Fury (25 page)

Another hour after that, another message appears in my in-box. This one reads:

 

I APOLOGISE. I REALISE THIS STUNT WAS A BIT IMMATURE. I AM MENTALLY ILL. I TAKE MEDICATION FOR IT AND IT MAKES ME BEHAVE STRANGELY SOMETIMES. LOL. I HAVE TAKEN THE PROFILE I MADE FOR YOU DOWN. MY NAME IS HENRY. BELOW IS A LINK TO MY REAL PROFILE.

 

I write a few short lines to the boy at the Web address he's provided, just to verify, in my own way, that he really existed and isn't the Lark in disguise. His profile picture is that of a wiry eighteen-year-old boy with what looks like a hearing aid. He has twelve friends. He says he enjoys smoking pot.

“So this is really Henry?” I type. “The Henry who wrote to me yesterday under an account with my own name?”

He writes back:

 

YES, THIS IS HENRY. I'M SORRY AGAIN FOR FRIGHTENING YOU. IF YOU HAVE A MOMENT I'D LIKE TO ASK YOU FOR SOME PUBLISHING ADVICE.

 

I go slack with relief, stunned by the coincidence in the absurd timing of Henry's message. Because I'm so relieved, or because I have a soft spot for young writers made stupid by hormones and illicit substances (time was, I had been one), I spend the next twenty minutes messaging with my new, manic-depressive friend. I explain book proposals. I tell him to read Frank Conroy's
Stop-Time.
I teach him about literary agents, and I secretly fear for ones that he might solicit, using his fine-tuned skills as a stalker.

There is barely time to get my bearings after that resolved conflict before I have to address another. Moments after I've wished Henry good luck and good-bye, I discover the Lark has responded to my e-mail.

I open the message, I sit back in my chair, and I try to breathe slow as I feel my pulse drumming in my ears. The beginning of the message reads like a script, a dialogue between characters A and B:

 

A: Can you help me.

B: Yes, I'll help.

A: I don't need your help. Oh, and fuck you too.

B: ??

What should B's reply be?

I don't know what your game is. Do you think that by hurting me you'll make yourself feel stronger? Part of me didn't want to reply to you, but I feel so aggrieved at your revisionist take on our relationship that I have to reply.

I'm “incapable of any real loyalty”? What the fuck? I was faithful to you before we even met face to face, and remained faithful until the end. Long after the end if you want the truth. I was and remain proud of you and take pride in the knowledge that you can only better yourself with your writing. Do these count as loyalty? I think so. It seems as though the phrase “no man is capable of loyalty” popped into your mind and you've tried, by the simple fact that I was born into a male body, to squeeze me into your repellent idea. I don't believe that revising the past to justify present emotions does any good at all, especially not for your own peace of mind.

 

As for the rest of the message, there is a “How dare you?” An aptly placed “Fuck you.” A bit about how I'm positioning myself as a victim.

There is a list of memories the Lark claims to cherish: “meeting you in Boston after weeks of pining and ache,” “introducing you to Brighton and my friends and family,” “reading papers in the Chelsea whilst the sunlight poured in.”

 

You haven't managed to tarnish these memories for me. Because what you are accusing me of has no part in them. If you want to look back on our year together as a time of hatred, insecurity and awfulness, that's up to you. It won't make you happy, and will probably ruin any chance you have of finding true love in the future. But if this is how you feel, then that's your choice. It isn't how I look back on our time together.

I'd like answers to all my questions, but I fear that any more contact will just ruin any respect I still hold for you. I want you and expect you to do amazingly well. But in your current state of mind, I don't want to hear from you again. I hope you will understand why.

 

I grab my keys and take off down the stairs in my slippered feet. It's late afternoon, but the lobby of my dingy high-rise is congested with familiar (if not quite friendly) faces. I tear past the scowling mailman. I pass the bestselling author who lives in the penthouse and treats me suspiciously whenever I say hello. I dodge and dart around the superintendent—a flannelled sadist who'd once told me that he drowns rats for sport.

Outside, it's a consummate autumn day. Shrill light splinters off mirrored storefronts. A barbed wind rakes the avenue. In my head, I roll around the Lark's words: “I don't believe that revising the past to justify present emotions does any good at all.” He's right to feel used. Alice has showed me that.

The Lark has touched me deeply, even in his harsh assessment, and I enter the drugstore on the corner of Twenty-third and Park with a sharp jolt of urgency. I need an international calling card. I'm sick of the one-way conversation of e-mails. I want to communicate with the pink instruments of my lungs and my throat.

I ferret through the aisles until I find what I need. I shift my weight with a nervous bounce while the cashier counts the bills I slap down in a slovenly bunch.

I find a pay phone on the corner of my block.

As I pick up the receiver, a street-sweeping truck monsters past and drowns out the dial tone. I dial the Lark's number after a gritty cloud of dust settles and I absently bite the corner of the calling card. I hold my breath as the line rings once. Twice.

“Hello?”

“It's Koren. Don't hang up. I just want you to hear me out, okay?”

“Okay.”

“You were right. I accused you of some things that were unfair and I blamed you for some feelings that weren't entirely about you. I know you were loyal to me.”

“Yes.”

“I can recognize that now. But I'm not a man hater. I need you to know that. God knows, I'm miserably flawed. I've got a million other even less becoming defects. But if you think I hate men, you might want to consider how you feel about women. No one would blame you for being distrustful of them. It sounds like you've known some horrible ones.”

