Desperate Asylum

by Fletcher Flora

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t think we’d better go any farther out.”

  She looked up at him. The salt water had splashed up and wet her hair, darkening the shade of red a little but making it look thinner than ever, and he thought that she was indeed an extremely homely little girl, but at the same time there was a strange, inquisitive charm about her.

  “It would be all right if you were to carry me,” she said.

  “Yes, I suppose it would.”

  “If you’ll just squat down a little I can get onto your back.”

  He turned and squatted down to make his back available, and she climbed quickly aboard. Her thin arms around his neck felt as if they had no flesh whatever on them. They were like flexible bone. He walked on out against the resistance of the Atlantic until only his head and neck were above water, and then she slipped off his back, retaining a hold on one arm.

  “Help me float,” she said.

  She floundered over onto her back and began to sink, and he put a hand under her and raised her to the surface, and she lay there as rigidly as a body with rigor mortis, floating on the light touch of his fingers. Her weight, which was little enough normally, was hardly anything at all in the water. Apparently all she wanted to do was to lie on her back and look up into the sky, and she lay there on his fingers without speaking or moving, except as she was moved by the motion of the water, for what seemed to him like a very long time. Eventually he glanced toward the beach and saw the fat woman, her mother, standing at the edge of the water and gesturing for them to come in.

  “Your mother wants you,” he said.

  “Yes.” She closed her eyes and made a face at the sky. “I thought it must be about time. She never lets me stay in longer than fifteen or twenty minutes. It’s a ridiculous idea of hers.”

  “Shall we go in, then?”

  “I suppose we have to.”

  She flopped over onto her stomach and regained her hold on his arm. From there she clambered onto his back again, and he waded in with an exhilarating sense of power rising within him in a kind of counter-action to the descent of the water on his body. He felt like a god or something. Or like a saint. Saint Christopher rising from the water with a child on his back.

  The mother, seeing them approach, had returned to her chair and was preparing to leave the beach. Avery deposited the girl on the sand and said, “It looks like you’re going to have to go. Thank you for letting me go swimming with you.”

  “Did you really enjoy it?”

  “Yes. It was fun.”

  “Mother will say I’ve made a nuisance of myself again. She says I bother people.”

  “In my case, that isn’t so. You tell your mother that.”

  “I’ll tell her, but she won’t believe it. You’re very nice. I hope you marry a nice girl.”

  “Did I say I was going to get married?”

  “You said you were thinking about it.”

  “Yes. So I did. I remember now.”

  He looked down at her, at her small ugly face beneath the ridiculous pink hair, and she assumed all at once in his mind a monstrous and unreasonable importance, as if he were suddenly certain through intuition that she was a kind of strange oracle by the sea who had come to him for a purpose which he must at this moment, before it was too late, recognize and exploit.

  “Tell me,” he said. “Do you think I should get married?”

  “Yes.” She gave him again her judicial stare. “Because you’re kind. Women like kind men. In the end it’s more important than anything else.”

  The woman called sharply before he could answer, and the girl turned and started up the slope of the beach. Without stopping, she turned her head and said to him over her shoulder, “Good-by. I don’t suppose I’ll see you again,” and he stood and watched her go until she reached her mother, and continued to stand and watch as she and her mother, the fat woman and the thin child of points and edges, went away together. What had she called herself? Eugenie? Was it possible that the child really had such an inappropriate name? He wanted to laugh. Sustaining the sense of exhilaration and power that had risen within him as he emerged from the water, he felt uplifted and assured. Everything was so simple, really. All the complexities and distortions and doubts and fears were susceptible to dispersion by the answer of a child, and everything was, after all, so very, very simple.

  He lay on the sand again and thought of Lisa. With this one, he thought, it would be possible. Because her flesh is pale and cool and quiet to the touch, devoid of fevers and hot adherence, it would be possible with her and time and resolution to establish and sustain an adequate relationship. One thing is certain. It must be done now and with this woman, or never and with no one. How I know this is not clear, but it is quite clear at any rate that it is true, and I even believe that this odd, ugly child Eugenie was sent this afternoon to establish it. Lisa. Lisa Sheridan. Lisa Sheridan Lawes. I can give her my name with a thought of intimacy and feel no more than the slightest revulsion. And even this will pass. Even this vestigial scar of early trauma and distortion will pass in time, and it will pass in the brick house above the river on High Street in the town of Corinth, in the place where trauma happened and distortion began and grew. It is all a matter of forgetting and learning, and it is not too late, though it would be too late after this last chance, and I am certain that it can be begun now and accomplished hereafter with this one woman with the pale, cool flesh.

