The Seduction - Art Bourgeau

by Art Bourgeau

  She shook her head to clear away the fantasy. "Be careful, take it slow and easy. You know how long it takes the police to respond to a call around here. You have plenty of time to get home. All you have to do is get rid of these clothes and appear surprised when the police show up. There's nothing to connect you with what happened at Carl's . . ."

  She thought of Laura . . . the way she fought back. She'd never known a woman so committed, so crazy. Women didn't act that way. They died quietly and with dignity as long as you didn't mess up their face, even young girls. Especially the young girls. They were so good at accepting the inevitable. When the time came all they asked was to be a pretty corpse, but not Laura . . . She crossed Market Street and replaced the Seger tape with one of Miles Davis playing the Cyndi Lauper hit, "Time After Time." The soft sound of his trumpet helped settle her. By the time she turned onto Race Street by the Black Banana her heart rate had begun to slow down and she reached over and took out her flask from the glove compartment. It was still half-full from when she had waited outside Lagniappe for Felix and Cynthia on Halloween night. That time when she and Felix were still together seemed long ago, far away. Felix, he'd pay, oh yes . . . She paused a moment at the stop sign on Delaware Avenue and took a drink. The bite, the burn, felt good, but quickly faded. Replaced by a vision of Felix's face, so like a younger version of her father. Her father . . . she'd done everything for him, hadn't she? She'd loved him enough even to kill for him. She'd given him the deep love her mother had denied him. Well, Felix would miss her . . .

  Her father, Felix . . . her nipples began to harden under the elastic bandages flattening her breasts. She wanted the bandages gone, her breasts free and swollen. She wanted to open her blouse to him, sit back with a brandy while he suckled and nursed at them . . .

  She drove south on Delaware Avenue, the river shimmering on her left. Traffic was heavy but she'd soon be home, be Missy again. Get rid of Peter's things. Weigh them down with something, throw them in the river.

  She put on her turn signal and moved into the left lane—and then she saw it, there in her driveway, a police cruiser. They were waiting for her, somehow they'd responded quicker than she'd imagined possible. Instinctively she pressed down on the accelerator, but caught herself in time. "What the fuck do you think you're doing? Take it easy. The last thing you want is to attract attention . . ."

  She stayed with the traffic moving south until she came to Washington Avenue, took a right, driving slowly toward the Italian Market at Ninth Street. The neighborhood that once held such fulfillment for her with Terri and the other girls now made her uneasy, heavily patrolled as it was by police. Get out before you're seen . . . but to where? She couldn't go to her townhouse; she couldn't go to Carl's; even as herself there were no friends she could go to, not now.

  The Italian Market with its streetside stalls was closed and almost deserted except for garbage trucks. Down the block she saw a police cruiser at the curb, but facing the opposite direction. She shook her head. Where could she go? Where could she find any safety? She had no money, no credit cards, no clothes, not even a purse. She was trapped, trapped in her Peter role, when what she wanted to be was Missy, to put all this behind her. And then the answer came—the one place where they had to take her, the one place where she was always welcome—home.

  Her mother was still in Rio with Edgar, which meant she could have time to herself in the house, collect her thoughts. She knew she couldn't stay, the police would be there sooner than later, but at least she could catch her breath, figure out where to go and pick up some money. Her father had always kept ready cash in his study safe.

  She stayed on Washington all the way to Twenty-second Street before she took a right and headed north toward East River Drive. The pain began again during the ride out, but she did her best to ignore it, push it away. Too many other things to think about, like where was she going to live . . . not what house, but what city? She couldn't stay in Philadelphia any longer, needed a place where they wouldn't be looking for her, a place far away, with life and style pleasing to her. By the time she reached Chestnut Hill she had decided on it . . . the one place she wanted to live, that she could lose herself in, was Los Angeles.

  * * *

  The stone house, nearly hidden from sight by trees and bushes, was dark when she arrived. Good. She turned off her lights as she pulled into the driveway, being doubly cautious, and parked behind the house.

