The Understory (10 page)

“Of course,” Claire said, directing Florence and her hair into her office. Florence Dickerson was convinced, with every strand of her six-foot long hair, that she was Rapunzel, from the Grimm Brothers’ famous fairy tale. It had all started seven years ago, when she’d come across a picture of her former lover, a fallen World War II soldier, and for some reason, at the very moment she laid eyes on it, neurotransmitters in her brain exploded in a fireworks show fueled by sad memories, bad luck, and old age. From that moment on, even though part of her, buried deep, knew time had moved on, Florence Dickerson’s subconscious redirected all her emotions toward the notion that she was still waiting for her lover to return from war. When she saw the picture, she recaptured that pining, incessant need to see him again by living in a metaphorical tower—being ready, at any miraculous moment, to unleash her locks on which her prince would climb. And thus, in her fairy-tale mind, she morphed into Rapunzel, the most patient woman in all fairy tales combined.

In medical school, Claire was taught not to fight the pivotal moments in her patients’ pasts that dictated who they were. Her mentors said that if she did, she’d have to take up battle with not only World War II, but also burning infernos, neglectful parents, tuberculosis, and unrequited love—tragedies in people’s pasts that forever dictated the paths of their futures.

“Here, let me . . .” Claire said, as she helped Florence step over her hair and settle in an overstuffed patient recliner. “How’s your daughter, Karen? Did she drop you off today?”

“Yes. Yes, she did,” Florence said, “but she’s needed back at the tower.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, it is in need of immense repair.”

“Really?”

“The bricks are failing—it’s old.” She looked out Claire’s office window with a longing gaze. “I’m getting old, too, you know,” she said, looking more like a Florence now than a Rapunzel.

“How old are you, if you don’t mind?” Claire asked from behind her big, polished desk.

“I don’t mind your asking,” Florence said. “How old I am—now
that
I mind.” Both women stared at each other. “I’m tired of waiting,” Florence said with authority. But then she looked to her psychiatrist for advice.

Claire called upon her extensive training, poring over a decade of education and volumes of information stored in her brain, looking for appropriate counsel, and then made the executive decision to borrow words from a rose-toting retarded man.

“Rise above,” Claire told her, leaning back in her chair. Now, Claire had no idea what it meant, but she hoped Florence would have a meaningful interpretation of it.

Florence wasted no time interpreting. “I don’t get it.”

“Well . . .” Claire said, stalling. She then conjured up her high school drama club voice intermixed with a splash of cheerleader. “You’re Rapunzel with a capital friggin’ ‘R’! You’ve survived imprisonment, abandonment, and bad tower food. You, my dear, are one magical, brazen bitch—”

“I am, aren’t I?” Florence said, sitting up a bit straighter and holding her head a little higher.

“Damn straight. And you’ve been stuck, but it’s time to move on. No more waiting. Rise above your comfort zone. Join the new millennium. Seriously, how old is your fairy tale? Nineteenth century?”

“Eighteen-twenties,” Florence said, nodding. “But how am I going to rise above with all this hair weighing me down?”

“Get rid of it. Let him take the goddamned stairs!”

“The tower has stairs?” Florence asked, with a new twinkle in her eyes.

“Fuckin’ A, it has stairs!” Claire said in a refined, professional voice. She stammered a bit, but said, “You don’t see them because they’re in back. A couple are cracked, but they’re fine.”

Florence looked over on Claire’s desk at the big black scissors sticking out of her pencil holder, and raised her eyebrows. Claire picked them up and helped her patient at last cut away long lock after long lock.

Claire’s post-session notes that day mixed the clinical with the emotional.

Tuesday, October 22
^nd
, 10:24 a.m.

Florence “Rapunzel” Dickerson, after months of therapy, makes profound breakthrough in obsessive tendencies and grief-induced denial.

It was during that session that Claire stopped being a doctor for a moment and tried to remember what it was like to have faith.

Prognosis: Considering the remarkable evidence from her recent session, it is likely that Florence will make a complete recovery, eventually coming to fully understand the reality of the long, arduous altered state that has overtaken her life for seven years. Real change is not only highly probable, but inevitable.

But then she remembered who she was.

Prognosis: Regardless of the seemingly remarkable progress evident in the recent session, it is not likely that Ms. Dickerson will experience more than a slight respite from her grief-induced delusions, which have manifested themselves in a fictional form, and ultimately, real, lasting change is not only highly unlikely, but impossible.

Real people, after all, don’t change.

Diagnosis: Life is not a fairy tale.

W
hile Claire Payne climbed the fractured stairs back into her tower, Hans Turner delivered someone else’s art. Custom doors he’d made with his hands, they were designed and commissioned by a very wealthy client interested in having an entryway that made an impression. In-between handiwork and magician gigs, Hans had put the final touches on these two oak beauties—massive double doors to be hung in the primary entrance of a home (mansion to most) atop a towering hill overlooking the elite Deer Run subdivision. The carvings of Apollo, the sun god, suggested a homeowner who ruled Phoenix—a king in the land of sun. Why he felt the need to be king, no one knew, not even the man himself.

When Hans arrived in Deer Run, he wondered how so many people could be so rich. Each yard, endless, lush, and green, might as well have been lined with dollar bills, because if you had green grass in Phoenix, it meant you could drown yourself in money as well as water.

