Jacintha

by Lorraine Davies

  “All right. One minute.” She left, glaring over her shoulder.

  Jacintha said, “I’m going to get us some coffee. I don’t think she’s actually going to check up on us in one minute, or even twenty. And please, don’t despair. I won’t tell anyone about us. And I’ve convinced Skitch not to say anything, you know, anonymously, because any scandal that came out would hurt me. And it would hurt you, and I don’t want you hurt any more than you already are. He loves me, and he’ll respect my wishes. We’ll talk more when I get back. Figure out what to do next.”

  She kissed him on his forehead, her lips cool against his hot skin, and left, smiling at him.

  He couldn’t be there when she got back. He struggled into his clothes, his shoulder making it too painful to get his left arm into his jacket; he pulled on his shoes without bothering about socks and without tying his laces; he looked into the corridor to see if the nurse angel was hovering, but saw no nurses at all. He hurried to the elevator, went to the downstairs lobby, and phoned for a taxi. He was standing outside the door, waiting, when Frances arrived.

  “Good heavens, Richard, what are you doing?” she said. “You look a mess. Carol’s not taking you home until tomorrow, you know. She’ll be visiting again this evening.”

  “I have to leave now. I’m not going home with Carol.”

  “Oh, Richard. Why not? She wants to look after you.”

  He started to cry great blobs of tears. Frances put her arm around him and he leaned his head on her shoulder, his crying becoming louder and wetter. People stared.

  “Come, you’re coming home with me.” She led him to her car, buckled him in like a child. “You can tell me all about it when we get to my house, if you want to. And you can stay with me as long as you like. What do you say?”

  “Yes, thank you, so kind.” Snot ran down his face and he wiped it with his sleeve.

  When he was settled in an armchair, drinking tea, he said, “I don’t want to see Carol. Could you please ask her not to come here — not for a while, anyway?”

  “Why? I don’t understand.”

  “I can’t explain right now. I mean, I could, but … Look, will you just promise me, please?”

  “Well, I’d really like to know why, but … yes, I promise. But will you tell me soon what’s going on? I know you’ve had a traumatic experience — the stabbing — but I sense there’s more.”

  “Yes. Maybe soon. I think I should be by myself now. Rest.”

  “Of course. I’ll make up the spare bed for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Frances started to leave the room.

  “Frances.”

  “Yes?”

  “I was … I was … attracted to one of my students.”

  Frances said nothing for a moment, as the sentence rang in his ears.

  “That’s not the end of the world. Is that why you don’t want to talk to Carol? Is your stabbing related to that?”

  “Yes.” Not the end of the world.

  “Do you know who the young man was?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you have to tell the police!”

  “No, he accused me of something terrible. Something that all the denials in the world wouldn’t erase from people’s minds. If he repeated it in court, it would be awful for all of us. The police think the attack was random. I’ve said I have no idea who he was or why he did it. It’s better that way. It’s the only way. Please believe me, Frances, and don’t tell anyone what I’ve told you.”

  “Well, I think you’re wrong. He should be held to account.”

  “No, please, there’d be terrible consequences. Please promise me you won’t do anything.”

  “All right, but against my better judgment. Whatever he said, he most likely wouldn’t be believed.”

  “Some people would believe. Promise me, Frances.” He was whining now, begging.

  “Please calm down. I promise. Truly.”

  Richard began to cry. Frances sat on the arm of his chair and held his head against her shoulder, swaying, humming tunelessly.

  After a minute or so, Richard stopped crying, blew his nose and said, “Thank you, Frances. I appreciate your sympathy even though I don’t deserve it.”

  She straightened up. “You’re very wrong about that. But I think you should sleep now. You look exhausted. Do you have some pills that will help?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll phone the hospital, see if I can find your doctor. Let’s get you to bed. I want you to know I’m here for you, promise and all, and that you’ll get through this. We’ll talk about it later. Process it.”

