Darling Clementine (12 page)

“Or yourself into a man?”

“Mayhaps.” I am positively royal. “It made me think that maybe I had married Arthur because, somehow, I don't know, he reminded me of—” Deep breath, back straight. “Of my mother.”

Blumenthal shifts. “Your mother, if I remember rightly from our earlier sessions, had a vagina, didn't she?”

“Quite so. I seem to be suffering from a certain amount of confusion on this whole point.”

“A vagina's no good?”

“Well—” I defrost a bit, thinking. “I mean, without a penis somewhere in the equation, there's no way to get back to her.”

“Who?”

“Your mother.”

“Why do you want to get back to my mother?”

“All right. My mother. Damn it, I mean, you men have it easy.”

“Sure,” says Blumenthal, “we just fuck our mothers, conceive ourselves and live forever.”

“Well, all right. But it's true, isn't it?”

“Is it?” Only the Jews could invent a science that works by answering questions with questions.

I sigh, my shoulders sagging. “I'm beginning to think that maybe all this—this branding thing—it was just a way to keep from thinking about what I really want.”

“Which is?”

“To get back to her—my mother. Just a way, the branding thing, of keeping her down.”

Quietly—almost tenderly—Blumenthal says, “But she came back, didn't she?”

“Yes. Elizabeth.”

McB. rubs his nose for a considerable and breathless period.

“How long have you been thinking about all this, anyway?” he asks.

“I—I don't know,” I say. “I think it first came to me when I was doing some, well, Zen stuff—meditation.” I am a little embarrassed that a sensible Episcopalian should be caught in the lotus position, but it is, shall we say, dwarfed by the context. “I've been thinking about it since, off and on.”

“Ever occur to you to mention this to your therapist?”

“Well, I …”

“Tell me something,” says Der Doc, shifting some more. “We've talked about Arthur a lot; you've railed against him, sung his praises. But I don't really feel like I know him. What's he like?”

I open my mouth. This seems to be a good start. I remain in this position for quite some time and yet, though I am listening very hard, I do not hear any words issuing forth. “Well …” I say, finally. “Arthur? What's he like? You mean my husband?”

Blumenthal puts his chin in his hand and the whole bottom part of his face folds up into a mass of soggy wrinkles. “Believe me,” he says, “King Arthur you've told me about.”

“I—” I say, looking around—the desk avec Kleenex box (regulation psychiatric issue), the bookshelves, the curtained window, all the objects that have become so familiar to me. I am looking for Arthur. “I don't know,” I hear myself say, and then, to make sure I've said it, “I don't know.” Then something comes unbidden into my mind. Basic Freud—free association. I wonder if I have ever told Blumenthal my theory about Freud. I do not tell it to him. I present him with this unbidden, unwelcome guest. “You know, I guess I really …” I say. “I think all I'm trying to say …” I look at him. That old face, that funny, mulchy, comforting old face. “I love my mother,” I say.

It is like a conjuring trick—speak of the devil and his horns appear. The words come out of my mouth and they are true—the difference between the word “fist” and being punched in the mouth. I love my mother. I mean, I always knew I loved my mother. But now, suddenly, I know I love my mother.

And, of course, at the same moment, I realize that I—the child I was; still am—I have lost her forever.

And so we conclude another episode of Samantha Clementine and James Blumenthal in “The Fabulous Circus of Doctor Unhappiness.”

A symbolic interlude. I leave Dr. B's office and walk into the park. I wander blindly, thinking of how I love my mother. When I look up, I am standing at the foot of the stairs leading up to Cleopatra's needle, an Egyptian obelisk. I laugh at the phallic-mother symbolism, though I'm not sure exactly what it means. The needle stands surrounded by a grove of bushes and low trees. I laugh some more and decide, in the name of symbolic courage, I must go up into the grove. Suddenly, I remember that the place is supposed to be a hangout for rapists and homosexuals and I become afraid. Again, I laugh: Now I have translated my symbolic fear into a real fear. I am becoming Hester Prynne. In the name of real courage, then, I must go up into the grove with the obelisk in it.

I climb the stairs, wary of attack. I come into the grove. It is empty, except for a young woman nursing a baby at her breast.

