What does a
woman do when she is jolted from a dream world and discovers her marriage isn’t
what she thought it was? If she's like
me, she segues into shock and bitterness. I gave boozing a try -- not so much to drown my sorrows as to get
attention from Ed.
"He
wants a different woman? By God, I'll
give him a different woman!" I scowled into the mirror, toasting my
bleary-eyed image with a third double martini.
My alcoholic phase didn't last long.
For one thing, Ed was disgusted with my drinking and reported it to our
children. For another, I couldn't stand
the hangovers. Alcoholism wasn't my bag.
I spent
a lot of time curled up in bed, thinking about suicide. Then my reveries shifted from suicide to
murder. One of us would have to go,
there wasn't room on this painful planet for both of us.
"I
didn't do anything, why should I be the one to die?" In a frequently viewed fantasy, Ed was walking across
the yard to the greenhouse. He passed a
bird feeder on a post between the greenhouse and the porch.
"Officers,"
I pictured myself saying to the policemen
examining the 22 rifle, "I was shooting at a starling, and my
husband happened to walk by when I
pulled the trigger. You see, the Audubon
Society says it's all right to shoot starlings because they're not indigenous
to Massachusetts."
What
could be more convincing, especially with the word "indigenous"
thrown in? Nah, they'd never buy it, and
besides, I wasn't comfortable with the idea of murdering anyone, even if he
deserved it.
Back to
Plan A. After my suicide attempt I was
committed to a psychiatric hospital -- jailed, really -- for two weeks. I was assigned a psychiatrist and had to
agree to regular visits before I was allowed to go home. I sat in his office and fed him stuff about
my childhood. Never mentioned my fantasy
about Ed and the bird-feeder.
February 1,
1971
San Francisco
From Vonnie to
her parents
February 5, 1971
Westwood
To Vonnie
After I pulled this stupid stunt, Timmy
was wonderful -- so kind, so loving.
Strangely, I had forgotten I even had children! Tim went with me in the ambulance to Mass.
General and sat by my bed for a long time, holding my hand and repeating
gentle, caring words.
When I was transferred to Graystone
Hospital I found myself in the company of other loonies, some pitiful, some
scary. I felt lost until Mother came to
see me, bringing a dozen roses and an armful of my magazine articles. "For your coffee table," she
smiled, ignoring the bars on the windows.
The articles accomplished their purpose.
Ernestine had reminded me that in real life I was a writer who could
make people laugh.
Then
she said, "I've got to tell you something. I can't help it. I still love Edward."
I told her I wouldn't want it any other
way. Maybe I'd love him again myself someday.
A few days later, who walks in, prepared
to make a rational woman of me, but your unbeloved Dr. C. His proposed road to sanity was via shock
treatments. Seeing my expression
(horrified), he launched into a long, reassuring speech about how effective
this therapy had proved to be.
Trying to conceal my terror, I said I'd
read about this kind of therapy and its side effects of memory loss. I didn't want anyone tampering with my brain.
"It's perfectly harmless," he
said.
"Have you ever had a treatment?"
He looked startled and said no.
"If you'll have a treatment and let
me watch, maybe I'll consider it."
Looking at me as if I were crazy (hah!)
he brushed off my proposition and suggested I talk it over with my husband.
Other patients told me if They wanted to
give me shock treatments, They'd do it, whether I liked it or not. Your father said, "But dear. if the
doctor thinks it will make you better, doesn't he know best?"
I put in a panicky call to Kathie, who
said, "Don't let them do it, Mom.
I'll speak to Dad."
As you can see, my brain was not
assaulted and is as brilliant as ever.
However, in order to get sprung from Glenside, I have to agree to visit
Dr. C. once a week.
Dad is courting me. So far, like Jeanette McDonald, I haven't
said yes, I haven't said no. If he were
Nelson Eddy, I'd say yes, and we could sing a duet. (Remember how you asked us when you were a little
girl if we ever sang to each other?)
