PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller (20 page)

“Mary. 
Perhaps it is difficult to expect you to be a friend to me, after being a
friend to Mary.”  She looks down into her lap.  “I said the same thing to Dana
only last week.”

To
me it seems a much bigger deal to be sleeping with her husband than it does to
be sharing a pot of tea with her neighbour.  But I like her thinking because it
would seem that she is at least aware that she is a blot, a stain on the lives
of those whom she betrays.  But I do not recall ever being close to Mary. 
“Mary?  My friend?”  I can hear the telephone ringing.

“Yes. 
That’s the impression I got.  Everybody here seems very close.” I hear Ishiko
answering the telephone and after what sounds like a series of sorry apologies
and half hearted reassurance I hear her back in the kitchen.  I am still trying
to work out what she said to me last night which was something about the ocean
or the lake.  Fish?  Frogs?  None of it made any sense, regardless.

“I
am surprised John discusses these things with you.”  I can imagine him sitting
there, complaining about his wife, regaling the age old story of how his wife
doesn’t understand him.  I am sure Marianne was hoping that I would add a bit
of authenticity to their life together with a few stories about how terrible
Mary is, but I refrain.

“We
don’t really talk about her,” Marianne says, rubbing her hands together
underneath the table, no doubt cold in Gregory’s seat because there is a slight
draught that creeps through the closest window.  "It's kind of hard for
him."  I hear the door handle and we both detect that Ishiko is on her
way.  She arrives at my side with the packet of hand wipes.

“I
can understand that,” I say, taking the packet from Ishiko and pulling out one
of the wipes, all the time aware of Marianne watching me closely.  “After all,
they are still close,” I continue, undisturbed by her attention as I wipe my
gloves.

“Close? 
How can they be close?”  Marianne looks at me as if I were an abstract
painting, trying to place my warped, colour rich features.

“Oh
no,” I say apologetically, “what would I know?  You must know more about their
relationship than I do.”  I wait a while before adding in, “surely?”

“But
I don’t understand?  How can they, still, be close?”

“Well,
I’m not sure if I should say anything really about how they are together.  I
don’t want to rock the boat.  Plus, anything I say,” I pause and look pensive,
as if hurt by the mere thought of it, “He will just tell you it’s because I am
crazy and that you shouldn’t listen to me.”

“Charlotte,
you are not crazy, and you have been a good friend to me.  But tell me what you
mean because I’m not sure I understand.”

I
wait a while and do my very best impression of Gregory looking contemplative. 
I gaze down at my gloved hands and take some deep breaths whilst thinking about
the wound on my head which isn’t bleeding as well as I would like it too, and I
think I can feel the pressure starting to build up.  “I think he is still very
much in love with her.”  I expect this to be met by resistance, insistence that
I am mistaken.  Instead she begins smiling, a reflective smile which seems
understanding to her problem.

“Of
course he is.  It’s hard just to fall out of love with somebody.  But at some
point the past has to become the past.”  She has no idea how many times I have
heard this, or from how many people.  “He doesn’t seem to understand this.  I
keep telling him that we have to be strong and push forwards, but he always
says it is his responsibility, and that he has to be there for support,
especially since their mother became so unwell.”

“You
should try to see them together, through your own eyes.  That way you can
decide if you believe what he is telling you or not.”  She places the cup of
tea down onto the saucer and pushes her unused plate away.  Resting her arms
down on the table she looks up at me, her face soft and confused.

“But
Charlotte, that’s not.....”

I
am distracted and I have stopped listening to Marianne.  I can hear the
telephone ringing again.  It
literally
hasn’t stopped ringing all
weekend.  The hotline to Crazyville.  I hear Ishiko speaking in the background
and then she is shuffling towards me, but I didn’t hear the conversation end.

“What
is it Ishiko?” I say without turning around.

“Mr.
Stephen Jones is on the telephone for you Mrs. Astor.  He has called several
times and says it is urgent.”

“Tell
him all is well and that I will call in another day or so.”  I smile at
Marianne but she isn’t smiling back at me.  Instead she is looking at me in a
way that makes me somewhat uncomfortable, as if I have made her uncomfortable,
so I turn around and look at Ishiko instead.

“He
says he wants to speak to you.  He says he is expecting you at the office.”

“OK,
then tell him I will call in later.”  I raise my head towards the ceiling and
shake it, as if shaking off the hardships of commitment and other people’s
demands, or like a shudder when people comment that somebody must have walked
over your grave.

