Fool's Journey

by Comstock, Mary Chase

  She glanced at her watch—she’d been there almost two hours. There was nothing like reading poetry born of post-adolescent angst to take her mind off her own troubles. She paid her bill, gathered her papers and walked up the hill in the mist. It clung to her face and hair like nature’s own perfume, refreshing and clean. Going home didn’t seem so bad now. As she slowly mounted the stairs to her apartment, she glanced back over the city. The lights twinkled at her, silver and gold like a troll’s treasure. She’d go to bed early with a novel and a brandy and dream the night away.

  She found the new key in her mailbox, as promised. Turning it in the lock, she heard the satisfying sound of the deadbolt clicking, and pushed the door open.

  A strangling bile rose in her throat, as the stink of cigar smoke rushed toward her.

  XXIV.

  “Come in and shut the door,” a voice cut through the darkness. “Don’t let the night follow you in.”

  Freemont Willard. Here, in her home.

  Why? and how? withered before such questions could even form; rage superseded any logical thought.

  With a click the floor lamp came on, illuminating his slouched form in her armchair, like a patient spider anticipating its prey. Deirdre pulled the door shut behind her and faced him.

  “Well, well!” he chuckled, tapping the ash from his cigar on the carpet. “I think I truly have surprised you now, my dear! How delightful! I was so very disappointed in your class today when you didn’t even turn a hair. No reward at all for my pains. You even had a little surprise for me.”

  “Get out,” she said through clenched teeth. “Get out now, or I won’t answer for what happens.”

  “Get out?” He shook his head and smiled at her. “No. That is not at all what I planned for this evening. We're going to have a talk, you and I, and then it’s time for games. I think you’ll do whatever I ask, little Emily. I’ve waited a long time to see what you’d look like naked, awash in that sea of gorgeous hair. Or kneeling before me as you take my –”

  “I’m not afraid of you, Freemont. You’re the one who should be trembling now.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “Don’t try to bluff me. You’re a very good actress. I wouldn’t have guessed that. But the fact remains that your future is mine. I can crumble it to nothing. On the other hand, in exchange for a few hours of your time–and perhaps an ounce or two of bodily fluid–I can give it back to you untarnished.”

  He rose from his chair and sauntered toward her, moving into her physical space like a seeping odor. She could even feel the temperature change as he approached.

  “Come, my dear. I already know the way to your little bedroom.”

  Deirdre felt the sting on her hand before she even realized she meant to slap him. The impact of the blow resonated all the way to her shoulder. Freemont’s face dropped its unctuous mask and the cold anger in his eyes frightened her more than any weapon could have. His hatred for her was clear and astonishingly visceral.

  “You will suffer for that,” he whispered. “Even that Vibert bitch didn’t dare to touch me, and she had more at stake than you.”

  Deirdre caught her breath. Something didn’t make sense. Diana Vibert had had more at stake? Even in the repressive past, how could being identified as a lesbian compare with her own sin of patricide?

  Her heart paused mid-beat. He didn’t know, she realized with a start.

  But he certainly must think he did or he wouldn’t be here. What was it he thought he knew? Even if it meant playing on his vanity, she had to know what trail he’d followed and what it was he thought he had.

  “You're more clever than I thought. How did you find out?”

  “Surely I don’t have to spell it out for you,” he said coldly, still rubbing the side of his face. “You seem to know what Vibert gave me.”

  “Poems.”

  “Yes, poems,” he spat. “That and more, as you’ll see soon enough.”

  She had to keep her questions as neutral, as empty of information as possible. “I didn’t think anyone would ever find out about me.”

  Freemont smiled slowly and shook his head. “Vanity, vanity,” he sighed with mock regret. “It almost made a fool of you, professor. If you had to turn to plagiarism to write your stellar verse, you should have come to me for some advice. I’m one of the best.”

  “Plagiarism,” she repeated slowly. Deirdre’s head spun. What was he talking about? She knew that it stood behind his own supposed accomplishments, but what did it have to do with her?

