The First Bad Man

CHAPTER EIGHT

She didn’t attack me for the entire month of July. Or talk to me. Or look at me. I was the vulgar one, I had dirtied her, not the other way around. How had it come to this and how could I clear my name? I was ready to throw myself into penitent acts as soon as an opportunity arose, but none did. Instead the hours limped by and each working day she was a little closer to moving out of my house. This would probably be for the best, though the thought was gutting, absurdly so.

On the last day of the month a blanket of heat descended in the middle of the night, waking every living thing and setting them against each other. I stared out the kitchen window into the moonless night, listening. An animal was being mauled in the backyard, possibly a coyote attacking a skunk — but not well, not deftly. After a few minutes Clee padded out from the living room and stood a few feet away from me. We listened to the squeals change as the animal approached death; the pitch had entered the human register, every exertion contained a familiar vowel. If words began to form then I would go out there and break it up. Words, even crudely formed ones, would change the game entirely. Of course they would be accidental — the way a tortured human might accidentally make sounds that were meaningful to a pig — but I would still have to step in. We both listened for a word. Maybe help, maybe a name, maybe Please no.

But the thing died before any of that, an abrupt silence.

“I don’t believe in abortion,” whispered Clee, shaking her head ruefully.

It was an unusual way to think about it, but no matter: she was talking to me.

“I think it should be illegal,” she added. “Do you?”

I squinted into the dark corners of the yard. No, I didn’t. I had signed petitions making sure of that. But it seemed like she was referring to what we had done just now, or hadn’t done.

“I’m definitely on the side of life,” I said, meaning not that I was pro-life, just that I was one of life’s fans. She nodded several times in full agreement. We walked back to our beds with a formal feeling, like two diplomats who had signed a treaty of historical import. I wasn’t forgiven, but the air in the house had changed. Tomorrow I’d ask for directions. Do you know where the nearest drugstore is? I saw her smiling with relief, as if I’d asked her to dance. Everything forgiven.

TOMORROW BEGAN WITH A PHONE CALL. Suzanne was outraged.

“I want no part in it. And I don’t feel guilty about that. Did I wake you up?”

“No.” It was six A.M.

“If she was keeping it, I would be mad but I would feel I had to participate. But according to Kate’s mom that’s not the plan. It’s just false stupidity. She’s doing it so she can feel like a trashy Christian girl, like Kate, like all of them.”

There was a little tickle in my brain, like the feeling of being about to remember the word for something. I knew I would understand what she was talking about in just a second.

“You have my permission to kick her out immediately — in fact, I insist on it. She needs a taste of reality. Who’s the father? She can live with him.”

The father. Father Christmas? Feather, farther, fallow? Was there liquid running out of my ear? I looked in the mirror; no liquid. But it was interesting to watch my face as it happened. It gave a very large, theatrical performance of a person being stunned: the mouth fell open, the eyes widened and protruded, color vanished. Somewhere a large soft mallet hit a giant cymbal.

The word for the thing we were talking about was pregnant.

Clee was pregnant.

Were there many ways to get pregnant? Not really. Could you get pregnant from a water fountain? No. My ear was being so loud I could barely make out Suzanne asking if I knew who the father was; even my own reply was hard to hear.

“No,” I yelled.

“Kate didn’t know either. Is Clee there?”

I cracked my door the tiniest bit. Clee was sitting up in her sleeping bag. Her face looked blotchy from crying or maybe just from being pregnant.

“She’s here,” I whispered.

“Well, please tell her she’s on her own. I’d tell her myself but she’s not answering my calls. Actually, you know what? Don’t talk to her. Just make sure she doesn’t leave. I’ll be there in an hour and a half.”

She broke the contract. It didn’t cover this, of course it didn’t, why should it? What did I care? What contract? We didn’t have one. I pressed my face into the bed, smothering myself. Was it the plumber? Of course it couldn’t be the plumber; that was imaginary. But something unimaginary had happened, probably not just once, more likely many times, with many people. That’s who she was. Perfectly fine. Not my business. She could have as much unimaginary intercourse as she wanted. Of course, she would need to leave immediately; our contract was terminated. What contract? Where did they do it? In my bed? I would throw her garbage bags onto the street myself. I put on exercise clothes for swift movement.

