Disturbances in the Field (27 page)

Nina had been promoted to associate professor, and she had a new lover. Freed from that unhappy pattern at last, she told me: he was much more appropriate. A lawyer. Civil rights. A Jewish lawyer, no less, a dozen years older than she, and married. “Appropriate? I can’t see what’s so appropriate.” “Lydia, you’re being parochial. You know what I mean. He’s someone I can talk to, for one thing.” “You wanted to be the world for somebody. How much of the world do you suppose you can be for him if he already has a wife?” “His wife is not my business. That’s his problem. I’ve got to think about me.” “I am thinking about you, Nina.” But she was in the fuchsia cloud, from which neither common sense nor the stringencies of Abelard could extricate her. Did she receive him at midnight in the harem outfits, Epictetus at her bedside and bangles on her wrists? I knew several Jewish lawyers in their mid-forties, politically liberal and sexy. Such men would love the harem outfits and the brainy, lapsed Sunday school student in them. But would not find the world there, nor bring it.

It was 1971, the war was still going on, and the promise of the sixties was turning like aging milk. Disheartened, Nina said we must go back to the beginning, where the crucial questions were first and best articulated. Plato, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus. But how could we? The Philosophy Study Group was meeting more sporadically than ever. Gabrielle and I zipped from home to work like frantic mechanical toys, Nina herself was deep in a study of the biochemical roots of schizophrenia, and Esther refused to come: it might interfere with her therapy. “Considering the depth of our inquiries,” Gaby commented, “I think her alarm is excessive.” But Esther was firm. Her therapist was teaching her, among other things, to say no.

“Therapists are the sophists of the age,” Gabrielle said testily as we fell onto the purple pillows.

Nina handed us gin and tonics in tall glasses. “Four ice cubes, Lydia.” She knew I loved ice.

Outside, a heat wave was stifling the city. From the huge windows, in the seeping dusk, we could see young mothers in shorts and halters, their backs shiny with sweat, slowly pushing strollers one last time around the playground to calm the fretful babies. Someone had opened a fire hydrant, and little kids splashed in their underwear. Passers-by walked through the spray with peaked smiles. It was a New York August. Inside, Nina had the air-conditioner on full force. We pinned up our hair and sat with our loose summer dresses pulled high on our thighs.

“Therapists”—Gaby spoke the word with contempt—“are the real sophists of the age. They travel around and give lectures—those marathons—just like Protagoras. They also take money for their teachings. In Greece the real philosophers didn’t condescend to take money.”

“But they don’t claim to be philosophers.” I was thinking of George, who was really quite humble.

“Don’t they? They teach skills for getting by, as Protagoras did. Only back then they called what they taught wisdom and virtue; we don’t even bother. Just a certain efficiency. Self-help. How-to. Truth is whatever works for you. The only difference I can see is that in Greece they manipulated words and emotions to succeed in politics, and here the action is all in the private arena. You know, ‘relationships.’ Being with people is a technique.”

I remembered her great tirade in the dorm, when she raged through the room in her blue leotard, splendid in her indignation against philosophic bad faith. She no longer raged. It was too hot, for one thing, and she had grown subdued, earthbound. More out of sorts, it seemed, than truly indignant. Maybe she was getting her period. I scolded myself for such retrogressive thinking.

She was smoking again too, French cigarettes. She tossed a still-burning match into an ashtray a foot away, as Esther used to do. It landed on the purple rug. Nina, once so quick to restore safety, sat unmoved while Gaby absently retrieved it and rubbed at the dark spot on the rug. “Look,” she went on, “Esther will always be Esther. She’ll always fumble around, and not because she doesn’t understand her own motives. I give her more credit than that. She understands fine. What she doesn’t understand is the world, what’s happening around her and to her. Protagoras says you can give the same food to a healthy man—well, let’s say woman—to a healthy woman or a sick woman. The healthy woman will say it’s good, the sick woman, bitter. Does that mean the sick woman is mistaken? Oh no, perceptions never lie. Only it’s better to be healthy, of course. So the job is to change the sick woman into a healthy woman, so that she can find the food good. How? By words. Now isn’t that exactly what a therapist does? But—the food is what happens to you in your life. And the point is, the food
is
good or rotten in itself. Everyone’s forgotten that. Let the world fall to ruins, we’ll just refine our coping techniques.”

“Good grief, you’ve become an absolutist,” said Nina.

“Why should you care if she goes to a therapist? If it helps?”

“No, you haven’t mastered the proper vocabulary, Lydia. You’re supposed to ask, why does it make me feel threatened.”

I felt a chill in the Philosophy Study Group, beyond air-conditioning and ice cubes. I got up and walked around the room. Gabrielle stubbed out the cigarette and crossed her legs Indian fashion. Then, as if to show she could still do it, she arranged her legs and bare feet in the lotus position. She looked at us with a peculiar, needless defiance, her eyes blue and green, flamed by discontent.

