The Revelation of Beatrice Darby

by Jean Copeland

  “Beatrice?” the gentle voice called out.

  She looked up at Father Sheridan waving her over from the side of the altar. She got up and followed him into the rectory, plunking down in a chair in front of his desk.

  “You must be very troubled today.” He folded his hands on the desk blotter.

  “Wow. It’s amazing how your powers tell you these things before anyone even opens their mouths.”

  He smiled easily, his young, rugged face a contrast to his cleric’s collar. “It’s not divine intervention. I just know kids don’t come in here this early in the morning unless something is weighing heavily on their minds.”

  “I’m still having those feelings for my best friend, Father. Last night when she told me my brother proposed to her, and she said ‘yes,’ I cried and cried until I ran out of tears. I really thought I’d have a nervous breakdown.”

  “How have you been doing with your prayers?”

  She sighed heavily. “To be honest, not very good. I mean I do pray, but nothing ever changes, so then I’ll say to myself, ‘what’s the use’ and go days, weeks even, without praying or thinking of God.”

  She bowed her head, waiting for the judgmental tone she had been conditioned to expect in confessional with other clergy. But Father Sheridan only exhaled lightly through his nose.

  “I can imagine how frustrating this must be for you.”

  She looked up from her lap. “You can?”

  “Of course. It’s the dilemma of many a good Catholic. You pray and pray in earnest for something you need to happen, and when it doesn’t, it’s very tempting to want to give up.”

  “I feel like God doesn’t care about me.”

  “I can understand that, too, but He does, that much I know. Faith requires patience, Beatrice. You may not have gotten the results you want from prayer, but right now God is doing for you what you need, not what you want.”

  “Is He going to make these feelings go away?”

  He reclined his chair and lightly drummed his fingers on the armrest. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” His response agitated Beatrice. “But that other priest I talked to a few times in confession said He would if I prayed hard enough. I’ve prayed as hard as I know how to, and I’m still this way.” Suddenly, she broke into tears. “What’s wrong with me?”

  Father Sheridan let her cry for a moment. “Beatrice, have you ever thought that if this is the way you are, it’s the way God made you?”

  “Huh?” she asked through sniffles.

  “You’re not a mistake. I don’t know why God makes people homosexual, but the fact remains that He does.” He paused and lowered his voice. “Look, I may sound like a heretic, but that’s my belief. I also believe some homosexuals can live happy lives.”

  “How?”

  “They find others like themselves, and if they’re lucky enough to find that special someone, I suppose they can be content.”

  Beatrice tilted her head to the side. “Are you saying it’s okay to be queer?”

  “No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying that God has His reasons for everything, reasons we can never understand here in the physical world.”

  “Father, I don’t mean to tell you your business, but aren’t you contradicting the Bible?”

  He folded his hands over his stomach. “I know what it says in the Bible about homosexuality. I also know it says it was okay to sell your daughter for livestock. My point is, in the modern world it’s unrealistic to expect even the most faithful to follow the scripture down to the letter.”

  She paused for a moment to digest Father Sheridan’s suggestion.

  “I don’t want to be queer. I don’t want to be different from everyone else. What if everyone rejects me because I disgust or embarrass them? I just want to be normal.” She glanced out into the gray morning, sucking in her cheeks against her tears.

  “I’m going to give you the name of an analyst I think you should talk to.”

  Beatrice picked her head up. “Analyst? You mean a shrink?”

  “Psychiatrist. Some people find analysis very beneficial, especially in cases like yours.”

  Fantastic. She’d gone from sinner to insane in a matter of ten minutes talking with Father Sheridan.

  “Do you think I’m crazy?”

  “No, Beatrice, I don’t think you’re crazy. I think you’re upset and confused, and if prayer alone isn’t working for you, perhaps speaking with a psychiatric professional will help you put things in perspective. Some people in situations like yours have even been known to change the way they think after several sessions with a good doctor.”

  “So then you’re saying I should change?”

  Father Sheridan smiled patiently. “I’m saying you should get another point of view.”

  As he scribbled down a name and phone number from his Rolodex, Beatrice gazed out at the gray formless sky, contemplating the implications of her latest counsel with Father Sheridan. Maybe she was crazy. She’d certainly reacted like a madwoman toward Gwen last night. Perhaps a visit to a shrink could help. After all, Freud thought everyone’s problems stemmed from toilet training and ids and egos. Maybe all she needed was a doctor to help identify the damage caused sometime in her childhood. Then she would be able to change. A small sense of relief welled in her heart. How freeing it would be not to feel the constant pressure to keep such a dark secret hidden from the world.

  Father Sheridan stood and handed her a folded slip of paper. “Give Doctor Stenquist a call, and then let me know how you make out.”

  “Thank you, Father,” she said, and reached for the door.

  “Beatrice.”

  She stopped and turned to him.

  “God didn’t give up on you. Promise me you won’t give up on Him.”

  “I won’t,” she said with a meek smile.

  She folded the paper even smaller and stuffed it in her coat pocket as she left the chapel. When she opened the door, the blast of cold air refreshed her senses for the psychology class to which she was about to be late.

