The Breaking of Day

by King, Sadie

  “I’m not a battered woman doctor. Victor never hit me. If anyone battered anyone, he was on the receiving end. You should have seen his face when my heel went in for the kill. Priceless.”

  “Zora, abuse doesn’t have to be physical. It can be emotional, psychological. Victor is a sociopath. He pretends to love you so that he can control you, hurt you, consume you. You are a battered woman.”

  Zora sighed, unconvinced. Dr. Weaver frowned at the emotion behind the sigh, a defensive emotion, a desire to protect the object of love, a tainted love but still a sacred love.

  “If you say so, Dr. Weaver. I suppose I am.”

  “Zora, I have one question for you more important than any other—do you love Victor?”

  Tears welled up in Zora’s eyes, just as they had already welled up in Dr. Weaver’s.

  “Yes, I love him, I can’t help it, I can’t control it. I can’t stop it. I only want him to love me back, love me whole, not part of him loving me, not part of me being loved by him. But I don’t know how.”

  “You can never make him love you, that is a choice only he can make. Cutting out his heart might be tempting, but it’s not going to do the trick. And besides, think of the mess.”

  Zora grinned and grimaced at the same time.

  “I don’t think he’s even capable of making that choice. It’s hopeless. He will never change.”

  “Your love is the beginning of his ability to choose. Your love is genuine and whole, I truly believe that. You are a battered woman, but your love is not simply twisted devotion to a twisted man. I can tell. And that tells me there is something in Victor deserving of your love. Even a sociopath can change.”

  “God, I hope you’re right. Talking about Victor so much has made me realize just how much I love him. I’m afraid your therapy might have backfired.”

  Now it was Dr. Weaver’s turn to grin and grimace.

  “Maybe so. But I have an idea. Are you willing to face him? Here in this office?”

  Zora shuddered. Her voice rose an octave, coming dangerously close to operatic falsetto.

  “Meet Victor here? Doctor, I don’t know if I’m ready to see him yet. I don’t think I can face him so soon after what he’s done to me—not to mention what I’ve done to him. I need time to heal, and he sure as hell needs time to heal. He’s probably in the hospital right now.”

  “Zora, it’s up to you. But I’m good at what I do. I know how people like Victor tick. I can cut him down to size. That’s my specialty. Leave the cutting to me from now on, deal?”

  Two women conspiring to cut a man to ribbons. And two things conspiring to make Zora say yes: venting about Victor had purged her of most of her fury and frustration toward him, and she knew that if any woman could humble Victor, it was Dr. Weaver. Whatever the good doctor had in mind would work like a fucking charm, Zora was sure of it.

  “Let’s do it. Anything I need to do?”

  “I’ll make all the arrangements. He’ll be here. I know a trick or two from the pages of Mario Puzo to use on a man like him. Nothing as drastic as a severed horse head, have no fear. I love horses. How I feel about men like Victor, that’s another matter entirely.”

  As Zora left Dr. Weaver’s office, her love for Victor stronger going than coming, she nevertheless understood the deeper meaning of the poetry of Sappho. How the bond between one woman and another, without the need for physical passion but not afraid of it either, could overshadow the fiercest love between a woman and a man.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Two days later, Dr. Weaver had done was she said she would do. Zora had no idea whether the pages of Mario Puzo had played any role—but there Victor was, outside Dr. Weaver’s door, knocking to come in. Zora and the doctor had already ensconced themselves in their chairs, had already begun sipping their tea. Dr. Weaver invited him in.

  He vaguely nodded at the doctor, turning his attention first to his lover and penile tormentor.

  “Hello, Zora. Good to see you. I brought you something.”

  In one hand he held a plastic food container, which he handed to her. She looked inside and saw three colorful rows of translucent sashimi—tuna, salmon, and yellowtail. She set the questionable gift on the floor. It wouldn’t fit on the table.

  “I made that for you myself. With my sashimi knife. You familiar with that particular blade?”

