The Uses of Enchantment (32 page)

You find me anxious?

Do you find yourself anxious? Mary said.

Then she laughed.

Just kidding, Beaton. Trying to beat you at your own game.

Tell me about
your
game, I said.

First I need a piece of paper, she said.

I handed her a piece of paper from the bottom of my pad. She tore the paper and handed half to me.

Here’s how it works, she said. You write a list of seven “props” that might be used in a play. Normally you’re limited to objects in the room, but you don’t have enough weird stuff in here so we may have to cheat.

Fine, I said. Then what happens?

Make the list first, she said.

Where did you learn this game? I asked.

My sisters and I used to play it when we visited people we didn’t want to visit. My grandparents, for example.

Where do your grandparents live, I said.

Revere, she said. They have a salt and pepper shaker collection and use famous paddleboats placemats. They share an oxygen tank.

So you make a list of items in a room, I said.

The point is to choose seven incompatible objects that must be used plausibly in a single story. In order to create a scenario that makes “sense” of the props, you have to make up a really wild story.

A wild story that makes sense, I said.

And that really wild story makes the depressing place where you are seem interesting.

So the point of the game is to take control of a situation in which you have no control, I said.

Mary regarded me queerly.

The point of the game is to win, she said.

So we’ll both make lists of things in this room.

No, she said. You list things in this room. I’ll list some things randomly, to give you an idea of the game.

OK, I said.

Go, she said.

I wrote down the seven most obvious objects in the room: my BU diploma, my opium weights, my cricket cage, my copy of
Dorcas Hobbs
, the pink tissue-box cozy knitted for me by my depressed sister, my bronze scarab paper-clip container, my Boston Red Sox coffee mug.

Done, I said.

I’m still thinking, she said. This is harder when you don’t have objects right in front of you.

Understandable, I said.

If only I were more imaginative, she said.

I think you’re plenty imaginative, I said.

Mary scowled happily. She either did not catch my deeper meaning—
I am onto you
—or chose not to acknowledge it. Outside my office door I heard the sounds of Maura, our suite cleaning lady, vacuuming. Maura was an enthusiastic vacuumer, banging the head of the vacuum against the door so forcefully that it sounded as though she were trying to break it down. The noise inspired a tenseness in my temples, signaling the possible beginning of a headache. My side vision became flecked with white confetti blinkers.

You know, Mary said, chewing her pencil, you don’t look so fine.

I lifted my head. It buzzed and throbbed.

Excuse me?

You said you were fine. But you don’t look it. I think something happened to you since our last meeting, she said. Maybe you look terrible because you met my mother.

Your mother?

She has that effect on people.

Mary scrutinized my face, as I scrutinized hers. I was not so disoriented that I didn’t understand what was happening. She was baiting me, just as Helen had baited me.

My head throbbed harder.

Did your mother tell you she was meeting with me, I said.

What did she want to talk to you about? Mary said, avoiding my question.

In the waiting room, Maura muscled the chairs around; she whacked the plastic hose nozzle against the floor molding.

I know what you’re doing, I said.

Huh?

You’re trying to trick me into telling you that your mother came to visit me, I said.

I’m not tricking you, Mary said. I’m asking.

I regarded her sternly.

I don’t get this, she said. Are you mad at me about something?

I want you to acknowledge that you behaved in a deceitful way.

Mary laughed.

That is not an acceptable response, I said.

OK, she said. Whatever. I’m sorry.

I didn’t respond.

I
apologized
, she said. What else do you want?

You did not apologize, I said. You withdrew from the conversation. That is not the same as apologizing. In order to apologize you would first have to take responsibility for your actions.

Mary held up her hands in a gesture of sarcastic surrender.

I take responsibility for my actions.
Jeez
.

So you admit that you tried to trick me, I said.

If I say yes, I tried to trick you, then you’ll lay off, right?
God.
You’re as bad as my sister Regina. You can be really psychotic sometimes.

Because I hold you to an honest behavioral standard I’m psychotic, I said wryly.

Because you’re a nitpicker, Mary said. You nitpick.

I’m doing my job, I said.

Well then, Mary said. I guess I know what Regina should be when she grows up.

We lapsed into silence. Mary scratched furiously at her pilled sweater. I felt my face redden and tried, mentally, to reverse the blood flow to my head. The mind can slow the pulse, the mind can control the sweating of the palms, the spiking of the temperature. This is crucial knowledge for a therapist who is on the brink of losing a patient to his own unauthoritative show of humanity.

I took a deep breath. I was clearly still rattled after the visit with Mary’s aunt.

I thought Regina was planning to be a shitty poet, I said.

Mary fiddled with one of the black rubber bangles she wore on her right wrist.

Huh?

Regina, I said. When she grew up. Had plans to be a shitty poet.

Was that a joke, Beaton?

I didn’t respond.

It’s premature to make a joke after being such a tool, she said. You must really be ashamed of your behavior.

Who’s nitpicking now? I observed lightly. Maybe you’re the one for whom my profession calls.

I can’t care enough about other people’s problems, she said.

Hardly a prerequisite, I said.

Another joke, she said. You really feel like crap, huh?

I didn’t respond.

You could have admitted that you were in a bad way when I originally asked you, and all of this could have been avoided.

Good point, I said.

I’m just holding you to an honest behavioral standard, she said.

Fair enough, I said.

She smiled.

I smiled.

So, she said. Honestly. What did you think of my mother?

Honestly
, I said, you should rephrase your question.

Rephrase how?

What you want to know is whether or not your mother came to see me, and if so, why.

I know why she came to see you, Mary said. She can’t stand the fact that I tell you stuff I’ll never tell her.

I’m pleased you’ve come to trust me so much, I said.

Mary frowned.

It’s less a measure of how much I like you and more a measure of how much I don’t like her, said Mary.

