Wallflower j-3
Page 16
Diana's barely twenty-five. I hate to lose her, but she's entitled to a future. I talked to her this morning. She refers to the 'old me who did that very bad thing' and how, though she knows that 'old me' was definitely her, and wouldn't dream of not taking responsibility for her actions, she feels emotionally disassociated from the person she used to be and thoroughly incapable of doing what she knows she did.
Thanks to you, Bev, she's practically cured! And I thought I'd never see the day. Anyway, you know that people who kill close family members are almost never dangerous to anybody else."
Ha! That's what you think, twerp!
Carl turns slowly toward you again, places his hands ceremoniously on his desk. "Look, she's your case. Whatever you decide I'll back you up. But think about this: If you don't want to take on responsibility for ini ating a release, and be 1 ve me, I can un(erstan w you might not, I'll be happy, with your consent, to take that upon myself. Believe me, Bev, every shrink on staff will join the cause." Carl's eyes dance merrily in their sockets.
Remember what she was like that first time? Young Murderess Ready to Strike. She had the killer eyes, the kind you'd seen so often in sociopaths, the fear and hatred raging to get out. Those kinds of eyes tell you there's no compassion, no identification with another human's pain. You have those very eyes yourself sometimes but never show them to the world. They're turned inward, and over the years you've worked up a mask so you can play the healer and make the troubled girlies think you care about their wearisome anorexia or tedious bulimia attacks.
She, Diana, Tool-to-be, had the true killer's glow and, fairly rare in combination with that, a deep, deep need to submit. She was a storm trooper waiting impatiently for orders, a gladiator frothing at the mouth to fight. She craved authority, a coach, a savior, and as she met your eyes, she knew you would be the one to give structure to her rage, focus it down until it became a pure blue torch point of fire.
How could you both tell so much from just a glance? Because you'd been looking for each other all your lives. You'd been rummaging for years in prisons and mental hospitals, searching always for a certain look, and Diana had been seeking you, too, even though she didn't know she had. So when you walked into that little room, she saw in you the governess of her dreams, and you saw in her a fine young ward who would help you balance up all your old accounts. It was, as,they say, love at first blush.
"They're calling you little murderess around the hospital," you told her, speaking passionately and looking straight into the little murderess's killer eyes., "They're frightened of you. they think you're dangerous. they say I'm a fool to sit down in here with you alone. But I am not afraid, Diana. I know you won't harm me. I understand why you did what you did, and I'm going to say this to you now, before you even speak a word: You were right to kill them, and you oughtn't to be,feeling any guilt over it. None! None at all! they abused you and by doing so brought everything that happened upon themselves. Mother, grandmother, sister-are you supposed to bear unendurable suffering just because it comes from your blood relations?
Everyone's got murderous feelings toward family members, but few have got the guts to take up an ax and pay them back. You're different.
You have got the guts. So whatever happens between us now, Diana, I want you to know how much I respect you for your bravery."
Having made your passionate personal statement, you assumed a cooler, more professional demeanor. "Now listen carefully, we're going to be working together. I'm going to be your doctor and help make you well. After I prove to you that what you did was right, we're going to take a good hard look together at who you are and what you ought to be. You have a whole lifetime ahead of you, Diana. In a few years, when you're ready, I'll get you released, and then I'll show you how to realize your potential. I'm going to help you first by building you up, making you feel strong and confident.
Now tell mewhat do you feel about what I've just said? Tell me your true feelings. I want to hear." The girl started to sob almost at once. You hugged her to you and urged her to weep on.
"It's okay. Let it out. Cry it all out of yourself. Clean yourself out with the tears, Diana. You'll feel better afterwards, I promise… 11 In the end, after the weeping gave way to sporadic little moans and sobs, she spoke the golden words you'd been waiting for: "I feel at last "Go on, my dear."
"I've met-"
"Yes. Tell me, who've you met?"
"Finally someone-"
"Yes, go on." ,-who understands me. Really does."