  Freemont turned away from her and stalked to the window. “I am a poet, you know,” he said bitterly, glancing briefly over his shoulder. “You think I don’t look out over this city, too, and see the poems in it?

  “I have the greatness of a poet,” he went on. “Masterpieces swell large in me, so perfect they bring tears to my eyes. But the words—sometimes they don’t come. You know about that, of course. We share that particular affliction, don’t we? We hunt and gather to make our poems as whole as they can be.”

  He shook himself and turned toward her again, drawing on the cigar. It glowed red in the semi-darkness like the unblinking eye of a child’s nightmare. “It’s an art in itself, isn’t it? This gathering of lines and piecing them together.”

  “What was the link to me?” she forced herself to ask.

  “Ah, serendipity! A happy accident, as we say. Our young friend Todd came to me quite concerned last term. It seemed he had found some poetry on the Internet that sounded familiar. Although it was attributed to another poet, some lines were almost word for word the same as one you published last year. I was, naturally, quite anxious to exonerate you in a student’s eyes, so we searched further. It only got worse, Deirdre. It was obvious you’d incorporated lines from another poet’s entire body of work. Not a good idea. Pick and choose, my dear. Pick and choose. And one more thing, if you’re going to steal someone else’s words, choose someone no one will notice. Artfully revised, I must say, but still there is no mistaking it. To think, that little McClellan girl from the tabloids wrote so beautifully.”

  Deirdre sank back against the door. He didn’t know. All of this, and he didn’t know. He had missed her darkest secret and seen only himself. It seemed so logical now. Of course when he saw the similarities between her earlier work and what she wrote now, he would automatically conclude she had done what he had: stolen another poet’s work. So he had nothing! He thought she was a mere plagiarist! The relief was extraordinary. She felt the laughter rise like a phoenix. It spilled out uncontrollably until the tears ran down her cheeks.

  Freemont stared at her. “I’m so glad you can enjoy this moment, Deirdre.”

  Rallying herself, Deirdre took a breath and opened the door. “You can leave now, Freemont. You’ve lost this game. You have nothing on me. I can reveal so much more to your detriment—you have no idea."

  Freemont cocked his head and stared at her for a moment, then drew on his cigar slowly and flicked another ash on the carpet. “So sorry, Deirdre,” he grinned. “You really should get an ashtray, you know.”

  He turned away from her with slow deliberate steps, eased himself back into the armchair and put his feet up. “You can shut the door again. I don’t think I’ll be leaving just yet. Forgive me if I think out loud for a moment. I find it helps to articulate a problem.”

  The sound of a clock ticking marked the passing seconds. She felt her upper hand slipping away as he contemplated her, drawing on the cigar.

  Freemont broke the silence. “What I’m wondering, my dear, is why you don’t just call the police now? Stealing a few poems is nothing compared to breaking and entering. Not that that’s what I did, by the way. Your landlord is very nice, but criminally stupid. He was very glad to tell me where the key was when I told him I was your father, visiting from out of town. He didn’t even ask for identification—merely seemed happy to promote a nice surprise for you. Still, I did misrepresent myself. You could have had me locked up, at least for tonight.
”

  A cold, damp wind blew past Deirdre through the open door.

  “So, why not, sweet Deirdre? Why not? Why would you pass up a chance to humiliate, if not ruin, someone you so clearly hate? This is a quandary indeed!”

  She knew she should say something, anything, to distract him from this line of reasoning, but as she stood in the wind, Deirdre felt as if she were in the path of a car spinning inexorably toward her in slow motion. Numbness was all she felt in the zone between relief and danger.

  “Come to think of it, I met someone last week,” Freemont mused. “She came to the department looking for you. I thought it rather odd at the time—she seemed an unlikely sort for you to know. Brassy. Ingratiating. I was intrigued enough, though, to keep her card. Shall we look at it, Deirdre?”

  He reached for his wallet, pulled a small stack of business cards from it and began to sort through them slowly. Finally, he held one up to the lamp beside him. “Well, well,” he said. “A Eunice Fisher. Eunice McClellan Fisher.”

