Looking back on it now, perhaps I should have known that Arlen’s ex would continue to cast a shadow over her second marriage. Harry was a considerate and attentive partner, eminently reasonable and understanding even when Arlen was at her most strident and irrational. But he didn’t have the dash or swagger that her first husband did—the aggressiveness and machismo that Arlen admired in a man. In the end, I believe, Harry came to know that in Arlen’s regard he would never be more than second-best.

­What’s more, he hadn’t been able to finish his Ph.D. with dispatch, as he’d hoped, but was forced to start over when his advisor found some problem in his work. So Arlen went on slogging away at a job she loathed while Harry continued to be supported by his parents. Also, he gained weight—and Arlen had a violent prejudice against “fat” people (as well as “retarded” people—her word—and gays) and used to call him a “fat slob” to his face, once even when his parents were visiting.

Angrily, I wrote:

Affixed

 

She is exasperating.

A surrealistic portrait would depict her

with a cube of concrete for a head.

She walks into every experience with a bias—

often outrageous—

to which she is so tenaciously affixed

that experience cannot pry her loose.

She is a slave to her prejudices,

like the hapless owner of a big, brutish dog

that drags its mistress around forever on a calamitous run.

And there was another incompatibility: Arlen wanted a companion to go places with, but Harry was more comfortable living a hermitic life amid his books and his music. He was a night owl, while she was a day person, so they ended up in separate bedrooms. As she became more and more dissatisfied that her life was not working out the way she’d imagined, Harry bore the brunt of her anger with patient stoicism. Eventually he went into therapy with Helen. I’ll always remember him confiding in me how troubled he was by several things she’d said to him, among them, that bad thoughts were as reprehensible as bad deeds—and I’m saddened for him that he took her opinion to heart.

As for my relationship with Arlen, her need for emotional support was constant, and though she might be appreciative of any sympathy or advice I offered, she never seemed able to remember anything I’d said, so that I kept having the same conversations with her over and over again until I wound up feeling utterly depleted from the effort.

Adam and I are reading a picture book. ‘Hunh?’ I say, turning to the previous page. “I don’t get this.”

Adam instructs me.

“What would I do without you to explain these things to me?” I ask him affectionately.

“I don’t know what you would do!” he answers importantly.

I’ve told him I’m going to South America. He keeps thinking it’s Africa because he remembers about the jungle—and keeps telling me plaintively that he wants to go with me.

                                                                             …

Over the years my father had done extensive reading related to his medical condition and had become convinced that he didn’t have arthritis after all, but a chemical imbalance that affected his neuroreceptors. He was prescribed the anti-depressant Elavil, which increases serotonin levels in the brain—the same drug I used to take for sleep—and, after seventeen years as a semi-invalid, he made a complete recovery virtually overnight.

When he asked himself what he most wanted to do, he told me, he decided it was to hunt for rare butterflies in the jungles of South America. A couple of years later Doug and I visited him in Tucson, and he showed us slides of his thatched hut on the Amazon River, a short distance from a tiny Indian village, where he spent summers with a parrot, spider monkey, and coatimundi.

He wrote me that a friend of his down there, George Salikas, had a boat service that ferried tourists down-river; because I knew Spanish, he was prepared to hire me as a guide. So I quit my housekeeping/babysitting job, ready to dash off on a grand adventure.

This is a journal entry from the time that I only discovered recently because it never made it into A Patchwork Memoir.

I follow Beth into her office, note the water-spotted, mildewing patch of rug behind my chair, and sit down with a sigh. Beginnings are almost as hard as endings. I’m going to try to say it all—I’m not going to let that old cat abscond with my tongue this time. We have already greeted each other formally in the waiting room, but once seated, I salute her “Hello” again. She answers “Hello” warily, without returning a smile. I try to orient myself, search for an opening. I’m quiet, remembering the drive to San Pablo. I was thinking about the Big Bang. How if they can’t find enough dark matter, the universe may prove be a one-shot deal—which made me ache with wonder at its terrible beauty.

I begin by telling Beth about my own view of therapy. “I can’t bear the kind of uprooting you’re trying to do—I’m not ready,” I say. I tell her I think the work of therapy for me, at this point anyway, is self-disclosure—and that I need to feel safe, need to feel I can trust her before I begin. “Don’t you think you’ve already begun?” she asks. I don’t know how to answer.

Later I ask her why she finds it necessary to use negative reinforcement—because criticizing me mobilizes so much pain and self-doubt I feel completely demoralized.

“You put me in a bind,” she says. “You try to set up all this space for yourself, but giving anyone else any space threatens your autonomy.” “It’s not like that!” I hear myself cry out. I say I need help, but it feels like no help is forthcoming. She tells me I’d better reconsider my requirements—they’re too stringent. That if I could loosen them, I could get help—from her and elsewhere. I say, “I have considered my requirements—the conscious ones; but the unconscious ones I have no control over. I feel like you’re telling me to come back when I’m well, then you can help me.” In barely more than a whisper, she says, “We have to stop.” She has been speaking more and more quietly and emphatically. I feel the hostility behind her words.

                                                                              …

Nevertheless, this effort, however misguided, was necessary for me. I had to try to find words for the pain and anger I’ve been feeling; I had to make a bid for what I longed for—understanding, caring, acceptance. I had thought if I could put some of these feelings into words, I might evoke the desired response. I was wrong. Still, the process of explaining, the effort to get things clear in my own head, has a value, whether I’ve alienated Beth or not. I value these things, even if she doesn’t. If I am such a “heavy” that in time I will alienate every therapist I see, then perhaps I will have to accept that I can work only a limited time with each and may have to go through a few more than I would like to before I reach the end—I can’t simply give up.

Dale was newly married at the time of her encounter with the bear—to another geologist, whose name was Charlie. When I visited their new home some months later, she made me a peanut butter sandwich with her toes, using a special knife with little pegs on the sides. Though I had to help her undress to get in her bathing suit, when we went swimming in a neighbor’s pool, she was able to propel herself through the water using just her legs. She told me she didn’t know how she would have gotten through it all without Charlie, who had had to do everything for her, from wiping her bottom when she went to the bathroom to inserting her tampons when she had her period—at least until she finally got a pair of prostheses—hooks—that she could work reasonably well.

The power of love, indeed.

“I’m telling Beth about Adam and wonder at her slight smile. She was thinking, she says, ‘the power of love!’ Strange to say, I’ve apparently domesticated that balking, braying, little crosspatch of a mule. I guess he does love me. But something he did the other day stung me, although I saw how absurd I was being. He absconded with a quarter that fell from my wallet, displaying it with a flourish and announcing he was a magician who could make money appear out of thin air. Thinking about it now, I should have suggested he conjure up some more. Instead I asked for it back, but he persisted in saying it was his. One quarter—a few carrots, a potato, or an orange. I was so poor it mattered. I felt half-aggravated, anticipating a prolonged contest, half-tearful, as I explained that I needed all my quarters. He offered to give it back to me when we got home—and magnanimously proposed to lend me some money from his piggy bank, as well.”