T. Boyle - The Inner Circle

“Women are not the initiators of sexual activity, as you know, but rather the reactors. Once they are embraced, arousal begins. But men, on the other hand — the average man from puberty to senescence, or the climacteric, in any case — are aroused any number of times throughout each and every day of their lives. Mentally aroused. Aroused by the sight of the female form, by paintings, music, art, by the fantasies they indulge, while women, the females, are all too rarely aroused by anything other than contact itself and in most cases regard the male genitalia as ugly and loathsome. Given that, it should come as no surprise that they’ve been forced into their roles as inhibitors, as prudes, as the watchdogs of what society calls morality.” He paused, let his eyes bore into me. “Do you see? Do you see what I’m saying?”

I didn’t. But then this wasn’t a conversation, not anymore.

“John. I’m saying that you have to allow for your wife — if she remains sex shy, then that is certainly a part of her nature, but more, her acculturation, and that can be changed only if she’ll open herself up to what we’re trying to accomplish here. Like Violet Corcoran, for instance. Or Hilda, Vivian Brundage or that young woman friend of Corcoran’s — Betty, isn’t it? These things aren’t written in stone. Think of physiological response, John. Physiological. ”

I was reminded of what Prok had said privately to a woman after a lecture one night in which the term “nymphomania” had come up. A nymphomaniac, he explained, is someone who has more sex than you do. Period.

I took a moment and then I told him that he was right and that I would consider it, absolutely, because Iris needed more experience, more variety, more physicality. For a moment, I was back in that attic, the women’s breasts shining with their sweat, the men hard and anxious, all my hopes and fears and inadequacies on display for everyone to see. “You’re right,” I repeated, “you are.” But then my voice cracked and I very nearly broke down right there in front of him. “Prok,” I said, miserable, absolutely miserable, as miserable as I’ve ever been in my life, “Prok, I love her.”

The word seemed to bounce off him like a pinball hitting a baffle, love, such an unlikely term to incorporate in the scientific lexicon, but give him credit: he bowed to it. “Yes,” he said dryly, “and I love Mac. And my children. And you too, John.”

He pushed himself back in his chair then and let his gaze wander, the pipes rattling overhead, the sun gracing the windows a moment and then vanishing. The interview was over. But there was something more; I could read it in his expression. He refocused his eyes on me and let just the hint of self-satisfaction creep over his features. “You know, I’ve arranged two lectures in Michigan City,” he said, “on very short notice. We’ll be taking some histories in conjunction, of course, two nights at the hotel there.” He paused, moved the pen from one corner of his desk to the other. “I thought you might like to come along.”

The drive up to Michigan City was uneventful, no different from a thousand other drives Prok and I had taken together, he at the wheel and I in the seat beside him, staring through the windshield and calling out directions because he tended to get involved in what he was saying and cruise right on by the crucial left-hand turn or miss the junction we were looking for and have to swing a U-turn a hundred yards up — at the risk of both our lives. Prok was getting older, less attentive to detail, and his driving had suffered. Of course, he would never consider asking me to get behind the wheel, not unless he’d been knocked unconscious. What else? It was spring again, another spring. The sun was unimpeded and the shoots of green things were springing up everywhere. We kept the windows down to feed on the glory of it.

We didn’t talk about Iris, but she was there with us the whole way, one more hurdle for Prok, the beginning and end of everything for me. I’d called, again and again, but she wasn’t coming to the phone and her mother’s voice could have crushed the hulls of icebreakers. I didn’t know what she expected from me. Didn’t know if this was the end or not, if we would divorce and my son would be taken from me — and my job. Because Prok wouldn’t have a divorced man on his staff — or even a remarried one. That was the rule, simple and final.

What we did talk about was Elster. “I don’t mean to say things behind anybody’s back,” I said, “but I think, well, I think it’s a mistake to hire the man. In any capacity. But especially not as our librarian, where he has access to our — well, you know what I mean.”

Prok didn’t know, and he interrogated me nearly the whole way there, his eyes gone cold and hard. He made me go over the details six times—“Fred Skittering? The reporter? And Elster put him on to you? How long ago was this?”—and he was still questioning me, still brooding over this treachery in his midst, when he pulled up to Iris’s girlhood home. It was a modest house on a street of modest houses, two stories, with rust streaks under the gutters and a battered Pontiac in the driveway. “This is it, then?” he asked, waiting for a car to pass before he backed in at the curb.

“Yes,” I said, my stomach sinking, “the white house, right here, number fourteen.”

He shut off the car and turned to face me. “What was the name of Iris’s mother again?”

“Deirdre. They’re Irish.”

“Irish. Yes. Right. And the father?”

I glanced at my watch. “Frank,” I said. “But he’ll be at work still.”

And then we were at the door, Prok running a hand through his hair while I rang the bell and the dog — a sheltie named Bug, which Iris’s father delighted in calling Bugger every chance he got — began barking at the rear of the house. There was the sound of footsteps, the scrabbling of the dog’s nails on the bare floor, more barking, and I tried to compose myself even as Iris’s mother pulled back the door and gave me a look of iron while the dog whined and leapt at my legs. “Um, well, hello,” I said, and I tried out her name, “Deirdre. Oh, yes, and this is Dr. Kinsey, my, well, my boss—”

Everything changed in that instant. Iris’s mother let her face bloom with a Kilkenny smile and the door swung wide. “Oh, yes, of course,” she said, “I would have recognized you anywhere, and please, please come in.”

I stepped through the door and froze: Iris. Where was Iris? And my son? I thought I heard the piping of a child’s voice from upstairs, from Iris’s old room, and I had to force myself to put one foot in front of the other. The dog whined and flapped about the floor and I stooped mechanically to stroke it.

I hadn’t been to the house in six months or more — we visited when we could, both Iris’s parents and my mother, but my work didn’t allow much time off, of course, as I think I’ve made clear here. At any rate, the place didn’t seem to have changed much, the same coats on the coat tree, the same umbrellas in the umbrella stand, even a pair of galoshes that looked vaguely familiar set aside in the corner. I noticed all these things with a kind of heightened perception — the dog looked shabbier, Iris’s mother older, the carpet was worn in the living room — because I was snarled up inside, twisted like wire. All I could think of was Iris. Would she talk to me? Would she see me even?

“Here, please, have a seat,” my mother-in-law was saying, “but you must be exhausted — did you drive all the way up today?”

“Yes,” Prok said, easing himself down on the sofa, “but John and I are used to it, isn’t that right, John?”