After dinner at her house on Christmas day we listened to Glenn Gould grunting through his performance of the Goldberg Variations. She sat on the floor between my legs and I gave her a long, leisurely massage. She joined Gould's grunting as I fingered arpeggios on her neck and shoulder muscles. Soon she got up off the floor and sat next to me. We kissed.
Despite my tender ministering I was still quite annoyed with her. She'd told me the night before to stop trying to arouse her, because she was still not fully recovered from her flu attack, and she insisted that I should "honor" the fact that she's not always as eager for sex as I was. Perhaps, she said, I was being just a bit insensitive to her feelings. I replied that I had no way of knowing how she felt at any given moment, and what's more she hadn't before mentioned the lingering flu symptoms. But since she'd just told me, well, I have no problem with it.
So now I wanted to punish her. I was getting perverse satisfaction out of giving her the extended massage, kissing her, gradually arousing her, and not allowing myself to go any further. Two can play the distancing game, right? I was pretty sure she could find a reference to this kind of twisted behavior in her DSM IV. But I didn't care.
She slid her hand down. When she felt my flaccidity she stopped, as if she'd been slapped. "What's going on here?" she demanded to know.
"I'm just trying to honor what remains of your flu symptoms."
She shook her head. "You're inhibited. Why? Does it have anything to do with Elizabeth?"
Blah, blah, blah. We embarked on still another circumnavigation of the globe of this ridiculous relationship. The same thing, all over again.
* * *
New Years Eve. When I arrived she was regal and aristocratic in her long black party dress, and was adjusting her earrings. After a hurried greeting she rushed to the ringing phone and spoke for a long time, while I sat in the chair by the fireplace. She returned and was about to say something when the phone rang again, and she hurried to the dining room to take the call, once again a long one.
"Sorry about that," she said when she returned. "It was an emergency from the father of one of my patients. He thinks she's bingeing again and is at his wits end. This is the very worst time for some people."
And then the phone rang again.
"What's bothering you now?" she asked when her conversation had finally concluded.
"Why don't you just turn the damned phone off, so we can talk. Or something."
Her cold, grim look told me I'd just said the wrong thing. Again.
"Don't you think that's an unreasonable request?" she said. "Don't you think it would be rude of me not to acknowledge all the holiday greetings I'm getting from relatives and friends?"
"There's a biblical saying. Render unto Caesar."
"Oh, for God's sake."
"I get the feeling you really are hell bent on avoiding intimacy."
"And I get the feeling you're just carrying a resentment because I told you that tomorrow I want to spend some quiet time, alone."
"Yes, when you made the announcement it seemed very much like being drenched by a bucket of cold water."
A long silence.
"Maybe I handled that wrong," she said. "But it probably was because I do have some concerns that we ought to talk about, perhaps after our dinner party tonight."
"Concerns?"
"Yes. It has to do with the trajectory this relationship is taking. I'm feeling pressured. Things are moving too quickly for me."
I groaned.
"I don't recall putting any pressure on you," I said. "As a matter of fact I never ask you anything beyond when we might see each other again. Which is rather normal in a loving relationship. Or do you disagree?"
"I'm feeling pressure, that's all."
"All right, fine. I'll work hard to avoid it."
She put on her coat, and we went out to her Mercedes. She asked me to drive, because she wasn't comfortable on wet, slippery roads. I thought of turning on the radio, but then didn't, because I didn't want her to think that…what? That I needed some distraction. That I was avoiding her "putting things out there," which apparently was so important to her.
"I'm wondering if you can allow us to have a good time tonight," she said.
I clenched my teeth.
"Don't worry. We will have a good time."
Dinner with Kent and Helene was pleasant and so was the cake and coffee afterward. I went out of my way to be as absolutely charming, and witty, and engaging as I could. And they all said I was. "Where did you FIND this pleasant, intriguing man?" I overheard Helene ask Joan.
We left shortly before midnight. Joan wanted to park the car, and just walk along the sidewalks of Haveford, past the beautifully lighted store windows. When we heard the sirens and noisemakers and fireworks, we embraced, and kissed. Happy New Year! I said to her, and Happy New Year! she said to me.
Then we drove to her house and resumed the argument we'd started five or six hours earlier.
She said she was walking on eggshells because she feared my reaction if she would express a desire to let a week or two pass without seeing each other. She was also concerned about my anger, my punishing silences, most particularly that flaccidity thing I did to her on Christmas. "It was," she said, "so clearly passive/aggressive that I really wonder where all your rage is coming from."
I said nothing.
"That ugly behavior reminds me too much of my mother," she said, "Who always engaged in the tactic when things didn't go her way."
"Perhaps you might want to take a look at what role your behavior plays in these games. Who provokes whom here?"
"I'm feeling pressure," she repeated.
"If you think I'm getting too romantically attached to you, well, you flatter yourself."
"What if--just for the sake of the argument--I were to suggest you move in with me?"
"No fucking way," I said with a loud laugh. "I'm not THAT crazy."
On and on. She threw one challenge after another, and I fought right back, with stubborn persistence. Finally, at four in the morning, we went to bed and grappled roughly, lustily, with great vigor. I came twice. I think she came twice, too. Great makeup sex, just like in the movies.
Before the sun rose we put on sneakers and sweats and ran two or three miles through Fairmont park. When we got back to her house I took a long, hot bath and read more of my Yeats, then Joan opened the bathroom door and announced I needed to get dressed right away, and hurry, because we're going back to Kent and Helene's, this time for a spontaneous, out-of-the-blue buffet they've suddenly decided to fix for all their friends, "And they just said on the phone they're so much looking forward to seeing that utterly charming James Stephen again."
