by Edward Lee
Feelings hurt? Alice thought, outraged. She acts like I’m a little kid who just got her doll taken away! “So that’s all you think this is? Me getting my feelings hurt?”
“Yes, Alice, nothing more. You’re going to have to develop a more adult sense of perception to situations that don’t suit you.”
“Oh, so now I’m being immature!”
“Yes, Alice. You are.”
Alice felt her temples thumping; it was as if she was sitting on nails. Holly’s insensitivity fueled her anger. “Last night, for the first time in over a year, I was with a man who showed a definite interest in me; then he took one look at my stump and almost threw up. And all you do is sit there and tell me I’m being immature and overreactive. Jesus Christ, Holly, I’ve got a stump where my left leg should be. It’s always going to be that way! No man is ever going to be attracted to me again.”
“There you go, blaming all your problems on your leg again,” Holly responded tersely. “Passing the buck. You’re worse than that guy last night. Rather than acknowledging the state of your life and making something good for yourself, you choose to run away.”
Alice’s gaze seemed to smolder across the desk.
“And another thing,” Holly went on with her chastisement, “what about him? Don’t you think you’re being a little unfair to him?”
“Unfair to him!”
“Of course, Alice. You spring something like that on a guy, what did you expect? Didn’t it ever occur to you that telling him about your leg first was the most sensible thing to do?”
“Well…” Alice stalled. That much she couldn’t argue with. “I was going to, but…there wasn’t time.” And then, for a moment, she thought about what she had just said. Once she’d gotten into the watch room nothing had occurred to her at all, other than making love. “It was like we were both on fire. All of a sudden things started happening really fast.”
“I should say so. You let the poor guy get hit in the back with a prosthetic limb.”
Alice stood up, her tolerance cracking like a dry twig; it was very nearly an audible sound in her head. She turned, making to exit. “I’m leaving,” she announced.
“Alice!”
Hand on the shiny brass knob, pulling open the office door. “I don’t have to take this kind of crap from you.”
“I’m not going to pamper you, Alice. I’m not going to treat you like a baby.”
“Fine.”
“Alice, come back here—”
The door slammed behind her. The heavy carpet in the hallway deadened all sound. Through the glass on the street door she could see cars moving around Church Circle, pedestrians briskly traversing the sidewalks on their way back to their offices from lunch. Alice blinked away a tear, steeled herself, and left.
She half expected Holly to come after her, but recognized that that wasn’t the psychiatrist’s style. I’m not going to treat you like a baby; the words replayed in her mind now that Alice had stepped out onto the sidewalk. She didn’t want sympathy—she’d never wanted that, not from anyone—just some kind of understanding, perhaps. Holly came from the hardline school of therapy: human behavioralism, glacier cold. She’s probably sitting there assuming I want her to come after me. Well, that simply wasn’t the case. Alice, alone on the busy corner, felt relieved.
She didn’t want to have to relate to anyone right now. Not anyone in the world.
Especially herself.
««—»»
Generally she walked to Holly’s sessions; it wasn’t far. The city’s scenery, drenched in its unblemished age, pristine colonial and federal homes, the shaded residential back streets lined by sprawling century-old oaks—walking in the midst of all this made her less aware of a chaotic world. Today, though, after the skirmish with Holly and last night’s calamity in her bedroom, walking drained her, each left step clinking an unpleasant image. Her leg felt like dead cement. Pining inside, she could imagine herself clumping along…
Yet she didn’t go home. Maybe she was being petty, but the notion of going back to the watch house drained her already flattened spirits. It was funny. She loved her house, but she rarely thought of it as that: her house, her home. It was always the watch house to her, as though it was actually someone else’s home, a neighbor’s perhaps, or a friend’s, where she was taking a room or house-sitting. Returning now would leave her skittish. What would she do? Watch sitcoms? she wondered in heavy sarcasm. Talk shows? Soaps?
Jesus, Alice, for a rich woman you sure don’t have much of a life…
Strolling around State Circle occurred to her, past its gushing, crystal fountains and sculpted hedgerows, but then a sudden reminder set a flame to the idea. State Circle housed the State House, and the State House contained the state attorney’s office, where Bob worked. She couldn’t imagine anything more dreadful than passing him on his way back from lunch.
She limped down Main Street instead, past quaint shops and cafes, squeezing between passersby. The sun made the narrow lane’s cobblestones look glazed, shimmering like white neon off the bay. She felt inert in downtown’s bristling life, a human doldrum, invisible. Well-groomed businessmen strode on either side of the street, their ties off, their shirts unbuttoned to their sternums. Women, bare-armed in tank tops, bare-legged in shorts, strode just as vibrantly, just as resonant with life. Alice stopped, leaning against a gimcrack shop. Outcast. Virtually cooking in her long denim jeans and dark-cherry blouse. Yes, she felt invisible, an unwitting spectator from some lackluster world.