She withdrew her compact and, with brutal movements, opened it to examine her reflection.

Interesting, I said.

What’s interesting, she said, snapping the compact shut and tossing it onto the adjoining couch cushion. I hate it when you say
interesting
. What does it mean, Beaton?
Interesting. Interesting.

As I’ve observed before, you cannot make a statement that would imply emotional dependence. Such a statement must be imploded and converted into an insult that hurts the very person you meant to compliment.

I didn’t mean to compliment anyone, she said. What’s with you today? Is this some new kind of therapy you’re trying out? Because I’d like it noted on my customer comment card that it sucks.

I can’t understand why you refuse to admit you
do
care why your mother would come to see me—if in fact she did.

I
don’t
care, she said. Whatever she told you, it’s a lie.

Your mother didn’t tell me anything, I said truthfully.

So why did she meet with you?

Why don’t you tell me why you
think
your mother came to see me, I said. Let’s speak in hypotheticals. Why
might
your mother come to see me?

That’s obvious, she said. She wanted to tell you about Kurt Thatcher.

Kurt Thatcher, I said.

How she threw a drink in his face last weekend. At Barbara Thorne-Hill’s wedding.

Tell me about this, I said.

Sixty-seven people at the wedding got botulism. They had to be hospitalized, including the groom, whom Barbara’s mother hates because he’s Polish.

Botulism, I said.

From the week-old crab cakes. Everyone was too busy bad-mouthing the cheapwad Thorne-Hills to remember that Mum attacked Kurt with her gin and tonic.

Why did your mother attack Kurt, I said.

Mum accused Kurt of kidnapping me last fall. Then she accused him of being a pedophile and molesting me when I was younger. Then she threw her gin and tonic in his face.

How did you learn about this, I said.

From the bartender, who is also my dad’s favorite caddy at the range. “Mike” is his name. With quotes. Dad and I call him “Mike.” Because he’s more than just a Mike. He’s a “Mike.”

You and Mike are in regular contact, I said.

I saw him at the arcade in the mini-mall two days ago.

How old is Mike, I said.

Old
, Mary said. Like maybe thirty.

But he still plays video games.

He wins all the time, Mary said, by way of explanation.

One important development is suggested by your mother’s outburst, I said. She believes you now. About Kurt trying to kiss you when you were twelve.

Mary shrugged. Whatever. She was drunk when she came home from the wedding and she passed out in my bed.

What’s the connection? I said.

Maybe she forgives me, Mary said.

For what? I said.

Threatening the overall whiteness of the world.

Mary’s eyes grew hazy, as they frequently did when she began to disassociate from our conversation.

But enough about
me
, she said. Let’s return to our game. What’ve you got?

She grabbed my list and handed me her paper scrap, on which she had written the following seven items:

1) Dented Silver Cigarette Case

2) Broken Car Lighter

3) Shrimp-Flavored Potato Cips

4) Very Old Pack of Cigarettes

5) Very Old Movies of Meerkats

6) Movie Projector

7) Blindfold

I read through the list three times in numerical succession. My paranoia rebounded; these little trinkets—the dented silver cigarette case—were just more clues to a meaningless scavenger hunt, meant only to scramble my sense of direction while falsely reinforcing my notion that I was onto something. I was not getting closer to the truth—I was being toyed with and led strategically astray.

In my head I repeated:
gray watch
,
daisy justice
.

This worked. My heart rate decreased as I retreated from the paranoid and sought refuge in the logical. Clearly, I told myself, Mary
knew
why her mother—or rather her aunt—had come to see me; she
knew
her mother had found the cigarette case and the receipt. Thus she
knew
that in order to regain the reins, so to speak, she needed to confound my sense of having discovered something about her without her knowledge. By introducing the possibility that the cigarette case was part of a game, she was engaging me on my own turf—she was telling me, in no uncertain terms, that she had fabricated her abduction, that the story of her abduction was her way of assembling these disparate artifacts to make her dull or depressing life feel interesting and, more to the point, the game was her way of taking control of a situation over which she had no control.

This list, in other words, was nothing short of a confession.

Well? said Mary.

As I observed earlier, I said. I think you have a plenty active imagination.

What Might Have Happened

A
s was usually the case with a cabin in the woods, the man reflected, the journey was the only fun to be had. No wonder in movies the arrival at the cabin in the woods marks the beginning of the end. The dead come alive. People are inhabited by malingering spirits and behead their lovers with any old ax. The anticipation of arriving, the luxury of sitting in a dark car and talking to the person in the passenger seat without needing to deal with their actual face—this was the pleasantly relaxing prelude to a bludgeoning in a cabin in the woods.

Now that the man and the girl had arrived at the cabin, now that he had pulled the sledge down the road to the Mercedes and fetched their groceries, now that he had built a fire in the fireplace and heated the girl a can of soup, now that the two of them were seated on the sagging couch with the afghan crocheted by his wife’s dead sister, both of them staring into the fire and pretending to be consumed by a “comfortable silence,” now that these various things had occurred his ashy many nights’ exhaustion overtook him and he wanted to be alone. He wanted to be rid of her. He was reminded of those days as an undergraduate at Boston University when he decided to become a coke addict for the sake of a cute, jagged-out oboist in his chemistry lab. He had paid good money to stay in close proximity to this oboist, and eventually the investment paid off; after three days of mindless inhalation, he had awoken beside her in a Lowell hotel room. Her skin was taupe; she smelled like new vomit. The distant fun they’d had wasn’t enough to erase the disgust he felt looking at her skeletal pelvis, the white blisters on her fingertips, the chafing between her upper lip and nose. Some days he just wanted to retreat inside himself, with no external people to remind him of the person he was. He needed to regroup without the assistance of myriad fucked-up others.