"You believe that?"
"Oh, yes." She nodded shyly. "I do."
You immediately hugged her to you again, then gently rocked her in your arms. "That's right, Diana. You have, you have, sweet girl."
And it was true! You did understand her! You truly, truly did!
The method was to envelop her in an alternate reality, a fictive world of your own creation existing parallel to the so-called real world, yet which to an outside observer would appear the same. to Diana, however, confined within your web, every so-called normal value would be subverted. Purposes, motives, principles, matters of morality and personal honor-in your alternate world such things would not have the same meanings as they did outside.
She's down there now in her dank little hole of a room in the basement, dreaming through her mission. She's imagining the feeling of popping the pin into the posterior of some unsuspecting man, the way it'll sink so nicely into his cushy ass. And then his yelp, squeal, cry, little chirp of pain, and how she'll record it as she runs by and how the pitch'il change because she'll be in motion. You smile to yourself: The exercise, if questioned, could be construed as a practical demonstration of the Doppler effect.
You went to watch her work out at her dojo at Broadway and I 10th, a big hot, humid room on the second floor above a supermarket, where you were greeted by the deep-throated cries of zealous young fighters and the tangy aroma of their bodies at work.
Diana was in the first line with the best of them, energetically slashing at the air with her strong young arms. You loved the way Tool threw fast kicks and punches in unison with the others, mostly giant males. She looked so right among them, cute, too, in her white canvas gi jacket, white pants, and black obi. But you'd seen the backs of her hands after a workout, raw from hundreds of knuckle push-ups ordered by her instructor, and occasional marks, too, across her back from hits delivered with a bamboo stick, penalties for poorly executed exercises or that obscure and thus endlessly punishable offense of the dojo, insufficient respect.
There was another girl in the class that afternoon who caught your interest, reminding you of someone from your past. She had blond hair cut into a wedge, beautifully tanned skin, and a smile that lit up her entire face as she punched and kicked the air. You watched her carefully during combat exercises. She easily overpowered her opponents. She was taller than Diana, though just as perfectly proportioned, and her eyes were entirely different. While Diana had cold killer's eyes, this girl's eyes blazed clear gray like a warrior's.
And while Diana had been trained to sneak attack her targets from behind, this girl was the sort to approach hers from the front in fair, refereed competitions.
That evening, as you ministered to Diana's bleeding knuckles, you asked her the other girl's name.
"Oh, you must mean Jess," Diana said. "Sensei says she's the best fighter in the class."
Remember Bertha Parce, Mama? That old mean bag of a bitch English teacher at Ashley-Bumett? Yes, that one, who enjoyed making fun of certain selected kids in front of all the others. Remember the time I told you about when she read a story of mine aloud to the entire class? The story I wrote about you, Mama, the true one about your opening night at the Fairmount Club Lounge, when Millie and I hid in back of the curtain behind the orchestra and you belted out those great Porter tunes, "You're the Top," "I Get a Kick Out of You," "I've Got You Under My Skin," and the crowd went wild. "More! More!" they shouted, and you grinned and belted out a couple more: "Let's Do It,"
"So in Love," and, as your final encore, "Another Op'nin'; Another Show." Even then they clapped and howled and begged for more. God!
Do you remember?
I wrote my story about that night, and everything I felt during it, the way my heart brimmed with pride in you, Mama, standing out there in your glittering sequintrimmed crimson strapless, knocking all those fancy folks for a loop. And then how you brought me and Millie out. "I want you all to meet my two girls," you announced. "It's way past their bedtimes, but they wanted to be here to see if their old ma could really sing." And the crowd went berserk again! I remember one fat old man in particular, with slicked-back gray hair, who stood and clapped until the rest of them followed suit. And then some bosomy lady yelled, "Bravo! Bravo!" and you glowed, Mama, you positively lit up electric in the smoky, booze-scented dark of the lounge.
