They had a belated Valentine’s Day celebration of their own, with rainbow sushi, chocolate cherry-chunk ice cream, excellent espresso, another bottle of bubbly. They had love, not dry silent kisses, not sleep; they had wild fires and shining naked unmasked storms. They tasted from flame-trees while cast out of Eden, but yet, oh but yet, why did it feel like bright and bitter Eden?
“Larissa,” Kai began, his excited eyes burning, his breath shallow. “On Route 66 there’s a town.” He rose on his elbow to look down into her face. The roses in vases framed his brown-blond head in red.
Why did she go numb in the fingers? She tried not to close her eyes, not to turn away.
“In Arizona, near Flagstaff, in between the mountains and the canyon, away from the desert and the forests, there is a little town.” He paused. “Not too far from the Canyon. Wouldn’t it be great to open a tour company? We’d make so much money. We’d buy a little bus, maybe a 1936 Yellowstone bus, with a tarp roof and a big old wheel in the back.”
“Buy it with what?”
“What do you think I’ve been doing with my commissions? Everything is in the bank. Anyway,” he went on, “we’d charge twenty bucks for a roll around the Grand Canyon. We’d go out three times a day, in the early morning, after lunch, and at sunset. Wouldn’t that be something?”
She didn’t say if it would be something. She said, “What happened to touring Jersey?” She wanted to mention the Second Watchung Mountain, and how the snow glinted, all packed down by sleds and snowboards and how Michelangelo beat his older brother in a race and thought it was the greatest day of his life.
Falling back on the bed, Kai flung his arms behind his head. “Nah. I want to ride my bike on the great prairies, in the distances between the seas.” He paused. “With you on my back.”
“Like a little monkey,” she said quietly.
His hands caressed her hips. Rolling over, he kissed her arm, the side of her breast. “Do you want to know the name of the town?”
“Is that the important thing?” She glanced at him. “The name of the town?”
“It’s not un-important. Names of towns define the life within. Summit. Mountainside. Paradise Falls. The one in Arizona happens to be called Pine Springs.” Kai smiled, his infectious toothy smile lighting up his face like Christmas windows. “Doesn’t that sound great?”
She didn’t know. She couldn’t say. There were plenty of pines in Jersey. Millions of them. Pine Barrens. There was the Great Swamp. There were springs in Jersey. No canyons, but there were mountains.
Love, sushi, coffee, cold Cristal, bare beautiful Kai. He was sheepish, wrenchingly endearing. “Larissa, hear me out, okay? I don’t want you to shake your head, or talk, or say anything.”
Not to worry, she wanted to say. I won’t shake my head or talk or say anything. Her voice was in her heart and her heart was in her stomach and couldn’t be heard from the black deep.
“The dude with the wife who ran into us on the street? Doug Grant? He was going on and on to me about his trip to the Australian outback.” Kai grinned. “Apparently, he went on a five-hour tour in saddle country near a place called Jindabyne, southwest past Canberra, near nowhere. He went in a modified Jeep.” Kai’s fingers were caressing her leg, down and up from the shank to the flank. “So it got me thinking. We could have a Jeep, a safari jungle Land Cruiser for cheap, and we’d take tourists out to the bush and narrate about the snakes and the land, and rocks, and some such.”
“What?” she breathed out.
He put a finger to her lips, jumping up into a lotus position, his face shining with excitement. “You said you wouldn’t say anything till you thought about it.”
“Thought about what? Australia? Are you kidding?”
“I’m not.”
“We know nothing about Australia.”
“We’d learn. And I know a little. What do you think I’ve been doing while waiting for you?”
“Obviously going insane.”
“Yes,” he said. “Insane for you. We’d go on a vagabond adventure. Canberra or Alice Springs, or a place in the outback, a wilderness called Mungo. Doesn’t that sound exotic, fantastic?” Kai squeezed her hands, brought his face down to them, kissed them, put his head into her lap. He was so close.
