An Act of Love

by Nancy Thayer

  It helped that aikido was such a formal martial art. All students had to wear the white, pajamalike gi, which sensei told them must be kept clean. Emily wore the white belt of a novice wrapped twice around her waist and tied in a knot. Of the ten other students, four were yellow belts, five were green belts, and one was a brown belt. Their instructor was a black belt, and at first Emily had found him an intimidating sight. Short and stocky, with his black hair tied back in a low ponytail, Lyman Rice wore a hakama, a long black skirt over his gi, and the effect was oddly powerful, making him seem otherworldly, even regal. Before stepping onto the mat, everyone had to give a formal bow of respect to the center of the mat, and when class began and ended, everyone had to give a formal bow to sensei. The students even had to bow to one another, formally, before and after working out, and after she got over the embarrassment and self-consciousness of this, Emily discovered that it helped her see her partner as a comrade, not an adversary.

  Which was good, for the world seemed full of adversaries. It was the end of February. She’d been out of the hospital for two full months. She saw her therapist twice a week. Yet sometimes after a day at school she was so exhausted by her own timidity that she hid in her bedroom and cried.

  Not that her mother didn’t know. Their dumb little apartment was too small and the walls too thin for secrets. But her mother came now and then to the counseling sessions at the Basingstoke Mental Health Clinic, and Dr. Srivastava had warned them both that Emily’s recovery would take time and would be spotted with occasions of depression and feelings of failure. So Emily understood, as she walked the long modern halls of Basingstoke High, why it was that she flinched when a strange guy came too close, why her chest held her breath in a vise when Tom Hudson or Mark Stephens stopped to talk to her, both of them so tall, seeming to hover over her like giants. She knew they liked her; she liked them. She didn’t want to be afraid of them and absolutely she did not want to display any fear. She hadn’t told anyone at the high school, not even Bridgett, her new best friend, about the rape. She did not want to be stared at and gossiped about.

  Sometimes images fluttered through her mind like a pack of cards thrown by the Red Queen. Rooms and faces. So many rooms, so many faces, in the past few months. Her bedroom on the farm, at Hedden, in the hospital, now in this new apartment. Her mother, Cordelia, Cynthia, Bridgett. Sometimes it was like being on a train, looking out the window at the countryside, and then the train rushes forward at jet speed, blurring the images into disorder.

  Hedden. When school first started in the new year, Cordelia and Zodiac and Ming Chu had been good about calling her and meeting her in town for lunch, but as the days went by they called less, and when they did get together, they had less to talk about. Her Hedden friends couldn’t get interested in the public high school gossip, and Emily found herself wanting to place some distance between herself and the private school. She had to move on with her life.

  The hospital. Just once in the months since she’d left the hospital had she gone back to visit her friends there. Cynthia had been right. Everything changed once you were out.

  Her mother had dropped her off at the front doors of the hospital, promising to pick her up in exactly one hour. As she went through the heavy swinging doors into the psych ward, a rush of anticipation mingled with anxiety passed through her, and then there she was, back in the familiar corridor.

  “May I help you?” A strange nurse coming down the hall with a clipboard in her hand had greeted Emily.

  “Um, I’m a visitor. I mean, I used to be a patient, and I just wanted to see some friends … Is Cynthia still here?”

  “She’s in the dining room.” The nurse took Emily’s purse to hold at the desk.

  Emily had planned on their being in the dining room. When she’d discussed the visit with her mother, Linda had suggested this time, because if things were awkward, they could all go watch Star Trek at seven.

  She’d made her way along the halls, surprised at how small and overheated and crowded the psych ward seemed, even compared to the dinky apartment she shared with her mother. When she stepped into the dining room, she’d realized with a jolt that she knew only two of the people there. Fat Bill. And Cynthia.

  Fat Bill had seen her come in, but his eyes had registered no emotion. He’d been at his usual place at the end of a table, an empty bowl in front of him. Cynthia had sat at the table next to him, and three new patients had sat at the other end, not speaking.

