MULTIPLE CHOICE

by Tara Ison

(Black Clock #17, Summer 2013)

He spotted her immediately from—his word—afar. The Famous 

a) Playwright
b) Congressman
c) Musician 

had espied her sylvan, fragile beauty at once, he tells her on their first date, an old-Hollywood-glam steakhouse, sanguine leather booths and five à la carte asparagus spears for twelve dollars, and heels and nail polish and mascara she was unused to but felt circumstances demanded, these unique circumstances, having been singled out, discerned, plucked from the madding crowd by this Renowned and Brilliant Man. It was her singular grace, he says, that he could not help noticing—even from afar, yes—the delicate strain of tendons at her throat, the soul-rich, beckoning light from her eyes as she

a) listened to the staged reading of his new, long-awaited play, a drama of history’s oppressed women now empowered, resurrected from obscurity, the unrelenting theme of his canon (and she has long admired the unabashed passion of his work, never mind the ticket/donation at the fund-raiser for a local women’s shelter was the equivalent of seventeen days’ rent),
b) licked envelopes at his grassroots re-election campaign HQ (the drudge role she’d volunteered for to flesh out alone-but-not-lonely weekends, although a sincere admirer of his legislative agenda, of course, his long-ago one-term House of Representatives crusade for the rights of the poor and meek of his district and the earth),
c) sat by herself front row at his comeback coffeehouse concert, twirling a thin lock of hair (and tears welling to those heart-breaking lyrics, admiring the chivalric warble in his voice, his troubadour’s promise of courtly love and eternal-though-tortured devotion in all those unironic songs of her yearning adolescence), 

and so he had to seize the rare and precious moment, he tells her. He had no choice. He could not allow this recognized her to just slip by and away. So that is why he sent, could not help sending 

a) his personal assistant
b) an intern
c) a roadie

to approach her, proffer the invitation to this dinner, something he is still apologizing for over a purple gash of tenderloin. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful, he swears. I didn’t mean to have you summoned. You are not some random

a) fan
b) constituent
c) groupie

to me, not at all. I was intimidated by you, he confides. I am just so out of practice at being back in the world these days. Forgive me? 

But there is no need for apology. She understands, is sure of his assessment. It confirms her most secret or hoped-for sense of her true value, her rarefied self. She knows she is not some incidental Happy Hour appetizer, the careless newsstand grab of a free weekly. She suspects she is superiorly intelligent despite a lack of obvious results, a showy CV or lucrative job that would finally unburden her of those student loans. Her beauty is subtle but evident to the discerning eye, an eye that her thirteen past lovers/boyfriends/FWBs had never quite honed. Her potential is simmering—there will be a top-tier graduate school down the road, she assures herself, or a wildly creative flowering, perhaps a dedicated career with an environmental non-profit—gaining its strength and unique bouquet, and look, here at last is a man who has recognized her incipient exceptionality, an older, wiser ways-of-the-world man with a parfumier’s sophisticated nose and an appreciation of quiet style. She forgives him his clumsy gaffe. But, emboldened, she encourages his unease. She puts him graciously in his place; of course she does not trust him, she tells him, given his reputation. Of course she is suspicious, given his timing, this sudden return-splash to the public eye of his. Are you now truly

a) sober?
b) legally divorced?
c) drug-free? 

she queries. Is his act really together now, is he sincere? She evaluates his responses with stern professorial squints. She offers insightful critique of his faults. He is eager, flustered, little-boyish, cannot finish his steak, urges her to doggy-bag it and the remaining asparagus spear home. He would think less of her were she not so wary of him, he tells her, and he is grateful for both her spirit and her open mind. He is delighted by her integrity. She does not even know how powerful she is. He will prove himself, if she will just give him a chance. They agree he is worthy, or at least potentially so, and she agrees to bestow upon him more of her precious, rarefied time.

