Midway Through the Journey of Our Life

By James Lawson

Midway Through The Journey Of Our Life is about a pivotal year in the life of a beautiful and successful woman. A 50th birthday party sets the stage for a spiritual upheaval in the world of Karin Sorensen, who jeopardizes everything that has made her life worthwhile, not for a grand passion, but for a whim, an errant desire that takes over the reason and her will.

What transpires is a rich and complex story of predators and prey, affluence and squalor, terrorism and addiction. An embittered teacher plots revenge. A ghost from the past reemerges in a new form. A billionaire rethinks his life. An aged patriarch has prophetic insights. An escort turns out to be more than she seems. The black sheep of the family transforms her life. Its a tale full of unexpected twists and turns, set mostly in contemporary Manhattan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781491794524

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Copyright © 2016 James Lawson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-9451-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-9452-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016905888

iUniverse rev. date: 05/09/2016

CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgement

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DEDICATION

To our close friends, who have stayed with us through midlife and beyond.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to thank Constance Woo not just for proofreading the manuscript but for her judgment in wading through my sometimes unorthodox grammar, and her attention to the tiniest detail, be it a misplaced comma or errant quotation mark. Her talent is truly awe-inspiring.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura

che la diritta via era smarrita

Midway through the journey of our life

I found myself in a dark forest

for the right way had been lost

Dante

1

What we can’t avoid, we might as well celebrate. Why else would anyone throw a surprise 50th birthday party for a woman who seemed decades away from her real age?

The party was being given that evening and a young woman and her new boyfriend were already late, delayed by what new couples generally do. They had just left the subway at 96th Street and Broadway and were hurrying eastward, hand-in-hand, towards Central Park West. They did not notice the pink sky behind them, slowly turning purple.

It was May Day. Earlier, a coven of Druid wannabees danced around a makeshift maypole in Central Park. Other celebrants were commemorating a revolution, a labor movement, feminist power, a day when someone died for some cause or when some god had made a significant contribution to the welfare of some nationality or ethnic group.

Marika Meyer didn’t mind missing the surprise part of the affair, because Karin, the fifty-year old, had known about it, and had been prepared to be surprised, for at least two months before. Marika’s concern was about exposing her new boyfriend to the rarified world of the birthday guests. She didn’t know what impression he’d make and how she would be judged accordingly.

Remind me why we’re going, said the boyfriend.

She told him that Karin Sorensen and her husband, Theo Xenakis, were among her parent’s best friends and that she’d known them all her life. She had babysat for their daughter, Evie, who had become something of a kid sister. They’d shared Christmases and Thanksgivings from the time she was born to the time she left for college and she regarded them as family.

So there’s no way to avoid this.

None whatsoever.

Does this mean I’ll meet your parents as well? asked the boyfriend.

I think it’s best if you meet them for the first time in a crowd, said Marika. My father is less likely to come at you with a meat cleaver.

The boyfriend smiled but thought there might be a grain of truth in her answer.

Neither of them suspected that their lives would be inextricably bound together from that evening on and that, before a year had past, they would be entirely different people.

They entered an old, weathered apartment building, which seemed grim and dark but whose location, overlooking the park, made it prime real estate, worth millions to each apartment owner. A middle-aged doorman in a blue uniform checked them off a list and directed them to a closed elevator with the face and character of a vault.

The boyfriend pawed the ground nervously until Marika comforted him. Don’t worry, they’ll love you. And so will Karin. You won’t believe she’s fifty.

She’s well preserved?

She’s incredible, said Marika. She used to be a dancer, and still has a dancer’s body.

What does she do now?

She’s a vortex of energy.

Is that a paying profession?

It got her through medical school and residency.

The boyfriend grimaced inwardly. The woman sounded like everything he was not — disciplined, motivated, one of these whirlwind types who expect everyone around them to match their enthusiasm. Marika was bad enough. She had wit and verve, but at least she had a decent body and a reservoir of lethargy that made her tolerable. Marika wasn’t a serious girlfriend, he knew, but she was a serious amusement, which would tide him over until the next one came along.

