Death by Water

by Alessandro Manzetti

  “GeoPeople Society: Earth, Its People, and the World…,” Sue repeated. She glanced down at the galleys, the reporter’s words spinning up at her and felt a rill of anxiety well up inside her. “Tony,” she said, “this is going to sound slightly bonkers, but what if they come after me?”

  “You, you’re just a fact checker. My bum is on the line.” He laughed.

  “Hello, I’m Susan Munsinger with New World Manhattan Magazine, and I’m fact-checking an article we’re planning on publishing. I just want to ask a few questions, and confirm a few details, okay?”

  “Well…”

  “So the spiritual leader of your group is Mother Taraneh, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she models herself after Mother Theresa?” Sue went on.

  “Mother Taraneh does not have to model herself after anyone,” the woman on the other end of the line said. “Her own name means song, and through her own inner joy she is spreading God’s truth— ”

  “But she dresses like Mother Theresa—with the royal blue stripe on the hem of her veil and— ” Sue said, plowing on.

  “Our holy Mother does her own good works.”

  Sue didn’t want to antagonize her, but she couldn’t resist. “Well, she’s not going into leper colonies with food, is she?”

  “There’s no leprosy, as you know, here in the United States.”

  “What about worldwide?”

  “We take care of people everywhere.”

  Sue said, “We’ve obtained insider information that in fact your organization does not tell new recruits everything and that they don’t find out what they’re really signing up for until months—sometimes years—later, and have paid over a lot of money.”

  “Not true,” the pleasant-sounding woman who refused to give her name said. “And all the money donated by our parishioners comes from their hearts because they believe in the Mother’s goodness.”

  “But don’t you offer them free personality tests?”

  “Yes, but it’s so they can begin to open their minds to universal truth.”

  “You believe that psychology and psychiatry are all wrong, actually harmful, and so you use a machine, a sort of lie detector called the ‘Emotional Response Analyzer’ to— ”

  “—It’s our version of the confessional and it’s a religious artifact, a holy rite.” The woman’s voice was cold, supercilious, Sue thought.

  Sue sped on. “We’ve heard that certain former members, like Marie Caswell for example, say they were forced into a virtual prison on one of your properties upstate, had no contact with friends or family, and could not even make phone calls or write letters.”

  It was the only question the anonymous woman even came close to answering. She shouted into the phone. “Marie Caswell is an OED. She’s an embittered liar who was asked to leave because she was committing criminal acts and we refused to cover up for her!”

  Sue felt a momentary confusion. Wasn’t the OED the Oxford English Dictionary? “Pardon me,” she said, “OED?”

  “Official Enemy Declared!”

  “Oh. Right. Well, one more thing. We’ve learned that Charles Manson—the convicted mass murderer—was affiliated with GPS. Can you tell me about that? Was he a member of the organization in California?”

  “Charles Manson!” The voice was a shriek and Sue heard the line click.

  “Hung up on me,” she said.

  June 1975

  The next thing she knew, there were cockroaches in her apartment and she was out of a job. Sue Munsinger was heartbroken. She wrote in her journal, “Virginia Woolf speaks of the ‘great interval of nothingness’ after her own mother died, and I feel the same kind of numbness, the sense of being bereft.”

  Her boss had been on maternity leave and she felt terrible about what happened to Sue. “It’s not because you weren’t good at what you’re doing,” she said. The ostensible reason was that a big Australian newspaper magnate was taking over the magazine and they were cutting down on overhead by letting go of the lower level editorial staff members. But Sue—as far she could determine from checking the masthead (where just about everyone except janitors was listed by name each week in the front of the magazine)—was the only one who lost her job. Sue tried to figure out what she might have done wrong. She did have a glass of wine with lunch more often than she should have, she thought. But then, they’d just given her a ten-dollar-a-week raise just before she got the boot. So that didn’t make sense—beyond her own guilt, she amended inwardly. But why should she feel guilty? There were writers who showed up for staff meetings after three-martini lunches. Because she did feel guilty. She did. No matter how many times the shrink told her that her own perceptions were what counted.

