Take the message on the answering machine from Myra Ascheim, for example. Jack didn't know that Emma already knew who Mildred Ascheim was, not to mention that Emma had been watching porn films day and night--"research" for The Slush-Pile Reader, she later called it--and this was before he happened to meet Hank Long on the set of Muffy the Vampire Hooker 3 and Jack and Emma started watching Hank Long movies together.
Jack told Emma that he couldn't read about Miguel Santiago without seeing Hank Long in the part, but Emma objected to his premature conclusion that her novel would one day be a film. "Spare me the movie talk, baby cakes," was how she put it. "You're getting ahead of yourself."
Jack first read The Slush-Pile Reader while the manuscript was still making the rounds of New York literary agents; Emma had decided she was more American than Canadian and she wanted to sell the U.S. rights before she even showed the novel to a Toronto publisher--notwithstanding that Charlotte Breasts-with-Bones-in-Them Barford, her old pal from St. Hilda's, was a young up-and-comer in Canadian publishing.
"Did you have to call her Michele Maher?" Jack asked Emma. "I adored Michele Maher, I worshiped her. I will always worship her. You never even met her, Emma."
"You kept her away from me, Jack. Besides, Michele is a very positive character--in the book, I mean."
"Michele is a very positive character in real life!" Jack protested. "You've given her the body of a twelve-year-old boy! You've made her this pathetic creature who's enslaved to bodybuilders!"
"It's just a name," Emma said. "You're overreacting."
Naturally, Jack was sensitive about the small-schlong business, too--that part about sleeping with a guy with a small penis being "a muted pleasure."
"It's a novel, honey pie--a work of fiction. Don't you know how to read a novel?"
"You've been holding my penis for years, Emma. I didn't know you were making a size assessment."
"It's a novel," Emma repeated. "You're taking it too personally. You've missed the point about penises, Jack."
"What point is that?"
"When they're too big, it hurts, baby cakes. I mean, it hurts if the woman is too small."
Jack thought
about it; he hadn't known that a woman could be too small. (Too big, maybe, but not too small.) Did Emma mean that "a muted pleasure" was preferable to pain? Was that the point? Then he saw that Emma was crying. "I liked the novel," he told her. "I didn't mean that I didn't like it."
"You don't get it," Emma said.
Jack thought she was talking about The Slush-Pile Reader, which he believed he'd understood fairly well. "I get it, Emma," he said. "It may not be exactly my cup of tea--I mean it's hardly an old-fashioned novel with a complicated plot and a complex cast of characters. It may be a little contemporary for my taste--a psychological study of a relationship more than a narrative, and a dysfunctional relationship at that. But I liked it--I really did. I thought the tone of voice was consistent--a kind of sarcastic understatement, I guess you'd call it. There was a deadpan voice in the more emotional scenes, which I particularly liked. And the relationship, imperfect though it is, is better than no relationship. I get that. They don't have sex, they can't have sex, but--for different reasons--not having sex is almost a relief for them."
"Oh, shut the fuck up!" Emma said; she was still crying.
"What don't I get?" he asked.
"It's not the novel you don't get--it's me!" she cried. "I'm too small, Jack," Emma said softly. "Even not-very-big guys hurt me."
Jack was completely surprised. Emma was such a big girl, such a strong young woman, and she was always battling her weight; she was much taller and heavier than Jack. How was it possible that she was too small? "Have you seen a doctor?" he asked.
"A gynecologist--yes, several. They say I'm not too small. It's all in my mind, apparently."
"The pain is in your mind?" he asked her.
"No, that's not where the pain is," she said.
Emma's condition had an uncomfortable-sounding name. Vaginismus, Emma explained, was a conditioned response; often a spasm of the perineal muscles occurred if there was any stimulation of the area. In some women, even the anticipation of vaginal insertion could result in muscle spasm.
"You want to avoid penetration?" Jack asked Emma.
"It's involuntary, honey pie. I can't help it--it's chronic."
"There's no treatment?"
Emma laughed. She'd tried hypnosis--an attempt to retrain the muscles to relax instead of involuntarily contracting. But even the psychiatrist had forewarned her that this worked with only a small percentage of sufferers, and it hadn't worked with Emma.
On the advice of a Toronto gynecologist, Emma had experimented with a treatment known as systematic desensitization--or the Q-tip method, as her Los Angeles gynecologist disparagingly called it. By inserting something as narrow as a Q-tip--and when this was accomplished, progressively inserting slightly larger objects--