The Darker Saints

by Brian Hodge

  “Do what you want,” she said, moving for the door. Then, over her shoulder: “Eunuch.”

  She exited far more noisily than she had entered. Justin, lying in solitude once more. The night air felt chillier now for some reason, and he drew the sheets higher. The bed seemed bigger, or he smaller. Eunuch. Shit. So much for the power of a confession from the heart, with the reformed temptress respecting his integrity, telling him his wife is a lucky woman. No, just eunuch.

  Justin became newly aware of the sounds from down the hall, from Leonard’s room. Quite the wailing voice that Terri had, and quite the vocabulary. Leonard must have been feeling like a porn star by now.

  Justin pulled the second pillow across to drape over his exposed ear. With years to wait before morning.

  Chapter 9

  Diving Too Deep

  By coincidence or design, April’s time seemed ordered according to function. Weekdays were for career, weeknights for marriage. Saturday mornings for mental and emotional archaeology. Digging into heart and mind and soul, blowing the dust off events near and far, minute and profound. Then putting the broken pieces back together.

  “He called last night, late. Really late. I was almost asleep. I was worried at first, before I heard his voice. I thought … I thought someone was calling to tell me something had happened to him.”

  “Something like what?” Dr. Gurvitz asked.

  “I don’t know.” April grinned ruefully down into her lap as she sat there. Looked up again. “Like, maybe he had another error in judgment after all this time … went off with somebody he would’ve been better off not going with … doing something stupid. And now someone had to notify next of kin.”

  “But nothing had happened and he was fine. Were you relieved by that?”

  “In a way. Because I knew he was … safe.” But had he been fine, really? No, Justin had not been fine, precisely. There was a difference. “He said he just needed to hear my voice.” She smiled, remembering the tone of his, soft and low and faraway, as if trying not to attract attention from his end. A lost quality to his voice that touched her in places characterized by both love and fear.

  “You don’t appear entirely convinced that was why he really called. Did you feel there was more to it than wanting to hear your voice? Something he wasn’t saying?”

  “It’s all he told me about.” But more, there was always more when it came to Justin, wasn’t there? And some of it, those things that scraped along just beneath the surface, frequently wore the most frightening faces of all. April raised her eyebrows while looking down, as if contemplating a pit. “I think a part of me was too afraid to ask if there was anything more.”

  She had been coming to Dr. Carole Gurvitz for over a year, starting even before Justin had left Tampa for those weeks in the Keys. In lighter moments, April would tease that she had gotten the jump on him as far as soul-searching was concerned. Taking that long, hard look inside and facing up to whatever stared back. It had been, at the time, one of the more anguished realizations that she’d come to: that she was in desperate need of help. You’re a head case, Justin had told her in the thick of all the gunfire and double-dealings last year, during that final respite when the future looked as barren as a dried-up river. Head case? The proverbial pot calling the kettle black, she’d thought at the time … but he had been cruelly right.

  Dr. Gurvitz had been recommended to her by a former coworker from her days spent in the ad department of the Tampa Tribune, a friend Gurvitz had helped to put her life back together after the end of a black-and-blue marriage.

  April had liked Carole Gurvitz from the outset. Her age fell somewhere in the forties, putting her comfortably into a margin that wasn’t quite peer and wasn’t yet parent figure. She always wore large-framed glasses; her hair, once a striking black, was now even more so, shot through with strands of white. A kind face and even voice that you just knew, in other circumstances, could whip out a well-aimed barb under provocation. This professional woman, thoroughly trim and well groomed in personal appearance, had little endearing elements of clutter if you looked in the corners of her office, possibly her life. The too-crowded bookshelves, the ragged bulge of an opened file cabinet, the bristling appointment book. It had probably been the clutter that had sold April on her. Clutter meant human.

  “What were you afraid of?”