  Looking about at the familiar grounds she already felt herself begin to relax, and reached for the flask, wanting to savor the feeling.

  "Who was it said you can't go home again? Shows what he knows," she said, raising the flask to the dark house in a toast. "Old house, maybe when all this is over I'll even come back for a visit. You'd like that, wouldn't you? Well, goddamn it, wouldn't you? Come on, you old bastard, talk to me. It's Missy, your golden darling daughter . . . And then she broke down, let loose, her shoulders shaking, tears flowing down her cheeks, wetting the beard, she was no longer aware of . . . "Daddy, Daddy, where are you? I need you, I do . . . please, please, Daddy . . ."

  Finally she quieted, trying to dry her eyes without ruining her eye makeup, not realizing that she was Peter and wearing none. Feeling shaky, she got out of the car and approached the house. Only at the door did she realize she didn't have the keys. Seldom used, they were back at her townhouse. And this house was wired with a security system, so she couldn't even pry open a window.

  She slumped down at the picnic table, feeling undone, about to cry again . . . but in a moment stopped and heard the voice . . .

  "Stop that goddamn nonsense. Just break the window." Peter's voice. She shook her head, no it wouldn't work—"Yes, it will" Peter's voice. "It's the frame that's wired, not the glass. You can break the glass and the alarm won't go off. You just can't raise a window or open the door." She thought a moment, knew he was right. Wasn't he always?

  She looked at the window. What to break it with? How to cover the noise? The latter was more serious . . . even though the houses were far apart this was still a neighborhood, and the sound of breaking glass could easily arouse someone to call the police. She needed something to muffle the sound but what?

  "Use your goddamn jacket," Peter said. Which only left something to break the glass with. There was no loose brick or stone. "Use yourself. . ." What? Oh, sure. And she went to the window over the kitchen sink, stuffed Peter's leather jacket against it to muffle the sound and gave it a sharp hit with her elbow. The sound of glass shattering momentarily froze her. She waited in a half-crouch, expecting headlights at any minute, swarms of police cars.

  Nothing came. She brushed away the glass and climbed through the window onto the sink and slid to the floor. The house was dark, but it had always been dark, all her whole life. It was a familiar darkness.

  She didn't turn on any lights. They would only attract attention, and besides she didn't need them. She'd always thought of herself as a cat, a night person. Her instincts were all she needed.

  She paused outside the door to her father's study. The night's strain had taken its toll; she felt exhausted. She needed a drink and five minutes to unwind, to escape the gnawing pain in her gut that had never left. She followed the dark hallway to the living room, where she poured herself a large brandy and flopped into an easy chair. She found a cigarette in a china box on the coffee table, sat back and blew a column of smoke toward the ceiling.

  What a mess—what a colossal mess she'd made of it all. Just as her father had warned her . . . it was what happened when you let your heart rule your head. Stupid . . .

  Well, she'd never again be taken in by a man like him . . . Like Felix. The two were so alike in her head she sometimes got them mixed up . . . He had used her, deceived her, rejected her even though she had offered him everything . . . And now, because of letting her feelings run away with her, it looked as though he was going to get away with it, go free after what he'd done to her, and she was the one who was going to have to suffer
for it. Just as always . . . it wasn't fair, it wasn't, it wasn't . . .

  And that bitch Laura . . . no question she'd milk her pitiful little cuts for all they were worth. She'd convince Felix she was Joan of Arc. The thought of them together was enough to make her want to throw up . . .

  She took a long drink of the brandy, and half-smiled, her thoughts shifting to Cynthia. That was a bright spot. She'd really enjoyed it and knew Cynthia had, too. Maybe she'd try another older one, but not too much older. Like Cynthia, old enough to really appreciate her, before their body got wrinkled and saggy like she knew Miss Priss Laura's was.

  Worse than all of that, here she sat, her body full of pain on account of a pregnancy she didn't want, feeling it tearing at her insides. And it was all his fault. Goddamn him. His? Felix's, yes Felix, who else? He had made her inseminate herself and go through this misery. Missy . . . Missy. Thanks to him and Felix and that wimp, Carl. All faithless, all users.