Suzanne’s Volvo rolled up silently; she must have cut the motor for the last block. I tried to give her a thumbs-up through the window but she didn’t see me. She was also wearing athletic clothes and she looked as if she had been battle-crying for the whole drive and now was ready for the kill. There was a sharp rap on the door, a metal beak or her keys. I rolled my shoulders back and came out of the bedroom, stone-faced.

Clee was peeking through a crack in the living room curtains. She looked from her mother’s wrathful face to mine, from my exercise clothes to her mother’s. With her arms folded across her stomach she stepped back until she was against the wall with her garbage bags. Rap, rap, rap went the beak. Rap, rap. My eyes fell on Clee’s bare feet; one was on top of the other, protecting it. Rap, rap, rap. We both looked at the door. It was shaking a little. Suzanne began to pound.

I swung it open. Not the big door, but the tiny one within it. It was just big enough to contain all of my features. I pressed them against its rectangle and looked down at Suzanne.

“Is she still in there?” she mouthed, pointing at the windows conspiratorially.

“I don’t think she wants to see you right now,” the door said.

Suzanne blinked; her face sank with confusion. I pressed myself against the oak door. Stay oaken.

“No one home. Keep out.”

“Okay, Cheryl, ha ha. Very theatrical. Let me talk to Clee.”

I looked at Clee. She shook her head no and gave me a tiny grateful smile. I redoubled my efforts, retripled them.

“She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“She doesn’t have a choice,” Suzanne snapped. The door handle rattled desperately.

“Double dead bolt,” I said.

She slammed her fist against the small iron grate that covered my face. That’s what the grate was there for. She examined her fist and then gazed at her parked car and Clee’s car behind it, her old car. For a moment she just looked like a mom, tired and worried with no graceful way to express herself.

“It’ll be okay,” I said. “She’ll be okay. I’ll make sure.”

She squinted at me; the rectangle was starting to cut into my face.

“May I at least be granted permission to use the bathroom?” she asked coldly.

I shut the tiny door for a moment.

“She wants to use the bathroom.”

Clee’s eyes were shining.

“Let her in,” she said with careful magnanimity.

I unlocked the door and swung it open. Suzanne hesitated, eyeing her daughter with a last-ditch harebrained scheme. Clee pointed to the bathroom. We listened to her pee and flush and wash her hands. She exited the house without looking at either of us; the Volvo rumbled away.

Clee took a long swig of old Diet Pepsi and tossed the empty bottle in the general direction of the kitchen trash. It bounced on the linoleum a few times. I understood. She had temporarily forgiven me in the heat of the moment without really meaning it. With all the fuss I had forgotten to make my bed; I headed to go do that.

“So,” Clee said loudly. I stopped. “I don’t really know a lot about health and stuff? But I figure you probably know what I should be eating. Like vitamins or whatever.”

I turned and looked at her from my bedroom door. She was standing on the moon and if I responded I would be on the moon too, right next to her. With her and away from everything else. It looks so far away, but you can just reach your hand out and touch it.

“Well,” I said slowly, “for starters you should take a prenatal vitamin. And how far along are you?” The phrase far along just fell out, as if it had been waiting in my mouth this whole time.

“Eleven weeks, I think. I’m not totally sure.”

“But you’re sure you want a baby.”

“Oh no.” She laughed. “It’ll go up for adoption. Can you imagine? Me?”

I laughed too. “I didn’t want to be rude, but…”

She mimed cradling a baby, rocking it frantically with a manic grin.

IN WEEK TWELVE IT WAS just a neural tube, a backbone without a back; the next week the top of the tube fattened into a head, with dark spots on either side that would become eyes. I read these developments aloud to her each week from Grobaby.com.

“All clogged up? Those pesky pregnancy hormones are to blame. Time to fixate on fiber.” She was constipated, she admitted, starting this week. The website had an uncanny ability to predict what she was about to feel, as though her body was taking its cues from the weekly updates. With this in mind I often reiterated parts that seemed important. (“Paddle-like hands and feet emerge this week. Hands and feet: this week. They should be paddle-like.”) When I accidentally skipped a week the cells twiddled their thumbs, waiting for further instructions. She took the vitamins and ate my food but the idea of a prenatal checkup sickened her.

