by Mort Castle
Laura Morgan came to the counter. Standing alongside Vicki, she nodded, introducing herself. “You’re Warren.”
He said, “Vicki’s told me about you, Laura. You’re her good friend.”
“Yes, I am.” After a lengthy pause, Laura said, “Sometimes good friends butt into each other’s business. I guess that’s what I’m doing. I think you and your wife have something to talk over.”
“We do.”
Laura looked at Vicki. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do, but if you want to take off the rest of the day, I’m sure I’d be able to manage.”
“No,” Vicki said, eyes down, “that’s all right.”
“Vicki, please.” It was how he said, “please” that got to her. She peered at him, studied him, and saw or thought she saw desperation, an emotion which he’d never shown—at least not to her. “I’m asking you to come with me. We can work it out, Vicki. Talk with me.”
She made up her mind. “I’ll be in Saturday then, Laura,” she said.
“That’ll be fine.”
She walked home with her husband. Work it out? she thought. No, she feared that was impossible, not this time. It was over. All they might have had together, all that they once might have been, was no more.
It’s time for an ending, she said to herself, even as she hoped she was wrong.
— | — | —
Twenty
“You’re angry and you’re hurt,” Warren said. They sat on the living room sofa, the middle cushion separating them. Looking at her folded hands in her lap, Vicki said, “Go on.”
“It’s a hell of a thing,” Warren said. “I’m a writer. I teach English. Words are important to me. Sometimes you can say it all with words, but other times, words are so damned inadequate.” He got up, stood before her, head hanging. “Vicki, I’m so sorry.”
The corner of her mouth twitched up in what was not a smile. “I’ve heard that before, Warren. I’ve believed it before.”
“I know. But this time is different.”
“I’ve heard that before, too.”
“No, I mean it. Liquor is a problem for me. I’ve never admitted it, not to you, not to myself, but now it’s time. Drinking is a real problem, and there’s only one way I can handle it. No more alcohol, period.” He smiled hopefully. “That’s something I haven’t said before.”
“No, you haven’t, but now I have to ask if you mean it.”
He told her he’d dumped all the liquor, and that was that. He thought he’d be able to stay sober on his own. He meant to try, anyway. He reached into his wallet. “If not,” he said, flourishing a scrap of paper as if it were a winning lottery ticket, “this is the telephone number of Alcoholics Anonymous. This goes with me from now on.”
Then he did the last thing on earth she could have predicted. Warren was proud, sometimes proud to the point of arrogance, but he slowly sank to his knees. It was so flamboyantly melodramatic that she questioned the act’s sincerity even as she was touched by it.
But she couldn’t question his tears or the sobs that choked his words as he said, “I am sorry, so sorry. Forgive me for hurting you. Forgive me for hurting our marriage and our life together. Love me, Vicki, and let’s start again.”
Her own tears blinded her. She didn’t know if she was convinced because she wanted to be convinced, but she could not doubt Warren was definitely trying to change.
She loved him. That’s what she told him, crying, on her knees, too, holding him, their hot, wet faces touching. A new start, that’s what she wanted, what they needed. But she had to talk to him, really talk to him at long, long last.
“…about what happened with David Greenfield.”
“No, there’s no need,” Warren said
“It’s something I have to explain, if we’re to make a new start.”
“All right, then, but let’s move to the couch. My knees are getting calloused,” Warren said.
Vicki gave the feeble joke a louder laugh than it merited, a laugh of release. She needed to confess so Warren would understand and forgive her. No, not only Warren. She had to get it all out if she was ever to pardon herself.
She fetched a box of tissues from the bathroom, and they both blew their noses. It was funny, she thought. Life’s most serious, heartfelt moments summon up tears—and the rudely comic noise of blowing noses!
She sat down, and when Warren put his arm around her, she leaned against him, assuringly aware of the gently shifting solidity of his body as he breathed.
“It was a bad time for me,” she began, then corrected herself. “It was a bad time for us.”
“Yes,” Warren said.
Missy had been 18 months old, but plunging into the discover-touch-break everything “terrible twos” without regard for the calendar. Warren, teaching at Laurel Valley College, a small school in southern Indiana, had been directly told not to plan on being a member of Laurel Valley’s faculty in the future.
That was, Warren maintained, because he had been asked to read the manuscript of a novel. The English department chairman, the book’s author, sought Warren’s advice because, “Ah, uhm, it’s possible there are some minor flaws in the work that are preventing its publication,” the book having been rejected by 43 publishers in nine years. Warren found only one flaw—the book was garbage. He could have been more diplomatic in rendering that verdict, but he was still young enough to believe writers were obliged to be honest.
Warren was working on his new novel, the book that eventually became The Endurance of Lyn Tomer. It was not going well. How could he write? Jesus, here he was on a frantic job hunt, sending out resumes and coming up zilch. And here was the kid, always screaming when he needed peace and quiet. And here was Vicki, always getting on his case with her pathetic bleating. “I’m your wife. I’m alive, I’m here. Will you please pay attention to me?”
