by Diane Wald
I continued to examine the room, trying to ignore a burgeoning headache. In one corner, and using up most of the available space, was my old piano, the one I’d had since childhood. I’d been forced to leave the new one, the budget-busting Bösendorfer, with my wife, who could not play. The old piano, my beloved Baldwin, had my brother Duncan’s baby teeth marks on one of its legs. I could barely make them out anymore, but my fingers still knew just where to find them, and when I touched the tiny, notched indentations, I imagined I could smell Duncan’s sweet, baby-moist, silky hair and feel his velvety, warm skin as I lifted him away from the piano.
The rest of the furnishings were new, ugly, rented; I passed my eyes over them as if they weren’t there. I looked at the cheap plastic clock: fifteen minutes to Lizzie. The pain in my head was becoming hard to ignore. I reached into the desk drawer, drew out a bottle of Percodan, and swallowed a half-dose, dry. I would have to shave and change my shirt at least. I wanted to shower, but there was no time—or, possibly there was time, but if Lizzie should come early, if she should knock timidly and no one answered, she might just go away. I couldn’t risk it. My loneliness bore down on me like a bag of heavy gravel. Besides its terrible weight, I could feel its filth seeping through the burlap and covering me everywhere. A shower. I would take the chance.
I got up slowly and turned off the desk lamp. Without turning on any lights in the tiny bedroom, I laid out clean clothes, arranging them on the bed in the order in which I’d put them on: a thin, beige, cashmere “Perry Como” sweater on the bottom, then a pale blue button-down shirt, then an undershirt on top. I chose new socks and shorts and decided the chino pants I was already wearing would have to do. I wished I had some jeans like Lizzie’s, then I laughed at myself. Jeans for the young, the whole, the with-it. Not for me.
Then, in the warm dark of the bathroom, I took off my clothes. I ran my hands over my chest, which, like my skull, still pleased me. I found myself gingerly touching my body more and more of late, suddenly valuing it, finding it a blessing. I paid no attention to my skinny arms and legs. Where, I wondered, not for the first time, did all those swimming muscles go? “Gone to academia, one by one,” I sang to the tune of a popular protest song, giggling. The headache was letting up, leaving the slightly drunken feeling I’d come to recognize, if not fully welcome. At least I’d remembered to break the tablet in half; Lizzie probably wouldn’t notice any change in my behavior. I decided, in honor of my galloping anxiety, to take an incredibly fast shower, extremely hot. After that, I dressed as quickly as I could without making myself dizzy. Then I sat down on the bed and prayed.
I prayed for the pair of swans in Thompson Park: that they’d stay and make a home there; that their unquestioning fidelity to each other would reward them with peace, good health, and many offspring; that no one would offer them junk food that would make them ill; that no one would taunt them and risk their righteous slashing; and that someday, very soon, I would take Eliza there to meet them. She would like the swans, and, what’s more, she would know what I had prayed for without my having to tell her.
Repeating “soon,” I went back to my desk and checked the clock. Five past the hour. Maybe the clock was fast, or she’d had car trouble, gotten lost, or simply decided against coming at the last minute. But all of that was unlikely. Eliza seemed shy, but her will was unbreakable. She’d said she was coming, and she would come, I was sure of it. Any minute now she’d arrive, or else she’d call to say what had detained her. She knew I would worry. She wouldn’t leave me hanging.
I thought about her last semester in my psychology class. To my initial amazement, this shadow from the back of the room had stood up for her point of view time and time again, courageously and unflinchingly. Sometimes, playing devil’s advocate, I would instigate extra discussions, just to see her in action. Her classmates would become exasperated with her at times, but if she thought she was right, she would not budge; she would calmly state and restate her position until the others would grudgingly grant her if not their concurrence, at least a portion of their respect. This mysteriously quiet girl: who would have thought it of her? I never interrupted her once she gained some verbal momentum. I allowed her, as I thought of it, to do my work for me, to teach for me (she was unquestionably my brightest student in many years), and to amuse and deeply interest me as well. There was something of the young John MacLeod in her, and I was drawn to it gratefully.