“Kai—”
His mouth was at her mouth, stopping her. “Ah, ah. You said you’d think about it, not speak about it. Come on, the Kai & Larissa Tour Company.” He laughed with joy. “Doesn’t that sound awesome?” He kissed her face, her hands, her lips. “Yes, my love,” he whispered. “Is that the grandest plan or what? I’ve saved a lot of money. You won’t have to worry about a thing. I’ve been salesman of the month for nearly a year. One more month, maybe two, and I’ll get my own Jag. I’m that good. Then we could sell it back, get another sixty, seventy grand. And you must have a little money, but even if you don’t, it doesn’t matter. I’ll take care of us, and when our business starts making money—”
“Kai…”
“Yes?” The whites of his teeth, the whites of his eyes were inches from her stunned face. “Close your eyes and imagine it. Tell me you can’t. Tell me you can’t see it vividly?”
“Kai,” she said in a faltering, frightening voice that didn’t come from the voice box, but from somewhere deeper, from the small provenance of all life. “You own my heart, but…”
“There is no but after that,” Kai said. “But is not allowed after those words. You may speak only of love. I can’t believe I’m worthy enough to be loved by you, Larissa. I didn’t think I was worthy of much, of anything. But to have you, how much the gods must think of me. So please. Don’t say but.”
She said nothing. It was time to go. Michelangelo wasn’t going to pick himself up from school.
“What about my children, Kai?” she whispered, barely audible even to herself. The curtains were open, and through the open sunny windows she could hear King Street traffic near the railroad. It was cold. She was burning.
Lowering his gaze, he swallowed and raised his shoulders in a faint question. “Pine Springs then?” he said. “In Oregon, I have a buddy, Roland, who told me the Louis and Clark Trail winds through the forests to the ocean. We could do a sightseeing tour. That would be something. In Colorado, we could do skiing tours through the Rockies. I can’t ski to save my life, but so what? What about the Badlands? The Montana rivers? We could teach the tourists how to fly fish.”
“But fish don’t fly.”
“Ha!” He clapped his hands at her. “We don’t know how to do anything. Isn’t it grand? I once didn’t know how to sell cars or lay paving. But we’d learn. My friend Don lives in Missoula. He said he would help. Or, in Northern California we could do a Redwood forest tour and live on the Pacific bluffs.”
“You have a friend there, too?”
He kissed her. “Who do you think comes to Maui? Tourists. I help them out, get them the best sushi, the best mangos, fragrant flowers for the missus, and as a result I got friends all over the world.”
“Not in Australia.”
“Yes, in Australia. My buddy Bart lives near Canberra. He owes me a solid for hooking him up with a chord progression that melted his girl Bianca’s heart. Now they’re married.” He rattled her a little, ruffled her hair. “Doesn’t it sound incredible?”
She said nothing.
Time to get dressed. Despite the terror in her heart, or perhaps because of it, she wanted him again, and as she was pulling on her Theory black slacks, a vile thought flickered by: if I went with him, I would have him again. Any time I wanted.
They kissed, bounded downstairs. He hopped on his bike, put his helmet on. “Larissa,” he called to her.
She turned around.
“What I want is for you to get on my bike, and for us to roar down Main Street together, and not be afraid. You’ll think about what I’ve asked you, won’t you?”
“And of nothing else.”
Larissa couldn’t even see Main Street as she drove home. She blu
ndered through two red lights and a stop sign, nearly crashing into a van that had the right of way. The screaming horns barely registered.
Chapter Three
1
Heart Strings and Alice Springs
Larissa found a doctor in Madison. He did not come with a recommendation. Because Larissa couldn’t ask for a recommendation. He came from the Yellow Pages. She chose him because she liked the tag after his name. “Dr. Kavanagh: Specialising in depression and matrimonial difficulties.” As if the two went hand in hand. Like lovers.
