“Good afternoon, Charlotte.” He stands in the doorway, his shoulders slouched, his posture loose. Unthreatening, waiting for my lead. I stand, a smile on my face. I am pleased to see him.
“Good afternoon. How are you?”
“Well, I’m fine. Come in, take a seat.” I assume the position of patient and sit on the designated settee, cream, soft, the kind that makes you want to put your feet up. He takes a seat in the chair opposite, and only then does he ask how I am today.
“How has your week been? In fact, less than a week. I was a little surprised to see that I had you scheduled today.” The office is feminine. I know he is married, happily so – whatever that means – and I imagine that it was she who designed the office. Everything is just a bit too soft around the edges to be designed by a man, not functional enough, too tactile. I think she only allowed him to select a few things, like the owl, his books, and the gramophone.
“OK, alright.” That doesn’t really feel like the truth, but I suppose that it is. Nothing bad happened. Nobody died. Not yet, anyway. “It’s been OK,” I repeat, making sure I put the full stop at the end of my words.
“Good. Tell me, what have you been doing?”
“Normal things. Household things. Normal life.”
“What does that mean?” he asks. I take my coat off and loosen my scarf.
“I had Ishiko cut some roses and they look good. I gave them to a friend.”
“Nice. You have been taking your tablets I hope.” I smile and nod.
“I went out for lunch with Gregory.”
“Really?” He seems surprised. “Can we talk about that?” He is trying not to show it but I can hear it in his words.
“Yes.”
“Where did you go?”
“To the hotel. The new deck. The one he says he built for me.” I can hear the scraping of a shovel outside. Somebody is clearing the pathway. It’s scraping against the gravel, metal on grit, grinding. I move about on the cushion trying to get comfortable, trying to find a position where the scraping doesn’t bother me. I lean forward and straighten up the items on the occasional table in front of me. They are so untidy, he must have done it on purpose before I came here. He doesn’t push me to continue. He just waits. I take my gloves off even though I don’t want to and place them in my lap. “We ate chicken.” I sit back and the shovelling continues.
“Is that bothering you?” He points outside. I shake my head and lie.
“He has changed his mind, like you said he would.”
“About what, Charlotte?”
“The baby.”
“What did he say?”
“He said that it is me, him, and the baby. That he was being unfair on me. That he wants us to build a future, together.” Silence. Sometimes I forget that he is not here to give me the answers. “That now it’s about the future, not the past.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“I wanted him to want the baby.”
“And so, how do you feel? Happy?”
“Yes, I guess so.” He sits staring at me. I know I am lying and I know he can see it. My lips move up and down, mouthing the first syllable of the truth, waiting for the courage to bring forth volume and to say it out loud. “I’m angry. I’m angry that it took so long. I am angry because I don’t believe him. I am angry for many reasons and it scares me that he is all I have.”
“Why don’t you believe him?”
“It doesn’t seem real. Who wouldn’t want their baby? Why wouldn’t he talk to me about it at first? Why won’t he tell any of our friends? Why isn’t he taking pictures of me as my stomach grows?”
“We all behave and respond in different ways, Charlotte. It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care.”
“But he doesn’t. I know he doesn’t.”
“Perhaps you should broach the subject of your sleeping arrangements. Perhaps it would help for you to feel closer to him if he was sharing your bed.”
“He is. He came back. We,” I feel embarrassed as if this may have been the talk I never had with my parents when I was a teenager. “We made love. Kind of.”
“Kind of?”
“Well, we made love, just, it was without the love.” Now it is his turn to shift in his seat.
“This is a positive step. You may not have felt it, but he chose to be there with you. To connect. It must have been very hard for him over the last few months to be separated from you.”
I cannot stand to hear how hard it must have been for him, and how he is supposedly trying to connect with me, bless his heart, when he is all over her whilst I am in the shower. That's it. I can't take the pretence any more. I cannot listen to another justification offered on Gregory's behalf and so I say, “He is fucking Ishiko.” He doesn’t flinch.
