by Louise Penny
Evasively Alyce said yes.
“And why would you do such a thing?”
“Why? I’m his assistant.”
“‘Assistant’? Since when?”
“And archivist.”
“Archivist?” Simon stared at Alyce, incredulous. “You’re an undergraduate, you know nothing about library archives. Why would anyone hire you?”
Alyce’s face burned with resentment, and unease. This question had occurred to her too, more than once.
“Did you know this Roland B___ before?”
“Before—?”
“When you—when we—when we first met . . .”
“I told you, he’s my professor.”
“I mean, were you his assistant then? His ‘archivist’? I hadn’t been under that impression . . .”
Alyce had never seen Simon Meech so discomforted. He was not so eloquent now, his manner not poised, aloof as it was when he stood before a classroom. When she’d approached the booth in the restaurant in which Simon was sitting with a drink in front of him, she’d seen his eyes glide over her with something like surprise, as if he’d forgotten, or had wished to forget, what she looked like. He had not, it appeared, even shaved that day, or had shaved carelessly.
It had been five weeks since Simon had last brought Alyce back to his apartment. Five weeks since he’d spoken to her. In the interim she’d missed several philosophy classes, she’d neglected to hand in an assignment. He might have been concerned for Alyce, her health, her welfare, what was happening in her life, but in his frowning face Alyce saw that his concern wasn’t for her but for himself.
A waiter approached. Simon jerked his head irritably, without glancing at the man, to signal, Go away, this is a private conversation.
“When did you start seeing this Roland B___, outside your class with him? That’s what I’m asking.”
“Why are you interrogating me, Simon? Why does it matter to you?”
Even her naming of him—Simon. This was startling to him, for she’d scarcely dared to call him any name at all previously.
“Let’s leave here. We should talk, in a private place.”
“In your apartment? No.”
“Not—not there. I have a car . . .”
Almost Simon was pleading with Alyce. She wondered what he knew, or could guess.
How hard it was for him to speak. And amazing to Alyce, to hear the man uttering such words she might have fantasized hearing weeks before, when he had mattered to her.
Reaching for her hand. Squeezing her hand. As rarely he’d done when they were alone together. In a faltering voice telling her that he’d missed her. He had thought it was wisest—for her, for them both—not to continue to see her, but . . . “I’ve wanted to call. I haven’t really known what to do, Alyce.”
But—did Simon love her? Soon in her dazed state Alyce would imagine she was hearing the word love.
Staring at their hands. Badly wanting to extricate her hand from his. Yet he was gripping her hand hard. As Roland B___ had sometimes gripped her hand, as if in desperation of his life.
What a charade this was! Telling Alyce now that he missed her, when she no longer missed him.
“I didn’t think you cared for me, Simon. I didn’t think you even liked me.” Almost spitefully she spoke, childishly. Those hours of hurt, shame, despair when she’d wished indeed that she could die, cease to exist, without the effort and pain of suicide, the man must pay for.
“That’s ridiculous. Certainly you could tell—I felt strongly about you. I’m not accustomed to spilling my guts the way poets do.”
Poets. The word was a sneer in Simon’s mouth. Alyce was surprised that he remembered she’d been a poet, or had hoped to be. Fortunately she’d never dared to show him any of her (love) poems, nor had Simon asked to see any.
She had to leave, Alyce said. She had to return to the hospital. She’d been there for much of the day and had only returned to the campus briefly to get Roland B___’s mail and other items . . .
“Jesus, Alyce! What are you to that man? He’s—what? Seventy years old? You’re being used by him—exploited.”
“He is not seventy. He is sixty—barely.”
“Oh, ridiculous! You are doing this out of spite, to hurt me.”
Simon spoke angrily, resentfully. His face flushed as if with fever. This was a new, rough familiarity between them that would have been astonishing to Alyce if she’d had time to contemplate it.
Stubbornly she said, “He’s all alone. He doesn’t have anyone else.”
“Of course he has someone else! He probably has a wife somewhere, and grown children. He’s just taking advantage of you.”
