Fury (24 page)

“I mean, do you really think all the anger that's been floating free in your head all this time belongs there, with him? Do you think there's even just the smallest possibility that something he did reminded you of the original object of your anger? Did anything in particular happen before you sent the Lark that message?”

“Well, I'd sent him an earlier one, giving him a whole heap of advice, for which he'd never thanked me or responded. I guess that made me feel kind of shitty. I also took some Staph. I got a card, out of the blue, in the mail from my mother.”

“What did the card say?”

“Just that she was glad I was back to working on my book and she'd be proud when I finished.”

“Did that make you feel angry for any reason?”

“I suppose. Just a little. I'm sure she just meant to be supportive, but sometimes it feels like my family only relates to and . . . ” I pause here to take a deep breath. “ . . .
likes
the part of me that's the writer.”

“Any idea where that feeling comes from?”

“No one seems to have much patience for talk about anything else in my life. And, of course, there are only so many emotions I feel like I'm allowed to share with them. You and I've already figured that part out.”

Alice nods.

“I was also the black sheep of my family until the time I was twenty-three and first started publishing what I wrote. Before that, I always felt like I was a problem. Like I was the one thing disrupting their lives. The fact that they only accept me now makes me feel like I have to constantly perform in order to earn their love. I suppose I resent that. But then, maybe it's not their fault. You say I withhold my emotions, and what do you call it—my essence?—with them. Maybe I've never given them an opportunity to get to know me through anything but my work.”

“Did the Lark somehow make you feel as though you had to perform in order to be accepted by him?”

“Not really. I think I was the one who tried to woo him through writing. But there was that thing he said about us getting along better through letters.” The weight of realization begins to settle on me. “You think it's possible that I've been using him as a stand-in for my family?”

“What do you think?” Alice asks. “You can tell displaced anger because its magnitude doesn't seem to fit the situation at hand. Do you think it was
fitting
that you reacted the way you did to his e-mail? Do you think there's any possibility that you baited him on an unconscious level? Do you think you might have created a situation where he felt compelled to express his support for your career—one of the few ways you feel your parents are supportive—and then unleashed all the angry rebuttals you're so convinced your parents won't let you say?”

My hands fly to my mouth in horror. “Yes,” I say. “That's more than a possibility.”

“Let's just say you're going to address your parents right now,” Alice says. “You're going to thank them for thinking of you and giving you their support, but you'd like to share with them some of the things about your relationship that don't work for you. What would you say?”

“I suppose I'd tell them that it hurts my feelings that they're so dismissive anytime I reference my personal life. Sometimes it feels like they only entertain talk about my career. And that makes me feel less like a person and more like a commodity.”

“Is there any chance that it goes both ways? Any possibility that
you
only confide in
them
about work
?”

“Only because
they
have always made it clear that they find emotion so unacceptable! My mother, in particular. Any talk of feelings and she turns her back on me.”

“So tell her right now,” Alice urges. “Pretend she's sitting right here.”

I sigh audibly. I still haven't warmed to role-playing. I always feel like I am faking it. Like a kid covertly nudging the planchette on an Ouija board, I spell out the words I suspect Alice hopes to hear in order to preserve her faith in the exercise. But privately I can't seem to conjure up the spirit. I can't envision my mother in Alice's office any more than I can imagine such frankness ever hurling from my lips.

“Follow me,” Alice says. “Mom, I really appreciate your concern . . .”

“Mom, much obliged for your concern. I know that you think I'm overly emotional.”

“But I need you to know . . .”

“I need you to know that I'm totally healthy and . . .” I pause. “ . . . halfway happy. I'm not sick. I'm not off my rocker. I'm not a saint and I'm not a demon, either. I'm a human being and things move me. Things disappoint me. Occasionally, they devastate me. I have emotions. I'm not a machine, all evidence to the contrary. Out there in the world outside your very limited orbit, everyone else thinks I'm aloof and impossible to read. The only person who thinks I'm a hysteric is you.”

After my session with Alice I need to purge my head of the horrifying realization that I am using the Lark to act out my relationship with my mom, so I drag my maladjusted ass to one of Rolf's “hot” yoga classes, the kind where he heats the room to a temperature more appropriate for roasting a rack of lamb.

I come back to my apartment wet as an eel; sweat is crawling down my breastbone. Before showering I collapse into my desk chair, more out of habit than with any explicit purpose, and log on to my e-mail.

I'm half-expecting a retort from the Lark, but that's not what I find. Instead, I discover a notification from the same social networking site we'd met on. It says I've received a message from myself or, at least, from a person who shares the name Koren Zailckas.

For a few moments I sit, paralyzed with foreboding.

Strange as it sounds to the rational ear, this is the moment I'd been expecting. A few days earlier I'd given myself freely to fury. And every moment since I've been waiting to be struck down, as if by a lightning bolt, and punished for the things I unleashed.

Where I'm from, anger never came without consequence. I think of all the people my parents have disowned over disagreements: my uncle, my maternal grandfather (who is my last living grandkin).

