Darling? (6 page)

And for a moment she was able to act as herself, Daisy the able, the swift. She plunked Karp’s coffee mug over the bee, slid an envelope under its mouth, and, since the office window was painted shut against pollens and molds, carried it into the waiting room and shook it free out the door while Karp made helpful and appreciative noises from the corner. No telling whether he was keeping back from the bee or from her—by the time she returned to his office he was back in his chair, his face arranged again into a blank screen.

“Let’s see,” he said, in his most neutral tone, “you were saying—” But the time; he stood up. “Actually we’ll have to pick up there next week.”

“It’s time?” Had she used up her hour by saving his life?

“I’m afraid…” He smiled wretchedly, and then, searching for some gesture of farewell—some way to get rid of her—extended his hand.

Which, having taken, she found herself unable to let go. Some eternal seconds passed, she gazing meaningfully at him, he pleadingly at her, until, with her natural officiousness (but he understood so kindly that her parents had needed her to tell them what to do) pulled him to her, held him tight.

It took an age—thirty seconds at least—to realize he was just standing there, unmoved except maybe by embarrassment and irritation. She had captured rather than embraced him.

“I have someone waiting,” he said icily, and pulled the inner door open, before he recovered himself, and, in his most careful, hypnotic, lion tamer’s tone, stuck his head right between her jaws. “I mean, if this brings something up, by all means feel free to call … but…”

The bride fled home to her husband with something like a steak knife lodged in her breast. What could she have been thinking of, trying to seduce a god down from Olympus, imagining that Morris Karp would embrace the likes of her? And on the truck in the next lane
cappuccino
was written with two
ns.
Why can’t anyone
spell?
Nobody bothers, nobody cares.… What if she just smashed into it until the word stove in on itself, folded the offending
n
out of sight?
Consult the dictionary!
she wanted to scream—and she pressed the accelerator. If she could only go fast enough, maybe a cop would come save her, put her in prison, get this weapon out of her hands.

As Daisy turned in the driveway at home Cyrilla burst out onto the steps, naked and golden with Hugh behind her holding a martini and proffering, beseechingly, a little pink dress. The Dow Jones, he said, with deepest, most satisfactory dread, was sharply up: this could only portend a crash. She hadn’t been noticing—when had he become a happy man?
And
another murder in Boston, he said, pointing to the television—why would anyone go into that city, what could be worth risking your life that way? It occurred to Daisy that she loved him more than she’d used to. His gloom felt cozy and familiar; he was only pointing out how big and frightening the world was, why she ought to stay by his hearth. She glanced at the reprehensible television—and there was Karp; his face filled the entire frame.

Talking about toddlers, she guessed, though she couldn’t hear or understand him while she was drinking him in this way. To look into his face so closely, see the thoughts pass across it, this was as much as she’d ever asked for—all she’d wanted from the awful embrace. There was a space between his front teeth—how had she missed this? What else didn’t she know? When his forty-five seconds were over and the bright generic face of the anchorwoman replaced his, the loss hurt her eyes. “Dr. Karp says it’s not the
amount
of time you spend with a child, but whether something meaningful takes place
during
that time,” the woman chimed. “Dr. Karp says…”

Daisy felt exactly how his arms should have fit around her … how he would have lifted her out of her dull, petty self into the light … to keep apart from him felt completely unnatural, wrong. And decided that for dinner she would make fettuccine Alfredo—she was ravenous suddenly; the foods she used to disdain rose up and demanded she acknowledge their deliciousness—what madness could have kept her from eating them all these years?

*   *   *

Three days later she was sitting on the stoop with a bag of macaroons when the UPS man came up the walk with
The Contemporary Parent
—the next thing to having Karp’s heart and mind in a jar. She tore at the package with her teeth rather than let the man go. She needed someone, someone in a uniform, with her, lest Karp fly out of the book and castigate her for prying into him again.

“Wanna see a picture of my psychologist?”

The UPS man smiled most uncomfortably, but this was hardly the weirdest request he’d ever acceded to. She held the book open for him, squinting sideways at the photo herself in case the sight of it would blind her.