Alyce didn’t want to say, Yes, but he loves me too. I am taking advantage of his love.
It seemed that they would not be having a meal together at the Greek restaurant. A waiter hovered nearby, ignored by Simon, who was becoming increasingly distracted.
Not a meal, not even drinks. Unless Simon had had a drink before Alyce arrived.
He began to plead. He apologized. He was very sorry for his poor judgment. Would Alyce forgive him? Try to forgive him? See him again?
No. Not ever.
Goodbye!
Preparing to leave, extricating her hand from his (sweaty) hand, and taking pity on him, the look in his narrow pinched face, his broken Kinch-pride, almost Alyce might have gloated, Now you know what it is like to be rejected, and humbled.
Simon was asking if he could drive her to the hospital, at least? They could talk together during the drive. She owed him that much, he would have thought.
Owed him! No.
Seeing the look on Alyce’s face, quickly amending: “I mean—since—since we’ve meant something to each other . . . At least, I’d thought that we did.”
Alyce felt again that rush of pity, sympathy for the stricken man. He had not meant to hurt her, perhaps. He had not thought of her but of himself—not her weakness but his own.
Simon was a young man: not yet thirty. Several years in the seminary had kept him immature: he knew little of the fullness of life.
Before Alyce he had not had any lover. He seemed awkward at touching and being touched. Yet Simon was older than Alyce Urquhart by at least ten years. A (male) faculty member at the university, improperly involved with a (female) undergraduate.
Alyce had the power to sabotage his career, she supposed. If she reported him to the dean of students, if she described his sexual coercion of her, as she saw it now, her shyness and intimidation by him. And the pregnancy. If she told anyone!
Relenting, yes, all right. He could drive her to the hospital if he wished. And they could talk—“Though I don’t really think we have anything to talk about, Simon.”
This was bravely stated. Never in the raging despair of the previous weeks had Alyce imagined such a statement made to the man who had impregnated her and abandoned her.
They were standing beside the booth. Still the restaurant was near-deserted. Simon seemed about to embrace her but hesitated.
On the way to the car along a windy snow-swept street, Simon thanked her. His voice was elated, excited. She had forgotten his height—he was taller than she, by several inches. She had forgotten the intensity of which he was sometimes capable, so very different from his calm, cutting eloquence.
He was considering returning to the seminary, Simon said. His contract at the university was being negotiated for the following year. In fact, there was the possibility of a three-year contract, and tenure. But he was no longer certain that he wanted tenure, a career in the university.
“The lay world, the civilian world, is . . . thin. Everything seems flat. Bleached of color.”
Simon spoke with bitterness that was a kind of wonder. Glancing about as if seeing in this very place, which to Alyce looked so solid, how flat and two-dimensional the world was, how empty. She tried to see the world as he might see it but could not.
“It’s God that has drained away. The meanin
g of my life.”
In the car, driving. Alyce was deeply moved that Simon Meech would speak to her in this way. As thinking out loud. Baring his soul.
The streets had been plowed recently. The air was very still and cold, and what Alyce could see of the night sky was beautifully illuminated by a partial moon, but Simon, behind the wheel of his vehicle, which rattled and shuddered, did not seem to notice. Belatedly she realized that he’d (probably) been drinking before she’d met him, he had hurriedly settled a bill on the way out of the restaurant.
“I think that I can regain it. Him. By returning to where I was before I left the seminary. The person I was.”
Him. What a curious way in which to refer to God. As if this him were a fellow creature, with whom the seminarian would be on particularly good terms.
“Not everyone wants to live in the secular world. Some of us require a different air.”
Alyce heard herself murmur yes. Perhaps she was disappointed, Simon didn’t love her after all. There was no room for earthly love in his priestly heart.
“I think we need to talk, Alyce. I think there is much you have not told me.”
Calmly he spoke. But Alyce could hear the rage quivering beneath.
Instead of driving Alyce directly to the hospital, Simon was taking a longer route that involved crossing a bridge over a wide, dark river edged with serrated jaws of ice.
