Brightness Falls (45 page)

"Why bells, Evie?"

"Probably wedding bells. Poor girl's cooped up here while all the other little girls are getting a jump on the nice young men."

"If she puts on a little weight and buys a padded bra she'll do fine."

"Ding dong," said Babs, her upper body moving metronomically as she tottered away, shifting from her good leg to her stiff one. Making no sign that she was aware of them, Delia continued to paint.

"So how are we feeling today, Mr. Pierce? ..."

The shrink's professional shtick was the genial, fatherly manner tinged with authority. Bejowled, he had a fleshy bulldog face that reminded Jeff of the late Dylan Thomas, a nearly comic juxtaposition of appearance and reality. Dr. Taylor wore cardigans and brown brogues that appeared to be made out of some petroleum-based synthetic, and he somehow conveyed the impression of smoking a pipe, though he did not. His office was immaculate, like the model unit of a condominium complex. Issues of the
Journal of Psychopharmacology
formed a perfect fan across the coffee table.

"Like shit. " Jeff lifted his right foot and disheveled the arrangement of magazines on the coffee table with his toe. "Not an original metaphor for a negative emotional state, but I think it fits the case."

Dr. Taylor nodded, his jowls shaking. "That's understandable. Your body is still recovering from addiction. But we've got to try to identify your issues—"

"I'm worried about the rain forests."

"Tell me more about Caitlin, Jeff. She left you two years ago. Why do you think she left?"

"Why not ask her?"

"All that need concern us here is why
you
think she left."

"Because I couldn't commit?" This answer had an experimental, interrogative rise.

"That sounds like something she would say. "

"It's true. I wanted everybody in the world to love me, and her ambitions for me were narrower. She just wanted me to love her."

"And did you?"

"Yes. But it didn't seem like enough. Ideally she would've been a blonde, brunette redhead who was whippet-thin and also voluptuous, tall and petite, nurturing and independent, fiery and complacent, whorish and motherly."

"You expected a lot from her."

"I suffer from gross expectations. This may be the only sense in which I'm a somewhat representative figure."

"Did writing a book give you a sense of fulfillment?"

"The day I finished it I suppose it did."

"Then?"

"Then an absolute conviction that the book wasn't very good—segue to more yearning, restlessness, insatiable, undiagnosable desire."

"Let's try and break that down, shall we?"

"You and what wrecking crew?"

Mail call. More books from good old Russell, the fucking dope; Jeff had been unable to read since he arrived, his concentration shot to hell. And a separate package from Corrine, which included a new copy of
Charlottes Web,
a secret shared favorite, which Jeff had once read aloud to her in a frigid farmhouse near Middlebury, Vermont, while she nursed an ankle twisted on the slopes of Killington. Russell was off in Oxford being scholarly and all that. The nurse flipped to the end of the book and read aloud the last lines, underlined by the subtle Corrine: "It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both." She looked up at Jeff to see if these lines had some special, encoded significance.

"Sounds like drug lingo to me," Jeff said.

He had to open the other books in front of the head nurse, who checked for narcotics and sharp instruments. She held the books upside down and fanned the pages, ran a letter opener up the spine of the hardcover
The Stories of John Cheever.
The late St. John, the country husband half drowning in alcohol, trying to be someone for whom the garden and the family and the holy smell of new wood in the basement workshop were enough, unable to resist the baby-sitter or the paper boy or the mid- morning drink. And here am I, thought Jeff—a blue-blooded junkie in suburban Connecticut.

A buddy had been assigned to Jeff when, upon graduating from detox, he'd enrolled in group. Tony had missed this morning's session because he had a pass to go into town on a job interview. Tony Del Vecchio once managed a chain of bar/restaurants based in New Haven. A tough guy, he'd started dealing coke; a natural fit, pure synergy, he explained, alcohol and drugs. Eventually he couldn't keep his nose out of the bag. Then he'd started going downtown, first chasing the dragon just to come down from the coke. Before he knew it, he was skin-popping, which led effortlessly to mainlining speed balls. After losing his job, house, wife and kids, he'd finally chosen to come here as an alternative to jail. He related this story at the first AA meeting Jeff attended, his confession tinged like all of them with the perverse pride of the survivor.