  Her parents had paid for her to see a psychiatrist. Lots of sympathy (even if it’s not free, Sue thought). She read a lot, she went on long walks, but her days were becoming more and more unstructured and formless. What had Virginia Woolf written in her own diary?

  A battle against depression, rejection (by Harpers of my story) routed today (I hope) by clearing out kitchen; by sending the article (a lame one) to N.S.; and by breaking into P.H. two days, I think, of memoir writing. This trough of despair shall not, I swear, engulf me. The solitude is great.

  Sue couldn’t find another job. She went on plenty of interviews, but money was tight everywhere in publishing and there was nothing.

  Sue Munsinger had also tried to throw herself into writing poetry and fiction—but every attempt felt half-hearted. And the rejections, even from the smaller magazines here and in the U.K. that paid in copies were depressing. At least Virginia Woolf and her husband owned Hogarth Press and she had an outlet for her work. She had a husband, Sue thought. She had a girlfriend, too. And God knows, Sue tried to put on a brave face, but it was all wearing thin. Very thin.

  February 1976

  The sort of dusky day, cold and damp, like looking up through lake water. A hint of sleet in the air. Sue was lying under the covers on the daybed that was supposed to be a couch during business hours or when one entertained in evenings (not that she had anyone to entertain) when very distinctly she heard the doorknob to her apartment turning. She’d been trying to push herself to get up and get dressed and get going because she had an appointment with Dr. Anselm in less than two hours. She peered through the half gloom. Was the handle actually turning? Her mind shut down with terror and she felt a rising sword of adrenalin paralyze not just her midriff, but her arms and legs. She couldn’t move, couldn’t croak out, “Who’s there?” Was the “police lock”—a sturdy iron bar that fitted into the floorboards—in place? She heard her neck creak as she turned stiffly to look. It was—it was. Then she heard light footsteps moving away from 4 B and going down the grubby hallway. She swallowed, but the fear remained.

  “I think someone tried to get into my apartment,” Sue told Dr. Elizabeth (“Call me Betsy”) Anselm that afternoon.

  “Did you call the police? Tell the super?”

  Sue shook her head. Her heart was thudding. “This might sound a little crazy,” she said, “but my parents phoned me and said they got an anonymous phone call where the person—a young sounding guy—said to them ‘My name is Jeff Van Ketterman and I used to work with Sue at New World and are you aware she was let go because she has a drinking problem? I thought you’d want to know, because I heard she’s seeing a doctor, but maybe she needs more help than anyone—including Sue—realizes.’” She twisted a Kleenex in her hands. She hadn’t started crying yet, but tears were frequent during the sessions. “Then they hung up before my parents could even answer.”

  “Do you know this guy?”

  “I do, but I don’t think it was him— ”

  “Why not?”

  “Well for one thing he was an assistant in the Art Department, and I don’t think I spoke to him more than once or twice the entire time I worked there. And—this is going to sound paranoid, but I get the feeling someone watches me, and watches when I come and
go. Someone followed me home when I was carrying two bags of groceries from Gristedes the other night. And twice when I left the apartment for interviews when I came back in it seemed like my papers and things were gone through.”

  “What do you mean, Sue?”

  “Well, I had the rejection letters for my stories that I’ve gotten in the top right-hand drawer of my desk and they were in the order I’ve received them and when I went to file the last one yesterday, they weren’t in sequence anymore.”

  “Couldn’t you have accidentally disarranged them yourself?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “How much drinking are you doing?”

  “Well, when I cook myself a decent meal—I mean more than just a sandwich or a plate of eggs, I have a glass or two. A few— ”

  “Just my point. You could have very easily moved the letters yourself— ”

  “But books and things. Disappear or get moved. There are odd clicks on my phone— ” She took a deep breath. “There was a journalist—a woman who wrote about a weird cult called Scientology a few years ago and they went after her hammer and tongs—and I think the GPS may be after me.”

