The Pisces
Page 49
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I would bring the wagon, just in case he appeared. I wanted to show him I would labor for him. But I also wondered if maybe it was a jinx—that if I brought the wagon he wouldn’t be there, like when you bring an umbrella and it doesn’t rain. Still, the wagon was my totem and I had to bring it. It showed my hope to the gods I didn’t even think I believed in. It was like an empty chalice waiting to be filled.
Every night, I promised myself that it would be the last night I drugged Dominic. But every night I had to do it, just in case. Should Theo return, I didn’t want there to be any impediments when he came swimming up. I would take him home and we would be entwined right away. I would do anything to stay with him. I would never think of leaving him again.
Sometimes I would fall asleep on the rocks. As I drifted off I would imagine that he was watching me from somewhere, seeing if I was putting in my time, testing me. Perhaps it was the gods I didn’t think I believed in who were watching me. But this is how it is with the gods and other mythic creatures. You imagine them watching you. You almost feel it. And so I waited for him. Nothing meant anything without him, except the hope of his return.
* * *
—
One night I dreamt that Sappho came over to the rocks and sat with me. She looked like Chickenhorse, only it was Chickenhorse as a hot, butch lesbian: her thick thighs in ripped jeans, hair styled in a pompadour and dyed jet black. Sappho-Chickenhorse told me I was stupid to wait for Theo. She touched my sternum with her palm and said, “Look at yourself, all of this over an asshole fish-boy.”
“But you were once the insane queen of unrequited love,” I said. “Shouldn’t you, of all people, understand?”
“Just be careful you don’t drown,” she said.
In my dream I closed my eyes. She kissed each of my eyelids. I felt turned on, like I wanted to rub against those thighs of hers in her jeans. When I opened my eyes again in my dream, Sappho had become Claire.
“I’m sorry I can’t drown with you,” said Claire.
“That’s okay,” I said.
“I’m really sorry, Lucy.”
“Nobody is going to drown!” I said. “Go get your nails and toenails done instead. You can pretend you’re going on a date with David.”
“Mani-pedi as the antidote to suicide,” she said. “It all makes so much sense now. But I just got them done. What do you do instead of kill yourself when your nails are already done?”
“Maybe Le Pain Quotidien?” I said. “You should go get a Danish. But I need to stay by the water, just in case he surfaces.”
“How long are you going to wait?”
“It won’t be long now. I feel him watching.”
50.
After four nights I began to lose hope. The sickness reemerged and it was deeper, all the way to my bones, the way addicts describe dope sickness. I shit myself constantly. I vomited into the ocean. Whatever he had done to me had made my body dependent. I literally needed him to survive. I had heard of people who died from drug withdrawals. Whatever was leaking from me could not be good. Was I going to die of the shits and the shakes? Was I going to die a painful, shitty death? Suddenly I became terrified of dying. It seemed like I was about to stop breathing. Even just the thought that I could stop breathing and disappear was terrifying. What was scarier still was that I had done this to myself.
I needed help. There were two hours until group. I needed some kind of emotional methadone, some advice at least about what they had done to tone down their withdrawals. I showered quickly, then walked from Venice to Santa Monica, afraid that if I took a car I might vomit or shit inside of it. Stopping at CVS to buy Pepto-Bismol, I felt terrified, like an alien, as though I were Theo on land. This trip to CVS was so unlike last time—the urinary tract infection where I had felt that strange closeness to myself. Now I was totally estranged and out of my body, as though I had no idea how to move. I saw my feet walking, felt my heart pumping, but I didn’t know how I was breathing on my own—how my lungs knew to breathe and my heart knew to beat.
* * *
—
“Well, I did it again,” said Diana. “I slept with one of the tennis pros again. This time an even younger one. Barely eighteen. It’s like they’re just passing me around now. I don’t know how everyone in my social circle is not going to find out.”
Everyone looked at her in awe as though we were watching a soap opera. Sara was popping cashews like popcorn.
“I just—I don’t even know how it happened. It was like I was in a blackout. One minute I was getting into my car, the next minute I was talking to him. Then he got in the car with me and we started making out right there in the club parking lot. I took him to the Loews on the beach and got us a room, because only tourists go there and I knew we wouldn’t see anyone. The whole thing lasted less than an hour. He didn’t even ask for my number.”