The elevator opened, revealing a young Puerto Rican whose uniform looked somewhat shabby and ill fitting, which was not the fault of the uniform. Mario looked awkward in clothing; nothing really fitted him. And on second look, he wasn’t really young. He had a young expression in an older face, a natural innocence that no street smarts could erase. He was, however, astonishingly perceptive. He could see the constant anxiety in Marika’s life and that, despite her positive persona and breezy demeanor, she was in despair about her prospects in life. It didn’t take much perception to see that her companion was a predator.

Hi, Mario, said Marika.

You going to the party, Miss Marika? said Mario.

Are there lots of people there?

I think I take up maybe seventy-five, hundred.

Then we won’t be missed, said the boyfriend.

Yes, we will, said Marika.

There was no hallway on the penthouse floor. The elevator opened directly onto a large living room, jammed with people. To one side, a string quartet played ballet music, which could barely be heard over the animated voices, clinking glasses, laughter, exclamations, declamations, noises of the throng. Young servers in black, four of who moonlighted as a classical quartet, snaked through the crowd offering hors-d’oeuvres and distributing glasses of Champagne. Several couples were dancing gracefully in a clearing near the quartet. Knots of serious people had taken over the chairs and sofas and were in the throes of arguing, interrupting, making or conceding points and attempting to impress one another. There seemed to be a continual explosion of greetings, hugging and kissing, and shrieks of recognition.

It was a glittering assemblage. Theo Xenakis (his wife had kept her maiden name, Sorensen), the host and architect of this non-surprise, had invited many of his colleagues at Columbia, something of a galaxy of academic stars, along with Karin’s peers in the medical establishment, the top brass at Lenox Hill and — the main source of the glitter — a troupe of ballet dancers from Karin’s former company and other luminaries of the New York dance world — in addition to old friends, Karin’s mother, Effie, her father, Magnus, in his wheelchair, petrified with age but still enjoying himself, her two sisters and other relatives. Naturally, the academics and doctors who weren’t expostulating among themselves did their best to mingle with the dancers, who were somewhat in awe of the academics.

On the floor below, a woman lay dying. She was in a coma and may have heard the party as part of a dreamscape, but her daughter, sitting at her bedside, couldn’t help feeling annoyed. Theo had warned her about the party and she had agreed to it, but she resented the celebration, with its pretentions to happiness.

The boyfriend was appropriately overwhelmed by the august guest list but didn’t have much time for gawking, as Marika’s parents were almost the first people they encountered as they walked off the elevator. Marika had utterly misrepresented her father, who couldn’t have been nicer, perhaps because the boyfriend had been introduced as my friend, without any sexual or relational overtones. Are you a friend from Marika’s office? he asked.

Marika froze, not knowing how the boyfriend would reply. She was praying that he wouldn’t reveal the true source of their relationship: that they had met at a bar and consummated the flirtation in a downstairs rest room within half an hour of meeting. Miraculously, they found that they liked each other afterwards.

No, we met at the opera, he said, to Marika’s relief, with an infectious smile that seemed to indicate how ridiculous this was, and perhaps how ridiculous opera was in general. We were introduced by a mutual friend.

I didn’t know you liked opera, said her mother.

I’m learning, she answered.

What exactly do you do? asked the father. To Marika, this seemed unnecessarily paternal for an introductory meeting. And why the exactly, as if her boyfriend would try to fudge the answer.

I’m a philanthropist, he answered, with a shrug of feigned embarrassment.

Oh, said the father, impressed.

That is, I’m training to be a philanthropist.

Don’t you need a large fortune?

That’s the problem, of course, he answered, laughing.

They chatted briefly but the boyfriend couldn’t help noticing a woman in the center of the room. She was tiny, barely over five feet, with the tight frame and perfect posture of a dancer, accentuated by a black, skin-tight outfit studded with sequins. Her black hair was short, done in a shaggy, elfin cut, from which her impish ears pointed outwards. She was not young but exuded youthfulness as she laughed and joked with a coterie of admirers.

The boyfriend was dazzled. Who is that woman? he asked Marika.

I’ll take you to meet her. That’s Karin, our birthday girl.

The quartet was now playing a waltz from Eugene Onegin and a large, pumpkin-shaped professor of mathematics, whose specialty was vector field topology, was gliding a ballerina around the dance area as gracefully as if he had been dancer in another life.