On their second date—rare, unsustainable sushi—he reveals his deepest-pain story, what once triggered and drove his legendary self-destructiveness but has also since been the fueling, bolstering heart-throb of his life’s work. She has heard the story before—she once viewed long channel-surfing seconds of a cable documentary on him, his struggle to overcome the distressful childhood to Make Something of Himself—but that is just superficial, salivating press, he tells her, media mumbo jumbo, the Journalism 101 exercise unable to penetrate mere persona. No, he must share his most intimate self with her, alone; he cannot hide from her his private pain, not if he wishes her to understand, or—far more important—to reveal her own pain, the pain he sees in her soul-bruised eyes, the pain he does so fervently wish her to share, to trust him with, and so he cannot help telling her about 

a) his sister, older, adored, and the ripening scent of womanhood he went boyhood sniffing for, her female bathroom smell, black soapy hairs in the tub drain and sticky panties in the hamper, how she stumbled past his bedroom door late that one night, a yell to the sleepy unwatchful parents that she was home safe from her date, how he lay silent and listening and heard her enter her room, heard the door close and the click of the lock, heard her window creak open slowly, deliberately slow, heard her stumble-crawl out to disappear again and the slow disappearing roll of tires on pavement and then she was disappeared forever, stolen taken abducted, an abandoned car found with a mere smear of her blood but they never found her and he is tormented to this day by her absent scent and his silence that fateful night, by having not watched over her, kept her at home, safe.
b) his mother, so unmoored after his good-riddance Godless dog of a father was gone for good, and he was five years old, six, the Man of the House, she’d whisper, Sleep with me tonight, honey, you’ll protect me, won’t you? and he grew yearning and used to her moist nylon nightie heat and oniony whiff, seven years old, eight, but how he came home that one day to the sound of urgent naked flesh-struggle inside, how he burst in and hurled himself brave at her naked hairy attacker but then she screamed at him—at him!—to stop it, Goddammit, stop, get out, grabbing and holding him down, pulling down his pants and her angry hand smacks slamming on his naked buttocks, her damp naked white breasts shuttling across his back, and then being banished to his little-boy room to listen listen listen to her with that pumping swarthy man, then to her with all the other come-and-go scumbag men while he’d sweat and grope and pump at himself and couldn’t protect her from her own degradation, the descent into slattern filth and booze and drugs and final vein-burned fate and he was truly left all alone for good.
c) the woman he found, he was innocent childhood backwoods exploring that day, was all, branches-for-a-fort-or-Y-stick-to-fashion-a-slingshot when he stumbled, tripped, was tripped up by the thick twig of a blue-veined marble arm beneath brown leaves, the nest of dark clotted hair, what he had to describe and relive over and over, how he fell on and thus found the chilling torn body, his screaming screaming for someone to come till his hoarse cries were heard and he was found curled on top of her naked sweet rot, fingers gripping her hair, her cold face, her icy breasts. An unknown unidentified woman, they told him afterward, some random no-name Jane Doe, some fated whore, just a body a body a body used and broken and discarded by bad brutal men. 

And she takes his trembling hand, I am here, she tells him tenderly, I am here, and he clutches, grips, weeps over his fatty toro. 

I was right about you, he says. But how can I earn you? You could have any man in the world. How can I deserve so much grace?

Expansive crystal-vase’d flower arrangements are delivered, overwhelm her studio apartment with their cloying lily gasp. Parchment and ink missives arrive each day, for he eschews the digital chilliness of social media or text. He buys her a several-months’-rent dress that she reluctantly accepts but can’t imagine wearing anywhere but some grand event he might escort her to. He offers to get her transmission fixed, pay her rent, pay off her debts, then delightedly begs her forgiveness when she refuses with huffy pride, is giddy when she sends back the pearl-and-platinum choker in its iconic robin’s egg blue box. He takes her to

a) the taping of a program for NPR, the interviewer rhapsodizing on his cultural legacy, his role as a shaper of American theatre and recontextualized, contemporized historical perspective, the much-needed re-emergence of his moral vision, his voice,
b) a parking lot rally in support of migrant workers and undocumented immigrants where the verbal sway of his impassioned rejoinders to xenophobic rightwing picketers and his impromptu Bible-quoting debate on the defining Christian tenet of shared brotherhood gets spontaneous applause, primetime network and then viral airplay,
c) an added date for his comeback concert, now becoming an actual tour, now a sold-out amphitheatre full of nostalgic boomers and cynical hipsters seeking honed arrows for their toughened hearts, celebrating the rediscovery of his wandering-minstrel lyricism and authenticity,