"Hey, buddy, what's this I hear about you in group," he asked, taking the chair beside Jeff's bed and turning it around, sitting down with his arms folded on the back.

"What can I say? I've never been good in groups."

"I'm just trying to help here." Tony was an unlikely-looking Samaritan, tattoos staining his forearms. "What have you got against Fran?"

"Right now I hate everybody."

"Tell me about it, buddy." He clapped a hairy hand on Jeff's knee. "I been there. Huh? It's like there's this big fucking hole in you screaming to get filled up, and everything else is just boring and stupid. Am I right?"

Jeff read the homemade tattoo on the back of Tony's hand: "Born to Party."

"I especially hate Fran."

"How's that?" Tony offered him a Camel filter, which he accepted.

"She's a fucking phony. People like Fran are the reason you start doing drugs. So you won't be like them. I don't care if she claims she's an alcoholic, she's one of the straights, one of the anal rule followers. She's a
group
person, the original happy camper."

"Bullshit. You take drugs to get high."

"She did something nasty to me," Jeff said, realizing how petty it would sound if he tried to explain it.

"Are you sure?" Tony removed his hand from Jeff's knee and slicked back his hair repeatedly as though massaging his thinking apparatus. "You probably did a lot of shitty things under the influence. Am I right? Huh?" He slapped Jeff's shoulder. "Why don't you think about that. Why don't you start by forgiving her. Then think about Step Eight in the program, that's the one where you think about the persons you failed. Make up a list of all the people you hurt because of your substance dependence. Then in Step Nine you try to make amends."

"I'm still stuck on Step Two," said Jeff. "The one where we come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity."

"That's the big one," said Tony. "Give it time."

"The entire history of civilization has been directed at freeing us from God and other arbitrary and bogus authority figures. And now, just because you crash the station wagon into a telephone pole you're supposed to say, 'Sorry, Dad, I'll eat my spinach and go to church this Sunday'?"

After dinner Corrine called. Jeff was in the TV room watching
Jeopardy
with the other burnouts when he was summoned to the phone.

"Just wanted to say I've been thinking about you."

"Been thinking about you, too."

Neither one of them seemed able to add anything. Jeff could imagine her embarrassment, her fear of saying the wrong thing.

"How's Crash?"

"Boring. All he ever does is work, and when he pops in for a second to change his clothes that's all he can talk about. He hardly even knocks anything over anymore."

"Divorce him and marry me."

"You're a real safe bet."

"That's just the point." He tried to sound chipper. "Would you rather be safe, or happy?"

"We were thinking of coming up this weekend."

"Neato."

"Try to feign some enthusiasm."

He couldn't imagine being enthusiastic about anything, much less a Sunday brunch with America's sweethearts. Somewhere in some sealed-off compartment of his heart was the knowledge that he loved these people, but he couldn't actually feel it. Mostly what he felt was angry. They were out there in the world, and here he was, stuck in the fucking nuthouse.

"I don't think I'm ready for that," he said.

"You must need something. We could bring—"

"How about you bring me about twenty balloons of junk."

"Not funny."

"Gosh, I guess I must've lost my sense of humor in detox."

"We love you, Jeff."

"We? What's this 'we' stuff? Love's not a group activity, goddamnit. Even though the mental hygienists here act like it is. Group fucking therapy. Do you know—we're encouraged to share and hug a lot. The word 'share,' that's a goddamn intransitive verb up here. We're supposed to write little journals where we say, 'I shared with Tony today... Fran shared with us about not being able to share with her family.' I know you and Russell like to do everything together, but in this case why don't you just speak for yourself." He paused, picturing Corrine's pained, beautiful face on the other end. "I love you, too," he said angrily. "Just give me some time to stop hating you."

36

"Do you want to talk about why we don't have a sex life anymore?"

"No."

"Well, I do." She knew, of course, but she wanted to hear him say it.