  April kicked that around a few moments. Sitting in her soft, sturdy chair at an obtuse angle to that of Carole Gurvitz. No couch needed; Gurvitz was more a believer in a ready supply of Kleenex. April braced her hands on the chair arm, raised her rigid self, as if levitating. Raise, lower. Upper body strength, energy to burn. It helped her think sometimes. Yeah, what had she been afraid of hearing, anyway?

  “You want to know the truth?”

  “No, lie to me.” Dr. Gurvitz slowly pulled her glasses away. Amazing, such a barrier they made sometimes.

  “Justin didn’t want to go on this trip to his client’s house in the first place. And I don’t blame him. I wasn’t invited, and he gets his fill of those people at work, so an entire weekend, you know, it seemed a little much. I didn’t mind him going, I didn’t feel threatened by that. I’d thought those employee-only old-boy gatherings went out fifteen or twenty years ago, but … I really didn’t mind. Mostly, I was happy that his client thought so much of his work to extend the invitation.” Okay, okay, go diving for the rest, drag it out into the light of day. Buried, it could only fester, gain added weight of corrosion. “I don’t know what made him call, if there was some specific incident or if it was just the way he was feeling ... but a part of me felt like a mother must feel when her child calls in homesick from summer camp. A part of you, it just tears your heart in two. But another part wants to tell the kid to tough it out, it’s not forever.”

  “So are you saying you were made to feel like his mother?”

  April shook her head. “No, no, that’s not it. I just don’t want him to have to lean on me too heavily. I can’t be a crutch, not at this time of my life, not when I’m finally getting some things sorted out.”

  “April, from what you’re saying, it sounds as though you don’t view this phone call as Justin simply reaching out for some extra emotional support. We all need that every now and then. You seem to be reacting to this as something more than that. Now, from what you’ve told me, Justin seems to have straightened up his act. Is it that you’re having a hard time believing it’s going to last?”

  “No,” she said, drawing it out. “Really, I do trust him in that regard. He’s a lot stronger about that than he used to be.”

  “Then where do you sense the weakness in him, that would cause him to lean too heavily on you?”

  Moments like this, April wished that she had detachable hands. That she could check them with the receptionist on arrival, reclaim them after her appointment. Not enough to do with her hands. At home, thinking something over, she could scribble in a page with doodles, shapes and fragments and faces. Here there was nothing but the pure hard focus of unease.

  “He hates his job now,” April finally said. “Most of the time, anyway. He can’t decide if he wants to quit or not. I helped him get that job! Well, the interview. And he’s done a great job for them, in just a year’s time, I’ve been really proud of him for that. And even if he throws it away, that’s not so bad in itself. But…

  “Okay, I need to back up a minute. When we first met, right after he moved down, we mentioned forming a kind of partnership. Our own little a la carte agency, he’d write the copy, I’d do the artwork, we’d both equally conceptualize. But that was just talk, over oysters and beer. Well, he’s brought that up again now, he’s mentioned it a couple of times.”

  “How do you feel about the idea of working with him?”

  “I don’t know how to tell him no. And it doesn’t have anything to do with him, per se. It’s not a case of us pooling our resources and starting from scratch. I already have a business. I built it, by myself. I made some horrible mista
kes a few years ago trying to get it off the ground, and I’m still feeling the effects of some of them, but I survived, and so did my business. It’s mine and right now I don’t want to give any part of that up. Because I’m married, does that mean I have to share everything?”

  “You share as much as you feel comfortable sharing,” said Dr. Gurvitz. “Have you tried telling him this?”

  April ran both hands, fingertips splayed, back from her forehead. Left her hair tousled, wilder. “I suppose I’m just stalling until I can’t get around it anymore.” April raised a finger to stop Dr. Gurvitz before she started. “I know, I know, we’ve talked about that, about me not trusting men enough to tell them bad news, something they might not like about me. I’m not just hoping this goes away, Carole, I really am trying.”

  “But?”

  But what, but what? Her level of trust was indeed higher. She could comfortably admit any past indiscretion to Justin now, and fear no repercussions. But this was not an issue of the past, was it? No, this was present, future, different beasts entirely.