When she wasn’t debating some finely tuned point, however, Eliza was invisible in the classroom, as motionless as the tall-windowed classroom’s afternoon light, a little long-haired figure in the back row, seated deliberately behind some broad-shouldered hulk, or next to one of the classroom’s thick, four-sided columns, so she could lean against it and make herself even harder to see from the front of the room. I knew it was only because she liked me so much that she bothered to speak at all: that flattered me. I imagined it meant she knew how much she could help me, though she didn’t know the nature of the help, or why I needed it so desperately. Eliza didn’t have much use for school, or school as she knew it. I always wished I’d met her when I was younger and richer, when I could have plucked her out of this state penitentiary of a learning institution and helped her to attend some saner, more classical, and just generally sounder university. But here she was, luckily for me, and she seemed to really take to my field, to be truly interested in my lectures.
The pain in my head wasn’t pain anymore, but it had taken over. It was like a stocking cap of thin, highly elasticized material pressed all around my skull. I imagined there were tiny lights in it, flashing on and off like starry pinpricks on a map of the night-roads of America. This made me laugh, and the sound of the laugh frightened me: it was a child’s laugh. Suddenly I was on the street corner in Boxwood, New York again, and seven years old. I tossed handfuls of dirt into the twilit air to see the bats rush at the particles, as if they were insects, food. The strength of their instinct amazed me, how they never doubted the evidence of their senses, how they experienced what they needed to see. When the streetlights finally went on in my memory of Boxwood, I remembered to look once more at the clock.
Twelve after, and no Lizzie. The stocking cap of pain somehow kept my head from exploding, although that might have given me some relief. I remembered a time, not too long ago at all, when allowing myself strong emotions had been as natural as breathing; now I was advised to avoid them, and I’d learned that that advice was wise. I hardly noticed feeling sad—I’d become inured to sadness—but I imagined Lizzie slowly slipping away, and myself unable to stop her, unable to summon up the passion such a motion would demand. Was it worth it, or would it be better to plunge into so-called “normal” reactions, and give my dear Lizzie a taste of what my feeling for her was truly made of? I didn’t know the answer, doubted if I even had the strength anymore to find it out. But one thing I did know: that if Eliza slipped away, I would not try to replace her. Even had there been a great deal more time left to me, the chances of again meeting someone so miraculously intuitive to my situation, so respectful and yet so sweetly mocking of my ways, were incredibly slim.
I decided to make some tea, to pass the time. In my new little kitchenette, everything was arranged precisely to my tastes and needs, a pleasure I had never before experienced. All mine. My first weeks in this place had been sad and monotonous, but I had to admit there were some compensations. I went first to the cupboard and selected two tall glass mugs with heavy bottoms—beer mugs, I suppose, but, in my view, the only perfect receptacles for tea. From the refrigerator I took, carefully, with two hands, the heavy plastic bottle of spring water, and poured some into a saucepan, setting that on the stove. I’d found that trying to direct a stream from the jug into the kettle’s small opening was a waste of time and effort, and anyway, the water boiled so much more quickly, with so many large and satisfying bubbles, in the pan. I waited a few moments until the water started to heat up, then held my hand over the surface, delighting in the wa
rmth and moisture. Then I went again to the cabinet and took down my tin of tea, the darkest, smokiest Chinese tea I’d been able to find in town. Costly, but I couldn’t give up everything. And I took out the sugar bowl, which I had to refill, using up the last of the bag. I wrote “sugar” in large letters on the notepad attached to the refrigerator. Then I sat down, squeezing into one of the two chairs around the tiny table with its peach and grey boomerang patterned Formica. I was breathing heavily, afraid to look at the clock. Automatically, I began to take my pulse, then stopped, disgusted with myself. Who cared if it was racing? And why had I set out two mugs? She obviously wasn’t coming.