“Not just an absolutist. A Stoic.” Nina laughed as she rose and took our glasses. “I can see it in the way you sit.” She went into the small kitchen, and through the connecting window, as she fixed the drinks, peered out at us. “Bear and forbear,” she said with a jaunty tilt of her head. “Those
Golden Sayings of Epictetus.
Death, disaster, loss, all wonderful opportunities to prove your mettle. Bear whatever comes, and forbear from evil. Bear the pain and forbear from the pleasure. Charming, isn’t it?” Ice cubes crackled out of a tray, and in a moment she was back.

I took the frosty glass. “It’s not all so priggish. Marcus Aurelius has that lovely part about the emeralds. Although he too—Gaby, don’t, what is it?” I reached over, but she shook her head.

She was crying with her face in her hands. She waved us away, and in a moment was composed again. Not menstrual pangs. A man in her office. It was driving her mad. She had never felt this way before—with eyes averted. She hadn’t known it could be so bad. It. Her face darkened. She thought about him all the time.
All
the time. She banged a fist on her knee, still captive in the lotus position.

“Well, what are you doing about it?” Nina asked. “You’ve got the will. What about the consent?”

“I’m doing nothing. What can I do? Wait it out. It’s no good, but it’ll pass. The hard part is ... I have to see him every day. It’s funny—I lie awake at night and think that with a few well-aimed words I could have him transferred. He’s in the Art Department. He could do the same thing for another magazine in the group. It would be a relief. But of course I would never do that. It’s wrong. I’d rather leave myself.”

“After all the effort you’ve put in! You said in a couple of years you could be the arts editor.”

“No, I’m not planning to leave. That wouldn’t be right either.”

“Your vocabulary,” Nina remarked, “is somewhat limited. Right. Wrong. Good. Bad.”

She smiled. “Unthreatening, I guess. Look, I know I could push words around to make it all right. I mean, all right to have the affair, or all right not to. With words you can do anything. But they don’t change the truth of what’s happening.”

“Yes,” said Nina. “It’s like that story about the student who wouldn’t pay Protagoras his fee.”

“What story?”

“Oh, you don’t want to hear a story at a moment like this. Go ahead, indulge yourself. Tell us all about him.”

“No, no. Tell it. It’ll distract me.”

“Okay. Protagoras taught the student how to be successful at argument, and they agreed that the student would pay his fee only if he won the first case he pleaded in court. Well, he kept delaying his first case, till Protagoras threatened to sue him; he pointed out that the student didn’t stand a chance: if Protagoras won, the student would have to pay by the judgment of the court, and if the student won he would have to pay according to the terms of their agreement. But the student—he must have been a pretty clever student—pointed out that Protagoras didn’t have a chance: if he, the student, won, he was freed of all debt by the court’s decree, and if Protagoras won, he was free and clear according to the terms of the agreement. There’s your typical sophist argument. You choose what you like and find words to justify it.”

I was never good at riddles. I sat puzzling, while Gabrielle made an effort to smile. The next minute she was in tears again.

“Oh, it’s really too hot to cry, Gaby,” Nina said. “It’s too hot even to talk. Let’s go to the beach, just for a look. The car’s right outside.”

I was up and ready. Gabrielle looked at her watch. “I don’t know. ... Don ... the kids ...”

“Is it right? Is it wrong?” Nina mocked. “Shall we bear the heat, forbear from going to the beach? Or maybe we should forbear from denying ourselves the beach. Let’s sit and analyze it.”

“Okay, okay.” She wiped her eyes and turned to me. “What was the part about the emeralds?”

“I’ll tell you another time. Come on, up! It’ll do you good.”

Nina put on real clothes, and we trooped downstairs to the aging but still plucky white Triumph. We sped over the bridge, with the Watchtower, home of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, glaring at us severely, warning of imminent apocalypse, then through the broad, stolid avenues of Brooklyn, past old people in sturdy white laced shoes, taking the night air on plastic chairs set on narrow stretches of grass. Very soon the smell of ocean seasoned the air. On the boardwalk were other seekers after a breeze and a glimpse of infinity. We took off our shoes and went down to the sand, cool on the soles of our feet. The beach itself was nearly empty. Wire trash baskets loomed like animals in the night; here and there a bulbous lump shifted on the sand, couples rolling in blankets. We didn’t dance or frolic as we used to, but walked sedately to the water’s edge and stepped in almost up to our knees. The surf knocked against our legs. Far off, a yellow light from a ship at sea (how far, Thales?) cast a ray on the water like a mistaken sun, out of season. The water was warmish, having been heated all day, all week, all month; it was comforting to think that even the sea, under a planetary sway, was subject, like us, to small fluctuations of temperature. A few gulls swooped overhead, plummeted, skimmed the surface and shot upwards into a black sky full of stars promising more heat when the dark lifted. We walked along the water’s edge about a quarter of a mile, stopped as one and turned back, not speaking. We were cooled. The heat and the day and the facts of our lives drained from us, and we were creatures unspecified, abstracted from ourselves, poised at the rim of the sea.

