“He’s never met them.”
“He does know you have children?”
“Of course.” Why did Larissa feel constantly indignant with this woman?
“And you’ve never talked about the future?”
Larissa desperately didn’t want to say. So she didn’t.
Kavanagh bent her head appreciatively. “And all this time your husband hasn’t found out? He must be a very trusting man. This isn’t easy to hide.”
“I was a theater major in college.”
“Ah. That helps. One more question before we go. Do you want to save your marriage? Is this why you’re here?”
Larissa paused, like she forgot the words.
“Hmm,” said Kavanagh. “Okay, then. See you next week.”
On the way home, on impulse, disbelieving herself, out of bounds, knowing it and helpless, Larissa, without calling or thinking any further about it, drove to Albright Circle, parked the car, walked up the steps and knocked on Kai’s door. She hadn’t planned it; she just pulled into the driveway, walked—thunderously, she thought—up the wooden staircase and knocked. She heard the guitar and the sound of his singing voice. Outside was dark and cold. The roads were icy.
“Larissa!” He pulled her inside. “What are you doing here?”
The TV was on but without sound, song books, the guitars and ukuleles on his bed, cartons of half-eaten Chinese food, opened cans of Coke and Corona. Kai, wearing loose navy sweats and a gray tank, barefoot and scruffy, was thrilled to see her. She breathed a palpable sigh of relief.
“Oh, I was headed back home from my new shrink,” she said. “Thought I’d say hi. Sorry I didn’t call. My phone was out of power.” Nice, Larissa. Lying to Kai now, too. Nice!
He pulled her onto the bed, swept the books off, moved the guitars to the side, laid her down, jumped on top of her, like a kid. “How long can you stay?”
Her heart aching, the talons of fear inside her still scraping away, she said, as he grinned, pinning her arms, kissing her neck, kissing her lips, “Fifteen minutes.”
“That’s fourteen more than I need.”
Unpinning herself, wrapping her arms and her legs around him, she realized belatedly she would smell like him when she returned home. And she couldn’t take a shower, come home after seeing Kavanagh being damp or smelling of soap. “What kind of shrink is this, Larissa?” Jared would rightly ask. But she also couldn’t come home having red prickles of her lover’s fresh stubble over her throat. Yet his lips were on her, and his face was rubbing against her neck, her clavicles, her chest. His wiry hair was in her hands, and he was kissing her and murmuring and smiling, something about how happy he was to see her at night, what a gift it was.
She stayed a while. It wasn’t an embrace in the public square but it was kisses of youth, silver guitar strings, dirges with drum beats. She came upon him suddenly, and he was himself, at night as during the day, one hour then or now: just happy to be with her like he was a sailor and she was an angel.
February had twenty-nine days that year. One extra day. To Kai’s question Larissa had no answer. She was hoping it would vanish in the ether like dandelion fuzz, and it did, and like a dandelion planted root where it parachuted down, sprouting like weeds in the grass, forcing its way through the pavement by the side of the open road.
What will it be, Larissa? Yes or no. You’ve got a house you need to clean every day, and vacuuming that hasn’t been done since Tuesday week. You’re down to your last roll of paper towels, and Michelangelo long ago ran out of white paint because you haven’t bought him any. You never did go out for Valentine’s Day dinner with Jared, but otherwise, every night you’re making your family dinner, baking store-bought cupcakes, frozen pizzas, potatoes in a box, corn in a can. Yes or no.
Megan is abominably wrong for Saint Joan, but the die has been cast, and you’ve got to make the best of her. She cannot be strong, her voice is whiny, and every day, you ask her, deeper Megan, you are Joan of Arc, the original and presumptuous! Joan is a warrior, built not for romance but for something greater. To make her a flirt would be like making Caesar a flirt; it’s unseemly. And Megan, wilting by the backstage, would say, what does Caesar have to do with the Maid of Orleans? They were both warriors, Megan! Assert yourself, don’t stand timidly at the curtains, remember Joan is the eighteen-year-old girl that led France to freedom. She doesn’t whine, Megan. She roars.
