Chapter 12
“It was before Brad learned that Wilhelm Reich was, well, how can I put it. He was a little crazy.” Brad’s younger brother, Rich, sat with his guitar on his knee, looking across at Anne. “Brad was very seriously studying psychoanalysis on the side. Did he tell you about Dr. Orenstein?”
Derrin had proved himself to be right when he told his father that Anne and Brad would like each other. Anne was very pretty and guileless, although not without experience with men. But she didn’t know anything about psychoanalysis. She said, “No. Never heard of the man.” Anne smiled her winsome, intelligent American smile. She said, “I’ve only had about, count ‘em, three conversations with Brad. I think Jo knows him better than I do.” Jo was her three year old daughter. Brad and Jo had gone to see the Beatles new movie, Yellow Submarine, and were due back in about an hour. Anne was Brad’s age, twenty five years old, and sang in a Country and Western band. They had sold enough records so that with her husband’s salary they hadn’t been poor until the divorce.
Rich said, “Brad likes you. I can tell.” He strummed on the guitar for a few moments and then said, “Well, Dr. Orenstein was our grandfather’s best friend. After Grandpop died, he kind of took us under his wing. He’s really a tremendous guy. Even though he’s old, he’s like one of the boys. You know what I mean?”
She said, “Sure. A stuffed shirt who doesn’t mind taking off his shirt now and then.”
Anne’s husband had every reason to be jealous of her. She was on the road a lot and had many opportunities to cheat on him. The court awarded her alimony but she was, in fact, responsible for the break up of their marriage and she knew it.
Rich laughed. “He’s better than that. Anyway, he wanted Brad to become a Jungian analyst but Brad never gave much credence to Jung’s theories. Brad was a Freudian from the beginning and I guess he still is, but he had a long love afair with the psychology of Wilhelm Reich. I don’t know why it took so long for him to discover that Reich’s theories were not really scientific. I guess the stuff he read on Reich down-played it.” Brad’s brother had asked Brad to arrange a meeting with Anne because he wanted to sing and play the guitar in her band. He loved Country and Western music.
“I confess, I’ve never heard of, who is it? Vilhelm ..” Anne shook her beautiful, light brown hair, causing it to dance around her shoulders. Rich was even better looking than his brother, she said to herself. She thought it was just more of her bad luck that he was married.
He said, “Well, basically, he was a psychoanalyst who believed that a very good sexual relationship between a man and woman was the most important thing for mental health.”
“That’s why Brad used to be such a womanizer.”
“I think that had a lot to do with it. At least that’s what he says.”
“Tell me about Brad. I’m curious.” Brad’s brother seemed innocent to her, at least compared with Brad. Rich was working towards a Ph.D. in engineering at UC Berkeley and hadn’t had much experience. In addition, he was only 22.
He said, “He’ll tell you all about himself, someday. I know him. He likes you.”
“Great. I love to be liked by men.” She was 25 but she felt very old next to Rich. “So you don’t want to tell me anything.” They were silent for awhile. She said, “He already told me about the women. Some of them, I guess. The pregnant woman and the fifty three year old with the son.” She pronounced the last sentence more as a question than a statement. She stared at him quizzically until they both laughed. She asked, “How old are you Rich?”
“I’m 22. I thought I told you.”
“I was just making sure you’re over age.”
He looked at her well-shaped body with quick appreciation and she caught his look and returned it with a bold look of her own. He said, “Brad started sex very early.”
“He told me about, Jeanette? Was that her name?”
“Yes.”
Anne said, in the form of a rhetorical question, “How old were they, ten and nine?” There was an amused smile on her face.
“Brad had a lot of bad luck. I mean, as a boy, he had the most remarkable and yet unremarkable love life imaginable. He thinks that, as he puts it, after this era closes, there will not even be the possibility that anyone could HAVE such a love life. But, of course you’ll have to ask him to clarify that.” He added, truthfully but with an ironic tone of voice, “I wouldn’t know what he means.”
