“Like a fruitcake,” she said, nodding. “The newspapers didn’t explain too clearly why this senator and his aide felt they had to kill you, but I got the point, seeing how I was in on the beginning of it.”
“Yes you were,” I said wonderingly, “and if you hadn’t told me—”
“If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t be lying here,” she pointed out, “but also that sexy senator and his pal would still be on the loose, wouldn’t they? Well, kid—” She reserved her liveliest bombshell for departure, announcing at the door with an impish grin, “Ollie and I got married yesterday.”
I sat up in astonishment. “Daisy! Married? Congratulations!”
“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “I owe you for that. Obviously a million bucks attracts leeches and vultures which a person needs like a hole in the head. So stop in sometime and watch me burp babies and do the domestic, okay?”
From the small sounds that reached me from the corridor as she left I guessed that her departure did not go unnoticed by doctors, interns, patients, and visitors.
As for myself, now that my excursion into violence is over, I feel changed in a way that is not explainable except, perhaps, to say that I have moved from Victim to Survivor, a distance of no small import. Some things matter more to me now, and many things less, and the past not at all. A balance has occurred that astonishes me: I am turning into a very agile tightrope walker, gliding across chasms and abysses without a glance below. I have no more nightmares and, ironically, now that I have come so very near to death it no longer haunts me. Joe says I am moving from Old Age to Middle Age and he suggests we get married in time for my Adolescence.
Amman Singh says that I have begun to walk the path to my Original Self. When I smile and ask him why he only quotes a proverb to the effect that no one can learn to live who has not learned to die.
What Dr. Merivale would say is something else again. As a matter of fact I met him just the other day on Main Street. He looked very trim, very well-groomed in his business suit, his face deeply tanned, which reminded me that May was always his vacation month, when he flew south to the Caribbean.
I said, “Hello there, Dr. Merivale!”
He stopped and looked at me, surprised. “Why—it’s Amelia, isn’t it?”
I’d forgotten how vague he could be; he’d always been nondirective as a psychiatrist and I suppose this enters subtly into the personality. He said, focusing on me reproachfully, “I’m sorry you’ve not come back for more treatment, Amelia, I feel your father would have wanted that. What have you been doing since I last saw you?”
I like Dr. Merivale, I really do. I mean, he held my hand for three difficult years and I am grateful for this but I was feeling mischievous that day. He had been away, of course, and so he’d not seen the newspapers, or the photograph of me being carried out on a stretcher from the Ebbtide Shop, with Joe in hot pursuit. I said gravely, “Well, Dr. Merivale, since I last saw you I’ve been looking for the murderers of a woman killed many years ago. I found them and was nearly murdered myself, and now one killer is dead and the other arrested. I’ve found a guru of sorts, I’ve fallen in love, and I’ve lost my virginity. I really think I’ve been Affecting My Environment, don’t you? At last?”
It’s possible that the passing of a truck blurred my words, or it’s possible that Dr. Merivale is not by nature playful. His glance at me sharpened suspiciously and then retreated in haste. “Ah,” he murmured, nodding. “Mmmm … well, I hope you will still consider that typing class, Amelia. It’s so important—as I’ve stressed before—that we all have purpose in life.” And having said this he gave me a kindly smile and continued walking down the street.
I stood and watched him go, and I laughed. I mean, have you ever stopped to realize—not just the miracle that life is—but how basically comic it is despite its griefs? The wonder of it, as Amman Singh says, is that we take it so seriously.
One day, poised on my tightrope, I hope to manage a glorious cartwheel, or at the very least a pirouette.
In the meantime, however, I bought a flower from the vendor on the corner and carried it home to Joe.
to Pat Myrer
with love and thanks
By Dorothy Gilman
Published by The Random House Publishing Group:
CARAVAN
UNCERTAIN VOYAGE
A NUN IN THE CLOSET
THE CLAIRVOYANT COUNTESS
THE TIGHTROPE WALKER
INCIDENT AT BADAMY
THALE’S FOLLY
The Mrs. Pollifax series
THE UNEXPECTED MRS. POLLIFAX
THE AMAZING MRS. POLLIFAX
THE ELUSIVE MRS. POLLIFAX
A PALM FOR MRS. POLLIFAX
MRS. POLLIFAX ON SAFARI
MRS. POLLIFAX ON THE CHINA STATION
MRS. POLLIFAX AND THE HONG KONG BUDDHA
MRS. POLLIFAX AND THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE
MRS. POLLIFAX AND THE WHIRLING DERVISH
MRS. POLLIFAX AND THE SECOND THIEF
MRS. POLLIFAX PURSUED
MRS. POLLIFAX AND THE LION KILLER
MRS. POLLIFAX, INNOCENT TOURIST
MRS. POLLIFAX UNVEILED
For Young Adults
GIRL IN BUCKSKIN
THE MAZE IN THE HEART OF THE CASTLE
THE BELLS OF FREEDOM
Nonfiction
A NEW KIND OF COUNTRY
Discover—or rediscover—Dorothy Gilman’s feisty grandmother and fearless CIA agent … Mrs. Pollifax!
THE UNEXPECTED MRS. POLLIFAX
THE AMAZING MRS. POLLIFAX
THE ELUSIVE MRS. POLLIFAX
A PALM FOR MRS. POLLIFAX
MRS. POLLIFAX ON SAFARI
MRS. POLLIFAX ON THE CHINA STATION
MRS. POLLIFAX AND THE HONG KONG BUDDHA
MRS. POLLIFAX AND THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE
MRS. POLLIFAX AND THE WHIRLING DERVISH
MRS. POLLIFAX AND THE SECOND THIEF
MRS. POLLIFAX PURSUED
MRS. POLLIFAX AND THE LION KILLER
MRS. POLLIFAX, INNOCENT TOURIST
MRS. POLLIFAX UNVEILED
Published by The Random House Publishing Group.
Available wherever books are sold.
Tightrope Walker Page 19