Crossroads

“I would never compare my situation to a Black person’s in Alabama. That’s really almost offensive.”

Sophie smiled pleasantly. “I didn’t mean to be offensive.”

“I was lucky to find someone to marry me at all, after what I’d been through. And even then I married him under false pretenses. I can hardly go complaining that I’m oppressed by him now. Even the business with his widow friend—I didn’t blame Bradley for losing interest in his wife. Why should I blame Russ for losing interest in me? I’m a lot older and fatter than Bradley’s wife was.”

“Anger is an emotion,” Sophie said. “It doesn’t have to be logical. Right now, for example, I’m feeling very angry at your abuser. I’m also a little bit angry with you.”

“What for?”

“Listen to your assumptions. You were lucky to find someone to marry you? Why? What was so wrong with you? You were sexually experienced? You’d had a nervous breakdown? Would that have been a problem if you were male? Would you have been lucky to find a wife? And why was it so important to be married in the first place? Because a woman isn’t really a woman if she can’t find a husband and procreate? Because she—”

Sophie stopped herself and shook her head, as if she’d said too much. And Marion indeed was disappointed in her. The dumpling was so soft and slippery in her manner that her underlying conceptual program, whether Freudian or medical or political or what, had been hard to pinpoint. Now the program stood revealed. Marion guessed that it applied to every one of the neglected or discarded wives who came here—One Size Fits All. Was she supposed to be delighted that it fit her, too?

“You must get tired of it,” she said, not kindly. “All the ladies coming to you and complaining about their men. Week after week, men men men. It must be frustrating for you—that we can’t talk about something else. That we can’t see how oppressed we are.”

Sophie, who’d regained her composure, smiled pleasantly. “It’s interesting that you assume my other female patients only talk about men.”

“Are you telling me they don’t?”

“It doesn’t matter if they do or don’t. What matters is how you imagine them. Do you think I think you talk too much about men?”

“I think you do,” Marion said. “You keep telling me I need to develop more of an independent life. I think what you’re really saying is ‘Enough about men already—go liberate yourself.’”

“You don’t care for the idea of women’s liberation.”

“If that’s your program, I don’t object to it. If it works for your other patients, more power to them.”

“But it’s not for you.”

“That landlord was a sicko. I never saw my friend again, I never saw Isabelle, but I’ll bet you he’d found a way to have sex with her. She got behind with her rent, or she needed a professional favor, and he used his power to take advantage of her. He was fat and repulsive, and he only ran that house as a way to have sex with lots of girls. I was one of them, and what he did to me was sick. Even the part that was normal sex wasn’t normal. It was all happening in his head—I was just a thing.”

“Exactly.”

“But let’s say he went to a psychiatrist: Sir, you’re making me a little bit angry. Isn’t it time you developed a more independent life? All you ever talk about is girls!”

Sophie drew a slow breath and slowly let it out. “A good psychiatrist might have helped him identify the trauma he felt compelled to reenact.”

“Ah, there we go. What am I reenacting?”

“What’s your guess?”

“I don’t know. Guilt about my father’s suicide. Is that the idea?”

“If that’s what you say.”

“I’ve stopped feeling guilty about Russ. I certainly don’t feel guilty about the landlord. I was guilty, but that’s different from a feeling. That’s an objective fact. The people I feel guilty about are Perry and the child of Bradley’s I killed without telling him. They were innocent, and I’m responsible for them.”

The dumpling looked down at her pudgy hands. Darkness had fallen outside the window. Elsewhere in the dental office, late units of pain were being manufactured with a drill.

“Your mother,” Sophie said. “You said she was skiing with her friends when you needed help with your pregnancy. Did you feel angry about that?”

“My mother was a self-centered alcoholic nightmare.”

“I’ll take that as a yes. You’ve also told me about your anger at your sister. But it was your father who bankrupted your family—”

“Shirley and my mother made him do it.”

“He committed fraud and lied to you. Then your car salesman takes advantage of you, despite knowing how sensitive you are. A sexual deviant does unspeakable things to you. You support your husband for twenty-five years, and now he’s chasing someone else. And yet the only people you seem to be angry with are your mother and your sister. Do you see what I’m not understanding?”