  Process it? Come to terms with it? What’s that other useless, hypocritical phrase? Find closure? “I don’t think talking about it will help.”

  “We’ll see,” Frances said.

  Under smooth, white sheets and a white down comforter, Richard lay rigid as a corpse, unable to roll from side to side to find a more comfortable position because of his wound, although the frantic tossing of his mind was the more serious impediment to sleep. Frances came in an hour or so later with sleeping pills, having miraculously got hold of his doctor. She’d had him phone a nearby pharmacy with a prescription, which she’d picked up.

  After Frances left, Richard took an additional pill and fell, finally, into a blessedly dreamless sleep.

  THIRTY-ONE

  HE HAD LET her in. She had appeared at the door and he had let her walk right in.

  He’d been sitting by the fireplace in his pyjamas and robe, staring into the flames. Fresh from a bath, he felt more comfortable than he had in many days. Frances had cleaned the area around his stitches and changed the dressing, and then went to have a bath herself. His wound, just below his collarbone, ached a little, and he concentrated on the ache, finding that doing so stilled his mind, made it almost blank. The licking and snapping fire had a welcome hypnotic effect. The room was cozy, cavelike, with its thick oriental carpet, warm beige walls, and red velvet drapes closed against the chilly night. He noticed, as if for the first time, that the fireplace had art deco tiles, with a border of stylized white lilies on a background of apple green. It reminded him of his and Carol’s destroyed fireplace.

  It was then he’d heard the knock on the door.

  She came in before he could speak. He closed the door, followed her into the living room, and stood looking at her. She wore a navy peacoat and a Russian-style fur hat, and her cheeks were flushed. She smelled of the wind that blows down from the mountains, promising snow, fresh and pure.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “How did you get this address?”

  “You got the bouquet of flowers, didn’t you, and a card from all your students? I needed this address so they could be delivered. Your wife told Aiden; she wouldn’t have told me.”

  Richard had been touched by the card, but felt deflated now, knowing it had been engineered by Jacintha.

  “Anyway, I am here. I used to be the one who should never have been, period. Not anywhere. But things turned out differently. Everything is different now.”

  Richard sat down stiffly, feeling as though he were splitting into two beings: one who wanted to recoil, to run and hide, and the other who wanted to hear her say something that would change everything, some denial. But that denial wasn’t going to happen — there was something electric about her, sparking from her as though her words were going to strike him, peel away from him like burned skin whatever thin shield he still possessed.

  “Listen. This is important. You loved me when you didn’t know who I was. You should love me more now that you know who I am. I won’t let go, now that I’ve found you. I love you and I know you love me and I want us to be lovers. We won’t tell anyone I’m your daughter. Don’t you see? We belong to each other in every way.”

  Richard couldn’t breathe. Breathe, must breathe.

  “Tell me it’s what you want, too, Richard. Please. Oh, please. I know you want me.”

  “No! You have to go. Go. Leave.
I don’t want you.”

  “Don’t lie.”

  “Do you want me to go insane? You have to go. You’re making it impossible for us even to know each other.”

  “We can’t take back what’s happened. We can’t deny the truth.”

  “You’ve got to give up this idea.”

  “I can’t.”

  Jacintha, who’d been standing a few feet from him, walked over and reached out to touch his cheek. He pulled away as though he’d been hit. He felt both frightened and ridiculous.

  He walked to the front door and opened it. “Please leave,” he said.

  She didn’t move. The cold air that blew into the room seemed to clear his head, and he emerged from a kind of fog of panic. He left the door ajar. He knew what he had to say, but when he spoke it was as though he were watching someone else take command.

  “The only way you can be my daughter is if we don’t see each other again. You have to make a clean break. Forget me. Think of me as a dream. Or a nightmare.”

  “Melt into thin air? ‘Leave not a rack behind’? Wishful thinking.”

