“Here,” Rose said. She poured more lemonade and Bea drank it. Rose lit a cigarette and went on, “I used to think sexual freedom meant doing whatever you wanted, with whomever you wanted, whenever you wanted to, but now I wonder if I’d be better off married.”
“Uh-huh.” The lemonade was spiked, Bea realized. Between the rum and the crash and the heat of the day she was woozy. She would have liked to curl up in her own chair, read smut until her eyes closed, sleep all afternoon. The only person who had ever used the word “sexual” in front of her was one doctor at Fainwright. And your sexual intimacy, it was forced, yes?
“I think I thought my sexual self was a man. Not homosexual, I don’t mean that, I mean voracious, craving variety, impossible to pin down. I think I was wrong.”
Bea nodded. Yes. Yes, she nodded at Fainwright.
“I’ve been reading Freud,” Rose said. “You’re not so sucked into the temperance vortex that you haven’t heard of Freud, right?”
This was why Bea couldn’t complain about the lemonade, which was rapidly loosening her mind. “Yes, I’ve heard of Freud. I’ve read him, actually.” In fact Freud had been read to her, by a fellow patient whose name Bea couldn’t remember now, a poet who said that Freud was the future, that the Europeans knew it but Fainwright was stuck in the last century with its Swedish exercise machines and pummeling shower cages and ice wraps. Bea remembered little of the Freud passage now. She remembered mostly that the poet was a tall, handsome woman with dark, billowing eyebrows whom Bea found surprisingly beautiful, even alluring. And she remembered—the memory cut like a scythe through the dense field of all she had forgotten—one doctor saying to another, “Don’t you see how centrally Ms. Haven’s poor appetite functions in this case? Wouldn’t it make sense that a girl who wishes to repress her memory of her first sexual encounter, an encounter against her will, would attempt to rid herself of womanly flesh?” She remembered his pride, his sweaty face, how he had swaggered out of the conference room without looking at her. She was humiliated now, remembering this.
Rose swished lemonade in her mouth, puffed out her cheeks, swallowed loudly, exhaled. “I just think I actually want one man, one man who knows how to please me. I’m tired of pleasing myself. It’s so . . . boring. After a while.”
Bea could no longer look at Rose. She knew but did not know what Rose was talking about. She took up her book again, whiffled through the pages. She found herself imagining, where Rose’s feet were tucked up underneath her, men’s hands there, men’s mouths. She found herself thinking of the lieutenant fingering her dress off her shoulder, pulling up her skirt, pushing her against the wall.
“Bea-Bea.” Rose giggled. “You look terrified.”
“My mother,” Bea whispered.
“Your mother is outside talking with Brigitte, pretending that she is French and that Brigitte’s baby is yours. Your mother can’t hear us. And neither can mine. But Albert, for instance. I mean, doesn’t he . . . make you happy? Tell me he makes you happy. When you actually see each other, of course.” She scrunched her nose. “So maybe that isn’t the best example.”
Bea was stuck on Rose’s nonchalant mention of Vera. What was wrong with Bea that she should miss Rose’s mother more than Rose did? Bea used to think everyone must have a mother they loved better than their own, but now she wasn’t sure—who else took refuge in her aunt’s house ten years after the aunt had died? She said, “I’m probably a bad example in every way.”
“Still, he’s there. If you wanted him.”
“Yes.”
“He’s very handsome.”
“He’s very handsome.”