Taking a very deep breath, a breath so deep it seemed to make the insides of my lungs stick together for a second, I forced myself to calm down. I closed my eyes and breathed that way for a minute or two, until, as I’d trained myself to do, I had directed a warming, relaxing flow of blood into my extremities and to the top of my head and the soles of my feet. When I’d first begun to practice this technique, I would experience a fleeting sensation of sexual arousal as I directed the blood to course throughout each part of my body, but no more. I told myself this was a sure sign of how I had refined the technique, yet I suspected and feared the real reason. Once again, at least, the technique was working. I managed to clear my mind, for the most part, of Eliza, the swans, and the headache. Then I allowed those images to seep back in again, but cleared, I hoped and imagined, of their worrisome edges. I opened my eyes, and then realized the pan on the stove was boiling raucously. Turning off the gas, and in one deliberately graceful, despairing movement, I placed one of the mugs gently back into the cabinet. No, she wasn’t coming: I was sure of it, and I was right.
4. Cybèle, Luther, and an Evening Surprise
My wife Frances and I, when we first began to pull in two salaries, had managed to purchase a little getaway cabin in New Hampshire. I had loved it unreservedly from the moment I first saw it and had more or less successfully (often by lying about available funds for renovations) stymied Frances in her efforts to turn this uncut gem into a piece of costume flummery. She therefore quickly lost interest in the place (“Who on earth could one invite there?”), and I went to the cabin as often as I could get away, which was not, of course, often enough.
One time, I’d managed a few days at the cabin to work on a paper I had to present the following weekend in Anaheim, California, at a meeting of the animal rights organization to which I had devoted as much time as I could manage. Shortly after arriving at the cabin that morning, I’d caught sight of a gorgeous little fox nosing around the falling-down shed out back.
I watched her (I decided it was a she-fox, though I had no way of knowing) for some time and became bewitched by her. I decided to make her my friend, but I had no idea how to do so—nor, in retrospect, had I any idea what I was doing, or whether it was a good idea at all. What might a fox like to eat, I wondered. Meat, of course, but I didn’t have any in the cooler; there was an egg-salad sandwich—maybe that would do? Eggs: “the fox in the hen house”? I had already decided to call her Cybèle, after a character in a movie who had once enchanted me. The idea of naming her and befriending her made me ridiculously happy, as did the dust-laden smell of the cabin, the early morning sunlight on the cobwebs in the window corners, and the way my feet felt cushioned and warm in my new canvas boots.
I unwrapped the sandwich, laid it on a shiny red plate I found in the cupboard, and then, as an afterthought, removed the top slice of bread and placed it to one side. An open-faced sandwich for my little open-faced Cybèle. Maybe the smell of the eggs would reach her faster that way. I couldn’t wait to see her again. Deciding not to put the food too near the cabin this first time, I placed the plate out beyond the car and driveway, making sure I’d be able to see it from the window before I set it down.
I could hear the telephone ringing as I returned to the cabin. I thought it might have been a mistake to give in to Frances and have a phone installed up here, but when she cited the actual possibilities of illness, death, or other emergencies, what could I say? I went inside slowly, removed the pile of clean flannel shirts I’d dumped on top of the phone, picked up the receiver, and said, dully, “Frances.”
Her voice oozed sarcasm. “However did you know?”
“What’s up?
“Well, actually, darling, your service called about five times last night and once this morning about some patient and they want you to call them right away.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me last night, Frances? Which patient?”
“I don’t know. I forget. It was a boy’s name. Fred or Ed or something. I was too tired last night. I’m not your secretary, you know.”
I dialed the service immediately. As I listened to the familiar voice of the woman on the other end, I looked out the window and noticed the red plate on the lawn. Licked completely clean. Of course, it was possible some other animal had come along and beaten Cybèle to the goodies, but I didn’t think so. I’d missed her, but at least now I knew she liked egg salad. And bread. I smiled. Then I dialed the number the answering service woman had given me, the number of Luther Edwards.