“What has happened to make you believe that?”
“I saw them having sex. I saw him doing it to her. He was snatching at her, like she was something precious but disappearing and he had to devour what was left of it. He doesn’t touch me like that.” Dr. Abrams stood up from his seat, placed his notes file down on the chair. One hand was on his hip, the other was brushing through his beard. He took several steps before turning back to look at me.
“If you believe that Gregory is having an affair with the maid who lives in your home, you must be feeling very hurt.”
“Yes, I am. I am hurt because he doesn’t want me.” I am aware of how Gregory hasn’t touched my face like Stephen did when I believe if he loved me he would have. I am aware that I can still feel Stephen's fingertips on my cheek even now, half an hour later, and I have no idea what that means.
“And you think he doesn’t want you because he would prefer that Ishiko be his partner?”
“That’s obvious. He waits for her to get near him and starts fussing over her. The other day he had me hold a bowl of Dettol to clean the cuts on her arms.” I realise he has no idea what I am talking about and that cuts on her arms means something entirely different to Dr. Abrams than the truth in this situation, so I clarify. “She cut the roses. She got cut on the arms and the face. Dr. Abrams, did I want to leave Gregory?”
“So he tended to her?”
“Yes. Did you hear what I said?”
“Yes, I heard you, Charlotte. I don’t know if you wanted to leave Gregory. I met you after your accident.”
“Maybe I did. Maybe I wanted to leave him.”
“Why do you think that? You haven’t asked me that before. You have never told me you wanted to leave.”
“Maybe I’m looking in the wrong place for the answers. Maybe I just wanted to leave him?”
“You mean before the accident?”
“Yes, wait. Dr. Abrams stop calling it that.” I move forward in my seat. “I set fire to the boat and overdosed. It wasn’t a fucking accident. It was suicide.”
“You seem very angry,” he says. I think I am crying.
“It wasn’t an accident, that’s all. I did it on purpose. Anyway, he had me hold the bowl whilst he wiped at the cuts. He made such a fuss. He even wanted to use a pair of my latex gloves.” I say this much more bitterly than I intended to. I make an effort forwards so that I can align a pile of magazines in front of me but realise at the last moment that I am not wearing my gloves and so instead return my hands to my lap.
“I might have got this wrong, but wouldn’t that be something reasonable to do? If she cut her arms?” He sits back down again, attempts to cross his legs before changing his mind.
“You don’t understand. This is just one thing. One element of it. I ruined his plans. This is why he doesn’t want us and why I don’t believe him when he says he wants a fresh start.”
“Let’s just deviate a moment. You said you took the flowers to a friend. Who is this?”
“Marianne.” He waits for elaboration. “She is our neighbour.” I decide to leave out the details.
“Do you spend time with this Marianne?”
“A bit, why?”
“Well we talked extensively in the pas
t about your level of social isolation. Your social circumstances are changing with the arrival of this baby, and it is important for you to find ways of coping with the external pressures. Having a friend is a very important element of that.”
“This is beside the point. I was talking about Gregory.”
“Ok, sorry. Tell me more about what happened this weekend.”
“Ishiko told me that I couldn’t remember the past.”
“Your memory problems are well documented, Charlotte.”
“But it was the way she said it. Like, to remember would be dangerous. Like only then I would understand. And then what Stephen said.”
“Who is Stephen?”
“My old boss. I saw him just now. It’s like what they both say is connected. Like they are trying to force me to remember things, and I have no idea if these things are true or not.”
“A threat?”
“No, a warning," I say as I wipe my face. "Like they know something that I don’t. Like Ishiko could harm me if she wanted to. She told me to beware the truth, or something like that.” I turn around and the man who was shovelling the snow has stopped. He is staring at me instead, waving. His face looks almost transparent and he begins to beckon me over. I try to ignore him, but he whispers my name. I turn away but feel obliged to look at him again, but when I do he has gone. I think Dr. Abrams must have disturbed him.
