Fool's Journey

by Comstock, Mary Chase

  Bess exhaled and watched as the smoke circled their heads. "Trust me on this, Deirdre—I know all about cancer. I’ve seen it up close. They can shoot me full of poison or they can whittle me down, piece by piece. Call me vain, but I’d like to avoid making my final exit both bald and boobless. I’m going to take the third option.”

  Deirdre felt a chill descend.

  “I’ll just sit back and wait for Mr. Death. It’s the only way I can keep the shreds of dignity I have left.”

  “What do you mean, ‘shreds of dignity?’ You’re a recognized authority in your field. Your students admire you–”

  “You don’t know anything about it,” Bess snapped impatiently. Deirdre felt the tears start in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Look, we’re not here to discuss my health. I’ve already made my decision. I only mention it at all so you’ll know what prompts me to tell you this sad, stupid story.”

  Bess drained her glass, poured another and went on. “This is the story of how I was a fool and handed my freedom over for less than nothing. It’s a story I don’t want to happen to you.”

  What could this possibly have to do with her? What did Bess know? Deirdre sat back and prepared herself to listen. It was all she could do.

  “It started when I came to the university about twenty-five years ago,” Bess began. “I was full of myself, sure of myself. Academically, at any rate. If there was an award, I’d won it. I made my reputation early, but it was in Victorian literature, you know, not gender issues. That was my quiet little vice. No one talked about gender in academe back then, let alone homosexuality. If anyone had known about either, my research or the fact I was a lesbian, I’d never have gotten tenure, especially here. The university is only nominally religious now, but there was a time they took their Baptist charter seriously. Twenty-five years ago, gays and lesbians lived in their quiet little closets and pretended to be normal.

  “So, there I was, the bright young star of the department. My career path rolled out in front of me like a red carpet. Life was good. Diana, the woman I was in love with, had moved in with me. Times were so innocent no one thought anything of two women living together – they even called us bachelorettes!”

  She laughed briefly and took a long drag on her cigarette.

  “Freemont Willard started at the university the same year I did,” she went on. “He was crap then, just as he is now. However, his future looked a lot bleaker than mine did, though. His field was supposed to be creative writing, but he rarely published, and certainly not anywhere you'd brag about."

  "I've always wondered about that," Deirdre said slowly. The mere mention of his name prompted a wave of disgust. "Some of his early stuff was brilliant. Some of it made me want to cry."

  “Me, too," Bess admitted. "But that's part of this story, too." She poured herself more wine and topped off Deirdre's barely touched glass.

  "We came up for tenure at the same time, Freemont and I," she continued. "I was a shoe-in, but he looked shaky at best. That was fine with me. He gave me the creeps, slithering around with his innuendoes and cheap feels. I was ready to write a brilliantly nasty letter for his file and vote against him in good spirit."

  "I can see why. He should be selling used cars, not dealing with students. What happened?"

  “Freemont likes to play games," Bess continued. "And he only plays games he can win. He showed up at the apartment one night, about six months before our reviews. Diana was out of town, visiting friends in Vancouver, or so I thought. He just walked in, looked around. I asked him what the hell he was doing.

  “‘Bess, I just want to let you know about my salvation,’ he said.

  “I didn’t know what he meant, but I soon found out. He had pictures, pictures of me and Diana at the beach. We’d thought we were alone, but he must have hidden himself somewhere. He used a telephoto lens. The pictures were . . . very invasive. I felt physically sick. I think I would have thrown up, but I didn’t want to humiliate myself in front of him. ”

  Deirdre felt an answering rush of nausea as Bess related the tale; It was as if every instinctive disgust she’d ever felt in response to Freemont Willard had found its way into her body in the form of pale, abominable worms. And if she felt so invaded, how much worse must it be for Bess?

  Deirdre looked away. “You don’t need to tell me this.”