That's what I wrote about, and the grip of little Millie's hand in mine, and the swelling up I felt inside, the warmth of my pride in people knowing I was your daughter. I wrote, too, about how, late that night back home, you came into my room to tuck me in and how you smelled, the faint scent of perfume on your skin, the remnants of powder on your cheeks, and the glow on you still, the glow that comes from being applauded, and the aliveness of you, the pulsing energy, the power I felt when you reached down and grasped me in your arms. I wrote about how I fell asleep remembering the applause, listening to it echo, and how, just before I slept, I whispered four words to myself. I think you know them, Marna. "A star is born" is what I whispered.
And I wrote how I smiled then and fell asleep and how I thought that was the happiest, proudest, most sublime night of my entire life, Mama, and I wrote about it that way, too, trying to capture the special quality of its magic.
A week later I was positively thrilled when Miss Parce announced she was going to read my story aloud in class. Except she had barely read a couple of paragraphs when I realized what she was trying to do. She read it in this mean, sarcastic way, and soon, sure enough, she had the other girls tittering, smirking, glancing at one another, and rolling eyes. And then, caught up in the spirit of the thing, she broadened her satiric attack, making funny little faces while relentlessly decimating my story, assassinating my every line, until finally all my words lay shattered and broken on the floor.
When she was finished, when there was nothing left of what I wrote except the sporadic tittering in the back of the room, she looked straight at me, eyes glowing, and said: "Tell us one thing please, Beverly: Is there a single line in this entire tale in which there resides one tiny particle of truth?"
I stared back at her uncomprehending, too stupefied to reply. The classroom went silent. You could hear a pin drop, as they say.
"Well, dear?" she asked, and, when I still didn't answer: "What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?"
She stared cold stone hard at me, her black pupils tightened down to points. And then she smirked. I wanted to speak. I wanted to cry out, beg her to stop staring at me. But I couldn't; I was too humiliated. And still, the mean old witch would not relent. She kept staring, and then her mouth turned cruel, and she dabbed her tongue to her lips like a snake readying to strike and said: "I've heard your mother actually does sing in nightclubs. Is that correct, my dear?"
I must have nodded faintly, for she went on. "Well, I must say that is a unique occupation for a mother. And I'm sure she does very well at it, too. But Beverly"-and here her voice turned false-friendly"there are things we write about when the assignment is 'Describe a sublime moment in your life' and there are things we don't write about, we don't even mention in polite conversation. I would have hoped you understood that."
With that the old witch wrote a great big F in red ink across the front page of my story, then daintily placed it facedown on her desk.
The girls in back had gone quiet again. And at just that moment (and she could have timed it so perfectly only by design) the bell rang to announce the end of class. The others shuffled out of the room in mortified silence, leaving me and the bitch alone. I began to cry. Miss Parce smiled at me and, in the phony manner of a wise, friendly teacher, said: "Now, now, my dear, no need to weep, I'm sure. – ."
As I sat there choking on my tears, I knew, Mama, that I would pay her back one day. Yes, Mama, I knew I would live to see her dead, mutilated, too, if I could manage it. But most importaht@ead! dead! dead!
Listening to the tape Diana brought back from Central Park, feeling her excitement rise at the sound of Diana's running feet, Tool's "uh!" as she plunged in the pin, the delicious squeal of the jogger victim, his "yeeeeeow!" as he was stuck, then his curses receding in the distance as Diana's feet hit dirt when she dodged off the running path and into the woods, Beverly knew she would always want Diana to bring back something from her missions.
It was only later, upon her realization that the quick kills Diana would be making would preclude the possibility of recording her quarries' cties of pain, that she evolved the notion of trophies. She wanted always to have something, some object taken from the Scenes of Bloodletting, to touch, caress, and hold. It would give immediacy to Diana's reports, and perhaps most important, it could be offered up to Mama on the wall.
