The Delilah Complex

by MJ Rose

  I had heard them from patients. I had dreamed them. I had even been thankful I did not feel that with my husband. It was too absorbing. I didn’t want to surrender to any emotion, to any passion. Ever.

  Jordain had too much intuition about me. About what I thought. About how to touch me. About how to make my body curve to his. About how to blow on the spot where my neck met my collarbone with breath so hot I had to close my eyes and hold on to his arms with tightened fingers.

  He would have weakened me.

  And that was not the worst he could have done.

  A flush of heat warmed the back of my neck. My celery silk shirt was suddenly sticking to my back and my olive gabardine jacket felt as if it was a whole size too small.

  Turning from the paper, I took another sip of the coffee, which by then was lukewarm. And another. I looked down at the ring on my right hand—a butterfly made of white gold, paved with tsarvorite in the wings and just a few tiny diamond chips in the body. It had been a birthday gift from my daughter and her godmother—my surrogate mother, Nina. I touched the tips of the wings, which were almost, but not quite, sharp enough to hurt. They had surprised me with the present just days after the Magdalene Murderer had been apprehended.

  Just days after I’d almost been killed, along with one of my patients.

  Just days after the last time I spoke to Detective Jordain.

  “Dr. Snow? You’ll be on as soon as this news break is over. Would you come with me, please?”

  The air was freezing in studio 1A and I shivered as we walked down the hall, aware that I was cold over a layer of heat that was, like a memory, holding its own beneath the surface of my skin.

  This was the last thing I needed to think about minutes before the camera focused on me.

  “Do you need anything before you go on?” she asked.

  “No, I’m fine.”

  But that wasn’t true.

  Eight

  “I’m not here to talk about going into therapy myself. I’m here on behalf of a group of women who would like you to conduct private group therapy sessions for them,” Shelby Rush said.

  More than twenty-five phone calls had come in on Friday afternoon, following my appearance on the Today show. The receptionist at the Butterfield Institute, where I practiced, said that all but one had asked what kind of health insurance I accepted and what my rates were. Five of them had said they would call back to schedule appointments after they checked with their insurance agents. I wasn’t planning on taking on all of them as patients. My schedule was already tight. But I’d meet them and evaluate them so that I could refer them to the right therapist at the institute.

  One woman had asked for an appointment without inquiring about either my rates or the insurance, and now she sat opposite me in my pale yellow office, on the other side of my desk. Shelby was in her mid-thirties, attractive and articulate in a way that many women in Manhattan are. Her expensive clothes were unremarkable. Taupe slacks, white silk shell and black blazer. High-heeled Chanel shoes and a Gucci handbag—taupe fabric with interlocking Gs.

  I dressed pretty much the way she did—but less expensively. The look was the same though: classic, tailored, chic. The New York City uniform for women over thirty. Not an expression of individuality so much as a way to win the fashion war that most of us were tired of once we left our twenties.

  You can’t read us by these clothes. Our shoes and bags, our suits, shirts and slacks all mean nothing. Our secret souls aren’t exposed by the name on the label inside our jackets. They are not even visible on our faces.

  Some therapists claim that they can get a glimpse of their patients’ real selves in their eyes, but I wasn’t sure of that anymore. Maybe it was because so many of the successful business professionals I worked with had learned the art of concealment and false impressions for work. Maybe it was because my talents lay more in getting people to open up, because they trusted I wouldn’t judge them. I don’t believe in popular psychology or fast fixes.

  “What kind of organization do you belong to, Shelby? Why do you think I’d be the right therapist?”

  She uncrossed her hands and looked down at her nails as if she’d find the answer to my question cribbed on the pale pink ovals.

  I took her emotional temperature. She didn’t fidget, but she bit her bottom lip and held the skin between her teeth so long it seemed as if the action was actually preventing her from speaking.

  “Shelby?”

  “This is a little complicated, Dr. Snow.”

  I nodded, encouraging her. She bit her lip again. I could wait as long as it took her to decide she was ready to tell me. I glanced at the two high arched windows on the south wall of my office. Beyond them was a three-foot-wide ledge—which, in Manhattan, many would call a terrace. It was only big enough to stand on and look down at the sidewalk or up at the sky, but I’d crammed the space with planters containing flowers and bushes that attracted butterflies.

  When I’d first created my city garden, everyone told me I was dreaming, that there were no butterflies in the city apart from those in the butterfly exhibit at the Museum of Natural History.

  But I knew there were masses of monarchs in Central Park. They settled on flowers in the Shakespeare Garden, in the Conservatory and in the Rambles. And since the Butterfield Institute was only a block and a half from the park, I thought they might come.

  The first year they didn’t, but they showed up the second and have been coming ever since. Lovely red-orange monarchs, cabbage whites and pop-art zebra swallowtails find their way to my small garden and grace me with their short-lived loveliness. Winged creatures that exist to reproduce and, in the process, help flowers to do the same.

  By late September the butterflies were usually gone, but this year it was still so warm that they had not yet started their migration. A monarch, as deeply orange as the leaves on the maple trees, flitted from petal to petal while Shelby struggled to figure out how to reveal her secrets.