Goddamnit, didn’t she understand? He needed to write the book. The book would save their asses. It would take care of money. Universities would come courting him, wanting him as a status symbol writer-in-residence. Granted, his first novel, Fishing with Live Bait, hadn’t made it big. There were reviews calling him “promising” and all that shit, but no sales. The first printing was 5,000 copies and only 312 sold.
But that was how it worked in the American literary game! It was your second book that established your reputation.
Was she too damned insensitive to realize his writing, his art, was a monumental concern in his life? With her religious upbringing, it was a weird irony she turned out to be a goddamned philistine! Christ, she was enough to drive a man to drink, which Warren did often. He just wanted to be left alone.
He certainly left her alone—all alone.
Vicki reached for the tissues as fresh tears began rolling. “Warren, I missed you. I wanted you.”
“I’m sorry, Vick…”
“Please, it’s my turn to be sorry. And please, just let me get on with it. This is hard for me.” She shook her head. “I was childish. I dreamed up crazy fantasies, but I wasn’t too original. There was the old stand-by—suicide. ‘Then he’ll be sorry for the way he treated me.’ But that was too scary. What if the razor blade did too good a job or I took one pill too many? Only way I was willing to commit suicide was if I had a guarantee I wouldn’t die.”
She dabbed at her eyes. “I put together a corny scene, night out of a 1940’s Technicolor movie, complete with violins. I’d be holding Missy in one arm and waving your manuscript in the other hand. ‘You must choose between your wife and child and your precious art!’ Every time I projected that on my mental movie screen, I could just about hear myself using a British accent. But you know, I almost worked up the courage to try it.”
“You didn’t,” Warren said. “I’d remember something like that.”
“I was afraid you’d laugh at me.”
“I probably would have.”
“So,” Vicki said, her tone detached, “that’s when it happened. David Greenfield.” Her shoulders
rose and fell in a shrug. “Nothing original there, either. A classic stupid strategy. ‘This will make him pay attention to me!”’
Not yet the renowned photographer, but obviously on his way, David Greenfield had been awarded a state arts council grant to teach at Laurel Valley College for a year. Greenfield was no academic. He had never even graduated high school. That was part of the charisma that established him as a very big deal on the Laurel Valley campus. He wasn’t ivory tower isolated, but real. He was also strikingly good-looking. He projected a cool competence that held particular attraction for confused people in an indecisive era. It didn’t take long before there were faculty jokes, some envious, about the photographer’s harem; not numbered among the jokers were the men whose wives had joined the harem.
“Most women found him appealing,” Vicki said, “but it wasn’t like that for me, Warren. I knew you liked David. The stupid way I was thinking, I decided an affair with your friend would be sure to…” She paused, searching for words.
“Get my attention?” Warren said flatly.
Vicki put a hand on his knee. She suddenly wished she could take back everything she’d said, but she had to forge ahead. It all had to come out now, because it hadn’t been dealt with then.
Warren thought a great deal of David Greenfield, respected his work and considered him a comrade in arts. Several times, they’d had lunch in the student union cafeteria. They’d discussed the goals of art and the struggles faced by American artists. They’d gone drinking together, and David Greenfield had been a supper guest.
“But there was another reason,” Vicki said. “I didn’t want to get seriously involved with another man. That sounds ridiculous, I know, but I loved you, Warren. No matter what I did, I never stopped loving you. I couldn’t run the risk of falling in love with anyone else. The way my mind was working or maybe wasn’t working, David seemed perfect.’’
David Greenfield was bright, intense, talented and witty when he chose to be, but he was not quite complete. There was something lacking in him. He could not give or accept love; you could sense that. Totally independent, he needed no one. “And no one should need me,” was the message he subtly telegraphed in a myriad of ways.
She approached him, awkwardly flirting and turning red-faced with embarrassment. David told her, “If you want to go to bed with me, say it. But mean it if you say it.”
She said it.
Naive in such matters, she didn’t know exactly how many trysts constituted an affair. She kept count. She went to bed with David Greenfield nine times over a six-week period.
Vicki’s attempt to emotionally remove herself from what she was doing was unsuccessful. Her moods swung wildly between rage and guilt.
But Warren never even seemed to notice, not a thing.
She ended it then and told Warren.
“Not long ago, you told me I was angry and hurt,” Vicki said. “You kept it hidden inside, but you were angry and hurt by what I did.”
“Yes.”
“And you still carry that anger and hurt inside you, Warren.” She took a deep breath, deliberately not looking at him. “Last night, when you were drunk, it came out.”
“Yes.”
She leaned forward, slipping away from his arm and turning to look directly at him. “Warren, I want your forgiveness. I need it. But can you really forgive me?”
He nodded, but she couldn’t accept it. “No, I want you to think about it. Now that you know why, that as stupid as I was all I wanted was your love, can you forgive me?”
He took her shoulders. “Let me ask you a question, Vicki.” His eyes were piercing. She felt as though a lie detector within him would instantly register even her slightest falsehood.
“Do you love me, Vicki?”
“Yes.” Her heart felt like a stone frantically skipping across a pond.
“And do you know I love you?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s all that matters now—and forever.”
“I…I’m going to cry again.”