  Freemont stood and turned on the overhead light. Deirdre blinked against the sudden glare and exposure. “McClellan. Katie McClellan,” he whispered. “You’re her, aren’t you?”

  Now it was Freemont Willard’s turn to laugh. “So our sweet little Emily isn’t so sweet after all! Oh! This is rich! The prim, pristine poet is a murderess!”

  “Be careful, Freemont,” she said through her teeth. “I wouldn’t think twice about murdering you. I’d smile as I did it. Just like before. I didn’t stop smiling for days.”

  “How exciting and dangerous! Even so, I don’t think you’ll do anything to stop me. You have far too much to lose. Just to be on the safe side, though, I’ll be sure to bind your hands when I fuck you, Katie. Rest assured, I will be smiling, too.”

  Deirdre’s stomach heaved and her knees turned to water. Still, the anger she felt kept her upright, strong enough to do whatever was necessary. There was a small table within arm’s reach. She opened the drawer and pulled a gun from it. Then she pointed it at Freemont.

  “It was good of you to turn the light on, Freemont. It makes my job so much easier. When I killed my father, it was very dim. I had to shoot him several times to make sure he was dead.”

  Freemont’s face went pale and his cigar dropped to the floor. Dispassionately, Deirdre hoped it wouldn’t burn the carpet. It was an old Persian, red and indigo, and she was very fond of it.

  “Pick up the cigar, Freemont, and put it in your pocket.”

  He complied quickly, never taking his eyes from her.

  “Now, I am going to step away from this door and you are going to walk through it. When you get home, you are going to write a letter of resignation to the university. You are never going to teach again.

  “My eye will be on you, Freemont. As you might guess, I can afford to have you watched until the day you die. If you step out of line even once, I will come and kill you. I would do it now, but you’d make a terrible mess in here.”

  A moment of stillness filled the space between them. Then Freemont stood and walked toward her. She stepped to one side, leaving a clear path to the door.

  He paused a moment before exiting and fixed her with a hard stare. “You think I’ve met my match, don’t you? You think you’re off the hook. For the moment perhaps. But one way or the other, I’ll see you writhe beneath me. I’ll drown you in all that hair.”

  XXV.

  Deirdre slammed the door behind him, pulled the deadbolt, then stormed through the apartment throwing the windows open. The wind was cold and wet, but she didn’t care. She had to get rid of the stench.

  In the kitchen, she filled a pan with water and dumped in whole boxes of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and set it to boil. Then she pulled a box of baking soda from the cupboard and made her way to the living room. She tore the box open and scattered its contents on the chair where Freemont Willard had sat. Long cigar ashes sat like piles of gray dog manure on the carpet. Angrily, she emptied the remainder of the box on them.

  Everything in her life felt touched, defiled, permeated with this other, horrible presence. Could she ever wash it away, paint over, regain what had been hers? Not in the way it had been. Regardless of the outcome, this place had been ruined for her. She’d have to search again to find another. It could be done. That would be easier than finding that calm place at her center that seemed beyond her grasp forever.

  The telephone began to ring and she let it go. She had to wash. She needed a long shower to steam away the insult to her spirit. She turned on the faucet and set it for as hot as she could stand. Dropping her clothes to the floor she stepped into the cascade of hot silver needles and let it beat on her. The steam swirled around her mixing with the smell of cigar that rose from her hair. It gagged her. She reached for a bottle of shampoo and emptied it on her head. The light herbal scent was swallowed almost immediately by the stronger cigar smoke and the combination rose up like the reek of damp leaf rot.

  She rinsed the soap away and tried again with a bar of soap, squeezing the suds through the thick seaweed of her hair. When she stepped from the shower, pink and perspiring, the chill air refreshing her, Deirdre wrapped her head in a thick towel and threw on her robe. At least her body felt clean.