“I've known some brilliant ones too.” He laughs, not unkindly, as I tell him about my eighteen-year-old hacker and confess that I'd thought it was the Lark in disguise.

“When you asked me if I'd contacted you, I thought maybe you were just looking for attention,” he says. “I've dated girls who did things like that.”

It has been two months since I've heard his voice. For three-quarters of an hour, I idle on the corner in my slippers, pressing the greasy receiver to the side of my face. As we talk he stops being the saboteur of my imagination. We talk about the position I'm applying for at a nearby university and the toy piano he's recently bought in an effort to help with his songwriting. I feel the blood bloom in my cheeks when he asks if I am dating anyone.

Whereas the last time we spoke, he'd sounded testy and preoccupied, now his voice seems soulful. He seems so much more present and receptive—perhaps we both are—and I tell him as much.

It's hard to say whether the fact of my honesty has unlocked his or vice versa, but instead of letting my fear speak to the Lark, I'm letting my humanity talk. Where does my sudden confidence and flexibility come from? I feel some twinge in my chest and think of Reiki. Odd as it sounds, it feels as though plates are gently sliding around there. Something new is being revealed. Though the hurt hasn't gone away, it's shifted a few small millimeters, making room for the possibility of love.

The Lark asks if I'd ever consider another visit to Brighton.

I pause. An elderly woman in a leopard print coat passes the phone booth and frowns at me under her thick mask of putty-colored makeup.

At the mention of Brighton, I feel my knees stiffen. I've only just begun to feel appreciative about being back home. Work is going better. I've finally put my apartment back together after packing things up to make room for my subletters. I realize I'd miss Devon. I'd miss yoga with Rolf, and even boxing with Max. I wasn't sure I felt strong enough to be a stranger in a strange land again. For once, the placater doesn't pop up to say, “I will if you want me to.”

Instead I say, “I'm not sure. I'd have to think about that. I'm not sure your town brings out the best in me.”

“Well, I hope you'll call anytime,” the Lark says. “I've missed the sound of your voice.”

A truck slams into a pothole. A hard, stinging wind blows my hair across my face. I hang up the phone, feeling a mix of relief and regret. I worry that I may never see or speak to him again. Dusk falls around me as I walk home with muted, dragging steps.

The part of me that emerges in the briefest flashes since I've started seeing Alice—a pure part, untouched by fear or past criticisms—feels like the Lark is still meant for me. But at the same time, I've never truly loved him and can't do so yet. I can't love the Lark until I see him for the person he really is. And I won't be lucid enough to recognize and appreciate the man in full until I acknowledge the whole of my biography.

The weekend after I speak to the Lark, I return to a passage by Alice Miller. “Without free access to these facts [of our life history], the sources of our ability to love remain cut off. . . . We cannot really love if we are forbidden to know our truth, the truth about our parents and caregivers as well as about ourselves.”

As far as therapy is concerned, I know I have to stop approaching it like such a good student. I've done enough anger research. I've done too much of it. Instead of bringing me closer to understanding myself, my inquests have only widened the distance between my emotions and me. The computer in me remains convinced that research can fend off the painful truths Alice wants to reveal.

In past sessions I've said, “There's this anthropologist, Robert Levy, who talks about ‘passive optimism.' He says in Tahiti people have less anger because they expect to have less power over other people. Nature teaches them this. If you try to control nature, she levels you, but if you relax and accept nature's bounty, you will be taken care of.” To this, Alice asked, “Who is ‘nature' in this case? Your family? Your mother?”

I asked, “What if my presumed ‘anger' doesn't come from anything that's happened in my personal history? What if it's just a biological predisposition? There's this Harvard pediatrician, Daniel G. Freedman, who studied Cantonese American newborns versus Caucasian newborns of North European stock. Their mothers were all the same age and had the same number of children, the same prenatal care and type of drugs during birth. And Freedman found the Chinese babies always fussed less than the white babies. They were always easier to console. Why should I go around ranting at people if there's a chance anger's just in my genetic code?”

“Do you have memories of being a baby?” Alice asked.

She said, “You can't see it, but you're already ranting at people. They're just not the
right
people. They're not the people the hurt kid in you really wants to blame.”

I'm just starting to put together the pieces a more adult woman would have realized from the first word: I elected to write a book about anger because I was brimming with it. I've been trying to give myself the license to unleash what I secretly agreed was “the most hideous and frenzied of all the emotions” (this from Seneca). But my fear only let me get close to my anger under the pretext of a scholarly exercise. It was like I couldn't access my emotions without a press badge. The more furious I got, the more detached I became from the source of my fury. I was quick to turn clinical; to categorize, or rationalize, a fit of temper; to transform my personal journey into a course of study.

I'm going to have to drop the shtick that I wear like a chignon and a pair of tortoiseshell glasses. I'll have to stop treating sessions like a night-school psychology course and my psyche as a case study in emotional maladaptation. Before I can be any sort of companion to the Lark, and I'd like to be, if he'd have me, I'll have to engage in a real relationship with Alice and tell her every petty, puffed-up, odious thought that flashes through my head. I will have to look into the woman's nearly cherubic face and let rip without exception.

Alice has been trying to charm my rage out of its coil. But the stubborn serpent never fully raised her head. Instead of striking, I've always bowed to Alice's provocations like an obedient child. Whenever she calls my bluff, I smooth my high-necked blouse and brightly vow to be more beastly.

After my conversation with the Lark not only do I realize that I've never trusted him enough to reveal the part of me with the potential to be just as rash and petty and inarticulate and snarly as any flawed human thing, but I haven't trusted Alice that way either.