She turned out to be a tiny, superbly dressed, exquisitely wrinkled woman in her early sixties, clearly a smoker, whose eyes were too sharp for Larissa’s liking. Larissa would’ve preferred her clinical help to be dull and opaque.
She didn’t know how to feel about the issue of the doctor’s sex. Would a woman be more or less sympathetic? She sat down on the leather couch, eyeing the doctor unsympathetically. Kavanagh sat in the task chair, twisted into a yoga pretzel, legs tucked under her. And is that what Larissa was hoping for? Sympathy?
She didn’t know what she was hoping her. She was in a fog of blind confusion and she wanted a nanosecond of clarity—so she could see either what was around her or what was in front of her. She couldn’t see anything besides him.
They spent twenty-five minutes on the vapid minutia of her life.
“Where were you raised?” the doctor asked.
“Here. Well, there. Piermont, on the Hudson, just under the Tappan Zee Bridge.”
“I know where Piermont is, I used to have a practice in Nyack. Where are your parents?”
“Divorced. Dad moved away. He’s dead now.”
“When did they get divorced?”
“I was twenty.”
“And did you say you were the youngest of four?”
“Yes.”
“So, when they split up, your parents must have been…?”
“In their late fifties, yes. Too old to get a divorce, I know.”
“Hmm. You’re never really too old for hate. Or love. Where did you go to school?”
“NYU. Theater.”
You’re married? How long? How many children? How old? What does your husband do? Where do you live now? Are you religious?
“Not really,” Larissa said. “I’m ambidextrous. My parents taught us to study things carefully, have an open mind, examine everything, then make our decisions. They were highly educated and, I believe, agnostic. That’s how they raised us.”
“You believe they were agnostic?”
“They had a curiosity about metaphysical things, but were too skeptical and intellectual to lean one way or another. They believed in science, in culture.”
“They believed in science?” The doctor paused, squinting. “What about now?”
“What, me or them?”
“You, Larissa.”
Larissa thought about it. “It’s just not part of my life.” She remembered Ezra. “I have heated discussions with my friends about ethics and meaning and whatnot. But just devil’s advocacy, you know?”
Dr. Kavanagh studied her, as if she didn’t know. She remained inscrutably blank. “Tell me why you’re here.”
Finally, twenty-five minutes in, the question Larissa came to have answered, and now that she was asked, she had nothing to say. Her mouth went dense and dry. She didn’t know how to begin. She grew uncomfortable, started to fidget, to chew her nails, the skin around her fingers.
“You seem agitated.”
“I’m not agitated.”
“No?”
“No. What I am is…” She trailed off. What was she? Larissa didn’t know what to say. There was no beating around the bush. What could she say? Start at the beginning? It was too tawdry. What about now, it wasn’t tawdry now? It was all decent?
Decent: moral, good, kind.
Tawdry: cheap, gaudy finery.
Yes, that’s what it was. Glad rags dressed as ceremonial dress.
“I’m involved with a man who is not my husband,” blurted Larissa. It was an emancipation to speak. She started to cry. Kavanagh was quiet. Nothing on her moved except a hand extending a box of tissues.
“How long?”
Not long enough. Unacceptably too long. “Months.”
“Two months? Six?”
“A year.”
Kavanagh whistled. “That’s a long time for an affair.”
“I didn’t say it was an affair. I said…”
“Yes, yes, I know. Has the husband found out? Is that why you’re here?”
“No. And no.”
“No?” Kavanagh seemed surprised. Was she alluding to Jared’s blindness? “How do you feel about it?”
Larissa blew her nose. “Feel about what?”
“Your relationship with this man. Your marriage. Yourself. How do you feel about what you’ve just told me?”
“Clearly I’m confused.”
Kavanagh pursed her lips. “I don’t know if that’s clear.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“And is confused what you feel?”
Larissa had no answer for that one.
“Do you want your husband to find out?”