  She began to towel her hair dry, running her fingers between the long strands. Years of hair, falling about her shoulders. It was a history in a way, separating curl by curl in multiple versions of itself, a mask of memory that fell before her eyes now. Her hair had always been so important to everyone around her. Her father, certainly. Now Freemont. Long curling masses of red hair—it was part of their definition of her. It was beautiful, but it had never brought her joy. From the time her father had cut it away, she'd let it grow. Its length represented distance in time but didn't erase his action. If anything, it was a link to that horrible moment, a palpable reminder she could have been rid of so easily.

  She shook her head as she turned on the hair dryer and began to run it through her hair. As it dried and fell in a thick curling mass, she thought she could smell the cigar smoke again. Would it never go away? Or was she just imagining it?

  "This isn’t enough. I have to do something," she whispered. She flicked off the hair dryer and twined her fingers up through her hair. She had to erase what had just happened. She had to disarm the horrible poem this day had been.

  She examined herself in the mirror beneath the fluorescent light. Her face looked pale and pinched, an alien lavender in the artificial light. Gathering her long hair in both hands, she pulled it away from her face and studied the effect for a moment. Then, she let her hair drop about her shoulders again.

  "No, Freemont," she whispered. “I won't let anyone have any more of me.”

  From the drawer, she pulled a pair of scissors. Then, she took a handful of hair in one hand, twisted it back, close to the scalp, and cut. Took another, and cut. And cut. And cut.

  A mere inch of hair remained when she was finished, a close cap that waved about her head; she left just one long tendril trailing over her shoulder, a reverse image of what had been taken earlier in the week. A symbol.

  Standing before the mirror when the job was done, turning her head from side to side, she could see that her face seemed more angular now, and her eyes more prominent and aware. She smiled in a thin, grim line, knowing that she looked harder, too, and more powerful. From Lady Godiva to Joan of Arc. Good.

  With deliberate movements she gathered the mounds of curling hair that had fallen into the sink and onto the floor, and piled them into a paper bag. What to do now? Carry them out to the trash? No. Anyone could find it there. The hair was hers. She wanted to build a bonfire and throw the whole lot on it, watch it sizzle and shrink, exude the stink of years saved up and gone bad. A cleansing ritual.

  It would have to be later, though. For now, she rolled the bag shut and carried it back through the dark series of rooms to her bedroom. In the shadows, she shoved the bag under the bed. That was that, for now. It would feel odd and
lonely to go to bed without braiding her hair as she had done every night for as long as she could remember. Rituals must change, she knew, but this one was as embedded as stepping over the cracks in a sidewalk. Her hand crept up to her head to feel the absence of heavy hair, just as, when a child, she had probed with her tongue the space where a tooth had fallen out.

  Deirdre was about to sit on the bed when she had another thought. Freemont had been in her bedroom. He’d said so. She pulled the cord on the overhead light and saw the impression on the bedspread. Her journal sat open on the bedside table. The penetration was complete. What else had she expected?

  No. She could not force herself to crawl between those sheets tonight, perhaps not ever again. She yanked open a drawer and found a sweatshirt with a hood, and pulled it on and covered her head, a token comfort against the sense of cold exposure. Then she left the room and shut the door behind her.

  In the living room, the light was blinking on her answering machine. It didn’t matter who it was. There was a limit to how much pain and anger a person could feel before they became numb to all of it. What use would avoidance be now? She clicked the playback button, expecting to hear Freemont’s taunting voice.

  Deirdre, this is Rosa Ruiz, the voice said instead. I’m sending Manny over to get you. You should sleep here tonight.

  Relief rushed through her soul to her knees. She could run away. She went quickly to pack a small bag. She’d be waiting on the curb when he got there.

  XXVI.

  Half an hour earlier, Rosa Ruiz had walked into Manny’s room and said, “Go get Deirdre. Something’s wrong.”

  Manny hadn’t asked questions, just closed his book, reached for his car keys and driven through the rain, fear churning in his blood. When he pulled up to the curb he saw her lights go out and before he could get to the stairs, she was locking the door behind her. Now, as she turned to him under the porch light, hair cropped short, her eyes pinched, he knew that Auntie Rosa had been right. Anger and a fierce protectiveness mingled in his heart. Silently, he picked up her small bag, put his arm around her and led her to the car.