Suddenly Saturday’s phone rang, making her jump.
Speak of the devil. Her mother.
She ignored it for the third time that day.
I have enough issues to deal with this afternoon. I don’t need another one.
She placed her phone in her purse, ran a hand through her loose locks, and adjusted the straps on her white maxi dress.
She touched the grain on the door, running her fingers over the small grooves before finally grabbing the doorknob and turning.
She met Mark’s eyes as soon as the door opened, her hazel gaze clashing with his bewildered one.
He was sitting on a cliché black leather couch, his dress casual and his jaw rigid as his lips stopped mid-sentence.
His jade eyes went wide upon seeing her face.
He didn’t expect me to actually show up.
When she stepped further into the room, a warm and grey-framed face greeted her.
Dr. Walt was facing Mark, but his stare was on her, his kind eyes wrinkling at the corners from the breadth of his smile.
“Saturday,” he greeted deeply, standing from his chair. “I’m so glad that you could join us.
“I’m Daniel Walt. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he resumed, extending a large hand to shake hers.
She grasped his hand, sheepishly, gesturing vaguely towards the door.
“I’m sorry for barging in like this,” she declared wincingly. “The secretary told me to come right in.”
“And she was right,” he responded. “I instructed her to do so. So, come in, come in,” he motioned. “Make yourself comfortable.”
Saturday nodded at his request and began to navigate her way around the large office while considering her options.
There was an open seat beside Mark on the couch to her right… and then there was a red armchair sitting directly to her left.
She chose the armchair, sitting quickly down and settling before she could change her mind.
She never turned to look at him, but she could feel the heat of Mark’s gaze on her skin. She shifted anxiously, looking expectantly at Dr. Walt, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Dr. Walt redirected his attention to Mark.
“Um, excuse me, Mark, but if you don’t mind… I’d actually like to speak to Saturday alone right now. You can go home now…and we’ll resume talking tomorrow, if that’s alright.”
Panic set in Saturday’s eyes and she stiffened with tension in her seat.
There goes that other shoe.
She didn’t have to look at Mark to tell that he was probably experiencing the very same thing.
He must have nodded because soon he was rising from the couch and striding quietly out of the front office door.
Saturday turned to watch his back before he disappeared. She didn’t know if she was relieved or dismayed to be alone now with Dr. Walt.
When she glanced back towards the doctor, his expression was grave.
From the green armchair in which he sat, Dr. Walt reached behind him to an oak desk, retrieving glasses from its surface.
He wiped them with his shirttail before proceeding to put them on and looking up at Saturday.
“Saturday…” he began. “I’m going to share some things with you about Mark… at his request. I believe that this route is probably best to establish some understanding between the two of you.
“He believed that it might be easier for you to hear this from me. And given what he’s told me about his dealings with you…” the doc hesitated. “…I’m more than inclined to agree with him.
“You see… Mark has had a fairly typical youth, punctuated with bouts of teen aggression and rebellion, but in some ways…he has allowed the ghosts of his past to haunt his future.”
Saturday’s breathing became shallower in anticipation of what was coming next. If she wrung her hands any harder, she was sure that a finger would come off.
“This is what he and I have been working on for almost a year now: working on not letting one’s past affect the present and future.
“Mark’s rebellion took a bit of a turn in his earlier teenage years, manifesting itself into a sort of… obsession that shaped his… uh… sexual… predilections.” He drew the words out haltingly, as if he weren’t quite sure he wanted to say them.
He was afraid, somehow: hesitant to share this information.
Saturday thought her heart was beating fast before; now it was playing the congas beneath her breast.
She swallowed thickly before asking her first question of the afternoon.
“What do you mean? What sort of…predilections?”
“Well, it seems that…”
BRRRINNNGG!!
Saturday’s phone was ringing again, making her entire purse vibrate in her armchair.
Embarrassed and unnerved, she grabbed for the phone, rushing to silence it.
Oddly enough, it was Kara calling.
What? Was there a meeting that I missed about calling my phone off of the hook today?
Saturday hit the mute button, apologetically turning to an expectant Dr. Walt.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I don’t know why I’ve been so popular today,” she nervously laughed.
Dr. Walt simply smiled. “It’s quite all right,” he answered. He cleared his throat. “Now, as I was saying…”
But Saturday’s phone was buzzing this time.
A text.
Saturday picked it up, frustrated. The text was from Kara… and it was urgent.
Kara:
Call me NOW!
Utterly confused, Saturday stood from her seat, throwing her purse over her shoulder.
“Would you excuse me for a quick moment?” she directed towards the doctor. “I have to make a phone call.”
He nodded understandingly. “Sure, sure.”
She pivoted quickly on her feet, taking quick steps towards the office door before finally exiting and closing it behind her.
She dialed Kara’s number and waited while the line started ringing.
