Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

"So we're married but we're not."

"Well, if we're faithful to each other, we're a lot more married than somebody who had a huge church wedding, and then goes sneaking around later and getting some sex on the side."

"Yeah, I see that. It's just that the word sort of hit me between the eyes."

"Don't think any more about it. A word is only a word. I don't think either one of us is ready to get married in the usual sense, with a license from the state and a church and bridesmaids and a minister and all that. So just relax. If we keep on being with each other, and we can see that with the passage of time we're getting closer in every way, I'll get you a ring some day and get down on one knee and all that. But that's at some indeterminate time in the future, and it's only if things keep going well between us."

"So what does it mean that we are now?"

"Anything you want us to be."

"Are you mine and am I yours?"

"Oh, damn. I was hoping you wouldn't bring that up. This is where we get involved in words again, and this one is a pet peeve of mine. The thirteenth amendment to the constitution ended slavery. It abolishes slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime that you have been duly convicted of. That means that I cannot own you, and you cannot own me. If you don't own me, then I'm not yours, as we would generally use the word. So with due respect for a million love songs, we need to find different words to use instead of yours and mine. Marriages break up every day because people rebel against that feeling of being owned.

"In marrying, I would grant you exclusive use of my body, but not ownership of me, and you would not have the right to sell me or rent me out. You would have the use of me for breeding and various other specific uses, but I would remain a free man and simply the grantor of this contract. And you would grant the same to me, while remaining a free woman. What this means is that our marriage would last as long as we treat each other with respect, and since the marriage contract should arise out of love, we have to treat each other with loving respect. That's a whole lot different from ownership."

"Well, if I'm yours but I can't say that I'm yours, what am I?"

"You and I are voluntarily joined together in a condition we call marriage or matrimony. You could consider that we have a secret marriage, since there was no formal ceremony. As for a single, short word, I don't have one. I sort of like saying that we're lovers. But if you were to tell somebody that you're married and I am you lover, they'd take it to mean that some other guy is your husband and you're cheating on him."

"My background as a historian makes me think that maybe love and marriage are so basic that they predate language, and we don't need words to describe our relationship."

"Amen."

Chapter twelve

I must have dozed off, because when I next looked over at Suzy she was sitting in the middle of the bed with her legs crossed in front of her, leaning forward, holding her head in both hands, and although she wasn't making any sounds her shoulders were shaking so I could tell she was crying. Sobbing. I didn't know what to do, whether to say something or hold her or back away and let her go. I gently laid my hand on her thigh, just to let her know that I was there for her if she needed me. At the same time I was thinking that this was the most complicated relationship I'd ever had, although it also seemed to be the most rewarding.

Finally Suzy turned to me, still heaving with what was left of the sobbing, and looked at me with what I could only read as pity. "Oh, I'm sorry, Jack. I'm just so messed up. After what we were talking about, I was thinking it all over, and trying to tell myself that life is going to be so good, and how caring you are, and how wonderfully everything is working out for me. But the better that things seemed as I looked to the future, the worse I felt. I think I was feeling guilty for everything going so well for me. Don't I deserve happiness? Can't I ever have things go well for me without thinking that every good thing will end up going down the drain? Oh, Jack, I'm beginning to feel that I really ought to see a shrink. I think I can handle things going badly but I can't take things going well. Did you ever hear of anyone so screwed up?"

"Actually, I have. It's not so uncommon. But I think a shrink could definitely help you with this. Do you want me to call and try to get you an appointment?"

"Yes. Yes I do. Do it now before I change my mind." Pause. "Please."

