course she is. One cannot help but judge every second of one’s existence. To consider is to judge.
She opens the manila folder on her desk and reads for a few moments, as if answers might be there. “When did you marry Jean?”
He notices now that she is wearing only one earring, a light blue teardrop, possibly topaz, hanging from her delicate left ear. This earring shivers a little when she moves her head. In the other ear, nothing. Is this a mistake or some new fashion? She reaches up to her right ear where he’s looking, feels the absence herself, surveys her desk, and finds the missing teardrop by the phone. She sticks it back in her ear in a single quick move. When did you marry Jean? A change-of-pace question calculated to lower the intensity level a bit.
“After.”
“After?”
“Her rape, her move from town, the loss of her baby. After everything.”
“Did you marry Jean thinking that you could heal her?”
Heal her—a therapist’s way of thinking, and a woman’s way. “I married Jean thinking that I loved her.”
“And your love wasn’t enough to make her whole again?”
“Love’s never enough.” Paul says. “Love doesn’t stop pain. Love doesn’t stop hate. They say love and hate are two sides of the same coin, but that’s wrong. Love and hate are on the same side of the coin, all mixed up together. Nothing separates love and hate.”
“Are you saying you ended up loving and hating Jean?”
Of course he’s saying that. Does he really need to state the obvious? Why do therapists always make you do that, as if there’s no truth without words? He says, “Do you think all men are capable of rape?” Another incendiary question, blurted out. It must be considered his hallmark now. Perhaps that’s how she refers to him with Simon—my patient who blurts things out.
He meets her eyes. They’re dark green, a stirred-up sea. “I think there is the potential for violence in all people,” she says, “male or female, and sometimes it expresses itself as rape.”
“And before it expresses itself you can’t tell who’s capable of it, right? Any average ordinary guy—like an uncle or cousin or a husband, even a mild-mannered man like me, for instance—could rape, under certain circumstances.” She looks up at him, sensing he has more to say. “And I did.”
“You raped someone?”
“Jean.”
“You raped your wife?”
The surprise in her voice surprises him. “Being married doesn’t give a man license for sex on demand, does it?”
“No, but normally—”
“There was no normally in our marriage. Jean did everything she could to avoid sex with me.”
“From the beginning of your marriage?”
“From the beginning through the middle to the end.”
“I see.”
He rises a bit from his seat. “Could you stop saying that? You don’t see, so please stop saying it.”
She hesitates, then, “I was going to say that normally—”
He doesn’t care what she was going to say. “A year after we married,” he says, “on our anniversary night, I decided I’d waited long enough. So I crawled on top of Jean in bed, my weight holding her down, and I spread her legs and I …” He can’t say the word. Surely she knows what he means. “That’s how I did it, maybe twice a year, no more. She didn’t even fight me after the first. But each time I had sex with my wife I felt like I was raping her. Raping her,” he says louder.
Amy leans over her desk toward him. “Mr. Chambers?”
“Raping her!” he shouts.
She picks up her notepad and raps it one sharp time on the desk—“Stop!” It’s so surprising, this outburst of energy from her, that he obeys. She says, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to end our session early today.”
“You’re afraid?”
“It’s just a figure of speech. I have—”
“—other pressing business?”
“… a family matter to attend to.”
She gets up from her seat, and he does, too, a little too fast. He steadies himself with a hand on her desk. “That’s a coincidence,” he says, “because I have a family matter to attend to as well.”
She tugs down on her blouse, a protective little gesture. “You didn’t mention having family in the area,” she says in a calmer voice, feeling back on safe ground, talking about families.
Paul shakes his head. “I don’t. You do.”
She takes a step around the desk, and he meets her there, within arm’s reach, just bare space between them. She slides sideways, and he mirrors her move, as if in a dance, perfect harmony. He can’t remember the last