Save Johanna!

by Francine Pascal

  Chapter Twenty

  I arrive at the cottage in the last minutes of daylight, emotionally wrung out and exhausted from a very long and painful day that started this morning in Wyn’s office and ended with my running away. All the way out in the car I fight a torrent of emotions that threatens to overwhelm me with guilt and despair. Coming out here was rash; I hope I haven’t done wrong.

  The cottage is three hours from New York, out in the middle of nowhere, on the north fork of Long Island. It’s perfect for privacy, separated from its nearest neighbor by more than a hundred yards and almost totally hidden from the road by massive rhododendron bushes and thick stands of pine and blue spruce.

  Anne wasn’t exaggerating about the furniture. The living room is totally empty. There’re a bed and a dresser in the bedroom and a small table and three chairs in the kitchen. Except for a couple of lamps, that’s it for the whole house. The first thing I do is move the table and one chair into the living room. That gives me a good working office with no distractions.

  On the drive out I passed through the town of Southhold and stopped at a grocery and a liquor store to pick up some supplies. Enough to hold me for at least a week. I don’t want to waste precious time running back and forth to town.

  By 10 p.m. I’m settled in and ready for work, but the house has gotten a little chilly. Fortunately there was a good-sized pile of logs in the backyard, and I’d brought in a couple. Now I’m able to put together a tolerable fire, and in a few minutes the tiny living room is warm and comfortable.

  Being out here alone should be good for me. With nobody leaning over my shoulder, telling me how to run my life, criticizing me, making demands and suggestions, it’s down to the essentials— Avrum and me with no apologies to anyone.

  I open a bottle of red wine and pour myself a glass. Since I arrived I’ve been too busy getting organized to do much thinking, and that’s helped keep out the demons that seem always poised on the edge of my mind, ready to pounce. The wine helps stave them off, and so does the weed. They work almost symbiotically, the wine giving me a pleasant buzz and making everything feel deep red and luscious, and the weed suffusing it all with a comforting haze. Now add to that the warmth of the fire, its long orange and blue tongues of flame licking at the hickory wood and turning the room pungent with fragrance. All this conspiring to protect me from the cold and bitter assaults of the day.

  I must have drifted off to sleep because the next thing I know I’m rolled up in a shivering knot on the floor in front of an almost completely burned-out fire. Foolishly I didn’t bring in any extra logs, and now it’s too cold and dark to go hunting around the unfamiliar backyard for more.

  The clock on the stove says twenty after two. If that’s right I’ve slept nearly four hours, and, with so little time to spare, I must get right to work.

  I set up my computer, put on my heavy Irish sweater, and get a small wool blanket off the bed to wrap around my legs. Earlier, when the fire was burning, the room seemed cozy, but now, with only the thin light of one pole lamp accentuating the empty spaces where furniture once stood and pictures hung, the room is bare and ugly.

  A perfect setting for the chapter I’ve been working on. In it Avrum reveals a maniacal scheme that will satisfy both his hunger for revenge and his pathological racial paranoia. He plans to commit a heinous crime and make it look like the work of black terrorists, prematurely exposing the black revolution he’s convinced has been secretly spawning for years. At the same time, provoking massive white retaliation that will overwhelm the blacks and crush the budding rebellion.

  Somehow, sometime, somewhere in that vast underground network of information the name of Avrum Maheely will become known as the man who saved the soul of white America.

  Despite the grandeur and madness of his plan, not one of his followers questions him. In true blind dedication they want only to know when and how.

  Sometimes I wish I hadn’t used their real names, even though this is only the first draft and I will change them in later drafts. Still, it gives them all too strong a reality, especially Avrum. So much of his real person has infiltrated the character that keeping him fictional in my mind has become difficult.