As Marika and her boyfriend approached her group, they could see that Karin was in high spirits and hear her high-pitched, hyper-animated, lilting voice, which seemed vaguely foreign, although Karin had been born and raised on the Upper East Side of New York City. Oh, but I assure you, she was saying, braking fluid will do just as well as spinal fluid. There was a burst of laughter and a hawk-nosed, utterly brilliant looking man in her group was about to comment when Karin noticed the couple approaching.

Marika! she said, with a ravishing smile, arms outstretched. When Karin focused on an individual, you had the sense that there was no one else in the room, the sparkle was meant for that person alone. She didn’t even notice the boyfriend until Marika extricated herself and introduced him.

This is my boyfriend, Shane Marshall.

Karin turned to him and froze in mid-smile. For a split second, she seemed to recognize him, and just as quickly, catch herself. Shane, did you say?

Yeah, he said

For another moment, her face registered disbelief, and then confusion. Her hand rose to her face, covering one side of her mouth. I’m sorry, she said, ashen. I’m not feeling well. I have to leave.

She ran off through the crowd without acknowledging their birthday greetings, and almost threw herself into the next room, Theo’s library, closing the door behind her.

Marika and Shane were almost shocked. What was that about? said Shane.

I have no idea, said Marika.

2

The library was Theo’s inner sanctum. As such, it was off-limits to partygoers. Unlike most libraries of wealthy men, it was not decorated with leather-bound tomes bought by the yard and never opened. Although he had inherited much of the library from his father and grandfather, he had read most of the books, including the ones in classical and modern Greek, the language of his forebears, and added a thousand of his own. Theo was a professor of history at Columbia College, specializing in the classical world, and many of the volumes in his library were dog-eared from frequent consultation.

It was not a room for togetherness but for reading and quiet contemplation. It consisted of one chair, one small sofa and one large table, along with side tables for lamps and an extraordinarily fine orange Kashan carpet from the Mohtashem atelier of Persia, which had been purchased in Iran by his grandfather. There were no windows to provide even minimal distractions. Air came from gratings on the floor, which filtered out most of the dust and kept the room to a constant 70°, slightly above the optimal temperature for preserving books. These were ranged along four walls, even over the door, in shelves that extended ten feet in height, with a moving ladder to reach the higher ones. The room was not a workroom – it had no telephone, no computer, and no buttons to communicate with the outside world – it was for reading and contemplation. For Karin, it was the perfect place to set her mind in order and recover from the trauma of seeing a dark creature emerge from the past intact, uncreased by time.

She collapsed on the sofa, dizzy with the thought that she had just encountered an exact replica of the man she had been in love with more than twenty-five years ago. Her first thought was that it must have been Sean, and that he didn’t recognize her. Had she changed that much? she wondered.

She was used to thinking rationally, weighing evidence and making decisions dispassionately, without fuss or fanfare. But all this went out the window in the face of a doppelgänger that couldn’t possibly exist. From the look of him, it was unquestionably, irrefutably, Sean and the apparition, or whatever it was, made her weak in the knees. What did Marika say his name was, Shane? She must have mispronounced it. Anyway, isn’t Shane a form of Sean?

Theo’s library had an aura – the collected wisdom of centuries on all sides, sagas of passion, beauty, heroism, shame, evil and saintliness, horror and ecstasy all within easy reach. But auras are just auras and there is nothing more immediate than the memory of a first love. The smallest details pop up unbidden and often unwelcome. Youth never ends, although the body ages and the mind stiffens. For Karin, she was back in a hotel in Paris where Sean, in the guise of the apparition she had just hallucinated, had abandoned her.

She sat up and tried to get her mind together. The Sean she met tonight was a boy. He couldn’t possibly have known her – he wouldn’t have been born when Sean left her. But it was him, everything about him, eyes, nose, build, the wild, sandy, unkempt hair, the slant of his eyebrows, but more than anything, his expression — confident bordering on arrogant, undisciplined, unpredictable, annoying, affable, gallant … But that’s ridiculous, she realized. She had barely looked at him. He hadn’t said a word, other than, Yeah. But even that was in Sean’s voice. The impression was devastating.

She stood up, held on to the back of the chair and did a few plies and battements of her ballet barre. Ballet exercises relaxed her when she was tense or upset. She imagined a strident piano in a studio, banging out the rhythm, and a clichéd martinet of a ballet master withering dancers with a look, a humph, an insulting compliment, utterly unlike the caring, supportive teachers she had studied with at ballet school.