February 12, 1971
San Francisco
From Vonnie
Mom, I was proud to the point of tears to
see that the Malley sense of comedy is unquenched, even in a time of crisis.
When and if you feel up to writing again
I'd like to hear of your progress with Dr. C.
I couldn't believe it when I heard he was your designated head
shrinker. If at any time he gets you
outraged enough, pop him in the eye and give it a little extra zap ‑‑ just for
old times sake. I sure wanted to do it
more than once. "Talking‑back"
shrinks have a way of making you bring out truths you don't want to admit, thus
causing you to resent them to the point of turning blue.
How is Kathie doing?
March 5, 1971
Westwood
To Vonnie
I've called it quits with Dr. C. The last thing I need is a psychiatrist who
regards a man’s straying as normal but as sluttish if a woman does the
same. I turned blue, as you predicted,
not because he was bringing out truths but because he's an effing male
chauvinist.
Kathie is doing wonderfully. In addition to teaching psychology at B. U.,
she is doing research with children who are having trouble learning to read,
under a special grant from the Office of Education. She tells me she doesn't like the word
retarded because she doesn't like to categorize children.
Recently she talked to me about her pet
hate -- being considered courageous or a role model. She insists that she isn't.
"Nature always compensates for a
loss," she said. "I can't use
my legs but my shoulders and arms are more powerful. If you have a strong will, that doesn't
change no matter what happens to you.
Look what the survivors in concentration camps went through. I'm very lucky."
April 20, 1971
San Francisco
From Vonnie to
her father
This is for us. I guess it's the first real written
communication we've ever had. You've
brought me up, protected me, stood by me, loved me. I feel so deeply for you it hurts.
You've got three children going in good directions
and one that's going out of orbit. Once
in a while I find someone I think may be a little bit comparable to you, get
disappointed, and start giving up again.
I know you're not perfect, but you've been my whole world as far as
being a man, a father, is concerned.
Daddy, you're so good, please help me find someone that can measure up
to half the man you are.
I just can't seem to find myself, whoever
I am. Remember when I was a kid? I was always in trouble. A teenager?
Still in trouble. Does it ever,
ever end? All I want is to be loved and
to love, with all my heart and soul.
That's what I was cut out for, not a Doctorate like Kathie, not an
athlete or hip pilot like my brothers.
Just a plain lover -- for one person.
Daddy, I love you. Please don't give me up as lost.
May 24, 1971
San Francisco
From Vonnie
It's been a year now. It doesn't seem possible that that little tow‑headed, thumb‑sucking, freckle‑ faced
girl who couldn't leave you for one single night, who couldn't go to sleep
without the burning, yearning kiss goodnight, has been separated from you for
so long. It's sad.
I wrote to Dad a couple of weeks ago. I've been trying so hard these past months
not to ask for help. But I just couldn't
hold out any longer. As usual, he came
to my rescue without more than a silent
personal groan. How fortunate we all are
to have him. His goodness surely
outweighs his shortcomings.
September 21,
1971
A week on a cruise ship seems like a year of ordinary living, but
we finally arrived in Istanbul day before yesterday. I visited the city’s
famous bazaar—sixty-seven streets and with forty-four hundred shops. I
walked quickly through the maze of narrow lanes, bought nothing, but took a few
pictures.
The streets beyond the bazaar
teemed with sellers, buyers, strollers, beggars, and creatures humped over like
camels, bearing enormous burdens on their padded backs. I snapped picture
after picture. Nearby was the university and an open area where handfuls of
corn were sold by crones and children. A pretty Egyptian girl assured me
I would get my wish if I threw the pigeons a few golden kernels. I threw
a few kernels.
A young man, wearing tinted glasses and a
dark moustache, spoke to me next.
"You are American. Are you visiting our city for
long?"
"No, my ship is leaving
tomorrow," I said.
"I am a student at the
university," he said, falling into step beside me.