A fat amputee, she silently tore at herself. A headcase. She’d hoped that walking would round off the corners of her anger at Holly. Well, it had, but instead of helping her feel better it made her feel more boring, more useless. Part of her knew that Holly was right: Last night had been but one instance—not all men were like Bob—but another, larger part of her remained unconvinced. She felt encased in uninteresting flesh with a repulsive plastic shaft for a leg.
It was the final glimpse that chased her away:
Three girls, teenagers, all smiles and long, flowing streams of hair as they sat together in cutoffs and halters on the end pier—
Alice gazed at them.
—chattering in avid innocence, in their precious and undefìled youth.
Her gaze blurred.
—their slim, bare, and very whole legs hanging over the edge as they languidly wagged their feet in the cool water…
It was as though she was fleeing the world just then, seeking a desperate exit. Time shunned her, as did distance. She was simply walking—or half trotting, as best her leg would allow—back up Main, the sun burning her face.
Thoughtless. Directionless. Aware of nothing but the need to flee.
Then, like the approach of a sudden storm, the radiant day turned dark and cool behind her back.
She caught herself, looked around dumbfounded.
What am I doing…here?
Winded, she was standing in a covered entry, before two high closed doors of luxurious veneered oak. alms read a wooden box with a slot in it.
She was standing in the outer vestibule of a church.
St. Anne’s, the great, steepled Catholic church on the Circle.
Why did I come here? she wondered to herself. Did I come here to pray? To confess? Alice couldn’t imagine. She hadn’t been to church, literally, in decades. She hadn’t prayed, nor had she confessed. She supposed she’d never really believed in God. But clearly her desperation had brought her here for a reason.
I guess I just need to talk to someone, she understood at once. Not Holly, not a psychiatrist.
A priest, she realized.
Someone enlightened. Someone with faith.
COME IN, read a sign posted on one of the doors, HERE, IN THIS HUMBLE HOUSE OF GOD, ALL ARE WELCOME.
Alice wiped the tears off her face, then reached forward and placed her hands on the pair of polished brass knobs. She gently turned them and pulled.
The doors were locked.
Part Two
The Black Church
— | — | —
10
“Damn it all,” Holly muttered. For perhaps the tenth time since noon she hung up the phone. After the first message there was little point in leaving more; Alice either wasn’t home or wasn’t answering. Probably just not answering, Holly decided. Probably thinks I’m an indifferent, pitiless bitch…
She tapped a fingernail.
…which I guess I am.
Not that she meant to be, least of all with Alice. Habit always took its due. Not You Are What You Eat, but You Are What You Are Trained. On occasion, Holly Ryan’s soul felt smudged, like hands after changing a tire. To her there existed only two schools of human psychology: the kiss-ass, school and the kick-ass school. She had no use for the former.
Most neurotics experienced positive response to conative reinforcement, and that’s what all her patients were: off the right track, misguided, fearful.
Neurotic.
And Alice Sterling was no exception. A little flustered. A little neurotic.
And a little oblivious, Holly added.
Her ornate office seemed buried in silence—then the chime clock stuck 6 p.m. The last of her patients was done, a slow day. Curt, the erotopathic federal agent; Eugene, who anonymously sent attractive women boxes of macadamia nuts; Erica, the exhibitionist; Roderic, the hapless S & M addict. “Women like me to slap them in the face,” was the first thing Roderic had said at his first session. “Tie them up, bite them, stuff like that…”
A unique introduction.
In fact, nearly all of Holly’s patients came to her for sexual problems. One woman, named Ivy, referred to herself as a fellatrice. “I…I have to suck men’s penises. I can’t stop; I can’t help it.” Ivy, it turned out, had performed the act of fellatio on over two thousand men in her thirty-six years. Her parents, Holly eventually ascertained via hypnotherapy, had deprived Ivy of the need to suck her thumb as an infant. Jervis, a phony name, was addicted to prostitutes. “Four or five a week, I guess. Just quick handjobs in the car mostly.” Holly instantly recognized him as the majority leader of the state senate. “There’s no greater thrill than having a woman you’ve never met jack you off in your car, in some dark alley.” Then there was Linda, a fifty-year-old voyeur; she’d go for long late-night walks through her upscale community, peering in windows—a Peeping Tomette. Holly actually had several patients with the same problem.
But it was all fodder to Holly. Lost people with lost ideals. It wasn’t difficult to set them back on a truer mark; most of her patients, in fact, were “cured” after a year.
Reconstruct the personal priorities. Make them reevaluate their systems of belief. Impel a transitive fixative action.
And kick their psyches in the ass.
It worked every time.
But what about Alice? she dared to ask herself.
She had a big problem…with Alice.
Not that her problems were all that intricate. Holly found that neuroses frequently harbored similar roots.
But Alice…
Christ, she thought.
Holly’d had her own share of problems, too. Her mother’s suicide. Her father’s sudden stroke. And her first year out of school, she’d fallen quickly into alcoholism. It hadn’t lasted long when she saw what it was doing to her; she had resolved to quit, simple as that. And she hadn’t had a drop since.