  To Zora’s immense surprise, he smiled broadly, showing her every one of his eerily opalescent teeth. She smiled too, and nodded. She just hoped he had thoroughly washed the knife first. And she couldn’t help but steal a quick glance at the region of his body where she herself had used that knife. He seemed to be bulging. Was it all the bandaging around his offended member, or the result of a temporary shortage of his beloved oil of hemlock?

  He turned to Dr. Weaver.

  “And I brought you what you asked for.”

  He handed her a rosewood presentation box, clasped shut. It was a fairly large box, at least a foot on each side.

  “Thank you Professor, or if you don’t mind, Victor.”

  He didn’t demur.

  “Please have a seat Victor.”

  She gestured to a third chair that had been brought into the room, forming a triangular configuration around the orchid table. He settled into it smoothly, but Zora could have sworn he winced when his midsection made contact with the cushion.

  Victor reached down and picked up the container of sashimi from the floor.

  “The sashimi is for all three of us. Here, allow me.”

  He popped open the food container, handing Zora and Dr. Weaver each a set of chopsticks from the three sets sitting inside. With his own set, he pincered a piece of yellowtail, and then tried to place it in Zora’s mouth. She twisted her face away, choosing instead to grab the piece of fish with her fingers and swallow it down with only a cursory chew or two.

  Dr. Weaver grasped her chopsticks, poised them in midair more like stabbing weapons than eating utensils.

  “A thoughtful gesture Victor. Don’t mind if I do.”

  She snagged a sliver of the salmon and swallowed it whole.

  “You know, I’ve always admired what a sashimi knife can do in the right hands.”

  She gave him a knowing glance that furrowed his brow like a canyon of skin.

  “Sometimes I think the person using it doesn’t go deep enough though.”

  He began to choke on the piece of tuna that he was guiding down his gullet as she spoke. It took him a good minute to recover, neither woman making any effort to help him. His face looked as though every blood vessel beneath its surface had burst.

  “Not deep enough. Very amusing.”

  “But also very true. Now Victor, I’m going to need you to sign this consent form.”

  She handed it to him. A single page, full of tiny print.

  “It’s a fairly standard consent form, boilerplate really, releasing the hospital and me from liability for any damages you might suffer from therapy.”

  “What, in case you talk me to death?”

  He gave the form a cursory glance and signed it. Dr. Weaver ignored his sarcasm.

  “Victor, do you know why Zora is here?”

  “Yes, you alluded to it on the phone. And my oil of hemlock went missing. I know she tried to kill herself. I’m sorry, my love.”

  He looked at Zora. He did seem genuinely sorry. He face was worn and sagging, as though time and suffering had caught up to him in recent days.

  “And why do you think she did that?”

  “I blame myself, if that’s what you mean. I haven’t explained myself well enough to her, explained my past, explained how I feel about her.”

  “How you feel about her? You mean, your desire to manipulate her, destroy her self-esteem? Just like you did to Chloe Ming.”

  Victor bristled; his face clouded with anger; his spine stiffened.

  “Excuse me, Dr. Bitch, you don’t know anything about me or my relationships. I don’t need your pop-psychology bullshit, and
neither does Zora.”

  Zora felt trapped. As much as she loved Victor, he was starting to prove Dr. Weaver’s point about his controlling nature, his propensity to strengthen himself by weakening others.

  Dr. Weaver passed over Victor’s little tirade. She focused the light in her eyes on the person in the room she cared about most.

  “Zora, do you feel manipulated by Victor?”

  Zora took in her hands the hands of the man she loved. She took into her vision his vision of her.

  “I do. He knows I love him—” his eyes shone with hope, the hope of redemption—“and I do love you, but you need to love me in return. Not as a game, not out of lust, not as a diversion in your busy life. You cannot desire me simply as a means to an end. I am an end in myself, and need to be loved that way. As a whole person, not as a body to be played with, played upon, and then discarded.”

  Before Victor could respond, Dr. Weaver did. She didn’t want to be left out of the triangle.

  “Victor, I think we all want to know—do you truly love Zora?”

  “I think I already answered that. Everything I have done has already answered that. Every word, every gesture, every thought.”

  He grasped her hands tightly. He could feel her left hand begin to tremble violently, a fluttering bird, inside the cage of his fingers.