  When I first started researching this project, I was the fascinated but removed observer. Then, as I began to write, I became the puppeteer pulling the strings, allowing the characters their own internal growth but, nonetheless, always in control. Now I’m so deeply involved I sometimes feel the characters no longer step to my strings but to their own. Indeed, so effortlessly do they move across the mindscapes of my imagination that, far from being pleased, I’m often increasingly disturbed. Certainly I am treating this book differently from all my previous writing projects.

  For example, I’ve never before been so secretive about my work. At home I kept the manuscript hidden. David hasn’t seen one word of it yet. No one has. Even the idea of revealing it to my editor makes me intensely uncomfortable. And, too, I am not unaware of the changes my life has undergone in the last few months. Before that it was relatively quiet and controlled, moving along in a well-thought-out direction, and then? Avrum and the book? David and the wedding? My sister? My memories? Or a collision of all of them causing an earthquake of emotions that’s rocking my very core. Maybe David is right. Maybe I can’t handle them. Take away the Valium, the Oxycontin, the weed, the wine, whatever holds me up, and I might crumble.

  Wyn says I have to turn and look my problems in the face. Stare them down and make them go away forever. The key to that is Sephra. She’s the only one who can tell me what’s tearing at my soul. But I’m so damned frightened of knowing.

  Time moves in giant steps—great strides of daytimes and nighttimes. Full days pass as chapters. Words grow and pages mount. The book alone is supreme. Any outside pressures that threaten it meet an army of Oxycontin and Valiums. I let nothing interfere. I keep myself free of any world but Avrum’s, now that I’m so close to the end.

  How could both bottles be almost empty? Two Oxycontin in one and five Valium in the other. That’s impossible. I must have put them someplace else.

  I hunt through the house for them; my legs are stiff and clumsy from sitting so long at the computer.

  They have to be here. All I have to do is calm down and think carefully. But I can’t because I need something to calm me down. I take three Valium. I have to save the Oxycontin. I wait five, ten minutes, but nothing happens. I drink some wine. And then some more wine. I can’t allow myself to surface because they’re all up there waiting for me. All the terrors.

  I have to take one of the Oxycontin. They always work when I feel jumpy, but this time instead of taking me down they’re charging me up. My heart is starting to race and I’m beginning to fly. I don’t like it. I feel out of control and I don’t know how to regain it.

  I get up and walk around, back and forth, fast, walk it off. Maybe outside. No, I don’t want to go out there. It’s dark and I’m afraid. I wish I wasn’t alone. . . .

  I have no one to turn to. If I believed in God again I could bring all my misery to Him, and He would take it from me. I could trust Him the way Pinky trusts Avrum. How safe to be like Pinky. No one can get past Avrum to hurt her. Maybe I could have some of that safety. I would trust Pinky. We’re alike. We share a secret. The secret of Avrum.

  She would help me. I want to tell her that, to talk to her.

  I have her phone number in my book. In my suitcase.

  I haven’t unpacked yet so I have to push through all the clothes.

  Maybe I left some more Oxycontin in here, but when I pull everything out I don’t find any. But the phone book is at the bottom, and I get Pinky’s number.

  I dial, and a man’s polite voice answers and says he’ll get her for me.

  “Hello,” Pinky says.

  “Pinky. It’s Johanna Morgan.”

  “Johanna, it’s good to hear from you. Are you in San Francisco?”

  “No. I’m in New York.”

  “Y
ou sound strange. Is there something wrong?”

  “No. I’m just working hard.”

  “How is the book coming?”

  “It’s almost finished. That’s why I’m calling. I need some information, and only you can give it to me.”

  “Johanna, your voice sounds so weak. Are you sick?”

  Maybe I can’t trust her either.

  “I had the flu,” I tell her.

  “I can hear it in your voice.”

  “Avrum. I want to ask you more about Avrum.”

  “Maybe we should talk tomorrow when you’re feeling better.”

  I knew it. She’s trying to trick me, but I don’t let her. “I need the information now, Pinky. Can’t you spare the time?”

  “Sure, I just thought you sounded so awful.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “All right, Johanna. How can I help you?” She stops resisting, knowing that I’ve outsmarted her.