His client, Judge Harold Stone, greeted Hans at the end of a long, winding driveway, while he pulled a couple of errant weeds from his flower garden. He looked good for a portly man in his late forties—folks who invest well and live in mansions usually do—and somehow, the Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops worked for him. Behind Judge Stone stood an expansive home, complete with a dozen Greek columns and a large, almost garish entryway.

“You’re right,” Hans said as he got out of his truck, “your current doors don’t do it justice.”

“May I?” said Judge Stone eagerly, walking toward the back of the truck.

When Hans released the tailgate and peeled back the tarp covering the doors, the judge was speechless.

“Are they what you—”

“They’re stunning,” Judge Stone said, leaning forward to touch the carved wood. “Even more beautiful than I’d hoped for.”

When Hans asked which door he liked better, Judge Stone seemed bewildered. “I don’t know,” he stammered. “The one with the dragon is really intricate.” Then he shook his head. “No, no. The dragon’s beautiful, but the one with Apollo and the oracle is so lifelike. Sort of. What do you think?” Within seconds, he’d gone from confident verdict-maker to indecisive buffoon in flip-flops. He recovered enough to look grateful, and to keep his secret—that unless he had a gavel in his hand and a jury in front of him, he was unable to make a decision. “Either way, it’s great work,” he said. “I love them.”

“Good, I’m glad. I’ve been working on them so long, I was starting to hear dragons in my sleep,” Hans said, but at the sight of the indecisive Harold Stone, Hans felt a dull twinge in both his hands. But this was often how it started when he met flawed people—first he was intrigued, and then he cared, but he knew their stories invariably had a shitty ending, so now he rubbed the curiosity and Judge Stone out of his hands.

As it happened, Hans was right about Harold Stone, who knew what it was like to hear things in his sleep, although he’d spent a lifetime trying to forget it. It was exactly what Hans didn’t want to hear.

On a fateful August night thirty years ago, Harry Stone had awoken to the sound of footsteps on the stairway outside his bedroom. He recognized the movement as his father’s, and although he wondered why his father, clad in his work boots, would be up so late, he decided it must be nothing, and without weighing other options or thinking it through, he fell back asleep. The next morning, he awoke to his mother crying at the kitchen table, and in an instant, without ever having entertained the idea before then, he knew his father was never coming back.

The last words Harry said to his father should have been
Don’t leave us, we’re worth it
. Instead, they were
Pass the salt, please
at dinner. And so from that day forward, Harry Stone doubted himself whenever faced with any decision, big or small. His only respite from the constant state of fickleness was his courtroom, where he not only was decisive, but precise, consistent, and just.

Hans found Harold Stone staring into the cloudless Phoenix sky. “Sir?” he said. “You okay?”

Judge Stone, standing rock solid, looked around at his sprawling estate, threw his hands up, and said, “I’m great. How could I not be?” With the sun beating down on him, he peeled off his first layer, a Hawaiian shirt, exposing underneath a white T-shirt, crisp, pristine, and, for the moment, without blemish.

Lifting the first door, Hans said, “Let’s make your neighbors jealous.”

W
hile everyone else in Story’s office sat in their cubicles, pretending to work, Story decided to go off-task in a much more obvious way—by leaving. As she walked past her colleague Jeff, feigning work on his
New Baby
series, she said, “Let me save you some time, Jeff. Picture a cute, screaming baby along with this tag line: ‘When you’re ready to take it back, you know it’s really yours.’ Now, take the afternoon off.”

Without a word, he scribbled down what she’d said and left for lunch, as did Story. During her extended lunch, she planned on paying a visit to Martin Baxter in hopes that her tenacity would wear him down, and together, they’d come up with a plan to make Cooper forget how sad he was. She’d called the university pretending to be a textbook sales rep, and found out he had only a ten o’clock lecture today, and she was pretty sure he’d be at home by now, sulking.

She’d already been to his house, so she drove right to it, but this time she rang the doorbell. When he answered the door, Story said, “Hi, I talked with you earlier today—”

“I told you I couldn’t help you,” he said, shutting the door.

Story blocked the door with her foot. “See, that’s the thing. I think you
can
help me, and that’s why I brought this as a gesture of solidarity,” she said, lifting up a native Arizona cactus wrapped in cellophane and a ribbon, picked up at a floral shop on the way over. “It’s a cereus,” she said.

“I know what it—”

“I’m serious!” When he smiled, she knew she was as good as in. She touched the tip of one of its sharp spikes. “Thought it might be a good example of how to grow a spine. Plus, I couldn’t find a moonflower—obviously—and this was the cheapest nocturnal plant they had.”

“You did your homework,” Martin said. “Maybe you’re not a bad reporter after all.”

Story winked at him. “I think we both know I’m not a reporter.”

“Well, you’re much too friendly to be a reviewer, and way too available to be a publisher, so I’m stumped.”

“Invite me in for a quick chat, and then I’ll leave you to your stamen.” She stared at Martin Baxter, still blocking the door. “That’s the male part, right?” When he nodded, she said, “What’s mine called?”

He wasn’t sure if he should laugh or call the cops. “If you’re referring to the female reproductive part of a flower, that’d be the pistil.”

“
Pissed still
. A scorned man named it that, didn’t he?” Story looked at her watch. “Come on now, invite a pistol in for a shot of bourbon already.”