Boundaries

by Wright, T. M.

  He wished now, as he sat alone and smoked and remembered his kind deception, that he was not the person that he was. He wished he were younger, a child, when most of his decisions had been made for him, when he had not had to make the kinds of decisions that circumstances forced him to make now. He wished he were ten or twelve years old again. He was someone he liked, then. He hadn’t even thought about whether he liked himself or not. But he thought about it now, twenty-five years later, and he knew it was true. He had liked himself. And now he liked the child he had been. He guessed it was that way with everyone—with Karen, and even with David, who lay quietly dying. We become people we despise, Christian thought, because we grow into adulthood, and independence, and that changes us—necessarily and regretfully—into people who have to hurt other people in order to survive and remain independent.

  Who can really love the grasping and desperate and hurtful adult?

  Who can despise the guileless and dependent child?

  He realized at once that Karen loved the child in him. He smiled. He enjoyed the revelation.

  The cigarette he was holding had burned down to a nub that burned the insides of his fingers. He stared at the nub for a moment, aware of the hot pain it was causing, but slow to react to it. He thought briefly that there was importance in the fact of his slow reaction. He thought that some change was taking place inside him. A metamorphosis. It would be truly fascinating to witness.

  He stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray near his chair.

  ~ * ~

  It is the morning of Anne’s murder. There is bright sun and warmth. Inside her house, Anne Case is humming. She’s unaware of it. Her humming is low and sweet sounding, though the tune is unrecognizable, borrowed from bits of this tune and that tune, until it becomes a tune of her own making.

  She’s watering plants. She has Dracena, Boston Fern, Diffenbachia, Croton, Sheffelliera, and they are all around the house, several dozen of them within the house’s fourteen rooms, though there are now none in the third floor ballroom; the room has begun to make her very uncomfortable in the past couple of weeks. It is the room where the rape happened.

  Anne is thinking about the rape as she hums. Not the rape itself, not the physical act of penetration and violence that the man perpetrated on her, but the surprise of finding him there, in that room. She keeps her house locked. She thought she knew the house, its moods, its movements; she thought that the house spoke to her in its way, and she was surprised when she saw the form in the corner, across the big room. The man waiting with his arms folded.

  The light on him was suggestive—light from the window, from the spot lamp on the front of the house. Light that was reflected and refracted up from below, through the window, off a mirror, and then in a narrow rectangle onto the man’s crotch, which was what she focused on first. Not his face. Because she knew he intended rape. She knew him, and she knew that it was what he wanted—to violate her. To give her fear and pain.

  She realizes that she’s humming as she remembers. She stops humming. The humming offends her. It’s an impropriety. Like laughing at a graveside.

  The morning’s light and warmth has begun to heat her house up. Reluctantly, she goes to a window nearby to open it. She finds that it’s unlocked. She tries to remember if she locked it and tells herself that of course she locked it because she locks all the windows in her house and she keeps them locked. But she could have unlocked it. The day before she could have unlocked it because it was hot then, as it promises to be today. But she does not remember unlocking it.

  It occurs to her all at once that there is someone else in the house, that the house is talking to her and telling her that there’s an intruder. She chooses to believe this but not to act upon it. Acting upon it would be an admission of trouble this bright warm morning and she does not want to admit there is trouble until she has real proof.

  She’s a tall, thin woman, graceful and pleasant looking, and the man watching her thinks that she is deserving of rape simply because she is so pleasant looking, so graceful, so nearly ethereal. People aren’t supposed to be that way. People are clods. People are clumsy. People snort and belch and fall down. That is the way God intended them to be. And it is not the way this woman is. People were not meant to be like the animals—graceful and ethereal. Animals never thought about themselves or about their place in the universe. They simply were. They simply existed. And they obeyed the dictates of their genetic predispositions.

  Just as he is doing.