  “Tell me about Avrum.”

  “What would you like to know?”

  “You trusted him. He took care of you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he love you?”

  “Completely, as I loved him and love him now.”

  “What about the others? Did he love them too?”

  “That was the power of his love, that we could all share its fullness. You could too, Johanna, if you needed him.”

  I hold my temper at the insult. “Why would I have such a need?” I ask her.

  “I don’t know,” she says, and then pauses and asks, “Why do you?”

  Pinky is different now. I have to be extremely careful. “I don’t,” I tell her. “My only interest in Avrum Maheely is purely research. But I want to know about your need. How does he fill it?”

  “In every way,” she answers. And, like Imogene, tells me that he is present at this very moment in every part of her life.

  “Like God?” I suggest.

  “Godlike.”

  “What about the sexual experience? Was that Godlike too?”

  “There was a spiritual essence to it.”

  “I’ve heard Swat and Imogene describe him as a man of high sexual energy, but there was nothing spiritual about the sex they had with him. Why was it so different with you?”

  “I don’t know, but no one before had ever given the sexual act such significance.”

  “Be specific.”

  “Johanna, why are you so angry at me?”

  “Because you’re not telling me the truth! There was a fury and a hatred that ran through Avrum Maheely, and when it surfaced sexually it turned into an ugly power.”

  “You don’t understand Avrum, Johanna.”

  “Yes, I do. I know his kind of brutality.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “You were young and weak, and he bullied you.”

  “No, Johanna, it wasn’t that way at all.”

  “He took you when he wanted you. Could you have fought back?”

  “I had no reason to.”

  “You couldn’t. He would have overpowered you if you tried. He became every part of your life, inside and out and all around. I remember him. The power in his arms, he could hold you down, trap you under those heavy hands.”

  “Johanna, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  She’s lying to me, keeping her secrets from me. Imogene would have told me. She knows the feel of Avrum. Pinky pretends to be concerned about me, but I know she doesn’t want to tell me. She doesn’t want to share Avrum with me.

  “You want to keep him for yourself,” I tell her, but she doesn’t answer. Instead she changes the subject, asking me where I am, and I tell her because it doesn’t make any difference. Then she wants to know if I’m alone.

  “Yes,” I say, “I’m alone. And tired. I need sleep. Do you dream about him? Does he make love to you in your dreams?”

  But she won’t answer me, she keeps asking me meaningless questions to take me off the track. I can’t talk to her anymore. I hang up.

  And the instant I do I feel ashamed for all the awful things I said to her. How could I be so cruel? She tried to care about me. But I’m a worthless person. I hurt them all so much, David and Sephra and now Pinky. I can’t help it. I have to hide my shame from everyone. Or confess it.

  The pain of my mother comes back. So intense it takes up my whole head. I’ve got to get it out, but I can’t without Sephra. She won’t help me. She never did.

  But she has to now. I drink another glass of wine, and the spinning in my head starts to wind down. When it slows up enough I dial her number. She answers.

  “Sephra?” I say.

  “Johanna, is that you?”

  But the struggle to slip one word past the sobs choking my throat is so great that, like a fool, all I do is nod my head, yes.

  But Sephra doesn’t wait for an answer. “Are you all right?” she asks, and I can hear the alarm in her voice.

  “No,” I tell her, “I’m not. Help me . . . Sephra . . . please. . . .”

  “Oh, God,” she says in a voice aching with remorse, “it’s my fault.” And I hear the Sephra of long ago, of long before whatever happened sealed her off from me. And I feel comforted. I love her. “Johanna, forgive me. I should have helped you before. I was the only one who could have. . . . Oh, how selfish I’ve been.”

  “Help me now. . . .”

  “I will, little sister, I want to.”

  “Then tell me what happened.” My voice is strained, almost breaking. “Tell me about my mother. Tell me everything about that day. Why was she so furious with me? Sephra, what did I do that was so terrible?”