“He looks very nice,” the man said, and seeing this fell short, added, “But … smug, maybe?”

“Oh, no!” Daisy said, though she saw what he meant. It wasn’t Karp, the raw, honest face she loved, the angel as grocer, giving good quality at fair prices—it was Karp in a state of helpless ingratiation. “No, he’s mortified, that’s just his mortified look,” she said. She knew his mortified look pretty well. “I don’t think he likes having his picture taken.”

He leaned in to look closer, taking the book out of her hands. He smelled of heaven: sweat and cinnamon chewing gum.

“… nurturing the inner child?” He had turned to the dedication.

“Oh, that’s just the way they talk … you know.” In her dreams he spoke Hebrew, the language written in flames.

He had not dedicated the book to her, and this came as an insufferable blow. Of course, there was that wife and child. But common sense had played no role in her relations with Karp so far and was hardly about to assert itself now. She scanned the acknowledgments, dusting her fingers over the print in case there was a secret message for her in braille, but no, she was one of the few people on earth whose name did not appear. She’d loved him for years now, while he lived his life among others.…

“I, I have some other deliveries—”

“Of course, of course, thanks—”

“I mean, he looks like a very nice man,” the UPS man continued, backing away.

Daisy nodded, and opening the book thought of the chunk of plutonium discovered by a Brazilian family in an abandoned clinic: they lived in a world of mud and straw, but this stone glowed blue as twilight—obviously sacred. They built it an altar in their kitchen, carried it into the fields, touched it to the forehead of each newborn child … The tumors were immense, the youngest, blessed most often, were first to die. Beware of talismans, sacraments—she closed the book and touched her cheek to the jacket. Could this really be all she was to have of Morris Karp?

*   *   *

By Wednesday she’d handled it enough that it didn’t seem quite so dangerous and she dared carry it to his office for her act of contrition. She couldn’t actually read the book—the words, being his, were too full of meaning, jewels to be lifted to the eyepiece one by one, but she held the book up and waited with heart slamming—when he came in and saw
The Contemporary Parent
instead of her face, he would have to love her, for a minute at least.

An hour passed with no Karp. Why had she ever touched him, tried to tear him out of the spirit world? He’d had no choice but to disappear.

A little man came up the walk, wearing red suspenders and a pointed beard, carrying the
Selected Paul Tillich.
He pushed open the door and looked at her with suspicion.

“He’s late,” she explained. “My appointment was at eleven.”

“Mine’s at twelve,” he replied, and nodded at the clock—it was 12:10.

“I’ve been here all this time,” she said. “He hasn’t come.”

“I’ve never known that to happen,” the elf replied, opening his book with a snap. After all, she was in a psychologist’s office—she must be mad.

But, of course: it wasn’t Karp who had vanished, it was herself! The gods know about torture: they had not sentenced her merely to lose him but to be erased from his sight. She heard his step on the stair and her heart beat frantically—he’d open the door, look through her, and take the elf into the sanctuary, and she’d have to return to the underworld alone.

But he came down and motioned to her just as always, taking her into the office and going back to speak a moment with the elf. Daisy was abjectly grateful; she vowed never, ever to touch him, never to trouble him with herself again. Karp sat down pleasantly, silently, as if nothing was out of the ordinary … perhaps nothing
was
out of the ordinary? One must follow the local custom—if her watch read twelve and Karp said eleven, then eleven it must be. If he’d opened an umbrella she’d have put her head under the faucet rather than point out the sun—there has to be something certain on earth; let it be Karp’s way. He smiled politely, as if she’d never saved his life, never held him.…

“You don’t love me,” she choked.

“I don’t sexually abuse you.”

“You
pigheadedly
refuse to sexually abuse me!” she wept. Yes, she burned like an immolated monk with longing and fury and shame—and still it was funny—was this fair? Could he really think that lying beside her, touching and being touched, eyes open so each could see his effect on each other, feel the absolute holiness of it—would count as sexual abuse?

