Self-Defence

"We were used to being shifted around."

"What about the half siblings you mentioned?"

"Ken and Jo? They lived with their mother, in San Francisco. Like I said, there's no contact at all."

"Where was your father all this time?"

"Being famous."

"Did he support you financially?"

"Oh, sure, the checks kept coming, but for him that was no big deal, he's rich from his mother's side. The bills were paid through his bank, and my living expenses were sent to the school and doled out by the headmistress- very organized for an artiste, wouldn't you say?"

"He never came to visit?"

She shook her head. "Not once. Two or three times a year he'd call, on the way to some conference or art show."

She pulled something out of her eyelashes.

"I'd get a message to come to the school office and some secretary would hand me the phone, awestruck. I'd brace myself, say hello, and this thunderous voice would come booming through. "Hello, girl. Eating freshly blooded moose meat for breakfast? Getting your corpuscles moving?' Witty, huh? Like one of his stupid macho hunting stories. A summary of what he was doing, then good-bye. I don't think I spoke twenty words in all those years."

She turned to me.

"When I was fourteen, I finally decided I'd had enough and got my roommate to tell him I was out of the dorm. He never called again. All you get with a Great Man is one chance."

She tried to smile, lips working at it, struggling to form the shape. Finally, she managed to force the corners upward.

"It's no big deal, Dr. Delaware. Mother died when I was so young I never really knew what it was like to lose her. And he was… nothing. Like I said, lots of people have it worse."

"This issue of being ordinary-"

"I really do like it. Not a shred of talent, same with Puck. That's probably why he has nothing to do with us. Living reminders that he's produced mediocrity. He probably wishes we'd all disappear. Poor Jo obliged."

"How did she die?"

"Climbed a mountain in Nepal and never came down. His wives oblige him, too. Three out of four are dead."

"Your mother must have been very young when she died."

"Twenty-one. She got the flu and went into some sort of toxic shock."

"So she was only twenty when she married him?"

"Just barely. He was forty-six. She was a Barnard girl, too, a sophomore. They met because she was in charge of bringing speakers to campus, and she invited him. Three months later she dropped out, he took her to Paris, and they got married. Puck was born there."

"When did they get divorced?"

"They didn't. Right after I was born, he went back to France. It wasn't long after when she died. The doctors called him, but he never came to the phone. Two weeks after the funeral, a postcard arrived at Aunt Kate's, along with a check."

"Who told you this?"

"Puck. He heard it from Aunt Kate- he went out to visit her in New Zealand after he finished college."

"Ken and Jo are older than you and Puck?"

"Yes. Their mother was his second wife, Mother was his third. The first was Thérèse Vainquer- the French poet?"

I shook my head.

"Apparently she was pretty hot in postwar Paris, hanging around with Gertrude Stein and that bunch. She left him for a Spanish bullfighter and was killed in a car crash soon after. Next came Emma, Ken and Jo's mom. She was an artist, not very successful. She died around fifteen or sixteen years ago- breast cancer, I think. He left her for my mom, Isabelle Frehling. His fourth wife was Jane something or other, an assistant curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. They met because the museum had a bunch of his paintings stored in their basement and he wanted them exhibited in order to revive his painting career- it's pretty dead, you know. So is his writing career. Anyway, he dumped her after about a year and hasn't married since. But it wouldn't surprise me if he's got another sweet young thing right now. Illusion of immortality."

She crossed her legs and held one knee with both hands.

Tossing out details about a man who supposedly had no role in her life.

She read my mind. "I know, I know, it sounds as if I cared enough to find all this out, but I got it from Puck. A few years ago, he was into this discover-your-roots thing. I didn't have the heart to tell him I couldn't care less."

Folding her arms across her chest.

"So," I said, "at least we know the log cabin wasn't somewhere you've actually been. At least not with your father."

"Call him Buck, please. Mr. Macho, the Great Man, whatever, anything but that."

Touching her stomach.

Remembering the ulcer she'd had before college, I said, "Where did you live the summer after you graduated from high school?"

She hesitated for a second. "I volunteered at a Head Start center in Boston."

"Was it difficult?"

"No. I loved teaching. This was in Roxbury, little ghetto kids who really responded. You could see the effects after one summer."

"Did you ever consider a teaching career?"

"I tossed it around, but after all those years in school- growing up in schools- I just wasn't ready for another classroom. I guess I might have eventually done it, but the bookkeeping thing came up and I just rolled with the flow."

I thought of the isolation that had been her childhood. Milo had talked about tough times strengthening her- a mugging of sorts. But maybe it was nothing specific, just an accumulation of loneliness.

"That's it," she said. "Now do you understand my dream?"

"Not in the least."

She looked at me and laughed. "Well, that's straight out."

"Better no answer than a wrong one."

"True, true." Laughing some more, but her hands were tense and restless and she tapped her feet.

"I guess I'm ticked off," she said.

"About what?"

"Him in my dreams. It's an… invasion. Why now?"

"Maybe you're ready, now, to deal with your anger toward him."

"Maybe," she said doubtfully.

"That doesn't feel right?"

"I don't know. I really don't think I'm angry at him. He's too irrelevant to get angry at."

Anger had stiffened her voice. I said, "The girl in the dream, how old is she?"

"Nineteen or twenty, I guess."

"About your mother's age when she married him."

Her eyes widened. "So you think I'm dreaming about his violation of Mother? But Mother was blond and this girl has dark hair."

"Dreams aren't bound by reality."

She thought for a while. "I suppose it could be that. Or something else symbolic- the young chicks he always chased- but I really don't think I'd dream about his girlfriends. Sorry."

"For what?"

"I push you for interpretations and then keep shooting them down."

"That's okay," I said. "It's your dream."

"Yes- only I wish it wasn't. Any idea when I'll get rid of it?"

"I don't know, Lucy. The more I know about you, the better answer I can give you."

"Does that mean I have to keep talking about my past?"

"It would help, but don't make yourself uncomfortable."

"Do I need to talk about him?"

"Not until you're ready."

"What if I'm never ready?"

"That's up to you."

"But you think it would be useful."

"He was in the dream, Lucy."

She started to crack a knuckle and stopped herself.

"This is getting tough," she said. "Maybe I should call the psychic buddies."