Chapter 20
He was fifty-one and she was twenty two. He was bald, fifty pounds overweight and the thick hair at his temples was streaked with gray. His body was hairy but he wasn’t unpleasant to look at. He had never gone through a middle-age crisis because his life had been an Epicurean search for a life of ease and pleasure and, in that sense, he had been middle-age all his life. By profession, he was a Gestalt therapist and he had written a best seller. He was well respected in his profession. He wasn’t selfish in a superficial way and he knew how to cultivate people and how to make them like him. He had left a wife and two children in a house in the suburbs and he rarely saw them. He gave them the house and car without a thought and paid alimony regularly. He was quite clever and made more than enough money to support his family and himself, comfortably.
Cheryl was not, of course, in love with him. He functioned as a mentor for her. He also reminded her a little of the director of the orphanage: he gave her money without asking questions and she was never made to feel awkward or guilty taking it. And he was an accomplished lover.
For Bill, Gestalt therapy was just another facet of his Epicurean life-style. It was a method of shaking off the Puritanical shroud that weighed down most Americans and replacing it with the Roman toga of easy pleasures and simple happiness.
Cheryl had a fear that she would become a prostitute. Her aunt had confided to her, on one of her rare visits to the orphanage, that her mother was a part-time prostitute and that Cheryl was the daughter of a client, almost certainly a prominent lawyer in San Francisco. She said that Cheryl bore a strong resemblance to the lawyer. She refused to tell Cheryl who he was, however, and as her aunt had not visited Cheryl very often, Cheryl had little opportunity to try to convince her to change her mind. There was a period of three years without a visit and then another period of two years which caused Cheryl to become bitter and hardened against her. During that period in the orphanage she feared that she would commit suicide.
She didn’t often speak of these things, but they were always in the back of her mind. She felt very close to her mother even though she had died when Cheryl was twelve. For example, her mother had been an excellent cello player and Cheryl felt as if she should play a musical instrument. She had demonstrated a talent for the guitar but she never disciplined herself enough to become an accomplished player. Her mother too had been an orphan but Cheryl’s mother had never known her own mother.
It seemed natural to Cheryl to be alone and she often preferred to be alone. There was something cloying about Warren. He seemed incapable of giving her enough space. She thought of Brad as a magnificent isolate like herself but also as a man who longed for something that was right in front of his face. She guessed that it was because his mother had been unable to give him love. She was not prepared to face Brad’s rejection of her love and she transformed hurt feelings into hostility. She was, after all, not a good lover either.
It was certainly not a question of lack of beauty. She had modeled for a dress designer in San Francisco. She had found little trouble making money selling her body but she had promised herself that she would not be a prostitute. Bill did not seem like a customer and in fact, she went to him as a therapist and counselor and didn’t think of him as a customer even though she accepted money. She didn’t ask him for as much money as he was willing to give her and, in fact, she had learned to live on a small amount of money since she had been with Warren. For example, she had only agreed to move into the commune on condition that she didn’t have to pay rent.
Bill was fascinated with the mixture of “wise old woman and ingenue,” as he put it. Whenever Cheryl came to him, he created a place for her by chasing out whomever he was currently seeing. The women in his life were usually resigned to his ways and accepted that he would never make a long term commitment.
Bill had never met Brad, but he detested him nonetheless. He itched to get his mental hands around Brad’s throat but he suppressed the urge: he didn’t tell Cheryl what he really thought of Brad. He had learned many years ago to avoid people like Brad and to concern himself only with people who could give him pleasure or advance him in the world in some way. He knew that Cheryl was in love with Brad even though she never mentioned the word and was always critical of him.
She didn’t want Bill to know the extent of her disappointment in and despair over almost everything in her life. She tried to hide it from him and he pretended not to know it.
She said, “I can’t believe that Brad is so immature.”
“I can.”
“He’s pissed because Jas made it with Rod Green last night.”
“It’s a normal male response. Didn’t you tell me that they made it across the hall from his room? With the door open.”
She said, “Rod never closes his door.” She paused for a moment. “If I didn’t know Brad’s story I would think he was a geek, a recluse. He stays in his room with his cat reading on Saturday nights.”
“Reading can be a great pleasure.”
“He reads Kierkegaard and Dostoievsky.”
“I’ve told you what I think of Brad. He takes life too seriously. He’s looking for answers but he doesn’t realize that his life is the answer. He is still accumulating and learning because he thinks he will find the answer in one of his books.”
“It seems like such a waste.”
“Sure. Brad’s a hunk. But you don’t need a hunk.”
“I could care less.” She arched her eyebrows. “I’m just saying, it’s painful to watch a young, intelligent man like that waste himself.”
He smiled his indulgent smile. He was wearing his luxuriant, purple robe with the ermine cuffs. “I’ve found that it’s next to impossible to dislodge people from their life trajectories. Character is destiny as Freud said. Brad is agonized. He is like the Greek athletes of old. He is in search of victory. Spiritual victory. He wants something that he already has but doesn’t know that he already has it.”