  “I’ve only just begun, Deirdre. I know it's horrible, but for your own good, I’m afraid I have to insist that you listen.” She ran a hand through her gray hair and stared at the ceiling for a moment before continuing. “Freemont knew, of course, that he couldn’t pass muster on his own. That Ivy League degree of his reflects family connections and money, but very little else. He needed to use whoever he could, and with those wretched pictures, he had a way to coerce us into collusion. Both me and Diana. She was a poet, you see, a good one. You've heard of Diana Vibert?"

  "Of course. I've always loved her work. La Lune Dormée. But she's–"

  "Yes," Bess cut her off. "She committed suicide twenty years ago."

  The silence hung between them for a moment before Bess went on.

  "Freemont knew Diana loved me. She'd do anything for me. He wanted some of her writing to submit as his own. I told him he could rot in hell, or waste away at some junior college, but he just laughed at me.

  "‘It’s already been taken care of’, he told me." Bess's voice broke and she shut her eyes. Deirdre knew that something even more horrible was coming.

  “I didn’t know what he meant right away," Bess went on after a moment. "But then it dawned on me. Diana wasn’t in Vancouver after all. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Diana and I, we’ve worked everything out. Everything. I just wanted you to know.’ He turned to leave, but before he did he said, ‘What a wonderful thing it is to fuck a woman who will do anything you ask of her, and give you a volume of poems besides’.”

  By now the tears were streaming down Bess’s face. She dabbed at her eyes with the edge of her napkin.

  “Bess,” Deirdre said, her voice barely above a whisper, "those poems he made his reputation on—they were Diana Vibert's?"

  Bess nodded silently.

  “Look, Bess," Deirdre said, "it’s horrible, it's disgusting, but none of it is your fault.”

  “I stayed,” Bess said. “My sin is that I stayed and did nothing. Said nothing. I got my tenure and I stayed. Diana left me a few months later and I was all alone with my precious professorship. I didn’t blame her. We couldn’t even look at one another anymore. A few years later she killed herself. Eventually I grew numb to the whole thing. Time does that. I just worked my life away, and now I’m done.”

  Deirdre leaned back in her chair, drained of any desire to know more. She’d known Freemont was a bastard, but she’d no idea how sick and soulless he was.

  “I didn’t tell you this to upset you," Bess said quietly. "I just needed to put you on your guard. You wouldn't have known how serious this was unless I told you the whole story.”

  Bess bent and picked up her briefcase. She glanced briefly at Deirdre before snapping it open. “Here’s something I want you to read. It’s never been published, but it’s the last of Diana’s writing. The thoughts that haunted her those last days. Maybe something in these pages will give you the resolution I couldn’t find.”

  Deirdre stared at the manila envelope Bess held out for her, but didn’t reach for it. “I don’t feel right...” she began.

  "Take it. Read it,” Bess said shortly. Then she leaned forward. “Here’s the thing. You’re going to need all the help you can get. You have to look out for Freemont. He’s jealous of you. He wants to see you fail. And the worst of it is, when your name came up in a meeting the other day, he pretended to misspeak. He referred to you as 'Diana'. Then he winked at me.”

  XVI.

  Deirdre kept her eyes trained on the pavement as she hurried away from the restaurant. Direction didn’t matter, as long as it was away. With each step, she mov
ed farther from all those things she hadn’t wanted to hear.

  Go on, Bess told her when she finished her tale. You need to think this through now. Freemont implied he has something on you, as he did with me and Diana. Wrack your brains. If you can figure out what it is, maybe you can disarm him. I hope to God you can. Remember, the past has a way of repeating itself.

  Yes, Deirdre thought, the past was repeating itself, and with a vengeance. She sensed she was only beginning to suspect how much. She remembered reading a science fiction book once in which the characters had been able to travel backward through time to adjust events in the past, only to discover that the patterns remained the same, despite their efforts.

  Fiction was so damnably true.

  She’d spent untold hours trying to reinvent her past, adjust it, and erase it. It didn’t matter, though. The ghosts still reemerged from the dark corners of the past, not quite exorcised, always ready to haunt her again.