We sat down on the sand, not close together but together. I saw a shooting star. It went by so fast I had no time to tell the others. No, I wanted it all for myself, because it brought back to me the night Vivian was conceived, thirteen months ago, when there was also a shooting star.

“Did you see it?” Victor had said. It was a weekend camping, our first weekend away alone in years. “Yes, I saw it. Ah, come here, Mr. Watson, I need you.” Our words came so slowly and lazily, everything else so fast. “First put the damn thing in, Lyd. Come on, baby,” he drawled, and I drawled back, “I can’t reach it, and I can’t get up. It’s too chilly out there. Look at all those cold stars. So cold. Yes, oh that.” “Lydie, I don’t want ... Let’s just—” “One time out of so many. It can’t happen. Oh Victor. Love.” “Baby, move over, yes. Oh Jesus. It’s always ... I could die in you. It would be all right.” “Stay still for just a minute. Can you? Oh that’s good.” “Listen, I’d better not. It’s too risky.” “Oh Victor, don’t, don’t. It doesn’t feel nice. Stay, please. Don’t go ’way.”

Vivian was what we had. We thought of an abortion and we remembered that moment on the damp earth, when I had pleaded and he had been unable to leave me, and we couldn’t bring ourselves to deny the fire that was her source. It was as if we knew it would be Vivian, child of air and water, conceived lakeside, child of the elements, magical, careless, with glistening shy black lake eyes; as if we knew in advance her delights and would not miss having her for the world. The world well lost. We would manage somehow. Four of them! There was something seductive, wonderfully outrageous about it. A game, like playing poor. People thought us stupid, but were too discreet to say. Had they heard how it happened, they would have thought us stupider still.

Gabrielle waited but the feeling did not pass. It wore her down like a disease; she got thin from it, and her blue eye and green eye both faded to gray. Yet she would do nothing but abide with it, speaking of it rarely, bearing it like a disease, not progressive and not terminal. In Don’s spiffy green Volkswagen bus we drove out to the country for picnics on warm Sunday afternoons, children bouncing around in the back, clamoring, How much longer? Sometimes she invited us for dinner and cooked fancy French food. There seemed little change between them. As ever, she was the gracious wife, receptive to his affection, but quieter. A weary kind of stillness settled on her movements. She glided around the table carrying dishes with almost no sound, deft, light, and self-absorbed, while he continued to dote, never letting on if he knew anything.

Holding me in bed, Victor whispered, “What is the matter? Is she not well?” “She’s well.” “What is it, then? Something between them?” “No, I think they’re all right.” “Someone else,” he said. It was terribly difficult not to respond; this murmuring was the core of our life. He nudged me. “Lyd? You up?” “I’m up.” “You can’t tell me?” I shook my head against him in the dark. He could feel it. “But Don. She still loves him. Doesn’t she?” “Oh yes,” I said. “Otherwise ...” “What if that should happen to us?” “She’s good,” I said. “I wouldn’t be such a good girl.” “No,” he said, “I don’t imagine you would.” “I don’t see it happening. I don’t have the time. Move your elbow, Victor. My arm’s asleep.” He did, and began to caress me. “Come here again,” he whispered, and moved to pull me on him. “I’m tired. Can’t we just lie here and talk?” He stopped and simply held me. “I could not love anyone else,” he said. “Of course you could.” “Maybe. That Jasper, Lyd. Jasper looks at you ... Greg never looked at you that way.” I moved off a bit. “Jesus, what is this, ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’? First of all, Jasper is homosexual, Victor. If he looks at me it has to do with what we’re playing. There’s an intimate current in a chamber group. You have to keep checking out the others. You can sense what’s going on in them. Musically. It may be analogous to sex but it is not sex. Besides, Jasper is better than Greg. Maybe that’s why he looks more.” “Then why is Greg the one who got the job in the Philharmonic? And incidentally, Jasper is bisexual, not homosexual. Didn’t you ever notice?” “You know, Victor, with all your perception, sometimes you seem very ignorant.” “I suppose when I want to make love I get ignorant.” I moved back to him. “In that case you should insist.” “Ah, I don’t like to insist. All right. I insist. No, I’ll urge. Like this.” I laughed. “Not bad. You’re funny, Victor.” “That’s why you married me, right? For laughs.” “It’s after two, though. They’ll be up in a few hours.” “Quick, then. We’ll make it very quick this time. No fooling around. You can even count. You tell me how many, uh, thrusts you require, and I’ll deliver, like George’s seltzer man. You can be asleep in five minutes if you concentrate. Ready, Lydia? One.” “Stop horsing around. I couldn’t count past two.” “Two,” he said. “Shh.” He stopped and stroked my face. “Don’t ever fall in love with anyone else. Please.” “I won’t, I won’t ...Oh!” I clasped him tighter, and when we parted I burrowed into his shoulder, almost asleep. “I’m glad you urged. Good night.” Hypnagogic pictures began, with music to match. I was almost gone. “Twelve,” he said in my ear. “Victor, how could you? How could I love someone who could do that?” “I’m just kidding. I made it up.” “Hah! I wonder.”