  As she reached for the doorknob to her father's study the pain got worse. She would have liked to talk to him, to tell him about it, what he'd done to her . . . Then maybe he'd fix it, as he'd done when she was little. He'd kiss it and it would be all better. "All better," that's what he used to say . . .

  Standing at the threshold she looked at his big chair, and what had been pushed away for so many years, what she'd forgotten, needed to forget, began to come back . . . Her feelings that awful night had been like the ones now . . . that night, too, she had been pregnant, in pain, scared. "Well, I'm back, and I'm pregnant again. Only this time it's worse. I don't know who the father is, I don't even know what color he is."

  She crossed the room to his desk. "I always seem to—" She was about to say "disappoint you," but something stopped her, her eyes widened behind the tinted glasses. The room, the circumstances, all too similar. She shook her head and began again. "No, doctor, I don't want to be a doctor, I can't follow in your footsteps like you want, I could never live up to you . . ."

  Those long-ago feelings of the pain and shame—she'd let him down again as she'd done that night . . . He was behind the desk, doing something. What? Talking on the phone? No. Reading? No. Working on his stamp collection? Maybe . . .

  Looking around the room, it was as if she were standing in the middle of a movie she'd seen and forgotten and now remembered. She knew the room—recognized it, rather, but didn't know it. She knew the actors' lines, though, or did she? At least some of them. She'd stood there now in front of his desk. He'd been behind it. Yes, that's how it had been. And it was the stamp album. He was pasting stamps in it when she came in, didn't look up until he was finished—

  She tried to shake off the past, told herself to "get busy, get the money, get out of here . . ." But this night the past wasn't so easy to exorcise. She'd opened the gates, let it come back, and it seemed to have a life, a will, of its own.

  She set her drink down on the desk and walked over to the photo of Cyrus Wakefield's medical class that was hanging on a nearby wall. Behind it was his wall safe, his money.

  The stamps . . . she had never remembered them before . . .Before she'd only remembered coming to his study door with the news of her pregnancy, then nothing after that until she'd come home from the hospital without the baby. And for a long time she hadn't even allowed that partial intrusion of the past. She turned from the picture and looked at the desk. What happened after the stamps? What did he do? What did she do? The scene focused. Maybe it was the pain, the pregnancy, that did it. Memories of his voice rising as he lectured about the dangers of trimester abortions . . . She could hear him now, even though his voice sounded far away, as though she was hearing it through water. Oh, God, he was calling her names, saying things that hurt her so . . .

  She could see herself standing there in front of his desk. Was she crying? No. What then? When the answer came it brought back a humiliation long denied . . . She stood in front of the desk and lost control. The next sensation was the wetness, just as when she was Peter with those girls . . .

  The scene changed and they were no longer at home. They were in his office. lt was night—the same night? Yes. They were alone in the main examining room. He made her strip and get up on the table—

  "Enough." She turned to the picture, took it off the wall and put it on the floor, face-down. "Get busy, you've got to get out of here." And the urgency in her voice now had nothing to do with fear of the police. lt was her father . . . he had forced her to do something in the office that night, something that had changed everything between them . . .

  Frantically she started twisting the dial on the safe, trying to open the doors. It was no good. Her memory was like toppling dominoes. She couldn't stop it . . .

  The examining room. She was on the table. The light was shining from above, the corners of the room dark. She was ashamed. Horribly ashamed. He made her lie on her side and draw her knees high up to her shoulders. She shivered with the memory of the cold liquid he had dabbed near the base of her spine, felt the burning that followed the cold.

  She had looked up and seen him standing in front of her. He was gloved and gowned. Over the lower half of his face was a surgical mask, and above it the light glinted off his glasses. He was holding a huge needle.