  “Hi, Bill,” Emily had said.

  He hadn’t replied.

  “It’s me, Emily. Remember? I brought you some candy.”

  At the word candy his eyes had blinked. He’d looked at her hands. She’d put the Whitman’s Sampler box on the table in front of him.

  “How are you doing?” Emily had asked.

  Bill hadn’t answered but had frantically torn at the plastic wrapping, then wrenched the lid off the box. He’d put three chocolates in his mouth at once. A brown dribble of chocolate had leaked down the corner of his mouth.

  Emily had pulled a chair up next to Cynthia. The other girl had sat listlessly, thin arms crossed in her lap, her hair lank and unkempt, her eyes dull.

  “Hey, Cynthia, it’s me, Emily. How are you?”

  Cynthia hadn’t responded in any way.

  Beldon had come into the room then.

  “Emily! Hey, girl, you’re lookin’ good!”

  She’d been both glad to see the man again, and oddly defensive. He had seen her at her worst, her most pathetic, and she hadn’t wanted to think about that. She hadn’t wanted him saying, “Remember the time you clawed your face?” But she’d risen and given him a hug, and Beldon had hugged her back, then asked, “How do you like your new school?”

  “It’s okay. I’m meeting some people.” She’d looked at Cynthia sitting inert in front of her. “Cynthia seems a little down.”

  “That’s putting it mildly. It’s the same old story. Third, maybe fourth time she’s done it. Left the hospital, felt great, stopped taking her meds, had a great manic time during the holidays, then crashed. Back to the hospital for a while.”

  “Poor baby,” Emily had said. She’d bent over Cynthia, wrapping her arms around the other girl’s shoulders, stroking Cynthia’s greasy hair.

  “Nice,” Cynthia had said. “That’s nice.”

  Emily had continued stroking her hair.

  “Heard from Keith?” Beldon had asked.

  “Yes. We talk on the phone about once a week.”

  “How is he?”

  “Back in school. He likes that. His parents are giving him some breathing space, and his mother has agreed to see a counselor with him.”

  “His father?”

  “Refuses to. But the mother is a start.” Emily had told Keith about aikido, and Keith had told her about the extracurricular course he was taking. “He’s taking ballroom dancing.”

  “Ballroom dancing. I can just see him.”

  Beldon and Emily had laughed together. Emily was glad she’d met Keith. She could imagine he would be a good friend for the rest of her life.

  “Star Trek,” Bill had said.

  Bill had risen, Cynthia had risen, and to Emily’s surprise, the other three patients who had been sitting so unanimatedly at the other end of the table had risen, too.

  “I’ll come see you again,” Emily had called to Cynthia. But Cynthia hadn’t replied, and as Emily went back through the ward and out the swinging doors, she had known the words were a lie. She wouldn’t come back.

  Emily didn’t think about the hospital much these days. She was lucky, she knew, not to have the serious psychiatric problems others had, and some days she was simply grateful for that, and that was enough.

  The farm. She really didn’t miss it that much. She missed Barn Cat. She missed seeing baby Sean and Rosie. Someday, her mother said, they would drive out to Ebradour and visit the Ryans. Someday, perhaps in the spring.

  Linda had really loved the farm and what Emily
hated most of all was that her mother and Owen were living apart. That her mother no longer lived on the farm. Emily burned with guilt about that, even though Dr. Srivastava told her she should not feel guilty. How could she not feel guilty? She was guilty. If she had just not told about the rape, if she could have just gotten over it without making such a fuss …

  Sometimes the guilt was so mixed with anger she could not tell them apart. When she thought of what Bruce had done to her, to them all, when she thought of all the consequences, the way she and especially her mother had had their lives totally, completely altered forever … she could not bear it. She could not bear it, and her anger was like acid inside her soul. Her new shrink told her that it would harm only herself, no one else, and so she tried her best not to dwell on it, but when she did, she found herself in the same state she’d been before she went into the hospital: nearly wild with rage. And with nowhere to put that rage. Certainly she couldn’t keep harping on about it to her mother, who put on a good front for Emily’s sake, Emily knew, but who also, Emily knew, because of the thin walls, cried herself to sleep at night.

