Desperate Asylum

by Fletcher Flora

  “What I think,” she said, “is that you are a man and are incapable of loving her properly for that reason for no other. Men are by nature dull and coarse and are neither sensitive nor tender enough to love properly.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Lisa.”

  “And now you are angry with me.”

  “No, I’m not angry. I just don’t want you to talk like that about Ed and me.”

  She slipped off the stool and stood beside it erect and quite steady in spite of the amount she had drunk.

  “Despite your denial, it is quite apparent that you are angry, and it is also quite apparent, as I said before, that you dislike me very much.”

  “Damn it, Lisa, do we have to go over that again?”

  “If you didn’t dislike me, you would come to our party. You and Ed.”

  “What party?”

  “The one Avery is having at the country club Saturday night. It is only a small party for a few people.”

  “No one has asked us to come.”

  “I’m asking you now.”

  “Well, I don’t know. Saturday night is a pretty busy time around here.”

  “You see? You just don’t want to come. Already you are making excuses.”

  “Does Avery know you are inviting us?”

  “What Avery knows or does not know is not pertinent. I have the right to invite someone to the party if I choose. The point is this: Will you come or will you not come?”

  “All right, Lisa. We’ll come. Thanks for asking us.”

  “Not at all. Eight would be a good time. Sometime around eight.”

  She turned and walked steadily across the room and outside into the street, and Roscoe walked down to Emerson behind the bar.

  “That’s a crazy woman,” he said.

  “She’s just had too much to drink, Roscoe.”

  “Sure. She’s always just had too much to drink. People don’t drink that way for fun, Em. There’s something crazy in them that makes them do it.”

  “She’s hungry, Roscoe. She’s married to a dud.”

  “Avery?”

  “That’s right. He’s a dud.”

  “So that’s why she’s after you!”

  “Don’t be silly, Roscoe. She isn’t after me.”

  “The hell she isn’t! You just be sure she never gets you cornered, that’s all.”

  “Don’t make me laugh, Roscoe. I feel sorry for her.”

  “In my opinion, it’s wasted sympathy. She’s the most quarrelsome damn woman I ever saw.”

  “I told you, Roscoe. She’s frustrated. Frustrated people get that way.”

  “Okay. I’m just a damn dumb bartender, and I don’t know anything about frustrated people or the way they’re supposed to get, but I know a woman on the make when I see one, and this is a woman on the make. She’s a bad one, Em. I’ve got a feeling about her. You take an old man’s advice and keep hands off.”

  “You shouldn’t have said that, Roscoe. You know how it is with Ed and me.”

  “Sure, Em, I know. I guess I talk too much.”

  “It’s all right.”

  Roscoe went back to work, and Emerson kept remembering Lisa’s eyes, the hate and pain in them.

  It was for me, he thought. The hate was for me.

  This was something he could not understand, and it disturbed him very much. He had not intended to have a second drink so early, but he poured it and stood there drinking it.

  SECTION 2

  In the street, the dry and searing heat came up around Lisa from the pavement. She went directly home, but when she was there she did not go immediately into the house, but went instead around the house into the back yard and down past the old summerhouse to the edge of the bluff overlooking the river and the wide bottom land. The river below was a gray and withered vein in the blistered body of earth. Beyond the river, marking the far boundary of the bottoms, the ridge was an ugly protrusion of bone with its quondam green flesh darkened and shrunken away. She stood staring out across the river and the bottoms to the ridge, remembering her recent insanity in the bar, frightened and impaired by her perverse penchant for self-destruction, and pretty soon she lowered her eyes to the rocks and tangled brush at the foot of the bluff that fell away almost perpendicularly before her. She began to wonder what it would be like to throw herself down, and she could see quite vividly for a moment her broken body in the brush, all that was left of the hunger and hope and perversity that she had been, and she felt for herself in death a great pity. It would be a great relief to be dead, she thought, but the prospect of dying was a terrifying prospect, because dying was not a part of death but the last part of living, and if she were to throw herself down upon the rocks among the brush there would be to endure the eons of seconds in descent and final pain.

  Shrinking away from the thought and the edge of the bluff, she went back a few yards to the garden swing and sat down. It was getting quite late. Sunlight had ascended the ridge beyond the river and would soon slip upward off the crest to leave the last of the visible world in a long summer’s dusk, but there would be little relief in the dusk from the sun’s heat, for that was held in the earth itself and its appurtenances. Even the swing on which she sat was quite hot. She could feel the narrow slats like brands across her body. The oppressive air seemed to swell and contract with the undulating sound of unseen cicadas, and she could hear behind her, approaching on the dry grass, someone moving with slow and heavy footsteps.

  It was Avery. He sat down beside her and sighed and let his head rest against the back of the swing.

  “It’s so hot,” he said. “It takes the strength out of you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Wouldn’t it be more comfortable in the house?”