After a flurry of hellos and cheek kissing and hugging, and so-nice-to-see-you-guys-again Joan ended up in the corner by the Christmas tree with a big-mustached man wearing a bulky white knit turtle neck sweater. She listened to him carefully, head cocked, while he spoke rapidly and made choppy gestures with both hands.
Yes, there was a Christmas tree in that Jewish household. And what's more, on the mantle was a shining brass menorah, unlit. By that time all nine candles in the menorah on the card I made for Joan were fully lighted.
I stood in the crowd of three or four dozen amiable, chatting folks near a long table groaning with food and drink and greedily ate chili from a plastic bowl, and then chewed eagerly on my first Jewish bagel covered with lox and cream cheese, and then I decided what the hell, it's the holiday, isn't it?, and wolfed down a bowl of mixed fruit, followed by a nice big hunk of carrot cake with cream cheese icing.
Yes, I know. I was self medicating. Exactly. I don't deny the horrid twisted pathology behind all my desperate gobbling. I was stuffing my face to make myself feel better. Or I should say less anxious. And I didn't need someone with a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Temple (or was it Villanova?) to explain it to me. It was obvious, self-evident. Joan was driving me fucking crazy. I had to binge because she left me no choice. So when I eventually got fat and ugly I could tell her it was all her fault, because it was.
Back at her place I was about to put on my coat and go home, because she'd made it perfectly clear that she wanted the rest of the day for some down time. She put her hand on my forearm.
"Would you consider another option?" she said.
"Like what?" I said, puzzled.
"Staying here, and us just crawling into bed together, and reading, or watching a movie?"
"Yes. Of course."
I tried to disguise my astonishment. Which gradually turned into a mild paranoia. I did not trust her sudden reversal of course. I lay beside her quietly as we watched a tape of Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson in "A Few Good Men."
Tom has Jack on the stand. He says he wants the truth.
Extreme close-up of Jack's face: "You can't handle the truth," he scowls.
Hmmmmm. A damned good line, isn't it?
After the movie I waited until I was absolutely sure of her intent, and we had sex. And then we fell asleep.
In the kitchen, over coffee and scones, she wanted to rehash our big New Year's Eve fight, which she said "was actually a great success."
"I'm so glad you think so," I replied.
"I rather liked seeing you so angry. Your eyes just blazed with emotion, and you looked so wild and dangerous--I mean in an interesting way. Do you know what I mean?"
"When I was in high school the girls seemed to like the bad boys, the outlaws, the guys who didn't take baths or showers."
"Yes, that's kind of like it. The excitement of living on the edge. It gets the adrenaline flowing. It makes you feel alive."
"Actually I prefer sweetness and propinquity. Peaceful coexistence."
"You're no pushover, you know? Usually it doesn't take me long to chew a man up and spit him out. You're extraordinarily capable of holding your own."
"Thank you."
Despite her joking tone I remained cautious. Wary. Which is to say that I was not about to ask her, "When shall we see each other again?"
No, I wasn't going to ask that because no doubt she'd throw it back in my face a week later. And furthermore I decided that when I got back home I would not call her, no matter how many days went by. I would give this woman all the space she needed. By God, I would put a halt to my obsessive romantic pursuit. I'll just follow her lead. And just acknowledge that she was not interested in anything but a casual relationship. Sexual buddies, I suppose.
Once again she brought up my Elizabeth. Why was I not surprised?
"I sense that some of our problem may be that you haven't yet fully worked through your being dumped. Some of that rage you displayed in our fight may be coming from that. Now, I don't want to be another Elizabeth in your life. Or what you might see as a better version of the mother who abandoned you."
I didn't doubt her sincerity. She believed what she was saying. But I was getting sick to death of her tactic of trying to turn things back at me just to avoid talking about her own issues.
"Joan, listen. When I met Elizabeth she was an emotional basket case after being blindsided by a sociopath who spent a year convincing her he was a normal, loving human being. She was a total wreck."
"So naturally you flew to her rescue."
"I fell deeply in love with her. Totally. She was a beautiful, talented, and acutely intelligent woman. She had great legs and great pipes."
"Pipes?"
"An incredible singing voice. And she played a mean guitar. I mean she was extremely good at it."
"Oh."
"And it was a shock to me, because I hadn't ever felt that strongly toward a woman before. I understood for the first time what real love meant."
"Go on."
"I courted Elizabeth, even though she was on the rebound. I was fully aware that these kinds of relationships almost never work out. But I went ahead anyway."
"Why?"
"Because I was deeply in love with her. What part of that don't you understand?"
"But you said you knew it probably wouldn't work out."
"Yes. For me it was like going to Atlantic City. The odds were stacked against me, but what the hell. I just might win. When I lost, I accepted it. So this wasn't a replay of my mother's abandonment. I know that my love for Elizabeth was authentic. Guess how I knew."
"Tell me."
"I was willing to let her go when she asked me to, because her happiness was more important to me than my own."
For a second I was right back there at the front door of our house, the evening I departed. When I said goodbye to Elizabeth for the last time, I somehow expected her to say, wait, maybe we're moving too fast here. Maybe we should talk some more. But she didn't. And I just walked out to my truck, got in and drove off.
"That's what love is all about," I said.
Joan's face was, as usual, impassive. She casually moved on to another subject. Apparently for her my story was no big deal. It was just one pathetic little recitation among the hundreds of others her boring patients tell her. So at that moment I vowed never to allow Joan to draw me into another discussion of Elizabeth. Elizabeth now was off limits. Period.
