Enter Victor, Joan's massage therapist, whom she sees two, three, sometimes four times a week. She describes Victor's hands as "large, powerful, intelligent and intuitive." He knows how to find all the little tense knots in her various back, neck, leg, and arm muscles. Victor's meticulous search for muscular tenseness lasts from one to two hours. His fee--$250.00 per session--is entirely worth it, she insists, because afterwards she feels totally more in touch with herself, "I mean way down deep on a cellular level where the important stuff is always hiding in the darkness."
Of course Joan picked up some negative vibes radiating from me when for the third or fourth time that week she spoke of Victor and what an absolutely fabulous job he was doing on her body. "So what's going on here?" she demanded to know.
"Guess."
"You're jealous. You're suspicious of Victor. You're terrified that something more than simple massage is going on between us."
"If I were to say no, absolutely not, I have no problem with Victor manipulating you for, what?, eight hours a week, how would you characterize that response? As normal? Or naive?"
"You're exaggerating just to prove your point."
"So make it just four hours a week, then, just to be conservative."
She brightened. An inspiration had just descended upon her. "Arguing like this isn't productive," she said. "Maybe we should try an entirely different approach."
"I'm game," I said.
"We could de-mystify him."
"And how do you propose we do that?"
"Come with me tomorrow. I'll introduce you. What do you think?"
It took me two, three seconds. "What the hell," I said. "Why not?"
"So are we sharing the finances of the meeting?" she said.
I blinked. Perhaps I misheard her. Did she really expect I would be stupid enough to PAY to demystify the son of a bitch? She just HAD to be kidding.
But she wasn't.
On my drive down the Blue Route toward Philadelphia it suddenly occurred to me this strange woman had locked me into a Bronze Age labyrinth, like the one beneath the Minoan palace at Knossos. Yes, I'm lost, but nevertheless I'm one stubborn son-of-a-bitch and I just won't give up. I continue to enter one dead end after another. I turn around, and try again. Does this bloody maze actually HAVE an exit?
I went into the bar at Bravo Bistro, and took a stool next to hers. I ordered a scotch with lots of rocks, please. She was working on her second martini and said she'd soon have a third, since she was in the mood. She seemed just a bit tipsy, the very first time I'd seen her that way.
Victor, she announced, had called an hour ago to reschedule our appointment this evening for the day after tomorrow because he was unexpectedly called out of town.
"Oh, what a pity," I said. Surprisingly Joan didn't pick up my sarcasm.
"But we're still on for the meeting, aren't we?" she asked.
"Of course."
She asked me if I'd had any luck with an internet search of the topic of eating disorders, which she'd asked me to run for her, and I said yes, and gave her a printout of about three dozen websites, some of which contained first-person narratives of women who were struggling with the affliction.
"The web is a tremendous resource," I said. "You need to get online."
"No, not me. I hate computers," she said.
Then I showed her proof sheets of the photos I'd taken of her a while back. She pointed out the ones she wanted 8 x 10 prints of, and I circled the frames with a red grease pencil. There were a lot she really liked, and of course mother will just love these, especially that one of me sitting in the chair by the front door, with the big lithograph hanging on the wall.
"It'll be a great post-Christmas gift, don't you think?" she asked.
"Oh, yes, indeed," I replied.
Speaking of her mother, well, it's verrrrry curious, Joan said. When Ruth calls she's always deeply depressed. You can hear it in her listless voice, and her continuous string of negative comments. Which worried Joan.
"Clinical depression, as you might know," she said, "is dangerous because one of the symptoms of the disorder is suicide ideation."
So she called up one of her mother's closest friends, Marcia, who by the way is a very successful Manhattan lawyer, with a huge office on the upper East side.
"I asked Marcia if she noticed my mother's depression when they talked," Joan said. "And Marcia replied 'Why do you ask? With me she's always bubbly, and energetic, and full of ideas and plans. I can't imagine why you think she's depressed.'
"So then I asked Marcia if she thought maybe my mother was depressed only when she talked to ME. Her only daughter."
"Well, what did Marcia say?" I asked.
"She said, 'DUH!'"
"Meaning?"
"Meaning yes, it's obvious that only when Ruth talks to ME does she become depressed."
"Why do you think that's so?"
"I'm still trying to figure it out. It probably has something to do with her chronic need to punish me, which goes back a long way. I just hated how she bossed me around when I was growing up, and she's still at it. And, to tell you the truth, I was bitterly disappointed with my father."
"Why?"
"Because he never stood up to her. Never."
"He refused to rescue you?"