“Did it come on spontaneously? Or was there any moment leading up to it where you noticed the idea in your mind? Anything that could have been a trigger?” asked Dr. Jude.
“Besides the fact that he was eighteen with rock-hard abs? And wanted me? No. Oh, there was a moment—the night before. I was at a party with my husband, an industry thing. And I looked at him from across the room. He was dressed up in a tux and I was wearing a cocktail dress. He was talking to a director, a famous one. And if there was any moment where he should have seemed attractive to me—it would have been that moment. But I looked at him and just thought, ‘I do not want that man. I do not want him at all. And I am going to be trapped with him for the rest of my life.’ And I felt like I was sinking. Like I was sinking through the floor.”
What was wrong with us? There were women on the planet who so easily accepted their paths. They were destined to like what they were given, and were given just enough, so that everything fell into place. Those women instinctively knew how to get a man and keep a man, each man interchangeable with the next: a torso, a dick, a pair of hands. Those women knew how to embrace whichever assembly-line man they were given. They knew how to breathe new life into him day after day and see what they had as special. They were like living psalms. There were no holes in their lives. Those women had never met a void a day in their life. They simply didn’t see any.
“Can I just say something?” said Sara. “Diana, I’m sorry, but if I had a husband who took good care of me—and I looked like you—and had young children who loved me, I would be so happy. I would just—be happy.”
“Dr. Jude, I’m feeling judged,” said Diana. But Sara didn’t stop.
“Stan left again. We got in a fight about a historical documentary. The Roosevelts. He said that I was the most annoying woman he had ever encountered and then he just left. I don’t know where he is staying. Maybe the spa? Maybe another woman’s house? I don’t know who would want him. We were supposed to go to a workshop this weekend. An ‘Opening the Heart’ course—a refresher for me, and basics for him. I was so excited. I was finally going to have a workshop boyfriend. I paid for both of us and everything. And you know what? I don’t even want to go now. I don’t want to open my heart! Now I’m going to have to go by myself. I’m going to be the woman alone again.”
I looked around the room and felt sad for all of us. We were built differently from other people—constructed in some fundamental way that was unlike those who could cope with love. Maybe we felt the same emotions as everyone else, but we felt them more intensely. Sappho felt more too, this I knew. Sappho was one of us. If she wasn’t overwhelmed by emotions, why then would she have needed to sing?
Every night, I promised myself that it would be the last night I drugged Dominic. But every night I had to do it, just in case. Should Theo return, I didn’t want there to be any impediments when he came swimming up. I would take him home and we would be entwined right away. I would do anything to stay with him. I would never think of leaving him again.
Sometimes I would fall asleep on the rocks. As I drifted off I would imagine that he was watching me from somewhere, seeing if I was putting in my time, testing me. Perhaps it was the gods I didn’t think I believed in who were watching me. But this is how it is with the gods and other mythic creatures. You imagine them watching you. You almost feel it. And so I waited for him. Nothing meant anything without him, except the hope of his return.
* * *
—
One night I dreamt that Sappho came over to the rocks and sat with me. She looked like Chickenhorse, only it was Chickenhorse as a hot, butch lesbian: her thick thighs in ripped jeans, hair styled in a pompadour and dyed jet black. Sappho-Chickenhorse told me I was stupid to wait for Theo. She touched my sternum with her palm and said, “Look at yourself, all of this over an asshole fish-boy.”
“But you were once the insane queen of unrequited love,” I said. “Shouldn’t you, of all people, understand?”
“Just be careful you don’t drown,” she said.
In my dream I closed my eyes. She kissed each of my eyelids. I felt turned on, like I wanted to rub against those thighs of hers in her jeans. When I opened my eyes again in my dream, Sappho had become Claire.
“I’m sorry I can’t drown with you,” said Claire.
“That’s okay,” I said.
“I’m really sorry, Lucy.”
“Nobody is going to drown!” I said. “Go get your nails and toenails done instead. You can pretend you’re going on a date with David.”
“Mani-pedi as the antidote to suicide,” she said. “It all makes so much sense now. But I just got them done. What do you do instead of kill yourself when your nails are already done?”
“Maybe Le Pain Quotidien?” I said. “You should go get a Danish. But I need to stay by the water, just in case he surfaces.”
“How long are you going to wait?”
