A Woman of Intelligence

by Karin Tanabe

  “Whatever makes you the most comfortable.”

  “I like the window,” I said, looking down at Dr. Creighton’s bag. It still looked quite full, probably packed with a straitjacket in exactly my size.

  “Now, your husband said that you’ve had trouble with alcohol these past few years,” he said, looking down at his paper.

  “Probably no more than most.”

  “He said that a few months back you went to see a doctor about your drinking. A woman,” he added with a very raised eyebrow. “And that lately you’ve been able to reduce.”

  “That’s true. I have.” I handed him the doctor’s letter regarding my condition that the FBI had kindly provided back in May.

  “But then, just two nights ago, you went out for dinner and did not return until two in the morning. The only explanation that you gave him was that you were having a nice time. That you needed a release, to explore the bonds of female friendship.”

  “That’s about right.”

  “It took you until two in the morning to experience a release?”

  “No. It just took me that long to come home.”

  The doctor scrawled something on his paper in sloping, small print.

  “Your husband said you were very excited to see this woman.”

  “I was,” I said, thinking about Faye. “She’s fascinating. And humorous.”

  “She’s unmarried?”

  “Yes.”

  He wrote on the paper again, this time his handwriting was even smaller.

  “Is your interest in this woman…” he said, looking up at me. “Does it go beyond appreciating her humor?”

  “Are you asking me if I am having an affair with Faye Buckley Swan?” I almost started to laugh.

  “I didn’t say that,” he said, scrawling again, probably the word lesbian, underlined and circled.

  “Well, I’m not. All that interests me is occasionally keeping company with people that are neither my children nor my husband. They seem to see me differently.”

  “All right,” he said, capping his pen. “Let’s put others aside for a moment, and talk about how you see yourself, Mrs. Edgeworth. When you look in the mirror, for example, when you are brushing your teeth or applying lipstick in the morning, who do you see? What do you think of yourself?”

  “Every morning I see a loving mother, a dutiful housewife, and a loyal spouse.”

  “Is that what your husband would like you to see,” he asked, touching his beard, in a pantomime of thoughtful consideration, “or is it really what you see?”

  “I just said it was.”

  “But that’s a surprisingly happy take considering your recent emotional releases. Your husband said that you’ve been inflicting pain on yourself. Enough to cause severe bruising.”

  Tom had still never asked me why I did it. But he did find it important enough to discuss with a complete stranger.

  “I’ve stopped,” I said. And it was true.

  “Why did you stop?”

  Because I’d had coffee alone with Turner Wells. Because I had to run documents from Washington for Russian spies. Because after a long and horribly lonely two and a half years, I could leave my boys for more than fifteen minutes. Because finally, I felt my body was slowly becoming mine again.

  I turned around and smiled at Dr. Creighton. “Husbands just know best sometimes.”

  “I don’t think you believe that,” he replied. “Let me ask a different question. Why did you start inflicting pain on yourself in the first place?”

  “Maybe I was having a long bout of hysteria.”

  “Female hysteria?” he asked, uncapping his pen and writing again.

  “Are there different kinds?”

  “Very much so.” He looked down at his notes. “Are you still affected by the events of the war, Mrs. Edgeworth? Is that a source of strain in your life?”

  “The war?” I asked incredulously. “It was terrible, but it’s no longer a source of strain. The men who fought may still feel the strain. I spent the war in Manhattan.”

  “How about the Red threat? Is that making you nervous?”

  “Nervous?” I said, turning back to the window. “I’m a housewife, Doctor Creighton. I barely give it any thought.”

  “All right,” he said, barely masking his frustration. “Then what do you think the problem is?”

  I decided to try honesty.

  “I think the problem is that since my boys were born, I don’t recognize myself. I don’t recognize the woman I see in the mirror. Neither when I brush my teeth nor when I apply lipstick.”

  “Who do you see?”

  “A woman I don’t know. Someone I’m not fond of. The woman I used to be is gone, and I miss her. I miss her so much that my bones hurt when I think about her.”