  Anne begins to hum again. She’s downstairs, near the locked door to the cellar, which is just off the expansive and well-furnished kitchen. She’s aware of the smell of olive oil from the butcher block table in the center of the kitchen, left over from a meal the night before that she shared with her brother. She’s very aware of smells; all her senses are keen. ("Sometimes, David," she said a long time ago to her brother, as if in awe, "I think that I hear too well, and that I see too well. And it’s like I’m being . . . bombarded by the world around me." She gave him a quizzical look. "Do you understand that?")

  ("Sure, Annie," he answered, though it was not entirely the truth—he understood only her words; it would be years before he understood their importance.)

  And now she smells something else lingering beneath the smell of olive oil. She smells nervous sweat.

  To her right and left a hallway leads—right—to the library, which is filled, floor to ceiling, with books that are often picked over; and—left—to the huge living room, where a grandfather clock strikes the quarter hour. There’s a boot closet ten feet from her. It’s from this closet that the man watches. He has the door opened a crack, though he’s unconcerned, now, whether she sees him.

  He has been in the house throughout the night. He’s picked over some of the books in the library, and returned them to the shelves (upbringing). He has prepared a light breakfast of Wheaties and orange juice and has put his dishes in the dishwasher afterwards (upbringing). He has stood silently in Anne Case’s bedroom and watched her sleep, her face illuminated softly by the spot lamp on the wall below her bedroom. He has thought desperately of pulling her blankets down as she sleeps (lust).

  But he needs to do violence to her and that is far more powerful within him than his lust. He wants to overcome her, to overcome her beauty, her serenity, her security here in her big house. He wants to show her that he has power and that she is powerless in the face of it.

  He pushes the boot-closet door open.

  She does not react. Her head stays down. She’s intent on a Dracena, she seems to be examining one of its leaves as she hums. The leaf is brown at the edges.

  He reaches and pushes the open door hard so it slams against the wall. He sees her flinch, but that is all. She does not look up.

  He whispers to her—in a voice that hisses and carries the promise of violence in it—"Hello, Anne." He pauses only a short moment. "I think you were expecting me."

  She does not react. Her attention apparently remains fixed on the Dracena’s dying leaf. This confuses him. He watches her a moment. Has she gone deaf in the last week? he wonders. No. She flinched! She did hear him.

  He pushes the closet door again. And again it slams against the wall. She does not flinch.

  He has a small knife in his pocket and he pulls it out and holds it up in front of his face. The knife has a blade that’s dull from too much polishing so it looks like pewter. But he conjures up the idea that the knife glistens in the morning sunlight slanting through a nearby window.

  He tells her, again in his hissing, violent whisper, "I have a knife, Anne."

  She does not react.

  His confusion is giving way to anger. He believes that she’s playing a game with him.

  "You’re toying with me, my sweet," he says. She does not react. Her attention apparently remains fixed on the Dracena and its heavy dying leaf. He growls, "Don’t toy with me!"

  She turns a little, so her back is to him. She’s dressed in a long gray dr
ess that hangs nicely on her.

  He steps out of the closet, still holding his small dull knife in front of him. He stops after a few steps. His breathing is very heavy and quick, though from anger and confusion rather than anticipation. He wants to speak to her but he isn’t sure what to say. He wants her acknowledgment, wants proof of her fear and of his mastery of her, because he’s certain she’s toying with him.

  He takes several steps. Stops. He is still holding the small dull knife in front of his face and for a moment he’s aware that he must look very foolish. The moment is gone.

  He says, "And what if I told you that I loved you, Anne?" He’s very surprised by this and unsure of where it comes from.

  Suddenly he’s filled with anger. He rushes at Anne and plunges the dull blade into her back.

  He did not intend his first blow to be so accurate, and for several moments he’s not entirely aware of its accuracy. He watches Anne fall face forward onto the oak floor, so her head is turned to the right—he sees that her eyes are closed—and her arms are at her sides, left palm down, right palm out. Her legs are together.