“I’ll go when it’s closer,” she said, hunched over her sleeping bag. I dropped it for the moment. Talking to her this way felt like a role — not unlike “Woman Asks for Directions.” “Woman Takes Care of Pregnant Girl.”

“I don’t want anyone from the medical establishment touching me,” she added a few hours later. “It has to be a home birth.”

“You still have to get checked, though. What if there’s a problem?” Somehow I knew just the right thing to say, as if I had watched Dana say it in a video.

“There won’t be a problem.”

“Hopefully you’re right. Because sometimes it just never comes together — you think there’s a baby in there but it’s just unconnected bits and when you push it all comes out like chicken rice soup.”

When Dr. Binwali showed us the fetus with the sonogram I was sure Clee would weep like every astronaut who has seen the earth from space, but she turned away from the screen.

“I don’t want to know the gender.”

“Oh, don’t worry, it’s too early to tell,” said the doctor. But her eyes held fast to the ceiling, avoiding the sight of her own splayed legs. She meant ever. She hoped to never see it.

“Grandma might be curious to see the last bit of the tail,” he said, tapping the screen.

Neither of us corrected him. We were rolling on rails now; the good people of the world glided around mothers and daughters, opening doors and carrying bags, and we let them.

HER SHAPE SHOULD HAVE LENT itself to a fertile appearance, but it was her biggish chin that I noticed now, and her burly way of moving. Together with the swollen stomach it created a peculiar picture, almost freakish. The more pregnant she became, the less like a woman she was. When we were out in public I tried to see if other people flinched or did a double take. But apparently I was the only one who could see this.

“ ‘Week seventeen,’ ” I read, “ ‘This week your baby develops body fat (join the club!) and his or her own unique set of fingerprints.’ ” It was hard to tell if she was listening. “So, make fat and fingerprints this week,” I summarized. She pulled a snail off the coffee table and handed it to me. I dropped it into the covered bucket by the front door; Rick was collecting them.

“ ‘Your baby weighs five point nine ounces and is about the size of an onion.’ ”

“Just say ‘the baby,’ not ‘your baby.’ ”

“The baby is the size of an onion. Do you want me to read ‘A Tip from Our Readers’?”

She shrugged.

“ ‘A Tip from Our Readers: No need to splurge on maternity wear, just borrow your husband’s button-down shirts!’ ”

She looked down at her stomach. It looked like a beer belly peeking out under her tank top.

“I have a shirt you could borrow.”

Clee followed me to my closet. The clothes were all clean but collectively they had an oily, intimate smell that I had never noticed before. She began sliding hangers around. Suddenly she pulled out a long green corduroy dress and held it up.

“It’s the lesbo dress,” she said.

The dress I’d worn on the date with Mark Kwon, Kate’s dad. She’d found it awfully quickly. It was long sleeved with tiny buttons running the whole length of it, from the edge of the calf-skimming skirt to the high collar. Thirty or forty buttons.

“It probably still fits you.”

“I don’t think so.” An older, blue-blooded woman with white hair and real pearl earrings could have been elegant in it. Anyone younger or poorer would look like a soldier from one of those countries where women hold automatic weapons. I pulled out my pin-striped men’s shirt. She took it into the bathroom with her but when she came out she was still wearing her tank top.

“It’s not my style,” she said, handing it back.

“Does it feel natural to you?” I asked. “To be pregnant?”

“It is natural,” she said. “It’s the medical establishment that makes it unnatural.”

Her friend Kelly had given birth at home in a bathtub. Same with her friend Desia. There was a whole group of girls in Ojai who had put their babies up for adoption through a Christian organization called Philomena Family Services. All of them home-birthed with midwives.

“But here, in LA, the hospitals are really good, so you don’t need to do that.”

“You don’t need to tell me what I don’t need to do,” she said, narrowing her eyes. For a split second I thought she was going to push me against a wall. But no, of course not. That was all over.

EVERYONE AT OPEN PALM KNEW and thought it was big of me to take her in like this.

“She was already in — I just didn’t kick her out.”

“But you know what I mean,” said Jim. “Risking your job.” My job was in no danger; Suzanne and Carl routinely sniffed out news of Clee from my coworkers. After each prenatal checkup I made sure to circulate the update. Everyone assumed I knew who the father was, but I didn’t. I didn’t know anything. It seemed impossible to broach the subject without also recalling our past, the scenarios, my betrayal. The unspoken agreement was we wouldn’t look back.