Kara picked up on the second ring.
“Where have you been?! Your mom said she’s been calling you.”
Saturday gripped the phone tighter.
“What?” she answered. “I mean, yes…she has, but what does that matter? What’s going on?”
“Well, she called me, too… and that’s why I’m calling you. Your dad’s in the hospital.”
***
Saturday stepped off of the runway under a cloudy Washington sky for the second time in as many weeks. Less than that, actually.
It was barely a week ago that she had exited a plane here under that very same piece of sky.
Her visit this time was considerably more dismal.
Her father had suffered a heart attack.
It seems when he returned to find half of his wife’s belongings packed and the other half missing, he panicked and managed to work himself up into cardiac arrest.
For a while, his condition looked dire… really dire; hence, the numerous incoming phone calls at Dr. Walt’s office.
The taxi ride to the hospital was a complete blur; Saturday moved through the motions of her trip like a sedated zombie.
She didn’t remember retrieving her luggage from baggage claim; hell, she didn’t even remember flagging a taxi down.
Every part of her excursion, every piece of her trip… was an indiscriminate haze that somehow led her right to the waiting room outside of her dad’s hospital bed.
When she arrived to the waiting room, it was empty, not a soul in sight. Not a coworker; not a friend; not a golf buddy.
Placing her hands in her pockets, Saturday paced the hospital hallway in her jeans and flip-flops, wondering what she would say or do when she saw her father.
When she finally worked up the nerve to grip the handle and open the door to his room, she found only her mother there, grasping his hand, leaning closely at his side.
It was in that instant… and that instant alone… tha
t Saturday realized that all her parents really had when the chips were down was her.
And if their little family didn’t stick together, they would fall to pieces separately.
Somehow, it was a saddening and invigorating realization.
Upon closer inspection, she saw that her father was asleep and after some unspoken gesturing, she gathered that her mother wanted to talk to her outside.
Her mother sighed deeply as they closed the door to Thomas Blake’s room.
Saturday started speaking first.
“Mom, the next time there is something important, please text me if I'm not answering my phone. I had no idea it was this bad.”
“I know; I panicked. I can’t believe this is happening,” Karen remarked stoically. “Thank God the gardener found him as he was collapsing out of the front door. This could have been worse. So much worse,” she commented, causing a chill to run up Saturday’s spine.
Her mother sighed again, continuing. “Technically, he’s out of the woods, but he hasn’t cleared all of the branches. They are still monitoring his progress.”
And then the façade Karen had adopted started to crumble.
She burst suddenly into quiet sobs, prompting Saturday to wrap her arms around her and hold her mother tighter than she ever had before.
Karen’s shoulders shook with more passion than Saturday had ever believed her mom was capable of feeling, up until a few short days ago, that is.
And Saturday was now hugging her with a fierceness that she had once thought she, herself, was incapable of returning.
And the tenderness that she showed with dad. I haven’t seen her look at him that way since I was young.
She sniffed her mom’s clean but uncombed hair, marveling at the fact that in her haste to be there for her estranged husband, Karen Blake had eschewed all of her accustomed sense of propriety.
She must really care.
Saturday rubbed her mom’s back soothingly, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to predict the fate of her parents’ relationship.
She wasn’t sure that they had much of one for the past decade or so.
Oftentimes, when Saturday referred to her parents, she did so collectively…as if they were of one mind, one body: one pigheaded, lumped-together pair.
Her parents were privileged people… living a sheltered, privileged life… bound to one another by the expectations of people who, in the grand scheme of things, never really mattered.
Honestly, why did they care so much what the neighbors thought?
Furthermore, Saturday had been so concerned with her dealings with them as a unit that she had never considered that they weren’t much of a unit to begin with.
And now it had taken a near-death experience to unite them as a family for the first time in almost twenty years.
She hoped that, at the very least, they could begin to build a friendship from this point forward.
Maybe this is the catalyst that will finally bring us all to therapy…
…which brought her thoughts back to a certain little office in the city.
When she received the call about her dad, Saturday burst back into Dr. Walt’s office from his waiting room, prattling off a bunch of “sorry’s” and “thank you’s” before hustling out of the building and into the nearest taxi.
And Dr. Walt never got to finish what he was saying about Mark.
With her dad in his bed, barely escaping death, and her mom in her arms, barely avoiding a meltdown, Saturday felt guilty that the thought had even entered her psyche.
She tried to ignore the nagging notion, but she could still feel the heat of its imminent touch; it was like a hot poker, roasting in the fire, ready to brand itself on her brain.
She squeezed her mother tighter realizing, especially now, that the only way out of a bad situation was to plow right through it.
***
Two days later, Saturday sat in the back of a smelly taxicab, on her way home. This drive to her apartment from the airport was one of the shortest rides of Saturday’s life.