I sit on the bench in the grove with the obelisk in it and the nursing mother. I cry quietly because, whatever happens now, I will never have had the love I wanted as a child.

Ah, the hermaphroditic God. Ah, Big Joe, Joester: the hermaphroditic God, what? What?

It was in a philosophic mood that God once said to me—just a day or two, in fact, before that visit to Blumenthal—said as I leaned my face wearily against the handset. “You know, we were all once both men and women.”

“Were we?” I said, stifling a yawn.

“Oh yes. In fact, it was, as I recall, the male appendage of Oouoh that fell off to become Marcodel. And as Marcodel parted from her, she, too, saw that Death must come into the world.”

“A bad day all around, I guess.”

“You know.” He chuckled. “Ever since then, she has been afraid of mice. She thinks they are her phallus, fallen off again, alive again. You should see her, standing on top of the mountain of Zugango with her skirts hiked: ‘Eeeee. Eeeee.' It's a panic.”

“I imagine,” I said dully.

I guess he heard it in my voice. “Are you mad at me?” he asked (hopefully?).

“No, dear, I'm not mad at you,” I said. “I simply miss you when you are in the heavens.”

“I … You want me to come down?”

“For God so loved the world …” I said.

“If I come down, something terrible will happen.”

“What, dear? What do you think will happen?”

“I don't know. But something. Something terrible.”

I smile. “Trust me,” I say. “I can handle it.” He is silent, and I remain smiling. Everyone thinks that, if they were to let go, the world would explode in the fireball of their passions. It is folks like Dr. B. who, by convincing us they can take the heat, allow us to reveal that it was only an imaginary fire to begin with.

“Trust me,” I say again. I say this because it makes me feel like Dr. B. I say this, also, because I am a foolish little girl. I mean, everyone, deep down, has the illusion that their unleashed passion would incinerate the universe. Not everyone, on the other hand, has the high-powered ex-cock of Oouoh, complete with telescopic eyeball, sitting in his closet, waiting to be used.

My cunt is an orchid. Sometimes. Sometimes it is a bleeding gash, the scar where my father tore my testicles from me by impregnating my mother, and then I hate him.

Today, however, it is an orchid, an orchid in the auburn grass, in the pine needles of the forest floor. I am looking at it, so I know. I remember once a gyno (Dr. Ihatechu, the last male gyno I have ever had) placed a mirror in front of me all during the examination. I was mortified by my ugliness, my rawness. What seemed to be a twisted configuration of torn flesh and dried blood.

But this morning—Arthur has just departed; I watched him from the window as the doorman hailed his cab—this morning, I am lying on the bed with my jeans on the floor and my t-shirt pushed up to my neck to bare my breasts, and I am holding the mirror, a rectangular hand mirror for eyebrow work, between my legs. I am watching my fingers fiddle with the lips—the petals, and the rose curves, and the clitoris in its comic-yet-ceremonial pink-brown cowl, and the black gap, the open pit of it, the emptiness that blooms inside me like the doorway to eternity, only it is not the doorway to eternity, it is my vagina, because I am not Woman, I am Sam, not the Eternal Feminine—because I have my own mother, my own Eternal beckoning to me from the dark recesses of life-and-death; and my problems are not the problems of the universe—thank you very much, MacBlume—they are mine, all mine, my problems, my past, my mangled history, and I love them even as I mourn.

My cunt is an orchid. I am sure of it, because
I
am holding the mirror.

But flesh, my children—ooh, I dip my finger in deep and bring it out wet to massage my clit—flesh, my darlings, is only the vocabulary of life—that is the lesson for today, I think. Cunts and cocks and breasts and anuses and flesh are the ways in which we children speak. The illusion that I could ever have worked my way back into my mother is only the illusion that I could be born of myself, eternal and recurrent. If I were “healthy,” I would become my mother and love myself, live through Arthur and depend upon him, his cock, to fuel my self-love. I would take his cock into me, into me, into me—my finger is his cock now, kissing the clit—and then I would capture it and it would begin to grow and I would feel the self-love of motherhood. And when that child was born I would crush it to me to maintain the illusion of life—all my conscious care overthrown by the need of not dying, I would crush it to me.