In the middle of the second trimester I saw Phillip. He was parking his Land Rover just as I was leaving the office. I ducked into a doorway and waited for twenty minutes while he sat in his car, talking on the phone. Probably to Kirsten. I didn’t want to think about it. Everything was in delicate balance and it needed to stay that way. When I finally walked to my car my legs were shaking and I was drenched in a foul sweat.

Each night I listened as she stumbled to the bathroom, bumping into the doorway and then hitting it again on the way back. It was torture.

Finally one night I yelled out from bed. “Careful!”

She stopped abruptly and through my half-open door I watched her stand in the moonlight and touch the swell of her stomach with a look of shock, as if the pregnancy had just come upon her right then.

“Was it Keith?” I called out.

She didn’t move. I couldn’t tell if she was awake or had fallen back asleep, still standing.

“Was it one of the men from the party? Did it happen at the party?”

“No,” she said huskily. “It happened at his place.”

He had a place called his place and it happened there and it was sex. This was both more and less than I wanted to know.

“It’s a nightmare,” she said, holding her stomach.

“Is it?” I was desperate to know more. She lurched back to bed. “Is it?” I cried again, but she was done, already half-asleep. It could only be a nightmare, someone growing inside you who you hoped never to see the face of.

IN THE MORNING I TRIED for a more hard-nosed approach.

“I think for safety’s sake I should know who the father is. What if something happens to you? I’m responsible.”

She looked surprised, almost slightly moved.

“I don’t want him to know about it. He’s not a good person,” she said quietly.

“Why would you do that with someone who’s not a good person?”

“I don’t know.”

“If it was nonconsensual then we should call the police.”

“It wasn’t nonconsensual. He’s just not the type of person I usually go for.”

How did they form the consensus? Did they vote? Did everyone in favor say aye. Aye, aye, aye. I went into the ironing room and returned with a pen, a piece of paper, and an envelope.

“I won’t open it, I promise.”

She went into the bathroom to write the name. When she came out she slid the envelope between two books in the bookshelf and then carefully placed the tab from a soda can in front of the books. As if it would be impossible to re-create the position of a soda can tab.

I ACTED QUICKLY, SETTING UP an emergency therapy appointment before Clee had a chance to think harder about trusting me. Once I was behind the pee screen I asked Ruth-Anne to look in my purse.

“There’s a sealed envelope and an open empty envelope,” I said. “Open the sealed one.”

“Rip it open?”

“Open it the way you would normally open an envelope.”

A clumsy ripping sound.

“Okay. It’s open.”

“Is there a name on a piece of paper?”

“Yes, do you want me to read it to you?”

“No, no. It’s a man’s name?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” I shut my eyes as if he was standing on the other side of the screen. “Write that name down.”

“On what?”

“On anything, on an appointment card.”

“Okay. I’m done.”

“Already?” It was a short name. It wasn’t an unusual, long, foreign name with many accents and umlauts that one would have to double-check. “Okay, now put the paper back in the unsealed envelope and seal it.”

There was a complicated rustling of papers and some banging.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing. I dropped them. I hit my head on the table picking them up.”

“Are you okay?”

“A little dizzy, actually.”

“Is the envelope sealed?”

“Yes, now it is.”

“Good, now put the envelope in my purse and put the card with the name somewhere safe that I can’t see.”

She laughed.

“What’s funny?”

“Nothing. I hid it in a really good place.”

“It’s done then? I’m gonna come out. Okay?”

“Yes.”

Ruth-Anne stood wide-eyed and smiling with her hands behind her back. The envelope was in many torn pieces strewn all over the rug. When you get something notarized, there is a dignified feeling about the proceedings, even if the notary is just a stationery store clerk. I had expected this to be more like that.

“What’s behind your back?”

She opened her empty hands in front of herself. Now she was rolling her eyeballs to the side of the room in a strange way.

“What are you doing? Why are you looking over there?”

Her eyes jumped back. She pressed her lips together, raised her eyebrows and shrugged.

“Is the card over there?”

She shrugged again.