“Therapists don’t hug their patients!” he said, then added, “Though, I’ve been doing this a long time and there have been others—I suppose the most unsettling one was a psychotic
man
—so I’ve had a wide experience, with hugs, and—”

“I’m sorry,” she said, but a rebellion welled up. “No, I’m not—look at you! You don’t even guess what you’re missing, living your life without me!” She turned the surfaces of her hands lightly, eloquently, together; she was paying him to watch her every gesture, let him at least suffer what he missed. “Wouldn’t you like to have that feeling again, like when you were twenty?” she asked.

“You’re inviting me to regress with you?”

“When you’re dying, please remember you never kissed me.”

“It’s against the law in Massachusetts,” he replied, and began to go over his itinerary again while she wondered if kisses were legal in any of the other major market cities, or if secondary markets were more lenient, in order to attract their share of authors. What about a place like Pittsburgh, for instance? Or maybe she should just fling him down and carve
I Adore You
into his chest with one of those sharp gold-nibbed fountain pens so popular with collectors. Never mind, she was going to stop on the way home for a vanilla milkshake and a BLT. She was infinitely greedy, for food, drink, beauty, love.… She would storm over the earth, a giantess, swimming the Atlantic in a few proud strokes, taking everything she wanted.… She frightened herself, she needed someone to suppress her.

Harvard Doc Says You
Can
Have It All

The
Herald
had a color picture: Karp at home with his daughter on his knee. This was shocking—a burst of reality in the midst of a dream, like the school principal taking her out of class the day her father died. She kissed her finger and touched it to Karp’s lips. She had to renounce him, she understood. He was in the public domain now, might as well be in the grave.

As boxes go, she decided, the television is eerier than the coffin. Karp’s head talked on
Frontline,
on
Dateline,
on
Nightline,
while she watched like a cat peering into an aquarium. Blown dry, wearing … was that rouge?… saying “Well, Ted,” manfully as if he’d been saying “Well, Ted,” all his life, he strode through the interviews, looking like an eager schoolboy who was sure he had the answer, thinking
Call on me, call on me!
His hand shook, and Daisy pressed hers to the glass, matching her fingers to his. If only she could smash the set, reach in and pluck a wriggling Oprah out of his way. The camera closed in, a child lifted a toy out of his hand: he was a giant of empathy, the father every single viewer had been missing. Real tears glittered in his eyes. If a bee had flown into the studio he would have treated it with such generous respect it would have lost its need to sting.

He was everywhere, on every channel—he had materialized out of the world of dreams and to that world he had returned. There was no way to reach him but by telepathy. Daisy went to Amazon.com, and under the name of Laurel Shipman, of Tyringham, Massachusetts, gave
The Contemporary Parent
five stars: “A must for every man or woman trying to negotiate the complexities of parenting today!! Without this book I don’t know where I’d be!”

In fact, the day
The Contemporary Parent
went on the bestseller list, Daisy went on Prozac. There would, of course, be side effects: anxiousness, diminished libido.… Karp had said this in his most neutral voice, in
no
way implying her libido was outsized.
This is my body and my blood,
she thought dully as she shook her pill out into her hand. It changed nothing, she lived at the empty black center of herself, getting Cyrilla to preschool, opening the shop, and spending the day in the corner behind the big armoire, hiding from the customers and ordering soft sweaters in the mail. The longing for Karp was always there, now distant, now right beside her—like a mosquito, faint but incessant, unwilling to light, so that she was doomed to flail at it until … until she had smashed every damned teacup, every vestige of the past. The UPS man always came at four, with her new sweaters and sometimes a confidence—they were becoming close, they had all that driving in common, and he was grateful to get advice from someone with such a famous shrink. Her fingers trembled, wishing to trace the lines of his tattoo.

Then the tour was over, Karp was home. It was November, the garish fall colors were deepened into rich reds and golds that glowed against the gray sky—by the time she turned into his driveway it was pouring. His door was locked, so she sheltered under the eave, watching the rain sweep across the lawn. A cleaning lady lugged a vacuum into the manse across the street. After a long time Karp came out, unshaven, looking perplexed and angry and frightened all at once—as her mother had, when she was having a spell.