Oliver's Story

What the hell is wrong with me?

I've just been readmitted to the human race. The petals of my soul are opening. I should be overjoyed. And yet for some strange reason, I feel only mezzo-mezzo. Maybe it's just leaves-are-falling blues.

Not that I'm depressed.

How could I be? I'm cooking on all burners. Working well. So much so I can now devote more hours to the Raiders up in Harlem and to civil liberties.

As for Marcie, in the words of Stephen Simpson, it is goddamn perfect. Our interests coincide in almost everything.

And we are literally a team. Mixed doubles, to be quite specific. Competing in a tourney for the tristate area. We conquered Gotham Club with ease and have been facing combos from the provinces. With moderate success (which is to say we're undefeated).

She deserves the credit. I'm outclassed by more than half the guys, but Marcie simply runs the legs off all her female competition. I never thought I'd see myself admit athletic mediocrity. But I just hang in there, and thanks to Marcie, we've won ribbons and certificates, and are en route to our first gold-leaf trophy.

And she's been really Marcie-like as we advance in competition. Being victims of the schedule, we have to play on certain nights — or forfeit. Once the Gotham quarter final was a Wednesday 9 p.m. She'd spent the day in Cleveland, took a dinner flight, put on her tennis clothes before they landed, and while I was bullshitting the referee, appeared by nine-fifteen. We edged a victory, went home and crashed. Next morning she was off again at seven to Chicago. Happily, there was no game the week she spent out on the Coast.

To sum it up: a man and woman synchronized in mood and pace of life. It works.

Then why the hell am I not quite as happy as the score-board says I should be?

Clearly this was topic number one with Dr London.

'It's not depression, Doctor. I feel great. I'm full of optimism. Marce and I … the two of us … '

I paused. I had intended to say, 'We communicate incessantly.' But it is difficult to pull a fast one on yourself.

' … we don't talk to one another.'

Yes, I said it. And I meant it, though it: sounded paradoxical. For did we not — as well our bills attested — gab for hours nightly on the phone?

Yes. But we don't really say that much.

'I'm happy, Oliver' is not communication. It is just a testimonial.

I could be wrong, of course.

What the hell do I know of relationships? All I've ever been is married. And it doesn't seem appropriate to make comparisons with Jenny. I mean, I only know the two of us were very much in love. At the time, of course, I wasn't analytical. I didn't scrutinize my feelings through a psychiatric microscope. And I can't articulate precisely why with Jenny I was so supremely happy.

Yet the funny thing is Jen and I had so much less in common. She was passionately unimpressed by sports. When I watched football she would read a book across the room.

I taught her how to swim.

I never did succeed in teaching her to drive.

But what the hell — is being man and wife some kind of educational experience?

You bet your ass it is.

But not in swimming, driving or in reading maps. Or even — as I recently had tried to recreate the situation — in teaching someone how to light a stove.

It means you learn about yourself from constant dialogue with one another. Establishing new circuits in the satellite transmitting your emotions.

Jenny would have nightmares and would wake me up. In those days, before we knew how sick she was, she'd ask me, genuinely scared, 'If I can't have a baby, Oliver — would you still feel the same?'

Which didn't prompt a knee-jerk reassurance on my part. Instead, it opened up a whole new complex of emotions that I hadn't known were there. Yes, Jen, it would upset my ego not to have a baby born of you, the person that I love.

This didn't alter our relationship. Instead, her honest qualm provoking such an honest question made me realize that I wasn't such a hero. That I wasn't really ready to face childlessness with great maturity and big bravado. I told her I would need some help from her. And then we knew ourselves a whole lot better, thanks to our admissions of self-doubt.

And we were closer.

'Jesus, Oliver, you didn't bullshit.'

'Did the unheroic truth upset you, Jenny?'

'No, I'm glad.'

'How come?'

'Because I know you never bullshit, Oliver.'

Marce and I don't have that kind of conversation yet. I mean, she tells me when she's down and when she's nervous. And that she worries sometimes when she's on the road that I might find a new 'diversion'. Actually, that feeling's mutual. Yet strangely, when we talk we say the proper words, but they trip out too easily upon the tongue.

Maybe that's because I have exaggerated expectations. I'm impatient. People who have had a happy marriage know exactly what they need. And lack. But it's unfair to make precipitous demands of someone who has never had a … friend … that she could trust.

Still, I'm hoping someday she will need me more. That she will maybe even wake me up and ask me something like:

'If I can't have a baby, would you feel the same?'