“He has a way of putting things doesn’t he!” She arched one of her nicely formed black eyebrows in disbelief. Her smooth forehead wrinkled slightly.
Rich said, “I suppose so.” He added, “I suppose I’m worried about him living in a commune. I’m afraid he’s going to fall into his old ways.”
Anne said, “We talked for a couple of hours the other night. He wasn’t too happy with his mother.”
“Well, she’s a fundamentalist and Brad’s an atheist. And he told you about Jane, his Jewish fiancee.”
“It was very heavy. I don’t see how Rhonda …, his mother, could break up their engagement. He’s a pretty strong willed guy. ”
“True. Jane had something to do with their breakup too.” He paused. “Her parents died in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. After graduation, Jane found a nice Jewish boy. Brad slipped into a promiscuous life which he tried valiantly to end but without great success until he found a couple of very good women, almost by accident.”
“A couple of very good women?”
Rich colored again. “He didn’t tell you about them?”
“No.”
Rich did not want to tell her about anything Brad had not already talked about.
She said, “He told me about a lot of stuff. One night stands. Six week adventures.”
Rich pulled one corner of his mouth up, making a wistful smile and took a long drink from his third bottle of beer. “Like I said, because of Reich, he actually thought that good mental health was dependent on a perfect orgasm.”
“Sounds like some of the guys I’ve met.”
“It’s hard to believe, but Brad was never a sexual adventurer.”
She smirked, “Far from it. He sounds like your average, clean-cut, next door neighbor type of guy.” She took a long swig from her bottle of beer.
He laughed. “For awhile, he described himself as a connoisseur of the female orgasm.”
She smiled. “I suppose you’re trying to protect me now by telling me about this.”
“Maybe. I thought you said, he told you about all this stuff.” He looked into her eyes for direction.
She nodded. “He did. I’m just trying to get your perspective.”
“Brad said if he couldn’t make a woman have an orgasm that lasted more than a minute he felt challenged.”
“He didn’t tell me that.” She gave a little laugh and her mouth remained slightly open, in astonishment.
Rich said, “He was reading Wilhelm Reich.”
“Vill helm Rike. Never heard of him.” She shook her long blond hair.
“It was a phase. It didn’t last very long.”
Anne said, “He told me about the mayor.”
“You mean about the mayor’s wife?”
“With that canopy bed that was in the middle of the living room, raised up about ten feet on a platform that she had to climb up on.”
“That’s the one.”
She smiled. “Your brother’s a rascal.”
He added, “He’s still confused. I think if he could drop his obsession with the perfect woman and fall in love a woman like you ….”
“Brad and I aren’t right for each other. Anyway, I’ve always hated football.”
They laughed. He said, “I’m afraid he’s still looking for something that exists only in his mind, or else a woman who is odd or challenging in some way. He was fascinated with the different races awhile ago: Chinese, Negro … He even had an American Indian girlfriend. Right now, he thinks he’s in love with a Jewish woman again who has already forgotten him after only three weeks. It’s ridiculous. And I met her. She’s not half as pretty as he thinks she is. Not half as pretty as you are.”
She finished her third bottle of beer and closed her eyes for a moment. She said, “Brad told me that he allowed the mayor’s wife to think she had seduced him and then, behind her back, after he seduced her, he seduced her daughter too. He seemed to be proud of it, even though he said he felt stupid afterwards. ”
“I’ll bet he didn’t tell you how it ended. It wasn’t pretty.” He laughed suddenly, with a hard, bitter sound and she observed that his dark hair fell into his face the same way Brad’s did when he laughed. “Brad thought it was very funny because he was receiving a good hourly sum for supposedly tutoring the mayor’s son in mathematics. At least he thought it was funny when ….” He stopped himself. It was obvious Anne hadn’t heard the part about the mother discovering Brad and her daughter in her canopied bed in the living room one morning or about Brad pulling his .25 caliber Browning pistol out of his pocket. He got up and got two more beers from the refrigerator.
She said, “And there was a pregnant woman.”
“He told you about her too?”