Larissa could’ve been talking to the curtains. Megan didn’t know how to roar. Megan thought the manatee, a sweet and gentle creature, was unfairly maligned with an insulting moniker: the sea cow.
This is tragedy, not melodrama, Megan! Do you know the difference? And the girl would shake her shy head.
Tragedy: where everything happens because of a flaw or an excess or a void in the main character. The hero directs the action of his own play—heroic struggle, followed by crushing downfall.
Melodrama: literally, drama punctuated by melody, orchestral music, little songs, sensationalized; external events not tragic flaws direct the traffic of your life. Do you see the difference?
And Megan would shake her woeful histrionic melo dramatic head and chirp, “One thousand like me can stop them! The shortest way to save your own skin is to run away!”
Yes or no, Larissa.
The doctor was pensive. “Tell me, is being a wife and a mother important to you?”
“Of course.” Larissa once thought it was her whole life. But independent of what she thought about it, it was what it was. Her whole life. Tears came to her throat again.
“What do you think your husband’s reaction would be,” Kavanagh asked, “if he were to find out?”
“I don’t know.” I don’t want to think about it.
“You’ve never discussed this issue, even hypothetically?”
“We’ve discussed it.” In Scruples with other couples. “But never with me as the guilty party.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not that person. I was happy in my marriage. Happy to be married. When I was a girl in a pink room, my life now—rather, a little before now—is what I dreamed of. This thing—it’s not me.”
“Oh, but clearly it is.” Kavanagh studied Larissa, wearing a pencil skirt, high-heeled pumps, a cropped cream sweater. “You’re an attractive woman,” she said at last. “Men, I’m sure, must consider you sexy.”
“My husband is a handsome man. We’re evenly matched.” Larissa gave off a whiff of harried irritation. “And…he is a good man.”
“Okay, but not so good that you want to save your marriage.”
“How can you save what can’t be saved?” asked Larissa.
“Nothing is beyond saving.”
Funny, that’s what Maggie kept telling her. Maggie, with her swollen ankles and muscle cramps.
“Doctor, but what if you didn’t want to be saved? Could you be saved then? Against your will sort of thing? Like divine intervention?” Like Che—once, not now.
Kavanagh sat in judgment of her from her pretzel-like presiding. “Is this supposed to be a joke?” She looked down into her lap—at her notes? “Okay let’s get down to the brass tacks: if your husband gave you an ultimatum, said it was either him or your lover, what would your answer be?”
Larissa exhaled. Her guilty eyes drifted to the carpet, and when she looked up, Kavanagh was staring at her, scrunching up her small wrinkled hands with elegant fingers the way she scrunched up her small elegant brow.
“Honestly, I don’t see any confusion in you, Larissa,” Kavanagh said. “I see crystalline clarity. Tell your husband you don’t want to be married anymore, move out, let him file for divorce, work out custody, and move in with your lover.”
Larissa turned her head to the window. She couldn’t believe it was windy March already. Time was marching on. The steady beat of it, drum drum, one more day at home, one more unfinished project, one more forgotten task. One more minute late to everywhere. One more phone thrown away, bought again, thrown away, bou
ght again…
“Our time is up,” said Larissa. If she hurried, she could spend an hour with Kai. She would’ve liked to fire Kavanagh, but because of the good doctor, she now saw Kai in the evenings.
Another week of sushi, sex, love, Saint Joan, deep in frustration and rehearsals, another financial quarter ending, late nights for Jared, sculpting now for Michelangelo and his white dry clay like hardened cement all over the wood floor of her house, and Kai’s question and Kavanagh’s question hanging in the air like lilac helium balloons, drifting, floating, colorful neon numbness.
Soul, soul, be gone from me.
On the way back from Kavanagh every Tuesday, she made a handy right left right, ran up the wooden steps two at a time, and spent one glorious hour at night in his company. They made love, had hot snacks, watched snippets of sitcoms, innings of ballgames, talked about the aesthetics of retaining walls in masonry landscaping, she listened to the sound of his deep singing voice one week, the strums of his guitar the next, and then…
“There has to be an end to this, Larissa.”