I called George's answering machine, and he called me back to say he could see Suzy that night at seven. He explained that he would spend an hour with her at no charge, to get a feel for what was involved, and then would decide whether he could continue to see her or there was a potential conflict because he knew me so well, in which case he would refer her to a colleague. So we had a light supper of hard bread and cheddar cheese with only a few sips of wine, and I walked her over to his office, about two blocks from where I lived. I took along a book I'd been wanting to read, and sat in his comfortable waiting room while Suzy poured her heart out to George. In a way I felt that I ought to start seeing him again, that it wasn't right for me to sit there with no worries while she was going through the painful inner cleansing that therapy demands if you're to get any good out of it. I guess I was feeling that I ought to do it for her, spare her the pain and the bewilderment that exorcizing our long-held feelings can bring. Then in a burst of clarity I thought, "Don't be stupid." That made me feel better, so I opened the book and began reading.

After a while I checked the book and realized that I had gone a long way through it for fifty minutes. In fact my watch told me that they had been together for nearly two hours. Just then the door handle creaked and the door opened, and George asked me to come in and join the party. What is this? Am I getting a Dear John interview? Has she decided that she can't stand me any more and she's using George to break the sad news? Did she die on the couch? How can it possibly take so long to walk ten feet from one room into the next?

George swung a chair around for me. He sat in his usual armchair. Suzy was sitting on the edge of the couch. Before I could frame a question, George said, "I know you're wondering what took so long. We had an unusually productive first session, and I was reluctant to cut it off until we reached a good stopping point. Suzy is an excellent patient, willing to go deep to recall key events."

Suzy just sat there, not saying a word. I turned to her. "Do you think this sort of therapy can help you? Do you want to continue it?"

"Yes. I don't know for how long, but I feel better already because of what we did tonight."

George had his little date book out. "Suppose we plan to do this every Tuesday evening at seven?"

I was conflicted. "Suzy, what about your plan to get down to Virginia to continue your research?"

"I think this is more important, more urgent. Do you mind the change of plans?"

"No, it gives me more time to work on my book. But may I suggest that you move this up to twice a week, at least for a while?"

George looked like the cat that had swallowed the canary. Or like a guy who had just discovered he could move up from a Cadillac to a Mercedes. "I could accommodate that, if that's what you want to do, Suzy. What do you think?"

"This is all so new to me. Let's try two a week for a couple of weeks and see how it goes."

"All right, then let's plan on Tuesday and Thursday at seven."

Later, at home, Suzy lay down on the living room sofa and just looked limp. "That's hard work," she said. "I'm worn out. Did it take a lot out of you when you went to George?"

"Like wrestling with bears. But you get out of what you put into it, so go ahead and push yourself if you want it to do you some good."

"George said some things about you. He said of all his patients, you have seemed to get the most out of his therapy, and you made him feel that he'd really made a difference in your life. And then later on he said that you are one of the most scrupulously honest men he's ever had on his couch."

"What about you? Did you feel that the time was well spent, that more of it can improve your life?"

"Oh my God, yes! Do you understand how it works? To me it's like magic. He asks a question that I've asked myself, but when he says it I dig down and come up with an answer instead of shrugging it off. And it made me feel good about my ability to get to the bottom of a problem so that I can solve it, so I can be happy and I can make you happy. Jack, I think that's why all this is coming up right now. By myself I could go on stumbling over my problems, even if they make me miserable at times. But that's not how I want to go through life with you. I feel that you'd do anything for me, and I want to make you happy and proud to be teamed up with me. By the way, that came to me while I was in with George. The thing for us to say instead of owning each other: 'We're a team!' Not like baseball, like horses. And I haven't grasped onto you so that you're mine; I've teamed with you. Did you ever watch a two horse team?"

"No. I'm a city boy and I missed all that."

"The two horses always pull together. If one falters even a tiny bit, the other one notices and turns his head to see what's wrong. They move absolutely in unison. The old country expression for a couple that fell apart was 'He went gee and she went haw.' Gee is right and haw is left. A good team never does that. And you and I are going to be a good team. The best team that's ever been. You'll see."

I tucked that information about horses into a safe location in my memory. You can never tell when a tidbit like that might fit into a novel somewhere, and I am always grateful for small doses of new information.