  But capacity? Diminishment and depletion of revulsion is one thing, a good thing but a negative thing, and capacity is quite another, because capacity is a positive rather than a negative, something that must be felt and done rather than simply not felt and not done. This is different. This is vastly more difficult. But it can be learned. I am sure that it is all a matter of learning, once you have unlearned all that formed the impediment to learning in the first place. One thing at a time. First one step and then the next. Like learning to walk. It will not do to consider all problems and perils together. One at a time. One after another as they are met. Who was it said that we would all be overwhelmed and terrified if we were conscious of all the deadly perils that threaten us every minute of every day in even the most commonplace affairs? It was Schopenhauer, I think. Yes, I am certain of it. It sounds just like him, the gloomy bastard, and I will not think any more about Schopenhauer, either, because he depresses me. I cannot at this moment think of anyone who ever lived who could possibly be worse for me to think about than Schopenhauer.

  I will think, instead, about last night. She was quiet and remote in an aura of physical frailty, and it was not bad, it was not bad at all in the lounge and later on the terrace, the best of all the nights in the last two weeks of nights, each a little better in its turn, each in its turn holding a little more securely the quality of peace and rightness and growing ease. A lot can happen in two weeks. It is remarkable how much can happen. In two weeks of nights, nations can fall and families can break and a man can enter, after a fashion, into a new relationship with himself. A man can lie, after that much time, on the hot sand under the hot sun and consider dispassionately, as he was not able to consider before, the social and biological essentials involved in the procreation of his kind and the preservation of his name. He can think of a certain woman and decide definitely to marry her.

  Hot. He was enveloped in heat that fell upon him from the sun and rose around him from the sand. It was time to move. If he did not move, he would be burned, as the girl with pink hair, the ugly little oracle Eugenie, had come to tell him quite some time ago. Getting to his feet, he walked up across the beach to the terrace of the hotel and saw Carl Sheridan sitting at a table with a tall cold glass in his hand. He went over and sat down at the table. Carl looked across the table at him and smiled and made a small tintinnabulation with glass and ice.

  “Hello,” he said.


  “Hello. What’s that you’re drinking? It looks good.”

  “Just a Tom Collins.”

  “Gin. I never cared much for gin.”

  “It’s all right when it’s hot. When the weather’s hot, I mean, not the gin. It’s refreshing.”

  “I think I’ll try one.”

  He started trying to catch the attention of a waiter. After a while he caught it and gave the order.

  “Have you been swimming?” Carl said.

  “Yes. I took a little girl out. Her name was Eugenie.”

  “Someone you know?”

  “No. She was on the beach with her mother. She cane over and started talking with me and asked me to take her out.”

  “You look a little red, old boy.”

  “Do I? I lay on the sand for a while. Too long, I guess.”

  “You ought to be careful about that. You can get burned before you know it.”

  The waiter brought the Tom Collins. Avery picked it up and drank some of it. The glass was cold in his hand, and the Collins was cold in his throat, and Carl was right about it. It was pretty refreshing.

  “We’re leaving Saturday,” Carl said. “Has Lisa told you?”

  “No. She hasn’t said anything about it.”

  “Oh? I thought perhaps she had.”

  “No, she hasn’t said anything.”

  “Well, that’s right. Saturday.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “Sorry to leave, for that matter. But all good things must end, as the saying goes. I want to get home before Christmas.”

  “Are you feeling better now?”

  “Oh, yes. Much. Quite thoroughly recovered.”

  “Lisa will go back with you, of course.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Lisa and I have been together quite a lot since you introduced us. Every night, as a matter of fact.”

  “I know. I’m sorry to break it up, old boy.”

  “She’s very charming.”

  “Do you think so? She’ll be pleased to hear it.”

  “I have been thinking that I’d like to marry her. As her brother, would you object to that?”

  “Not at all. Quite the contrary. I’m familiar with your background, of course. Your family and situation and all that. Have you asked her?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Have you definitely decided to do so?”

  “Yes. I’m not returning to Corinth until spring. Plan to go on to Mexico City in a couple weeks or so. I’d like to take Lisa with me.”

  “Marry her here, you mean?”

  “That’s right. Before you go back north, naturally.”

  “Well, it’s up to her, old boy.”

  “I have your permission to ask her, then?”

  “Certainly. And best of luck.”

  “Thanks.”

  Avery finished his Tom Collins and stood up.

  “See you later,” he said.

  He went inside and up in the elevator. So this is the way you do it, he thought. This is the way you refute the past and imperil the future. In a few minutes. In a few words. As if it were nothing at all.

  In his room, he showered and shaved and dressed. Already regret was working at him, the grave, reflective doubts. He thought of the odd little oracle of the afternoon, but she was now no more than an ugly child with no authority, and he went for his Scotch and found the bottle empty. Going to the telephone, he ordered another bottle and sat down to wait for it. When the bottle arrived in the hands of a bellhop, he paid the bellhop and poured three fingers and sat down again. He drank the Scotch a finger at a time and began to feel better.