Mama told her: "Truly now, dear, in your training of Diana, you've found your true vocation. I think at heart you were always a behaviorist hiding in an analytic therapist's cloak. Rewards and punishments, increasingly complex tests of obedience-these are the only ways to dominate and compel. Certainly the progress you've made with the lynx proves the efficacy of your approach. My God, Bev, take a look, will you, at the incredible little tool you have wrought!"
The vigorous training workouts-long, slow, loping jogs along the bridle paths of Central Park; short, sharp wind sprints along the East River esplanade; huffing and puffing calisthenic sessions on the cold basement floor of the house; sweaty muscle building on the Nautilus machines at the Eight-sixth Street Health Club; harsh, exhausting martial arts training at the West Side dojo; the special intensive ten-day commando course in Boulder, Colorado; endurance exercises; obedience tests; ice pick attack drills performed against straw dummies in your holiest of holies, your bedchamber-all were carefully designed to build strength and speed, refine coordination, increase response time, restore vigor in the face of fatigue, and, most important, inspire a yearning to kill.
Once the craving was instilled, the obsession would build, and once the obsession was implanted, the command to execute would be ardently obeyed. "It's all in the preparation," Mama told you. "The long, hard months of training will pay off," she said, "in the swift split seconds of attack." But since the kills will be so very swift, you and Tool must receive gratification some other way. Perhaps through slow rituals performed afterward upon the cadavers, rituals of vengeance by which your rage will be satiated and the humiliations you endured will be many times repaid. "Remember, Bev," Mama said,
"it's not sufficient to settle your old accounts at par value. Too many years have passed; the interest has built up and by now far exceeds the original charges entered in your ledger."
Diana Proctor stands poised in a corner of the cellar, sleek and slinky in her black cotton bodysuit. Two specially designed holsters, each containing an ice pick, are strapped to her forearms. Across the room a scrawny tiger cat, abducted from the street, prowls around a plastic dish of kitty tuna bits.
Beverly studies the human lynx, breathing slowly, deeply, awaiting her order. Finally Beverly decides it's time.
"Kill it," she orders.
Diana doesn't move. Beverly approaches the girl, then slaps her hard, smack!, across her face.
Diana, eyes front, lips trembling, receives the blow as her due. Beverly watches as the pale skin of the lynx's cheek turns pink, then red from the impact. Both understand the meaning of this chastisement. Delay and/or squeamishness will not be tolerated.
T@
"Kill! Kill the cat!" Beverly whispers her command, and this time an admonished Diana instantly obeys.
"Clean up the mess; deposit it in a trash can on the avenue; then report to me in my bedroom," Beverly orders. "I have a choice new punishment in mind for you, my dear. One that will, I'm sure, instill a greater eagerness to obey." Diana, braced, nods acceptance of this directive. As Beverly turns, she smiles quietly to herself.
The little lynx can't wait. She loves correction. She'll be lubricating like crazy by the time she mounts the stairs.
You told Tool to befriend the girl named Jess, the lovely, strong, brave gladiator at the dojo. You had in mind a kind of recruitment but naturally never mentioned your intentions.
After Tool flew down to Florida, slew Bertha Parce, and brought back your trophy, a hair curler found in a funny bright blue plastic box beside the old schoolmarm's bed, you quizzed her endlessly about the gluing of the bitch's vagina, what it felt like to stather in the gooey stuff, then squeeze the labia majora shut.
"Did she smell down there?" you inquired, grinning. "Like a rotten old fish, I bet," you added, pinching your nostrils with disgust. Your delighted interest in the aromatic dimension most definitely spurred Diana on. She described everything, as she'd been trained to do, in the most exhaustive detail. And you relished every word, for that was the bliss-the imagining of it, the reconstruction, the obsessive staging and restaging of the execution. Your recreations, fueled by Diana's reportage, gave you more pleasure, you were certain, than anything you might have felt had you gone down there and done the wonderful deed yourself. Your imagination, embellishing powerfully upon the details Diana provided, could create scenes far more intense than what had actually taken place.