while she stands to one privileged-insider side and smiles and nods her support in response to his anxious, searching-for-her-in-the-pauses eyes. Afterward he is exhilarated but dismissive of the hoopla and noisy acclaim—it is not about that, he tells her, the joy is knowing she was there, with and for him. It was, paradoxically, a moment of their greatest intimacy thus far. He strokes her arm, intimately, describes to her the 

a) upstate New York estate he will purchase for her after this play goes Broadway and Tony and Pulitzer, with verdant grazing land for goats and long hand-in-hand private walks and she can fill her days making chèvre or going to grad school and getting a doctorate in whatever discipline she likes while he writes and writes, for the greatest most inspired work of his life still lies ahead, he knows that now, and evenings before a roaring stone fireplace with wolfhounds or babies at their feet he will read those fresh-inspired pages aloud to her, his Lover, his Muse,
b) Georgetown townhouse they will make their havened own when this campaign is won and he rises to the next-on-the-list prize, a Senate seat, and he will storm the Capitol on behalf of the downtrodden and disenfranchised while she volunteers at animal shelters and veterans hospitals and church soup kitchens, raises their golden children and elegantly DC-hostesses at his side, his Dolly, his Eleanor, his gracious helpmeet bride,
c) charming craftsman bungalow they will settle in after this album drops and he’s back on steady rotation, a giant Stickley bed and early-L.A. architecture like the profiles in those heavy high-gloss magazines, and daytimes he will compose and record epic love songs dedicated to her in his state-of-the-art studio out back while she writes poems or novels or paints or sculpts or weaves or has kids, she can do anything she wants for she is an Artist, too, his Brilliant Other,

the woman he cannot wait to introduce to the world as his. And every night they will make love for hours in mutual ecstasy and he will hold her safe in his arms while they weep gratitude for the relief of their shared pain, their island-in-the-stream togetherness, for their—his word—metamorphosizing love. 

She coughs. Let’s maybe take this a little slow, she tells him nervously. OK? Let’s just keep this between us for now? You are a public figure, but I am a private sort of person, I guess. I guess I’m not used to all this. 

Of course, he assures. He knows what he offers is overwhelming, intense. He respects her privacy, her delicate sensibility. Everything will be up to her, everything will be hers. He is happy to give her as much time as she needs, although it is wrenching, excruciating for him to rein in his galloping heart. He senses she finds him slightly ridiculous, and perhaps he even is. But he is serious, he insists. And he is somewhat hurt, to be honest—a brief shadow to his face—by her lingering skepticism. But she will see. She will open herself to him. She will learn to trust again. Then, once they are truly, fully-faithed together, he will achieve his Greatest Things. She will at last be fully, deservedly realized in the world. And he leaves her at her apartment door, merely hand-kissed and cheek-stroked, 

I am delighted to court you, he says. 

And she is a little grateful for the reprieve, his willingness to keep resetting the clock at courtship and tentative respectful ladyfair kisses goodnight, and she is—increasingly very—relieved because she tries but cannot ignore the age difference, the lack of actual attraction or sexual pull, or even the faint but growing, creeping-in crawl and distaste at the smell of his skin and breath and hair—when, she wonders, does older merely become old?—and she is happy to encourage this urgently leisurely pace to give her time to adjust, adapt, yes, that’s all she needs, because this vision and dangle of an existence lived at such peaks, such unbound emotional extravagance, is of course overwhelming, just as he says. A touch of altitude sickness, is all.

But what if he is right, she wonders, worries, and this is the—one? only?—call to liberation from negligibility, her gifted destiny revealed at last, her inevitable grand role to play, the ultimate Wikipedian narrative arc of her life? 

Her friends and co-workers and parents voice hesitant—envy-tinged, she suspects, or is that surprise at his choosing, at this sudden starshine upon her Plain Jane face?—concerns. What about his past, they ask, those old vague pre-TMZ rumors of addictions and instability and bitter divorces and breakdowns and adolescent run-ins with the law? 