“But that’s why we are here, Charlotte. That’s what we are piecing together in these sessions. Perhaps these people are trying to offer you something from the past. A memory together, something helpful.” My nose is running and I wipe it with one of the wipes from my handbag. I take another out, wipe my hands.
“That’s another thing. Gregory doesn’t want me to come here anymore. He thinks remembering the past is harmful. He says that it is unnecessary.” Dr. Abrams puts his pen down and watches me for a minute, as if he is giving me a chance to alter my statement before he questions it.
“Gregory has always been very considerate of you coming here, Charlotte. I find it difficult to believe that he would ask you to stop coming to our appointments.”
“But he did.”
“But why? What does he have to gain from you not coming to our sessions? When I was at your house, he was adamant that you attend.”
“I don’t know what he wants. No, wait. He wants me to not remember. That’s what he said.” The shovel is still grating, but more distant and the sound is softer. I look out of the window and the man is still working but no longer pays me any attention. I get up and walk to the window. When he sees me staring I wave, and he waves back but seems surprised by my friendliness. I sit back down and Dr. Abrams starts talking again.
“That’s very unlike him.”
“If you don’t believe me, then there is no point in me being here.” With that, I pick up my coat and walk towards the door.
“Don’t be hasty, Charlotte. Come on, sit down.” I put on my gloves and grab the door handle. As I open the door I can see that he is conscious of the next person in the waiting room who has arrived well before her time slot. He doesn’t want to divulge anything personal, and his words become a whisper. “Charlotte, please.”
“You can ask him yourself, in one of your next sessions together.” I make a start towards the exit, but Dr. Abrams places a hand on my arm which stops me. I don't feel trapped or threatened. It is a soft touch, not one to wriggle free from, rather, it is one to sink into.
“What do you mean by that?”
“You don’t have to play the psychiatrist with me anymore, Dr. Abrams. I’m not coming here again. I know now that you have been seeing him. I bet he has told you all about Ishiko. I bet he has told you how he fucks her and you have a good laugh about it. How can you be my doctor if you are listening to both of us and when you obviously knew all along what they were doing?”
“Charlotte, I don’t see Gregory as a patient. You are my only patient, and I can assure you that I know nothing of the sort. It’s only you that I am concerned with.” His hand slips free from my arm, and I pull my coat together, fastening the buttons. “Come on, take a seat. We have another half an hour.” The patient is watching us, and at first I pay her little attention. But then I think that I can smell lavender and so I turn around to get a closer look at the woman watching me. She has black hair and a blunt fringe. For a second I think it is Ishiko sitting there, but I think I am probably wrong, so I turn back to Dr. Abrams.
“He comes here, he told me so. He told me that you said I don’t need you anymore because I have him.” This probably isn’t the truth, but it could be. He could have said that.
“Charlotte, I don’t see Gregory.”
When I left the office building I was aware of Dr. Abrams staring at me through the window. I was already feeling guilty for treating him this way. The man with the shovel was still working, but most of the pathway was clear and he had brushed my earlier footsteps away. Another mark that I had left on the world casually discarded. It is as if I am not even here. He didn’t try to talk to me again.
When I got home Gregory was out. Ishiko was in her bedroom and the house was quiet. I used the time to take out the drawer and count the tablets. I took the three from under the mattress. Fifty two. I took out number fifty three and held it in my hands for a while. My guilt over the session with Dr. Abrams was welling in my stomach, and I saw the fifty third tablet as a possibly remedy. My treatment of Dr. Abrams was unjust and I considered that taking one of his tablets was a good idea and in some way could act as atonement for my earlier actions. A sign of my compliance. Why would Gregory lie about seeing Dr. Abrams? How would Stephen know? Surely Gregory would know that I would find out, unless he was banking on my adherence to his suggested avoidance of my psychotherapy sessions. In the end I lined the little green and white capsule up on the shelf and put the drawer back in and got on the bed, certain that fifty three tablets would be enough to kill Marianne.
