Envy (19 page)

“Well?” she says, when he doesn't say anything. “Will you please get to the point? We do know all this. We have established this much.”

“Here's the point. While I assume that she bears no relationship to me—why would I think otherwise?—she's checking me out. She has a definite agenda. She arrives on time for her second session, and we address the problem she described the previous week. This entails a detailed account of her most recent ‘date' with an older man, a narrative that strikes every possible erotic note and one that's obviously an attempt to put the moves on me.”

“On you!” Elizabeth slaps the table with her open hand. “My God, William, have you completely lost it?”

“Let me finish. So after a ‘blow-by-blow'—her words, not mine—description of how she seduced a professor at the place where she waits tables, she gets up to leave and hesitates at the door to my office. Asks me for help with the knob because, she claims, she has carpal tunnel syndrome and can't turn it. This being the very same knob she turned the previous week, but what she really wants has nothing to do with the knob; she—”

Elizabeth surges up from her green metal chair, her thigh hitting the tabletop so that the umbrella sways, tea and Dr Pepper slosh over the lips of their respective cups. “She does! Jennifer does have CTS, and as you'd know if you were a real doctor, it is not a constant thing, it goes into remission for a time and then it's—”

“Fine,” Will says. “Fine. Jennifer has carpal tunnel. But it didn't prevent her from accompanying her open-mouth, big-tongued kiss with some very dexterous, very nimble manipulation of my genitals. Despite her crippled hands.”

“She did not!” Elizabeth cries. “That did not happen!”

“Yes,” Will says. “It did. But that's not all, Elizabeth.”

“You're telling me that my daughter put her hand down your pants?”

“Not exactly. She fondled me through the fabric of my trousers while she French-kissed me. And that's still not the end.”

Elizabeth sets her lips in a tight line.

“I discontinue treatment and refer her to a colleague. I assure her that I will not share any of our conversations or her unusual behavior with that colleague. She'll have a fresh start, a clean slate, whatever she wants to call it. But that's not what she wants. She has no interest in starting over, no interest in analysis or any other kind of psychotherapy. Her agenda is decidedly outside of the therapeutic envelope. She calls me; she leaves messages with my service. When I don't return her calls, she tracks me down at my home number. I hang up, or, when Carole answers, I refuse to take the call, explaining— honestly, or so I think—that I'm under siege from a patient with whom I've discontinued treatment. I even tell Carole why it was I discontinued treatment, and we talk about the occupational hazards of working with unbalanced individuals.

“Anyway, when she can't reach me by phone, she comes to my office one afternoon and, thinking she's my three o'clock, who happens to be late, I buzz her in. I manage to get her out of my office when the patient does arrive, but she doesn't leave the building. Instead, she sits on the stairs, she comes back up when the session is over. She has to see me, she's sorry, needs my help, doesn't want to start over with a different therapist. Please, please. And why am I making such a big deal out of a kiss if, as I've told her, she's no longer my patient? After all, outside the context of any professional involvement, a kiss is no big deal. By now, I've turned my back on her for a minute so I can collect my thoughts, figure out how to get rid of this person without physically throwing her out of the building. But whatever I've planned to say goes right out of my head. That's how shocked I am to find that while I wasn't watching her she's taken her clothes off. All of them. She refuses to dress or to leave. She threatens to cause a scene—‘kick and scream' is how she put it—if I don't play the game her way.”

Elizabeth's mouth, which has been open for some time, begins to speak in an unnaturally calm and measured tone, the voice of someone who works a 911 line, who gives the same directions countless times each day, who is prepared to listen and respond to heart attacks and drug overdoses, babies who can't be woken, criminals with guns, fires in the attic, and more. “There's a phenomenon,” she says, “I'd think you'd be familiar with it, William. It's called erotomania. Erotomaniacs suffer the delusion that other people are sexually fixated on them. Maybe after the accident, after your son drowned, maybe you got a little unglued and—”

“Of course I came unglued! Not a little, a lot! And, yes, Elizabeth, I do know what erotomania is. How is it that all these years later, as other people our age arrive at a more nuanced and humane maturity, you remain so condescending? Do you actually believe you've got it all figured out? That the rest of us are just struggling to catch up? I'm not talking about erotomania, and I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about a young woman who is endangering herself and others with her amoral and pathologically narciss—”

“Oh, spare me! I'm not one of the suckers you can fool with your psychojargon. As you've said, Jennifer is not your patient. You have no idea who she is.”

