Emma Who Saved My Life by Wilton Barnhardt Read Free Book Online

offwhite wool and had no sleeves but rather two big gaping holes at the shoulder and every time she gestured or got a drink or got a piece of flavorless brown bread, you couldn’t help seeing her pointy small breasts when she bent forward. But then she seemed like she might not mind your seeing her pointy small breasts. I told Lisa that I couldn’t help noticing her pointy small breasts.
    â€œYes,” said Lisa seriously, “they’re always pointy and sticking through her crocheted tops. Joan once gave me a speech on how dishonest I was because I shaved my underarms. Joan is that woman’s roommate…” Lisa pointed her drink toward a brunette version of Joan, who had long dark hair as if she might think she looked like an Indian—wait: native American—with a leather headband (HOW unfashionable …) pulling her hair back, but from the neck down she was dressed like an almost-stylish secretary in a “midi” with white hose that looked strange between the midi and the leather boots.
    â€œSally’s a classic,” said Lisa, pulling me further back from the party so we could gossip. “Last month she had two analysts. Two. She had so many problems, you see, she went to one on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the other on Monday and Wednesdays. On weekends she went out and did self-destructive, stupid things to talk about Monday through Thursday.”
    Lisa was rehearsing her stand-up comedy routine, right?
    â€œNo, I couldn’t make this story up,” she went on, steadying herself on my arm. I led us both to a sofa that someone had spilled a drink on and therefore was deserted. “All her problems in life are because of Daddy,” said Lisa. “Daddy who pays the rent on her $400 a month loft apartment I’d kill for, Daddy who pays her analysts’ bills, Daddy who is a wealthy real-estate tycoon who sends her to Europe once a summer—”
    Sounds like child abuse to me too, I said.
    â€œWell Daddy,” Lisa continued, “is the source of all her neuroses and when the Unification Church didn’t help and the People’s Love Temple didn’t help and a retreat with the Mormons didn’t help, she went to this high-priced analyst and told him about her daddy who raped her, abused her, and fondled her as a child and why this has caused her to be frigid with men today. Well the doctor came up with a therapy: sue Daddy. Take him to court, exorcise those demons, expose him for what he is, a public catharsis.”
    And she did?
    Lisa smiled, “There was a problem,” she continued, raising a finger. “Mainly that she made it all up. So she started going to Analyst No. 2 and told him about telling Analyst No. 1 the rape story. He asked her why she made it up, and she said that it was because Analyst No. 1 had made a pass at her and had molested her during a Valium treatment and she was so scared of him that in order to assert how vulnerable and fragile she was she created the whole father-rape story. It gets good here. Analyst No. 2 is outraged that Analyst No. 1 did these things and tells Sally that she should sue him, get his license revoked, expose him for the quack he is—it’s analysts like that who give analysts a bad name, right? And so he was going to take this up with the New York Psychiatric Board.”
    She made up the second story as well?
    â€œYes, so she’s in a bit of a spot. Now I can’t remember what comes first here, the affair with Analyst No. 3, who I think I saw here at this party, or her botched suicide attempt—”
    Suicide attempt?
    â€œYeah, she took too many pills, unfortunately. I mean, unfortunately because so many people want her loft. Anyway, Joan moved in with her and the details are foggy. It’s been a long time since she told me all this stuff.”
    She TOLD Lisa all this?
    â€œHoney, she’ll tell you all this; any acquaintance, the mailman, for