Chapter twenty seven
That night I am waiting in the drawing room for Gregory when he arrives home. I hear him park the Jaguar on the driveway, his feet destroying the snow as he inches towards the house. A blanket of winter has fallen across the town, covering up the tiny imperfections and smoothing out the wrinkles of life by the lake. He opens the door, letting in the chill like a common cold, which runs quickly through the house infecting all in its path. The log fire that Ishiko set earlier whistles up the chimney, bracing itself as the breeze tickles at its edges, the smallest of the flames breaking free and escaping upwards into an amethyst February sky.
I shivered as he came near me, the cold emanating from his skin and clothes. His lips were frozen, and as he leant down to kiss me they met my cheek, his blue blood circulating against my skin leaving upon it the mark of a soulless kiss. His lips were dark blue and his skin was nipped white as if it had snowed straight onto him, leaving a coating. He looked depleted, desaturated of life, somewhere between black and white in a place that has consumed the hopes of all souls. He appeared as the colour of despair, and in my eyes, a liar.
He brushes off his coat like an eagle spreading his wings, and few droplets of water sprinkle onto me. I pull my chair a little closer to the fire to further the distance between us. My head is throbbing.
“Oh, what an afternoon. So busy. One job turned into two jobs turned into six jobs,” he says as he lays his coat across the back of the leather settee. He looks around for Ishiko but she is not here.
“What jobs?”
“Oh, you know, just things that cannot wait.” He sits down next to me and I move to create enough space in the oversized armchair. He is freezing to the point that a corpse may feel no more lifeless than his touch right now. “Things that no longer seem important,” he grins, “now that I am home with you.”
“I thought that you just had one appointment,” I say. “Who was that with?”
“You know, Charlotte dear, I don’t want to talk about my day. My day was fine and uneventful, and I am sur
e nothing but boring to you. Tell me,” he says as he strokes my hair away from my face, “what have you done?” I see Ishiko appear in the doorway to the drawing room. It is late, past dinner time and neither of us has yet eaten. I see that it has started snowing again. “Have you eaten darling? Shall we sit together in the conservatory?”
We eat our dinner whilst talking about the trivialities of my day, most of which is fictional because I don't want to mention either of the visits that I made this afternoon. He stands after he finishes eating and offers me his hand. I accept it as if I am dismounting from a horse drawn carriage, and I allow him to lead me towards the settee. I sit in the same place where I pretended to sleep whilst lamb chops burnt in the kitchen, and he props himself up on the edge of the seat next to me. He clears his throat and turns to face me. I remain uncertain as to what to expect. An admission? An apology? But he says nothing. Instead he reaches into his pocket and produces a box. If we were not already married, I may have expected a proposal, the comfortable kind that has received little thought or attention to detail. At home on the settee. Lame.
He opens the box and I see a small silver heart. It’s a locket, the kind you insert an image inside of the person whom you cannot stand to be away from. I feel an instant wave of sadness knowing that I have nobody in my life that I couldn’t stand to be away from. I have nobody to put inside and keep close to my heart so that should that day be the day I die an accidental death, I would not die alone.
“Go on, try it,” he says as he pulls it out, the locket spinning and glistening in the subtle light of night. He pulls me in closer to him and turns me to expose the back of my neck by holding up my hair, giving it a quick tug so that I hold onto it for him. Automatically I take my hair in my hand and he attaches the locket to my neck. I let my hair fall as he places his hands on my shoulders to indicate he has finished, and I place my hand over the locket as he turns me around ready for inspection.
“Let me see.” I peel my hand away to show him what his gift looks like on my neck, and as I do so my other necklace, my Triquetra, the one that my father gave me, slips away. He has unfastened it without me realising.
PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller Page 26
