“Dr. Abrams told me that I should be very careful about telling you too much too quickly.” He looks at me but fidgets with his tie. His hand releases mine, and the anticipation that he had built seems to disintegrate, like dreams made of dust, blown away by the gentlest of breezes. Hope, once again it seems, is for losers.
“When did he tell you that?”
“In our appointments. I want to tell you, honestly I do.”
“What appointments?”
He waits a moment before saying, “It’s not just you that goes to see him, Charlotte.” I remember the day when he left the hotel so suddenly. Was this where he was going? “What happened took its toll on both of us. I have been talking to him too, trying to find us a way back.”
“What did he tell you not to tell me?”
“Nothing specific, just general details. That you have to discover things in your own time. That you'll remember when you are ready.”
“Tell me what he said. Tell me what I have forgotten.” I am reaching across the table, my hands scampering around like mice in search of his. I couldn’t look anymore pathetic in this moment if I was on my knees begging him for answers, but I do not care. I am fuelled by the grandest sense of desperation that I have felt since that day when I slipped beneath the water and the only distraction for me now from the possibility of learning the truth is the very same sound of the water underneath me. It seems louder somehow, as if it has been awakened and excited by my proximity. It can hear my desperation in my pleas and it wonders if this is the chance to finally collect me.
“Well,” he said, coughing. The waiter comes out to clear the plates and Gregory bats his hands frantically, sending him away. He squares up the napkin and rearranges the salt and pepper shakers. “Well, like the problem of children. How much you wanted them.”
“But the pregnancy was a surprise.”
“Yes, it was. But you wanted them. Why do you think you took my boat out?”
“What?” This might be the first time I have heard him refer to that day. Ever.
“You were angry at me. You said it was my fault. You said I was preventing you from, what was it you said, putting a stop to the past. You said having a child would give you a new label, you could be something new, something different, and that it was my doing that you couldn’t.” I know without any of the doubts that usually afflict my life that he is telling the truth. Label. Something new. Something different. These are all my words. “That’s why you burned my boat. You said it was payback, so I would know that I could have made the difference, but wouldn’t.”
“How would you know that? We have never spoken about it.” At least I think we haven't.
“You left a note.”
“What!”
“A suicide note.”
“I want to read it. I have to read it.” This will tell me. This will tell me that last thing that I knew. The collections of apple cores, the receipts, the rose petals, the photographs, the rows of tablets, the piles of chewed fingernails, the magazines, and even the small pill box that contains fallen eyelashes which I have gathered to help me never forget anything ever again would pale in comparison to this one chance. My final thoughts before I was supposed never to return to life. The last thoughts of a woman who believed it was over. I will finally understand and I will answer my own questions and Ishiko can be silenced. The fear, the pain, they will all be gone, replaced by the clarity of a diamond.
“You can’t.”
“No, Gregory,” I say as I stand up, the crockery on the table rattling as I knock it with my thighs. “You don’t understand. I have to read it.”
“You can’t, Charlotte. It doesn’t exist. I burnt it.” I sit, or rather sort of collapse into the chair and he reaches over and grabs my hand again. I don’t feel it, I just see him doing it. That’s how I know what is happening. I see without any sense of feeling. “You said it was my fault that you couldn’t have children. That it was my doing.”
“You burnt it.”
“I had to. You hated me in those moments. I couldn’t keep it.”
“You burnt the truth. You took it from me.” Now he is on his knees, holding my face.
“This is exactly what Dr. Abrams meant,” he says, talking to nobody, not looking at anything. “Charlotte, focus.” I can feel my head spinning and racing. I am gripping the edge of the table trying to hold on to the last moments before I am lost. I can feel the heat of the flames on that day, the dizziness from the vodka and the tablets. I can smell the petrol. I can smell the vomit right before I slithered over the edge of the boat into the cold blackness of nothing but deep water. But then something strikes me, hard on the face. It is Gregory. He is standing over me and he has slapped me. I let go of the table and hold my stinging cheek. “Stay with me, Charlotte. Focus.” He is holding my other hand close to his chest and I feel his heart racing and I realise that he is as scared in this moment as I am.
“Why did you burn it? It could have helped me. It could have helped me understand.”
“I did it because I couldn’t stand it to be there, lying on top of the piano where you left it. I couldn’t know it existed. There was such hate, Charlotte. You wanted anything but me. Even death was a better option. You blamed me for everything, but nothing more so than us not having a child. I was trying. I really was.” He is close to tears. I can see them welling up in his eyes which have tinged pink like blood mixed with milk. My throat hurts. I feel pity for him in this moment, and see that the pain of my intended death doesn’t live on only with me. It might be the first time I have ever considered this.
“That seems very unfair of me,” I say, trying to offer him a degree of understanding.
“You weren’t thinking straight, Charlotte. That’s all,” he says as he strokes my hair away from my face. He brushes past the head wound, tries to take a look, but on the basis that it has really started to hurt, and smell, I stop him. I blamed him. I told him that everything was his fault. Was I right? Was I fair?
“I have to see Dr. Abrams.”