After
a short while she relays my information, before I hear the click as she
replaces the handset in its base.  During this time Marianne has said nothing,
but she has listened.  Perhaps her hearing is better than mine and she could
follow Ishiko’s conversation.  I do not know what she said but I know she got
rid of him.  For now at least.  But I will have to go to the office.  I will have
to explain my absence.  When I told Gregory that I had given up work I knew
that it had made him happy.  I knew that he would have preferred that he alone
were the reason, thanks to a set of principles that he has picked up from 1955
as if passed down through his DNA, but he accepted it as a good turn of events and
I could see his delight.  After this I had to stick to it.  I had to stay away
from work.  I had no other choice.

It
was a near miss the other night at The Sailing Club when Stephen Jones wandered
over to our table.  Thank goodness for the announcement to take our seats.  My
little incident more than put an end to any risk that he would be back at my
side questioning my whereabouts.  But I knew he would call eventually.  I knew
he would call because he was one of the first faces I saw peering over me
amongst the star filled ceiling of fairy lights.  He is what I would call
inherently interested.  He wants to know.  I cannot even count the number of
times he asked me into his office in the first weeks back at work.  It seemed I
was performing fine, but he just wanted to talk.  How was I doing?  How was I coping? 
Was my workload too much?  What could he do to help? Could he cut my hours for
me?  Could he reassign some of my workload?  He is all want want want.  He
wants to be the saviour, the helper, the one that makes life better.  Another
man who wants to save the nearest flailing woman.  Because I just couldn’t cope
on my own, right? 

Men
like him, like Gregory, they want to save women, shelter them, love them out
from underneath the blanket of their own psychosis.  Gregory wanted to do that
with me once.  He wanted to dispel the past and build a future.  He wanted to
see me smile for him every day like a good wife.  But I understand his
incentives now.  I understand them more than he realises.  When we met it was
so easy for him to be with me.  All of the ‘better’ women that he had dated,
that he had tried to make his own, they saw him for what he was.  They saw his
selfishness, his needs, and they had a full life already.  They could only make
space for him.  He worked his way down until he got to me, sacrificing a little
bit more until he found somebody that would make him her everything, because
she had so much space in her life that he could consume it, fill it.  Be it. 
It was so much easier than making any personal sacrifices of his own to become
something better.  It was easier to fill the void of another person.  Less
pressure that way.  It was fine whilst I was depressed.  It was fine when I
spent my life drowning in tears rather than the lake.  He would have taken as
much of that as I could throw at him and he would have held my hand through it
all.  But by wanting out, trying to die, it was too much for him.  It meant he
was a failure.  If I wanted to die, it meant he couldn’t be my everything. 
There was a better, more attractive alternative in death, than him.  He can’t
get past that idea, so he has found his own alternative.  He didn’t even have
to leave his home.  But perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on him.  Coming second
place to the finality of death?  Perhaps there isn’t a man in the world that
could understand or accept that. 

Marianne
has remained quiet ever since the phone call, and I usher her out of the house. 
We share a few air kisses and I promise to call her tomorrow.  I tell Ishiko to
remind me.  She watches me for a while whilst I sit in the conservatory,
looking out into the fog.  I am looking into it, really into it to see if
anything can be seen.  Sometimes the fog here is so dense that you can hold
your hand out in front of you and you can’t even see the tips of your fingers. 
Once, whilst I was walking along the lakeside the fog began to fall
unexpectedly, rolling in faster than walking pace and consuming everything in
its path.  It swamped me and I got lost.  I was following the course of the shore
but still lost my way, my feet splashing in and out of the water as I veered
from the path.  I had passed my house, my private road, and was leaving the
town behind me.  But a lucky break in fog gave me an exit back to the road and
showed me the way.  It was like it was playing with me, teasing me.  It was
warning me that at anytime it could take me, just like it had tried to before. 

