An Inconvenient Wife Part 11

S: Then we must try to find the reason that you can't have a child. Do you- Here I stopped, because Mrs. C. was hiding her face from me with her hands. I gently forced them down, keeping them covered with my own while I gave her the command to remain calm and told her again to imagine the ocean. It had some effect, though she did not stop crying and in fact seemed disturbed by the image that had brought her peace only moments before.

C: I can't bear to think of it now. I have ruined things so badly.

S: Ruined what?

C: My marriage. My life.

S: Why do you say you have ruined it? What have you done?

C: If I could only be like everyone else. If I did not want so much.

S: It's no crime to want children. Women naturally- C: I don't want children.

She spoke the words baldly, and with them, her tears stopped. She looked up at me in what could have been either shocked realization or a bold challenge.

S: You don't want children?

C: No.

It is not so unusual that women in unhappy circ.u.mstances do not wish to visit those circ.u.mstances upon their children and so choose not to become pregnant. But Mrs. C. does not live in poverty; her husband does not abuse her; she has a life envied by many.

S: I'm sure you believe that to be the case. The emotions you're experiencing- C: I'm not deluding myself. I've never wanted children. I knew it when I was quite small.

S: Are you telling me that you feel no need to commit to what is considered to be woman's sole purpose?

C: To have a child is not my purpose.

S: I see. Then what is?

C: I want to paint.

I have seen this kind of displacement many, many times. Her disappointment in being unable to conceive has channeled itself into the urge for selfish expression for which there is no talent or real desire beyond the statement "I want to paint."

S: Hypnosis cannot give you talent. I can't create something from nothing.

C: I have talent. Or once I did. It's been so long, I don't know.

S: You have picked up a paintbrush, then? You've applied yourself to painting?

C: Yes.

S: But you no longer paint?

C: My father took my paints away when I was a girl.

S: Why?

Here she began to show distress once again. She could not keep still. I debated whether to calm her, but she continued before I could intervene.

C: He disapproved of it. He said it wasn't a ladylike profession, that I was embarra.s.sing him by pursuing it.

S: Most women learn painting. How was your pursuit unladylike?

C: He said I was too ardent. He said I would make myself ill, as I'd been before.

S: You were ill before?

C: He took my paints and he threw them into the street. The horses . . . the carriages . . . they kept on going as if they didn't see, and I couldn't save them. He threw my canvas into the fire and said . . . he said, "You'll not get another one of those, my girl, not as long as I live. It's best you learn how to be a wife." He said I should have children and devote myself to them. Not painting. Not poetry. "You'll only be unhappy," he said. "Believe me. I know."

During this speech, Mrs. C. seemed most inconsolable. Her hands came up as if she were trying to stop someone, and her whole body was in a state of tremendous agitation.

S: Was this the end of it, then? Did you never paint again?

C: I tried. I bribed the maid to buy me some paints, but Papa caught her and dismissed her, and then no one would take the chance. Every time I came home from shopping, he checked my bags and boxes. He searched my room to make sure. After a while it seemed best . . . not to try .

S: Perhaps he was only trying to protect you.

C: Protect me from what? Being happy?

S: Is that what you think? That your father wants you to be unhappy?

C: I don't know.

S: Your father doesn't rule you now. Why don't you paint again?

C: William would never allow it. Papa told him early in our courtship that I was fragile. That I should be kept from paints and poetry. They were too overstimulating. He said I had a propensity for melodrama and illness.

S: Did William tell you this?

C: I was there when Papa said it. He wanted to make sure I heard.

S: So you would not try again?

C: Yes.

S: You said earlier that you had been ill. When was this?

C: I was thirteen, and I found poetry. I quite gave myself up to Byron.

S: To the point of illness?

C: I wanted to write like him, to be him.

S: To be Byron would be to be a man.

C: Isn't it only men who live so pa.s.sionately? Who experience every moment?

S: Is that what you wanted, then? To pursue moments?

C: To pursue life.

S: And you can't pursue life within your marriage?

Here Mrs. C. began to cry as pa.s.sionately as she had spoken. The sobs seemed to come from deep within her chest. "Rest," I said, and she immediately quieted.

To see such emotion in this woman was fascinating. It explained much that has puzzled me. Her hysteria no doubt comes from her unconscious confusion-to long for something and be denied that longing with no hope of ever achieving it. I began to believe that despite the inclinations of her s.e.x, perhaps she truly does not want children, that such a circ.u.mstance might drive her to deeper levels of despair. I also understood why her unconscious mind did not grasp my suggestions urging calm. To be at peace is not what she wants. To be like other women is also not her desire, as much as she protests that it is. It is clear that she does not want to be well in this world her father and husband have made for her, a world as a wife and mother, without the pa.s.sion that exists within her, a pa.s.sion that has no outlet but hysteria. Any suggestion I make that more firmly urges her adaptation to this world may not be successful.