“Do you? Do you have any idea who she is? Maybe the rest of this story will be illuminating. Maybe not. Maybe it will come as no surprise.” He folds his arms, waiting for her to ask him to continue.

“Well,” Elizabeth says. “Don't stop at the cliff-hanger. What happened?”

“She steps up, unbuckles my belt, unzips my fly, and we have sex.”

“Oh fuck,” Elizabeth says, and she closes her eyes. Her face, no longer animated by her eyes, looks exhausted. He sees lines he hadn't noticed before, around her mouth and on her forehead. “Why! Why didn't you stop her?”

“Well, first of all, don't forget, I think she's Andrea whoever, a young woman who is no longer my patient. Second, I'm . . . she . . . I was worried about protecting my career, my family. I didn't have any faith that I could resist her effectively. Without her framing me. I was—”

“You were a schmuck!”

“And you know what's the worst part of this mess? I don't know what I should be worrying about most. Potential incest? Adultery? An STD? Or the idea of you and my brother?”

“Your brother?” Elizabeth looks at him sharply. “What does your brother have to do with this?”

“Jennifer said you were sexually involved with both me and Mitch at the same time. And two other men. Four potential fathers.” Elizabeth stares at Will, not saying anything. “After Jennifer offered me a strand of her hair,” he goes on, “she explained that it might not be so bad. I hadn't necessarily done it with my daughter; she could just as easily be my niece. And that's because”—Will's voice gets louder—“you were fucking my brother!”

“Don't yell,” Elizabeth says.

“Were you or were you not fucking Mitch?”

“Don't yell.”

“Were you?”

“Yes.”

“Yes!”

“I told you, yes.”

“I cannot, I can not—well, I can—but no, I cannot believe that my brother, that, that you . . . why?”

“You know, William, I can't help but suspect that you're making a big deal out of this in order to draw attention away from the fact that you had sex with my daughter.”

“She assaulted me.”

“According to you.”

“She was the aggressor, and I didn't know her real identity because she lied.”

“Okay, so you were screwing a patient twenty-five years younger than you. Ex-patient. Let's not claim moral high ground. Anyway, we're talking twenty-five years ago. When we were kids. Is it such a big fucking deal if when we were kids I slept with your brother?”

“Why?” Will asks. “Tell me why. Why were you screwing Mitch and me at the same time?”

“Oh, Christ. Can we get back to the real topic? And it's not like it started out that way. For a long while it was just you.”

“And then?”

“And then it wasn't. But we're not talking about the past. We're talking about—”

“It was and then it wasn't? What is that supposed to mean?”

She shrugs. “I don't know. I guess he came on to me.”

“Mitch came on to you? When did he?”

“Actually, it was more complicated than that.” Elizabeth frowns, pinches her lower lip. “He sort of led me to believe it was you, that he was you, and by the time I knew he wasn't, it was too late.”

“How the hell did he do that?”

Elizabeth raises her hands, wiggles her fingers theatrically. “Under cover of darkness,” she says. “You're twins, remember? Identical. Built the same, sound the same. You guys were so square you even had the same haircuts.” She takes a sip of her tea, now cold, and makes a face.

“Go on,” Will says.

“He came over, this was sometime senior year—I was living off-campus in that house on Maplewood—and he slipped in that back door—you know which one, you used it yourself. So he made his way to my room and got into bed with me. I thought that was pretty ballsy. I liked it—it was sexy. You seemed suddenly sexier, or you seemed sexy in a way you'd never been before. Of course at first that's who I thought it was—you. After, when he revealed himself, I was irked.”

“
Irked?
You were
irked
?”