“No.”
“One way or another, something has to change.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why? What do you see happening?”
Who said this to her? Could’ve been her doctor. Could’ve been him. She hoped it wasn’t him.
“Even if your husband doesn’t find out, eventually your lover might get tired of sharing you with another man, no?” said Kavanagh. “Men can be funny about that.”
So it was the doctor. Larissa felt a rising prickle of irritation.
“Have you asked yourself why your lover hasn’t?” Kavanagh said calmly. “A man who loves a woman usually prefers not to have his woman share another man’s bed. Why hasn’t he?”
“I don’t know why. He is calm. He doesn’t poison me with petty jealousy. He knows how hard everything would be if he did.”
“Or perhaps,” said Kavanagh, “this is convenient for him too. Juggle you, and other things?”
“No. It’s not like that.”
“That calmness of his must come at a price. What is it? Are you just one hour in twenty-four for him also, Larissa?”
Flattened, Larissa drove home, as if she had been rolled over by a sand mixer. What was wrong with Kavanagh? This is what talking got you. No solutions, but instead a knifelike burrow inside her chest. She couldn’t take a breath imagining Kai touching another woman. How did he live imagining her with Jared? Don’t think about it, Larissa! Don’t think about it…
“What are your plans?” asked Kavanagh.
A plan by definition involved the future. “Haven’t got one.”
“There’s something you’re not telling me. I feel it. I’ve seen this thing too many times before. What’s the missing piece? Why won’t you leave your husband?”
Larissa said nothing.
“Tell me more about your lover. What is it about him that drew you? Is he very different from Jared?”
Larissa described Kai.
“Car salesman? Stonemason? Drives a motorcycle? How old is he?”
Larissa said nothing.
Kavanagh opened her eyes, and pulled the legs out from under herself, leaning forward in the chair. “He is young?” she exclaimed, startled.
“Not very young,” Larissa said, bristling. “He’s a little younger than me.”
“How much younger?”
“A few years.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know, Doctor. Maybe ten. Or so.”
“Ten, or so? Larissa, to help you I need to know the truth.”
“He’s twenty-one, all right?”
Falling back in the chair, Kavanagh whistled softly. For a few minutes she said nothing. Then she spoke. “So where do you meet someone like that, a woman like you, a housewife, a mother?”
“At Stop&Shop,” Larissa replied.
“Ah, well,” said Kavanagh. “That explains it. I don’t usually shop there, which is probably why I’ve never run into someone like that. I go to Shoprite. It’s cheaper.”
“He goes to Stop&Shop for sushi.”
“Well, that may be another one of my problems right there,” Kavanagh said, “because I don’t like sushi.”
“Yes,” said Larissa. “I didn’t either.”
“What does he want with you? He is a boy barely out of his teens and you’re a married woman with children in the middle of your life. What are his plans for the two of you?”
Larissa couldn’t tell Kavanagh about the wheels of the Ducati landing on the pavement in Pine Spring, in Willowbend, in Invercargill. Lewis and Clark and the Redwoods, and the whole damn volcanic mist over the ocean, the beaches and the sailboats, and the Mungo outback dreams right before her sunset eyes.
“You really should’ve told me about his age, Larissa.” Kavanagh shook her head in disapproval. “I understand your predicament now. And it is a predicament indeed. All this time I’ve been saying to you, why don’t you just do what other people do. Move out. Retain custody of the kids. How fraudulent of you to let me continue giving you advice based on your giant omissions.”
“Is your advice different now?” How can there be visitation, right, Doctor? How can a mother be a visitor to her own children, be a guest in their holiness? If Larissa clenched her fingers any tighter they would fracture.
But afterward, an hour with Kai. O pine smoke bliss.
Except…he can’t resist asking her things she can’t answer either.
He is looking at her puzzled and questioning. She wishes they all would stop asking her things. She’s doing her best, can’t they see that?
Once I was Larissa. Then I was Jared’s wife. And then I was Emily and Asher and Michelangelo’s mother. And then I was Kai’s lover. But long after I will stop being someone’s wife, or someone’s lover, I will continue to be a mother. I cannot resolve the unresolvable. The paralytic with a broken neck cannot walk, no matter how much he wants to, no matter how often or how passionately he talks about it. I am a mother. I cannot walk.