Weakly Alyce protested, but Simon promised he wouldn’t keep her long.
Driving away from the city. Into the countryside. Simon’s foot on the gas pedal erratic, aggressive.
Very still Alyce sat, staring at the rushing road.
Understanding that possibly she’d made a mistake. Leaving the restaurant with Simon instead of walking quickly away. Accompanying him to his car parked on a side street. Stepping into the car, into which she’d never stepped before, out of a (vague, apologetic) wish to placate the man whom (she’d been encouraged by him to think) she had hurt.
In the darkness of the countryside asking her almost casually, glancing at her, a smirk of a smile, “You’re pregnant, aren’t you? That’s why you’ve been avoiding me.”
Alyce was stunned, speechless. That Simon had asked such a question. Never had she imagined that Simon Meech would be capable of uttering the word aloud—pregnant.
“N-No . . .”
“What do you mean, no? You are not pregnant, or you haven’t been avoiding me?”
Still Alyce stared ahead, at the rushing road. Her thoughts beat frantically, she could not think how to reply.
“Well, are you? Look at me. Answer me.”
“I—I am n-not . . .”
Realizing now she had not wanted the man to know. Not this man.
Not because he would cease to love her, he did not love her. But because he would wish to harm her, as his enemy.
“How long? How pregnant are you?”
Just short of jeering. Furious. In the restaurant he’d kept glancing at her, furtively. And now, with that look of reproach and disbelief.
Rapidly Alyce’s brain worked. She must find a way to answer him, to placate him. A raging man beside her, a vehicle hurtling her into the snowy countryside.
Simon’s foot on the gas pedal alternately pressing down, releasing, and pressing down again. Several times he asked her how long, how long pregnant, and Alyce managed to stammer that she was not, not pregnant. And still he asked her, how long.
She had not calculated. So long as the duration of the pregnancy was imprecise, not marked on any calendar, it did not seem altogether real to her, even as her belly was swelling, thickening. Even as her breasts were becoming the fatter, softer breasts of a stranger.
How many miles Simon drove, into the countryside, away from the lighted city, Alyce had not a clear idea. Seeing his hands on the steering wheel tight as fists.
She hadn’t even known that he owned a car. But perhaps this wasn’t Simon’s car but one borrowed for the night.
At last turning into an area cleared partially of snow. Long swaths of snow left by a forked plow. A small parking lot, it appeared to be, a rest stop with shuttered restrooms, beside the state highway and overlooking the river.
Had he planned this place? Alyce wondered. It did not seem to her by chance, Simon’s car turning into this remote place.
He has brought other girls here. It was his intention all along.
Telling Alyce that he knew what the situation was but wanted to hear from her. In her own words.
“No accident, is it? You knew. You wanted it.”
She had no clear idea what he was talking about. But there was no mistaking his anger.
“Did you? Purposefully? Use me? To trap me? Or—for some reason of your own, you’re too stupid even to know?”
Alyce licked her lips. To deny this, to cry no, would be a confirmation of his suspicion, a mistake.
She would not beg him to drive back to the city. She would not beg him. Desperately calculating how quickly she must act, to get out of the car before it was too late.
“I don’t intend to let you ruin my life, Alyce. No one is going to do that. If—”
Alyce grasped the car door handle, managing to open it before Simon could stop her. Surprising the man, she was so quick, and so strong, pushing away his flailing hand.
Because she’d seemed mute, passive. Because she had not resisted. He had underestimated her, had no idea of her cunning.
Outside, cold wet air against her face. Running, slipping on icy pavement as the man pursues her, thudding footsteps, surprisingly fast, faster than Alyce would have thought the priestly Kinch capable of. Coming up behind her furious and cursing and suddenly near enough to strike her with his fist, a glancing blow that would knock her down if she were not in motion, ducking instinctively from him, silent, teeth gritted, knowing she must not infuriate him more by screaming, and she must not squander her breath.
