Warning Signs

by Stephen White

  That's when Lucy began to tell me about Sam's lack of imagination.

  R emember what you told me about intimacy?" she asked me.

  "Of course," I said, but my radar was tweaked and I was wary of where we were going.

  "There are natural limits, aren't there? With some people, I mean. Like with Sammy, he doesn't really want me to open up to him. He doesn't really want to know my secrets. He gives me lots of signals that tell me when to stop."

  I shot a quick glance toward Lucy. She was looking east. A split second before, I'd been looking in the same direction, busy imagining that I could perceive the gentle curvature of the earth on the horizon.

  I replied, "In a relationship, intimacy can be restricted, or enhanced, by either person." My words sounded banal. "Sorry, Lucy. That sounds trite. I don't mean it to. What you're saying is true. At least it is about Sam. He draws lines in the sand sometimes. We all do."

  She waved a hand, dismissing my apology. "No, it's fine."

  Wind whistled through the pines in a short burst. It wasn't a melodic tune-it was more acid than sugar. The sound reminded me of the first gasp of gas escaping the green cylinders on the back of Ramp's truck. Though the day was warm, I felt a chill as the memory hissed at me.

  Lucy stood. She towered over me. From our precipice she appeared to be a diver contemplating the degree of difficulty of her next jump. The image troubled me. I didn't stand beside her.

  I wondered about Lucy's recklessness, about what despair could have fueled her compulsion to be taunting fate. I knew I wouldn't have let Grace stand there-when she could stand, anyway. I got lost temporarily contemplating how many more weeks that might be and wished I'd paid more attention during the human development class I'd taken as an undergraduate.

  "I told Ramp I was sleeping with Royal," she said. "He asked me, so I told him. I spent much of the rest of the time I was with him wondering whether or not it was an act of intimacy on my part."

  At Lucy's admission about her relationship with Royal, I felt my breath catch just a little in my chest. The hesitation was not over learning that she'd slept with him, but rather at hearing her admit it. My mind flashed back to Lucy's oddly provocative behavior the night I visited her home, and I tried to put her confession about Royal in that context. Ever since I'd learned about the wet spot, I'd been preparing myself for the likelihood that Lucy had been intimate with the DA. Still, hearing her confirm the fact was far from comforting.

  I asked, "Whether what was an act of intimacy? The sex with Royal? Or telling Ramp?"

  "Good question. The telling. The sex with Royal wasn't intimacy. I don't have any doubts about that now." She kicked at something on the granite boulder. "How do you do that so easily? You didn't even hiccup when I told you that I'd slept with Royal. Weren't you surprised?"

  Although I hadn't really been surprised by Lucy's revelation, at some level I knew that my sensibilities were offended, but years of clinical work had left me practiced at not revealing that kind of reaction. I said, "I suspected, and the truth is, I don't surprise easily anyway. Maybe I'm not as innocent as Sam. Maybe it's the work I do-I hear a lot of things."

  "You don't care that I was sleeping with Royal?"

  I chose my reply with care. "You mean do I judge you?"

  "I guess that's what I mean."

  "I'm in no position to do that. Knowing you slept with him is like skipping to the back of a book to find out how it ends. It's dangerous to make assumptions from there. I don't know what came before. What your motivations were."

  "Are you curious?"

  Good question. "We're both in difficult positions, Lucy."

  "Does it make sense why I wouldn't tell Lauren and Cozy?"

  "Sure. If you were having an affair with Royal, it wouldn't be hard for someone to extrapolate that maybe you had a motive to kill him." I, for instance, was having no trouble making that precise extrapolation. None. I added, "But they are your lawyers, Lucy."

  Almost coyly, she asked, "Do you want to know about it? What happened between Royal and me?"

  "I'm not sure. I don't want to be in a position to compromise your position."

  "You mean legally?"

  "Yes."

  "It's not like that. With what I'd like to tell you, you could hurt me, but not legally."

  I finally guessed where she was going. "But you would be vulnerable? Psychologically?"

