and fearing where they could lead.
A memory suddenly insinuates itself. A memory of doublebooking an engagement. He had arranged a dinner with friends when he’d already committed himself (except that he hadn’t) to a function with Laney’s family.
How come, she had asked, you can recall all those work statistics yet not remember a simple arrangement with me?
He’d said `they’re not comparable things’. And had been content to believe it; to leave unexamined a contradiction that surely indicated something concerning about the way his mind worked. Or about how it didn’t.
Perhaps it also revealed something concerning about his character. Because of the two engagements, he had remembered the less important.
The coffee shop is now thoroughly oppressive. He is not quite at the point at which he can locate the oppression within himself.
He pays for the privilege (I am always paying) and seeks refuge in the street. Leaves eddy and swirl; a Bogart hat would not be inappropriate.
For warmth. For protection.
For disguise.
And recalls something else as he saunters to the pub. It’s now almost one, and he needs food as much as he needs a drink.
A(nother) conversation with Laney. A playful conversation (or as close as he could get to that) in the aftermath of sex.
We can’t disguise ourselves from ourselves, she’d said.
And he had said (and believed it)
Ah but we can.
How long had he believed that?
And why, at this point, does it seem important to find out?
Something jars him. He remembers a movie in which the quiet but potent denouement had been the realization of the protagonist that he had failed some obscure but significant test.
That in the multiple, and sometimes unrecognized challenges life throws up, he’d been presented with one that had revealed him to be wanting. And had been forced to acknowledge an internal deficit of which he would have preferred to remain ignorant.
Memory of that movie is disconcerting.
For what other reason than that he can identify with it?
But if he has failed to deliver in some important and irrevocable way (for that was the crunch; the self-insight had been non-negotiable) is that solely the product of his own weakness?
Given what had happened to him – what had happened to him; those words still unseat him - could he have coped better?
When he had always driven himself so hard?
What chance had he ever had to indulge particular qualities and capacities, including some that denoted a fully functioning human being?
What had happened to his ability to relax, to connect, to empathize?
To spontaneity, generosity; the capacity to relate?
He’d experienced those things fleetingly. Only to find himself withdrawing when something more seemed to be required of him.
Sometimes, on those long night drives when almost all he could see was his own incapacity, he wondered whether it was possible to reconfigure himself.
Or even to recognize what that might entail.
Something has been taken from me.
I don’t even know what it is. But I want and need it back.
How did one begin to disclose to another, to a therapist, the enormity and devastation felt to have been wrought?
He should be grateful even to be able to think about communicating it. For years he had stumbled alone like a blind man in a fog, barely able to register what he was experiencing.
But it isn’t gratitude he feels now. It’s that cocktail of nausea and anxiety.
It is overwhelming; he needs to pull over again…
4
`So how’s that skin cancer coming along?
She winces at her friend’s directness. Diane is as forthright as she herself is tentative. Yet that’s also part of the reason for their friendship. The seeking out of opposites, the filling of deficits.
For the most part they relate well. But there are times when their contrasting styles are problematic.
And this is one of them.
`It’s OK I think’.
`Still using the Chinese herbs?’
Does the question contain an implicit challenge? Or is she being over-sensitive?
Maybe it’s the association with Shen.
Gentle Shen, locked up in a detention centre.
Her blood simmers. The blemish on her chest (just above the neckline of her shirt, albeit invisible under a bandaid) likely darkens in sympathy. Or is it malignancy.
`Yes’.
`Are they working?’
`Well – ‘
Are they? It’s hard to tell. The blemish is changing in composition. Although it doesn’t seem to be diminishing in size.
`Shouldn’t you go back to that dermatologist?’
`His only option was to cut. It’s not a melanoma, so there’s no rush. And there are other possibilities for treatment’.
She can tell Diane’s forthrightness stems from concern. So tries to check the annoyance she feels. She is also surprised by the number of her women friends who endorse the surgical remedy so blithely. Since it would leave a permanent scar in a visible and delicate place, why wouldn’t she (wouldn’t they?) want to canvas alternatives?
But she also represses annoyance with herself, and even shame, for thinking of the effects on her appearance.
In a world of injustice she is worried about the cosmetic effects of minor surgery to erase a skin cancer! She should be so lucky. A glimpse of the evening news a week ago had featured amputations, without anaesthetic, on children in a refugee camp.
`As long as you keep an eye on it’.
`Oh, yeah, I am’.
Which she is, although with a kind of detachment. Perhaps she is less motivated by unexpected and disconcerting vanity than by disbelief that she has developed the thing at all. She had lain in the sun a lot years ago. And often without sunblock (so did a lot of people; that was what you did back then).