No, to Holly, human problems were minor obstacles. You isolated them, identified them, analyzed them…
Then you cured them.
But—but this…
She’d only lied a little bit the other day, when they’d gone downtown. McGuffy’s. Alice had, in rebellion, asked her about her own romantic life.
The quagmire came when Alice had inquired as to why Holly herself wasn’t yet married.
And Holly had responded to the effect that she hadn’t yet met the right person.
Person! Jesus, Holly. You certainly pick your words carefully, don’t you?
Holly had never lived in denial, as did most of her ilk; she was far too self-aware for that. Her bisexuality was something she’d acknowledged to herself since her first year of high school. She’d had her flings with women; she’d even had a few affairs. And as for men? She’d had her flings there, too, early on. But she soon learned that men, to her, were good only for a quick fix. A physical and hormonal curiosity. Other than that, they seemed primitive and depthless, thin as water. They scratched a certain itch, and nothing more.
Then she discarded them.
Which eventually enlightened her to the fact that she was not bisexual at all. She was a lesbian.
She’d discovered that through trial and error, as most did, and she was happy with the discovery.
Yes, she’d had affairs with women, many of them. She’d had “relationships.” But—
She knew that her feelings contradicted everything she’d ever been taught at Skinner Hall and then, more precisely, at Johns Hopkins. Professor Saul—he was dead now, and ancient even when she’d known him. A friendly, bent old man creviced by age who’d taught Holly’s first course in the domestic management of psychiatry.
And, without doubt, the most paramount dictum of all was the very first thing he’d said on the very first day of her very first class:
Never get involved with a patient.
And she hadn’t.
Holly’s “involvement” with Alice Sterling had never been anything more than doctor-to-patient.
And that was the problem.
She broke then, the steely spine of her feelings snapping like a dry piece of pasta.
Her face lowered to her desk blotter, and then she did something she couldn’t recall ever doing before.
She cried.
What am I going to do?
Her tears flowed, a wellspring to her heart. Her eyeliner began to run.
She was a psychiatrist. She was a therapist and an objectivist. She was a professional.
And I’m in love with one of my patients, she finally and fully admitted to herself.
I’m in love with Alice Sterling.
««—»»
(Alice? Alice?)
Then:
Pin-drop silence.
The moon glowed cotton-soft in her eyes. The warm night caressed her as the water shimmered—
And the razor poised.
But…
Had she heard a voice?
No, it must be her imagination. At a time like this, considering such a terrible development? Of course her mind would fabricate things. Perhaps some tiny kernel of her subconscious was attempting to distract her, trick her, make her think someone had called her name.
But who would? Out here, no one in the world could see her, except God perhaps.
But He’d locked His doors on her earlier, hadn’t He?
God, she wondered. The thought dwindled.
The finely crafted French doors to the watch room hung open behind her. She was standing out on the veranda, overlooking the bay. It was just past midnight now— she’d counted the strikes of the grandfather clock just moments ago, sounding its knell from the front foyer.
Midnight, she thought.
It seemed an appropriate time to die.
And what a night for such a deed! Lushly warm, starry. A low moon hovered just over the mirror-still bay. Holly had said it was a beautiful view, hadn’t she, just the other day? The bay extended like a scape of endless, perfect glass.
And the sounds, too, so beautiful. The gentle lapping of the water to the shoreline, just below the deck. Herons, crickets, and peepers. The night was teeming with sound.
Thank You, God, she thought with some strange consolation. Perhaps she was already hoping to be forgiven for a sin she hadn’t yet committed, and by a deity she didn’t believe in.
Thank You at least for this beautiful night…
And the night bid a question.
Was she really going to do this?
The razor, between h
er fingertips, felt so insignificant, too small to harness such a devastating power. But where was the real power? Not in the razor blade, she realized. Suddenly she felt very powerful herself, for it required a great deal of power, didn’t it? To take one’s own life?
She’d thought about it often, and not just since the accident. The feeling was incalculable. Feelings heaped upon still more feelings, all bad. She felt lost in a gruelling maze, she felt…black. It didn’t matter that life had been good to her. Sometimes she just didn’t want to go on— too many things hurt too much. Lost fondness, lost love. She guessed that was what it was really all about. Love. She wanted to be in love, and she never had been. She wanted those feelings, she wanted that special resplendent fulfillment that she’d always heard about but never experienced. Even before she’d lost her leg, each day awaited her like the ugliest morass. She felt useless, purposeless, a cog in a dull machine. Loneliness—it sounded so trite in a day and age such as this. Alone, she thought to herself. That’s how she’d always felt, even in a busy office or a crowded court, at company picnics and firm victory parties and power lunches downtown with a half dozen associates. Each day coming home to the same thing.
Alone…
The world revolved without her, a smug passerby. Yes, the world. For all of her adult life she’d never really felt that she was part of it.
I don’t fit in, she realized. I’ll…never be part of it. Never.
Her resolve, at just that instant, arrived with a surprising placidity.
I’m going to do it.