  “You didn’t do anything.”

  “But she was so angry at me.”

  “No, not at you. Oh, God, it’s so hard for me. . . .” I hear her inhaling deeply as she builds up her courage, and finally she finds the strength to speak, but instead of Sephra’s voice the sound is small, almost like that of a child.

  “It all started a week before my tenth birthday. My first birthday without my mother. She’d died eight months before, and I remember lying in bed that night and wondering what it would be like having a birthday without her. I remember feeling uneasy and a little afraid that somehow I wouldn’t know how to handle it by myself, and I wondered whether my father would even remember. I knew that if he didn’t I would never be bold enough to remind him. He was such a forbidding figure in my life, our father, the deep-set dark eyes, the sunken cheeks. The black cassock of his ministry that he was always wearing. And his voice, so deep, so powerful. To me, God Himself couldn’t have been more awesome.

  “We lived alone, just he and I in that huge Victorian house where everything was dark brown and maroon with heavy velvet drapes that kept out any sunlight. Sarah, a woman from the congregation, cleaned for us three times a week. She cooked for us too, heavy brown stews that clogged my throat, but she was a nice woman, and I looked forward to seeing her. She brought in a pleasant ordinariness that lightened some of the intensity of my world.

  “When we were alone, Father and I, we said very little. Though he was never in any way demonstrative toward me when my mother was alive, after she died it was as if he deliberately held himself apart from me. I was very lonely and missed her terribly.

  “That particular night, as I lay in my bed, I decided to make my birthday my secret day that I would share only with my mother. I remember turning on my side toward the far wall, happy with my decision and beginning to slip into sleep, when I felt something odd. I stared ahead at the wall, listening without moving, but I heard nothing. Then I saw what I had felt. Ahead of me, halfway up the wall, was the outline of a huge, wide shadow. It went all the way down to the bottom of the wall, broke and spread across the floor, then disappeared behind the foot of my bed. Fearing some storybook monster, I lay frozen. Then I heard my father’s breathing and felt his hand caress my hair and, like puppies do sometimes, I remember moving into it, wanting more. I needed the love so badly. . . .”

&nb
sp; Sephra’s silence seeps into the haze of my brain with a foreboding akin to nausea. I wait for her to continue.

  “But it wasn’t love, Johanna,” she says, and years of locked-in fury explode in her voice. “The hellfire and damnation he whipped his congregation with became mine. Nightly this pious leader, this monster demon, my own father came to my bed and with his black and hairy fingers unbuttoned my pajamas and as I lay stiff with horror abused my body and tore apart my soul.”

  Sephra, my older sister, the rock of my life, collapses into sobs as she curses out a two-year nightmare. And then her voice grows quiet and sad again. “I was just a little girl, Johanna, little as my Betsy, scared and ashamed, with no one to help me. Once I tried to tell Sarah, but when she realized what I was saying she turned on me and said that God would strike me dead if I ever made up another story like that again. I never said a word to anyone after that.

  “My only defense was to retreat deep inside myself, leaving the outside intact but dead. In school my teachers saw the change, but like everyone else they were too intimidated by Father’s position to interfere.

  “The torture lasted until I was twelve, the year he married your mother.

  “Johanna, I loved your mother right away. She was so good to me, and when you were born I loved you too.”

  “Sephra, I’m so sorry. I wish I had known. At least we could have shared the pain.”

  “Johanna,” she says, “there’s more.” Her very words signal a chill that shudders through my body. Black feelings that have terrorized me for years begin to well up, and I wait silently to hear what in some hidden place in my mind I already know.

  In a voice evened out by control she continues. “One afternoon we were home alone. You were about four and had just gotten over a very bad flu and were still in bed, recovering. I was at the kitchen table, reading a magazine, when I heard you crying. I remember grabbing a cookie for you as I left the kitchen. On the way up the stairs to your bedroom, I sensed your cry changing to a whimper, and I hurried on, thinking you must have hurt yourself.