  He nodded. “There are two versions of you, then. Or do you feel that you’ve made an internal split?”

  “No.” I shook my head in frustration. “There is only one woman … it’s that this new one has been deeply and terribly unhappy. Despite what my husband believes, I have felt better recently. I’ve felt more…” Attractive, intelligent, worthy of the perfect kiss, worth risking it all for. “More important.”

  “And why is it that you feel more important?”

  “Because I’m leaving the house. Alone.”

  He put down his pen again and looked at me. “Mrs. Edgeworth, I think one of the problems is that you have too much time. An idle mind is the devil’s playground and all that. Living as you do, I imagine your only job is to raise your children, which leaves ample amounts of time for your mind to wander, and especially with women, an idle mind can be a dangerous thing. Now, there have been many studies on occupational therapy for women suffering from similar episodes of identity confusion. I’ve seen other female patients find great joy in hobbies. Quilting. Ceramics. Macramé.”

  I leaned back, wringing my hands together. “Dr. Creighton,” I said slowly. “I have no interest in sewing during the two hours a day when I’m not watching my children. I have a master’s degree from Columbia, and it is not in quilting.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “In that case,” he said, staring at me, “I’ll leave you a bottle of Thorazine.”

  I nodded. “That sounds like a good solution.”

  Tom thought everything could be fixed with the miracles of medicine, surgery, or psychiatry. But he was wrong. My problem was that I wanted out of this ivory tower.

  “Your husband would like me to see you every day this week,” Dr. Creighton’s voice interrupted me. “Shall I come at the same time tomorrow?”

  I put my hands in front of me and nodded. “Though I can’t predict when the boys will fall asleep. And Peter is walking now. He’s quite excited about it and doesn’t want to nap.” When Gerrit had first walked, Tom had not been home and we hadn’t even had a thirty-second conversation about it. “Gerrit walked today? Did he? At ten months, that’s early. Must be the Edgeworth blood. Could you please bring me a steak knife? And the béarnaise.”

  “Shall I come at the same time anyway?” Dr. Creighton asked.

  “By all means. You can always wait here in the library. There’s plenty to read. I personally recommend de Beauvoir.”

  After he left, I went to Gerrit’s bedroom and laid down next to him. I looked at my sleeping boy, leaned over, and kissed him. I was proud to be his mother, but I was more than his mother. I walked to the bathroom and emptied the bottle of Thorazine into the toilet. Then I took out my tube of Mother’s Friend, the cream Tom had bought me to prevent pregnancy marks on my stomach. It hadn’t worked. I picked it up and let it fall into the garbage can. I took out a large bottle of Miles Nervine. I’d kept it on hand since Peter was born, as the women’s magazines had instructed. Be sure to have bromide on hand for your nerves. I’d never tried it; I surely wasn’t going to start now.

  Still clutching the bottle in one hand, I picked up the telephone. Turner answered after one ring.

  “Tom has me held cap
tive in my home,” I explained. “I can’t go to Washington on Wednesday, I can’t even go to Central Park.” I paused. “But I will not stop thinking about Central Park,” I said quietly.

  “Me, too,” said Turner. “Me, too.”

  I walked back to the bathroom and added the bromide to the pills already floating in the toilet and flushed them all down. I didn’t need drugs. What I needed was to hold on to this new version of Rina Edgeworth, one kindly provided, with pay, by the United States government.

  CHAPTER 36

  After a week of good behavior, with only one episode when Tom witnessed me crying, he let me out of the house, under his supervision, like an orderly who takes their mental patient outside to watch grass grow. Tom assumed my tears were over the boys, as Gerrit had given his baby brother a bloody nose that afternoon. Instead, I was crying over Ava. I was crying because Turner was not outside my window, or on the other end of my telephone, or waiting for me in the Eighth Avenue Coffee Shop. I was crying because I had started to feel better, and now I felt myself shrinking back into my tiny, isolated world.