  So twice a week, in the evenings, she tried to channel that rage into this discipline. She arrived in her gi, bowed, did the thirty minutes of warming-up exercises with the others, then faced her partner and practiced the techniques of aikido.

  There was only one other woman in the class, a rather flabby older woman who seemed as determined as Emily to learn this martial art. The few times Emily had had her as a partner, Emily had been vividly aware of the woman’s femininity, how her wrist was softer, plumper, her movements more supple and languorous, and less precise. The woman was gentler, almost apologetic, and Emily supposed that was the way she was, too. They were not good partners for each other.

  It was the best for her when she practiced with one of the green belt men who knew more, whose movements were quicker, smoother. It was frightening for Emily to work with a man. Each time it was frightening, as the man stood before her, always taller, always heavier, sometimes somber and intense, sometimes insulted and bored by a woman partner, sometimes amused. But male.

  Run, her body told her.

  Stay, her mind told her body. Stay. And learn.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  In a small town off the Mass Pike, almost exactly halfway between Ebradour and Basingstoke, a colonial mansion had been turned into a small guest house named The Bayberry Inn. On this cold February night the lounge did smell of bayberry, and of cinnamon-scented candles and apple wood crackling in the fireplace.

  Linda was curled up on a deep sofa, staring at the fire. She had arrived early because the weather forecasters predicted snow and she hated driving in snow. Owen would be there soon.

  Until then, it was balm for her soul simply to sit in this luxurious room. This peaceful room. With each passing second she was thankful that Owen had suggested they come here. It was expensive, but they had decided such an indulgence was necessary. Once a month, dinner here, the night here, time together away from their busy homes. Time away from their work, professional and familial. Time away from their children.

  “Been waiting long?”

  She looked up, and saw her husband standing there. He’d lost weight recently and his blazer hung on him, and the collar of his button-down shirt was loose. Still he was breathtakingly handsome, and just for a moment all the delicious electricity of their early meetings broke over her, flooding her with desire and with delight, because this man was hers.

  “Not long,” she said. “How was the drive?”

  “All right.” He sank onto the sofa next to her. “Have you seen the suite?”

  “Yes. It’s wonderful. A four-poster bed. Wood-burning fireplace. And a clean, modern bath.”

  “The best of both worlds.”

  “Yes.”

  “You look good.”

  “Thanks.” She was glad he noticed. She’d lost weight, too, an accidental consequence of the recent events in their lives, and for tonight had bought a dress that showed off her figure. Owen liked to see her in a dress; how long had it been? She lived in jeans and sweaters and boots or fleece-lined moccasins.

  For tonight she’d had her hair cut and shaped. Her hairdresser had suggested tinting it. “Goodness!” Maxie’d exclaimed. “Look at all the gray!”

  “Leave it,” Linda said. “It’s my badge of courage.”

  “What?” Maxie asked, puzzled. “Honey, it makes you look old.”

  “Never mind,” Linda said, then to placate the other woman, “I’ll think about dyeing it.”

  “Darling, we don’t dye. We cellophane. We color.”

  “Fine, but not today.”

  Owen, she noticed, had more gray in his hair, too. And the skin on his face had begun to hang down from the bones, just slightly, but enough. The curved lines between his nose and mouth were more deeply engraved, and when he was in repose, as he was now, staring at the fire, the sides of his mouth turned down. They did not use to do that.

  “I brought a bottle of champagne,” Owen said.

  “Lovely! What kind?”

  “Perrier Jouët.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “We can afford it once a year. We deserve it this year.”

  They had spent New Year’s Eve separately, at home with their children. Linda nodded ruefully. “When shall we drink it?”

  “Well—how soon do you want to eat?”

  It was lovely to discuss such inconsequential matters. For the first time in weeks they could think only of themselves and their immediate pleasure.

