window at the sparkling murk of the city sky. Perfection is perfect, she thought. That much I have established to be true. A perfect performance by a perfect performer. Why don't I care?

  Dr. Lipi slept peacefully b
eside her, golden and relaxed in his naked sleep. She looked at him with distaste. Big deal. Big fucking deal. Senses, bah! Without senses there would be no needs. Hey! Lipi! Did I need this? Are you necessary, Dr. Lipi? Did you follow unavoidably from certain conditions? Are you an a priori kind of guy?

  Where was Edward? she wondered. Had he stayed at Lily's? What a sordid affair. Two sordid affairs. Dr. Lipi, the sleeping statue, stirred. Margaret moved away from him and tried not to cry. His beauty appalled her. Strange and abstract, it glowed before her; and yet Dr. Lipi and his beauty were not strange and abstract, not to her, not anymore. Dr. Lipi was concrete and familiar now. Which made it all seem that much more strange and abstract.

  This is not my bed, she thought, staring resentfully at his face resting peacefully on the pillow. You are not the man beside whom I sleep.

  For once, her memory did not fail her, would not fail her. The failure of her memory failed her. She could not forget what she had done. She could only remember it. In perfect detail. And she could not forget Edward, dripping wet, dripping the drops of the guilty, a husband stepping from a shower that was not his own, cleansed but not clean. She could not forget Lily, either, the feel of her, and her own dizzy uneasiness as she grasped the waist of the girl she then discovered had been boffing her husband. She could not forget Dr. Lipi, the ardent dentist, a man so devoted to his art that he saw himself as more than himself, as an exemplar, an exemplar that must proselytize its own cause, that must proselytize itself. If he awoke now, he would talk of the art of love, his love. He would earnestly relate to her exactly what she wanted to forget. He would look at her with those odd, narrow eyes and kiss her with those curvaceous lips, and he would narrate and explain the significance of his use of eyes and lips in terms of endowing her with pleasure, and through pleasure, oral and emotional health. In terms of the oral and emotional health of the nation, too. Nay, the world!

  Oh, I should have stayed safely coiled among Martin's speaker cables. Or lain on my narrow cot, harangued by the tolling of Richard's clocks. Or better yet, I should have stayed at home. With Edward. Where I belong. Where he belongs. But now, there is no home. There is no Edward. Edward does not exist. Not even logically.