  "Yes. I would be very, very vulnerable. To you, certainly." She spread her arms to the side and closed her eyes. She held her position with the assurance of a yogi. "Stand up with me," she said.

  Reluctantly, I did. Inches from my toes, the canyon dropped at least a hundred yards-okay, maybe fifty-almost straight down. If I fell, I counted at least two or three sharp outcroppings of rock that would crack my skull and my bones on the way to the bottom.

  Lucy looked at me. I turned my head to her slowly, afraid that a more rapid motion would disturb my precarious balance.

  She said, "I think Susan wanted me to."

  I said, "What?"

  "I think she wanted me to be… involved with Royal. It served her purposes."

  Fortunately, she caught me before I keeled over.

  "A little less than a year ago-it was early last summer-she called me one day, out of the blue, and asked me to come over to her house. I thought it was odd, but I did. I went. She said her illness had finally taken its toll on Royal, and that he was planning on leaving her. He wasn't going to run for DA in the next election. He didn't love her anymore and he was going to divorce her and move on with his life.

  "She blamed the illness, of course. It never crossed her mind that Royal might have grown to despise her even had she been healthy."

  I opened my mouth to speak but reconsidered. I needed to listen, not talk. Lucy had just admitted that she'd been sleeping with her mother's husband, and yet she was choosing to talk not about her own behavior but about her mother's. My antennae were twitching.

  Lucy continued. "She said she'd need someone to care for her." I watched as Lucy lifted her right foot from the uneven stone and bent that leg ninety degrees at the knee, finally resting the foot against the inside of her left thigh. "She meant me, of course."

  She maintained the position for a count of about twenty. I held my breath until she lowered her leg again. Both feet firmly on the rock, she reached out and grabbed my hand. The breezes were shoving insistently at our backs, nudging us toward something.

  "I didn't even let her ask. I told her no, that I wouldn't take care of her. No way. Not a chance."

  Lucy grew silent for a while. I was aware that we'd started to sway in unison. I really wanted to sit down.

  "She acted surprised, almost offended, that I could think she would ask me to take care of her. But I knew where she was going before she got there. I don't know why, or how, but I just did. Sitting with her then, I felt like you feel right now. On the edge of something dangerous. Unsure of my balance, what I should do next."

  She knew I was nervous.

  "And she… I thought she was kind of threatening me. She was subtle, but I got the message anyway. She told me that she always thought that she could count on her daughters for help if circumstances… demanded. Me, I was one of her daughters. What she was doing was she was letting me know she'd be willing to tell people that she was my mother. She actually said she was beyond humiliation. She didn't care if the whole town knew she'd abandoned her daughter."

  "She said all that?"

  "She didn't have to say it all."

  "But it felt like a threat to you?"

  "It felt pitiful. It made me despise her more."

  "So what do you think she was doing? Why did she invite you over?"

  "I don't know. Maybe she was trying to play on my guilt. She knew I didn't want to have anything to do with her. And I'm sure she knew I didn't even want to be associated with her publicly. She was letting me know that she could make living in Boulder uncomfortable for me, and she was offering me an a
lternative."

  "Taking care of her?"

  She nodded. The wind stilled temporarily and Lucy seemed to be pondering her next words. I told myself to wait her out. The wait was prolonged. She didn't speak until the wind returned to accompany her tale.

  "A week or two later Royal called and asked me to come over to discuss 'things.' That's what he said-'things.' But I didn't want to go to Susan's house, so I asked him to meet me at my place. It was a Saturday afternoon that he came over. The Broncos were playing a preseason game. I don't even remember against who." Her voice brightened as she asked, "Did you ever get a chance to spend time alone with him?"

  "With Royal?"

  She nodded.

  "I only knew him socially, Lucy. The smallest group I ever saw him in was probably a dinner party."

  Her gaze seemed to fall out of focus. "You missed something special. Royal was charming when you got him alone. Truly charming. That day he came over to my house I liked him right away. He was nothing like what I'd expected based on seeing him on the news."