He picked up on the first ring, his voice timid and tired.
“Luther. It’s John MacLeod. I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you last night. I just got your message. I’m up here in the woods in New Hampshire, and they had a little trouble reaching me. How’re you doing?”
There was a long pause. “All right, Doctor.”
“What happened last night, Luther? Do you want to talk about it? I’ve got all the time in the world.”
Pause again. “I guess I’m all right now, Doctor, really. I don’t feel like talking. I’m all right.”
“What are you doing today, Luther?”
“Not much. Going to the library. Going to the park. Not much. I’m okay, though, really; don’t worry about me. I’m sorry I bothered you. I just got a little panicky last night. I had a bad dream. I had a dream about some Indians—not the wild-west kind, I mean Indians from India—and there was one of those funeral pyres and when I got up close to it you were on it, Doctor, you were on it, all wrapped in, you know, ‘swaddling clothes’ like in the bible story, and I don’t think you were dead yet, but you were going to burn and burn, you were going to burn for my sins, and there was all this beautiful singing and swaying going on in the crowd and a gorgeous young woman whose voice soared out over all the rest and I think she was singing to me, to me, Doctor, but I couldn’t stop to go to her because you were burning …” His voice trailed off.
By this time, I’d made myself a comfortable seat on the floor, padded by the stack of shirts. I listened and talked to Luther for almost an hour, until the boy had calmed down, promised he’d eat a good lunch, and said he’d call me in the morning. Then I spoke to his mother for a minute or two, to be sure she would watch him carefully. I thought the immediate crisis was over, but I wanted to be certain: to lose Luther now to a major setback would be a sad thing indeed—the boy had come so far. I liked Luther—he was more than just a patient to me—and I didn’t regret having given him the precious phone number. Now when the phone rang it would either be Frances, Luther, or a wrong number. Of course, Frances might give the number out at any time, or let one of the boys call, but she’d probably forgotten about me already this morning.
It didn’t matter. A shaft of sunlight was hitting me in the stomach as I lay there, and it felt wonderful. And Cybèle had had her breakfast. All was not exactly right with the world, but I’d seen worse days.
After spending the rest of the morning cleaning up the cabin’s interior, driving into town for supplies (including some canned dog food for Cybèle), I began to feel the creeping fatigue that had been building in me for months. I’d set up the cot like a couch, with some pillows leaning up against the log wall, and there I settled, to think with my cup of coffee, watch the modest fire I’d started in the fireplace, and glance once in a while out the window for the little grey-
red fox. I wrapped a wooly blanket around my shoulders; it was not particularly cold, but I felt comforted by it, more secure. I started thinking about Luther’s strange dream. I’d felt it to be fairly transparent at first hearing, but I’d reserved my full opinion, knowing from experience that nothing was really all that transparent in Luther’s case. The funeral pyre part was a bit worrisome, but I didn’t spend too much time analyzing it just then.
Luther had been my patient for five years now, and we’d made tremendous progress together. When we started, the boy had been twelve, skinnier than a blade of beach-grass, and smarter than anyone knew. He was acting out violently at home and at school, and his parents thought they might have to place him in an institution, but in a very short time, through intense talk therapy, we were able to get almost past his deep anger. He was still unstable in some ways, and needed to do a lot more work, but gradually I had been able to win his trust and draw him out, and his new-found communicativeness brought to light all sorts of psychological complications with which Luther and I would do battle. I was convinced he would someday be whole, and looked forward to that day with great interest, since Luther’s intellectual powers were, in my opinion, quite remarkable.
My opinion in such matters was based not only on my extensive research on gifted children, but on personal experience: I had been a so-called gifted child myself. In fact, both my younger brother Duncan and I were discovered to have unusually high IQ’s, and were exposed, through our parents’ gracious and knowledgeable attentions (they were both college professors: Mother in American history, Father in the physical sciences), to academic and artistic influences that helped us develop our abilities to what were considered astonishing degrees.