  “I do love you Zora, please believe that. Why else would I lead you to Chloe’s note? I am trying to open myself to you, but you are making it hard.”

  “She is making it hard. She is.”

  Dr. Weaver echoed him, mirroring him, with a sense of marvel. Incredulous that he would still shift blame away from himself. She took the rosewood box he had brought into her lap and opened it.

  “Victor, tell us what you brought, what I asked you to bring.”

  “You asked me to bring the most valuable item in my collection of ivory. I brought my Canova sculpture.”

  Dr. Weaver removed from a box the most beautiful, the most sensual, sculpture that Zora had ever seen. It depicted a winged figure—Zora assumed it to be an angel—leaning over a bare-chested maiden lying upon a rock. The maiden’s arms were curved upward in a heart-shaped embrace, her hands resting like butterflies on the angel’s head. The angel’s left arm covered the maiden’s breasts; his right hand cupped around her cheek, holding her head steady for a kiss. A metaphor of heavenly love. Either that, or one really lascivious angel.

  “Tell us about it. Tell Zora. Tell her what it means to you. Tell her what she means to you.”

  Dr. Weaver cleared everything else off the table and set the sculpture in the middle.

  “It’s called Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss.”

  So it wasn’t an angel but a god—Cupid to the Greeks, Eros to the Romans. Even better.

  “Done by Antonio Canova in the late 18th century. Not a lot of people know this, but before Canova did the famous version of the sculpture, the life-size marble one in the Louvre, he did a much smaller version in ivory. The one you see here. Why do I love it so much? It shows that love can heal the soul. Psyche ended up marrying Cupid and becoming the goddess of the soul. That’s why we’re here in this office, my love, to understand the depths of the psyche, yours and mine. Cupid’s arrow brought Psyche back to life, and my arrow—”

  He stopped himself. That sounded way too Freudian, way too phallic.

  There was a time and a place for his arrow, and this was not it.

  “—and my love can bring our relationship back from the brink, heal you in your despair and me in my arrogance.”

  Dr. Weaver actually started clapping her hands.

  “Bravo, Victor, Bravo. Quite the performance. There is only one problem.”

  “It’s not a performance, doctor. Zora knows it’s not.”

  Zora said nothing. Her hand had stopped trembling.

  “That sculpture may be beautiful, and it is beautiful, but it is only an object. You cannot truly love an object. And it is deeply wrong to pretend to love a person as you pretend to love an object. Zora is not an object and I am not sure you understand that.”

  “I’m not Pygmalion doctor. Zora is not my ivory bride.”

  “We’ll see about that. Let me ask you, just out of curiosity, how much did this sculpture cost?”

  “If you must know, I paid a little over $5 million for it.”

  Dr. Weaver’s eyes bulged out a little; she exhaled sharply. Under her breath she muttered, “Well, fuck Freud sideways.” Apparently Dr. Weaver had a kinky side herself, and a fantasy or two better left unspoken.

  “That’s more than I expected, but the principle is still the same. The connection you share with this woman in front of you must be stronger than the connection you share with any item in your collection, any object in your life. And do you know what is stronger than ivory Professor?”

  “I don’t know, what?”

  “Alabaster!”

  From the floor on the left side of her chair, Dr. Weaver picked up a small sledgehammer topped with a head of alabaster. She had brought it in especially for this purpose, and she was strong for her age. She lifted the hammer into the air, and before Victor could stop her, brought it down with incredible force onto the embracing figures of Cupid and Psyche. The entire upper bodies of both figures disintegrated, Cupid’s head flying across the room, Psyche’s upraised arms amputating themselves from her body onto the floor. One of Cupid’s wings launched itself toward Victor’s face, and he had to reflexively twist his head to the side to avoid being blinded in his right eye, impaled in his eye socket by the point of the god’s wing. The wing managed to graze his cheek and he started to bleed from the cut.

  Frantically he grasped at the pieces of the broken sculpture lying about, trying in vain to reverse the blow of the hammer, put back together a scattering of severed body parts, a carnage of ivory. In his obsessive scrambling, he didn’t even check to see if Zora had been scathed by the shrapnel of ivory as he had. She was unhurt, too dumbfounded by the explosion of limbs to realize it.

