Donald Antrim - The Verificationist

I might have felt Richard’s boner against my leg, but not, probably, against my back. I could be mistaken, though.

Rebecca turned her head and said, over my shoulder, to Bernhardt, “Hi, we haven’t really met. I’m Rebecca. I was your waitress.”

How rude of me to have forgotten introductions. And how stupid. It was too late, now, to control their meeting, and to keep Bernhardt’s contact with Rebecca at a minimum.

Bernhardt said, “I remember you. You had a wonderful way of helping Tom here get through a tough decision about his dinner. Not many people can show such calm in a crisis. That’s a real talent you have. You might think about a career in psychology.”

“Really?” asked Rebecca.

“I wouldn’t lie to you,” said the big man to the young girl with the dog on her neck. This got me mad. Why couldn’t I have been the one to say nice things about Rebecca’s prospects?

I countered Bernhardt. “Don’t rush into a profession, Rebecca. It’s important to experiment and find work that’s right for you. What you want to do is go to a decent liberal arts school and take a variety of courses in different fields. Enjoy yourself, read a few good books, play some intramural sports, and see what interests you.”

She said — and made the idea sound absolutely depressing—“My mom wants me to go to Kernberg.”

“Hmm,” I said.

Bernhardt practically shouted, “Kill ’em, Colonels!” Then he quieted down and said, “The place has changed since I went. There’s the brand-new veterinary school. Coed dorms.”

Was this supposed to be incentive? It was not at all surprising to hear Manuel, seated and drinking coffee with Maria at the vinyl-and-Formica booth immediately behind Richard — it was not surprising to hear the Kleinian pipe up and exclaim (to the extent that this man ever exclaimed anything), “Resist the mother! Taste the forbidden pleasures in life!”

“You’re such a prick, Manuel,” said Maria. “Why don’t you just invite her to lie down here on the table so you can have your way with her on top of our plates?” Maria peered up at Rebecca and said, “Listen, honey, don’t pay any mind to these creeps. They see you as a sexual object. They’re threatened by your vitality.”

What could be said about this? Maria was right, up to a point; and it was inevitable, I suppose, that she would create a job for herself as Rebecca’s alternative, “good” mother.

Maria gave the girl some advice about sex and power. In doing so, she sounded an unwittingly contradictory and revealingly carnal note, ironically undermining her cherished position as a mature, financially independent woman who can take or leave men.

“Fuck ’em,” she told Rebecca.

It might be useful, at this juncture, to pause and study, for a moment, the developing interpersonal situation: the weary old allegiances in decline, the new erotic configurations taking precedence; the relational matrix in flux around the question of a young waitress’s college plans. As every educated person these days knows, our criticisms and judgments of others’ lives are at least occasionally meaningful — in the opinion of some workers in my field, almost always so — as covert communications about our own attitudes, dispositions, and needs. However, some of what we say about ourselves when we babble sentimentally or resentfully about family and friends (or about institutions like the Krakower Institute, or even made-up characters populating a story) expresses more than the solitary Self in action; rather, offhand commentary and gossip about others reveals insights and perceptions that are unarguably public and universal, common to humanity.

This is another way of saying that the things we believe about parents and lovers are, more often than not, true.

It is my hope to make a picture of things as they were, that April night at the Pancake House & Bar, and, through this process, faithfully reveal my own character and the characters of my companions, in this way say something worthwhile about what I call the verifiability in emotional experience.

