The Trouble with Women

Safe as Houses

IN MY EXPERIENCE, people tend to match their houses. You can meet someone, spend a few minutes conversing with them, observe their personal habits, their clothing, their manner, absorb the stories they tell about themselves, and their approximate level of privilege will reveal itself.

Sasha's house looks nothing like her.

First, it's in moneyed Moore Park — walking distance from the expensive Leaside address I'd just fled from. This is, in itself, a surprise. People in social work, even Advisors with offices, don't live in wealthy neighbourhoods. But then, I remind myself, there's her husband: the dusty old academic in the photo on her desk — tweeds and elbow patches — must be the one with money.

Second, and I have to admit I am profoundly disappointed by this, there are no peace signs in the windows, no women's re-empowerment icon whitewashed on a tree like a secret signal, no Buddhist prayer flags strung around the stately columned entry-way. Nothing at all to say 'a member of the Resistance lives here.'

Could the rumour about Sasha have been, after all, just a rumour? Is she just an ageing social worker who married a rich professor? The devastating, ordinary let-down of that possibility is too awful to contemplate.

But still, she is my Advisor and the closest thing I have to bedrock in my groundless state. I approach the door of the red brick, ivy-buttressed home and knock.

Almost immediately, as if she has been waiting for me at the front window, the heavy black door opens, and there is Sasha. She's wearing an expensive-looking pyjama set, topped by a soft linen kimono. Her arms open in an uncharacteristically touchy-feely invitation to hug, and I move into them.

There, inside her entryway, I lean into her strange embrace — at first, hesitant, then with so much need I nearly knock her down.

She rubs my back and murmurs the kind of nonsense you say to an upset child.

Okay now, there you go, shhh, I've got you, it's all right.

These are things my mother might have said to me once. They didn't ring true then, and they don't quite ring true now, but it feels good to be held.

When I am finally ready to be released, I push back from her and swipe a hand under my wet nose, catching a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror: splotchy, puffy face, eyes bright against the red spidering of veins around them.

I rub at them, aghast.

"I'm so sorry for barging into your home like this, Sasha."

"Stop that right now," she says. "You're clearly in a state. Come through. Sit down. I'll get us some tea?" She poses this as a question but doesn't wait for my answer, just pushes me toward a cozy room with overstuffed couches, rich with lamplight. She startles me slightly by shouting behind her, "Simon! Make us a pot of tea, love? I'm taking her into the sitting room."

She leads me to a couch, takes my bag from my shoulder and holds her hand out for my jacket, which I remove, docile as a child.

I realize, of course, that it's not only her evening I'm imposing on, but her husband's as well.

"I'm sorry," I say again.

She holds her hand up to stop my apologies and settles into the other end of the couch.

"Now, let's begin at the beginning, shall we? What's happened?"

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, after I have given Sasha a near-complete account that stops just short of what I am actually afraid of (myself), there comes a hesitant knock at the door of the room and a man's weathered but kind face angles around the corner of the doorframe.

"Tea's ready," he says as he enters the room with a tray. I watch him place the tray carefully on the low table by our knees and sort the cups out delicately. He peeks at me from under his white eyelashes. He clearly wants to know who I am and why I'm in his home, red-faced, monopolizing his wife at this late hour.

"I'm Dolly," I say to break the tension.

He pours tea into two cups and looks at me directly now with a curious interest.

"Yes, I know," he says. "Sasha said you were coming. I'm Simon, and I'm very glad to meet you after all this time."

I suppose it's natural to mention the people you work with to your husband. Still, I feel slightly uneasy to think of Sasha discussing me here in this incongruously nice house with this incongruously nice man. I don't belong in places like this, not even as a topic of conversation.

I nod at him and accept the cup he holds out to me.

"Are you a professor at the University?" I ask to make my presence — his presence — less uncomfortable.

He looks quickly at Sasha, then back at me.

"No, did you think that? No." He says, smiling.

Sasha shoos him away. "Don't ask him what he does. He'll bore you to death with his science stories."

"Oh," I respond, trying to reconfigure yet another piece of information about Sasha: scientist husband.

He laughs good-naturedly as he leaves the room. "She's only jealous because I won a Nobel and she hasn't... yet."

Sasha smiles fondly at his back and waves her hand as if to clear the room of his ridiculous comment.

"A Nobel Prize?" I ask, incredulous. "Was he serious? For what?"

"Oh, Simon," Sasha responds indulgently. "He's the brains around here and just wants to make sure you know it."

When I don't look satisfied by that, she adds, "He led a team of clinical programmers back in the twenties on the development of the first virtual kidney. You might remember it." She shrugs like it's not that impressive, but of course, it is. The virtual kidney was a massive leap forward in digital medicine. Besides changing the survival outlook of billions of dialysis patients, it altered prosthetic medicine, acting as the foundation for all kinds of next-generation support systems: modern pacemakers, tube dilation, diabetic insulin delivery... 

"That explains the house, then." I'm aghast to hear myself say that out loud and start to apologize.

"Nope, that's okay. You're right, some money came with it, but honestly, he just reinvested it all in the lab. He likes to keep his hands dirty. But, please, enough about Simon. It would give him too much joy to think of two women sitting here discussing his merits! Let's get back to you. Dolly, I want to understand a little better how you felt seeing Charmaine and her uncle sitting closely together."

"Not just sitting. He was touching her hair," I explain quickly.

"I understand what you believe you saw — and maybe you did, we're going to investigate that fully — but I think we need to consider the possibility of countertransference, Dolly. Based on what you've shared about your personal experiences—" and here she reaches for my hand and strokes it soothingly, "I feel that we need to look objectively at the reality versus your perceived reality."

"And," she continues, "It sounds very much to me like you had a dissociative break on seeing what might have been a perfectly explainable moment of familial affection. If that's so, I'm not sure we can leave you on this file."

I feel panic bubble up into my chest and rush to head her off.

"I can keep the file. I need to help Charmaine."

Sasha tilts her head and eyes me carefully. She speaks in the slow, steady voice of a hypnotist trying to convince her subject to cluck.

"Dolly, Charmaine is not Dolores."

A strangled sort of bark erupts from my throat in response. Of course, Charmaine isn't Dolores! Nobody is Dolores, I want to tell her. Nobody can do what Dolores did.

Except me.