Failure is not what her husband wants; it is not what she claims to want. And yet I cannot deny the temptation such knowledge presents. In Mrs. C., I am reminded of the old questions: How much influence does the unconscious mind have over the will? How much control? If I discovered the wellspring of the inner life this woman claims not to want, and I planted the correct suggestions in her unconscious mind, would they overcome her reason? Her will?

Fascinating, but impossible that such an opportunity for research exists in this woman. This woman who is everything I've dismissed so contemptuously before now. I know I cannot pursue this. It is irresponsible. If my suspicions are correct, the pa.s.sion she tries so hard to hide and control would ruin her were it brought to light. She would no longer be able to exist within her world, and I have no faith she could exist out of it.

Yet what could it harm to learn more?

Chapter 9.

Where is my husband?" I asked Dr. Seth.

He looked at me with grave eyes. "No doubt he'll be here soon. The opera is nearly over."

I remembered then. Seth's visit to our box, my escape. What I did not remember was anything after that.

"You hypnotized me," I accused.

He didn't deny it. He merely shrugged.

"What suggestion did you put in my mind this time?" I asked. I felt violated, as if he had somehow seen me unclothed and taken an image without my permission.

"I planted no suggestion," he said simply. "You will not yield to me, Lucy, and I cannot fight you. We are doomed to failure."

I was not sure which to be more stunned by, his admission of failure or his use of my given name.

"What do you mean, we're doomed to failure? Do you mean you can't cure me?"

"I mean you don't want to be cured."

"But I do. I do. I cannot go on this way." I was desperate, my anger forgotten in the realization of what I must tell William, at what would happen to me. Another failure. Dr. Seth was our last hope, and even he could not mend the break within me. "But you can't give up so soon. Why, we've barely tried!"

"I no longer believe that you want what your husband hired me to bring you."

"But I do. I want to be well."

"Ah." He uncrossed his arms and hesitated. I had the sense he was deciding something. He said, "There is a difference, Lucy, between being well and being alive."

I stared at him in confused silence. "I-I don't understand."

His eyes lit with a strange intensity that had me shrinking against the leather seat. He seemed driven by an excitement that animated him as he leaned toward me, so close I smelled the sage and citrus of his shaving soap. "Do you remember what we discussed while you were in a trance state?"

"N-no."

He put his hands on my forehead, fingers and thumb pressing into my skin. "You can remember," he said.

It was odd; suddenly I could. I remembered his questions, I remembered crying. I remembered the day my father took my paints from me, throwing them into the street, his words; and then later, William's compliance.

I recoiled from Seth's fingers, appalled, feeling violated again. "You stole my memory," I whispered.

"Not stole," he corrected. "You told me freely. I did not force you. I believe you wanted me to know."

"It was a long time ago. I was very young."

He hesitated. "Lucy-"

"I have not given you permission to call me that."

"Lucy, tell me something. These things you say you want: to be like other women, to be at peace-are you certain they would make you happy?"

I was filled with a terrible fear. "Yes. Yes, of course."

"You've led an entire life ruled by a will not your own," he said. "Your father's will, your husband's will. What if you could be the woman you were meant to be? What if you could escape from this"-he gestured futilely about the carriage-"this dull acquiescence?"

I stared at him. "Surely you're joking. My father would be appalled if I were such a woman. William would leave me. My friends would turn from me. It would destroy me. Surely you must understand that. I came to you for help. I want to be like everyone else."

He stared at me for a long moment, and then he said, "I'm not sure we can achieve that, Lucy."

"Stop calling me Lucy," I ordered. My voice was harsher than I intended. "My husband is paying you a goodly sum of money to make me well."

"Which I can do only if you're honest with me."

"Very well." I nodded. "I'll be honest."

At that he smiled, but it was a disturbing smile, one I didn't trust. I considered taking back my words, telling him it would be better not to see him again. But then I thought of William, of the asylum, and they filled me with such a terrible desperation that I said, "I don't want to fail, Dr. Seth. Please. I know you can help me. You must help me."

"Very well," he said, and though there was resignation in his voice, I had the strange feeling that he was not at all resigned. "Then we will try again. Be at my office tomorrow. At one o'clock."

"One o'clock," I agreed.

"What is it he does?" William asked for the dozenth time as we came into the house. He followed me as I handed my cloak to Harris. I headed for the stairs, pausing to adjust the gas, waiting for the little pfftt as it went out. "You were so calm when I came back with your father."

I sighed. "So you've said."

"I tell you, it was like magic. Like some parlor trick. What does he do to you?"