Exactly, that is the past, she assures them. It is Ancient History 101, why he disappeared from the public stage for so long, to confront demons and finally work all that through. He has been totally upfront and honest about everything—and hasn’t he channeled his furious, damaged genius into positive action and change? Look at what he is creating in the world—hasn’t he risen above such skeptical misunderstanding, such hurtful snark? It is the price of greatness, she supposes to them, sighing, the burden of his brilliance. She allows her own voice to be tinged with status, ascendancy, and the next night shows up determinedly at his door, steeled by Two Buck Chuck Chardonnay, to offer herself in reward.

It is her fault, she feels, the awkward and unsync’d grapple of it, then the ultimate mortifying failure. He is unable because of her lingering bourgeois superficiality, she is sure, her tentative going-through-the-sexual-motions motions. Chemistry is, well, chemicals, she chides herself, just Bunsen burner hype, schoolgirl mythology. Get 

over it. Love is of spirit and souls and so if her flesh is passive, unmoved—cringes, actually—and her lungs strain for air during his groping mewling her-pleasure-is-everything exertions it is no wonder that the potency of his own response is weakened, disempowered, if his own pleasure in her is dulled. She apologizes.

He does not accuse her. On the contrary he revels in her refinement, contrasts her constantly with other women, the coarse, withholding, pedestrian past 

a) girlfriends
b) wives
c) lovers

in whom he placed such mistaken disappointed faith, who could not rise to meet him at his level of essential truth. He understands she is not yet fully his—a subtle darkening of his voice—but he assures her she is making progress, justifying his trust. He has peeled for her his very soul to pulp and seeds, and she cups it so soft in her dear hands. Whatever else he may achieve in this life, his only true dream is to die in her arms. She alone is his last chance for a profound happiness. She has not run, has not fled, and he needs no greater reassurance or evidence of the redemptive promise of her love. 

She clears her throat. She wills herself to pat, no, stroke his shoulder, his naked back, to initiate, but he stops her, 

No, he says. There will be plenty of time. They will get there soon, together—he has no doubt. It is their fate. 

One later night—another wilting, truncated effort—he asks her, yet again, to share her pain. Her most visceral, damaging pain, the pain she hides from the world but he can discern and will rescue her from, what will at last fuse their souls and thus, successfully, their flesh. He needs this from her. But she can think of no pain worthy enough to share. She tries to remember the agonies of spirit she must have suffered when that 

a) sweet senior-year-of-college boyfriend backed out on the eve of moving in, he just wasn’t ready, he said, although she was really awesome and everything and he cared about her, and maybe he was just panicking, yeah, although didn’t that show his unreadiness to make a commitment, even to a really great girl like her, and while it did hurt at the time, of course, her truest distress was having cleaned out her closet to make room for him and his stuff and it was too late to get those clothes back from Goodwill.
b) cubicle co-worker she hooked up with and started dating after the office Groundhog Day pub gathering confessed he also was sleeping with Anita in Human Resources, but she kept dating him for another few months anyway because while it did hurt at the time, of course, what she secretly hoped was Anita would feel guilty enough to push forward a raise or promotion for her, and it went on until the day he just disappeared from their cubicle to go back and live with his parents in one of the Dakotas, Anita told her, rolling her eyes, over their let’s-split-a-chicken-Caesar lunch.
c) hot wanna-be actor guy from the CinemaSoape Laundromat—who she was sort of crazy about, or maybe was just crazy about the carnal sex and his pliable porno assurance with her body, although she nursed a hope this was or could be or would be love, but what would she do with this life-as-it-comes kid she could never introduce to her friends, her parents, even after he groomed the scruff and she bought him a decent jacket and pair of shoes—agreed to her ending it with nothing more than a carefree grin and insulting shrug, and while it hurt at the time, of course, when he offered to fuck her one final time in her car, she simply shrugged back and said Sure.

She is embarrassed by her lack of formative anguish. She feels shame at the juvenile unworthiness of her prior men, the mere and interchangeable boys she had chosen, those petty hurts; he will reassess her, realize she lacks profundity, a poet’s tender heart. When he continues to entreat she demurs, mysteriously, hintingly, as if still clutching to her delicate breast the most ineffable of torments, as if he has not quite yet earned the peeling open of her soul, and at his now-darkened, newly-hardened face, at the twitch in his eye, she wonders, suddenly a little afraid, how much time she has left.