  His clarity, mercifully, continued. “I’ve done you a great wrong. Before you were born, I injured you. And now I’ve done this most unforgivable thing.”

  “‘Most unforgivable’? Only from your point of view. Living without you was the most unforgivable thing. I haven’t told you, have I, why I was taken from my mother? I was raped by one of her johns. Afterward, I ran to a neighbour, who told a social worker.”

  He tried to speak, but his throat had closed up.

  “But that was long ago, and now I have you. I lost my need to seek revenge, to humiliate you. I think it happened when I first saw that you wanted me, the child you thought had never been born. We have to stay together. I’m flesh of your flesh.”

  “No!”

  She stared at him for a moment, then suddenly dropped into the armchair across from him, shoulders slumped, head down. Finally, she looked up and said, “I should have come to you that night on Thanksgiving. I should have come to you.”

  It took Richard a moment to realize what she meant.

  “No,” he said. “No. That would have made everything worse. Unbearable. No. Not coming was the best thing you’ve done in all this.”

  She jumped to her feet, her fierce posture regained. “We would have been together now,” she said, slowly, drawing out every word. “None of the bad things would have happened. Nobody would have known our secret.”

  “Jesus Christ, why can’t you see? That would have been the bad, the terrible thing.”

  “Finding a lost daughter is never a bad thing,” she said, and this time her hand touched his face and he seemed robbed of the energy needed to move.

  “And on the beach, you were eager to make love to me. We were pressed naked against each other. You can’t take back how much you wanted me.”

  He dropped to his knees, moaning. Cold air blasted in from the door, making him shiver.

  Just then, Frances came down the stairs, wrapped in a huge bath towel. “What’s going on? Who is this?”

  “Her, it’s her,” Richard said, barely audible.

  “Do you want her to leave?” Frances asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You heard,” Frances said. “You’d better go. He’s very upset. He hasn’t been well.”

  “All right. But I’ll come back tomorrow.”

  “No. Don’t come again unless you’re invited,” Frances said.

  “Richard, please. You’ll see I’m right,” Jacintha said.

  Still kneeling, head bowed, he knew he looked, in his thick, brown bathrobe, as though he were a penitent monk, waiting to be whipped. He looked up, saw that the three of them, all perfectly still, made an absurd tableau vivant: the guardian angel, wild haired and wingless; the beautiful supplicant; and the doomed monk unable to pray or receive a blessing of any kind.

  Then, fracturing the picture, Frances took Jacintha’s arm and walked her outside, where Jacintha pulled free angrily.

  She looked back and shouted, “Remember, Richard. We belong to each other now.”

  When she was gone, Frances helped Richard up and into a chair. “God, the nerve,” she said. “Can’t she understand nothing’s going to happen? I just assumed you weren’t going to pursue …”

  “No, nothing’s going to happen.”

  “Dear Richard. Don’t worry. She’ll give up on you before long. But it won’t help, you know, you falling to your knees, looking helpless. You’ll have to be firm with her if you see her again, heaven forbid. Unless she’s crazy. Do you think she’s crazy?”

  “I don’t know.” Truly, he didn’t. Madness seemed like a pit they’d both slid into, a pit with slippery walls and no footholds.

  “Well, I’ll protect you from her as best I can. She’s very beautiful. I can see why you … well, never mind. I’ll go and get dressed, and then I’ll make some tea.”

  “Rather have whisky.”

  “Whisky it is. I could use one, too.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  FOUR DAYS HAD passed since Jacintha’s visit. Every time Richard heard footsteps on the porch or heard the phone ring, his heart lurched. She had sent two emails on every one of the four days. He read the first four and after that pressed “delete” without reading them. They were brief, begging him to see her, and repeating, with variations, many of the things she’d said on her visit.

  He was surprised she hadn’t come back. Or maybe she had come to the house or phoned and Frances had refused to let her in or to speak to him. Or maybe Jacintha was planning some different tactic. Some fresh hell.