“Maybe me too. It’s a time for tears, I guess. It’s a time for something else, too.” His voice dropped. “Let’s make love. That’s what I want now, Vicki.”
It was what she wanted, too. But upstairs in the bedroom, with the sun slipping around the edges of the lowered window shades, she wondered if it was a mistake. They were distant and silent, undressing slowly without looking at each other.
Then it all changed. In bed, Warren was forceful in a way she had never known him to be. He held her as though challenging her to try to push him away. His lips attacked her mouth, and it was hard for her to breath. Vicki twisted her head. “Warren, please…”
“Be quiet.” His voice was soft, but there was no question it was a command. It surprised her. In a way she could never have articulated, she realized what this was all about.
This was a ceremony, a covenant of the flesh, a living symbolic act, as he claimed her as his and only his.
It was what she wanted, what they needed.
She yielded to his demanding mouth and hands. He moved and positioned himself between her thighs.
She braced herself, not yet ready, but willingly surrendering. On his knees, Warren slipped his hands under her buttocks, lifting her up and curling her back onto her shoulders, as his mouth voraciously fell on her womanhood, his tongue a spearing wet shaft.
She became only feeling, all heat and tightenings and tremblings. He was doing what he wanted. He was forcing her, taking her. He was doing what she wanted him to do—taking her! The climax he forced upon her was so intense she screamed, and only the quivering totality of her body kept her from losing consciousness.
Warren moved, turning her over, his arm under her heaving, damp belly, lifting her to her knees, buttocks high. She was utterly vulnerable to him.
He thrust into her. His hands on her hips, he lunged against her again and again.
She climaxed in a blinding rush. A moment later, he pounded hard against her, pouring himself within her. Then, gasping, he was curled over her back, arms tightly wrapping her to him.
That was when he said something that made her feel loved and protected, cared for and looked after, something that made her know she was his. That was when he called her by a dear name he had never used in their years together.
He said, “Everything is all right, and everything will be all right…”
And he called her, “…my little girl.”
— | — | —
Twenty-One
Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. Those were the words of the Prophet Isaiah. They also had been the words of affirmation in the mind of Evan Kyle Dean as he watched Emerald Farmer cock her revolver.
I trust in God. I am not afraid.
He stood before a woman who meant to kill him, yet he was at peace. The peace of God which passeth all understanding, a blessed radiance, filled him. The Lord’s will be done.
“No!”
He heard Carol Grace scream. He wanted to reassure his wife, to remind her of God’s eternal promise to His children, but he could no longer speak. The Holy Spirit had seized him and taken over his mind and body.
Emerald Farmer pulled the trigger.
The Colt’s hammer fell. The firing pin struck the casehead of the .38 caliber bullet. There was no explosion no discharge.
“No! Oh, no…” Emerald Farmer’s face screwed up in horrified surprise. Then she thumbed back the hammer and again pulled the trigger. The gun clicked harmlessly and she pulled the trigger and pulled the trigger and pulled the trigger.
Head canted to the side Emerald stared dazedly at the pistol she held. With awe and misery in her voice, she said, “Something is wrong. I don’t understand.”
Evan Kyle Dean took the pistol from Emerald, and Carol Grace ran to him. “Praise God for deliverance!” she whispered, tears streaming down her face.
Emerald Farmer staggered back, moving like a short-circuited robot. She dropped to th
e chair behind her. In slow motion, she put her face in her hands, and then a ululating wail burst from her.
An arm around her husband, Carol Grace whispered, “I’ll phone the police.”
“No, the police aren’t needed.”
“But Evan…”
He patted her shoulder. “It’s all right. Please, could you make some coffee, Carol Grace? Yes, coffee. That would be nice.”
In slow motion, Emerald Farmer tumbled to the floor, curled on her side in a catatonic fetal position. Her eyes glazed over. Her tongue protruded wetly from her mouth.
“Coffee,” Evan said, softly nudging his wife in the direction of the kitchen. “And a prayer, too.”
His wife out of the room, Evan knelt beside Emerald Farmer. So much anger and hatred, he thought, so much hurt. And so much of it his fault.
“You lied.” That had been the woman’s accusation—and the truth. There had been lies to those who’d come to him seeking God’s healing. Not at first. But when it became “heal on cue and we’ll go with camera three,” when he became a performer and charlatan because God had withdrawn His favor and His gifts, yes.
The power of God burned inside him. It was in his soul and his heart and his mind. He was uplifted. He was transfigured. His eyes were as the eyes of the prophets of old, and as he gazed at Emerald Farmer, he beheld a vision.
Evan Kyle Dean had lied. No less had he lied to himself, rationalizing he was still doing God’s work. After all, so many of the afflicted suffered strictly from psychosomatic illnesses, you could say they were cured, or rather, as good as cured, by the power of their belief in him.
He had put himself before the Lord. He’d been handing out popular positive thinking disguised as God’s grace. But eventually he was no longer able to justify the charade. He’d ended his healing crusade services. Abandoned by God, he had despaired—and repented.
Now, once more, the countenance of the Lord shone upon Evan Kyle Dean, so that he might do God’s will and heal Emerald Farmer.