“I don’t want to know where it is.” I sat down on the couch. “This is probably unethical.” I waited for her to draw me out. There were still ten minutes left in the session. Ruth-Anne sat down and rubbed her chin, holding her elbow and nodding significantly. She seemed to be acting out the role of a therapist in a mocking way, like a child pretending to be a therapist. “I don’t want to break my promise to Clee,” I continued, “but I also want the option of knowing. What if there’s a problem? What if we need his medical history? Do you think that’s wrong?”

Something slid down the wall. Ruth-Anne’s eyes grew wide but she made a great show of ignoring it.

“Was that the card?”

She nodded vigorously. She had hidden it behind one of her diplomas. It now lay on the floor. I averted my eyes.

“It doesn’t need to be hidden like an Easter egg. Just put it in your desk drawer.” She leapt to the card and rushed it not to her desk but out the door to the receptionist’s desk, slamming the drawer as if the card was a rascally character, prone to escape.

“Where were we?” she said, returning breathlessly and folding herself back into the therapist pose.

“I asked if you thought this was wrong.”

“And I’ve been telling you.” She was suddenly herself again, dignified and intelligent.

“What do you mean?”

“You wanted to play like a child, so we played.”

I slumped back into the couch and my eyes ached with dry tears. This is why she was so good, always finding a way to take it right to the edge.

“You can throw out the card,” I said, winded.

“I’ll keep it there as long as you want. Our lives are filled with childish pranks, Cheryl. Don’t run from your playing, just notice it: ‘Oh, I see that I want to play like a little girl. Why? Why do I want to be a little girl?’ ”

I hoped she wouldn’t make me answer this question.

“Have you ever considered being birthed for a second time?” she asked.

“Like born again?”

“Rebirthing. Dr. Broyard and I thought it might be a good idea.”

“Dr. Broyard? You talk to him about me?”

She nodded.

“What about patient confidentiality?”

“That doesn’t apply to other doctors. Would a pulmonologist withhold information from a neurologist?”

“Oh, right.” I hadn’t realized I was such a serious case.

“We’re certified”—she gestured to a certificate on her wall—“to work as a team.”

I squinted at the certificate. TRANSCENDENTAL REBIRTHING MASTERS CERTIFICATION II.

“Do you really think it’s necessary?”

“Necessary? No. All that’s necessary is that you eat enough to survive. Were you happy in the womb?”

“I don’t know.”

“After a session with us you will know. You’ll remember being a single cell and then a blastula, violently expanding and contracting.” She grimaced, contracting her upper body with a tortured shiver and then groaning with expansion. “All that upheaval is inside you. It’s a heavy load for a little girl.”

I pictured lying on the floor with Ruth-Anne’s groin against the top of my head. “Why does Dr. Broyard need to be there?”

“Good question. The baby may have consciousness even before fertilization, as two separate animals — the sperm and egg. So we like to begin there.”

“With fertilization?”

“It’s just a ritual symbolizing fertilization, of course. Dr. Broyard would play the role of the spermatozoa and I would play the ovum. The waiting room”—she pointed to the waiting room—“becomes the uterus and you come through that door to be born.”

I looked at the door.

“He’s here with his wife this weekend, a special trip. How’s Sunday at three?”

“Okay.”

She glanced at the clock; we were out of time.

“Should I—?” I pointed to the scraps of paper on the floor.

“Thank you.” She checked her phone messages while I knelt down and gathered the pieces of envelope. I carried them out with me, not wanting to clutter her wastepaper basket.

After slipping the envelope back between the books and repositioning the soda can tab, I clicked back through Grobaby.com. Nothing about the blastula expanding and contracting. I stared at a cartoon fetus, biting my fingernail. This website was not a how-to guide. If the thing in Clee was in any way relying on my narration, there would be major gaps in its development. I saw a lazy, text-messaging, gum-chewing embryo, halfheartedly forming vital organs.

Embryogenesis arrived the next day; I splurged on expedited shipping. Its nine hundred and twenty-eight pages weren’t neatly divided into weeks, so it seemed safest to start at the beginning. I waited until Clee was done eating her kale and tempeh. She settled on the couch and I cleared my throat.

“ ‘Millions of spermatozoa travel in a great stream upwards through the uterus and into the Fallopian tubes—’ ”

Clee held up her hand. “Whoa. I don’t know if I want to hear this.”