  “It’s different with Justin, his life, how it connects with mine. I…” Oh, and this was one of the hardest things of all to look in the eye. Still. Probably always would be. “Last year I hurt him like I’d never hurt anybody, like nobody had ever hurt him. I lied him into a situation where he almost got killed, and I knew what I was doing … and he forgave me for that. I’ve forgiven myself, too, but now I feel … I feel …” She was drawing a blank.

  “Responsible for him?”

  “Maybe that’s it. No it isn’t — I feel obligated to him. Like, what’s a little career flexibility when it comes to what we put each other through? Some of these day-to-day things seem so trivial by comparison.”

  “But are they trivial, April?” Dr. Gurvitz said. “I can understand how they might seem that way, compared to the life-ordeath situations you were in for two weeks. But nobody can sustain that level of emotion and intensity for very long without cracking under the strain. It was obviously happening to the both of you by the end of that period.”

  “I know. But sometimes? Sometimes I think Justin would almost prefer going back to it.”

  Not that she didn’t understand its bizarre appeal. If nothing else, it had been a learning experience of monumental proportions. It had brought every neurosis and insecurity and emotional time bomb kicking and screaming to the surface, where they had to be dealt with, or else. Nietzschean philosophy had proved true: That which did not kill me made me stronger.

  Carole Gurvitz had helped her sort it all into order. Helped her understand that her responses to stress had typically followed a bell-curve pattern: The rougher the situation got, the tougher and more competitive April got, until an emotional factor entered the equation. At which point her effectiveness plummeted.

  Helped her understand the significance of the day a six-year-old April had her first innocent look-touch-feel session with a neighbor boy, after which her father — having just spanked her — accidentally severed part of his hand on a table saw. Sex and guilt now linked, interwoven, and she had dragged them into adulthood like weighted chains.

  Dr. Gurvitz placed no great reliance on an all-important past, only the past as it was significant to a patient’s ability to function in the present. April now understood what a foundation that singular incident had lain for her life, how she had set herself up for punishment off and on as an adult. Erecting psychological tripwires across her paths of achievement — stupid decisions, substance abuse, wrong choices in the interpersonal. A humiliating association with Tony Mendoza and his factory of sleaze, boomeranging back around into an engagement with a safe, no-risk fiancé who would have given her a life notable only for its bland sanitation. No wonder Justin had seemed so attractive when he’d come along: a once successful guy teetering on the brink of ruin.

  Carole Gurvitz didn’t believe in any single method as an approach to healing. Transactional analysis was used to identify unhealthy dramas April had a tendency to play out time and again. Gestalt therapy helped her focus on the underlying guilt tied in with her father’s maiming, to reexperience the moment in all its pain, and finally put it to rest.

  April’s favorite, though, had been the creative therapy. Given her artistic leanings, Dr. Gurvitz had encouraged her to do some work wholly for herself. No worries about client strictures, no adherence to commercial art specs — just take every free-floating or deep-rooted anxiety inside her and tear them loose. Give them shape, give them form, give them color. Give them homes, paper or canvas, anywhere else besides her mind and soul. She had used oil paints, which seemed most appropriate: She could commit them to the canvas one layer at a time, as many layers as needed. One for every layer of defective psyche she was peeling away.

  The paintings were characteristically grim. Surrealism: her almond eyes, large and floating in a haze, weeping a cascade of severed fingers. Or two Aprils, one crumpled and deflated, ravaged by scars of dependency and abuse, while another chrysalid April emerged, not wholly formed, and still connected to the first by an umbilical of videotape. Others.

  She could look at them now and feel only minimal pain. Even entertain the thought of someday trying to exhibit them in a local gallery. Admiration of Ybor City’s creative strata had left April cowed, never having considered her artwork of interest to that kind of crowd. It was a new goal, though. Subject matter had made all the difference.