  Lucy liked Royal. I tried to process that data.

  "Nothing happened that day. We talked about life with Susan. He told me about his plans, what life might bring after he left the DA's office. We talked about the Broncos and cars and being a cop."

  And, I wondered, what bridges to intimacy did you cross?

  "The next move was mine. I called him a week later, asking if we could talk again. Neither of us wanted to be seen out together in public, so he suggested I come by his house after Susan was in bed.

  "I did. That's the night we made love for the first time." Her head lolled back and she stared at the sky. "I almost didn't do it because, in some sick way, I knew right from the start that I was doing it partially for Susan. Like a gift. But I really liked Royal, so I knew I was doing it for me, too. I was having my cake and eating it, too. I can't think of another time when that's been true in my life. Not one."

  "I don't think I understand how it was a gift for Susan." Whether or not I understood wasn't particularly relevant. What I was really saying was that I suspected that Lucy didn't truly understand how it was a gift for Susan.

  "As long as Royal and I were involved, he wouldn't have a reason to leave her right away. Susan had told me that she thought their youngest daughter could help her out when she got out of school the following spring. My relationship with Royal bought Susan time."

  Using my office voice, a voice that sounded foreign to me out here among the rocks and pines, I said, "So you convinced yourself that having sex with Royal was an act of generosity to your mother?"

  She registered my change in tone. She stilled and asked, "What do you mean?"

  I allowed the vinegar of incredulousness to seep into my words. "By sleeping with her husband you thought you were being generous to her?"

  "As long as I was involved with him, I didn't think he'd leave her."

  I could hardly believe the level of denial that I was hearing. It bordered on hysteria or dissociation. But if Lucy's denial were doing its job protecting her ego from the rage she obviously found so intolerable, she would be almost immune to gentle confrontation from me. Part of me felt I should turn and walk away from Lucy's defenses, leaving the thick insulation undisturbed.

  Part of me-maybe unfortunately-didn't. I wouldn't put it past Susan to snare Lucy into some kind of evil, but I truly doubted that Susan's motivation would have anything to do with prolonging the Petersons' marriage. I said, "And you believed… that what you were doing was… uncomplicated? Just a favor to your mother? Like bringing her hot meals occasionally?"

  My words were more generous than my thoughts. In my head I was thinking that Lucy had been sticking a dagger into her mother's heart and had somehow convinced herself that the act was bypass surgery.

  Could she have performed a similar operation on Royal? I wasn't sure. I just wasn't sure.

  "No, of course not. I knew it was weird, that part of it. But the other side of it was that… Royal was special to me. I knew that I was getting what I wanted from him. That came first. I'm not blind about all this. If it was just about Susan, I wouldn't have done it."

  I sighed involuntarily, and ratcheted up the confrontation. "I think maybe you've been kidding yourself, Lucy." I was eager to be certain that my words had registered, but she didn't look back at me. I continued. "I don't think your decision to sleep with Royal was anywhere near as uncomplicated as you would like to think."

  I gave her a chance to reply. She passed on the opportunity. I went on. "If-and it's a big 'if'-Susan was really inviting you to get involved with her husband, what she was really inviting-Look at me please, Lucy." I was mildly surprised that she turned toward me. "What she was really inviting was your hostility, and you fell right into her trap and complied. She held out a noose and you agreed to close it around her neck."

  I watched Lucy's jaw tighten, watched her eyes narrow. A gust of wind blew her hair across her face. She threaded it away with her long fingers. "You think that's what I did? I did this to… hurt her?"

  She looked baffled, almost disoriented, as she recognized with alarm that I'd been busy setting up an ambush on her denial.

  I decided to give understatement a chance. "I think you may want to look at it, Lucy."

  "She wanted me to punish her?" The question was naive. This was virgin territory for Lucy. I continued to fight astonishment that, despite the events that had transpired since the night Royal was killed, Lucy's defenses were so resilient.