  Aristotle had named butterflies psyche, the Greek word for soul, and I understood why. Their metamorphosis reminded me of the way patients work so hard to become free of what has kept them fettered in the past.

  Finally, Shelby let go of her lip and began. “Our society—we call it a society, the Scarlet Society—is a secret. Sounds so melodramatic, doesn’t it? But it is. No one outside of the membership knows about it. We don’t do anything illegal. Or dangerous. But it has lasted, in one form or another, for the past forty years without anyone finding out about it except the people we wanted to know.”

  I did the math. The society had formed in the early sixties.

  Shelby had stopped talking and was biting her lip again.

  “Can you tell me any more than that?”

  “Yes. Of course. Our membership is made up of single, married and divorced women, many of whom work for a living. Everyone is fairly well off. Our dues are high.”

  She stopped. I waited. She didn’t offer anything else.

  “That doesn’t really help me all that much. Is there more?”

  “Yes, much more. But first we need to reach some kind of agreement, and I’m not really sure how to proceed here. We’ve been so careful. Our members don’t even know one another’s last names. You are the only one who knows mine. Can you agree to help us? Then I can tell you more of what you need to know.”

  “I can’t do that until I know what you need and why.”

  Shelby frowned and looked back down at her hands.

  “Okay. How about this? We are a group of women who have similar interests. Nothing we do is dangerous. Or illegal.”

  It was the second time she’d made those two points. So I knew one thing: what they did was in some way dangerous. And possibly illegal.

  We all lie. We learn when we are small children and see an overweight woman in the pool and cry out—Mommy, look, there’s a fat lady—and our mothers tell us that isn’t nice, that we shouldn’t say things that can hurt people’s feelings. Because in s
ome cases it’s kinder to lie, we are taught to ingest moral cyanide in the name of civility. And then one day we get to a point in our lives—perhaps the point that Shelby Rush was at that moment—when the truth is the only way we can begin to help and heal, but still we obfuscate and hide because it is what we are used to doing.

  “Okay, if you can’t tell me any more about the society, tell me why you think I’m the right therapist for you.”

  “Because you’re a sex therapist.”

  I nodded but was frustrated and Shelby knew it. “I could explain it all if you would just agree to work with us.”

  I leaned forward. “Shelby, here at the institute, we make a serious effort in matching therapists to patients. We’re professionals. I can’t just assume that I’m the right therapist for your group.”

  “Almost everyone agreed that you’d be right.”

  “Who didn’t agree?”

  “One of our members who doesn’t think we need a therapist at all. Another who wanted us to hire her therapist, but I didn’t think that would be a good idea.”

  “Why me?”

  “A friend of mine who isn’t in our society recommended you. She was a patient of yours four years ago. Ellen Kenneth?”

  I nodded. Shelby continued. “She told me you are non-judgmental and that you will listen to us talk about sex and the things we do sexually and that you won’t tell us we should stop or warn us that we’re all screwing up our relationships. That you will understand when we tell you we aren’t, that we’re keeping our relationships alive.”

  I felt the first stirrings of excitement that usually kick in at the start of a good therapy session. “What is it a therapist would be judgmental about?”

  Shelby sat up straighter, smoothed her pants and flicked her hair behind her shoulders. She was preparing for battle. “What do you think normal sex is, Dr. Snow?”

  “I don’t qualify sex as normal or abnormal. Each of us has boundaries. What might be acceptable for you, might not be for someone else. Not because the act itself is acceptable or unacceptable, but rather because of your own reaction to it.”

  “Isn’t there anything you think is abnormal?”

  “Are you asking me where I draw the line between what is healthy and unhealthy?”

  She nodded.

  “When your own sexual desires or actions cause serious pain or danger to either yourself or someone else.”

  Shelby sat silently, nodding, it seemed, to herself. “We need a therapist who is trustworthy. I know every therapist is supposed to be, but we need to find someone who has been tested. And we know you have been. I did some research on the Magdalene Murders. You never betrayed your patient. You never told the police what you knew.”

  I nodded in acknowledgment. Shelby continued.

  “We need a therapist who will understand what it is like to be a successful woman making her way in a world that is still male dominated. Who won’t be shocked or disturbed by what we have to say. And we want it to be a sex therapist, not because we need help with sexual issues but because the sexual component of our society is so intrinsic to it that we don’t think anyone else would be able to understand what we have to explain.”

  Shelby had told me she was a divorce lawyer, and while I found most of her conversation devoid of legalese, this last speech was too convoluted for me. I wondered if she had done that to confuse me or was really having a hard time coming out and telling me about the Scarlet Society?

  “On the Today show you talked about how, as women become empowered and gain more recognition and prominence in the work force, their success becomes sexualized, and how that is creating a sexual crisis in many relationships today.”

  I nodded again. This was also the basis of the paper Nina had asked me to deliver at the psychiatric conference next August. I waited to hear what connection this thesis had with the society.