It was obvious. This boy couldn’t be Sean. Perhaps his son. She hadn’t seen Sean in so many years, it was possible. Some bastard Sean had sired on a moment’s lust. He probably didn’t even know he had a son.

The boy had a different last name from Sean, so he was probably no relation at all. She stopped her barre, took a few deep breaths and patted her hair in place. Theo walked in the door.

Are you alright?

Fine, she said. You know how it is with us fifty-year olds. We can’t take too much excitement.

I can’t remember that long ago.

Did I tell you? Evie called from India to wish me Happy Birthday?

I was on the call, don’t you remember? said Theo. Evie, short for Evelyn, was their 19-year old daughter, studying dance in India.

Oh yes. Shall we get back to our guests? I wonder if Marika is still there.

They returned to the fray. Marika’s parents were still there but Marika and her boyfriend seemed to have left. Only Mario, who took them down in the elevator, knew where they were going, and why.

3

Karin Sorensen was the daughter of Effie Dahl, who was born in Denmark, danced for the Royal Danish Ballet, and eventually married Magnus Sorensen, whose family left Denmark ten generations ago, when the United States was still a British colony.

Effie was now seventy-five and, like her daughter, had exchanged dance for medicine, although Effie was a psychiatrist and Karin a cardiologist. She still practiced but no longer had the punishing schedule of her forties, fifties and sixties, when she attended conferences and gave speeches all over the world. She was a professor emeritus at Karin’s medical school, and had a small private practice in an office she shared with three other psychiatrists.

Magnus was ninety and had been an astute investor, a middling pianist and an enthusiastic balletomane in his day. His mind was still intact but had slowed down to the point where it was almost impossible to carry on a normal conversation. Only Effie, and occasionally his children, had the patience to wait for him to articulate a thought. What came out was sensible, relevant and often witty, but few people heard him. The one way he could express himself freely and normally was by email, where time was not a factor. As a result, his whole family treasured his emails. Magnus was inclined to visions and florid images but not the words to articulate them. In his mind, he roamed the universe, frolicked in the Elysium fields and did everything that his aged body refused to do.

When Karin and Theo emerged from the library, Karin scanned the crowd for Marika and … was it Shane or Sean? … but didn’t want to been caught hunting for them. She and Theo gravitated to Karin’s family. Larissa Larsen, Karin’s middle sister, younger by two years, had successfully convinced her children to dance with one another, until they were taken over by two dancers. The boy, Rhys, was unknowingly dancing with one of the great ballerinas of her generation. At ten years old, he viewed his partner as unspeakably old but fun to dance with. His sister, Olwyn, eight, dancing with a handsome young corps member of the City Ballet, was in heaven and showed a genetic aptitude for grace in motion. She was already taking classes at the School of American Ballet. Larissa and her husband, Bart, were looking on with bovine satisfaction as Karin and Theo approached.

Don’t they look splendid, said Larissa.

They always do. Where’s Camille? asked Karin. Larissa pointed out their younger sister, exchanging pleasantries with a scientist while clearly eyeing a dancer, who was chatting with a doctor in the next group.

Attempting to get laid, as usual, answered Larissa. All three Sorensen sisters were beautiful and desirable, but Camille was the youngest, unmarried, the most flirtatious and considered the nymphomaniac of the family, a title she might have relished had she deserved it.

What’s wrong? said Effie. Her daughter was not as happy as she should be, but then, when was happiness ever unalloyed?

I think I’d better work the room, said Karin, wandering off to verify if she had really seen a ghost or golem, kneaded into a semblance of her former lover.

She moved easily from group to group until she managed to accidently bump into Marika’s parents, whom she had greeted an hour before.

Seems like a nice boy, Marika’s friend, she said.

Claims they met at the opera, Marika’s father said, wryly. Very unlikely.

That’s so unfair, said her mother. Why can’t Marika go to the opera?

It’s been so long, Karin interrupted, since we’ve seen you and Marika. Why don’t you come for dinner, and Marika can bring her new boyfriend. Shall we say sometimes in the next two weeks?

That’d be wonderful, said Marika’s mother.

They never saw one another again.

4

Heather Marshall gathered her papers together, including two sets of quizzes, and prepared to leave for home. It had been another unsatisfying day at school.