“Yes, pissed off. I guess because I was a little freaked out. But then, after a minute or two, it didn't seem so bad.”

“A minute or two! That's how long it took you to adjust?”

Elizabeth leans forward. “About as long as it took for Jennifer to go from being a person to whom you owed professional respect to just another piece of ass.”

Will ignores this.
Sexy in a way you'd never been before.
Mitch, who he thought was celibate. “So was that . . . was it . . . was that the only time?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“How many?”

“I don't know.”

“You lost count?”

“I never tried to count. Jesus, why are men so petty and small-minded? Do you think I made hatch marks on my bedpost? I'm a woman, I don't have to do that. I'm not living in constant fear of sexual inadequacy. I don't worry that my penis isn't big enough or that I won't be able to get it up or—”

“Okay, okay. For how long?”

“I don't know. He came back. I didn't stop him. I don't remember for how long.”

“Yes, you do.”

“You're right, I do.”

“Why?” Will says. “Why did you let it go on?”

“It was, I don't know, interesting.”

“It was
interesting
?”

“Yes, interesting. Sophisticated. Cool. It seemed hip and liberated. Counterculture. All those things we wanted to be. It seemed free.”

“Who? Who wanted to be cool and counterculture?”

“All of us.” She raises her eyebrows at him. “I did. Didn't you?”

“What's free about deceiving someone? A person who loved you?”

“I don't know, William. You were always . . . you made everything so claustrophobic. You were always all over me, and I don't mean physically. I felt like I couldn't get any air when I was with you.” She stops, frowning in concentration, and he sees the same frown as her daughter's. Why, why hadn't he put things together? “In retrospect,” she says, “I think it must have seemed like a way to escape you without doing anything terribly wrong. You and Mitch being twins made it seem like it wasn't cheating, exactly, or it wasn't such serious cheat—”

“Are you kidding! It's worse that he's my brother!”

“Now, maybe. To you, maybe. But to me, back then, the fact that he was so nearly you mitigated that aspect of it. I know that sounds like a rationalization, but it is how it felt. And it's not as if you and I were engaged or something. I never said I wasn't sleeping with anyone else. Besides, I didn't think you'd get hurt. I didn't think anyone would find out. And no one did, William. This all started because you were so weird and fixated at the reunion. I mean, it's been twenty-five years. Have you forgotten that we were young? We were, you know, kids. Careless.”

“I wasn't. I was never careless with you.”

“Well, I guess I just must have been less
evolved.
”

“Less evolved! The person you're describing is someone with the moral intelligence of a bait worm!”

“Jesus, William. Will you just lighten up?”

“Who was better?” he asks.

“Better?”

“Who was better in bed?”

“You must be joking.”

“Not at all. Who was the better lover?”

“Both of you were what, twenty? No one is a
lover
at twenty.” Elizabeth uses the index and middle finger of each hand to make quotation marks in the air when she says the word
lover.

“Fine. Who lasted longer? Who was more considerate, more deft, more creative? Who made you feel good? Who went down on you? Who made you come?”

“I'm not going to answer any of this.”

Will reaches across the table and grabs Elizabeth's wrist, aware that he's out of control, but it's like noticing your car's brakes have failed when you're already going down a hill: he can't stop. “Yes, you are,” he says. “You are.”

She twists out of his grasp, stands up. “I'm leaving. I've had enough.”

“So have I. But it's not over yet.”

“Yes it is.” She ties the belt of her trench coat and shoves her hands in her pockets. “If you contact me—if you e-mail me again, or call me, or Jennifer—I'll report you to the police. I'll tell them you sexually assaulted my daughter. If Jennifer is half as calculating as the person you've described, then maybe she didn't use a condom because she wanted her underpants to collect some, what shall we call it? Proof of your trespass?” Elizabeth looks at Will and, when he doesn't answer, continues. “Any number of strategies might present themselves to an amoral, ambitious, sexually experienced girl like Jennifer. I hope she didn't perform fellatio on you. Only too easy to have hidden a Ziploc bag somewhere. A quick spit and, zip, she'd—”