The Uses of Enchantment (6 page)

I thought these people didn’t speak English.

They didn’t, Mary said. But after I fell asleep and woke up again, I could understand them.

I paused. Ever since the topic of sex had arisen, she’d continued to prod the interior of her compact with her finger. Should I point this out? Should I point out that “talking” to these people, speaking their language and understanding them, was tantamount to admitting she’d participated in an orgiastic manner with them? Or should I continue to permit her to inhabit her parallel universe and see what other suggestive similes emerged? “Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth,” said Archimedes. Even if that place is an illusion, and that world a brilliant hoax the mind has flung upon itself.

If we are to accept your story on a literal level, I said, which I’m not necessarily suggesting we do, there is one obvious interpretation.

I was put under a spell? she said.

In a manner of speaking, I said. You were hypnotized.

Mary stared again at the carpet.

Have you ever been hypnotized before, I said.

Mary had not.

Hypnosis is something I regularly do with my patients, I said, when they believe they lack a memory that is simply hidden in a forgotten place. However, some people use hypnosis for less therapeutic reasons. They use it to brainwash people into forgetting the bad things that happened to them.

That could be a good thing, Mary said.

It could be, I said. But a shortcut to happiness is never synonymous with happiness.

Don’t worry, she said. I’m not happy.

That’s why you’re here, I said. We’re going to try to help you remember what happened to you.

She shook her head.

That won’t be possible, she said.

Maybe not, I said. But it won’t hurt for us try.

But I’m telling you we won’t succeed. It’s impossible.

Why is it impossible? I said.

Because of the spell.

You mean the hypnosis.

I mean the
spell
.

How did you know it was a spell? I asked. I recalled a biographical detail from Mary’s file: her mother, a member of her local historical society, discovered that her family was distantly related to an accused witch who’d been hung and never pardoned by the state of Massachusetts. This relative had become an obsession for the mother; it had even been suggested by H-F’s notes that the shame the mother felt toward this relative was ignited by the subconscious cultural perception that accused witches were, in fact, women of wild sexual proclivities.

I wrote on my pad
sexual shame is equated with witchcraft
.

What are you writing? Mary asked.

Notes, I said.

Notes about me, she said.

It will be my habit to make notes during our sessions, I explained. Later, with the help of the audiotape, I will draft these notes into a more fleshed-out composition. This activity will help me gain a multipoint perspective on your case.

Are you writing a novel about us? she said.

If I’m writing a novel about us, that would imply that you’re a fictional character, I said.

It would also imply that you’re a fictional character, she said.

Let’s return to this “spell,” I said.

She picked at her sweater cuff.

You seem irritated with me, I said.

Only because you’re too busy writing to listen, she said, before succumbing to yet another coughing fit.

I thought I was listening, I said. What have you told me that I didn’t hear?

Instead of listening to what really happened to me, you’re trying to explain it away, she said. Her voice was hoarse.

It’s like you don’t believe me, she said.

Do you believe you? I asked.

That’s a stupid question, she said.

Why is it a stupid question?

That’s also a stupid question.

OK, I said. What’s an example of a non-stupid question?

Mary didn’t respond.

Let me put it this way, I said. What question would you most like to be asked?

She stared blankly at the carpet.

Mary? I said.

My end-of-session alarm beeped.

Mary closed her compact and returned it to her coat pocket. She rose from my desk chair and pulled on her gloves. I followed her to the door, opened it, waited for her to pass through into the waiting room. She paused at the threshold.

I would like to be asked if I enjoyed myself, she said.

What Might Have Happened

T
he man was a decent man. The girl could tell by the way he cautiously steered his Mercedes through the rainy streets of her town, as though she were endangered and required safeguarding against harm. He paused at a green light to allow a pedestrian, huddled under a tartan umbrella on the curb, to cross. He didn’t speak to her except to ask directions.

Left here, the girl said. Now a right. Another right.

The man stopped across the street from a white colonial, its shutters appearing black in the rain. A station wagon was parked in the cobbled drive, the lawn neatly raked of leaves.

His car idled, the wipers tick-tocking across the windshield in which, the girl noticed, there was a very small starburst crack at eye level. When cars passed them in the opposite direction, their headlights struck the crack and it seemed to her that the intense brilliance alone might shatter the glass.

You have a crack in your windshield, the girl said, pressing a forefinger to it.

I know, he said. Apparently I’ve been meaning to fix it.

The girl inspected her house, looking for signs of people. With the exception the front-door light, which her father had put on a timer, the house was dark.

I had good intentions to fix it, the man said.

Another car passed them. The man’s forehead gleamed sweaty in the headlights.

But I forgot to do it, the man said. I plumb forgot.

The girl saw, or thought she saw, a figure walking through her kitchen.

I plumb forgot, he repeated.

You forgot, she said distractedly. She was wondering if her sister was home, and if so, if she’d noted the car parked across from the house.

Yes yes it’s embarrassing, he said.

Why is it embarrassing? she asked.

Excuse me?

Why is it embarrassing? Do you have amnesia or something? the girl said.

The man rotated the cartilege of his nose rapidly with the pad of his little finger.

Hello?
I asked you if you had amnesia. Or have you already forgotten, she joked.

He cleared his throat and pulled a cigarette case from the inside pocket of his trench coat. The case was silver, it was tarnished, it was collapsed in the center and vaguely boat-shaped, as though it had been stomped upon.

Mint? he said, offering her the case. In the light of a passing car, she could see it was monogrammed with the single letter
K
.

She accepted a mint. It smelled of tobacco.

You don’t smoke, the girl observed. Or did you used to? I mean before you got amnesia?

Smoking almost killed me, the man said.

You had lung cancer, the girl said.

Yes, the man said. I mean no.