The children didn’t like her and she found herself becoming more and more pinched and severe around them. In the past, the children warmed up to her towards the end of the year but not this year. Well, not for several years now.

She taught Fourth Grade at a prep school on the Upper West Side, a few blocks from her apartment. She had been living there for twenty years, since she first started teaching at the school, and though the place was tiny and the rent ate up a greater and greater portion of her salary, she could not afford to move. She had no assets, no reserves, and could not come up with even the down payment for a coop or condo. She was also in debt, from paying part of her son’s college tuition.

Normally, she would have accompanied the children to the school entrance, where the parents were waiting, but fortunately, she had found another teacher to take her place. She didn’t want the parents to see how little interaction she had with the children, and didn’t want them annoying her with questions. She knew she had been pulling away from her students and the school for years now, but didn’t know what to do about it.

She left by a side entrance and stopped off at a supermarket to buy tonight’s dinner, for her son was coming over on one of his rare visits. She was a vegan but he needed meat — a haunch of beef would do — something she could fling on the floor for him to gnaw on raw, like all carnivores of his ilk. She was conflicted about her son. On the one hand, she had the requisite maternal feelings and would have given her life for him. On the other hand, he was a man, in the grossest sense of the term, duplicitous, unreliable, heedless, amoral and charming.

There was a song in the Cole Porter musical, Kiss Me Kate, that expressed her sentiments exactly. It was called, I Hate Men, sung by the heroine of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, a play that never failed to rouse her indignation to the boiling point. A man marries a strong, independent woman for her money and tortures her until she becomes obedient — and that was supposed to be funny! Well, her son would find it funny.

She had raised him according to Dr. Spock, whom she would like to have blamed for the way he turned out but she knew it wasn’t Dr. Spock’s prescriptions but her coldness. Where Spock recommended trusting her parental instincts, she felt that she didn’t have the right instincts to trust. She had this small creature, who wouldn’t shut up until fed, cleaned or picked up. She couldn’t pretend to like it. Technically, she did everything right; mostly, she did everything wrong. So how could she expect him to turn out but a cold predator, like his father?

Her home was a small one-bedroom flat in an old brownstone. While Shane was growing up, the bedroom was his room; she slept on a sofa bed in the living room. The bedroom was a boy’s room, with a shelf of books of varying degrees of literacy, posters of athletes and rock stars on the wall, a circus pennant, a few second and third place ribbons for sporting events, a photograph of Shane and several other boys with a baseball player, a chaste pinup of an actress, all of which he left when he decamped to the East Village after college. What was bizarre was that when Heather moved into the bedroom, she changed nothing, took nothing down, displayed nothing of herself. It was still Shane’s room and she still felt she did not belong there.

He arrived an hour late, but she was prepared for this. When he said, Right on time, at the doorstep, she didn’t give him the satisfaction of lying to her about getting the time wrong.

You’re always so punctual, she said, kissing the space around his cheek.

She poured his wine – she didn’t indulge – anointed her salad with fat-free vinaigrette and watched, with some disgust, as he devoured his steak. Still, she guessed it was better that he had a hardy appetite than not, and he didn’t seem to be getting fatter. He came to dinner once every couple of months, usually when he wanted money. Well, she’d let him wait for that. She expected him to make pleasant conversation to earn his reward — if that’s what he came for. He was only two or three subway lines away; you’d think he’d come more often — but then, here she was, a walking cliché of a mother.

How’s school? he asked, to make conversation. He really had very little to say to his mother. He knew she probably loved him but definitely didn’t like him, and the feeling was mutual.

There was no point answering more than a shrug because the answer was always the same, and had been for years. She knew that he only asked the question to annoy her and she refused to let him get a rise out of her. And how is … whatever you do? she asked.

You don’t know what I do?

I forget. Something with computers.

Right. Explanations were useless; she wouldn’t understand anyway, even if there were something to understand. Actually, he did nothing with computers except email and porn. He dealt drugs in a small-time way, gambled occasionally but knew when to stop, won several low-paying lotteries and did odd jobs for his father, including messenger work, transporting envelopes and facilitating meetings. For this, his mother had spent $160,000 on an education at a college where hard work was not a requirement. Heather was aware only that her son did as little as possible.