  “But why? You were just a fact checker like you told me?” Betsy smiled.

  “It’s in their official policy—doctrine—they ruin anyone who has anything against them. They conduct actual campaigns, they sue people, they— ”

  “But you only spoke to them. Have they gone after the writer? The magazine?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, glancing down. “But they could be keeping it on the Q.T. I mean someone is reading my diary,” Sue said. “I found a smudge, a thumbprint—like a person who’s been eating a Hershey Bar in several places and— ” She paused. “And the pages they were reading, they were all about how much it scared me that Charles Manson and his cult used to creepy-crawl houses when people they wanted to victimize slept. They did it and left traces to scare people, get them off balance. I also wrote about worrying about having wine at lunch sometimes when I worked at New World—even though everyone did. I wrote about how phobic I am about cockroaches.” She took a deep breath. “And now, suddenly, after more than a year in my place, I have them.”

  “The main thing is how you perceive all this…why do you think you’d be so important to them?”

  Sue was embarrassed. “Maybe they’re trying out new scare tactics, ways to intimidate,” she said. “Maybe they’re ‘practicing’ on a little fish—someone no one else would pay attention to. Like murderers who kill prostitutes and drug addicts because they won’t be missed…”

  “You do have a great imagination,” Betsy laughed.

  Sue smiled weakly. “Thanks. You know, at least I feel safe here. The GPS despises all psychiatrists.” She didn’t tell Betsy that she’d found an empty Vlasics jar (it wasn’t hers, it wasn’t because she didn’t eat pickles—she’d always hated them) under her kitchen sink—way in the back of the cabinet, out of the light and under the pipes. That was two days after she’d written the entry in her own diary about Virginia Woolf cleaning her kitchen and Sue was straightening shelves and neatly lining up supplies like Brillo pads, dish sponges and Comet bleach and she’d seen the first of what would become many cockroaches. Now she kept packets of what she called “separate” cockroach sponges just to squash them against walls or—even if she didn’t see them in the bathroom when she went in to pee—to wipe the toilet ring before she sat down.

  Over and over she wondered: Was someone creepy-crawling the apartment? Reading her diary? Calling her parents? Loosing vermin on her? Trying to drive her crazy? Was she imagining all this? She wondered, she really did wonder, but there was no answer.

  March 1976

  “…There is something worse than death, with its promise of release and slumber. There is dust rising, endless days, and a hallway that sits and sits, always full of the same brown light and the dank, slightly chemical smell that will do, until something more precise comes along, as the actual odor of age and loss, the end of hope,” Virginia Woolf wrote.

  She was tired, she loved that phrase, “There is dust rising,” and the words were swimming up at her, but she was afraid to turn off the reading light. Sue felt she was in the same kind of funk Woolf experienced. She hated hanging (dishabille) in her old bathrobe, barefoot, hair unwashed, nails grimy in the apartment, but she hated going out more. Every time she left (the grocery store, a walk in the slushy gray streets, to the corner bar for a drink) she was sure someone was going through her things in the apartment. She called the police once and the earnest young officer who stood with one elbow leaning on the kitchen counter holding a pen and notepad (quickly put into his shirt pocket) had shrugged. “Nothing’s missing? Who could get in? I mean if your super has a key and he’s coming in, why would that be? Nothing’s defaced—I mean no writing on the walls, right? Nothing’s ever been broken— ”

  How could she tell him that she’d come in very suddenly one night and found an open lipstick near the mirror (it wasn’t her lipstick! She never wore red or used Maybelline!)—as if someone had planned to write something and left in haste. Would they write “Pig” or “Die” or “Rise” as they’d done in the Manson murders? It occupied her thoughts all the time.

  She was alone, lonely, isolated. She was dependent on her parents’ good will and money and the jokes asking about when she was going to give up and come home to live didn’t sound so much like jokes anymore. Her mother had taken to sending her larger checks for food when she saw Sue had lost a lot of weight. “I have my savings,” she told her, “I’m just not hungry.”