Rebecca was with me in the air. She was in the air because she had taken my hand in hers. She was a Young Woman of Strength, and I wanted her beside me. Richard anchored me in place. Richard was in love with Maria; he had shown this by choking on a piece of her sausage. Maria, a marriage counselor, had never married. Richard wrapped his arms around me. Richard’s arms were my reason for flight. Flying after eating breakfast food made me feel sick, though staring at a fixed point while buzzing around beneath the ceiling helped settle my stomach. The top of the hospital was one such fixed point, Sherwin Lang’s bald spot another. Sherwin was not making any big movements. Leslie was encroaching on him, and he was, in effect, playing dead. Mike watched these two as, in movement and stillness, their gestures and poses, each told the other what would and would not be permissible in bed. Mike’s smile hid rage and envy. Elizabeth looked at Mike, and she pulled back her hair, showing Mike her ears. When two people in a group pair off, others around begin pursuing mates. Elizabeth wanted Mike. Manuel wanted Jane. The teenagers in their corner wanted each other. Bernhardt wanted Maria, and I wanted Maria, and Maria wanted Bernhardt, and I had him; I was his child. Maria was beyond my reach, and so, as an adaptive protection against Sherwin and Leslie — a way not to feel unchosen and lonely in this room where, everywhere you looked, erotic love was, as we like to say in the business, “in process”—in order not to feel too melancholy and afraid, and in order to create, if I could, a sense of balance and proportion in my life, I had selected Rebecca for my female partner. I risked disapproval from my colleagues. Then again, discretion is an equivalency of professionalism in the psychoanalytic community. Bernhardt’s erection pressed hard against my back. The teenagers playing their jukebox almost kissed, as Konwicki kept from crashing backward in his chair. The world outside the windows was abruptly illuminated by distant lightning. I saw the cars and trees, and then these things were gone. Thunder followed. Maria spoke in a low voice to Manuel. Manuel understood that my embrace of Rebecca was a signal to him that I recognized and accepted his affection for Jane. Soon he would use tiredness and a busy day tomorrow as excuses to finish his coffee, say goodbye, and go home.

But he would not go home.

He would drive to my house with its front door painted red and the little windows upstairs painted shut.

It was not hard to imagine Manuel parking and getting out of the car, easing the car’s door closed. The Pritchetts’ television is always audible in the evenings from their house next door. This night — as I knew it to be, and as I imagined it to be — this night, the stars are obscured by fog that colors the sky white, almost, with light from the city. Jane’s tulips border the driveway on both sides. Pale yellow, bright pink, red. They have begun to bloom. It is likely that Manuel — whose personality pretty much conforms to stereotypically American expectations regarding the characterological traits of southern European intellectuals, meaning that his is a personality, or persona, that could aptly be described as an amalgam of subtle, implied aesthetic sensibilities — it is likely that Manuel will take time to appreciate the tulips; he’ll pause and bend over, at some point during his stroll up the drive to the red front door, not to sniff a yellow or a red flower, because that might seem vulgar; rather, to engage in a swift and confident physical gesture acknowledging beauty, a kind of semiotic rehearsal for the much more cunning gestures and motions required, once he’s inside my house, to put Jane at ease and make her receptive. A shrug here, a nod or small movement of the head or hand there. It’s very easy when you know what you’re doing. Manuel bends over and prepares himself for my wife; he gets his nose close to her garden, even though there is no one around to witness him doing this. And Jane will not be surprised when she sees Manuel standing on our porch in the night, not really. She might pretend to be surprised — and she is! Jane is, in that moment of pretending, genuinely flustered, disoriented in the most pleasurable way — but mainly Jane is satisfied and happy, a condition she masks by acting fidgety, uncertain. Would he like a drink? Oh, please come inside. Jane has to reach awkwardly around Escobar to latch the door and, in this confusion in which they almost touch, he refuses the drink. Then he reconsiders, because she is imploring him. Are you sure? What can I get you? She wants a drink. They are in the living room. They don’t have much time. What’s faster? Do you have the damned drink or turn it down and possibly get hung up in a snag over formalities, the proper way to function as guest and hostess? Manuel has the opportunity at this point to try out an uncharacteristically goofy joke. The joke is that Tom has been “held up” at the Pancake House. It doesn’t matter that this is neither funny nor recognizable to Jane as a witticism. In a way, that’s the point. It’s Manuel’s first cruelty. He has the drink with Jane, because he feels slightly guilty about his wisecrack. Already he has begun denying her access to his thoughts and feelings. It would be terrible if she knew he had a sense of humor. Things can proceed with dignity only if all the polite steps are taken. And that’s exactly right. Drinking the drink is the correct thing to do.