One many-nights-later night he calls. He is rambling, a thick-throated inchoate stumble over sentences and words and it crosses her mind—as fear? as hope?—that he must be drunk, wasted, in the middle of some kind of breakdown. Are you all right? she breaks in. Slow down, what are you saying, I cannot understand you. He gulps, edges consonants, asks if she has ever

a) been assaulted, taken against her will, she can tell him, such violation can happen to any woman, one never blames the victim, she is never asking for it, never seeking to be overpowered or hurt that way, even if there was no actual physical force he would understand because there is always always the threat and so the woman must submit, in the end must spread herself wide and perhaps even take pleasure in it, sometimes that happens, it is no fault of the woman if she gets aroused, wet, orgasms climaxes comes, a woman’s body is designed that way, after all, to shudder and writhe and be possessed by the male force, and so she must confess, tell him all about it,
b) had sex with a black guy, a Mexican or a Muslim, or a dog, what is the ugliest most filthy diseased thing she has ever allowed inside her, been penetrated by, taken in to her most sacred private places, sucked or fingered or fucked, because some women, very sick and disturbed women, do crave and seek out such self-punishing unnatural defilement and so she must confess, tell him all about it,
c) been paid for sex, whored herself out for cash or drugs or tuition, but doesn’t every woman do that in some way, sell herself for gutter slut cheap, because even the smart-negotiated exchange for marriage or caviar or jewels is still just perfumed marked-up whoring, a piece of rotten meat with fancy sauce and price-tag slapped on, just cold-hearted frigid viper-bitch betrayal, and so she must confess, tell him all about it, 

and he will try but cannot promise to forgive, although he may never be able to touch her again he can at least help her to repent, to cleanse herself, and so—Do not ever—there is vomit thickening her own throat now—ever contact me again, she says, and hangs up.

She nurses her nausea with quarts of ginger tea. She asks her landlord to turn up the water heater, and scalding-showers herself every day, loofahs her crawling skin to a tender-bright new. There is a mailbox slew of fattened fine-stationery envelopes addressed in a blotty, barely-legible scrawl that she tears up without opening. There are sobbing voicemails and then heated imploring texts, and she changes her phone number. There are emails with exclamation-point subject lines and she marks them as spam, then deletes without reading. There are FedExed boxes she refuses to accept, although the nonplussed FedEx guy tells her there is no point, he cannot register her refusal or return to sender. There are deliveries of towering long-stemmed vases and old-fashioned boxed bouquets that she drops off at the nearest Cancer Treatment Center. She leaves the still gift-tagged, grand-event dress with a fancy consignment shop—a touch of guilt at not donating to some charity auction but even her thirty percent share of the sale will help her cover last month’s bills, this month’s rent. She casually mentions to her friends and co-workers and parents that it is simply over, ended, is all—the age difference, sure—aiming for a shrugging, just-a-fling, nothing-to-see-here tone, but they continue to reference, to ask if she 

a) has heard the rave notices and hot buzz for the L.A. previews of his play, about the record advance ticket sales for its Broadway run, the announcement of film rights already purchased by a legendary director for an Oscar-winning actress and that he has signed an above-the-title-credit, multi-million-dollar deal to write the screenplay,
b) has seen the polls predicting a landslide victory, the pundits proclaiming this is just the beginning, or new beginning, the resurrection of his political career and a nation’s hope, a validation of progressive faith-based humanism, there already is talk of his keynote spot at the convention, his party-favorite, frontrunner status for the next Senate seat, and who knows what political heights after that,
c) knows that the first single off the new album already has made download history and a Rolling Stone cover piece is due next month, that a retrospective boxed set of his albums is in the works with all proceeds going to school arts’ programs, that he is organizing and headlining an upcoming HBO concert to benefit impoverished families and the children of famine,

and she ratchets up her shruggy indifference until they cease. She goes offline, limits herself to local TV news of weather and sig alerts and petty neighborhood break-ins and eventually sleeps through the night, finally comes and goes from her apartment without first peep-holing or peering up and down the street with queasy galloping heart.