I didn't want company; I wanted to concentrate on taking pictures. The young man introduced himself as Ahmet and
continued to ask questions. I didn't
want to hurt his feelings by telling him to get lost.
Ahmet offered to take me to picturesque
areas I would have difficulty finding by myself—outdoor markets, fishing
wharves, and parks. At no charge, he
said.
"You are a very attractive woman, if
you don't mind my saying so."
I didn't mind. Ahmet was twenty-four and couldn't believe I
had two sons almost as old as he.
"You are so slim and shapely—surely
you must have been a child bride?"
Going, going, gone. At the end of the afternoon, as Ahmet walked
me back to my ship, I agreed to meet him after dinner and let him show me
Istanbul's night life. I took the precaution of telling shipboard friends that
I was going out for the evening with a student named Ahmet.
"If you don't show up for breakfast,
we'll sound the alarm."
My escort took me first to a shabby cafe
where we had drinks and tried to talk above the clamor of a jukebox. Soon Ahmet was calling me Barbara, clutching
my hand in both of his, and assuring me I was the most fascinating woman he had
ever met. After one more drink, I
believed him.
He was not satisfied just to hold my hand,
he said. He would take me to a place
where there was dancing, so he could hold me in his arms.
The next dive shrouded its seedy
atmosphere in darkness. Battered tables,
lit by candle stumps, were grouped around a dance floor. We had more to drink, we talked, we
danced. Ahmet said I had bewitched him,
he couldn't bear to think he would never see me again. Behind his glasses, his hooded eyes entreated
me to relax and let him hold me closer.
"You are not afraid of me, are
you?" he asked. "You can trust
me totally." So might a cobra speak if it had a larynx and spoke with a
Turkish accent.
"But it's too late," Ahmet was
insisting a couple of hours later when I said I wanted to return to my
ship. He showed me his watch. "The authorities close the gates to the
ship at midnight."
Then I would have to go to a hotel, I told
him. I was tired and had had too much to
drink, and I really wasn't feeling very well.
Ahmet said it was all his fault, he was so enchanted with my company that
he had lost track of the time.
My stomach rumbled disagreeably. I was beginning to think I had picked up an
affliction from one unwashed glass or another. Arguing persuasively, Ahmet convinced me I
should spend the night at his house, which he described as a villa, with
terraces and landscaped grounds. There,
he assured me, I could enjoy complete privacy in a separate apartment; and to
prove his honorable intentions, he would give me the key to my bedroom
door. He would get me back to my ship
first thing in the morning.
Several bus changes followed, with the
neighborhood and our fellow passengers gradually deteriorating. I felt increasingly alarmed.
"Ahmet, I've changed my mind. I want to go back to the city."
"There are no connections at this
hour. Why have you changed your mind,
Barbara? Are you frightened? No harm will come to you as long as you are
with me."
Next, we were walking down a deserted
alley, lined with the dark irregular shapes of two‑ and three‑decker
tenements. I desperately needed a
bathroom. That first. Then a
policeman.
"Here we are," said Ahmet, whose
voice begun to sound brisker and less
ingratiating as we neared the home he had
described in such splendid terms.
He led me down a set of jagged stone steps, took out his key, and pushed
open a scarred, creaking door.
"Where is the bathroom?" I
asked, looked around the dingy apartment.
I had been thoroughly conned. The
question was, would I now be killed or was I just in for a bad night?
"Over there." Ahmet pointed to a
curtain. "The toilet seat came from Sears Roebuck," he said with a
note of pride. "We haven't had it
connected yet, but you can use it."
"We?"
I asked.
"My cousin, with whom I share these
quarters. You remember my telling you
about him?"
Yes, I remembered something about a
cousin. At the time I had visualized
"these quarters" as being less intimate.
"He is very nice, you will meet him
in the morning. Ah— here he is
now."
A dark‑skinned youth with sparse black
whiskers, pulling on a pair of trousers, came through one of two doors opposite
the curtain. Ahmet started to introduce
us.