“Yes.”
He smiled and motioned with his hand, outlining a big stomach., “He thinks the pregnant woman was a really was a big thing in his life.” She laughed. Rich said, “Sorry about the very corny pun. He’d like it though. He’s big on puns.”
She said, “He also told me about a girlfriend he had as a child. The one before, what was her name? Jane?”
“Jeanette. He met her when he was ten and she was nine.” He opened both bottles of beer and handed one to her. I hope you aren’t outraged by all this. I mean…”
She answered, “Well, true confession isn’t my bag but I’m curious about Jeanette I guess. He said he met her when she was 9 and he was 10. He told me they had a sexual relationship from the beginning.”
“Her
mother was a vegetarian and a nudist and divorced. She had two sisters who
were a couple of years younger than her. I
remember them well. They lived a few
blocks from us, in
“Yeah. It was pretty amazing. I almost wish he hadn’t told me. I felt sorry for him.”
“She
was a senior in high school and he was going to
She said, “A plainclothes cop picked them up and arrested Brad for child molesting.”
“Legally, she was under age. She was seventeen and looked about eleven. It was so odd because Brad felt a great loyalty to her and I think he really loved her. He was deeply troubled by her physical immaturity. To have that happen was the height of irony. Jeanette was humiliated. Naturally she refused to prosecute him but it was out of her hands. In fact …” He paused.
Anne looked into his eyes with sympathy. “It sounds horrible.”
“It was. She threatened to commit suicide. I was with her almost constantly during that time. It was awful. Mother was scared to death that there would be a scandal and so she hired a very expensive lawyer to take care of it. Jeanette’s father got involved. The judge was willing to go as far as he could but he said he had no choice but to put Brad on probation. They finally managed to convince him not to but it was a mess.”
“Weird. Far out. Where was the Jewish girl in all this?”
Rich asked, “What do you mean?”
“Jane.”
“She had already met her future husband. Brad calls him ‘the nice Jewish boy.’ ”
“Very heavy. I feel sorry for Brad.”
Rich said, “You know about the Fields medal too, right?”
“He told me. But I don’t really have any idea of what it is. He wasn’t too clear about it”
“Well, let’s just say it’s a mathematical prize and it opened a lot of doors for him. Especially bedroom doors. He made a hobby of collecting college professor’s wives for awhile but I’m not sure if they were collecting him or he was collecting them.”
“So when did he have time for mathematics?”
“In a way, he didn’t. But that’s another story. A long one.”
“You said he isn’t chasing women anymore.”
“Yeah. So he says. He said he was cured by the 53 year old woman.”
Anne told a white lie, “He told me about her but not the details.”
Rich said, “The details are the funny part.” He laughed.
She was silent.
He said, “Well, the only way she could do it was if she had incestuous fantasies about her son, who was about Brad’s age and every time they made it she went down on her knees afterwards and asked forgiveness from the Lord. The son got involved in the end, and he had a gun and, as I’m sure you know, Brad is an expert with weapons.”
Anne couldn’t hide her surprise and shock that Brad was an expert with weapons. Rich said, “I’m sorry. I thought he told you.”
“Whew!” She looked into the almost empty bottle. “He didn’t tell me about all that stuff.” She looked into his eyes. “I suppose he told you about me.”
“A little.”
“About my brother and me?”
“Yeah.”
She said, “You and Brad don’t keep many secrets from each other, I suppose.”
“Not too many.”
She said, “I thought if I moved into the commune I could keep my brother away from me but he’s been hanging around.”
“That’s what Brad said. You know that Brad doesn’t have the normal amount of fear and prudence about things like that. Like I said, he keeps that loaded .25 caliber Browning semi-automatic pistol pretty close by.”
They were silent for a moment. She said, “There was a long time, while I was married, that my brother stayed away. But after the divorce, well …”
“Brad told me about it.”
“It isn’t totally his fault.” She looked to the side into a very private place. “But I don’t want it anymore.”
“Life is complicated.”
“Yes.”