“It already happened, I’m just recapping.”

“Do I have to listen?” She picked up her phone and headphones.

“Music might be confusing — it has to hear my voice.”

“But my head is way up here.”

She scrolled through her phone, found something with a thumping beat, and nodded at me to go on.

“ ‘The successful sperm,’ ” I orated, leaning toward her round belly, “ ‘merges with the egg and its nucleus fuses with the egg’s nucleus to form a new nucleus. With the fusion of their membranes and nuclei the gametes become one cell, a zygote.’ ” I could see it so clearly, the zygote — shiny and bulbous, filled with the electric memory of being two but now damned with the eternal loneliness of being just one. The sorrow that never goes away. Clee’s eyes were shut and her brow was sweaty; it wasn’t so long ago that she was two animals, Carl’s sperm and the ovum of Suzanne. And now the same thing was happening inside her, a new sorrowful creature was putting itself together as best it could.

The next morning I greeted my bosses with empathy; you would think a thing made of you would at least remain on speaking terms. Suzanne and Carl hadn’t heard from Clee in months. They sat as far away from me as possible, hands folded on the tabletop, a demonstration of civility. Jim smiled encouragingly; it was my first meeting of the board. Sarah took notes in my old chair, off to the side. I was formally welcomed and Phillip’s resignation was acknowledged.

“He’s not in great health,” Jim explained. “I vote for sending him a basket of mixed cheeses.” More likely he was too ashamed to show his face — and he should have been. Sixteen! A sixteen-year-old lover! When Suzanne argued against retirement benefits for Kristof and the rest of the warehouse staff, I found myself rising from my seat and jabbing my fist in the air like a person who knew something about unions. Taking Phillip’s place was wonderfully emboldening. When the vote fell in my favor, Suzanne mouthed “Touché.” She was studying my hair and clothes, as if I was someone new. I called Sarah Miss Sarah — like a servant. Suzanne laughed at this and asked Miss Sarah to bring us more coffee.

“You can sit down, Sarah,” Jim said. “Those two are just playing around.” I felt drunk with camaraderie. All these years I’d been looking for a friend, but Suzanne didn’t need a friend. A rival, though — that got her attention. When the meeting adjourned we both went to the staff kitchen and made cups of tea in silence. I waited for her to begin the conversation. I sipped. She sipped. After a while I realized this was the conversation; we were having it. She was giving me her blessing to care for her young and I was accepting the duty with humility. When Nakako came in, Suzanne walked away. For honor’s sake we would keep our distance.

RUTH-ANNE HAD WARNED AGAINST parking in the garage; there was no attendant on the weekend. I parked on the street. An elderly woman was cleaning the elevator as I rode up. She quickly Windexed the door when it shut behind me and then began cleaning the buttons, illuminating each one as she polished it, but politely focusing on the numbers above my floor.

The door was locked; I was early. I turned off my phone so it wouldn’t ring during the rebirthing. I sat in the hall. They were almost fifteen minutes late. Apparently they weren’t as professional about their side work — it was a more casual affair. Well, wasn’t I the fool for being exactly on time. After a while I remembered that the appointment was for three o’clock, not two o’clock; I was forty minutes early. I wandered around. No one worked on the weekends; the building was silent. Ruth-Anne’s office was at the end of a long corridor connected to another long corridor by a long corridor. An H formation. That was useful to know — I had never been totally clear about the floor plan of the building. How else can I use this time constructively? I asked myself. What can I do that I need to do anyway? I jogged back to the door, turned, jogged down each of the corridors — it was a terrific workout and no small distance. Thirty or forty H-reps probably equaled a mile, two hundred calories. After seven Hs I was covered in sweat and breathing heavily. As I jogged past the elevator it dinged. I accelerated, rounding the corner just as the doors swished apart.

“But the parking attendant doesn’t work on the weekends,” Ruth-Anne was saying. “He never has.” I ran past the door of her office and turned the corner. I needed a moment to catch my breath and wipe off my face.

“Oh no,” she said.

“What?”

“The key’s on my other ring. I just got a new fob and…”

“Jesus, Ruth-Anne.”

“Should I go back and get it?” Her voice was strangely high, like a mouse on a horse.