  Bruce had been invited to spend the night with a bunch of guys, Ebradour friends he’d known since he was a child. He and Owen had discussed this with Dr. Ingersall; the host parents—and all of Ebradour as well—knew that Bruce had left private school, but nothing more, and Dr. Ingersall thought there was no reason to tell them. Bruce was taking low doses of Depo-Provera; he was working hard in school; he spent all his spare time in the barn, refinishing furniture; he saw Dr. Ingersall twice a week. At home he was sullen but placid. Tonight he and the other boys would watch videos and eat pizza. The parents would be around the entire time; it seemed a safe enough bet.

  It would be the first time Bruce had spent away from his father since the night he was jailed.

  Emily had also been invited to spend the night, with a new friend from the Basingstoke public high school. Bridgett was a somber girl, with braces and glasses and her hair in braids. She was seemingly uninterested in boys, which was probably one of the reasons Emily liked being around her. Bridgett wanted to be a journalist when she grew up and her conversation was packed with information about injustices, especially against women.

  Linda had driven Bridgett home several times, and met Bridgett’s parents, both college professors, serious intellectuals, strict disciplinarians. She found them rather dumpy and overearnest, and she could tell they found her, a novelist separated from her second husband, a wee bit alarming, but all in all they had passed each other’s inspections.

  The important thing was that Bridgett was Emily’s friend. Now and then Emily met Cordelia and Zodiac and Ming Chu in town for ice cream and coffee. But the other three girls were always engrossed with Hedden gossip; Emily felt left out. She was left out. She was in a different world now, but doing all right, Linda thought.

  Emily saw her therapist once a week. Sometimes she voluntarily told Linda about her session; other times she’d simply shrug off Linda’s queries. “We just talked about life and stuff. Nothing exciting.” It was the therapist who’d advised Emily to take a course in self-defense, and that, more than anything else, seemed to be imbuing Emily with a stronger sense of self. A kind of grace was slipping into Emily’s bones, a slight ease in her posture, her chin held a little higher, her shoulders straighter.

  The truth was, Linda had to face it, Emily really loved living in Basingstoke. On the farm she had missed the daily serendipitous exchanges with people; Emily liked being around people. She had
begun to baby-sit for a family who lived in the condominium. Eleven-month-old Greg was a picture-book baby, with wisps of white-blond hair and huge blue eyes and fat rosy cheeks and very fat thighs, and he was a cheerful baby, too. When he saw Emily come in the door, he squealed and bubbled with glee and waved his arms for her to pick him up. She carried him with her everywhere, and took great pains to keep him perfectly clean, and never let him cry for more than a millisecond. As Emily joked to her mother, he was one nonthreatening male.

  Owen knew all this, just as Linda knew how Bruce was doing. They talked to each other on the phone every night, just before they went to sleep. They talked about their children, and they talked about other things, too, their work, the farm, their friends.

  Linda was scheduled to attend a joint family session with Dr. Ingersall once a month. At some point in the future Emily would be invited to join them for a session. Bruce needed to apologize to Emily, Dr. Ingersall said, if their relationship was to continue at all. It would be healthy for both of them to confront each other again, he said. But Bruce wasn’t quite ready for that yet. Probably Emily wasn’t, either.

  Tonight, Linda and Owen had agreed in advance, they would not discuss their children. Life did hold other elements. They had not been attracted to each other because of their children nor had they married for that reason. Their lives would go on when the children were grown.

  “Let’s go to our room,” Owen said now. “I have something for you.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Linda responded archly.

  Owen grinned. “That, too, but not till after dinner.”

  They went up the winding staircase and down the hall to their suite. Linda put a match to the kindling while Owen popped the cork on the champagne. They settled into the small armchairs in front of the fireplace and toasted each other, and then Owen reached into his pocket and took out a piece of paper and handed it to Linda.

  Linda looked at it. It was a check, for one hundred thousand dollars, made out to her.

  “Owen?”

  “I sold the south woodland.”

  “Owen, no.”