She asked, “What does Brad want?”
He laughed. “I wish I knew. Or, more to the point, I wish he knew.”
“What’s the Fields medal?”
“It’s a very big mathematics medal that has been called the equivalent of the Nobel prize in mathematics.”
“The Nobel Prize in mathematics?”
“That’s right. It’s awarded every four years. He was the youngest recipient in the history of the prize.”
“I suppose he doesn’t want anyone in the commune to know about that either.”
“He’s definitely traveling incognito. But they found out about Rhonda Bradford. Derrin found out. Brad isn’t sure how.”
“He looks a little like her.”
“True.”
She “I don’t know any of them very well. They all seem like a bunch of weirdoes to me anyway.”
“There’s a big controversy now in the mathematics world about Brad. A lot of people say it was his grandfather who really proved the big theorem. I think, basically, it is just a challenge the professors have thrown out to Brad to reenter their world and show his genius again which he hasn’t done in over five years. It’s getting late in the game. I think he can still do it, but he’s got to do it pretty soon. Brad thinks he needs to find the perfect woman first. Dr. Orenstein thinks he should marry his niece, Joyce. She is beautiful and ...”
“Why doesn’t he?”
“It’s complicated.”
Anne looked at her watch. “I thought Brad was supposed to be here about an hour ago. I’m getting drunk.” He was bringing her daughter, Jo back to Rich’s apartment after the movie.
Rich said, “He’s supposed to bring a pizza for dinner. There was probably a big wait. Maybe they got caught in traffic. Hey, I thought we were going to sing together. This is my big chance to be in a Country and Western band.” Rich picked up his guitar and began strumming an Everly Brothers tune, All I have to do is Dream.”
“Brad says you can sing any range. From bass, like the Big Bopper to falsetto, like Roy Orbison.”
“Hey. He’s my brother. He thinks I can walk on water.”
He began playing and singing Pretty Woman.
“You sound more like Wayne Newton than Roy Orbison.”
He sang a Big Bopper song to demonstrate his bass voice..
“That’s what he said. You’ve got the range. Very impressive. Do you write songs?”
“I haven’t done much, no.”
She asked, “Much?”
“Well, here and there but I threw most of them away.”
“That’s not good!”
“How about you?”
“Hundreds. Mostly about my fucked up life. I’ve written my life story in songs. Well, most of it anyway.”
“Beautiful. You’re beautiful. I’d love to hear you sing some of them.”
“Stop flattering me. I’m getting horny.”
“Hey, I’m married, I can say anything I want.”
“You’re a sadist. Brad never mentioned that.”
They heard the noise of a car door slamming and a small child’s voice.
“That’s them,” she said. “It’s about tiime.” It was getting dark. They came into the room holding hands. Brad said, “I’ve finally found a woman I can spend the rest of my life with. The only problem is, she’s too short.” He was carrying a pizza in his free hand. “She said she likes pizza. We thought we ought to share it with you.”
Jo said, “You can have some, but not too much.”
“Listen to her,” Anne said.
“She’s been drinking beer again,” Jo said tartly.
Donna’s mouth dropped open and she stabbed Jo with an angry look.
Brad said, “Hey beautiful, that’s no way to talk to your mother. I love to drink beer too. Nothing better.”
She dropped his hand and ran to the refrigerator. She opened the door and peered in. She said, “Shit. There’s nothing in here but beer. I hate beer.”
“Watch your mouth.” Anne said, sharply.
“I want a coke.”
Brad said, “Why didn’t you say so in the first place. I’ll go back and get a six pack.”
Jo said, “I’m going too.”
Anne said, “She doesn’t have to have a coke.”
“I want a coke!!!”
Brad said, “No problem. It’ll take about five minutes.”
They disappeared as quickly as they had appeared.
Anne said, “She’s got him wrapped around her little finger already.”
“I told you he’s a sucker for intelligent women. I heard she’s a child prodigy.”
“So they tell me. I don’t know about that, but I can tell you she’s three going on thirty.