  “And what about you?” Carole Gurvitz asked. “Would you want to go back to an existence like that?”

  April raised and lowered again. Grappling with truth, with self, with delusion. Finally, “Maybe. If I could be guaranteed of surviving it in the end,” and then she laughed. “But that’s cheating, isn’t it? Like knowing how a movie comes out before you see it.”

  She took another peek inside, chewed on one corner of her lower lip. Consultation with the part of her that had generally served her best, the pragmatist, she who took calculated risks: a father’s teachings. The April who hated backing down from a challenge. The April she had always liked most of all.

  “Maybe I would. For all I did to screw up getting out of last year alive and in one piece, maybe I would. Just so I could prove to myself I wouldn’t screw it up all over again.”

  Chapter 10

  Charmed Life

  By late Sunday morning, it was all Justin could do to float in the pool, sunk butt-first into some high-class inner tube. A drink poised within easy reach on the pool deck, more of that planter’s rum punch, going down sweet and easy. Sob story, his life was so hard. Yeah, well, try doing it without sleep for a couple of nights, then see how much fun it is.

  Leonard cruised around the deep end, an orca in the making. The resulting waves were steady, bobbing, hypnotic motion beneath Justin as he lay across the inner tube, limp as a dead Viking borne home on his shield. His eyelashes weighed pounds apiece. Sure, sure, out here he could nod off just fine. Tuck him into bed up in his guest room and it was a different story entirely.

  Bad vibes in that room, or something of the kind; this was the only thing he could figure. It wasn’t that he hadn’t yet been ready for sleep when going to bed the past two nights. The boredom factor alone assured this. Nor was the bed uncomfortable. Au contraire. But as soon as he so much as dropped off, a whisper of slumber, he might as well have been with a rude bedmate, some prankster beneath the covers.

  Or in his mind.

  Rampant bad dreams, as if he’d dropped down a chute directly into REM sleep and ruptured a mental sewer line. Imagery that he would scarcely remember upon awakening moments later, with only the feelings lingering behind. The apprehension of something vast and terrible beyond the veil. Touch it, feel it, avert your eyes and drop with your face to the ground in homage. Insignificance of self, his lifespan that of a flea, flitting about a charnel field of smoke, snap and thrash, brittlebone nightmare teeth.

  After two nights like this, sleep had begun to lose its allure. He would see how he fared at ho
me, maybe even on the plane back. If this persisted, he would gladly make the pilgrimage to April’s therapist. And agree that, yes, posttraumatic stress syndrome had finally caught up with him.

  Present tense slapped him in the face: a big wave of pool water swept across him by Leonard’s arm. Justin sputtered and lazily opened his eyes, blinked away the runoff. Leonard grinned at him, and if his partner in hype had been too tightly wound upon Friday’s arrival, he had if anything swung too far in the opposite direction. He was now an overgrown kid at the summer camp he had always missed out on. Not a pretty sight.

  “Where’s Miss September?” Justin asked him.

  “Who? You mean Terri?”

  Justin nodded, head thrown back over the swell of the inner tube. “Your silicon implant poster girl. Where’d she go?”

  Leonard shrugged. “She’ll be out soon. She’s a late riser. You think she keeps the same kind of hours I have to back home?”

  One wife, two kids, and no guilt. Their mutual profession had taught this guy well.

  “Her I am going to miss,” Leonard then said. Paddling over, closer to Justin, then draping his arms back along the edge of the pool deck. Flexing buoyant white legs before him. “If I ask nice, maybe Mullavey can arrange for us to meet again on our next commuter hop up here.”

  “Keep the faith, Len.”

  “Can’t help but love her, that girl takes me places. You know what she did yesterday morning? Gave me a massage — full-body rubdown, I’m talking here, scalp included — and then she clipped my nails for me. Fingers, toes, then filed them down smooth.” Leonard flexed one hand, as if inspecting a high buff gloss. “My toenails, kid. That’s the kind of service you’re missing out on this weekend.”