You poor man, the girl said. Who are you?

The man stared through the windshield. From the side his naturally bulging eyes appeared fishlike, stupid.

I was trying to light a cigarette while crossing the street, he said slowly. It was a windy day.

Because it was windy, smoking almost killed you?

Because it was windy, I had my head down, I was cupping the match with my hands. I didn’t see the car. So, yes. Because it was windy, smoking almost killed me.

How awful, the girl said.

Yes, the man said distantly. I suppose it was awful.

You don’t remember the accident? the girl said.

I don’t, he said. Apparently I’m not the same man I was.

According to whom?

According to whom
. My grammarian ex-wife would be very impressed, the man said. According to the doctors. According to my ex-wife, who was my ex-wife before the accident. She claims I used to be taciturn and self-defeating, I used to be a trial lawyer who lacked animation, I used to be an uninspired dinner-party guest. I used to be a heavy sleeper. I used to detest shrimp.

Wow, the girl said. Do you miss yourself?

The man laughed bitterly.

It’s hard to miss a man who married a woman I cannot imagine anyone finding attractive, he said.

The rain increased its intensity. The girl watched as a van pulled into her driveway; her older sister emerged from the passenger side, her school blazer pup-tented over her head. She ran for the side door and fumbled beneath an empty clay planter for the house key.

Her sister vanished inside the house.

It’s getting late, the man said.

The girl reached down to grab her backpack, then remembered she’d left it in her locker.

I wonder, said the girl, if not knowing who you are—I mean, were—feels exciting or frightening.

Must it be one or the other? the man asked.

But you could be anybody now, the girl said. You might be a champion chess player or a famous artist. You might be a criminal.

The man gripped the steering wheel with his gloved hands. He wore black gloves, the sort of gloves, shiny and tight-fitting, that TV stranglers wear.

Exciting and frightening, the man said. Both, I’d say.

I’m hungry, the girl said. You?

The man didn’t respond.

I’m in the mood for shrimp, the girl said.

One by one all the windows of her house ignited. Her sister was a nervous person, terrified of robbers, kidnappers, all-purpose intruders. She had yet to realize that the way to surmount your fears was to stalk them and invite them to dinner.

The man didn’t say yes, he didn’t say no. He put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb just as the girl’s sister appeared in the living-room window, her body a silhouette framed by the curtains.

The man had a good sense of direction, or at least his new self did; he didn’t ask the girl
left here?
or
right?
The rain had submerged the roads and driving the Mercedes appeared to be like steering an unwieldy scow; each slight turn of the man’s wrist resulted in a delayed, and disproportionately large, directional shift. He slalomed out of the girl’s neighborhood, a canopied tangle of poorly drained roads lined with very old houses close to the curb and very new houses built to look like very old houses set farther back in the woods. The girl’s mother hated these new-old houses, these sentimental facsimiles with their suburban willow trees and their diagonal property sitings and their perfectly round ponds. Her mother volunteered at the historical society and the landmarks commission; she was in charge of maintaining the dignity of dead things.

The man turned south on Harbor Road. It was completely dark now, though only 5:46 p.m., according to the car clock. The girl did not ask
where are we going?
Possibly a restaurant. Possibly his house, where he now kept a freezerful of shrimp at his ready disposal. Possibly to his boat (if he had a boat), where he would offer her a beer and they would sit in the damp cabin and the sex, if they had it, would be the chafing kind that would leave friction burns in places he hadn’t even touched her. Possibly to the woods, where he would rape and dismember her and promptly forget he’d even met her, because his short-term memory, too, might be compromised. She allowed these blacker possibilities to slide in and out of her consciousness without paying them any more attention than the blander ones; she did not want to seem nervous or immature to the man, because she knew his willingness to be seduced by her depended upon this.

The road got darker, the houses fewer and farther between. The girl shivered. Her sweatpants and her ski jacket were still damp, and the damp had transferred to her skin, then to the muscle layer beneath. The man, noticing, turned on the heat. The air from the vents smelled of many-times-burned things.

They passed a gas station, a marina sign, a reclining-chair store advertising a fire sale. Commerce began picking up, and the girl relaxed; at least she would be dismembered and raped in a neighborhood. Dying, even in the proximity of clueless strangers, seemed less terrifying than dying alone in the woods. They passed a dry cleaners, a plumbing supply store, the infamous day-care center run by two old women, now jailed and awaiting trial. These old women had been accused of doing unspeakable things involving toddlers and their own wrinkled bodies. They had been accused of riding broomsticks around the room. It was so unbelievable that it was totally and completely believable, at least to some people. But the girl needed only to glimpse the newspaper pictures of the two women—with their iron-colored hair, their drugstore reading glasses, their lumpy bodies in lumpy cardigans, their tiny gold crucifixes—to know there was nothing perverse or witchlike about these old ladies; the only potential crime they’d committed was to live their entire lives in an unimaginative way.

Eventually the man turned into the lot of a diner.

Tick-tock-tick-tock
went the wipers.

Do they serve shrimp here? the girl asked.

The man squinted at the diner windows, trying to read the giant menu slanting from the ceiling.

I have no idea, he said. But I hear the food is good.

From whom? the girl said.

From whom
, he said. From my ex-wife. According to her, this is where we came on our first date.

The girl tucked her chin into her ski coat collar. Rain splattered noisily on the car hood, the drops widely spaced and as heavy as nickels. The man exited the car, walked to her side, opened her door. He’d forgotten to put on a hat. His hair recoiled boyishly in the wet, encircling the lobes of his ears.

Perhaps we should be introduced, he said, holding out a hand.

OK, said the girl, palm pressed against his strangler’s glove. I’m Ida. Who would you like to be?

West Salem