She picked up her glass, drained her martini. The bartender gave her a questioning look, and she nodded, yes, bring me another.
"He not only refused to rescue me, he abandoned me. How's that?"
"You mean when he died."
"What did you think I meant?"
"Sorry."
"Let's not talk about this anymore. I have something more important to talk about."
Uh-oh!
It was about a book she thinks she might write. An extended analytical work on eating disorders. And why not? She's been specializing in that area for the past five or six years, and she has some insights that might be worthy of sharing with not only professional colleagues, but also with the general reading public.
"Victor keeps telling me this is an absolutely brilliant idea. Have I mentioned that during our sessions it's not just deep body massage that he gives me? We also get into some very long and serious discussions, some go on for three, four hours. He has tremendous intuition, and also the capacity to pick up what's locked in my cellular memory."
"Cellular memory?"
She turned on her stool. Peered into my eyes. That steady gaze of hers was very familiar to me. When drunk my father would lock his eyes on mine, and it was as if he were seeing everything in slow motion. As if it took a long time for the signals to travel from his eye's retina to his numbed brain. That's what her prolonged gaze reminded me of.
"Deep traumas imprint themselves within our bodies," Joan said. "We're never aware of this because we work hard to ignore memories of a painful past, but it's all in there, and extraordinarily sensitive men like Victor have the ability to pick it up."
I felt a tightening in my gut. A rising level of discomfort, anxiety. My first impulse was to change the subject. But then I thought, no. When something bothers you, the healthiest thing is to speak openly of it. Silence is toxic. I hate silence. Why? Because my father was always silent.
"When you bring up your thing with Victor it makes me very uncomfortable."
"For God's sake why?"
"Because it feels like you and he have developed a mutual trust and intimacy that we haven't yet achieved."
She looked up toward the ceiling. Like she was counting slowly from one to ten.
"Why shouldn't I talk to you about the things that are important to me?" she said loudly. "Victor is helping me, has been for a long time, and it's unfair that I have to keep worrying about what trivial little thing might set you off next."
"I'm just telling you what I feel. I'm putting it out there, as you always say. It's up to you what you want to do with it."
"Your sexual jealousy is wholly misplaced," she said. "Victor is not a sexual rival of yours. As a matter of fact, Victor is in YOUR camp."
I didn't bother to ask her what she meant by that.
"Joan, you keep bringing up your discomfort with our so-called relationship trajectory, and you keep pushing me away so as to have more space. To be honest I think your concerns are ridiculous, but nevertheless I honor them. Now, god damn it to hell, I expect you to respond in kind. In other words, I would very much like to receive some reciprocity here."
So we were up and running. We eventually returned to an extended discussion of her proposed book, but it was full of testy combativeness. She'd say she had profound doubts--mostly concerning her creativity, her intellectual capacity, and most especially her path in life. I'd respond with affirmations, like whoa! You ARE creative, you ARE intelligent, and you're trying hard to understand the path you're on.
I thought she'd appreciate hearing some affirmation, especially after that thing with her depressed mother, but no, she didn't. Silly me.
"James, when I bring up a problem the very first thing you do is come up with one solution or another. Sometimes it would be nice if you just LISTENED. Frankly, I'm astonished how a man with your feminine sensibility always automatically lapses into that damned 'problem solving' mode all men are so obsessed with."
She paused.
"And when I say feminine sensibility I mean it in the very best sense of the term. It's good that you're as much in touch with your feminine side as you are your masculine. Do you understand what I'm talking about here?"
"Yes, I do." And I did. I wasn't worried about arbitrary gender labels. It was all a crock. We are who we are.
She surprised me a few minutes later when she said, "I'm sooo tired, James. Let's go home and go to sleep." I'd been fully prepared to jump in my truck and speed right back up the Blue Route.
We undressed, climbed into her bed. We slept through the whole night. No sex.
In the morning I quietly suggested that maybe our big fight might not have occurred had we been here, in bed, rather than at Bravo Bistro. Maybe it was the utterly-too-formal "date" aspect of our meeting in a public place that made me so sensitive to her bringing up Victor. That could be it.
"Sounds like you're trying to come up with solutions again."
"Yes. My masculinity is presently in ascendance."
She lifted the covers. "Indeed it is!" she laughed.
Two hours later, as I was heading out, she said, "Are we still on for our meeting with Victor?"
I deliberately paused, just to build up some suspense.
"Yes. But I've thought it over. I'm not giving Victor one thin dime."
Joan looked amused. "I thought you'd eventually come around to that position."
"You pay. I'll just go along for the ride."
"Fine."
