Dan Wakefield - Starting Over - A Novel

It would soon be spring.

Potter and Marilyn decided that the two of them were as much of a “group” as either needed, therapywise. Hearing one another’s problems was sufficiently depressing without having to hear about the horrible depressions and horrendous hangups of a half-dozen other poor souls. Marilyn continued to see her own shrink privately, though, mainly because he supplied her with prescriptions for the pills she now used regularly to get to sleep and to wake up, to perk up and to calm down.

Her sessions with Dr. Shamleigh had turned into shouting matches over what she should do about Herb. Dr. Shamleigh said she should give him up and find a nice, eligible bachelor. Marilyn said there weren’t any. Dr. Shamleigh said she wasn’t looking hard enough. Marilyn accused him of trying to break up her relationship with Herb because Herb was a shrink too, and Dr. Shamleigh was jealous of him having all this good sex outside his marriage. Dr. Shamleigh insisted he was not jealous, that he had no desire to seduce Marilyn but only to help her, though she made that very difficult. Marilyn then suggested that Dr. Shamleigh wanted her to break up with Herb because he was a shrink and his affair with Marilyn made it seem like shrinks were just as fucked up and human as everyone else. Dr. Shamleigh said that was nonsense, he wanted her to leave Herb because there wasn’t any “future” in it. Marilyn angrily sputtered that “there isn’t any future in—the future for god-sake, that’s a dream.” Dr. Shamleigh said Marilyn was losing her grip on reality, partly because of the fantasy nature of the affair, because it took place in the “unreal” situation of secret weekend meetings, and because it was based on the “fantasy” that Herb was going to leave his wife and family and run off with her into the sunset. Marilyn pointed out that even if he wanted to do it Herb couldn’t just go get a divorce and sweep her off to city hall, never mind sunsets, all that took time. Dr. Shamleigh said indeed divorces took time, but if Herb was seriously going to do this he could make his feelings known to his wife and thus begin preparations for what would be the long and difficult proceedings that would lead him eventually to marrying Marilyn, if that indeed was his honest intention.

Marilyn broke down one night after one of those sessions and called Herb, sobbing, and told him he had to make a choice between her and his wife, that he had to tell his wife he wanted a divorce or Marilyn wouldn’t see him anymore. Herb said that was an ultimatum, not a choice. Marilyn said he could call it whatever he wanted but she couldn’t go on this way. Herb said he had to have a little time, he would have to consult Dr. Gumbacher. Marilyn asked who the hell that was, and Herb said it was one of the most distinguished analysts in the country. Marilyn asked, incredulously, if a shrink had to see another shrink before he could make a decision of his own. Herb said this was different because Dr. Gumbacher had been his analyst for the analysis that all analysts must go through before they can become analysts and analyze other people, and Herb wanted to get his former analyst’s professional opinion on whether the desire to leave his wife and children and marry a younger woman was a healthy life development or whether it had some dark roots in conflicts that perhaps were left unresolved in his analysis. Marilyn told Herb that he and his analyst had better figure it out right away because when she came down this weekend she wanted a straight answer or she wasn’t coming down anymore. Herb said in that case she left him no choice but to try to reach a rational decision about a complex problem involving his whole life in a matter of days, and Marilyn said that was exactly right because between her shrink and Herb and Herb’s shrink she was going to go to pieces if she didn’t get the thing settled next weekend one way or other.

“Wow,” said Potter.

He had guzzled two martinis while Marilyn paced the room, poured straight gin in her glass, and filled him in on how things stood and why. He poured himself a third, and said, “I guess this sounds pretty feeble, but is there anything I can do?”

She stopped her pacing, turned to Potter, and much to his surprise, said, most emphatically, “ Yes .”

Usually, no matter how good your intentions, when you ask a friend if there is anything you can do, things have reached a point at which no one can do anything.

“What can I possibly do?” he asked, genuinely not knowing what it might be.

“Come with me this weekend,” Marilyn said.

“To New York? ”

“To New York.”

“Look, Marilyn, I’d do anything—”

“Then come.”

“But what can I do, if you’ll be seeing Herb?”

“I’ll only be seeing him part of the time—the time he can sneak away from his happy little home. The rest of the time I’ll be alone in an anonymous room that will probably be pretty high up in the Fifth Avenue Hotel.”

“OK, but if I come, what do you want me to do?”

“Keep me from jumping.”

Herb always put Marilyn up at the Fifth Avenue Hotel because it was down in Greenwich Village, where his wife, neighbors, and colleagues were unlikely to be hanging out. Herb, of course, lived in a swank apartment in the Upper Seventies, off Park. Being, as he was, a Freudian.

The Fifth Avenue Hotel was a good one, by all odds the best the Village had to offer, but Potter decided not to stay there himself, not because of any worry that it might be too expensive, but rather out of some obscure, private-eye-story notion that he shouldn’t be registered in the same hotel as Marilyn since no one was supposed to know he was down there to come to her aid. The only person who could possibly care was old Herb, who knew Potter by name but probably wouldn’t recognize him from the New Year’s Eve party, but the whole bizarre and clandestine nature of the business led Potter to decide he should get a room at the Earle Hotel, which was handily situated nearby on Waverly Place.

He had heard people long ago praise the Earle as a nice little Village Hotel, but he hadn’t been in it for years, and it was obviously on the decline. The hallway smelled of urine, and when Potter began unpacking his bag in a paint-peeling room with a soiled print of a vase of flowers hanging tilted above the bed, he wished he had stayed at the Fifth Avenue. It was done, though, and to check out now would only create a greater hassle for himself. He splashed cold water on his face, brushed his teeth, straightened his tie, put on his overcoat, and went over to Marilyn’s hotel.

Herb was due in an hour, and Marilyn had dressed for the crucial meeting with him.

“What do you think?” she asked.

Potter walked slowly around the room looking at Marilyn and her outfit, studying the effect. “No,” he said thoughtfully, “I don’t think so.”

Marilyn looked down, disappointed, at the maroon velvet gown she was wearing. It showed her cleavage, and was split way up the side, revealing lots of leg. “I thought you told me it was sexy,” she complained.

“I did. It is.”

“So what’s the matter?”

“Let me think a minute.”

Potter loosened his tie, and sat down in an armchair. “Let me have a drink, will you?”

Marilyn sighed, and poured him a Scotch over ice. Potter stirred it with his finger, reflectively.

“If you wear that,” he said, “it’s like you’re saying ‘Here—take me. I’m all yours, whatever the conditions.’”

“But I’m not saying that. I don’t want to say that.”

“But the gown says it.”

Marilyn crossed her arms over her chest, holding herself as if she were chilly.