He handed her a pretty teacup. It was filled with hot water and a few seeds from when he had squeezed the dregs of a lemon into it.
“So I see you’ve been stricken by my old pal, Melancholia! Why is it that we never give sadness its due? Why do we insist on keeping so many things secret? Tell me about your relationship with sadness, please.”
“Even when I was a little girl I wanted to make everybody happy.”
When she spoke, phlegm cracked her voice. Since she hadn’t spoken in a while her words seemed to be covered in rust. She was glad to talk to the doctor. She always liked to have meaningful conversations. Sometimes you tried to talk to people and nothing worked. The words were all stiff and slow.
“I always had this gift. Even though we were in this big orphanage where we weren’t supposed to experience anything like happiness or joy, I was still able to see beauty every day. As a child, I existed in a strange, prolonged state of glorious rapture.”
“Nostalgia and Melancholia are thick as thieves. Old pals from grammar school, one could say.”
“There was only one other child in the orphanage who was able to do this. He was known by everyone as Pierrot. He could feel it too. That wonder. He was also a collector of beautiful moments.
“The times did not encourage such children to survive. The rest of them are all lying in tiny wooden boxes in the cemetery. Like packaged dolls to be opened on the final miraculous Christmas.
“I decided it would be wonderful to invite a great bear as a visitor to the orphanage. And he had a great big heart. He had a heart the size of ten of the mothers. He had such a big heart that he couldn’t help but be a pervert. Could he? He couldn’t help but be a little inappropriate. But wasn’t it better to have someone who was always gushing annoyingly about love than someone who was reserved with it? They had never had someone pinching their cheeks and squeezing them so hard that they could barely breathe. The big dirty philandering bear was a dream come true.”
“When we accept our perversion, we accept ourselves.”
“I wouldn’t have been able to express any of that then, of course. But I was a very complicated little girl. I think I was so interested in navigating these strange emotional seas that I became a pervert. Or I lack moral fiber. Either/or. But I would like you to know that I am trying to combat this . . . well . . . complicated aspect of myself. And can you deduce, doctor, what is wrong with me?”
“You’ll have to take off your underwear and lie on the couch with your legs back up in the air.”
“Why in the world would that be necessary?”
“So that I can check my prognosis.”
“And what is said prognosis?”
“There’s a certain sort of melancholy that is a symptom of pregnancy.”
In the aquarium a butterfly began to emerge from the cocoon. It looked at first like an umbrella that someone was having trouble opening, and then each wing fluttered out. Dr. Bernstein held a little box of chocolates for her to choose from. Each one looked like the face of a crying baby. But they were actually shaped like roses.
? ? ?
ROSE WALKED AWAY from the building, frightened. She didn’t have any of the symptoms of pregnancy usually considered typical. She wasn’t sick in the morning. She hadn’t even missed a period. She did, however, know strange things. She was able to guess people’s middle names. She knew how old cats were. She always knew what numbers were going to come up on the die at the barbotte tables. She was surprised to be accumulating so much money. She was making a tidy profit just through betting on them.
Things that were unhappy called out to her. She lifted up a rock to discover a beetle underneath it, squashed. She opened the back door of a restaurant and a bird that had accidentally been trapped inside flew out. Perhaps it was all coincidence.
? ? ?
SHE DID NOT TELL MCMAHON for fear it would make it more real.
? ? ?
SHE BEGAN throwing up in a bucket. What happened if an unwanted child gave birth to an unwanted child? It was as though she were in a hall of mirrors, except that instead of getting smaller in each one, she got younger and younger.
? ? ?
BUT IT DIDN’T HAPPEN that way. Instead she had a cramp one morning. She went to sit on the toilet. And when she was done, there was the world’s tiniest baby floating in the toilet. She put her hands up to her face. She pulled the chain and her firstborn was flushed.
23
OF MICE AND WOMEN