But the world is an illusion nestled in an illusion—the illusion that we need not die, need not love death and life as one. And I am not healthy, I
will
not be healthy because slowly, slowly, slowly I am becoming sane.

I watch my fingers in the mirror as the petals of my cunt flow and close around them like water. I am not masturbating—I am making love to myself.

But I do not come. Damn it, I'm breathless, but I cannot come. How all orgasms do inform against me! Now, I am thinking of a man, of Arthur; now of Jones, now of a blues singer I saw on the street.

Oh, but what's the point. They are all one. They are all Dr. Blumenthal. Oh, Doctor, Doctor. (Jimbo? Jim?) Talk dirty to me, Doc. Tell me I'm conflicted. That's it. Force me, baby: make me turn verbs into adjectives. Do it. Tell me I have to resolve some issues—God, it's meaningless, but I love it! Strip me, Doctor. Strip me of the only power I have left: the power of words. Tell me my head is in a bad place, put it in a bad place, oh, God, I want my head in a bad place. Ambivalence! Id, say Id to me. Ego—oh—oh—oh!

Mind-fuck me, you maniac!

Oh, Jesus!

Oh, shit. I'm in love with my therapist.

After dinner, we put Jones and Sheila in a cab. Jones, that is to say, stands in the middle of the street, screaming, “Hail me a taxi to SALVATION!” until some reckless idiot actually pulls over. As they get in the back, Jones waves to us and then pounces on his wife and they begin necking feverishly. The last thing I hear before the cab pulls away is Jones' plaintive, “I'm hungry, man. That roast beef was
cold
.”

Arthur and I walk across 80th to Fifth with the massive white facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art gleaming before us. I take Arthur's arm and lean against his shoulder. It is a difficult way to walk and he wriggles free and puts his arm around me. It is fine May weather—all warm and sad and wistful.

I look up at his profile. Handsome, boyish, controlled, worldly; complete.

“Arthur?” I say.

“Yes, my turtledove.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

He laughs. “No.”

“Were you a happy child?”

Arthur glances at me, one eyebrow raised as if he is surprised. “Well,” he says, “I was a relatively happy child. That is, being a child, you know, isn't easy. Being an adult isn't easy. But my folks—I don't know—they were very—nice to me. A lot of my friends, you know, their parents expected things of them—prep school, the old alma mater, law school or whatever. A lot of my friends went down the drain in the sixties, you know, like history showed them a bit of daylight so, you know, they dodged past their folks—and then, went through the hole and just found themselves tumbling through the air. My parents, I don't know, they were just on my side all the time, no matter what I wanted to do. I remember wanting to be a folk singer at one point—I was fourteen—and my father just went out and bought me a guitar for Christmas. I didn't want to be a folk singer, I just wanted to see what he'd say. He said something like, ‘This Dylan chap has a few nice tunes, hey?' and bought me a guitar.”

My mouth falls open. “Chester?” I say. “Chester said that?”

He laughs with affection for his father, and I am so envious of him I could weep. “For three weeks, my mother went off to her clubs and meetings, singing ‘Blowin' In The Wind,' and proudly telling her cringing friends that her son was going to be a folk singer ‘just like that nice Zimmerman boy.' I guess they figured they were lucky I didn't want to be an astronaut—how would they have gotten the rocket ship under the tree?”

“And so you just happened to want to be a lawyer like your dad?”

“Oh, no, no.” He laughs—and he does sound a little like Chester, at that. “That took a while. That's a long story how that happened.”

“You mean, you didn't go right to law school?” This, I am ashamed to say, had never occurred to me.

“Oh, gee, no,” says Arthur—my husband of five months, mind you, almost six. “That's a long story.”

I wait but he just walks, looking ahead, his arm around me, and suddenly I feel sort of small. In my small voice, I ask, “Will you tell it to me?”

And he looks down at me and smiles as if I am the same size as ever. “Sure, Sam,” he says. “You're my wife: I'll tell you anything you want to know.” I am an inch—an inch tall. “I went to Princeton, you know, I sort of—mucked about as they say. Majored in history, minored in art history—you know, I could draw, I was always good at drawing.”

“I didn't …” know that, I'm about to say, but I stumble over it and he goes past me.