  I had told Dr. Creighton that the Thorazine was like a wonder drug. How joyful I felt. How fulfilled. I even knotted up some dental floss in macramé knots and said I’d found real happiness in the act. “It’s beautiful,” I’d declared, “and handy when eating a salad.”

  He’d nodded seriously. “I’m glad,” he’d said, despite my theory that therapists preferred when their patients didn’t heal and continued to require their services. “Thorazine and a little perspective, some appreciation, and I think you’ll be just fine.”

  “Perspective…”

  “Yes,” he’d added with his upper-crust diction. “Think of how many women would love to be in your position. Two healthy children. Both boys. A successful, committed husband. The key to happiness is being satisfied with what you have in life. And you, Mrs. Edgeworth, have a lot.”

  “I do,” I’d replied, resisting the guilt he was pushing on me. “But sadness found me anyway. Even the rich aren’t immune.”

  I got rid of Dr. Creighton after that. Riding the high of firing a therapist, and pleasantly surprised that my husband didn’t wheel me off to Bellevue after I did, I imposed one vital and rather enormous change in my life. I invited Sarah Beach to the house one Sunday afternoon, when Tom was certain to be home, and declared her our new babysitter. After thirty minutes of interrogation—questions about her parents and her GPA at Barnard, as well as showing her how to perform chest compressions on a teddy bear—Tom agreed she was suitable company for the boys.

  “She seems exuberant,” he said, smiling.

  “Sometimes even Americans can be exuberant,” I responded.

  A few days later, I was waiting for Sarah to arrive, as I was meant to finally see Turner again, when the phone rang, and I heard the voice I’d been terrified to hear.

  “Katharina,” Jacob said. “There you are.”

  “Jacob, it’s been too long,” I said, trying to keep my tone even.

  “What are you doing this afternoon? Could we meet? I have a favor to ask you.”

  “Of course. Yes. We can meet.” I put my hand over the phone. Peter was walking over to the bar and Gerrit had a crystal decanter in his hands, about to pour himself and his baby brother two whiskey highballs. “But not quite yet. In an hour?”

  “Fine. Let’s meet close to you. How about Tavern on the Green. Ever been there?”

  “A few times,” I replied. Now I wasn’t just worried, I was panicked.

  “I’ll be there by two.”

  His voice was hoarse, but he didn’t reveal a thing about Ava Newman.

  I hung up and called Turner.

  “In an hour? I’ll be there, too. You won’t see me, but I’ll be there. I promise.”

  “Of all the things you could have said, that’s the best one,” I whispered.

  Jacob was already at Tavern on the Green when I arrived. He wasn’t sitting at the restaurant, but standing out front. He had on wire-framed sunglasses, a pair of old jeans, and a Columbia University T-shirt. His body was even thinner than the last time I had seen him, and his shoulders were slightly sloped. With every step I took, I grew more certain that it was him I’d seen outside of Ava’s apartment. He kissed me on the cheek. My body bristled. He smelled like sweat and a bottle of whiskey. He lifted his sunglasses. His eyes were half-closed, but noticeably bloodshot. He had killed her, and now he was one hell of a mess.

  “Jacob, I’m so happy to see you, but you don’t look well,” I said, returning his kiss. He no longer tasted like memories; it was a taste much closer to death.

  “I know. I’ve been sick.”

  “That’s what you said last time.”

  “I’m still sick. I think it’s the weather. I’ll probably be sick until the fall. July is the ugliest month in Manhattan.”

  “Why not August?”

  “Because the rich leave in August, and we can all breathe again.”

  “The fall,” I said, matching his slow steps. “That’s a terribly long time to be unwell.”

  “Some people spend their entire lives unwell. I won’t complain. Come, Katharina, let’s walk uptown. You can say something to make me laugh.”

  “To make you laugh…” I was too scared to not let him guide the conversation. “Did you hear about the two peanuts walking at night through Central Park?”

  “No…”

  “One was a salted.”

  “That is a very bad joke, Katharina,” he said, laughing.

  “It’s bad, but it does the job. Sometimes, that’s all you need—something, or someone, to do the job.” I was a fool to bait him, but I hadn’t come to be his entertainment.