But then another small voice clears its throat and croaks. Yes. But before you were a mother, you were Larissa. What will you be if you stop being a mother?
Every Tuesday at seven she drove to see Kavanagh to help her figure out the sick primordial mire of her life, and afterward Kai was waiting for her. That’s how she made it all better. By finally figuring out how to see her Maui lover at night! And maybe soon there could be a jazzercise night, and maybe she could take a painting class at Drew, or sign up for pottery and French. Oui, oui, madame. La passion est la maitresse due. With any luck, she wouldn’t have to be home at all.
The Ides of March had passed.
“I love him,” she said to Kavanagh.
And the doctor replied, “You don’t think you’re bandying that word about too lightly?”
“I don’t bandy.”
“You love your children, don’t you? You love your husband? Your parents? You yourself said you’re living a dream life. Perhaps what you really mean is infatuated. Which is not permanent, you know. But the decisions you make based upon this infatuation are permanent.”
That was almost advice! And the doctor looked spent after giving it.
“Everything you say is entirely correct, Dr. Kavanagh,” said Larissa, trying hard not to fidget. “Except I don’t think you understand. Am I having a hard time explaining it? It’s not infatuation. It may not have stood the test of time like my eighteen-year-old marriage, but it doesn’t make it any less real. I was one kind of person, one kind of woman before I met him, and I was plodding along, and I thought I was doing pretty good, but then what happened, you see, is that everything inside me got reordered.”
“Somehow, I don’t believe that’s true,” Kavanagh said quietly.
“I don’t mean awakened,” Larissa hastily went on. “I mean, broken down and remade. The outside may be the same woman, but the inside is not. I can no more deny what I feel for him than I can
my own name. Now we may argue that it’s wrong, we may argue that I need to feel other things too, like guilt, obligation, responsibility, we may argue that I need to put my feelings aside, which is a separate discussion, but let’s not talk about how what I’m feeling isn’t real. It’s more real than anything else I know. If it isn’t real, then nothing is real. Nothing.”
“It’s a bright flame,” Kavanagh said. “It burns out.”
“But after it burns out, isn’t true love what’s left?”
“What if nothing is left?” the doctor stared hard at Larissa. “You say you once loved your husband. Where did that go?”
Heavily, Larissa got up off the couch. She wanted to crawl away. “You really don’t understand. Wow. I keep saying it over and over. It’s like I’m talking to a wall. I can’t end it with him. I can’t. In the scale of my life, he outweighs everything else.”
“Everything else?”
“Doctor, what are you talking about?” Larissa exclaimed. “There are sixteen schools of psychotherapeutic thought, but only one second law of thermodynamics. Take a good look at me, not into a book. I’m spinning into chaos right in front of your eyes. I’m paying you—my husband is paying you—a hundred and forty dollars an hour to notice. Don’t you notice?”
Kavanagh was cold and calm. “Your lover or your children, Larissa.”
She slammed the office door so hard on her way out, the glass jar on the glass coffee table rattled and fell over.
Dear Larissa,
Why haven’t you written to me? Why do you only send me money with a superficial note full of platitudes?
You cannot believe what’s happening to me. I’ve wanted to be a mother for so long. At forty, I’m finally having the baby I’ve been praying for my whole life, with a man I love so much. I can’t believe what’s happening.
Lorenzo went out to protest with that cursed Peace Brigade, and he was given weapons to carry with him for the demonstration: three knives and a smoke bomb. The protest got out of hand, a fight between the mob and the police ensued, and Lorenzo got carried away and threw the bomb. He was told by Agas Ilocano, the council leader of the Brigade and his close friend for seven years, that it was a smoke bomb, just a little tear gas to let the cops taste some of their own medicine, but he was duped. It was a nail bomb. And it exploded into a hive of cops. It blinded two of them, and critically injured several more, including one who got a nail stuck in his temple. He was taken to the hospital, and died three days later.