  He stares at her. He realizes that his first blow has killed her, but he does not admit it at once. He didn’t want his first blow to kill her. It’s why he chose such a small knife. He wanted her to endure many blows.

  "Damn you!" he hisses.

  He falls to his knees so her legs are between his legs. He is enraged. She must react, must react!

  He raises the small dull knife high over his head and brings it down.

  He does it again.

  And again.

  And again.

  ~ * ~

  The earth. The body on the tile floor.

  Past blindness into sight.

  It could have been days or no time at all that she had been here. Only the body on the tile floor counted such things and it was beyond counting. It did not breathe. Or perspire. It no longer cared for itself. It counted nothing. It was the moment that it died. The moment. The inhale and the exhale and then the stillness, but not the counting of it—the memory of it, and, so, the naming of it:

  The body on the tile floor named nothing. It had no awareness of names—a wave does not call itself a wave, nor did the body on the tile floor have a name for itself.

  It was the body on the tile floor that was, at this moment, an exhale, and, at this moment, stillness.

  TWO

  One of the nurses monitoring David outside his room in Intensive Care noticed a change in his respiration and EEG. She paged David’s doctor, who was in the middle of a shower but heard the paging anyway. Five minutes later he was beside David’s bed, his legs and bottom still damp from the shower. He scowled at the dampness.

  David’s eyes flickered open. Closed.

  The doctor leaned over him. "Mr. Case?" he whispered. "David?"

  No reaction.

  The nurse monitoring outside the room said into her microphone, "His respiration is becoming shallow again, Doctor."

  "Dammit!" the doctor whispered. "David!" he said sharply.

  David’s eyes popped open.

  "Respiration heavier," the nurse said into her microphone.

  "David?" said the doctor. "Can you hear me? Blink if you can hear me."

  No reaction.

  The doctor shone the beam of a penlight into David’s eyes, found the pupils responsive.

  David turned his head ever so slightly toward the doctor. It was a quick and unexpected motion, and the doctor straightened a little in surprise. He grinned, embarrassed, and leaned over once more. "Mr. Case? Are you with us?"

  No reaction.

  "Mr. Case?"

  David turned his head so he was once again staring at the ceiling. "My God," he whispered, "I’m back."

  ~ * ~

  THE FOLLOWING DAY

  "He’ll tell you a wild story," the doctor said to Christian Grieg and Karen Duffy, seated in front of his desk. "He’ll tell you he’s gone over to the other side." He shrugged. "Heaven, as it were—"

  "No," Christian interrupted. "He’d object to that.“

  "Object?" The doctor was puzzled.

  "To your characterization of this . . . place he claims to have gone to as ‘heaven.’ He’d disagree with it."

  Again the doctor shrugged. "Be that as it may—and I really fail to see the difference; the difference is actually just one of semantics, isn’t it? Be that as it may," he repeated, "we are going to hold him for a few more days."

  "Why?" Karen asked.

  The doctor shook his head a little as if in reassurance. "Observation. Merely observation, Miss Duffy." He paused meaningfully. "And there really is no assurance that he won’t try it again, is there?"

  "Try ‘it’?" Karen asked. "Try what?”

  “Suicide," the doctor said.

  Karen gave him a tight smile. "You can’t hold him forever."

  Christian said, "Perhaps it would be better for David if they did."

  The doctor stood. He said to Christian, "But that’s out of the question, of course."

  Christian nodded vaguely.

  The doctor came around the desk, went to the door, opened it. "If you’d follow me, please. I’ll take you to Mr. Case."

  ~ * ~

  David’s memories were as vivid as pain, as vivid and as real as the bed he lay in or the smell of anesthetic that hung in the air like a mist. And precisely because his memories were so vivid, he found it very hard to believe them. Memories were always dulled by present events, and by the expectation of future events; they got filed in a mental storehouse where they could be pulled out now and again. And they were never as vivid and as real as these memories were.