“Why?”
“Why?” I can’t believe his question. “You have been begging me to see Dr. Abrams. I need to. I have to remember the past. I have to know who I was so that I can be somebody different.”
“You just have to be you.”
“But I can’t be because I don’t know who I am.” I stand up and he gets up from his knees. He has to hear me so I grab him by the arms and turn him to towards me. He has to really understand. “I don’t know what the truth is, I can’t remember it. I can’t remember anything. She was right.”
“You do know, wait,” he looks suspicious, “who was right?”
“I have to see him.” He touches my face again, brings our eyes in line, but mine are still darting about all over the place and I know this because I see trees and mountains and bricks and a used dining table all within the space of a few seconds.
“Wait, Charlotte. Who was right? Who have you been talking to?”
“Ishiko. She told me. She told me I have to remember.”
“When did she tell you this? When Charlotte?” His grip tightens, his hands on my wrists. “What else did she say?” Part of me wants to tell him everything, and tell him that I know he has failed me. Again. But the other part of me wants to protect him because I am thankful that he has shown me some of my past. And also because I feel guilt. I have blamed him for my intended death. Can I blame him again? The version of me who wanted a child in the past seems like a woman I do not know. A different me that I believe I could have liked. Perhaps I was not always so hard and empty. If he knows more, he could help me. He could be the difference now. His knowledge could be the difference between a future of something or nothing.
“I can’t remember,” I say.
“Unbelievable. Unbelievable,” he says loosening his grip on me and turning away, one hand on his hip and the other over his mouth. He turns back to me, his finger pointing at my face. “You don’t need to remember anything, OK? I wi
ll help you.”
“And Dr. Abrams will help me.”
“No, no,” he stammers, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why? I don’t understand. You have always pushed me to see him.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea anymore. Bringing up the past is obviously difficult for you. This proves it.” He reaches down and clutches my hands, tries to appeal to logic and sense, which I never really believed he thought I had. “It’s me and you now. And the baby. We have to move forwards, not backwards.”
“Dr. Abrams told me that understanding the past helps me move forward.”
“Shhhhsh.” He holds a finger up to my lips. “It’s just us now, nobody else.”
He leads me inside the hotel and up to the suite that he has reserved especially, the one that looks over the town. The room is nice, but a bit tired in the same way that I am. I see that he has had somebody scatter the petals on the bed and on the floor around it. There is a bath already filled, bubbles creeping over the sides. There are two glasses of champagne. He still isn’t really thinking of the baby.
I take a bath. After a while he comes into the bathroom and sits on the side of the tub. I hear Beethoven’s Für Elise dancing through the speakers, his idea of romance. Wildly different to mine. The fresh wounds that score my body tingle until I get used to the pain. When I made the cuts there was a moment of weakness which I didn’t mention earlier. Briefly I took the knife away from my skin, almost changing my mind. I have forgiven myself for my hesitations now, and so feel able to admit to it.
When he decides I have finished my bath he holds a robe up for me in true genteel fashion so that he doesn’t see me as I step from the water. I am covered and thankful, not wanting to explain why. He takes my hand and he sits me on the bed, scoops my feet up so that I lie back. He removes his clothes methodically, folding each item whilst a ridiculous smirk creeps onto his lips. He stares at my legs as the robe slips open, my skin wet and glistening. He tries to remove it, but I hold onto it, and he accepts this with deference. He does what he wants to do to me and I act appropriately. There is a crack on the ceiling, and a small fly has landed near the light. There is a bird singing outside, or maybe it is a crow cawing. When there are no more details nearby to distract me I think about Stephen’s hands and the weight that his body would create if it were on top of me and as a result I believe that I do take some pleasure out of what is happening. I smile and stroke Gregory's hair afterwards, pretending that I am thankful. I wait for him to fall asleep which takes only minutes, before getting up, showering, and partially dressing. I inspect the wounds and find that they are not as deep as I had originally believed, which disappoints me. I find a small knife in the minibar and re-cut them whilst I bite on a flannel, pressing the tip of the knife so far into my skin that I have to stop to wipe the flow of blood from beneath my navel. I smile when I realise that my white belly is topped with a little blob of red, like a cupcake with a cherry on top. My head wound, even though it hurts and I am sure that it smells, appears to have healed. I jab the tip of the knife into it just in case I am right.
The room is large, and there is a small sitting area. I take a seat, my mind on the earlier conversation of how I always wanted a child. I wonder if this person which he describes is really me, or just an imagined version that he thinks suitable for our new situation. I wonder if his distance has been a desperate effort to try to find a way to cope with me, and this creation, the maternal version of Charlotte Astor that he offers me now is a chance to force me in the direction of motherhood. Safe and cautious and controlled.
You might think my unwillingness to believe in this new perfect version of my husband or my aversion to give him another chance is a pity. That I am being unfair. But how can I trust him when I have spent the last two months feeling more alone than ever before. I have even wondered if the thing growing inside me might even be the reason that he no longer wants me. I have sat as he has groped me, only to be rewarded by the sight of him pleasuring himself in the shower. I have requested a pregnancy friendly menu for my birthday only to return home to find that we are having sushi. I have watched him fuck Ishiko whilst he thought I was in the shower.