Nevertheless, I felt antsy. I was becoming aware of the looming prospect of a lasting partnership here, and although I was eager for it, the newness of it made me a little nervous, as if I needed to feel my way toward it cautiously, testing each step along the way, sniffing the wind, ready to be convinced but not rushing headlong to embrace such an upheaval in my life. What would it be like? Every night, instead of opting to write into the wee hours or taking a night off to watch television or read a book, I'd be asking "How would you feel about . . ." or "What do you feel like doing tonight, my love?" or . . . what? That was the crux of it, not knowing. Not that I couldn't handle it or even that I wouldn't enjoy it immensely, but just that I didn't know what it would be like. And yet I wanted to please this lovely creature, please her always, be her hero and savior. I wanted to put her on a pedestal and have her put me on one right next to her. Oh, this was ridiculous! It was like the fear of a little kid going off to his first day of school. This would be the life I thought I was headed toward with Carol, only better. Except that with Carol I didn't really know what we were headed toward; we just lived a day at a time, or more like an hour or fifteen minutes at a time. We didn't think about growing old together because down deep we didn't want to. We clung to each other but at some level we couldn't stand each other. For us, long range planning was what we should do about lunch, or dinner. We'd go to the movies at a theater with ten screening rooms, and decide what film we'd see when we got there. So if we were like a team, it would have been a pair of blind horses, bumping along through life, crashing into things.

I thought about Carol for a minute. We didn't understand at the time what a temporary thing our life together was. It wasn't even a life together, just two very separate people, clinging to each other for support, but ready to let go and fly apart at the first bump in the road. And that's just what we did. We weren't all that good for each other but we didn't know that. We weren't about to change to accommodate each other. Whoa! Did that mean that Suzy and I would be willing to change ourselves to accommodate each other? Well, wasn't that what Suzy was doing by launching herself headfirst into George's therapy? And hadn't I suggested it?

Maybe this was the time to have The Talk. "Suzy, please sit down here with me and let's talk about lifestyle things."

"What does that mean, lifestyle things? What's this all about?"

"Look, let's start with my golden goose, the novels I write. Sometimes they come along easily, and sometimes I have to chisel out the chapters, one word at a time. It can be frustrating, and I might not always be in a good mood because of that."

"What do you do when you're in a bad mood? Throw things? Smash furniture? Kick holes in the walls?"

"Well, no, nothing that drastic. But I might not want to talk for a few hours, or I might want to stay up half the night working on a story and then sleep till noon next day. I haven't thrown anything for a long time. I used to have a tennis ball but I don't even know what happened to it. But suppose you say something to me and I yell back at you, yet you haven't done anything wrong to deserve it."

"I don't see where there's anything there to get worried about. I could handle all that. And I bet if that happened, you'd want to apologize afterward and we'd kiss and make up."

"What do you do that might be hard for an old bachelor to get used to?"

"You mean like hanging my panty hose in the bathroom? Or having my cosmetics scattered all over the vanity counter? I'll let you in on a little secret: this apartment has two bathrooms. I don't know if you ever spent much time in the other one, but it's there and it has everything I could need. You can clutter up yours, and I'll do the same in mine."

"But what will you do if I'm working late and you were thinking of a nice evening together?"

"I guess I'll do something else. I could watch television, or read a book, or do some research on whatever project I'm working on, or write a new textbook about the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation on the economies of leading European nations. Or I could work on a collection of my essays comparing single women's lifestyles in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. I don't see any reason for you to alter your working habits because of me. You might want to make changes just to make life easier on you, but that's up to you. Fiction writers are creative artists, and creative artists have to follow where their inspiration leads them. When you finish a novel, especially one that you've had to work hard at, I suppose there might be book signing tours, and if I could go with you I would. But I'd hope that eventually we could have a little getaway place, maybe a house in the country or a cabin in the woods or a cottage on the seashore, where we could go and decompress. Then we could come back here to your beautiful apartment and pick up where we left off, only relaxed and rejuvenated."

