Love Always (9 page)

“Make yourself at home,” Hildon said. “Come and get me, or go downstairs and get Elena if you have any questions.”

When Hildon left, she walked to the window and looked out.
It was a view of town she hadn’t seen; a few stories higher up, she could have looked down on the domed roof of the bank. She looked into the empty window boxes. A squirrel ran up the trunk of a dead elm, then ran down again, circled the tree, and dashed into an alleyway.

She had only read half a dozen letters in the In basket when she came to one that interested her so much that she read it again, and then transcribed it:

L
IKE
the heroine of her favorite novel, there were many things that Maureen would never do: drink tequila; give blood; do volunteer work; put into practice what Hildon had taught her about changing a tire; sharpen her own knives; read Proust; bargain for lower prices at the vegetable stand at the end of the day; have oral sex; learn the metric system; snorkel; have a conversation with a Jehovah’s Witness; do acrostics.

She had just done one of those things, and it was the most horrible thing imaginable.

Maureen had decided that she needed to change her life. She had lost her sense of herself, and she had to regain it. It was not that she had been Hildon’s wife too long, but rather that it did not seem that she was anybody’s anything. When she decided to be Matt Smith’s lover, she thought that would spite Hildon, but actually doing something like that was self-destructive: she was only being spiteful to herself.

She did what people always did in the movies when they were having a crisis. She looked in the mirror. Even trying as hard as she could, her face was so familiar to her that she did not know how objective she could be.

She was at least attractive. It might make her prettier if she had her hair streaked, lightened around the face. She might go back to buying and wearing the candy-colored clothes she had liked as a student at Mary Baldwin College. She might affect that southern accent again, slightly. None of it would do any good if she continued to be surrounded by the bizarre, self-indulgent people who had been part of her life since Hildon’s
magazine became such a success. But before she could meet new people, she would have to restore her self-confidence. And today, Davina Cole, for a mere $50 an hour, was going to help her to be the best person she could be.

As Davina explained it, her approach was part psychotherapy, part whole body reconditioning, and part assertiveness training.

In preparation for their session, Maureen, as Davina had instructed, had tried to get a good night’s sleep and had had mineral water with orange juice for breakfast and eaten lightly. Davina had had a photograph of Maureen enlarged, cut out, and backed with cardboard. She leaned it against the wall as they talked. This black and white Maureen was almost life size. It was quite eerie, having it there in the living room: Maureen in her sarong, smiling.

“When you look at that, what do you see?” Davina said.

Maureen looked at it a long time. “I don’t know,” she said.

“You see an attractive woman smiling, don’t you?”

“Maybe I look silly.”

“Please don’t think of the statue as ‘I.’ Try to tell me only what you see.”

“I think I see a woman who isn’t especially attractive. Just an ordinary woman.”

“What is the part you think is most attractive?”

Maureen thought about it. The legs were nice; the calves thin and shapely. The hair was long, thick, and rather dramatic. She knew that her eyes were probably her best feature, but the blowup had almost obliterated detail, so that they were oval, muddy pools. “The hair,” she said.

“Good,” Davina said. “Concentrate on that for a few minutes.”

Maureen tried to concentrate on her hair, but her attention kept drifting. She was more worried about Hildon coming home while this was going on than she had been the time she went to bed with Matt Smith.

“Reach up and stroke your hair,” Davina said. “Say out loud: ‘I have lovely, luxurious hair.’ ”

“I have lovely, luxurious hair,” Maureen said, stroking her hands down the sides of her hair.

“Do you believe that?” Davina said.

“Well, of course, many people …”

“We aren’t interested in many people. We are interested in you. Do you believe that this is true of you?”

“Yes,” Maureen said.

“Society has taught us to turn aside compliments, which is wrong enough in itself, but which is very harmful if we take a simple fact to be a compliment. Now, tell me something else about your hair.”

“My hair is long.”

“Your hair, then, is the most impressive thing you notice about yourself; it is luxurious, lovely, and long. That’s very good, and easy to remember, because it alliterates.”

Davina opened a canvas bag she had brought with her. She took out a white towel, went over to the statue, and draped it over the hair.

“Find something else to admire,” she said.

Maureen smiled; with the sarong tied around her and the towel thrown over her hair, it looked like she had just come out of the shower.

“The legs,” Maureen said.

“What about them?”

“They’re shapely.”

“Fine. What else?”

“You mean what else are my legs?”

“Yes.”

“They’re not muscular.”

“Not what they aren’t, what they are.”

“They’re smooth.”

“Fine. Your legs are shapely and smooth. That’s going to be very easy to remember, also, because it alliterates. Are you a writer?”

“I’m nothing.”

“That’s why I’m here: to prove you wrong. Your identity is not what you do. It is the wholeness of you. Your essence,
which we will get to later. But today we are already noticing that the statue has some attractive features. Let me cover your legs and see what else you can find for me.”

She reached in her bag and took out a piece of material and two thumbtacks. She tacked it over the legs.