  I shrugged. "That's part of it. Assuming she knew what was going on, the other part is that she also wanted to injure you as well. The hostility cut both ways. I'm afraid she accomplished that, too. Didn't she?"

  Lucy shook her head as though my words stunned her, but when she spoke again she ignored my question, returning instead to the issue of her own rage. Her cheeks drained of color as though they'd suddenly been bleached. "That makes me what? Sadistic? To my own mother? Is that what I am-a sadist?"

  "I don't think the label is necessary or helpful."

  "What, then? What is necessary?"

  "The awareness of how furious you've been at her. Maybe that's a good place to start. That's precisely what she took advantage of, Lucy-your anger. She knew all about your anger."

  Her shoulders hunched upward and her body began to sway back and forth like a sapling against the breeze.

  I put a hand on her upper arm and told her that I needed to sit. She sat with me. Still way too close to the edge for my comfort, but at least we were sitting.

  Lucy's sobs were almost drowned out by the gusting wind. I had to struggle to make out her next words. "I could've fallen in love with him. Maybe I did. It wasn't all about Susan."

  I weighed her thoughts for further evidence of rationalization. But I knew I'd been witnessing evidence of something else, something more pathological than a garden-variety ego defense. Could it have been possible that her rage at her mother was really as isolated as it appeared? Had she been so incapable of seeing how Susan had been hurting her all over again? So out of touch with her own agony? And so unwilling to see her own vicious response toward her mother?

  It seemed like time for me to say something. I said, "This wasn't about Royal, Lucy."

  "It wasn't?" The sound of her question was so puerile it was as though I were watching a child move from doubts about immense bunnies to recognition of the fact that Easter morning was a fiction.

  I shook my head. "No, it wasn't."

  Lucy said, "I wondered if she knew."

  I didn't respond.

  Lucy went on. "I don't know if she knew. Royal thought she suspected, but I didn't see how she could really know. We met at their house. He'd give her some sleeping medicine before I came over. That was the arrangement. I'd park on the next block and come in through the backyard. Royal and I would get a few hours together." She wiped her eyes with her fingertips and wet her lips with her tongue as she scanned the sky.

  Reality was settling
the way that dust coats a mirror.

  "God, it was hostile, wasn't it? What I did."

  I replied, "And what she did. And what Royal did."

  In a quick motion she popped to her feet and circled me on the rock. The abyss in front of me felt as though it was pulling at us with the force of a vacuum. For a fleeting moment the image of a bloody confrontation between Royal and Lucy filled my awareness. I considered the possibility that she was intending to jump off the rock, and I wondered if I was strong enough to stop her. I knew I wasn't.

  Before I could decide what to do, she stopped wandering around the rock and lowered herself to a squat again. She was slightly in front of me, inches from the edge. "Am I crazy, Alan? How crazy do you have to be to do what I did?"

  I thought, What did you do? I said, "You're not crazy, Lucy."

  "But I have problems, don't I?"

  I revisited understatement. "Yes, Lucy. I think you could use some help."

  A fter a few minutes of silence she said, "After I went out with Grant for a while, I decided what I was doing with Royal was crazy and I decided to break it off. The night Royal was killed, I'd told him it was the last time."

  "That was it?"

  "He wasn't happy about it but I don't think he was surprised. It wasn't like we argued about it or anything. He was… rather gracious… and he said I didn't have to worry about Susan, that when he moved out he'd make arrangements for her, that he had some long-term-care insurance she didn't know about, and that he'd been looking into assisted-living facilities. He told me that he'd already talked to their kids and none of them was in a position to live with Susan. And that was it.

  "I was relieved I wasn't going to have to take care of her. I felt guilty about that, but I was more feeling sad that the thing with Royal was over. We said good-bye and I left."

  "Royal was still alive?"

  She squeezed my hand. I read no offense in her voice as she murmured, "Of course he was." She squeezed harder. "You know what Royal said right at the end, as I was leaving that last time?"