On
the day I got lost I arrived home with wet hair and feet, my breath running in
and out of my lungs at a sprinter’s speed.  He was at the window waiting for
me.  He came out quickly and threw a blanket across my shoulders.  He sat me at
the edge of the fire, had Ishiko make hot tea, and as he sat rubbing my blue hands
he kept telling me how awful it must have been to be lost like that.  I didn’t
tell him that I didn’t feel scared.  I was panicked yes, but not scared.  It
was how I imagine a prince might feel when he hears of the King’s death.  There
must be panic at that time.  There must be terror.  All the planning and all
the training cannot remove the humanity of the response.  He will be a King.  He
will succumb to fate just like he always knew he would, in spite of the panic
that he feels in that moment.  Because beyond it he knows that it is his
destiny.  He knows that he was born to be King.  There may be pain, panic,
hurt, but he will get through it and fulfil the role he was born to complete.  
It was my destiny to be lost in the fog, to be pulled in by the water.  It
tried to take me once.  I tried to give myself to it a second time.  Both times
the plan was ruined.  Both times I was
saved. 
But I will make it.  I
will achieve my destiny.  I am clear again, the tablets have left me, I am
myself.  I thought for a while I might have a new destiny, a new label, mother,
but now I know it’s not real.  I can be no more a mother than he can be a
husband.  I know what I am, and in my understanding which comes to me with the
same certainty as the night, I think I have also learnt what I am not. 

“I
want to start today by going backwards, Charlotte.  Are you agreeable with
that?”  I nod my head and he continues whilst I curl my hands up underneath my
thighs, tight as springs so that I can feel my own weight on them.  “Good.  I
want to cover some ground that we did right at the beginning of the therapy
sessions, when we first met each other.  I believe it’s a good point to refresh
a little, don’t you think?”

“OK.” 
I know that it is possible if there is complete silence to hear the
conversation in this office on the other side of the wall.  I am certain that
Gregory must be listening, and part of me imagines him wedged up against the
door, ear pressed against the lock listening to the words I say.  I feel like
muttering out a few obscenities, words I know he hates like cunt or cheat or
motherfucker, just to have him hear them fall from my lips.  I feel my mouth
part, but find even with all the will I have, which today isn’t very much,
nothing comes out. 

“Were
you going to say something?” Dr. Abrams asks.  I shake my head and he
continues.  “OK.  When we first met here Charlotte, I asked you to give me a
few words about how you were feeling.  Words that described your state of mind
before the accident.”  He still insists, on occasion, on calling it an accident
and I wonder how I am supposed to accept it as anything other than an accident
if my own therapist cannot.  “When I asked you to do this you found it quite
difficult.  You were always able to discuss matters of intelligence.  It was
easy for me to establish what you believe about religion, and what you have and
have not learnt in life.  But when it came to who you are, Charlotte, it was
much harder for you to talk about your feelings or your motives.”

“I
don’t remember.”  There is a gardener outside sweeping the pathway.  Schweep, schweep,
I hear repeatedly.  The gardener realises that I am watching him, and so does
Dr. Abrams, so I look away, ashamed of myself and my throat feels tight.  I
grip at it, my fingers tangling in the chain of my pendant.

“I
know that.  I am aware that there is a lot that you cannot remember.  There is
a lot that you have blocked out from this time.”  He stops to take a sip of
water and I feel the urge to do the same.  I mirror his actions and pick up my
glass. 

“Is
this glass clean?” I ask before it touches my lips.  He nods and I take a sip. 
I cannot bring my own glass here.  It tastes weird and I wonder if there is a
problem with his water supply.  “What did I say about religion?” I ask as he
places his glass back down onto the desk at his side.  He writes something down
in the notes balanced on his knee before putting his glass back down. 

“You
told me that it was for the weak.  That there was no such thing as a God.”  He
rests his pen on his lower lip, taps is a couple of times.  It leaves a small
ink stain that should make me laugh but it does not.  I nod, uncertain what I
think of my previous statement.   If there is a God, I have repeatedly forsaken
and angered him with my attempted rejection of life.  I wonder if he would cast
me out from heaven or take me at his chest in his all forgiving embrace and
tell me that he was sorry for what he created for me in life.  Dr. Abrams
continues.  “I asked you to give me individual words regarding your feelings. 
Your emotions.”

“Was
I rude to you?”

“No,
Charlotte.”  He shakes his head as if he has never been more certain.

“Are
you sure?”

“I’m
sure.  Why do you think you were rude to me?”  He looks perplexed as he leafs
through his pages of notes from that time as if to be sure he is correct, in
order not to confuse me.  He stops flicking through the pages and seeing my
continued uncertainty repeats, “I am sure.”