Lying beside her in the darkness, he sighed emphatically. "Corrine, I have to wake up and go to work in five hours."

"Is it that you find me repulsive after... after what happened?"

"Of course not, that's ridiculous."

"What am I supposed to think? It's been weeks since you touched me. You think I'm disgusting."

"You're supposed to understand I've got a truckload of shit on my mind right now, that I'm under a
lot
of pressure at work."

"What about what I've been through?"

Russell could hear those little tearful catches seeping into her voice.

She turned toward him and burrowed into his side. "We sound so
old.
Could you ever have imagined when we first started seeing each other that we'd have this conversation?"

"We
are
older, Corrine."

"I don't want to be an old married couple already. I'm too young to be old."

Russell sat up in bed with a furious heave of his shoulders. "Look," he shouted. "I don't have time for this right now. Everything's all fucked up."

"So tell me about it," she shouted back. "I'm your wife, Russell."

"All right, all right, I'm getting weird signals from Bernie, for one thing, and we're hemorrhaging staff and authors. People are saying they hear the deal is shaky. Well, that becomes self-fulfilling. And I don't know if I really have a job yet, not until the papers are all signed."

"But you own part of the company," Corrine said soothingly. "That's something."

"Melman has controlling interest. And he's got his own agenda, which doesn't necessarily include me."

"Isn't it possible," she said quietly, "that you're overreacting?"

"I don't think so."

After a long silence she said, "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

He lay back down. "You were right. About the deal. I wish I'd never thought of it. "

"It'll work out." She reached over and stroked the furrows in his forehead, which reminded her suddenly of the blubbery striations on the beached whale at Bernie Melman's summer house. That was the day she'd known that everything would go wrong.

"Wait a minute—aren't we sort of rich now?"

"We may have a couple million in stock if everything goes through," he said gloomily.

"My God, listen to yourself. You could retire and write poetry."

"It's a little late for that, Corrine."

"You're thirty-one years old, Russ."

"Almost thirty-two. "

"I'll buy you a cane. Come on! It's not too late for anything. You've done what everybody wants to do—make a pile of money and do what they want."

"I'm not ignorant enough to start over from scratch. When you're twenty you don't know how hard it is to be a poet or whatever, and if you can fool yourself long enough and work hard enough you may have a shot at becoming what you were pretending to be. It's not just a question of time and money. It's a question of being able to fool yourself."

"Just a couple of months ago you fooled yourself into thinking you could buy a whole company."

"Maybe I used up my capacity for faking myself out. Anyway, it's easier buying a company than writing a significant poem."

Although she believed much of what he'd said, Corrine would have been sad to think
he
really believed it. If she lacked his general optimism, she recognized his tendency toward self-dramatization.

"Why didn't you tell me all of this earlier?"

"I don't like to leak."

"Talking's not leaking, for God's sake."

"Can I say something, then? Can I, like, be really honest for a change?"

"Of course."

Corrine raised herself up on one elbow and looked down into his face. In the darkness she could just make out the outline of his head on the pillow and the glint of his eyes. He took her hand in his own.

"I'm worried about you. You're too thin. You're disappearing in front of my eyes. You know this has been a problem for you in the past. I think you should get some help."

She turned her back to him and pulled the sheets and blankets up around her shoulders. Couldn't he see how big she was? All he had to do was look at her. She felt his hand measuring her hip.

"It's because I'm too fat that you won't sleep with me, isn't it?" she said. "That's what you really mean."

"Corrine, don't do this."

"I don't blame you for thinking I'm gross," she said.

"Are we even speaking the same fucking language?"

"Don't yell."

What made him angrier still was that at the most fundamental level she was right about one thing. They didn't make love as much anymore and he was angry that he had lost some of his desire, a thing he never could have imagined ten years before. He was angry because she had come near a truth he could not bear to admit even to himself, which was that passion cannot be sustained forever, though other compensations might replace it. The tragedy of monogamy. To acknowledge this seemed disloyal. It also seemed to him a failure of manhood; having for a long time wanted his wife as often as he could get her, he feared that his own vitality was waning now that this was no longer true.