  “Our club is built on the idea that being sexually aggressive is not alien to women but something we’ve been taught to suppress in order to protect the male position. Male-dominated institutions, businesses, religions and philosophies have perpetuated the myth of the powerless woman. But there are women who want something else. Who don’t want to be dominated. Who don’t want to be chosen. Who don’t get off on any of that.”

  I leaned forward. She smiled, knowing she had me. I knew it, too, but that was okay.

  “Dr. Snow, our chapter here in New York is having a problem, and we don’t know how we should handle it. I’m afraid…a lot of us are afraid that if we don’t do exactly the right thing now it might rip us apart or threaten what we have. And that would be awful because women have a right to exercise their free will. Not just in the marketplace. Not just by being single parents. Not just reproductively. But we have a right to our own sexual free will. We have a right to be stronger women and enjoy men on our own terms if that’s what pleases us.”

  “What are you afraid of?” I asked Shelby.

  “We’re afraid for our lives.”

  Nine

  On Tuesday afternoon at 4:00 p.m., Betsy Young rushed out of the lobby of the New York Times. She had an interview uptown and didn’t want to be late. A strong wind was blowing leaves off the trees, littering the sidewalk, and it was raining. Other people pulled their jacket collars up and opened umbrellas. Even though Betsy was in too much of a hurry to notice the weather or the leaves, she saw the blue sedan that idled outside the office.

  But she didn’t have time to do more than run into the street and hail a cab. Jumping in, she gave the driver the address of an apartment building on Park Avenue and slammed the door shut.

  As the taxi peeled away from the curb, Betsy pulled a sheaf of papers out of her tote bag: research she’d pulled off the net about Philip Maur’s wife and her family. Before she looked at it again, she turned and looked out the window, and saw that the blue sedan had pulled out behind her cab.

  Was she being followed?

  Well, it was possible. The police could be watching her. After all, she was the one who had gotten the photographs. The only one. But she’d worry about that later. Now she had to focus on the exclusive interview ahead of her.

  Earlier that morning, she’d taken a chance and called Maur’s wife, who was also the daughter of a high-powered New York politician. Cyn Maur had been so confused and distracted that Betsy wondered if she actually understood she’d agreed to an interview. If she had, then Betsy wanted to know why. Even though her job depended on people talking to her, she was always astonished when anyone opened the doors to his or her private hell.

  Betsy could not imagine showing her own scars and shame to the public.

  Number 1235 Park Avenue wasn’t the Maurs’ apartment. It was the home of Cyn’s parents. And that was why Officer Tana Butler didn’t recognize the address when the reporter’s taxi stopped there.

  Betsy walked into the marble lobby, gave her name to the doorman, and told him who she was there to see. The doorman called upstairs and announced the visitor. He listened, then hung up.

  “Apartment 15E, Miss Young. First elevator on the right.”

  Betsy walked into the interior lobby. As soon as she was out of sight, Officer Butler got out of the blue sedan and walked into the building. Flashing her badge, she asked the doorman who the woman ahead of her had asked to see. She opened her notebook and wrote down the name of Cyn Maur’s parents.

  Then she went back outside, got into the unmarked car and waited.

  Upstairs, Cyn sat on the pale yellow couch in the living room and waited for Betsy’s questions as if she were facing an executioner.

  “Is this your first interview?” Betsy asked, trying to get the nervous woman to talk about how uncomfortable she was.

  “I didn’t want to do it, but it has been more than a week and the police still don’t have a single idea of where my husband’s body is. Not one lead on who killed him or why. And I have to know. I’m desperate to know.”

  “So you thought you’d talk to the press?�
��

  Cyn nodded. Her mouth twisted into what Betsy thought was an ugly grimace. “You’re vipers. You’ll investigate ruthlessly. You’re not hindered by the law. I don’t care who finds my husband’s body or his killer—the police or the press—as long as someone does. I am tired of crying from not knowing.”

  Even now, facing the reporter, the tears came.

  “It’s horrible. No matter where I look, I see the photographs the police showed me, those frozen images of my husband’s body. I’ve even tried to pretend that he wasn’t my husband. That the shots were of some other man. I even yelled at the detectives, told them that they had the wrong person. I pushed them, trying to get them to leave. But they knew what I was doing. So they waited and let me cry until, finally, I told them that, yes, it was Phil.

  “He looked so cold in the pictures,” she said, her heart splintering into pieces all over again. “I need to be able to close my eyes at night and go to sleep and wake up in the morning and pour orange juice for my children, and make them waffles. But I can’t concentrate on anything. My husband was tied up and brutalized. He’d been photographed from the most lewd angles possible. Why? The pallor of his skin haunts me. His slack face and helpless hands obsess me.

  “Phil had never been helpless in his life,” she said, not sure if she was answering a question or not.

  Betsy smiled sympathetically and leaned forward, her pen poised on a page of her notebook. “So, he was a strong man? Do you mean emotionally? Or physically?”

  Cyn Maur heard something in the reporter’s voice. Was it doubt? Confusion? Cynicism?

  If she had slept even a little last night she might have picked up the subtleties in the reporter’s tone. A warning bell might have alerted her that Betsy knew something that she shouldn’t have.

  Ten