I am left with no other option than to wonder if there is anything real about him anymore. Perhaps there is nothing more real about him than there is me. His new version of me, a maternal and loving wife haunted by her inability to have a child for which she cruelly blames her husband seems a self-indulgent offering on his behalf. Even in my attempted death he was misunderstood and blamed without fair cause. Could I really have been so unfair? I have to wonder if he just wishes to remind me of my past mistakes in a way that makes him appear blameless or wronged.
I open the drawer of the table in front of me and find a Japanese magazine. I pull it out and leaf through it without really paying any attention to the contents. I am not the first woman to sit in this chair or lie on the bed from which I can hear his snoring. I finish dressing and put on my coat and gloves and count to 3547 whilst staring at the magazine in order to control the anger that slid over me like molten lava from a volcanic explosion at the sight of the colourful cover. The crow still caws outside the window, interrupted only by the sound of Gregory sleeping. I put the magazine in my handbag along with the knife and realise that his revelation today changes nothing.
Chapter twenty four
Two days pass under conditions that would appear as relative normality to an outsider. It was only me, and perhaps the others involved who realised that there was nothing remotely normal about the situation.
The household has been quiet. Gregory has stuck to me since we left the hotel, blissfully happy in the knowledge that he has now decided that our life together is one worth saving. I might be more inclined to feel the same way if I didn’t believe that most of what he told me was a pack of lies so transparent that the truth was almost visible. Almost. In order to take my measurements I have been forced to resort to stepping into the bathroom under the guise of needing the toilet, which is a task I know he would never wish to join me in. I have been forced to work quickly, and have therefore been storing the measurement chart under the sink behind the pedestal. It is no longer possible to remove the drawer by my bed. This has complicated matters with the tablets. I am sure at the last count it was forty nine, but then at times I wonder if it was fifty. I am waiting for him to leave the house so that I may get back in there without fear of his lurking over my shoulder. You might ask why I don’t just lock the door, but he is so closely attuned to my actions that it is impossible. He has even started watching me take the tablets again so I must first put one in my mouth, manoeuvre it under my tongue before removing it once the lights go out. There are three tablets between the mattress and the bed itself waiting for me as soon as I get a chance to store them correctly.
Whilst I haven’t had to tolerate his spidery fingers creeping over me in the night, fidgeting their way into my curves and creases, a surgical procedure couldn’t have attached him any closer to me. But this is simultaneously his problem. For it is not just me that he wishes to be close to. He is also desperately trying to catch a moment with Ishiko. I can tell because I watch him watching her movements. It is easily done because her movements are predictable, for she has taken to spending most of her time in her bedroom. The changes that occurred over the past few days have been a giant setback for her. She is doing her best not to talk to either of us, because it seems she cannot work out who is burdened with the larger portion of blame for the change in her circumstances. Me because I got pregnant when I wasn’t supposed to, or him because he has forgotten their agreement. She was doing very well prior to this weekend, and I felt her success of my gradual eradication from Gregory’s favour. But now her plans, whatever they might have been, have been shattered, smashed into dust which is settling like the late winter snow that fell on the ground last night. The temperature feels better, but we have all been largely confined to the house which has been an unfor
tunate development, and has without doubt made matters worse.
When she emerges from her room before dinner time his interests are raised. He watches the corridor from behind the newspaper which he pretends to read. I was surprised to feel a degree of sympathy for her, because for all of her efforts she could surely never have seen the turn of events coming. She must have watched us for days, weeks, months. Watched how our relationship was falling apart, and from the pieces scattered at our feet she collected those which suited her and began building her own. His actions have taken nothing of this effort into consideration, and because of this sympathetic awareness I did try to talk to her. She muttered something in Japanese which I couldn’t understand. But what I did understand was her lack of eye contact and the tone in which she said it. It told me without any space for confusion that my concern was lost on her, and so I have since kept it in check. Afterwards I felt foolish for trying to speak to her and so I sat and picked the wounds on my hand and head until they bled, and I felt better.
At one point, I announced that I was going to take a shower. I went upstairs and opened and closed my bedroom door without going in. Instead I sat on the top of the stairs, and as I suspected within a couple of minutes I heard the shuffle of the newspaper and the patter of feet as he began his approach. I knew Ishiko to be in her room, and it didn’t take long before he came to find her, his feet as slow and cautious as a father’s on Christmas Eve. He found me atop the stairs, and of course he looked startled with no prepared excuse to offer me. How predictable of him to take the first opportunity to try to get near her. He needed only one chance to prove to me that everything he says is bullshit. He stuttered something out asking why I wasn’t in the shower. I told him I had changed my mind and decided instead to take a breather, to look at the view through the landing window. He turned and returned to his seat, the newspaper soon back in his hands. I sat and watched the whiteness of the sky, the unchanging vista of winter uninterrupted by bird or plane, thinking about how he is a liar of necessity rather than desire.
PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller Page 24
