Part 19 (1/2)

I shrugged. ”If it did, they'd never say. At least not to my face.”

”Why is that?”

”Because he was my choice. And as you said once-because of who I am.” He sat with his elbows balanced on the armrest, his hands clasped before him, listening. ”In the end they'd accept anyone my father and I brought before them. They knew almost nothing about William. But I loved him, and my father approved. That was all they needed.”

”And what about you?” he asked. ”Did you need more? Did it distress you to know so little of William?”

”I know nothing of you either, and you hold my deepest secrets.”

”I'm your doctor,” he pointed out, ”not your husband. There's no need for you to know anything of me.”

”What if I want to know?” I asked him, though I had not meant to; I had not even wondered about him before this moment. I had taken what I knew about him-his castaway Jewishness, the degrees on the walls of his office, his books-and those things had formed my opinions of him. He had sprung to me fully formed: Where he came from, who he was, had not mattered. But now I wished to know more. ”What if I insist you tell me something of yourself?”

He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, ”It's unnecessary. It could even be harmful.”

”How could it be harmful?”

”Should a child know its parents' secrets?”

”I'm not a child.”

”I should be a mystery to you, Lucy.”

I felt oddly as if I wanted to cry. ”I don't want you to be a mystery.”

”This is not unusual, what you're feeling.”

”Isn't it?” I asked bitterly. I could not help myself; I went to stand before him. ”Is this what all your patients insist on, then?”

He looked at me calmly. ”Most of them,” he said. ”At one time or another.”

I felt an irrational surge of jealousy. ”Have you made such strides with all of them? Do you understand all of them the way you understand me?”

He hesitated. Then he rose and took my arms, holding me loosely, rubbing his thumbs against my silk sleeves. ”None of them are like you, Lucy,” he said, and there came into his eyes a look that made me both afraid and glad. I pulled away from him and stepped back, though there was a part of me that wanted to stay.

”So in the end, you're just like William,” I said. ”You're just like my father.”

”I am nothing like them,” he said angrily. I'd never seen him be anything but in control, and though it made him more human, more of a man, I was distressed by it. I think he saw that. The anger left his face after a visible struggle for control, and then he was mine again, the doctor I knew, and I was rea.s.sured.

”You said I was like your father,” he said. ”How is that? Was he a mystery to you?”

”It's as you said,” I told him. ”There are things a child should not know about a parent.”

He took a deep breath and sat down again. ”Which do you mean? Do you mean that you're relieved he's a mystery, or that there are things you wish you didn't know about him?”

”My father is a tyrant,” I said simply. ”There was a time, when I was a small child, when he was a G.o.d to me. But then I saw his flaws, and if a G.o.d has flaws, how can he remain a G.o.d?”

”Most G.o.ds have flaws,” Dr. Seth said. ”Even your G.o.d. He punishes beyond rationality. He changes His mind. He demands sacrifices to His ego. Like any common man. Science has no ego. It's rational and logical.”

”Science has all the answers?”

”Yes.”

”So there can be no mystery?”

Seth shook his head. ”In the end, all things can be explained.”

”Can they?” I smiled bitterly. ”Can love be explained?”

”A change in the brain,” he began, ”purely physical reactions. Love is entirely somatic.”

I thought of the way my body had yearned for my husband. Of the way I'd once felt about him, the racing of my pulse, the shortening of my breath, the excitement I'd felt when he came into a room. ”Yes,” I murmured. ”Perhaps so. And hate?”

”Hate is learned,” he said with certainty.

That I knew was true. ”Yes,” I said. ”I learned to hate my father. How easily love turns.”

”In the face of unbearable flaws,” he said gently.

”Is that how you lost G.o.d?” I asked.

Dr. Seth smiled. ”You're searching for answers to me again, Lucy.”

I nearly held my breath. ”Yes. But it's such a little thing, isn't it?”

When I thought he would refuse me, I felt desperate. I could not explain why I wanted to know this so badly, or why it should matter, only that it did.

Then he said, ”Unbearable flaws. Things I could not reconcile. Little injustices.”

I felt a rush so dizzying it was as if he had filled my lungs with his words. ”But we all experience that. We don't all turn away from G.o.d.”

”No,” he said, and then he pierced me with those too knowing eyes. ”But we don't all turn away from life either, do we?”

I was struck by his words. I thought of myself, yielding to my father, to a husband I barely knew. Packing up the Gerome, hiding my sketching, b.u.t.toning up my pa.s.sion. Little injustices.

I had allowed William to do this to me. Suddenly it was unbearable, to be so wors.h.i.+ped and untouched, to be denied as if I were nothing more important than a pretty doll. I wanted a husband who knew me and accepted me. I no longer wanted to hide. I wanted life.

I said, ”You think that I should show William who I really am. You think I should insist against . . . angels.”

”Cupids, I believe you said it was.”

”Angels,” I told him. ”I meant angels.”

I went home. Once there, I went to my room and took from beneath the bed my case of sketches. They were crumpled, the charcoal broken into little bits from how rapidly I'd put them away. Now I laid them upon my bed, smoothing them as best I could, then I took the pile of them downstairs into the parlor that had once served as my mother's ballroom. I drew open the curtains to let the sunlight in, and then I laid out the sketches-some on the upholstered window seat, some on the table, over the settee. There were so many of them. But of the best there were twenty in all, and when I looked at them, I felt a sense of accomplishment, of pride, of pleasure.

I stood in the middle of the room, so nervous I could not be still. I touched the sketches, smudging a little here, wis.h.i.+ng I'd thought to bring the charcoal with me so I could fix a line, a shading. I wanted them to be perfect. Dr. Seth had seen me in them, who I was, what I wanted to be. I prayed William would see the same things. I did not allow myself to think of this as a desperate attempt to stave off the sense that I was leaving him behind, or the truth of my increasing awareness that I would never be happy with William.