Golden Fleece

Maddening not to know, not to be able to interpret categorically. And yet, parts of the message were even more elusive, more perplexing …

EIGHT

I do not pretend to understand what Kirsten was going through. I mean, here she was, back in the apartment she now shared with Aaron, trying to comfort her lover over the death of his ex-wife. That it was distressing her greatly was evident from her medical telemetry: her pulse was up, her EEG agitated, her breathing somewhat ragged. Although I had no way of measuring gastric acidity directly, she showed all the other signs of having a royal case of heartburn. Kirsten, tall and cool and reserved, wasn’t as demonstrative as Diana had been, but I knew, even if no one else did, that she was usually more sincere.

Aaron had been silent for three minutes, twenty-one seconds, sitting opposite Kirsten in his favorite chair, a bulky lander cockpit seat he had amateurishly reupholstered with tan corduroy. The last thing Kirsten had said was, “She didn’t seem like the type,” meaning, I presumed, that Diana apparently lacked the characteristics Kirsten associated with those who usually committed suicide. I’m sure Kirsten’s medical training had included lectures on this issue, so I didn’t doubt the validity of that observation. But, as I well knew, even the most logical minds, the least emotional souls, could end up killing themselves.

“It’s my fault,” Aaron said at last, his voice a hollow monotone.

“It is not your fault,” Kirsten replied at once, with the firmness Aaron had wished to hear from me earlier. “You can’t blame yourself for what happened.” Psychological counseling was a bit further removed from Kirsten’s field of expertise, and I wondered whether she was just winging it or if she actually knew what she was doing in trying to cheer Aaron. I accessed her academic records. She’d taken a psych elective while at the Sorbonne. One course, and only a C+ at that. “You can’t let this thing destroy you.”

Thing. Their favorite word, an all-purpose noun. Did it refer to Di’s apparent suicide? To Aaron’s insistence on blaming himself for it? Or something larger, less precise? Damn it, I wish they’d be more specific in their speech.

“She’d asked me—begged me—not to leave her,” Aaron said, his head bowed. From my vantage point, I couldn’t tell whether he was staring at the floor or had closed his eyes, the better to concentrate on the internal turmoil he was experiencing. Granted, it was true that Diana had not wanted her relationship with Aaron to end, but Aaron’s view of her actions had been colored by his feelings of guilt. Either that, or—a less charitable interpretation—he was deliberately lying to curry further sympathy from Kirsten. In any event, Diana hadn’t beseeched him to stay.

“Don’t blame yourself,” Kirsten said again, meaning, I supposed, that she had already used up all the psychological wisdom she could remember from that one class.

“I feel… empty. Helpless.”

“I know it hurts.”

Aaron fell quiet again. Finally, he said, “It does hurt. It hurts one whole hell of a lot.” He got up, hands thrust deep into his pockets, and tilted his head to look now at the constellations of holes in the acoustical tiles on the ceiling. “I thought she and I had parted friends. We’d loved each other— I really and truly did love her—but we’d grown apart. Distant. Different.” He shook his head slightly. “If I’d known she’d take it so hard, I never would have—”

“Never would have left her?” finished Kirsten, frowning. “You can’t be a prisoner of someone else’s emotions.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. You know, Diana and I were dating for close to a year before we got married. It wasn’t until just before the wedding that I told my mother about her; she never would have understood me being involved with a blonde shiksa. You have to take other people’s feelings into account.”

“Are you saying you would have stayed with Di if she had told you she’d kill herself if you left?”

“I—I don’t know.” Aaron began pacing the room, kicking the odd piece of clothing out of the way. “Perhaps.”

Kirsten’s voice grew hard. “And I suppose you were taking her feelings into account when you started seeing me.”

“I didn’t want to hurt her.”

“But you would have hurt me had you changed your mind and decided to stay with Diana.”

“I didn’t want to hurt you, either.”

“Somebody was bound to get hurt.”

Aaron had paced the room one and a half times now. He stood at the far end, facing the wall, putty-colored like in his old apartment. His back was to Kirsten as he whispered, “Apparently.”

“You did what you had to do.”

“No. I did what I wanted to do. There’s a world of difference.”

“Look,” said Kirsten. “It’s all moot. She didn’t tell you in advance that she’d kill herself if you left.” She rose from her chair and began to walk toward Aaron, long legs carrying her across the room quickly. But she stopped before she reached him. “Or did she tell you?”