The Book of Joe

knows I know she knows. Once again, our knowledge is a circle, spun around my unrepentant engorgement. She turns her head to press her lips against my ear, their gloss wet and against me, making me wish my ears had taste buds to identify what flavor she’s wearing. I guess peach. “Come up to the house and see me,” she murmurs. “I want to talk to you about your book some more.”
    “I will,” I say, shivering at the crush of her lips on my ear, a hot flush spreading from the base of my neck. Half a year of celibacy will do that to you.
    She steps back, her fingers brushing my arms as she lets go of me. “Promise?”
    I do.
    While editing Bush Falls, I was torn about whether or not to include the pages dealing with my obsession with Sammy’s mother, worried that Lucy might one day read the book. “The minute you start editing your writing based on the consideration of how it might be received, you’ve greatly compromised the integrity of the whole work,” Owen told me somberly.
    “It is fiction,” I pointed out weakly.
    “The fiction writer is every bit as responsible for the truth as the nonfiction writer,” Owen said haughtily. “Even more so, since he isn’t constrained by factual considerations.”
    “That’s a contradiction in terms, isn’t it?”
    “Only to an obtuse literalist. And anyway, it’s entirely beside the point.”
    “The point being?”
    Owen grinned. “Sex sells.”
    A short while after Lucy’s visit, I’m in the shower when I frighten myself badly by letting go with a piercing, anguished howl that bursts angrily out of me, raking my throat before reverberating loudly against the tiles and frosted glass door of the shower chamber. That solitary cry opens the floodgates, and for the next five minutes I stand convulsing under the hot spray as my body is racked with powerful sobs that come from deep within my belly, clawing desperately through my esophagus to escape to open air.
    When it’s over, I step out of the shower, feeling light-headed and congested, and wrap one towel around my waist and another over my head and shoulders, which always makes me feel like a heavyweight fighter. The tissue disintegrates in my wet hands as I blow my nose, little sodden flecks of Kleenex mingling in my snot like guppies. I study myself in the mirror, not quite sure what I’m looking for, and then, when the steam has fogged up the glass, obscuring my face, I get dressed and go page Owen.
    “I’m behaving oddly,” I tell him when he returns my page.
    I can actually hear him force his mouth shut against the comment he wants to make. “In what way do you feel you’re behaving oddly?”
    I tell him about my violent crying fit in the shower, and then back up to my tears in the hospital stairwell and in my father’s den the night before. “Crying,” he says, “is hardly odd behavior.”
    “It is for me.”
    “Listen, Joe, you obviously have a significant amount of unresolved conflict concerning your family and your past.”
    “No shit,” I say, struggling to keep the impatience out of my voice. “But it’s never reduced me to tears. How would you explain this behavior?”
    “You mean, if I were a therapist.”
    “Right.”
    “Which I’m not.”
    “Whatever.”
    “Hell, I don’t know,” Owen says. “Therapy is a complex course of exploration and analysis. It’s a perversion of the process to offer shotgun diagnoses.”
    “But you already have one.”
    “Of course I do. I’m just throwing up my usual disclaimer.”
    “Duly noted. Now lay it out for me. Do you think I’m having a nervous breakdown?”
    Owen sighs. “You’re not having a breakdown. I don’t think you have it in you.” Only Owen can make this sound like an actual character flaw. “Off the top of my head, I’d say that for many years you’ve been very lonely for the love of your family. It’s probably a significant factor in the utter failure of all your other relationships. You’re never satisfied, because no woman can fill the giant void left by your family. Now you’re in your hometown, confronted with the family whose love you so desperately yearn for, and you can no longer contain your deep feelings of guilt, loneliness, and loss.”
    For a long moment there are just the sounds of our respective breathing over the phone lines as I consider what he’s just said. “That sounds pretty much on the money,” I finally say.
    “I’d appreciate it if you would sound less surprised,” Owen