  “Still a very bad joke,” he said pleasantly.

  We walked together, two former paramours who had lied, schemed, and killed their way into a very complicated situation.

  “Will you start going to Washington for me again, Katharina?” he said as we walked slowly north.

  “As Turner told you, or I hope he did, it’s been impossible,” I said. “My husband has been very present. But I can try again.”

  “It’s important that you do. Imperative, in fact. Nick says they need someone to go every week now. That their new material is extremely time sensitive. Can you go every week?”

  “Every week?” I heard my voice falter. “Yes. I mean, I can try,” I repeated. I should have just said yes, especially now that Tom knew about Sarah. Anything to keep me as Jacob’s courier, to keep me in the game, especially with Ava gone for good. But I found myself too disgusted by him to just nod along in submission.

  “You were correct about Ron,” said Jacob. “He needed to be handled more delicately. He’s a very smart man. Very committed. But he gets nervous.”

  “Not surprising, given where he works. Do you ever get nervous?” I asked.

  “Of course not. I’m a New Yorker,” he said, trying to lace a little Queens through his Ukrainian accent. “Do New Yorkers ever get nervous?”

  “Extremely. We tend to be a very nervous people.”

  “Well, this one isn’t. Probably because my fate is sealed.”

  “In what way?”

  We approached a group of children and Jacob wandered through them like a ghost, forcing them to maneuver around him.

  “They know who I am,” he said. “The American government, that is. I’m just trying to do as much as I can until they force me to stop. They don’t know all the particulars yet,” he added, looking at my worried expression. “Otherwise I’d be finished. Their intelligence services are very slow.”

  “Should you still be in New York then? And should I be walking with you in Central Park?”

  “Are you afraid to?”

  “No.” I was afraid for very different reasons.

  “Good. You shouldn’t be. We’ve been friends a long time. Or at least we were a long time ago. That’s alibi enough.”

  So was being an FBI informant. “But you’re still goin
g to remain Nick Solomon’s contact?”

  “Of course. I don’t trust anyone else to do it. There are very few people I trust. But I do trust you. And Turner Wells. You can tell him that. Though, he’s busy with other things.”

  I didn’t know if he meant the CRC or me. Right now, Turner Wells was busy with making sure Jacob didn’t butcher me under a bridge.

  “Did you go to Washington to speak to Ron?” I asked. Jacob had slowed considerably since we’d started to walk.

  “No. I had him come here. The FBI would have been too delighted to see me go to Washington. They would have put ten men on me. Ten clean-cut, beady-eyed, Bible-salesmen types. You’d think they’d have been smart enough to hire at least some people who didn’t look like Sunday-school teachers.”

  In fact, they were. “I don’t think motorcycle gangs line up to apply to the FBI,” I said instead.

  “Regardless, Ron agreed to come to New York because he also wanted to see Ava,” said Jacob. “He was very attached to her. But he’ll be the same way with you soon.”

  I didn’t reply, waiting for Jacob to say something more about Ava. To acknowledge her death. He didn’t.

  “Thank you for going to Washington,” he said finally, pushing up his sunglasses. “It’s been a difficult month.”

  “Anything to help you, Jacob.”

  “Even though I’m not nearly as handsome as Turner Wells?”

  “You’re Jacob Gornev,” I replied. “You don’t need to be.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Sarah Beach arrived again on Thursday morning to watch the boys. I rushed out in a haze of kisses and goodbyes after Tom left for the hospital and settled into my train car just as the doors closed. The wheels creaked out of Penn Station and into the sunlight.

  “Do you mind if I join you?” I heard a man ask ten minutes after we had rolled out of the station. Without looking up, I broke into a grin.

  Turner Wells sat down next to me.

  “Is there any news about Ava?” I asked as he crossed his ankle over his knee, his thigh brushing mine as he did.

  “There isn’t. I wish there was, but I haven’t heard anything. Let’s just talk about the weather instead,” he said. “The weather was good that day in the park.”