  When she’d encountered Freemont Willard in the English Department last night, his smile had chilled her, and she knew why now. It was her father’s smile, pasted on another face—superior, triumphant, cruel.

  Maybe you can disarm him, Bess had said.

  No, she thought. Nothing short of murder can disarm him. Not if he knows what I think he knows. Not if he uses it the way I think he will.

  Her past was scurrying after her. The encounter with her aunt that morning was a mere prelude. Eunice’s veiled threat of exposure paled now, a comparative inconvenience. She could at least be bought off painlessly. But from what Bess had said, Deirdre knew Freemont wouldn’t be interested in money. He had plenty of his own. He would want his pound of flesh, and the phrase made her shudder.

  But how had Freemont found her out? It couldn’t have been easy. The court records were sealed long ago. She had changed her name before she'd even entered college. There had been five years between the time she had published under her birth name and the appearance of her work as Deirdre Kildeer. No one should have been able to make the connection. Yet, apparently, Freemont Willard did.

  But how? How had he found the shadow child from nowhere?

  Then the obvious occurred to her. Of course! Freemont Willard was wealthy. He had family money, just as she did. Neither of them used it ostentatiously, but apparently they both found it useful in smoothing the way and getting what they wanted. Freemont was using it for his little hobby – destroying people. He cared enough about bringing her down that he had paid to have her investigated.

  That had to be it. Here in Seattle, the only connection to her past was her mother. It would have been easy enough, she reasoned, for a detective following her movements to observe her regular visits to the nursing home. Then all he had to do was ingratiate himself with the staff and discover the name of the patient she visited. The rest would have been child’s play once her mother’s name was revealed.

  But the other business with the hair? She couldn’t feature Freemont doing the actual deed, but could he be so sick and cold that he would pay someone to send her this message?

  Considering the story Bess had just confided, the answer was an unequivocal yes.

  How uncanny that Freemont could have guessed exactly what to do to get her. There was nothing about her hair in any of the newspaper accounts from her past. Somehow he had known. Were there references in any of her poems? Possibly. Probably. She couldn’t think clearly enough to recall. Still, among all the images her lines contained, why would he have chosen that one to exploit?

  Unless the radar of sixth sense had pointed him there.

  “Deirdre!” She heard her name screamed even as she felt herself pulled back and heard the sound of brakes.

  It took her a moment to realize she’d been pulled out of the path of an on-coming car. The driver wound down his window with a couple of angry jerks and snarled, “Watch where you’re going, lady!” Then he bore down on the accelerator and sent an arc of rainwater over her as he drove off.

  “Professor Kildeer! You could have been killed.”

  Deirdre realized someone still had a tight grip on her elbow. She turned to see a pair of brown eyes, narrow with fear, staring into hers. A heartbeat later she recognized the face beneath the shadowed hood of his rain parka—her student, Adam Watts. A quick glance at her surroundings told her she’d found her way to the edge of campus, more than a mile from the restaurant where she’d started.

  “Thanks, Adam,” she said shakily. “I guess I was almost a dead poet.”

  “You’re soaking wet,” he said, not laughing at her little joke, but dropping his hand from her arm.

  “But I’m all in one piece,” she said. “Thank you. I think you probably saved my life.”

  “I saved your life?” His eyes widened. “Gee. I guess I did.”

  He was still staring at her, a bemused grin now spreading over his features. She’d always abhorred the word ‘goofy,’ but it was a perfect description of his expression. She hated to agree with Panda on this point, but Adam seemed to have joined the ranks of male students who all too often fell in love with her for a term or two.

  “Maybe I’ll save your life sometime,” she said lightly. “At least if you’re wavering between and ‘A’ and ‘B,’ I’ll know which way the scales tip. Thanks again, Adam. I’ll see you in class tomorrow.”

  “I’m heading to campus right now anyway. Is it okay if I walk with you?”