Cheryl wasn’t listening. She was remembering Brad punching Warren’s kick bag, the one that hung under the large Magnolia tree in front of the commune. She often watched him from the window. He wore small, leather gloves and was usually stripped to the waist. She was mesmerized by the rippling muscles just under the skin around his stomach and waist. By contrast, Warren was flabby.
Bill said, “Brad has the misfortune to have Orenstein for a therapist. Carl Jung was an idiot. I told you that I got my doctorate with Fritz Perls. He was still influenced by Jung in those days and I spent a year in Zurich studying with Jung and his group. Before the war. It was the biggest waste of time of my life. They were all obsessed with spiritualism and astrology. And they had their hands up the skirts of every female within ten miles. Jung was the worst. Orenstein is a reasonable man but he is still tainted with that stuff. They think there is something to religion that shouldn’t be lost, a kind of perennial mystical philosophy. Alan Watts and Aldous Huxley are peddling that nonsense today. I’m afraid Brad doesn’t know it but he’s being had by these people. He’ll wake up in twenty years.”
Cheryl was always amused when he talked like that. She never listened to him and in fact didn’t really understand what he was talking about. For some reason, it usually made her hungry. She knew that if she could get him to smoke a joint, he would fix a magnificent dinner. She got up and went to the cigar box where he stored his drugs.
She said, “You might not know it, but Brad has had a very active sex life.”
“I think you told me about that. So did Saint Augustine have a very active sex life..…before he became a saint.”
She lifted the lid. There was a little mound of already rolled joints. “Who is Saint who?”
“Augustine. Another Brad who lived in the third century.”
“Where are the matches?”
“In the drawer.”
She knelt on the Persian rug and stretched, like a cat, arching her back. She lit the joint and took a puff. She blew the smoke over his shoulder. She didn’t want to get high herself. Just a little. She passed the joint to him. He took a long hit and held the smoke in his lungs.
She asked, “What’s for dinner?”
“What do you want?”
She answered, coyly, “I don’t care.”
“How about salmon.”
“Do you have any of that lobster left?”
“Sure. It’s frozen though.” He had a freezer stocked with the best cuts of meat and all kinds of fowl and fish.
She said, “Beggars can’t be choosers.” She knew that he liked to make love after dinner. She remembered the last time they had lobster together. Francine had arrived unexpected, after dinner. She was a woman of about forty five, with dark hair and devouring, wet eyes who had looked at Cheryl all evening as if she were a morsel of chocolate cake. She was garrulous and insipid and even though Cheryl didn’t like her, she allowed herself to be sucked into a threesome. Afterwards, she had felt used.
“Whatever happened to Francine?” she asked.
He was pouring hot water into a large pan for the lobster tails and didn’t hear her.
He
said, from the kitchen, “What did you
say?”
“Francine. Are you still seeing her?”
“Francine. She’s too complicated for me. Too much trouble. Besides, I believe she has a full-time girlfriend again.”
Cheryl was glad she wouldn’t have to worry about her. She didn’t want to spend the night with anyone else. She had told Bill, after Francine had left, that she didn’t like her. She didn’t think of herself as a Lesbian, although she admitted to herself that she still occasionally needed a woman. She often saw desire in women’s eyes and there had been several recent occasions when she had succumbed. She was honest enough to admit that she was not simply a passive recipient. But she felt that, at bottom, she only wanted the love of a mother and that if sex was involved that kind of love was really impossible. It was the same with men but she had never known a father and didn’t seem to need one. She liked older men simply for their maturity and self-confidence. Bill never argued with her and never questioned anything she did.
She wanted to escape into herself while he made dinner so she put a Leonard Cohen record on his Gerard turntable, lay back on the white couch and closed her eyes.
After dinner, she wanted to talk to him about Derrin and Warren. He had a very good reputation as a therapist and she hoped he could shed some light on her problems. She did the dishes and put away the left over food while he sat at the table and they talked.
He said, “Derrin lives by ideas and not feelings. That’s why his girlfriend left him. What would you do if your boyfriend asked you to move into a commune and presumably share you with five or six strangers?”
“I would be more flexible. Couldn’t she control herself?”
“The Catholic Church says, wisely, ‘avoid the occasions of sin.’ She was testing him too. She was probably asking him to marry her and he was saying no.”
“It’s 1968. There is a revolution happening.”
“How old is she? 27? And she has been a school teacher for three years. She’s not going to become a hippie.”
“He’s still completely impotent. We’ve tried several times since I last talked to you. He just can’t get it up.”
“It’s because you’re only an idea for him. A fantasy that he is trying to make real. You don’t correspond to anything real in his life. He needs to find what it is that attracts him on a feeling level and allow himself to move toward it. But he refuses to do that, on principle.”
“Why does Warren love me so much when I don’t love him?”
“That’s easy. It happens all the time. People want love from people who don’t love them. Shakespeare’s plays are full of it. His plays usually end happily but life isn’t like that. People make compromises in real life because it isn’t often that two people love each other equally in real life.”
