Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“You have alife most women would envy,” Barbara Walters told Jennifer Terhune. “You’re young, you’re beautiful, you’ve had success as a model and as an actress. And you’re the wife of an enormously talented and successful athlete.”

“I’ve been very fortunate.”

“What’s it like being married to a man like Tommy Terhune?”

“It’s wonderful.”

“The clothes, the travel, the VIP treatment...”

“That’s all nice,” Jennifer acknowledged, “but it’s, like, the least of it. Just being with Tommy, sharing his life, that’s what’s truly wonderful.”

“You love your husband.”

“Of course I do.”

“But I’m sure there are women in my audience,” Walters said, “who wonder if you might not be the least bit afraid of your husband.”

“Afraid of Tommy?”

Walters raised her eyebrows. “Mr. TNT? Terrible Tommy Terhune?”

“Oh, that.”

“ ‘Oh, that.’ You’re married to a man with the most famously explosive temper in the world. Don’t tell me you’re never afraid that something you might do or say will set him of.”

“Not really.”

“What makes you so confident, Jennifer?”

“Tommy has a problem with rage,” Jennifer said, “and I recognize it, and he recognizes it. He’s been working on it, trying a lot of different things, like, to help him cope with it. I just know he’ll be able to get a handle on it.”

“And I’m sure our hopes are with him,” Walters said, “but that doesn’t address the question, does it? What about you, Jennifer? How do you know that terrible temper, that legendary rage, won’t one day be aimed at you?”

“I’m not an umpire.”

“In other words...”

“In other words, the only time Tommy loses it, the only time his temper is the least bit of a problem, is when an official makes a bad call against him on the tennis court. He never gets mad at an opponent. He doesn’t go into the stands after fans who make insulting remarks, and I’ve heard some of them say some pretty outrageous things. But he takes that sort of thing in stride. It’s only bad calls that set him off.”

“And after an explosion?”

“He’s contrite. And ashamed of himself.”

“And angry?”

“Only during a match. Not afterward.”

“So it’s never directed at you?”

“Never.”

“He’s a perfect gentleman?”

“He’s thoughtful and gentle and funny and smart,” Jennifer said, “in addition to being the best tennis player in the world. I’m a lucky girl.”

Later, watching herself on television, Jennifer thought the interview had gone rather well. She sounded a little ditsy, saying like often enough to sound like a Valley Girl, but outside of that she’d done fine. Her hair, which had caused her some concern, wound up looking great on camera, and the dress she’d worn had proved a good choice.

And her comments seemed okay, too. The likes notwithstanding, she came across not as an airhead but as a concerned and supportive life partner and helpmate. And, she told herself, that was fair enough. Everything she’d said had been the truth.

Though not, she had to admit, the whole truth. Because how could she have sat there and told Barbara Walters that Tommy’s temper was one of the things that had attracted her to him in the first place? All of that intensity, when he served and volleyed and made impossible shots look easy, well, it was exciting enough. But all of that passion, when he roared and ranted and just plain lost it, was even more exciting. It stirred her up, it got her juices flowing. It made her, well, hot — and how could she say all that to Barbara Walters?

In fact, when you came right down to it, she was a little disappointed that Tommy never lost it except on the tennis court. It was a pity, in a way, that he never brought that famous temper home with him, that he never lost it in the bedroom.

Sometimes — and she would never admit this to anyone, on or off camera — sometimes she tried to provoke him. Sometimes she tried to make him mad. Even if he were to get physical, even if he were to slap her around a little, well, maybe it was kinky of her, but she thought she might like that.

But it was hopeless. On the court, with a racquet in his hand and an official to argue with, he was Mr. TNT, the notorious Terrible Tommy Terhune. At home, even in the bedchamber, he was what she’d said he was, the perfect gentleman.

Darn it...

“So we beginto make progress,” the psychoanalyst said. “The need to win your father’s approval. The approval sometimes granted, other times withheld, for reasons having nothing to do with your own behavior.”

“It wasn’t fair,” Tommy said.

“And that is what so infuriates you about a bad call on the tennis court, is it not so? The unfairness of it all. You have done everything you were supposed to do, everything within your power, and still the approval of the man in authority is denied to you. Instead he sits high above you, remote and unreachable, and punishes you.”

“That’s exactly what happens.”

“And it is unfair.”

“Damn right it is.”

“And you explode in rage, the rage you never let yourself feel as a child. But now you know its source. It’s not the official, who of course cannot be expected to be right every time.”

“They’re only human.”

“Exactly. It’s your father you’re truly enraged at, and he’s dead, and out of reach of your anger, no longer available to approve or disapprove, to applaud or punish.”

“That’s it, all right.”

“And now, armed with the insight you’ve developed here, you’ll be able to master your rage, to dispel it, to rise above it.”

“You know something?” Tommy said. “I feel better already.”

In a first-round match two weeks later, an unreturnable passing shot by his unseeded opponent fell just outside the sideline marker. The umpire called it in.

“You blind bastard,” Tommy screamed. “How much are they paying you to steal the match from me?”

“With every breath,”the little man in the loincloth intoned, “you draw the anger up from the third chakra. Up up up, past the heart chakra, past the throat chakra, to the third eye. Then, as you breathe out, you let the anger flow in a stream out through the third eye, transformed into peaceful energizing white light. Breathe in and the anger is drawn upward from the solar plexus, where it is stored. Breathe out and you release it as white light. With every breath, your reserve of rage grows less and less.”

“Om,” Tommy said.

In his nexttournament, the Virginia Slims Equal Opportunity Challenge (dubbed Men Deserve Cancer Too by one commentator), Tommy waltzed through the early rounds, breathing in and breathing out. Then, in the quarterfinals, he smashed his racquet after a service double fault.

He had a replacement racquet, and it wasn’t until midway through the next game that he snapped it over his knee.

“Why put youon the couch for ten or twelve years,” the doctor said, “when I can give you a little pill that’ll fix what’s wrong with you? If you had high blood pressure, you wouldn’t probe your psyche to uncover the underlying reasons for it, would you? You might stroke out while you were still trying to remember your childhood. No, you’d take your medication. If you had diabetes, you’d watch your diet and take your insulin. I’m going to write you a prescription for a new tranquilizer, and I want you to take one first thing every morning. And you won’t have to master your anger, or figure out where it comes from. Because it’ll be gone.”