  In the psychiatrist’s reception room Sue sat waiting for the start of her appointment, leafing through the glossy pages of Time magazine. There was a short, boxed sidebar piece about how the Scientologists had broken into all kinds of government offices—including the IRS and the United States post office. She flipped back, intent on reading the main article, but she was called into Betsy’s office.

  Her hands were trembling. Before she could even sit down or say hello she said, “Now I’ve really got to wonder if the GPS is targeting me.” Tears came into her eyes. “Every short story and poem I sent out for the last month to every single magazine came back unopened this morning. A huge stack—all the envelopes were crammed and wrinkled and stuffed into my mailbox. How could that happen? How?”

  “Postage?”

  Sue shook her head. “No, they had plenty…something is happening. I know it’s them. I’m sure there was enough postage, I always check.”

  When she got home, she looked at the pile of clasped manila envelopes. Not a single one was stamped.

  March 28th, 1976

  From the diary of Sue Munsinger:

  Betsy is suggesting—oh so gently—that it’s not a bad or terrible thing, that it’s not my fault, but perhaps the loneliness, the isolation has gotten to me and I’m losing it. Perhaps, she says, the meds aren’t enough. Maybe I need a rest for a while—somewhere. My parents couldn’t pay for that, and I don’t want them to. It’s too embarrassing, too shameful.

  Virginia was really lucky. She didn’t have to worry so much about rejection because she and Leonard owned their own publishing house. Except for one short item I posted in New World, I’ve never had a single thing accepted. Nowhere. Can’t get a job, no money for graduate school. The weirdest part is, I never wanted to be a journalist or an editor. I wanted to be a famous writer. I wanted to write my heart out (like Salinger says, “Are all your stars out?”) in peace and calm and tranquility. A sort of Emily Dickinson who became famous after she died. See? I was always worried that if I did become famous it would go to my head and I’d screw up. Start taking drugs, drink myself to death. But I thought I really, really care about writing and if I can write well enough, I can achieve a kind of everlasting life that way. If I could just keep trying. If I had money and a room of my own. But the room, I now realize, is mental space—not a studio apartment in Manhattan. The money is your own ea
rnings—not weekly checks from your parents in upstate New York attached to short (worried but loving) notes. Christ. It all hurts so goddamn much. Losing Tom, the job at New World, the sense of betrayal, the instant tears that start and then won’t stop.

  I think about this hideous, grinding half-life inside the gray walls of my mind. Walls that rise like the dust that dispirited Virginia Woolf. I went out for coffee this morning, because the goddamn cockroaches can have this dump as far as I’m concerned. And when I came back, the window on the fire escape was open and the book of Woolf’s letters was open. Maybe it’s a sign. She wrote to her beloved Leonard of her incipient madness: “I don’t think any two people could have been happier….It’s not your fault. You’ve done everything for me….I can’t go through another of those times….I can’t concentrate….I can’t fight any longer. I’m spoiling your life.”

  You see, Mom and Dad? Like Virginia Woolf, I can’t even write this properly. And like her Leonard, you’ve also been so incredibly good to me. I’m costing you a fortune, I’m miserable, I can’t go on ruining your lives.

  Dad, do you remember the time I wanted to wade in the Esopus River (that tributary of the Hudson up in Ulster County) and you told me no one wades there—there’s white water and rapids and I cried. From the bridge where we stood it looked so peaceful. All that green, all that lush foliage. And it was so quiet except for the gurgle and trip of the water over the stones.

  I’ve set out all my work for you and Mommy. All the stories (some of them are good, I know it) and all the poems. Maybe you can find a home for them someday. I like to think you might or that at least they’ll give you some comfort.

  I told Betsy that one of the things I couldn’t understand was how when people were in the GPS cult they could be made to feel that all the good things they ever did could be wiped out with a single transgression. Now I know, because I feel utterly worthless. A failure. And nothing is going to make any of this right. The loss of hope as Virginia writes.