He Said, She Said
I want it clear that I’m not your patient, though I understand why you need to see me. So, let’s skip the toddler traumas and adolescent anguish and get right to how I came to marry Alma.
The truth is she seduced me at her father’s funeral. No, I wasn’t imagining things and I certainly wasn’t expecting it. And I wasn’t putting the move on a vulnerable, grief-stricken girl, because Alma was neither grief-stricken nor vulnerable. There wasn’t anything ambiguous about it, the seduction: it was straight up, direct. And yes, I know it’s not exactly seemly to be seduced at a funeral, even if it’s not your idea and even if it was Alma. It’s ungentlemanly to talk about it, but if I aim to understand things, I’m not supposed to conceal anything. Right?
Okay, so here’s how it happened. I went to the cemetery, stood at the graveside. As things were winding up Alma left her mother and walked over to me. She put her hand on my arm and invited me to the reception at the family mansion. I was surprised and flattered and, of course, I went, though at the church the priest announced the reception would be just for family and her parents’ closest friends, people of their own sort. Not my sort. I stood around by myself until Alma asked me to help her in the kitchen. That’s where it began, in the kitchen and, well, it wound up twenty minutes later in the bedroom, the one Alma slept in when she was little, before she went to Abbot Academy and then Bryn Mawr.
Her father had been my boss, the CEO, the Big Tuna. He looked the part — over six feet of high WASP with cropped steely hair, sharp blue eyes, and a thin hard-driving mouth. He had a face that probably looked refined on weekends but ruthless on weekdays. He shouted a lot at work, was always bawling somebody out. Productivity was his obsession — productivity and the Japanese. Sometimes I thought he wanted to be Japanese. “You know, they hardly ever sleep,” he’d say admiringly, though it sounded menacing. Everybody feared him, but we were in awe too. We all griped sotto voce and swore about him, but I guess admiration and fear add up to respect. No matter what they said in private, everybody wanted his good opinion, feared a tongue-lashing, and longed for a nod of approval. He was not one of those demoralizing but easy-going bosses with low standards. He was a micro-manager who chewed people up and spit a lot of them out. Some of us hated him but everyone was sure he was, you know, the real thing, and his temper tantrums came with the job. It was like working for Zeus. As for me, I idolized him even though I thought he was mad — not clinically mad but mad in the sense of unpredictable. I once saw him fire an assistant manager because the poor guy’s socks clashed with his necktie. With me, though, he was always polite. But it never felt like the courtesy was sincere. It’s hard to explain. It felt like he was suppressing some feeling he didn’t want to come out in public — aversion, disgust, maybe hatred. He didn’t yell at me, and he didn’t fire me, but I was passed over for promotion three times. It all made more sense after Alma told me about her father’s views. I was a token, but a token not to deceive the outside world but himself.
So, Alma was the daughter of Zeus, the golden girl you dream about and would never dare approach, an intimidating prize from a higher world, one that might kill you for just staring at her too long. You know what she looks like, how she talks. I was stunned the first time I saw her. It was during her spring break. She was home from college and came by the office. She was so beautiful. I mean it was like being pushed backward by a wind. And she threw herself at me after the funeral, right there in the kitchen. I was too breathless to wonder why.
It never crossed my mind that it was to spite her father. Who’d have figured she’d wait until he was dead to do that? Just dead, too. I didn’t suspect she was as mad as he was, twice as mad — really mad. We were married three months later. Her idea. The craziness didn’t show up for almost a year after that, or maybe I was just too bewitched to notice.
Please understand, Doc, reconciliation isn’t what I’m after here. I want to escape.
…
— Okay, it’s true. I slept with my husband-to-be right after the funeral of daddy-that-was. I could say he looked to me like a Perseus or Bellerophon but I’m not that into mythology. I also wouldn’t call myself a romantic. Aren’t you going to say something?
— Both slayers of monsters, weren’t they?
— You know your myths. What do you want me to say? Something about being saved? But the monster was already dead, wasn’t he? Freshly. Think I was all broken up by grief, that I had a damsel-in-distress fantasy?
— You want from me maybe a banality?
— You and your phony Yiddish accent. He worked for Daddy. I liked that.
— A thousand men worked for your father. What did you like about this one? His humor? His personality? Good hair? Good digestion?
— I liked that he was there. I liked that he was Jewish. Like you.
— Really. You liked that he was Jewish?
— Ha! You’re blushing, Doctor. Look, my father was a terrible anti-Semite, but he tried to keep it secret. He was ashamed of hating Jews the way alcoholics are ashamed of loving booze, but he hid it about as well as they do the gin bottles. At home, I mean. He managed better in public.
— So, it was — what? Some kind of revenge, this post-funeral coupling?
— Coupling? My, you are tactful. Revenge? Doctor, you’re almost always wrong; but that’s just what I like most about you. No, not revenge — allure. I wanted to marry a Jew because Daddy hated Jews, not because I hated Daddy, which, as a matter of historical fact, I didn’t. Daddy just made Jews attractive. You know: hands off that avocado, Eve? Besides, Jews are terrific at guilt, the men in particular. My freshman roommate’s mother, Mrs. Schwartz, had a good take on that. Jewish husbands make the best slaves, she told her daughter. Jeez, I said to myself: Yes, please.
— So, you wanted a slave?
— I wanted a slavish husband. Or, you could say I was being spiteful. Or maybe I wanted something to take away the taste of the preposterous eulogy. Maybe I wanted coupling, as you call it, followed by abject gratitude on his part and remorselessness on mine. Da-da-da-da-da. Jew rhymes with screw, also rue. Et tu? Roses are red, violets are blue. My father’s dead, so what else is new?
— Calm down, please.
— Calm down? Is that your prescription, Doctor? Keep calm and don’t carry on? I’ll tell you something. Electra’s the only character all the Greek dramatists took a crack at, one after the other.
— Is that so? Electra, who loved her father. And you find that significant?
— You ought to know, being a mythologically informed shrink and all.
— What is it you think I should know?
— That too many diagnoses are as good as none. Off your rocker? Keep calm. We’ve a pill for it.
— Some disorders are like symbolic poems, Alma. They can sustain any number of interpretations.
— Fine! So, I have a case of symbolic poetry.
— I only meant —
— What I think, Doctor, what I think is that life’s what goes on between funerals. Doesn’t everybody always say — sooner or later doesn’t absolutely everybody say, even if, like you, they practically choke on clichés — doesn’t everybody always end up saying life goes on? Until it doesn’t, of course.
— Do you love him?
— Who?
— Your husband.
— Yes. No.
— Your father?
— No. Yes.
—
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