“No,” Larissa said quietly, almost whispering. “I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it.”
“Well, what do you want to think about?”
“What to do, I guess.”
“You want to think about what to do?” Kavanagh said dryly. “What to do about what?”
“I have no one to talk to.”
“Yes, you said this.” But Kavanagh’s voice softened slightly. “Do you want to get out of it?”
“Get out of what?”
Kavanagh was watchfully silent.
“It hasn’t been easy, I see by your face,” the doctor said from a throat that had had forty years of nicotine. She sounded like Joe Cocker. “Leading a double life is not easy. A year is a long time to live with deception. You feel like you might have to make a choice soon. Your family, your husband, or your lover.”
“I suppose.” Larissa noticed her hands were clenched on her lap, but she was powerless to unclench them.
“Is this why you’re here? To figure out what to do and then do it?”
“Is it why I’m here?”
“Larissa, are you answering my questions with questions?” Kavanagh might have looked amused if she didn’t look annoyed first.
“I’m here because I wanted to talk to someone. That’s the honest truth. My husband and I have mutual friends. I don’t want to humiliate him.”
“Yes, words can be very humiliating,” said Kavanagh, and Larissa couldn’t help feeling that the doctor was mocking her. She remembered her own similar reaction to Bo’s worry about Jonny. For some reason, Larissa liked that about Kavanagh, liked being judged. It got her blood up.
“A friend of mine recently had a situation,” she said, “and we all knew, and now we’re all looking at her boyfriend like he is a chump for staying with her.”
“Is that what you would think of your husband? That he would be a chump for staying with you?”
“I don’t know…I was just talking about my girlfriend. That it’s better to keep that stuff hidden, because your friends never look at you the same way.”
“Is that what’s important to you?” Kavanagh asked. “Not if your husband will look at you the same way, but if your friends will?” and before Larissa had a second to get indignant, continued, “Let me ask you another question. If this could all work out just the way you wanted it to, what would that resolution be?”
Larissa opened her hands. “I don’t know.”
Kavanagh looked skeptical.
“I have no time to imagine the future,” said Larissa. “I’m spending every minute just managing the seconds of today.” That’ll be one hundred and forty dollars for all the lies today, thank you.
“But I have to know what you want, so we both have something to work toward.”
“Okay, you want to
know what I want to work toward? I want it to work out without everyone involved getting trounced.”
“Who do you mean by everyone?”
“I mean…everyone involved.”
“You?”
“Well, yes. Me, too, I guess.”
“Your lover?”
“Yes.”
“Your husband?”
“Yes.”
“Your children?”
“Yes.”
“Who the least? Who do you want to hurt the least?”
Larissa didn’t want to answer the doctor’s question. She didn’t. Because the small answer was: herself. She didn’t want herself to get trounced most of all. Because she had to remain with herself till the bitter end, and she didn’t want to live with her failed and beaten self.
Kavanagh wrote something down in her little notebook. “Do you see it continuing?”
“See what continuing?”
“The extra-marital relationship, of course.”
“As opposed to what?”
“As opposed to ending it and rejoining your family life.”
What a terrible idea it was to come here!
“I cannot imagine it not continuing,” Larissa said into her fists.
“When you first started, what did you think?”
“I didn’t.”
“You gave no thought to the future?”
“Not much,” Larissa admitted. “I guess at first I thought it was going to be a short burst. Brief, extinguished. I didn’t imagine…”
“Tell me how often you see him.”
Larissa told her.
“Wow. It seems both insufficient and incredibly excessive. What does your lover want?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t asked.”
“Is he married?”
Larissa couldn’t tell even her psychologist! “No.”
“Does he have children?”
“No.” Kai’s sorrow wasn’t Larissa’s to tell.
“You know,” said Kavanagh, “it’s not easy to maintain a relationship with a married woman with three children.”
If the doctor only knew.
“How does he feel about your children?”