  "No, please, don't . . . She mouthed the words in the darkened study, and they still did not help her. He was ordering her to lie still, to stay in that fetal position; then he was behind her, out of sight, and she felt the pain and burning as he worked the needle through her muscle layers and into her spine.

  How could her daddy, her beloved daddy, do this to her? She asked it then—she asked it now. Why didn't he understand? Why was he hurting her?

  The light over the table was hot. She began to go numb. He bustled about . . . affixed the catheter, turned her over, strapped her down, taped the syringe of anesthetic to her shoulder. And then he was talking to her through his mask. "I'm going to make a transverse incision; we call it a bikini cut. You'll like that; you can still wear a two-piece at the beach . . ." A stranger's voice. He shouldn't have been wearing green, should have been wearing black . . .

  "Daddy, please, please . . ." Words that got you excused, but not this time-

  Shake it away, she told herself, moving around the study. This is all wrong. It didn't happen this way, he'd never do this to you, he loved you too much.

  Still the dominoes toppled . . . The aseptic solution on her belly. More coldness flittering through the numbness. She didn't want to look but had no choice. Her head was propped up to keep her from vomiting, he said.

  The scalpel, its gleam and twinkle in the night. "No . . ." His hand moved, quick and sure. She felt a tugging. Then she saw the blood. Her belly was laid open.

  Back in the study. "Brandy. Where's my brandy?" It was on the desk where she'd left it. She went to it, half-stumbled, picked it up with shaking hands . . . and there he was again, anchoring a shiny metal ring the size of a dinner plate to the side of the table, his hands positioning it over the cut, using it to hold the retractors as he opened the incision wider. He was tearing her apart with his bare hands, but she felt nothing. Not then, but now . . .

  The cut for the uterus came next—" Get a grip on yourself," she said in the study. "You're acting crazy. So he did a C-section on you. It should have been done in a hospital, but you were too far along; that was your own damn fault for not telling him sooner. At least now you know what happened. It hurt, but that's medicine for you. He did what he had to do, no reason for you to have blocked this out . . ."

  She gulped from her glass and looked back at the safe. "Now what was the combination?" She still couldn't remember. All the dominoes hadn't toppled yet.

  What she remembered was waking up in her own bed upstairs and not knowing how she got there. Her belly felt on fire. She was stiff, sore inside and out. When she moved she felt something against her breast and pulled back the covers to investigate. It was wrapped in a towel. She reached for it—"

  "No, don't" It was the ado
lescent Missy's scream, trying to reach back over the years. And now she was there, memory replaced by crystal-clear vision. She didn't know what was in the package, didn't want to know. All she knew was that until now she had never been able to remember what had happened that night. And whatever it was, the C-section wasn't it. It was something worse, much worse-

  She smashed her glass against the wall and ran from the room, without thinking going up the stairs to the one place that belonged to her. Years had passed since she'd been in her old bedroom but nothing had changed. One wall was still covered with ribbons from horse shows and trophies from camp. Barely visible in the darkness were pictures of a younger Missy, pictures of her with her horse, pictures from school. On another wall was aposter of Led Zepplin. Below it had hung a picture of Cher but it was gone now. Her father had made her take it down. She crossed the room and sat on the window seat, wishing she dared to turn on some lights. Just one, that's all she needed to break up these bad memories, but she couldn't risk attracting attention. She sank down on the bed. It still had the same frilly girlish spread her mother had picked out. She'd always hated that damn spread. And looking at it, the past rushed in, not to be denied . . .

  She was groggy from the shock of the C-section when she found the bundle in bed with her. The towel wrapping it was white, and the bundle was cocoon-shaped, the size of a bread basket. She remembered reaching for it, hoping it was a present from her father, to show that he had forgiven her . . .

  Her fingers touched it. She unwrapped it near the top and peered inside. At first what she saw didn't register. And then, when it did, she began to scream.

  Inside the white towel was the dead fetus. Hers? Her child? She shoved off the covers and tried to scramble away. She felt the pain in her belly from the strain on her stitches. Never mind, it didn't matter, She had to move, get away from it, not let it touch her.