Six months later an innocently thin, return-addressless, bulk-stock envelope slips from a sheaf of junk mail and she opens it without thinking. I ask nothing of you, it says, the penmanship lucid and precise, I cannot even ask your forgiveness. But you must know I was very ill. The stresses of my second-chance fortune broke me; the challenge of you triggered a renewed haunting by my past. I abused you in an unforgivable manner and it is the loss of you that has at last shattered my denial and forced me to confront my darkest self, to seek help from

a) my AA sponsor. I am going to meetings every day, living one day at a time, it is so hard but so true, I finally understand the rigorous commitment it takes to lead an honest and real life, and I have no choice,
b) a spiritual advisor. I have found a priest, a brilliant Jesuit who understands me and my struggle, is guiding my return to faith, helping me choose and commit to an honest path forward, one grounded in harmony and peace, for
c) a shrink, a real psychiatrist. I cannot take meds with my history but I am fully committed to the therapeutic process, grueling as it is, because I have finally chosen to be honest with myself about myself, and

it is time to change my life. Your discretion and respect for my privacy these past months is proof of your extraordinary compassion, and I would be honored (although I have no right to be honored) if you would attend the (ticket enclosed) upcoming 

a) opening night
b) election night
c) concert

and celebration event as my respected guest and my tender, tender friend.

He stands spotlighted and dignified and steady-spined before the applauding world, and she can see even from a distance the fresh serenity to his face, the clear and buoyant light in his eyes. But she also can discern—she alone, she is sure—the fragility behind his soft-murmured thank yous, the frightened boy-child pulse. She applauds with the crowd, palms slapping hard and then harder, hoping he will sense her forgiving and respectful presence, her support, perhaps notice she is wearing the (retrieved) dress he once gifted her, and when their eyes catch—you are here! she alone can hear him say—his dignified smile is suddenly a child’s joyous beam, humble and without guile. 

He holds out his hand. Heads and cameras turn, rippling the crowd with expectation. He is reaching, hoping, and she finds herself—she cannot leave him just standing there, no—stepping forward, then at his side. He seizes her hand, pulls her closer, and announces to the applauding world: This is the angel who saved me and made everything possible, the answer to my prayers. Here she is, the woman who has changed my life.

He undresses her that night as if unwrapping an heirloom ornament from sepia tissue leaves, and as she lowers herself below him to the bed, as she opens to him her mouth, her arms, her thighs, as she feels him slide hard inside her with startling spearing depth, she hears his soft voice murmur, whisper, tell her, what she will do now is 

a) pretend he is a stranger, a man of steel command, she has been carried off and she will struggle while he positions and binds her, she will cry out and beg while she is torn and split wide—show me, he says, show me how you bleed—and only then can he, will he, hear her screams and relent, will he soothe and stroke and take her so very tenderly,
b) force him to all fours, make him crawl and howl like a dog, like the ugly animal he is, she will tame him, shame him, beat him down to dirt, will fuck him with—see, he has the tool she must use, it straps on—all her own animal rage and pain and only when he is fully degraded can he, will he, take her, find pleasure in her, for only then will she be brought down as foul and brutal and bestial as he,
c) lie still, stripped naked and serene, she will lie in the cold water bath—see, there is the snowy crushed ice that he will pack her in so velvet soft—and when she is chilled fully and pure to white-blue porcelain flesh, she mustn’t move, no shivering, no chattering, she must not spoil his pleasure, only then can he, will he, pound his heat into her, bring her back to a hot throbbing life, 

and only then will they be truly together at last, only then will she fulfill her destiny, her fate.

She struggles against his weight, pulls her body from his clutch, is elated at her flesh resealing shut against him, at the strength of her simmering, resurging self. She breaks his final hold on her wrist, grabs and pulls on her dress, is leaving running fleeing, is at the door, and stops.

For he is not pursuing: he is simply lying there, watching, waiting, in wait. For her to choose. It is up to her to seize at last, for good, this one and only chance at singularity, at saving grace. She reaches for the door, pauses. Everything can be, will be hers, it is true. But only if she—for she was never she at all, she understands, never a discerned or rarefied her—chooses an existence both realized and obliterated. Yes. Only if she 

a) is a dead woman.
b) is a dead woman.
c) is a dead woman.