  *

  For the first half of the lecture on treatments for various debilitating psychiatric disorders and the criminally insane, Beatrice’s mind floated through myriads of abstractions about life, faith, God, and love. In the end, the only idea that made any sense was the way she felt about Gwen, and Abby, years earlier. But like it or not, she had to accept the fact that her brother was going to marry Gwen.

  As Professor Hawley droned about what drove homicidal maniacs like Leopold and Loeb to murder for no apparent reason, Beatrice entertained possible scenarios that would involve Quentin’s mysterious disappearance. Of course, she didn’t want any harm to come to her brother—just something simple like waking up in Amish country with a nasty case of amnesia that would last about twenty years.

  She emerged from her fantasy when Hawley flipped off the lights and started the reel-to-reel projector to show a documentary about electroshock therapy. She slunk down in her seat watching the ghastly images as the narrator spoke in a calm, clinical tone. After the female patient’s wrists, head, and ankles were secured to the gurney with thick leather straps and a bit wedged into her mouth, her eyes darted wildly at the cluster of white-coated bodies surrounding her.

  Beatrice squirmed at the woman’s helplessness and how her treatment appeared more like a medieval punishment for being sick than a remedy. Her hands trembled as she pictured herself in the film strapped to the table after months of sessions with the good Dr. Stenquist had yielded no change in her thoughts. When the patient on the screen convulsed in a wave of electrical current, Beatrice closed her eyes tightly, peeking out of her left one once the awful buzzing noise subsided.

  “Often several administrations of electricity in separate intervals are required to produce the desired effect in the patient,” the narrator said as another jolt rippled through a different wretched woman.

  Beatrice lifted her three-ring binder in front of her face.

&nb
sp; “Put that down, Bea,” her classmate, Bobby, whispered. “You’re gonna miss the best part: lobotomies.”

  “What’s that?” she whispered from behind the notebook.

  “It’s when they go in through your eye socket and drill holes in the front of your brain,” he said excitedly. “It’s way out.”

  “Why on earth would they have to do that?”

  “It’s for the real nut cases when even the shock treatments fail.”

  “That’s horrible,” Beatrice said. “Does it help? What happens to the people after?”

  “They usually end up locked away in an institution anyway.”

  “Oh God,” she muttered, wiping perspiration from her forehead. “I don’t think I can watch anymore of this.”

  Bobby shook his head. “This is exactly why girls should never be doctors.”

  “You mean executioners. Save me the notes, huh?”

  She gathered her things and made her escape out the back of the lecture hall.

  *

  Later that evening, Beatrice surprised Gwen with a culinary treat even more intriguing than the Sloppy Joe. Visions of a future sporting a snug-fitting white jacket in a padded room gave her a sharper perspective on her situation than even Dr. Freud himself could have.

  “Wow, what’s all this?” Gwen asked as she came in from an early evening trig class.

  “It’s a combination celebration and apology dinner.” Beatrice smiled brightly as she presented two steaming, foiled-covered trays from their electric hot plate. “Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and corn. Hope you’re hungry.”

  “I’m starved,” Gwen said as she sat on her bed in front of a television tray. “Is this one of those TV dinners?”

  Beatrice nodded proudly. “A revolution in fine dining without ever having to leave the comfort of your own home. It would be even better if we had a TV instead of a radio.”

  “It’s perfect just like this,” Gwen said as she tore at the foil. “Bea, you didn’t have to go to all this trouble.”

  “It’s no trouble, and yes, I did. I still feel terrible about the mood I was in last night.”

  Gwen smiled. “Well, this wasn’t necessary, but I sure appreciate it.”

  Beatrice sat on her bed and removed the foil from her meal. “My pleasure, sis.”

  “Sis,” Gwen exclaimed. “Oh, I love it.”

  Beatrice smiled and bit into her fried chicken breast, concluding that the flutter of butterflies in her stomach Gwen still gave her was a lot easier to handle than a thousand watts of electricity zapping her cranium.

  Chapter Eight

  Two months after graduating summa cum laude from Salve Regina, things weren’t exactly going according to Beatrice’s meticulously drafted life plan. She tugged at her tight, scratchy chiffon maid-of-honor’s dress with one hand while blotting the sweat in her cleavage with a balled-up tissue. She wobbled over the grass in a pair of misogynistic heels to the shade of one of several tents set up at the Ridgeways’ summer home—a sprawling Newport estate on which Fitzgerald could have easily set The Great Gatsby.

  She guzzled another glass of Dom Perignon as her dearest friend and her brother gently smeared blobs of French truffle wedding cake across each other’s lips, laughing in the July sun. By this stage in the day, Beatrice had seen enough. She was light-headed, and her jaw ached from grinding her teeth nearly to dust every time they touched.

  “Another glass of champagne, Bea?” her mother asked. “Maybe if you’d eaten your filet mignon you wouldn’t look so green.” She handed her a cocktail dish heaped with liver pâté and Melba toast.

  “Thanks, Mother, but I can assure you, it’s not the bubbly making me sick.”