“It’s
just that Gregory tells me that I was quite rude to people at that time, when I
first went home.”  He remains unconvinced and shakes his head in a way that
discredits what I just said as nonsense, but how could he really know for sure. 
He never lived with me.

“No,
you were in fact the complete opposite, Charlotte,” a small smile creeping on
to his face.  “But this isn’t really very important anyway.  Most people are
conditioned to the point that for the most part in society we will act
accordingly.  We are conditioned to try to fit in, to be polite.”  He takes
another sip of water and so again I do the same.  “But often how we act and how
we feel are not in unison.  They can be in fact quite polar.”  I believe this
is true for most people.  There is a face that presents to the public a certain
perception of the internal personality.  It is how we would like to be seen. 
It is the face of what we would want written in our obituary, spoken in our
eulogy.  It’s a first impression, but it is also nothing more than a
characterisation of an idea that cannot in reality be maintained for very long. 
It is subtle in many, almost indistinguishable from reality in the normal
people of the world.  In the complex characters, the killers, the cheaters, the
psychopaths, and the murderers it is deeper, a smiling face which hides the
absence of a heart and soul.  A structure without foundation, a skin that hides
no flesh.  Only the brave or the crazy who walk the earth truly reveal
themselves.  For their efforts we scorn these people. 

“But
I didn’t try to do that, Dr. Abrams.”

“Didn’t
do what?” he says as he puts his water down onto a small coaster which is sat
on top of a pile of books, which itself looks like it is sat on top of a pile
of notes.

“Try
to fit in.

“You
are referring to your attempted suicide?”

“Yes.” 
What else?

“Quite
right, Charlotte.  But by the time you saw me, you apologised for it and was
acting sensibly.  Too sensibly, like you were programmed to say what I wanted
to hear.  You seemed very attuned to your predica......no.”  He stops, confused
at himself.  “That’s not the right word.  I mean, your situation.”

“In
the hospital?”  He confirms by nodding.  “How did you know I wasn’t
remorseful?  Maybe I regretted it and that what I said really was the truth? 
Maybe I was aware.  I am a realist.”

“I
couldn’t be certain, Charlotte.  I just made a judgement.”  He doesn’t say
anything about my self assessment which surprises me.  He is usually begging
for a personal insight.  He does however scribble something down in the notes,
and I feel desperate to know what it is.  I can’t breathe in here for the smell
of wood polish, like bee’s wax.

“Based
on what?”  He reaches over his crossed knees and presses play on a Dictaphone
sat on a small table between us.  It crackles for a while, like an old long
play record before the music begins.  Then I hear muffled words and the date.  Last
August.  The microphone was too close to his mouth, pushed up against his beard,
but it was his voice.  Then I hear myself confirm that I was happy for the
interview to be recorded.  I stand up and open the window.  Somewhere in the
distance a bird sings.

It
sounds like me, the voice on the tape.  I know it as my own voice.  Short of
that, I don’t recognise myself.  I sound like a politician’s wife, an agreer, a
non complainer.  Whatever he asks me I give a polite answer. 
My name?
 
Yes
of course, Mrs. Charlotte Astor
. 
How am I feeing today?
 
Oh, I
am very well
. 
Please, don’t worry.  I am just looking forward to going
home
.  I am 1950’s debutante eager to please and answer correctly, to agree
with whatever his version of the truth may be.  I listen as I discuss my
attempted suicide and say that it was a mistake.  He stops the tape.

“I
had forgotten that you recorded me.”  I am standing by the window, sucking in
the icy air but still can’t breathe a full breath, the kind that fills your
lungs and expels the poisonous gas.  Schweep, schweep.  The gardener is still
working, but he has moved further away, I think, because my staring bothers
him.  The bird still sings, unaffected.  I take hold of the window frame, and
the stability helps, grounds me somewhat and I recover and breathe.

“I
know, Charlotte.  But it is important today to try to recap these things.  Make
sure that you and I are on the same page.  I want to understand where we are
at.”

“OK.”

I
turn to see him shift the notes file in his lap, squaring it up.  Inside it is
filled with papers.  He is rifling through them, searching for something.  He
finds some small cards and reaches across his crossed knee again and holds them
out to me which encourages me towards him.  I take the cards and sit down.  He
doesn’t interrogate my actions here in the office, and I think my moving around
doesn’t bother him.  It is only my thoughts which trouble him.  It is my
handwriting on the cards.  I have never seen them before.