  Still scrambling for ivory, still ignoring Zora, he hurled his wrath at Dr. Weaver.

  “You psychotic bitch, what have you done?!”

  Dr. Weaver’s eyes were a cauldron of molten metal.

  “Done you a favor. I have showed you what you have done to Zora. You broke her. But it isn’t too late to fix her, help her fix herself. With her love for you, and your love for her, she can be healed from within, healed from without. And she is real, a woman whole, unlike these fragments at our feet, which can’t possibly love, can’t possibly feel, even whole. You’ll come back to thank me.”

  “Someone will come back here, that’s for sure—the police. You maliciously destroyed what belongs to me. That’s a crime, a felony. You’ll be in a cage soon doctor. Maybe I’ll come to thank you there.”

  “You signed the consent form Victor. You’re a professor of law. If you had actually read the form, you’d know it includes any damage to property that arises during the course of therapy. The hospital’s not legally liable for your beloved sculpture, and neither am I.”

  “Give me that fucking form.”

  He started grappling for it.

  “Security!”

  Alerted by Dr. Weaver’s scream, a titanic guard materialized out of nowhere, through the door. Victor froze.

  “Please remove this gentleman from the building. He has outworn his welcome, and wishes to enjoy the rest of his day elsewhere.”

  Victor growled.

  “What about my fucking sculpture?”

  “I’ll mail you the pieces. Have a nice day.”

  The guard put Victor’s arm in a vice-grip, forcing him away from the two women. Zora wanted to reach out to him but her arm wouldn’t move. As he was being led roughly from the room, Victor stepped on the armless upper body of the broken Psyche. He broke her once more. Under the weight of his body, under the sole of his shoe, the delicate ivory head of the maiden snapped clean off.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Dr.
Weaver was right: Victor recovered from the violent demise of Cupid and Psyche. The dismemberment of their ivory love. He loved Zora. Her psyche was his main concern. He still thought Dr. Weaver was in more desperate need of therapy than her patient. For the good doctor, he would have preferred extensive electroshock therapy—he would have been more than happy to administer it personally. He was in a bind between women: desperate to see Zora again, desperate not to see Dr. Weaver. Unless he could flip the switch to the electroshock machine.

  And Zora yearned for him as well. Her heart had uncoiled open, with so much tension toward closing again that only will alone could keep it sprung. The will to have faith. Faith in other people and in herself. A spirituality of self and others, of love and compassion.

  Her heart was open most of all to Dr. Weaver. She trusted Dr. Weaver, and Dr. Weaver trusted nature. A disciple of naturopathic medicine. Why else all the plants, the flowers, the shrubs, the vines? A blooming forth of nature’s bounty in a cold sterile place, a place of confinement of the self, of the mind.

  Dr. Weaver put her faith in nature to work for Zora. Two plants in particular would be the salve for Zora’s soul. Griffonia simplicifolia—the kagya vine, harvested in Ghana. Hypericum perforatum—St. John’s wort, harvested in Australia. These would ease Zora’s anguish, bring a placid radiance to her mind. Dr. Weaver knew the plants she prescribed like she knew the people she cared for. She knew that the Akan people of Ghana had a saying:

  Esie ne kagya nni aseda.

  The anthill and the kagya plant need not thank each other. The saying symbolized symbiosis, how the plant provides food and shelter for the ants, and the ants help protect the plant from over-grazing. A truly mutual relationship, rendering gratitude unnecessary. For gratitude is a sign of a debt—in a relationship of equality, neither side is indebted to the other. Love bears no debt.

  Victor still bore her a debt—a debt of repentance. And she expected prompt payment. Her first day back in his class was a Wednesday. There was Jack, looking very concerned, whispering well-wishes in her ear like sweet nothings. Victor must have revealed something to him of her condition. And there was the devil himself, not neglecting her in the sea of faces for once, his own face awash with gratitude and relief. So much energy of connection passed from him to her that the rest of the class barely got a glance. He knew better than to riddle her with Socratic questions though. He left her alone.