“Nothing else in particular,” Maureen said.

“Nothing here?” Davina said, pointing to her arms.

“They’re just arms.”

“And here?” she said, pointing to Maureen’s breasts.

“I think they’re ordinary breasts.”

“Here?” Davina said, pointing to her ribs.

“Nothing really. I’m not fat, but you just want to hear what I am, not what I’m not.”

Davina stood there a minute, considering the statue. She took off the material and the towel. “All right, then. You are not conscious of your face or of your arms or of your chest or torso.” She reached in the bag and took out a clipboard, flipped through, and removed four pieces of paper. She handed them to Maureen. They were exercises for those parts of the body that, Davina said, would help make her more conscious of them. She was to exercise, as the little diagrams instructed her, and tell Davina the following week whether she did not feel a new awareness and more positive response to parts of her body. She was also to develop and improve the parts she admired; Davina thought that streaking her hair would be a good idea. She thought that mesh stockings would indeed accentuate Maureen’s shapely legs.

“Do you believe that you have rights?”

“What?” Maureen said.

“Do you believe that you have rights?”

“Yes, of course, but …”

“Maureen: are you
certain
that you think that
of course
you have rights?”

“Well, yes.”

“What are some of these rights?”

“I have the right to be happy.”

“Specific rights, please. Not general rights. I don’t want to
hear you recite the Declaration of Independence. I want to hear what your specific rights are, in your life.”

“It is my right to tell people when they call and I am sleeping that they have awakened me and that they shouldn’t call so early.”

“Very good. Tell yourself that you will do this the next time someone interrupts your sleep.” Maureen nodded. “Out loud.”

“When I’m sleeping and somebody wakes me up, I’m going to tell them that they have disturbed me and that they should see what time it is before they call.”

“What other rights do you have?”

“It’s my right to tell my husband that I insist that he stop having an affair with Lucy Spenser.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Davina said. “No one can stop men from having affairs. This brings up a crucial point: it is impossible to have rights when you have no power. When you truly know the power you do have, you will spend less time worrying about the power you don’t have.”

Davina’s watch alarm buzzed.

“I know he’s sleeping with Lucy Spenser. Don’t you think it’s my right, even according to the Ten Commandments, which forbid adultery …”

“Maureen, please: it will do us no good if you continue to think in terms of the Declaration of Independence and of the Ten Commandments. Naturally, on the Fourth of July, or on Sunday when you are in church, they may come to mind, but you cannot let them determine your thinking. You must concentrate on what is truly the case or likely to be the case, and increase your power so that you can deal forcefully and effectively.”

Davina was taking a piece of plastic out of her purse, and a hanger. She slipped the hanger in a groove on the back of the statue, held the top of the hanger, and lifted it. Maureen dangled. She moved Maureen to the sofa and slipped the plastic over the statue, and tied the bottom with a twist-o-flex.

“I should tell you,” she said, as she walked toward the front door, “although this is probably premature, that if you continue to be troubled by your husband’s infidelity, it is your good luck that I have an ex-sister-in-law who practices witchcraft.”

“L
IGHTS
! Camera! Action!

“Who says that? Nobody says that. Let’s take it from the top. People
do
say that. It makes sense, too. Think about all the people who are tempted to take it from the bottom.

“That was a bad joke.

“Hello, sweetheart. For one trillion zillion dollars and all the love that will fit onto a microchip, can you tell me who’s talking to you?

“Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s irrelevant if you’re farsighted. You don’t have to see to know that it’s Piggy Proctor, talking to you via TDK cassette. What you see as you hear my voice, no doubt, is a bird taking flight, and if there’s a plane, it’s a coincidence. You never looked up thinking you’d see Superman to begin with, did you? There you are, enjoying the beauty of nature in the country, and the real Superman is off making babies with his longtime love, Gay Exton.

“I can just hear you now: what do you
want
, Piggy?

“What’s to want, except your continued success. Never doubt me. As sure as they’ll never put fluorescent lighting in the Polo Lounge, Piggy Proctor lives for your continued success.

“Su casa, mi casa
.

“I am calling today with very good news. Just as you were beginning to feel like a yacht without water, what should happen but that the heavens open, and rain pours down for however many days and however many nights, and suddenly there is a vast ocean on which to set sail; you are buoyed up, higher and higher, until suddenly it is September, and all around you
a new ocean of possibility: you are aboard Noah’s Ark, and Piggy is with you. Where will the boat dock? On NBC. And where’s the beef?
Not only
have they decided to revive the series—not only have they decided to cough up under the influence of Piggy Proctor’s Heimlich Maneuvering, but they are going to a
nightly
half hour if they are pleased with the results of the pilot. Our new sponsor is a company in the Midwest that makes dehydrated oatmeal that puffs up when it hits milk. A bunch of neo-hippie capitalists sell the company and they decide to
diversify
, and what do they decide to gamble on but a girl whose fame they think will expand faster than oatmeal pellets.