"I have to go to the bathroom,"
I interrupted.
The toilet seat, backed by a lidless,
empty tank, was stationed over a hole in the floor. I had no choice but to use it.
Outside I could hear Ahmet and his cousin
conversing in low voices. Oh God! Trapped in a 12 X 14 "villa" with
Bluebeard the Turk and his cousin, Blackbeard!
"Barbara, if you need water, I will
show you where you can wash up," Ahmet called through the curtain.
When I came out, the cousin had disappeared. Ahmet said he had gone to bed. I certainly hoped so. He ushered me into a cubbyhole which was
apparently the kitchen. There was no
sink, just a pipe with a faucet.
"Where's a towel?" I
asked.
Ahmet gestured toward a grimy rag hanging
next to the pipe and left me to manage my Turkish bath as best I could.
Ahmet entered my cell in his maroon
pajamas, removed his glasses, and surveyed me with dark, heavy‑lidded
eyes. He had changed from a mild‑mannered
university student to an imperious, mustachioed sultan, accustomed to having
his way with his choice of the night.
In an attempt to think positively, my
mother's precept, I tried visualizing myself aboard my ship, having an elegant
breakfast with my fellow passengers. If
they could see me now. . . .
Through that long night I felt an affinity
with women of all times and all cultures who have been sexually exploited
against their will. The next morning,
haggard and degraded, my self‑esteem in shreds, I accompanied Ahmet and his
cousin to the bus stop. The three of us
talked about the weather on the long ride back to the city.
September
22, 1971
It worked again. Like my stay in the loony
bin, my night with Ahmet lost its obsessive power
once I had written it out in terror-assuaging paragraphs.
I stayed in my cabin on the ship until
noon yesterday, writing, writing. I sent
for a sandwich and wrote some more. Then
I slept, and slept. This evening I was
ready to face the pre-dinner cocktail group. There, someone asked me, “What do
you do?” I had rarely heard this
question until I started traveling. At
first, my stammered answer was “I’m a housewife, I guess.” But now another answer occurred to me. “Well, for one thing, I fly an airplane.”
This terminated all conversation within
earshot as effectively as if I’d announced I was a go-go dancer. My shipmates insisted on hearing about some
of the zanier adventures Ed and I have had, starting with our boating days;
they wouldn’t let me stop until my memory went dry. Next to writing, holding a group’s attention
is the best poultice for a traumatized psyche.
I am about to go to bed, after condensing
a sanitized version of Istanbul and Ahmet on a postcard for Kathie: “Leaving
the bazaar, I was picked up by a twenty-four-year-old Turk, a university
student who told me I was beautiful and said he wanted to take me dancing so he
could hold me in his arms. Wherever you
may roam, a line is a line is a line.
After a few drinks of Turkish rotgut, we did go dancing and I woke up
this morning with a hangover. Love, Mom"
November
2, 1971
Westwood
I returned from Europe looking and feeling
like the one thing I had never been able to be for Ed since 1940—a new
woman. In an earlier era we might have
reconciled and lived haphazardly ever after, but now I know I have options
besides shrinks, suicide, and little blue pills. I asked for a trial separation.
“`Enry `Iggins” was sure I’d come crawling
back in two weeks as if, like Eliza Doolittle, I was nothing without him. Instead, I have made an unexpected
discovery: being single again isn’t all
that bad. Rather than orbiting like a
trapped planet around my husband’s personal planet, I am free to explore new
worlds, including the world evolving inside my head.
I have joined a women’s consciousness-raising group and signed up for a seminar for recently divorced and separated men and women. I’m looking into Parents Without Partners. I’m even taking dancing lessons.
I have joined a women’s consciousness-raising group and signed up for a seminar for recently divorced and separated men and women. I’m looking into Parents Without Partners. I’m even taking dancing lessons.
No comments:
Post a Comment