  Deirdre would far rather be alone, but it was difficult to find a reason to refuse his request. As long as she was this close to campus, at least she could go up to her office to dry off.

  “Sure, Adam. Are you on your way to a class?”

  He hesitated a moment. Then he grinned again. “Some cultures would say I’m responsible for you now. I learned that in anthropology. I guess I’ll have to follow you around.”

  Deirdre fought the impulse to shudder. His remark was ill timed, but surely innocent. “What else are you studying this term?” she asked, trying to turn the conversation.

  He shrugged. “Nothing very interesting—finishing up requirements.”

  She nodded and, as they crossed the street together, she quickened her pace. Adam rattled on about a particularly boring history class he was taking, and she managed to provide appropriate responses as they crossed campus. Adam was a nice kid, but she wanted to be by herself.

  “Thanks for the escort, Adam,” she smiled when they finally reached the English department.

  “Sure,” he said. “I guess I’ll see you in class tomorrow. But be careful. It’s a dangerous world.”

  XVII.

  The English department was the last place Deirdre wanted to be, especially today, given Bess’s story. There nothing warm and fuzzy about the place, but today, as she entered through the back of the building, she could sense the unhappiness and desperation that had played out there.

  How could Bess Seymour have brought herself to stay? Considering her scholarly reputation and numerous publications, Bess could easily have found a position at a better university. Survivor’s guilt. She knew it well herself. Bess was not been responsible, but it was clear she felt responsible for the death of Diana Vibert. Poor Bess! Perhaps she simply couldn't leave the scene of the crime.

  Rainwater was dripping down Deirdre’s face and neck, trickling in rivulets beneath her sodden clothes. If she could make it to her office without running into anyone, she’d be all right for the moment. Behind the closed door of her office, she could dry off and collect her tattered thoughts. The squish of her shoes as she climbed the back stairs to the fourth floor echoed in the stairwell. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw a trail of puddles glistening on the treads, as if some swamp creature, gone academic, had decided to join their scholarly set. The way things were going, chances were he’d get tenure before she did.

  The trail of water followed her down the carpeted hallway to her office, blending with the wet footprints of others. The hall was deserted, she was grateful to see, and the door to the faculty loun
ge was closed. As she scooted past it, she could hear the low murmur of conversation. A committee meeting, she decided. Thank God she wasn’t expected to be there.

  When the door to her office clicked shut behind her, Deirdre relaxed against it with her eyes closed for a moment. Her head was so full she couldn’t think. A welcome silence closed in around her, and through it, the muffled throb of her pulse. It was steady, almost calm.

  Why should that be, she wondered? Then it came to her. Though Bess’s story was horrible, it revealed one very important piece of information: Deirdre knew now she was not in danger. Not physically, anyway.

  The sudden realization that Freemont Willard was behind everything banished the fear of being stalked by some homicidal maniac. And though his intent was evil, he wasn’t going to kill her. Much as she dreaded the exposure of her past, she knew now that, one way or another, she would survive.

  Death was the only thing she truly feared. In death, she would have to meet her father again.

  The emotion that overrode everything else was no longer fear, but cold and deadly rage. She was furious, both for herself and Bess’s dead lover, Diana Vibert. Two lives had been diverted from their paths and changed forever for the sake of one man’s perverse amusement.

  Diana Vibert. Deirdre had always felt a link with Vibert’s desperate, beautiful verses, but she never imagined the bond would grow beyond admiration into a strange communion of shared victimization.

  Deirdre plucked a book from her shelves and flipped through it to the last poem Vibert had published before her suicide, “Scarecrow of the Damned.”

  Let starlings come with evil beaks–

  I’ll scatter seed. Perch upon my ragged fingers!

  Feed, feed, feed!

  The poet’s cry for release from pain touched a chord within Deirdre when she first read it. It resounded doubly now.

  “I’ll avenge us both, Diana,” she whispered. “I will not let this pass.”