And now she is down, falling heavily onto the freezing ground. And the man above her, face white and contorted. Kicking her. Grunting, cursing. As she tries to shield her face, her head. Kicking her back, her sides, her thighs. Trying to turn her over, to kick her belly. Bitch. Whore. Did it on purpose. I will kill you.
So quickly it has happened, the man’s fury. As when he’d first touched her weeks ago. She’d felt the sudden flaring up of the man’s desire like flames that ran over each of them, and each of them helpless to thwart it. Thinking, But this can’t be happening. He would not—no . . .
In fury the man is sobbing. Oh, he had not meant to kick her.
Her fault, the woman’s fault. Provoking his feet to kick. Not his fault but hers. Making a beast of him when it is she, the female, that is the beast, the bestial thing. How can he forgive her!
Seeing that Alyce lies very still in a paralysis of terror, he ceases kicking her. Very exhausted, panting—he relents. But blaming her nonetheless. You! You did this. God damn your slut-soul to hell.
Simon will think that she has died, possibly. Or, no—Simon wipes tears from his eyes and can see that she is breathing, just perceptibly.
Backing off from the fallen girl, in disgust. Alyce can hear him muttering to himself. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! It is a plea, the most succinct Catholic prayer for help, forgiveness.
Alyce groans, wracked with pain. The man has returned to his car. He will drive away now, he will abandon her in this freezing place.
Her head is throbbing, her eyesight blotched. Later she will discover that the cartilage of her nose is broken, blood flows freely. Close against her face, rivulets of ice like veins. The warm blood—not hot: lukewarm—will freeze against the ice, if she gives in, if she allows herself, as she so badly wants to do, to sleep.
Lying on the ground. Trying to breathe. Lying where he has flung her. Where he stood above her kicking her, her belly, her chest, she can scarcely draw breath, the pain is so strong. Ribs cracked, broken. Massive bruises on her chest, belly. The bleeding face, broken nose. Broken tooth crushed into the gum. Wanting
to kill her, but he has not killed her. Whatever is growing inside her, the living thing, the baby, he has wanted to kill but did not.
Ruining his life. It is the baby that will ruin his life.
All this Alyce thinks. Calmly and almost coolly, as if (already) she were floating some distance overhead observing the abject fallen figure (her own), the figure crouched over her (Simon Meech) and then backing away.
Very still she lies, in the cunning of desperation. Willing the man to drive away and leave her. Willing the car engine to flare into life, the foot pumping the gas pedal.
But then she hears his footsteps—staggering and wayward in the hard-crusted snow like the footsteps of a drunken man. Is he returning to her, to murder her?
By this time Alyce has managed to rise from the ground. She is very dizzy. She is on her knees. Her stunned face is smeared with blood, she has no idea she has been cut. No idea her tooth has been smashed into her gum, for there is no sensation in her lower jaw. A fist in her face, the heel of the man’s boot in her face. Her face, which has been so precious to her.
The man, infuriated, past all restraint, is returning to her. He is the priestly Kinch, he cannot help himself. Like one who must crush a beetle beneath his feet, cannot trust the badly wounded beetle to expire of its own volition, a filthy thing he must grind into oblivion. And Alyce fumbling to seize a rock too large for her hand, fist-sized, a rock covered in ice, as the man stoops over her, panting audibly, to strike her, to take hold of her, close his fingers around her neck.
Doesn’t know what he is doing. Fingers around the girl’s neck to squeeze, squeeze. Not planned. Not premeditated. There is innocence to it, almost. But Alyce slams the rock into his face, unbelievably. Somehow this has happened. Scarcely able to clutch the rock in her hand, yet Alyce summons the strength to slam the rock into the jeering face. Into the eyes and the bridge of his nose and she feels the crack of the bone and feels or imagines she feels the man’s wet warm rushing blood against her fingers. Against her face. Hears him cry out in rage, disbelief.
Running from him, limping. In triumph.
In triumph carrying her life as one might carry a torch, shielded against the wind. Her life, and the precious life within her, a torch, a tremulous flame, shielded by her crouched and running body from the wind.