Consumed by David Cronenberg

Author:David Cronenberg
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group (Canada)

“GONNA HAVE KIDS someday, Nate?”

They sat side by side on the rough-cut stone patio overlooking the narrow lap pool and the fussy, overgrown rock pond harboring some very butch koi. Beyond that there was a slate-roofed coach house which looked original—that is, about a hundred years old—overlooked by a bland institutional apartment block. Nathan idly wondered how many tenants were watching them through binoculars and urban telescopes. He could hear the trickle of a small artificial stream or waterfall but couldn’t see it from where he was sitting under the vast canvas teak-strutted garden umbrella that sprouted from a gasketed hole in the center of their table, also vast, also teak. A small, anxious Asian woman had brought them coffee and nuts and berries in bowls.

“I have no idea, Barry.”

“You’ve probably got a steady girl somewhere, though, haven’t you?”

The sun was high and hot and Roiphe had polarized sunglass clip-ons over his glasses that were even bigger than the glasses themselves; the chromed lower edges of the clip-ons dug into the doctor’s flaccid cheeks.

“I sort of do, I guess.”

Roiphe was playing with a khaki mesh-vented Tilley hat, twisting the brim, crushing the crown and re-blocking it, putting it on and off his head. “Do I detect some sexual ambivalence there? You know, there was a big vogue a while back where GPs dabbled in sex therapy. I’m not sure how healthy that really was, but it was pretty darned common. You can see the psychopathology right there. I refused to get into it. A lot of my colleagues got into big trouble with it. Busted up a lot of marriages.”

“Ambivalence, I guess. I wouldn’t say sexual.” The blueberries were especially good, but the raspberries had gone soft, mushy, and sour. “Just the commitment problem, I would say. Not just committing to a particular woman, but committing to a particular future. Kinda banal and ordinary.” He rotated his Nagra so that he could be sure it was recording at a decent level given the heavy ambient noon traffic noise. “But speaking of psychopathology, I have to wonder about the deal here, you playing the role of shrink to your own daughter.”

Roiphe chuckled and poured himself more coffee with a shaky hand, spilling a bit onto the brim of the hat that now rested next to his cup. “Aren’t you the cheeky one. Well, to begin with, that’s how I always approached being a parent. I’m naturally analytical. I’m clinical. I can’t fight it. That doesn’t mean I’m cold, although maybe my poor dead wife would’ve disputed that. But goddammit, what would you be doing? We sent her off to France, Rose and I, with the best of intentions—as you can imagine, given the expense. She was such a bright girl, Chase, and kinda European in her outlook. She didn’t look to the States for excitement or inspiration.

Partially it was the language thing. Of course there’s a lot of Spanish going on in the US, but she wanted the whole deal, a country where English was basically not spoken, and the culture was based around that language.

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