all-throwing absurdly heavy balls at distant wooden pins while the world drowned in grief and gore. She fought a longing to lay her head on the ball return, so when one arrived it would split her head wide open, like a pumpkin thrown on a sidewalk. Like the head of that little boy whose father swung him against the stone fireplace. Her brains would spill out on the shiny wooden floor like a Jonestown corpse exploding in the jungle heat .
…
“Hey, are you okay?” asked Brenda, standing above her and bending down with a look of concern, the gold medallion swaying hypnotically from her throat. More than yesterday, less than tomorrow, bullshit.
WOMEN
“I’m fine,” Caroline replied, wishing she could fight through the wall of cotton wool between them, but knowing it was impossible. They inhabited one world, and she another-a place of deep dark pointlessness. That was why she couldn’t do Hannah’s damn list. How could you describe someone who didn’t even exist?
Leaning forward from the tweed couch, Caroline searched through her National Abortion Rights Action League totebag on the carpet. Driving down the hill from Lloyd Harris without a list, she’d been seized with anxiety. That list was her assignment, and she hadn’t done it. God knows she’d tried. There where a self-image should have been was a great charred crater. But if she didn’t hand over a list, Hannah would be displeased. So in the parking lot she scribbled, “Kind, honest, well-meaning, mean, devious, ungenerous, possessive, wimpy . .
.” Let Hannah figure it out. That was what she was being paid for.
She looked up at Hannah, who sat in her swivel chair watching Caroline’s rummagings with a faint amused smile. Wearing a tan pants suit and a blouse with attached cravat and tigereye stickpin, Hannah looked like a truant from a Tupperware party. Caroline did a double take: Hannah was in stocking feet.
“As yes, the list,” said Hannah, taking it. She glanced at it, then handed it back and lit a brown cigarette with matches from Corinne’s, a new restaurant in the tannery where she and Arthur had eaten rack of lamb last night. If Caroline had done the list to please her, she wanted to convey that Caroline’s compliance or noncompliance was a matter of indifference to her. From the perplexed look on Caroline’s drawn face, she suspected this assessment was correct. Therapy was theater. You tried to restage scenarios from the client’s past so the outcomes were different. She remembered a boy at the state hospital who spent his days plucking invisible bugs out of the air. But the one time she persuaded him to stop, he ended up in a straitjacket.
“For next time why don’t you divide your list into categories?” said Hannah, picking up Nigel’s stone and cradling it in one palm as she flicked her cigarette ash into it.
OTHER
Caroline frowned. The list had occupied her entire week, only to be dismissed in fifteen seconds. Why bother? “What kind of
categories?”
“Whatever ones you see.
Caroline heaved a sigh. Now she’d have to spend next week figurout what categories Hannah had seen. As though she didn’t have report cards to sign, laundry to fold, dressings to change.
She didn’t have time for these games. Let housewives with nothing better to do play them. Her eyes returned to Hannah’s bare feet.
“What’s wrong?” asked Hannah. These ritual enactments struck her as transparent, but most clients seemed not to see through them. This was where her British heritage came in handy. Nobody was so gifted as the British at pageantry-coronations, corteges, royal marriages, the changing of the guard, masterpieces of fantasy that participants and observers alike believed were real. But at least she was aware of being a fraud.
“That list was really hard to do,” Caroline said.
“All I could come up with was what other people have told me I’m like. But their versions contradict each other.
I felt canceled
…
“Hey, are you okay?” asked Brenda, standing above her and bending down with a look of concern, the gold medallion swaying hypnotically from her throat. More than yesterday, less than tomorrow, bullshit.
WOMEN
“I’m fine,” Caroline replied, wishing she could fight through the wall of cotton wool between them, but knowing it was impossible. They inhabited one world, and she another-a place of deep dark pointlessness. That was why she couldn’t do Hannah’s damn list. How could you describe someone who didn’t even exist?
Leaning forward from the tweed couch, Caroline searched through her National Abortion Rights Action League totebag on the carpet. Driving down the hill from Lloyd Harris without a list, she’d been seized with anxiety. That list was her assignment, and she hadn’t done it. God knows she’d tried. There where a self-image should have been was a great charred crater. But if she didn’t hand over a list, Hannah would be displeased. So in the parking lot she scribbled, “Kind, honest, well-meaning, mean, devious, ungenerous, possessive, wimpy . .
.” Let Hannah figure it out. That was what she was being paid for.
She looked up at Hannah, who sat in her swivel chair watching Caroline’s rummagings with a faint amused smile. Wearing a tan pants suit and a blouse with attached cravat and tigereye stickpin, Hannah looked like a truant from a Tupperware party. Caroline did a double take: Hannah was in stocking feet.
“As yes, the list,” said Hannah, taking it. She glanced at it, then handed it back and lit a brown cigarette with matches from Corinne’s, a new restaurant in the tannery where she and Arthur had eaten rack of lamb last night. If Caroline had done the list to please her, she wanted to convey that Caroline’s compliance or noncompliance was a matter of indifference to her. From the perplexed look on Caroline’s drawn face, she suspected this assessment was correct. Therapy was theater. You tried to restage scenarios from the client’s past so the outcomes were different. She remembered a boy at the state hospital who spent his days plucking invisible bugs out of the air. But the one time she persuaded him to stop, he ended up in a straitjacket.
“For next time why don’t you divide your list into categories?” said Hannah, picking up Nigel’s stone and cradling it in one palm as she flicked her cigarette ash into it.
OTHER
Caroline frowned. The list had occupied her entire week, only to be dismissed in fifteen seconds. Why bother? “What kind of
categories?”
“Whatever ones you see.
Caroline heaved a sigh. Now she’d have to spend next week figurout what categories Hannah had seen. As though she didn’t have report cards to sign, laundry to fold, dressings to change.
She didn’t have time for these games. Let housewives with nothing better to do play them. Her eyes returned to Hannah’s bare feet.
“What’s wrong?” asked Hannah. These ritual enactments struck her as transparent, but most clients seemed not to see through them. This was where her British heritage came in handy. Nobody was so gifted as the British at pageantry-coronations, corteges, royal marriages, the changing of the guard, masterpieces of fantasy that participants and observers alike believed were real. But at least she was aware of being a fraud.
“That list was really hard to do,” Caroline said.
“All I could come up with was what other people have told me I’m like. But their versions contradict each other.
I felt canceled
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