“By the time you get back here the session will be over.”

“You could work with her alone until I get back.”

“In the hallway? Just call her and cancel.”

It took her a moment to find my number in her phone.

“Straight to voice mail. She’s probably parking. I’m sure she’ll be up in a minute or two.”

My panting was hard to control and my nose was whistling. I should have gone farther down the hall but it was too risky to move now.

Dr. Broyard sighed. “This never really works out,” he said. It sounded like he was unwrapping a candy. Now something was clacking around in his mouth. “For one reason or another.”

“Rebirthing?”

“Just — these things you cook up so you can see me when I’m with my family.”

Ruth-Anne was silent. No one said anything for a long time; he started biting the candy.

“Is she even coming, or was this your plan, that we would stand in the hallway together and — what? Fuck? Is that what you want? Or you just want to blow me? Hump my leg like a dog?”

A confusing high-pitched noise seemed to descend from the vents, then broke into a mass of wet, convulsive gasps. Ruth-Anne was crying. “She’s coming, I promise. It’s a real session. It really is.”

He crunched his candy angrily.

I tucked my hair behind my ears and smoothed my eyebrows — it would be embarrassing for everyone but at least he would know she wasn’t a liar. I took a deep breath and stepped boldly around the corner.

“Did you—” Her crying was so violent that she could barely talk. “Did you say that because you want me to”—the last part came out in a shrill chirp—“blow you?”

My backward steps were silent and swift. No one had seen me.

“No, Ruth-Anne. That’s not why I said that.” He sighed again, louder this time.

“Because,” she said, “I might be willing to do that.” I could hear her attempt at a coy smile through her stuffy nose and running mascara.

In the very beginning she didn’t even like him. She could see his arrogance and his tendency to ignore what was inconvenient to him. The doctor was surprised, taken aback, when she pointed out these flaws. It made him want to have intercourse with her, just to put her in her place. But he was married and it wasn’t worth it. She wasn’t his physical ideal — a little too old, a little manly around the shoulders, horsey in the jaw. She knew this; it was as clear as if he had said, “You’re a little too old, a little manly around the shoulders, horsey in the jaw.” The insult kept her interested, this and the fact that he was married. Nothing inspired her like the thought of wifely Mrs. Broyard, obsessed with making dinner and the consistency of her children’s stools. Finally she broke him down. One night after rebirthing class he wept into his wineglass and admitted that he and his wife were going through a rough patch. It was on this night that she suggested the arrangement; she described it as a form of therapy. He said he trusted her and for the first few months this trust was the basis of their dynamic. She was his new receptionist but it was as though he was working for her. She guided him into each thing he did to her. It was sweet, and he actually loved her a little bit. She felt satisfied and at peace. Gradually he gained confidence and the game heated up. It was aerobic and exhilarating for him; in their finest moments he admired her athletic build and the broadness of her shoulders. A smaller woman would have been more quickly exhausted, but she had a brute endurance.

But eventually she wanted it more than he did, and this made her lower than him. There was no way to knock down a woman who was already lying on the ground. Their intercourse continued for a while, ritualistically, then dwindled to a pat on the rump in passing. And then finally nothing, for years now.

“Where are you going?” she sniffed.

He was walking straight toward me. His arm extended around the corner as he used the wall to stretch out his shoulder, one hand resting just a few inches from my forehead. I stared it down and it withdrew. He groaned and walked back to Ruth-Anne.

“Let me pay you a normal rate. My secretary in Amsterdam makes three times what you do.”

“But she’s a real secretary.”

“You’re a real secretary.”

Like a person slapped, she said nothing.

“How are you different from a real secretary? Tell me. It’s been years, Ruth-Anne. Years.”

The contract, I thought. Refer to the terms of the contract.

She was silent.

“If you won’t take a normal salary, then I’ll hire a secretary who will.”

Ruth-Anne cleared her throat. “Okay. Hire another secretary.” Now she sounded like herself again, calm and astute.

“Yes, I will. Thank you. I think it’s best for both of us,” he said. “Shall we go?”

“You go. I’ll wait a bit longer.”

Dr. Broyard laughed tiredly. He still didn’t believe I was coming. “Are you sure?”