She noticed that his fine sandy hair – the same consistency his father’s – could use washing. There was a speck of something right in front – lint, dust, a fleck of food, perhaps, or even a small insect – and this reminded her of a weird piece of trivia that she had dug up for her class one day, that an estimated 100 trillion neutrinos are passing through our bodies every second, that to a neutrino our bodies are empty space, with atoms miles apart. But somehow, a few quintillion neutrinos had clumped together on Shane’s hair to create the speck that she couldn’t help staring at, until he brushed it away nervously.

So do you have a girlfriend at the moment? she asked. This was usually a forbidden topic but she would take her chances with it. It might provoke anger, at butting in on his life, or a shrug, or occasionally a revelation.

A strange thing happened a couple of nights ago, he said. This girl took me to a party …

Nice girl?

He waved her away. I’m not seeing her anymore.

Slam bam?

Pretty much. He described the birthday scene and the glittering woman at the center of the celebration.

Don’t tell me you’re interested.

"Well, given that she’s fifty, married, rich, a doctor, a dancer, a distinguished person — she’s in Who’s Who, I looked her up — it’d be interesting to see how fast I could fuck her."

I beg your pardon. Heather was genuinely shocked.

"Okay, seduce her, same thing."

I don’t think this is a topic you should be talking about with your mother.

He laughed. It was always enjoyable to prick her prudery. I just said it to get a rise out of you. I’m not really after her.

You can be truly disgusting sometimes.

What I can’t figure out was why she reacted the way she did. She seemed shocked.

She probably had an insight into your true nature, said Heather.

Probably, he laughed, and finished off the last of his steak. What’s for dessert?

Ice cream.

Excellent.

When the rituals of dinner were over and he had finished off the bottle of wine, she waited for him to bring up the subject of money. There was really no other reason to have dinner with her, unless he had some darker agenda, like examining her celibacy, her lifestyle, her bitterness, her lack of friends, her absence of a life, all of which he occasionally mentioned offhandedly, as a way of twisting a knife into her heart for fun.

The subject of money never surfaced. He thanked her for the meal, gave her a perfunctory kiss on the cheek and headed for the door. Oh, by the way, he said, as he opened the door, Dad emailed me.

So that was why he came to dinner, to torment her. Never have anything to do with that monster, she said.

Oh, he’s not so bad, really, he said. When was the last time you saw him?

When I was pregnant with you, in Paris.

I’ve been in touch with him every now and then.

"I know. What I don’t know is why he wants to see you."

Maybe he likes me.

He doesn’t like people; he uses them. Even children.

What could he possibly use me for?

I guess you’ll see.

He raised his eyebrows in mock horror, and left.

It was all she could do to keep from smashing the plates on the floor. Despicable men, both of them! she thought. Sean had unceremoniously dumped her soon after she learned she was pregnant. She announced her pregnancy and the birth of her child to his doorman, as he refused to see her. By refusing to acknowledge Shane as his son, he avoided child support and other unpleasant duties. There was no DNA testing in those days so he could get away with it. He reappeared when Shane was in the first throes of puberty.

Shane had come home from school one day and said that a man had approached him as he was leaving the building. He had introduced himself as Shane’s uncle, and asked him a few questions about himself, and about his mother. He didn’t attempt to lure him away or draw out the conversation so Share figured he might have been legitimate – he probably wasn’t some gay pedophile – but who knows? When he described the man, Heather knew it was Sean. The man is dangerous, she had warned Shane.

After all these years, it was still a mystery why Sean had even bothered with her – a small, spare woman, who might have been a passable gymnast in high school if she had had the courage. She was not especially attractive to men, with no breasts to speak of, a severe manner, little conversation, no wit and a dedication to worthwhile causes, which should have discouraged a man like Sean, or any man. Yet he had romanced her, convinced her of his love, mistreated her with her consent, impregnated her, and left.

Sean reappeared to Shane several years later and more frequently when Shane was in college. Eventually, Shane took a liking to his father and they became friends of a sort. Sean lived in Switzerland – so he said - and saw Shane whenever he came to the States on business, although he never said what his business was. Heather’s warning meant nothing to him.

Heather’s feelings about Sean were unambiguous. She resented every second her son spent with Sean. She resented every mention of him, every thought of him. She wanted him dead, preferably by her hand.