  These could easily have taken form and shared the room with him, as if they weren’t memories at all but a reality that existed outside the scope of his five senses.

  No. He could smell pine tar. Dust.

  "Back with us," he heard. He turned his head toward the door to his room. Christian was there, grinning what looked like a mock-friendly grin. Karen was beside him. She looked concerned, David thought. The doctor was already in the room.

  Karen said, "You’re going to be all right, David. You had a bad time, but now you’re going to be all right."

  The doctor said, "How are you feeling, Mr. Case? Do you think you’re up to visitors?"

  No, I’m not, David thought. He turned his head so he was looking at the ceiling. He nodded. "Yeah, sure," he said.

  There was a moment’s silence. Then Christian said, "So tell us all about it, David. We’re here because we’re your friends. But you know that, of course." David thought he could hear sarcasm in Christian’s voice. He turned his head. Christian was grinning very slightly, as if remembering something that gave him secret pleasure. David turned his head so he was looking at the ceiling.

  "Yes," he said, and felt suddenly bone weary, as if sleep were going to overtake him. But it didn’t.

  They asked him questions.

  "How are you feeling, David? Are you still depressed?"

  "No. I was never depressed. Not in the way you imagine."

  "What does that mean? Depression’s depression—especially if it makes you suicidal. It’s something to deal with, something to overcome—"

  "Don’t badger him, please," the doctor warned.

  "Who’s badgering? I’m concerned. I’m the man’s friend, for God’s sake!"

  David listened and answered, "It was not suicide that I attempted."

  "Of course it wasn’t," Karen interjected.

  "So maternal," Christian said. Then, "Was it the same place, David? The same place you went to five years ago?"

  David shook his head. "I don’t know." He paused. "Yes. The same place."

  "But you went . . . deeper?"

  David nodded. "Deeper," he whispered. "Yes."

  "How much deeper?"

  "He’s tiring," the doctor warned.

  "It was a simple question."

  "Not so simple," David managed.

&nb
sp; "It’s the heart of simplicity, David."

  "Deep," he said.

  "And you’re going to try it again, aren’t you?”

  "No. Of course not."

  "We’re not convinced, David." Christian’s voice. A pause; then, "I need answers. I have no answers."

  "What sort of answers?" Christian asked.

  "Answers to . . . questions I have. We’ve talked about this already."

  "Questions about Anne?" Christian again.

  "Yes. Mostly."

  "I’m afraid that I must insist now—"

  "What do you need to know, David? We know what’s important. We know who killed her."

  "Possibly. I don’t know. I thought I knew, but I’m not sure."

  "Please, no more questions. Your friend is very tired."

  "We really do know who killed her, David. So what else do we need to know?"

  David said nothing and, a minute later, Christian and Karen were gone and he was alone.

  But he knew that he was not alone. He knew that something had come into the room with them, and had stayed, and still lurked in their absence.

  He glanced about the room, expecting to see more than beige walls, monitoring equipment, gray blankets.

  And he did.

  He saw dust.

  He smelled pine tar.

  And he heard distant voices raised in gaiety. Then he slept.

  ~ * ~

  IN BATAVIA—THE FOLLOWING MORNING

  Leo Kenner said, "Our boy did the rape. Are we agreed on that?" During Anne’s autopsy, it had been discovered—through bruising on her shoulders and arms and around her pelvic area—that she had very probably been raped.

  "Our boy?" said Fred Collins.

  "Brian Fisher. We agree that he did it, right?”

  “The medical examiner wasn’t certain it was rape. It was just a guess."

  Kenner looked suddenly exasperated. He fished for a moment in the thin file on Anne Case’s murder—it lay open on his desk—then handed a page from it across to Collins.

  Collins glanced quickly at it. It was page one of the Genesee County medical examiner’s Report of Autopsy. At the bottom of the page, outlined in red pencil, were the words, "The high probability exists that subject was victim of forced intercourse one week-ten days prior to death . . . "