She wasn’t at all sure, this was plain as day. She was giving him one last chance to choose her, to stay, stay forever, to honor all her complications and live with her in a new world of love and sexuality.

“Yeah, I’m sure.” I could hear the smile she was using. Last chance, it said. Last chance forever.

“Well, I might not see you before Helge and I take off. Let’s have a phone call when I’m back in Amsterdam, okay?”

Maybe she nodded. He walked to the elevator. He pressed the button and we both listened, my therapist and I, and waited for this part to be over — the part where he had already left but was still with us. We listened to the elevator rush upward, the doors opening and shutting, and then a long descent, which got fainter and fainter but never seemed to end. She slid to the floor, sobbing. Something in the building shut off, the heating or cooling; it became even quieter. I tried not to listen to her choking, wet gasps. After a while she blew her nose, hard and loud, gathered her purse, and left.

It was a wonderful feeling to be back in my warm car, driving home to Clee. I turned on the phone; there was one new message.

“Hi, Cheryl, it’s Ruth-Anne, it’s three forty on Saturday afternoon. You missed your three o’clock rebirthing appointment. Because you didn’t cancel twenty-four hours in advance you will have to pay in full. Please make the check payable to me. See you at our regular time on Tuesday. Be well.”

There was no way around it. I called back and made an emergency appointment. I would have to tell her what I had done and admit that I was struggling with my conception of her. She seemed pathetic and desperate to me now. Obsessed.

“Good, good,” she would probably say. “Keep going.” It would turn out that this was the key, witnessing this exchange between the primordial mother and the primordial father.

“But I eavesdropped!” I would cry.

“It was essential that you perform the role of a spy, a naughty child,” she would say, excited because for the first time in her twenty-year practice a patient had shifted the field — this was a psychiatric term, shifting the field. It meant everything could be exposed for what it really was, every question answered, total clarity for both doctor and patient, leading to a true friendship inaugurated by the therapist reimbursing all her fees in one lump sum. Dr. Broyard would now come out wearing a mask that was a crude drawing of his own face and it would be revealed that the entire exchange in the hallway was a farce — it was the rebirthing.

“You witnessed the reverse conception and survived it. That’s very powerful.”

“But how did you know I would be early?” I would say, incredulous, almost dubious.

“Look at your watch,” Dr. Broyard would say. My watch was one hour behind. Dr. Broyard would take off his mask, revealing a very similar face, then Ruth-Anne would pretend her face was a mask and because her skin was a little on the loose side it would look for a moment as if she really might be able to peel it off. But she couldn’t, luckily. We would all laugh and then laugh about how good it felt to laugh. A massage for the lungs, one of us would say.

Now I almost felt like I didn’t need to go to the emergency appointment, but I went anyway. I was curious if I would really get all my money back in one lump sum; it seemed unlikely, but if I had really shifted the field then I guessed it was only fair. If shifting the field was a real thing, which, as I sat on the leather couch, I remembered it wasn’t. I explained about arriving early and hearing their entire exchange.

Ruth-Anne’s eyes widened. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know. But do you think maybe it was important that I perform the role of a naughty”—I could see already that she didn’t—“child? A spy?”

“I just don’t understand how you could do this.” She put her face in her hands. “It’s such a violation.”

Unless this was also part of the farce? I smiled a little, experimentally.

“For the record, I think you did the right thing,” I said. “By quitting.”

Ruth-Anne stood up, took a moment to put her long hair in a ponytail, and told me our work was done.

“We’ve gone as far as we can go together. You broke the patient confidentiality agreement.”

“Isn’t that to protect the patient?”

“It’s a two-way street, Cheryl.”

I waited to see what would happen next.

“So, goodbye. I’ll prorate today since it wasn’t a full session. Twenty dollars.”

It seemed like she meant that so I fished out my checkbook.

“You don’t have cash?”

“I don’t think so.” I looked in my wallet, all ones.

“How much do you have?”

“Six dollars?”

“That’s fine.”

I gave her the cash, including both halves of a dollar bill that I had been meaning to tape together for a few years.

“You can keep that one,” she said.

As I drove out of the parking garage I could feel her watching my car from her window on the twelfth floor. I marveled at the therapeutic process. This was bringing up a lot for me, being abandoned like this. Our most potent work to date.