“Charlotte,
you wrote these for me in our first session after you left the hospital.  I
want you to take a look.”  I turn the cards over in my hands.  There is one
word on each card.  There are four of them.  “I want you to read out the
words.”

“Hopeful. 
Pleased.”  I look up to him for a sign, anything, something to connect with,
but he offers me, in this isolating moment, nothing.  “Joyous.”  I turn the
last card.  “Happy.”  I put them in my lap and place my hands on top of them as
if stifling out the last embers of a smouldering fire.

“Do
you remember writing them?”  He leans back in his chair and I hear the leather
creak under his weight.

I
brush a hair from my eye, soak in the smell of leather and wood polish mixed
with honey which I think is in his tea, cold and untouched next to his water. 
“No,” I say.  It’s the truth.  I have no recollection of writing them.

“Right
before writing those words I asked you to write one word on each card that
described your state of mind at the time you wrote them.  You wrote these words
six days after your accident.”  I am thinking about what to say, but I feel
lost.  I don’t know what to say.  I do not understand these words.  They don’t
mean anything to me, and I imagine they never could have.  I cannot imagine how
I could have possibly felt this way.  Right now I feel hopeless, desolate,
envious, and pathetic.  “Why do you think you wrote those words?” he continues
to prod.

“It
was obviously how I felt,” I offer, more staccato than intended, and he almost
looks offended, like I have disappointed him.  I snatch at a snippet of hope
that he will buy it, but it is fading before I have even finished the
sentence. 

“We
have come further than mistruths, Charlotte.”  His lips are pressed together,
pursed with disappointment.  He sits in silence waiting for me to speak.  One
time when I was at school I was caught smoking with one of the older boys
behind the long white wall that bordered the playground.  My head teacher
yelled at me and put me on detention.  My form tutor, Mr. Ridgard, hung his
head down and wouldn’t speak to me when I told him that there had been a
misunderstanding and that it wasn’t me who had been smoking.  It was a lie.  He
told me that all he ever asked of his pupils was that they tell him the truth. 
That we all make mistakes and that how we face up to them is the true
definition of our character.  That was the same week I cut my wrists.  I was
never allowed to return to his class.  He took nearly a whole year off with
stress afterwards.  “How do you feel right now?  Right this second?”

“Confused.”

“Why
do you feel confused?” 

“Because
I don’t remember doing any of this.”  I take the cards and put them on the
nearest table on top of a brown file than has another person’s name on it. 
Rachael Warwick, I think, but it could be Raquel.  He sits and waits, his chin
resting on his forefinger and thumb.  “It upsets me when people tell me I did and
felt certain things.  I can’t remember writing those cards or saying those
things,” I say.  It is a surprisingly honest answer which I had no intention in
providing.  Six days after I tried to die these were the words I wrote.  Who
the hell wouldn’t be confused?

“But
there is a reason for you feeling this way.  You don’t have to be upset by it.”

“The
bleed?” I say, touching my head where they operated and where I refuse to let
heal.  I can’t find anything to scratch and his attention to my actions stops
me dead.  I put my hand back in my lap.

“Yes,
the bleed and subsequent seizure certainly play a factor in your memory
problems.”  He folded up his brown leather file and placed it on top of the desk
next to him.  He is leaning in towards me.  “I asked you to write on the back
of each card the reason that you felt each of those emotions.”  I look back at
the cards and pick one back up.  Hopeful.  I turn the card back and forth.  I
wonder if my confusion is growing, because I cannot see any other words.  My
confusion has reached my face.  He sees it.  “You couldn’t do it.”

“Perhaps
I just needed more time,” I say, returning the card to the top of Rachael’s or
Raquel’s file.

“I
gave you a week.”

“Perhaps
I forgot.”  I am determined that something stopped me other than insanity.

“I
spoke to you each day to remind you.”  I have no answer.  “The words were just
words, Charlotte.  There was nothing emotional about any of them.  You picked
four words that you thought I wanted to hear and that would get you out of my
office.  You didn’t want to deal with it, or with me.”  He is reaching across
and he is taking my hands in his.  “It is very important that we hang on to the
work we have done in recent months.  I don’t want you to fall back into this
level of emotional numbness.  Even if you are feeling bad, hopeless, or terrified,
we can work on it together.  You just have to be feeling something, and be able
to express it.  Here, with me.  You must come to our sessions.”