5

Effie’s fifty-three-year old marriage to Magnus was not crumbling exactly, but petering out. It was almost entirely due to Magnus’ age and physical condition. His mind was there, his love for his wife and children was intact, his empathy with Effie’s concerns and kindly interest in the lives of his children and grandchildren was evident, and his fortune was in no danger of diminishing, but it wasn’t enough.

The problem was not that Effie was seventy-five, but that Effie was extraordinarily youthful for seventy-five, which is not uncommon these days. She still had her dancer’s body, although her skin had loosened somewhat, wrinkles had appeared on her face and she had a scar from an operation on one side of her stomach. She was astonishingly flexible and could still do a barre, although she no longer attempted jetés and entrechats. Experience had enhanced her mental agility, rather than replaced it. Her psychiatric practice was thriving, and if she didn’t attend all the conferences she had in the past, it wasn’t for lack of energy but for lack of invitations – she had long standing feuds with many of the organizers.

Although Effie slept with Magnus in the same bed, and cuddled together for part of the night and in the morning, when Magnus’ various aches and pains could tolerate it, Effie missed their sexual life, which had never been transcendent but was active enough to keep them stimulated for the first 45 years or so. Neither Effie nor Magnus had ever strayed but now Effie was contemplating it.

The problem was, how does a seventy-five-year old woman, in whatever shape, find sexual satisfaction in a way that’s not dangerous, disgusting, or fraught with ramifications. The idea of professionals she discounted immediately – the image of sleazy, tattooed muscle men was utterly repellent. She certainly wouldn’t approach anyone she knew. Personal ads or Craig’s List were rife with objectionable people, like serial killers. The online match sites were a possibility but when she viewed them, she got depressed. The thought of other women had occurred to her but she found the prospect unappealing, even if it was slightly less dangerous than the straight scene. Actually, the thought of any kind of scene at all was degrading. So far, she had not pursued any avenue of satisfaction, but she felt she was on the verge of being on the verge.

A few days after Karin’s party, Effie received a call from an old patient, whom she had been seeing on and off for over twenty-five years. The woman could no longer afford her, as Effie didn’t take insurance, and she hadn’t seen her for several years. Evidently, this was a crisis.

Effie was uncomfortable with Heather, her old patient, for ethical reasons. Years ago, Heather had had a devastating affair with a man who left her pregnant and embittered for life. The ethical problem was that her daughter, Karin, had an affair with the same man, not long after Heather’s. Effie had met the man, Sean Kelly, and tried to warn Karin away from him, without giving away any details about Heather. But Karin was nineteen, head over heels in love with him and nothing Effie could say made any difference. Fortunately, Sean had left Karin merely devastated but not pregnant.

She had an opening that morning and Heather called in sick at school in order to attend. She came to Effie’s Park Avenue office wearing jeans and a sweatshirt under a winter parka, although it was a fairly mild day, with a slight nip in the air from the wind. Effie noted that she had aged considerably in the years since she had last seen her. Her face was thinner and her eyes deeper; she had a gaunt look and a bitter mouth.

As soon as she had taken her seat, she skipped any pleasantries and came straight to the point. I want to kill my son.

Don’t say any more, said Effie, quickly. If you’re actually planning a murder, I’d have to inform the police.

I wouldn’t do it, said Heather. I’m thinking about it. It’s the only way I can save all the women he’ll destroy.

Like his father destroyed you.

Like father like son.

Suppose you tell me what this is all about, said Effie.

What came out was confused, chaotic and vituperative. Heather saw in Shane the callous sexual predator of his father. She had lain with a monster and given birth to another, she said. It was Shane’s genetic heritage to plough through the field, to break women and strew babies in his wake.

And you have to save them? asked Effie.

I don’t know.

Tell me what happened.

With considerable prodding, Heather spoke of last Friday’s dinner and that Shane had been fascinated by a fifty-year old woman he had met at a party. She described the party and the woman’s reaction to him. He wanted to see how fast he could fuck her, he said.

Effie was back in her ethical dilemma. It was clear that the party she was describing was her daughter’s surprise party last week, and that the woman Shane wanted was Karin. Now Heather was warning her about a threat to her daughter. If it was real, of course. In any case, she should abort the session immediately.

She didn’t. She let Heather vent on about her son, his father, men, her life or lack of it and the children at her school who hated her, especially the boys. At the session’s end, she wrote out a prescription for Alprazolam and hoped Heather