"What about cooking?"

"I'm all in favor of it. Eating all our food raw isn't a good idea. But other than a few survival items, like bacon and eggs or ham sandwiches, I'm sort of hopeless in the kitchen. You're probably a better cook than I am. If I have leisure time to fill while you're working, I guess I might try to learn how to cook. Buying every meal from somebody outside is expensive, it stifles variety, and it deprives me of an opportunity to do something I've never gotten into. And what if I screw up a meal? There's always the deli down the street as a last resort. We won't starve."

"What would happen if you decide to take a job and it interferes with our life together?"

"How much could it interfere? Suppose I had to go to Toledo for six months. You could go with me and check out the local scene from Upper Sandusky to Detroit, for background in your next novel. You could write there. It's not as if you'd have to haul a machine shop with you. You might get used to doing your serious writing on your laptop, which is certainly portable enough. Or even if you want to take your whole desktop computer along, it's no bulkier than a big suitcase.

"Jack, you seem reluctant. Are you trying to think of reasons to back out of our deal? Or are you really trying to help me plan how to shoehorn our two independent lifestyles into one successful relationship? Am I missing something here?"

"No, you're not. I was. I was trying to understand how we could do this shoehorning, as you called it, looking for obstacles that could shoot us down. But I wasn't giving you credit for being so smart and resourceful and flexible and dedicated. You're right. We can make it. Come here and let me kiss you. Oh, you feel wonderful."

"That's because I left my bra in the bathroom. My bathroom, not yours."

Chapter thirteen

We went on and on, day after day. I was turning out words more slowly than I had estimated, but they were better words. I sent off my chapters a few at a time to Grace, who accumulated them and then had a go at a bunch of them all at once. She was insightful, and used tact to soften the occasional judgment that I'd fed her a few thousand words of nonsense and I'd better get serious. But my output was pretty steady, which is one thing that editors watch for, so things were going pretty well. I was having trouble inventing perilous situations, which move a novel along. She emailed me asking if I were in love again, because I was sending her a surplus of pretty flowers and twittering songbirds, and a shortage of ax murders. To quote her punchline directly: "Forget about the buzzing bees and baby bunnies, and send me some hungry grizzly bears." Did I mention that she was insightful?

The plot to bomb the Jeep had been disposed of, and Henry was checking out some strange goings on at a mine that was supposed to be abandoned. Naturally, Fern was right there, crawling along right behind him, and when things got scary she'd grab his thigh. I had been considering the advisability of ripping her shirt or maybe tearing off a few buttons, just enough to expose her milk-white breasts, all but the nipples. But I couldn't see a way to describe it in an offhand fashion so it would blend in with the rest of the narrative. I pondered whether crawling along on a bed of gravel could possibly stroke Henry into an inappropriate erection, but rejected that because it would be just as hard to work into the story line as the milk-white breasts. Finally I left them crawling along, saved my work, and went looking for Suzy.

I found her watching some eminently forgettable show on television, in which the crime victim had somehow gotten himself sealed into a large container that looked like an oversized milk can. The detectives seemed to be treating the situation as a big joke, while the crime scene experts, who are intellectual snobs, were all but peeing their pants because they couldn't figure out how it happened. I sat down and wrapped her up in a big hug, while she snapped the power off with the remote control. "How's Henry doing?" she asked.

"Henry is crawling along hoping that he can discover some danger and do something heroic to pique Grace's interest. Meanwhile, Fern is trying to get a little closer to him so she can grab him by the crotch and have her way with him before the bad guys figure out that Henry's onto them. I need to come up with something that will scare the readers out of their complacency because I've been writing some very peaceful scenes, and Grace is on the verge of vomiting all over my last three chapters. What do you think would be the most chilling, heart stopping thing that could happen to them?"