“Well then the exercise is dumb,” says Orson. “Pain isn’t objective. If the most pain you’ve ever felt is breaking a toenail, and I’ve been stabbed with an ice pick, you can’t compare that on a scale of one to ten.”
“That’s what they asked me to do,” Mark says.
“It’s such an American thing,” Orson protests, “all this crap about ‘How much does it hurt?’ You all just want to feel good all of the time, don’t you?”
“What’s so wrong with feeling good all of the time?” Viola smiles.
“Nothing, if you want to live in Disneyland,” Orson says, unexpectedly flippant. He shoots her a look and somehow they are talking about the cello, even now throbbing in the closet. They are talking about her mother. Is that how he perceives her irritation, her denial—as a desire to feel good? Is that what it is?
Turning to Mark, Orson adds: “Viola is a philosopher.”
“Not an actor?” he asks. His eyes give her a wet, unpleasant feeling. “That’s a shame.”
“Did you ever think about it?” Orson asks.
“No, I…” Hadn’t she? Ever? “I don’t think I really did.”
“Well, call me if you change your mind.”
Orson inches closer to her on the couch, as if to say,You should never call this man. His fingers brush hers. “My point was, I’m sure she can enlighten us on the nature of pain.”
She can’t, really. She’s a logician at heart, it’s not her thing. But Niamh would certainly have something to say. It’s the kind of existentialist minefield she loves to wander around in, waiting to get blown up by the possibility of none of it mattering. But Orson is looking at her expectantly, as though she ought to give them a joke or a sparkling witticism.
“Well,” Viola says. “Pain is as much in the mind as it is in the body. When you hurt yourself, the pain is in a very specific part of your body. It’s caused by an objective physical condition. But the way you experience it is private and subjective. So, there’s a conflict there. Is it real or is it perceived?”
Orson looks disappointed by her assessment. Maybe she was too clinical. He bites his top lip with his famously crooked bottom teeth, a face she has never seen him pull in a film. Not that she can watch hisfilms anymore. It’s unnerving now, the way his work distorts her sense of who he really is.
“Real or perceived. She’s too clever for me, Mark. Not sure I understand the difference. But either way, kidney stones, best avoided?”
The drink is surfacing something provocative in him. It is strange that she cannot ask what he wants from her. That the presence of this other person—the first real person other than Jen—is preventing her from saying:Are you angry with me?
“Remember that whole storyline, Mark, with One-Eye Stokes and the phantom eye?”
“Oh God. What was it again? A fork?”
“Can opener. Still not sure about those mechanics. But Vi, basically, he kept experiencing this pain where his eye used to be even though he hadn’t had it for years. Very symbolic, naturally. But I don’t know, could be fun to rewatch that, the three of us? Surely we could find it online?”
“Not sure I’m up for TV,” she says.
Orson looks disappointed and turns, decisively changing the subject. “Where’s your little lady?” he asks Mark. “I thought you were seeing that writer.”
“Yeah, oh yeah. Ha ha. Still trying to work out if she’s marriage material.”
The conversation bends away from her into meaningless names and references, dealings that she has no currency in. The men take little notice when she puts the kettle on, fills a mug of green tea, and steps out through the sliding doors onto the raised wooden porch.
From the other side of the long glass panel, the room becomes a muted sitcom set, the two of them on the couch, oblivious to the audience and the laugh track. She adds voices in her head:Well, you see, Orson, the thing about Glendale…Any moment now the main character will walk in and the audience will erupt into applause. Her mother, probably. That’s who everyone really wants to see.
Or maybe Susan would have felt outside it too. Stood here looking up at the glimmer of the moon, her mind elsewhere. After all, she neverlived out there, not fully. How many hours of her short life did she spend flying back and forth?
Why?
It was strange, now that she thinks about it, what Orson said about her father.I know he can be difficult.Had her mother said that? Or was it just a feeling Orson had?
Had it really been Al, all that time, holding her back?
1994
Why won’t you make this easy?Al’s wife is brandishing the receiver like a weapon. The holding jingle for the travel agency tinkles over the line.