  SECTION 4

  She was lying on the bed, just lying there quietly on her back and looking up at the ceiling and trying not to think about the wrong things, when someone knocked on the door. She continued to lie without moving until the knocking had stopped and started again after an interval, and then she got up and took an empty glass and a half-empty bottle of whiskey off the bedside table and carried them into the bathroom. Returning without them, she went to the door and opened it, and Carl came in.

  “How are you, Lisa?” he said.

  “All right. I was resting.”

  “I’m sorry I disturbed you.”

  “You know I didn’t mean that.”

  He could smell the whiskey on her breath, and it bothered him. If she drank to excess in the bar or in company, he thought nothing of it, but when she drank in her room he immediately began to worry, because it seemed to him that solitary drinking was a bad sign. He walked over to the glass wall and stood with his back to her.

  “I’d like to talk honestly with you, Lisa.”

  “I’ve been honest with you, Carl. I made up my mind to be, and I’ve been.”

  “I know. I believe you have. How are you feeling?”

  “Most of the time I feel good. Sometimes depressed. Not for any particular reason. It’s just something I can’t help.”

  “Are you depressed now?”

  “A little.”

  “What have you been thinking about?”

  “Nothing much. I’ve been trying not to think at all.”

  “We’re returning north Saturday, you know.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “What will you do when you get there? Have you thought about that?”

  “I’ve thought about it, but I don’t know. I guess I’ll get an apartment and a job and go on living.”

  “I’ll help you financially, of course. But that isn’t the first consideration. Will you be safe?”

  “Safe? I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

  “Yes, you do. I mean, will you go back to the other life?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I wish you would be a little more certain about it.”

  “I would be more certain if I could, but I can’t. I don’t know.”

  “I am willing to pay for a psychiatrist if you think it will help. Do you think it would?”

  “I don’t know about that, either. It might help, but I don’t know.”

  He turned away from the window and came over and took her by the arms from the front and looked into her eyes.

  “I love you, Lisa. I have always loved you in spite of everything, and I’m very worried about you.”

  “I know that. I didn’t know it before, but now I do. It makes me want to cry, but I find that I am no longer able.”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you be willing to follow my advice?”

  “I would be willing to try.”

  He released her arms and went over to a chair and sat down.

  “I was just talking to Avery Lawes on the terrace.”

  “Oh?”

  “You’ve been seeing Avery often, haven’t you?”

  “Every night. Sometimes in the day. I thought you wanted me to. I know you never said it, but I had the feeling you wanted it.”

  “So I did. I had the idea you would benefit from a normal relationship.”

  “That’s what I thought you thought.”

  “Well, how do you feel about him?”

  “I don’t feel anyway about him. Neither one way nor another.”

  “You aren’t repelled by him?”

  “No. He’s all right to be with. He doesn’t disturb me.”

  “Perhaps that’s a good sign.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “It might be the beginning of something more positive, I mean. He comes from an extremely good family.”

  “That’s what you said.”

  “He’s quite wealthy, I believe. He’s the la
st of the family, too. He lives by himself in a large house. His father died only last summer.”

  “He told me that.”

  “Yes. Well, as I said, I was just talking to Avery on the terrace. The truth is, he is going to ask you to marry him.”

  “When?”

  “Probably tonight. He wants the marriage performed before I leave on Saturday. How do you feel about it?”

  “Terrified.”

  “Why? There’s no need for that.”

  “Isn’t there?”

  “Oh, I know what you mean. You mean you will not be able to function as a wife. But you will. I’m convinced of that. At first it will be only a matter of submission, of compelling yourself to accept him passively, but later you will learn to find pleasure in him. In your relationship. It’s normal, Lisa. It’s the way men and women are supposed to be. Surely, if you give yourself the chance, it will be easier after a while to be normal, the way you’re supposed to be, than to be the way that was never intended. That’s only common sense.”

  “If only it were so simple.”

  “You must have a chance, Lisa. And to have a chance, you must take a chance. You would have wealth and a fine home. You would have a high position in society and would be respected automatically. It would be a kind of asylum for you. It would give you a chance to make the necessary conversion and to become well.”

  “We’re forgetting something, aren’t we?”

  “What?”

  “Avery. Doesn’t he deserve some consideration? It seems like a dirty trick to play on him. To use him this way.”

  “He’s asking of his own will.”

  “That’s not the point, Carl. You know it isn’t.”

  “It won’t be a dirty trick if you make him a good wife.”

  “I’m not at all sure I can make him a good wife.”

  “You can. You must believe that you can.”

  “He will know something is wrong the first time we are together.”

  “Nonsense. He will only think you are frightened and inexperienced. Perhaps somewhat frigid. Many women are like that at first.”