“I don’t think I ever really loved Warren. He has always seemed like a child to me.”
“Well, people don’t usually marry for love. Some people fool themselves into thinking they do. The man wants a pretty woman and the woman wants a successful man. That isn’t love. When they get a little bit older, they sometimes see it. One of the most common things I see in my practice is a man who has lost his job and his wife at the same time or a woman who has been left by a man for a younger woman, usually after he has received a promotion.”
“Sometimes you seem so cynical.”
“No. I’m not cynical. I’m an old idealist. But I’m also a realist. I started out like Derrin myself but I quickly came to my senses. Gestalt therapy teaches you to watch yourself very closely to see what you really want. To be wary of grand ideas with capital letters, like ‘Starting a Commune.’ ”
She said, “I find Brad attractive but I could never love him. He is stuck inside his head too. He seems worse than Derrin that way.”
“I don’t think so. He’s more complicated. Didn’t you tell me that he’s had a lot of experience with women. That he had a sexual relationship even when he was in elementary school?”
“Yes. That’s what he said. He didn’t go into details. I was surprised when we made love. He wasn’t awkward or anything but he was like John Wayne. I told Warren and Warren told Brad.” She looked to one side, as if she was still angry with Warren.
He said, “Warren is jealous of Brad. They are opposites. Warren remained childish because he matured so late, physically. He was small in junior high school and Brad was big. That’s why he learned karate. It’s a compensation.”
“Warren said that Brad told him he had masturbated about two hours before we made love that morning, and that’s why it was such an effort.”
“It sounds like you’re impressed now!”
She colored slightly and grinned. “I guess it explains why he was so intense.”
He said, “Why is it that you like Brad so much?”
She was silent for a moment. “I don’t.”
“You’re ambivalent.” Bill knew that she didn’t want to admit that she felt rejected by Brad and he didn’t want to press her. He said, playfully, “But it’s obvious that you are fascinated with him.”
“He’s the only man I’ve ever known who is both strong and sensitive at the same time. When we first got to know each other, he told me a lot about himself. More than Derrin has told me in a month. Even though we’re sharing the same bed.”
Bill knew that she did not want to hear the truth. He had never met Brad but she had talked about him so much that he felt as if he had. It was clear to him that Brad wanted an intellectual woman and a monogamous relationship and he knew that Cheryl was incapable of monogamy and would never be an intellectual. But when he had tried to point it out before, gently, she had rebuffed him and gotten angry. He waited for her to continue.
She said, “Derrin talked about his father.”
“The mechanic?”
“He said his father owned a Rolls Royce dealership in Los Angeles.”
“Aha.” Bill was silent for a moment. He said, “So there must be money in his family.”
“I don’t think he wanted to tell me. It slipped out. He told me that he had been a Rolls Royce mechanic because I told him that Robert’s brother’s rented Rolls Royce had died on the freeway.”
He looked puzzled.
“You know. The drug dealer that I went out with. The guy that yelled at Brad.”
“That’s right. Now I remember.”
“Anyway, he started talking about a Rolls Royce dealership in Los Angeles. I asked him how he knew so much and he told me about his father. But it seemed like he wished he hadn’t said anything.”
“It fits. The sons of the rich are often the most rebellious. They know they’ve got something to return to. They’re just sowing their wild oats before they settle down.”
She thought of Raney’s boyfriend, Philip Levy, and his enormous allowance of $5,000 a month.. “How do you know he’s rich?”
“Well, I suppose I’m exaggerating. But if he was a Rolls Royce dealer, he would be a millionaire. Didn’t you say he was retired and he played golf all the time?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it fits. But you never know. He also has a young girl friend and two wives too, as I recall.”
“You have such a good memory.”
Bill had learned to take notes on all his patients and it was a habit that had paid many dividends. He did the same with his friends. He said, “Maybe you should do a little detective work, a little prying. Didn’t he say he wanted you to meet his father?”
She said, “We were on our way to Santa Cruz but something came up. I forget. I think he got cold feet or something. But Derrin is aloof. I don’t think he wants anyone to get close to him.”
“Are you feeling any better about Warren?”
“What do you mean?”
“You were starting to feel very hostile.”
“I feel cruel. He is like a little boy who needs his mother and I’m turning my back on him. He thinks if he gives me space I will return to him. I guess I think of him as pathetic. Sometimes I want to lash out at him for his stupidity, for his dogged persistence.”
That night, after they had made love, while she lay in bed unable to sleep, she was overwhelmed with a lonely sadness. She recalled the afternoon when she discovered her mother lying motionless in her bed, dead from an overdose of sleeping pills. She had just come home from school and she was twelve years old. She had never completely forgotten that day but sometimes she managed to push the pictures way back in her mind so that they were a small speck surrounded with white light. Lying next to Bill, in the dark of night, the pictures were there again in all of their agonizing intensity. Her mind was filled with the limp, beautiful body of her dead mother, eyes open, lying face up and staring at the ceiling, like a fallen angel.