  He heard Frances on the phone now, talking to Carol. He assumed it was Carol by Frances’s tone of voice, stern and sympathetic by turns, and by the few phrases he made out: “better not,” “he’s not ready to,” “can’t explain,” “patience.”

  Patience. Patient. A sick man waiting. For what? Deliverance? Oblivion? Not for a cure in my case. He simply waited for each minute, each hour, each day to pass. To that end, Frances had assigned him household tasks, simple things he could do without putting a strain on his wounded shoulder.

  “We can live only a moment at a time,” she said. “Why not concentrate on our daily necessities and let the past and future take care of themselves?” She was full of Buddhist-inspired sayings, and sometimes they annoyed him, but mostly they soothed. Just a little. It was good to keep busy with mindless activities.

  He was holding a potato in his left hand, his left elbow on the table to minimize the pull on the arm, and feeling some satisfaction as he peeled thin strips from the white flesh and released the starchy wetness. He cut the naked potato into four equal pieces and dropped it into a pot of cold water; picked up another, brown, rough to the touch, and pulled the blade down the length of it. Once, twice, three times. The rhythm was pleasant.

  “It doesn’t matter what the work is,” Frances had said. “What matters is how much attention we bring to it. No job is more significant than any other. That’s not only Buddhist teaching; it’s part of many religions. The constant prayers and menial tasks of Christian monks, for example, are as much for developing attention as for praising and serving God. Well, maybe not quite as much, but learning how to be conscious in the moment must be a part of it.”

  So he was a monk now, paying attention to vegetables. He’d have liked to wear a medieval robe of rough, brown wool that punished his skin. Failing that, he’d have preferred to stay in his bathrobe all day. He smiled at how unlike punishment his soft robe was — it was more a symbol of defeat. But Frances insisted he dress every day in freshly laundered clothes, his shirts crisp and fragrant, ironed by her. He was required to shower and shave every morning, too.

  She was his mother superior. His warden. His protector. He didn’t know what he would have done without her sanctuary. Something drastic, maybe, but for the moment he was passive, childlike, in Frances’s care.

  Every day was much the same. The outside world had
faded. He found it impossible to read the newspaper, listen to the radio, watch TV. He hadn’t turned on his computer since Carol had delivered it along with clothes and toiletries on his first day here. Frances hadn’t let her in, obeying his instructions.

  The world had faded, except for the part that held the one who tormented him.

  “Don’t resist your thoughts,” Frances said.

  He couldn’t have, even if he’d tried. They entered with a force that flooded his mind and body, and he’d find himself standing with a broom or a face cloth or a knife in his hand and not knowing how much time had passed as some lustful vision of Jacintha thrilled and shamed him, caused an internal Bacchanalia as wild as the one that night on the beach. He lived then in the moment, all right — an eternal moment of imagined bliss. That, he presumed, was not the kind of “being present” that the Buddhists advocated. Maybe he got points for not resisting.

  Dinner consisted of mashed potatoes, rich with butter and milk, roast beef, green beans, and salad. Richard had eaten almost nothing the first couple of days, so Frances prescribed comfort food. She’d asked him what he liked, and mashed potatoes was one of the first things he’d named. And pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. Childhood food. He and Frances made them all.

  “The ritual of cooking and sitting down to eat three times a day will be good for you,” Frances said. “Calm and steady, a reliable routine.”

  “Good for invalids and lunatics,” he said, and Frances laughed.

  After dinner, they sat by the fire and drank the last of the red wine from dinner, and then Richard had some brandy. He was drinking a lot.

  “Richard,” Frances said, “as I said before, I get the feeling that there’s more going on with you than an ‘almost’ affair and the attack. Well, I’ve never been stabbed, so maybe I’m wrong, but some of your reactions seem a bit overboard, like refusing to see Carol. I bring it up again because I don’t think you’re going to resolve whatever’s troubling you without sharing it with somebody. That would be a start.”