“It won’t be long now. I feel him watching.”
50.
After four nights I began to lose hope. The sickness reemerged and it was deeper, all the way to my bones, the way addicts describe dope sickness. I shit myself constantly. I vomited into the ocean. Whatever he had done to me had made my body dependent. I literally needed him to survive. I had heard of people who died from drug withdrawals. Whatever was leaking from me could not be good. Was I going to die of the shits and the shakes? Was I going to die a painful, shitty death? Suddenly I became terrified of dying. It seemed like I was about to stop breathing. Even just the thought that I could stop breathing and disappear was terrifying. What was scarier still was that I had done this to myself.
I needed help. There were two hours until group. I needed some kind of emotional methadone, some advice at least about what they had done to tone down their withdrawals. I showered quickly, then walked from Venice to Santa Monica, afraid that if I took a car I might vomit or shit inside of it. Stopping at CVS to buy Pepto-Bismol, I felt terrified, like an alien, as though I were Theo on land. This trip to CVS was so unlike last time—the urinary tract infection where I had felt that strange closeness to myself. Now I was totally estranged and out of my body, as though I had no idea how to move. I saw my feet walking, felt my heart pumping, but I didn’t know how I was breathing on my own—how my lungs knew to breathe and my heart knew to beat.
* * *
—
“Well, I did it again,” said Diana. “I slept with one of the tennis pros again. This time an even younger one. Barely eighteen. It’s like they’re just passing me around now. I don’t know how everyone in my social circle is not going to find out.”
Everyone looked at her in awe as though we were watching a soap opera. Sara was popping cashews like popcorn.
“I just—I don’t even know how it happened. It was like I was in a blackout. One minute I was getting into my car, the next minute I was talking to him. Then he got in the car with me and we started making out right there in the club parking lot. I took him to the Loews on the beach and got us a room, because only tourists go there and I knew we wouldn’t see anyone. The whole thing lasted less than an hour. He didn’t even ask for my number.”
“Did it come on spontaneously? Or was there any moment leading up to it where you noticed the idea in your mind? Anything that could have been a trigger?” asked Dr. Jude.
“Besides the fact that he was eighteen with rock-hard abs? And wanted me? No. Oh, there was a moment—the night before. I was at a party with my husband, an industry thing. And I looked at him from across the room. He was dressed up in a tux and I was wearing a cocktail dress. He was talking to a director, a famous one. And if there was any moment where he should have seemed attractive to me—it would have been that moment. But I looked at him and just thought, ‘I do not want that man. I do not want him at all. And I am going to be trapped with him for the rest of my life.’ And I felt like I was sinking. Like I was sinking through the floor.”
What was wrong with us? There were women on the planet who so easily accepted their paths. They were destined to like what they were given, and were given just enough, so that everything fell into place. Those women instinctively knew how to get a man and keep a man, each man interchangeable with the next: a torso, a dick, a pair of hands. Those women knew how to embrace whichever assembly-line man they were given. They knew how to breathe new life into him day after day and see what they had as special. They were like living psalms. There were no holes in their lives. Those women had never met a void a day in their life. They simply didn’t see any.
“Can I just say something?” said Sara. “Diana, I’m sorry, but if I had a husband who took good care of me—and I looked like you—and had young children who loved me, I would be so happy. I would just—be happy.”
“Dr. Jude, I’m feeling judged,” said Diana. But Sara didn’t stop.
“Stan left again. We got in a fight about a historical documentary. The Roosevelts. He said that I was the most annoying woman he had ever encountered and then he just left. I don’t know where he is staying. Maybe the spa? Maybe another woman’s house? I don’t know who would want him. We were supposed to go to a workshop this weekend. An ‘Opening the Heart’ course—a refresher for me, and basics for him. I was so excited. I was finally going to have a workshop boyfriend. I paid for both of us and everything. And you know what? I don’t even want to go now. I don’t want to open my heart! Now I’m going to have to go by myself. I’m going to be the woman alone again.”
I looked around the room and felt sad for all of us. We were built differently from other people—constructed in some fundamental way that was unlike those who could cope with love. Maybe we felt the same emotions as everyone else, but we felt them more intensely. Sappho felt more too, this I knew. Sappho was one of us. If she wasn’t overwhelmed by emotions, why then would she have needed to sing?