  “Look around, Bea,” her mother said, clueless to her daughter’s agony. She devoured the opulence with famished eyes and quickly glanced in her purse to check on the lobster-puff pastry wrapped in a napkin. “Such a shame you didn’t meet a nice young man at college, too. If you’d put forth more of an effort, perhaps we could’ve all been gathered in a place like this today for you instead of Gwen.”

  “I’m sure this is just a minor detail, but Quentin didn’t even finish college. Shouldn’t Gwen’s parents be sobbing into their golden goblets right now?”

  Mrs. Darby was ready on the draw. “Quentin is an exception. He’s so brilliant and such a dedicated company man, he’ll be an excellent provider for Gwen.”

  “Gwen doesn’t need a provider. She’s got a bachelor’s degree.”

  “That’s all well and good, but unless it’s in homemaking and child-rearing, I’m afraid it won’t be very useful.”

  “You and your Puritanical notions,” Beatrice said, shaking her head. “Women can actually do other things besides raise kids and bake pies.”

  “Well, of course they can. I know that. I’m not from the Stone Age. Once her kids are off to college, Gwen can do anything she wants with that degree.”

  Beatrice rolled her eyes. “You act like it’s the law that a woman has to get married and have kids.”

  “It’s the natural law. Who’s going to do it if women don’t?”

  “Then I guess it’s a darn good thing New York University accepted me into their master’s program so I can continue the great husband hunt.”

  “I hope you’ll take this a little more seriously on your next go-round. You’re almost twenty-two, dear. You’re going to blink your eyes one day and be thirty years old and still without a husband. Then what will become of you? I’m not getting any younger. I can’t take care of you forever.”

  “I don’t need you or a man to take care of me. I’ll be able to provide for myself.”

  Her mother pursed her lips and peeked in at the pastry again. “Now I know you’ve been in the sun too long.”

  “I don’t think this is the time or place to be arguing about this.”

  Her mother adjusted the drooping lily over Beatrice’s ear. “Oh, Beatrice, I don’t want to argue at all. You look so lovely today. Maybe if you could keep yourself this feminine all the time you could attract a decent man.”

  “What do you suggest? I parade around in a maid-of-honor’s dress every day?”

  “Honestly, Bea.”

  Her mother scoffed and wandered off to mingle among the upper crust who on any other day would have mistaken her for the help.

  *

  As the sun hovered high over the estate, Beatrice stood in the shady refuge of a beech tree watching well-coiffed women and overdressed men move under the wedding-reception tents. Never mind that they were all cutouts of a social culture she would never be part of—nor cared to—but nearly everyone in attendance was paired off with someone of the opposite sex. Nearly everyone had a date, except for her and the children who were in the wedding party. She half-smiled as the frisky little ring-bearer chased the flower girl who wailed for him to let her alone.

  “Stand your ground, Sally,” Beatrice muttered as she licked pâté off a cracker, grimaced, and spit it on the grass.

  Quentin approached her from behind. “Why are you all the way over here by yourself?”

  She fixed her gaze on the blinding reflection off the Atlantic. “I needed to cool off. It’s too hot over there.”

  “How about joining the party? My best man needs someone else to dance with.”

  “I wasn’t aware I was on call. A dime a dance? No, thanks.”

  “Jeez, Bea, lighten up, will you? We’re supposed to be dancing and having fun. This is a wedding reception, not an execution walk.”

  “Cousin Nancy will be happy to dance with him, I’m sure.”

  Quentin raised his eyebrows. “Maybe after she’s completed all her shock treatments.”

  “You’re terrible,” she said casually.

  “Hey, when someone goes out of their way to be an oddball, they shouldn’t be surprised when people notice. Come on. You can’t be having any fun by yourself.”

  “I’m a writer. We like to lurk in the shadows and observe.”

  Quentin
shook his head. “You writers are weird. But I have to say, you look beautiful today, like a girl for a change.”

  She tossed the cracker away like a Frisbee. “Thanks.”

  “No, I mean it. You look very nice, feminine.”

  Beatrice crossed her arms and watched waves foam as they crashed into shore.

  “Does this mean you’re out of that phase?” he asked sincerely.

  She broke her gaze on the ocean for a moment to look him square in the eye. “What phase is that, Quent?”

  “Never mind. Let’s go.”

  He tried to pull her by the arm, but she jerked it to her side.

  “Look, what’s your problem, Bea? If you’re not happy for your own brother, can’t you at least be happy for your best friend?”

  “I know how you are with girls, Quentin. Happy isn’t exactly the word I’d use to describe how I feel about Gwen marrying you.”

  “So I played the field a little in my younger days. Big deal. I love Gwen. I’ll be a good husband. I know how to resist temptation, unlike some people I know.”

  She wheeled around to face him. “If you hurt her, Quentin, I will kill you.”

  He studied her like an abstract painting. “What, do you have a thing for her or something?”

  She looked away, refusing to give him the satisfaction of reading the answer in her eyes.

  “That’s it, isn’t it? Boy, that explains everything.”

  “As usual, you have no idea what you’re talking about, so fuck off, all right?”