  “I suppose it would.”

  “What are you doing down here?”

  “As you see, I am sitting in the swing and looking across the river to the ridge.”

  “I used to sit here a lot when I was a kid. I would sit and watch the river and try to imagine what it was like when this was the frontier and the wagon trains were going west.”

  “I know. You’ve told me about it.”

  “Have I? I’m sorry if I’m repetitious. What have you been thinking about while you’ve been here?”

  “Just before you came I was trying not to think at all, and before that I was standing at the edge of the bluff and wishing that I had the nerve to throw myself down.”

  “You don’t mean that, Lisa.”

  “Don’t I? All right, have it your own way. I don’t mean it.”

  “I’ve tried very hard to make you satisfied.”

  “Oh, it isn’t your fault that you’ve become involved in an impossible situation. I am well aware of that. It’s my fault, and I am perfectly willing to acknowledge it.”

  “It’s not your fault. So far as I can see, there is no blame attached to either of us. I wish you would stop being so ready to condemn yourself.”

  “It must be very annoying to you.”

  “No. I only wish I knew why you get so depressed. Have you had a bad day?”

  “Not particularly. It was neither better nor worse than most other days, which is bad enough, God knows.”

  “Perhaps you need more to do. Something to keep you occupied and interested.”

  She laughed. “You mean like occupational therapy? Thank you for being so concerned.”

  “You’ve been drinking. Have you been to Em Page’s bar again?”

  “Yes. I was there for quite a long time and had quite a few drinks.”

  “I thought you had decided not to go there alone any more.”

  “I did decide that. I promised myself that I wouldn’t go, but now I’ve started going again. I’m very good at b
reaking promises. It’s one of the things I’m best at.”

  “You say that as if you were proud of it.”

  “I’m not proud of it. It’s the truth that I can’t think of anything I’ve ever done in my life that I’m proud of. Not a single thing. It is only that I am very tired and worn out with pretending. There is a certain relief in facing things squarely. It’s called catharsis, I think. I went to a psychiatrist once, and that is what he called it.”

  “There is also a certain relief for some people in assuming guilt that is not properly theirs. I didn’t know you had gone to a psychiatrist. When was it?”

  “I was in college at the time.”

  “Why did you go?”

  “My parents sent me because I tried to kill myself, and it frightened them. I was very cowardly about it, of course. I might have done it in a way that would have been certain if I’d had the nerve, but I didn’t. I only took some sleeping tablets, and it was not successful.”

  “It is not always unsuccessful. My mother did that, and it worked very well. She took the tablets at night and was dead in the morning.”

  “I was under the impression that your mother died of a heart condition.”

  “That’s the impression that practically everyone is under, thanks to the code of the Laweses. In the code of the Laweses, unpleasant things are carefully disguised as something else. But that is irrelevant and hardly worth talking about. Why did you try to kill yourself?”

  “For the same reason your mother actually did kill herself, I suppose. Because I felt that I didn’t want to live any longer.”

  “That’s hardly an answer.”

  “Yes, it is. It is the answer to the question you asked.”

  “All right. Why did you feel that you didn’t want to live any longer?”

  “Well, that’s another question and needs another answer. I could say that I was depressed, but then you would want to know why I was depressed, and pretty soon I would have to tell you something you certainly don’t want to hear.”

  “If we are going to make a success of our marriage, there are many things, I think, that I should hear.”

  “Are you still holding to the hope that we can make a success of our marriage?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “No. It is quite hopeless.”

  “Then why do you stay?”

  “You know why I stay. Because I promised to try for a year, and the year is not up.”

  “But you are quite good at breaking promises. It’s one of the things you’re best at. Isn’t that what you said?”

  “Nevertheless; this is one that I am trying to keep. I will go away if you want me to, however. You only have to say so.”

  “I don’t want you to go, Lisa. Our year is just over half gone. I’m still convinced that we can reach a satisfactory adjustment in time.”

  “You think we can learn to love each other? You honestly think that?”

  “Perhaps not. Not in a physical way, at least. But there are other values.”

  “Spiritual values, you mean? One hears so much about them, but I’m not sure I know just what they are. I am no philosopher, you understand, but it seems to me that thought and emotion do not exist independently. They must surely have at least a physical source, and if the source is no good, if it is distorted or in some way wrong, the thought and emotion are also distorted and wrong, and that is just too bad for the person concerned.”

  “Do you deny the possibility of any kind of correction?”

  “In my case, I deny it. Last December in Miami I honestly thought that it might be possible, and I have tried to go on thinking it, but now I am sure that it is not so.”

  “Have you never loved anyone at all, Lisa?”

  “Are you sure you want me to answer that? I told you that I am very tired and worn out with pretending. If I answer, I will tell you the truth.”

  “I wish you would.”