She shook her leg from the anxiety, wishing there were a way to slow down this taxi, to prolong the distressing inevitable.
She was back in New York… and the problems of her life in the city drew nearer as her issues back home faded into the back registry of her mind with each passing mile.
Her father was doing quite fine; after a thirty-six hour stint in the hospital, doctors sent him home to the waiting and anxious arms of her mother… who had moved back into her old home with her dad… at least, temporarily.
The focus back in Washington had been on getting her father as settled and comfortable as possible; all other issues had fallen by the wayside in the wake of his recovery.
A silent communication had taken place between Saturday and Karen as they prepared Thomas’s bed for his arrival, the underlying message being: familial reconciliation was delayed but definitely on the horizon.
They would wait until her father was back to normal before broaching the subject; Saturday just hoped that normal didn’t mean he would return to his usual, ornery self… or her mother would be moving out just as soon as she had come in.
In her grey sweats and tank, she lugged her suitcase all the way up to her front apartment door when a note stuck near the handle almost made her drop everything.
She grabbed the folded piece of paper from the nook of her door and opened it:
I hope that I haven’t imposed too much with the presents. And I really hope that you derived some sort of joy from them. All I wanted to do was put a smile on your face.
Saturday tucked the letter into her purse.
She remembered a time where a note like this from Mark would have made her smile.
The gifts had been thoughtful, and if she weren’t so upset with him, she would have happily accepted every one of them.
But each package arrival had made her more agitated instead… and a huge part of her still was.
On an impulse, she reached for the door handle, opening it and dropping her belongings where she stood.
Whipping her phone out, she dialed the newest contact she had placed in her cellular.
She was going to take care of some things right now…once and for all.
***
He welcomed her with a small smile when he answered the door, ushering her in with a “come hither” motion that led her further inside.
He sat across from her while she took a seat in that same red armchair.
“Dr. Walt,” Saturday started out haltingly. “I know this is very short notice, but I’m having a hard time with patience right now. I let myself be too patient with this situation before…and I paid a high cost.”
She inhaled deeply.
“What’s going on with Mark?”
He shuffled in his seat, running his spectacles across his sleeve before answering.
“Saturday, I have to be honest with you.
“I’m only telling you this because Mark has given me license to do so. Normally, these matters would fall under doctor-patient confidentiality, but Mark has allowed us to bypass those. And I don’t think we should take that permission lightly.
“He has given us full allowance to do this, so I want you to carefully consider what I am going to tell you without jumping to extreme conclusions…”
He looked at her intently, watching for understanding.
Saturday nodded with as much conviction as she could muster, her skin prickling with nerves and tension that permeated her entire body.
Dr. Walt continued.
“As a teenager, Mark dealt with a psychosexual disorder that we know in the profession as… voyeurism.
“With Mark, a fairly innocent fascination with photography and a curious nature combined into something more repetitive and sexual in nature until it established itself in a voyeuristic fashion.
“This fixation played out not only with simple observance and ocular stimulation, but a need to incorporate…photographic evidence.�
��
Saturday’s blood ran cold.
Ocular stimulation… voyeuristic fashion… photographic evidence?
All of this to say…
A full-blown awareness hit Saturday, seizing her chest, making it tight.
Mrs. Rich was right... It isn’t as bad as it seems.
It’s worse.
She inhaled despite the constriction in her chest and throat.
“Are you saying that Mark is a… Peeping Tom?”
Dr. Walt clasped his hands together.
“That is a bit of a distasteful colloquialism used for it… but in a manner of speaking…yes.”
For the second time this week, consciousness threatened to slip from Saturday’s grasp. She huffed heavily through her nostrils to prevent a panic attack.
Dr. Walt grabbed for her hand.
“He was, Saturday. Was. Long ago.
“He was a teenager. A young, confused and frightened child with a camera: one who harbored his feelings of anger and rebellion into a unique and abnormal preoccupation.
“With the necessary treatment… and support of his parents, he altered the course of his life: turned his adolescence around.
“He channeled his energy elsewhere: into his artistry. He graduated high school with honors, took his talents to New York, and well… the rest, as they say, is history.
“Today, he is a normal, healthy and, might I say, brilliantly talented twenty-eight year old man… but he is also a scared individual.
“As of late, he has avoided romantic and sexual relationships in the fear that one day his childhood habits would return.
“A chance encounter with you turned his world upside down, and he was ill-equipped to handle a newfound love interest.
“That’s what I’ve been working with him on: how to separate what he was from what he currently is.”
He squeezed her hand briefly.
“I’m going to lay it all out for you, Saturday.
“Mark hasn’t had a real romantic involvement for some time now. Before you, he hadn’t partaken in any sexual encounter for over two years.
Behind the Blindfold: A Sexy Mystery Duet Page 22
