Read Online Talking in Bed by Antonya Nelson - Free Book Online Page B

an ashtray. He took little naps on his sofa. He'd once offered to let Gerry live here, at least stay here on the coldest Chicago nights. But Gerry preferred being outside, preferred camping out on the floors of friends' homes or on roofs or in parks. And to be realistic, Gerry could never have figured out the office alarm system.
    Luellen was Ev's last client today. Her problems weren't new, but the peculiar slant on them interested Ev. She hated her father—nothing fresh in that, something decidedly stale, in fact, in that—but hated him because he
hadn't
abused her. He had molested the other three daughters in the family—prepubescent intercourse—but not her. Why didn't he do it to her? This was her unanswerable question. She wasn't the oldest, she wasn't the youngest, but she was, probably, the least attractive of the children. When she'd begun to trust Ev, she'd brought in a photograph of herself with her siblings. The other daughters were blondes, big-toothed tan girls. Luellen was simply less pretty, a brown-haired girl whose ears stuck out. She most resembled the father, in the photo, and it was her ironic human quandary to feel competitive for abuse.
    But her likableness as a client had more to do with her intelligence and quickness, her ardent honesty, than with her unusual spin on her family molestation drama. For example, she had noticed right away when Ev brought in the metal box containing his father's ashes—the only one of his clients who ever commented on its presence. The ashes had been placed discreetly on a bookshelf behind where his clients generally sat, but Luellen had enough curiosity about settings to be always aware of the one she inhabited.
    "New box," she'd said.
    "Ashes," Ev had answered, coming the nearest to intimacy he would ever achieve with her or any of his clients.
    "Your father?"
    He nodded. She had begun therapy only a few months before Ev's father had died. Her own father had died recently, too, which may also have explained his liking her, feeling comfortable with her. Ev imagined a club, the Dead Fathers, he and Luellen and Paddy Limbach as three of its charter members. Also, Luellen had the unusual distinction of being someone whose dislike of her father surpassed Ev's. Her darkness was bigger, her father's darkness was bigger, and together they had the charm of subsuming Ev's and
his
father's.
    "Did I tell you what I did with
my
father's ashes?" she had asked, sitting down and tilting her head at its familiar confidential angle.
    "No."
    "My sisters and I each got a portion of them, just like in some dumb fairy tale. The first daughter took hers to the lake, on a sailboat, and scattered them to the wind. The second daughter keeps hers in a safe-deposit box. The third daughter buried them in her back yard and planted a tree—which died, by the way. But the fourth daughter took hers into the mortuary bathroom, poured them in the toilet, pissed on them, then flushed." Her eyebrows jumped in the way they did to punctuate statements. "You could do that."
    Ev nodded. "I could."
    "But you wouldn't?"
    "Probably not." In truth, he could imagine doing it if his anger hadn't already been served by his suffocating his father, if the itch hadn't already been scratched. He didn't find Luellen's gesture that of somebody lacking sense or reason, just that of somebody seeking justice. Long ago he'd understood that the crux of his business, the slogan he would have to live by, would be
It's not fair.
    But Ev was not the kind of therapist who described his own experiences as a way of eliciting client trust or confidence. He did not want to bring more than his intelligence and sensitivity into the relationship. His clients frequently sickened him with their weakness, their victimization, their victimizing, their boring deceptions. He didn't like imagining the enormous normal-looking infrastructure that kept all the grossness hidden. Their secrets occasionally disgusted him, and he