  She had not looked at him since he had sat down beside her. She did not look at him now. She continued to start out across the river valley to the ridge on the other side, and the light had now left the crest, and the darkening air swelled and collapsed and swelled again with the persistent rhythm of the unseen cicadas in the listless trees.

  “Very well, then,” she said. “I have loved more than once with an ardor that would surprise you. In the beginning there was a girl named Alison, and it was a long time ago. It seems to me, anyhow, like a long time. She was tall and slim and strong and very good at games and things like that, and it was my opinion that she was the most wonderful person who had ever been born or was ever likely to be born. I loved her very much, and for a while she loved me too, but then she didn’t love me any more, and this was because of something that happened. I wrote her a note and lost it, and someone found it, a teacher in the school we went to, and that was the end of it, of course, and it was all my fault. She said that I was careless about the note, which was true, and I didn’t blame her for being angry, and I still don’t blame her. No one understood about it, and we were treated like criminals, and it isn’t right for someone like her to be treated that way. I would have given up everyone else for her sake, the whole world, but she said that I was a fool and that she never wanted to see me again. It wasn’t quite that way, however. I did see her many times afterward, but we were like strangers, and it was far worse than not seeing her at all. Do you want me to go on?”

  “I’m not sure that I understand what you are trying to tell me.”

  “I think you are. I think you are very sure. Later, one summer at a lake, there was someone else. It didn’t amount to much. It was just something that happened in the summer and was not expected to last or to mean any more than it obviously did. After that there was no one else for quite a long time, but I was often very depressed, and it was then, sometimes during that period, that I took the barbiturates but did not die. I wanted to die, I believe I was sincere in that, but I did not want to do any of the things that would have made dying certain, and after the attempt which failed I did not try again. Eventually I was glad for a while that I hadn’t succeeded in dying, however, for I was in college then, Midland City College, and there was a teacher there who taught French. She was French herself, I believe, or had been born in France at least, and she was very sleek and sophisticated, and all the men in her class were excited about her, which was a great joke on them that they never understood. It was wonderful with her at first, as if I had been lifted to a new, exhilarating life, but it couldn’t last long because of circumstances. Because of her position in the college, I mean. You can see that, of course. The perils were multiplied, and the consequences of exposure were far too severe to be risked indefinitely. I have found that nothing can survive in the shadow of a constant threat. Nothing on earth has the strength for that.”

  She stopped and waited and was apparently listening for some sound in the hot dusk, but actually she was only giving him time to say something or strike her or do what he felt impelled to do in the circumstances. She still did not look at him, but she knew that he had not moved and was still sitting with his head back against the swing, and she had a feeling that his eyes were closed and had been closed all the time she had been talking. After a while he repeated his long sigh.

  “Is that all?” he said.

  “No, it is not all, but perhaps it is enough.”

  “I want you to tell it all.”

  “All right. Just as you wish. Bella was the last. I met her in a park during a particularly bad time, and we met there two or three times afterward, and I went to live with her in her apartment. It was never very good with Bella, not like with the others, but it was better than being alone, and I stayed with her until it was no longer possible. She found out that my family had money and wanted me to help her blackmail them, and it was this that made it impossible to s
tay. Against my will, she contacted my brother Carl and had him come to the apartment, and he came and paid her five thousand dollars, and this was the night he took me away with him and three or four days later took me to Miami.”

  He stirred and sighed again and spoke so softly that she could barely hear him.

  “To meet me.”

  “Yes. You were in bad luck. You probably won’t believe it, but I’m truly sorry.”

  “Why did you marry me?”

  “For asylum. Carl thought that marriage would eventually convert me to normalcy, that it was the only way. He had been very kind to me, and I wanted to please him. He wanted me to change, and I honestly wanted to change myself. I even convinced myself that it would be possible in the way you offered, but now I know that it is not possible and can never be accomplished. I’m sorry for the hurt I’ve done you.”

  “You needn’t be. I deserve what I’ve received.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “I had no capacity for marriage myself. I was using you as much as you were using me.”

  “Oh, that. That’s different.”

  “Yes? How?”

  “Impotence can be adjusted to. Even compensated for. If only that were between us, we would have no great problem. Anyhow, it will serve no purpose now to weigh the blame. You said that yourself a little while ago, and I agree with you. The only question is, what do you intend to do about it?”

  “Do? What’s to be done?”

  “I must say you are taking it very calmly. Don’t you find me disgusting? Don’t you want to strike me or curse me or even kill me?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t understand it.”

  “Maybe I am too tired. Do you think you are the only one who has ever been tired or depressed or has wanted to die?”

  His voice did not rise with emotion. It was perfectly flat and lifeless. She turned her head and looked at him for the first time since his arrival, and he was sitting as she had thought he was, with his head back and his eyes closed, and his face had in the dusk the stiff, waxen look of a face that had been embalmed.