At sixteen, after a particularly vicious verbal fight with my mother, I was lured downstairs by panicked footsteps, clangorous wails, and the sobering words “emergency room!” I remember the reddening rag that she held between her hands, and that she'd made a point of telling me that she had sliced her hand (and a few tendons, a doctor would later determine) because she'd slammed a crystal bowl against the sink in her frustration with me.

I log on to the Web site. Sure enough, in my in-box I find a message from myself. I take a deep gasp and open the note, feeling damned. It reads:

 

People are sending me messages of support. That's not what this was meant to be about.

 

Do I gag? Time freezes. For a moment I can't hear the roar of traffic outside my window. As I bring my hands to my mouth in shock for the second time in one day, I notice, in a dislocated way, that they've gone cold and jittery (
the Staphysagria patient often trembles when she is enraged
).

At the top of the message, an oscillating orange symbol indicates that my alter ego is online at the moment. When I bring my cursor to her name and click, I am treated to my own face in her profile picture.

It's a regrettable shot, but one that has been posted online elsewhere: In it, I stand wild-eyed against a bloodred wall, my hair rising from my head in a thorny crown of static and one corner of my mouth curled into an impish smirk.

I scan the rest of the page with a hot flush of horror. According to the profile, my “interests” include: “rimming,” “fisting,” “deepthroating,” “shit-eating,” “being punched in the prissy, fucking face,” “boozing,” “shagging,” “swallowing,” and “making disgusting, nasal, moaning sounds” while I fornicate like a “stray dog.”

In the part designated for “friends,” this person has already contacted, among other people, Alyssa, my sister, and my brother-in-law.

I am struck by the British slang “pleb.” In the space set aside for “favorite books,” it reads “nothing that a pleb like you would know,” betraying the origin of the page's creator.

I've heard that acknowledging a hostile stranger is the worst thing a person can do in these situations. But then, I am not convinced I'm dealing with a stranger. My spine chatters against the back of my chair. I stab the keys madly as I type the following response:

 

This is clearly the Lark. Or his brother. Or both. (Here's a hint: next time you might want to disguise your British spelling.) This is a personal matter. So let's please deal with it personally. And in a manner that's a bit more adult.

 

My alter ego reads it immediately and dispatches “her” reply:

 

I DIDN'T REALISE (OOPS, REALIZE) AMERICANS SPELLED THINGS DIFFERENTLY. WHO IS THE LARK? I AM JUST SOMEONE WHO READ A BOOK AND HATED ITS AUTHOR SO MUCH I WANTED TO MAKE HER PAY.

 

In a state of deep panic, I take the L train to Devon's place. The subway car shimmies and shrieks in the tunnel, carting a cast of people who totter foal-like in their high-heeled boots and laugh as the subway poles slip away from their mittened hands. Beside me an off-duty firefighter hits on a young girl in a minidress as tight as a compression bandage. “I know a place off the next stop,” he tells her. “Just a scummy, roughneck neighborhood place where you and I can get a beer.”

Everyone seems selfish and secretly cruel, a recurring side effect of any rejection. For the moment it's as though Alice has never helped me to see the childhood memories where these feelings first took shape. Instead of being present, where the fake profile might exist to me only as a childish prank, I am stuck like a barnacle to the past. And in the past, the mean messages constitute further proof that when I reveal myself I will be hurt for it.

I take my cell phone from my pocket and send the Lark a text message. It reads: “I know we're not on good terms right now, but did you contact me by Internet today? I really need to know.” How much I want to believe he's the cause of all emotional turmoil. It's less painful than admitting my life feels chaotic because Alice is slowly making me acknowledge the childhood lessons I've never wanted to admit. Because she is slowly and systematically stripping me of my defenses.

Devon squeezes me hello at the door to her apartment and helps me out of my scarf and coat. She has a pot of something warm bubbling on the stove. Her boyfriend, Jeff, one of my friends from college, moves between the stereo and the sofa, changing a record and loading something on his laptop. The light is warm and the radiator hisses under its breath.

“So you think it was the Lark?” Devon asks once we're settled on the floor around the coffee table, drinking hot apple cider from footed teacups.

I tell her I'm not naïve enough to think that there's only one person in the world who hates me. But it just seems a little too coincidental, didn't she agree? Two days ago, I said the harshest things I've ever said to the Lark, and today I get an unmistakably
British
message from someone who seems to know my nasally speaking voice.

“Your voice isn't nasally,” Devon sweetly insists.

Jeff takes a sip from his delicate teacup. “The Lark seemed like a decent enough guy when I met him,” he says diplomatically. “But I can't lie. You make a strong case.”

The next morning, a text message comes through from the Lark. All it says is: “It wasn't me. Sorry.”

Within the same half an hour, the vilifying Web page is taken down. Or rather, the profane details are wiped from it and my picture is replaced by one of a green-faced grim reaper, cackling as he brandishes his scythe.