The Pandora Effect

by Olivia Darnell

  She was holding up a small white dress that looked like doll clothes. It was covered in rows of baby lace and pink satin roses. Several other outfits lay scattered around on the bed behind her. Baby clothes! Booties, hats, bonnets, blankets. The whole nine yards. She was completely absorbed in her activity, oblivious to his presence.

  He cleared his throat.

  She turned to look at him and then frowned.

  “Tyler!” She said. “What on Earth are you doing home this time of day? Is something wrong?” She got up and began to scoop all the things into a Rubbermaid storage box.

  “No, nothing’s wrong,” he told her. “Whatcha doin’?”

  “Just goin’ through some of the stuff in our closet,” she told him as he bent to pick up a tiny pair of socks with lace ruffles. “I do that from time to time. Just to clear out the clutter.”

  “Whatcha doin’ down at Doc Peterson’s?” He asked nonchalantly dropping the socks into the box. All the clothes were old, brand new, but old. Never worn.

  “How did you know I’d been to see him?” She stopped short to stare at him.

  “I took Aunt Mary over this mornin’, remember?” He asked raising both eyebrows.

  “Oh, yeah.” She frowned and took the box back to the closet. “How is she?”

  “She’s fine,” he said tiredly. She was evading the question. “In fact, she’s doin’ better than me.”

  “That’s good.” Paula Anne said distractedly. She started past him out the door and he took hold of her wrist.

  “Paula Anne.” He made her look at him. “Tell me what’s goin’ on.”

  She had the most beautiful blue eyes in the whole world. All she had to do was look at him in that peculiar way and it was all over. He’d never been able to shed that one last fascination. He knew all she had to do was cry a single tear and that would have been the end of it.

  He backed up to sit on the bed and pulled her down on his lap. She wrapped her arms around his neck and laid her head on his shoulder like a little girl.

  “He shouldn’t have told you,” she said into his shirt.

  “He didn’t.”

  “I didn’t want to tell you yet,” she said. “I’m taking some new fertility drugs.”

  “Dammit!” He looked up at the ceiling and closed his eyes.

  “It’s new stuff, Ty,” she told him. “He said you need to come in and get checked out this time.”

  “Paula Anne...” He began, but she cut him off.

  “This is a new drug, but the doctor thinks the problem might be something else. He really needs to do some tests... on you.”

  Tyler stiffened and fell silent. It was exactly what he had expected. He hated it when she tried that stuff. It always made her sick.

  “He says he can’t find anything wrong with me. He says that there is no reason why I can’t get pregnant. He says...”

  “Paula!” He looked away to keep from seeing her tears. “Remember how sick you got last time you took that junk? I told you that it wasn’t worth it. I’d rather have you just the way you are.”

  “I’m getting old, Tyler!” she told him plaintively. “Look at me!” She pulled his face around to look in his eyes. “I’ve got wrinkles!”

  “You do not!” He told her earnestly. “You’re as cute as a speckled puppy under a red wagon.”

  She smiled at that, but it wasn’t enough.

  “Why won’t you go?” She asked. “It’s not fair.”

  “We’ve been through all this before.” He tucked her head under his chin and patted her hair. “I hate to see you get all pumped up and then let down again over and over. I ain’t sayin’ that there might not be something wrong with me, but I’d just as soon leave well enough alone. Maybe we’re not meant to have any kids.”

  She began to cry even more and she damned well knew he couldn’t abide it.

  “Look at me!” He pushed her away and lifted her chin. “I don’t care about kids. I don’t care if we have none or a dozen. I’m the one gettin’ old here. I’m happy just the way we are.”

  “And what are we? Just two people living in the same house. We aren’t a family. We don’t even eat together!”

  “We can if you want to,” he told her.

  She laughed in spite of her tears. “That’s not the point. I want to be a family. I want to have children and grandchildren. I want my little girl to be a cheerleader. I’m tired of playing with everyone else’s children. I want some of my own. Our own.”

  Tyler shook his head. It was no use arguing with her. He wanted to tell her that he would go down to see Dr. Peterson, but he couldn’t. But maybe he should. Maybe if he found out once and for all that it was his fault, then she would accept it and quit beating herself up every six months.

  “But these drugs. They’re not healthy. Remember last time?”

  “Yeah,” she nodded and then smiled and sniffed. “I took my shot on Friday. Tonight’s the night.”

  “Oh, here we go.” He rolled his eyes.

  She stood up and pushed him back on the bed and jumped on his stomach like a kid almost causing him to lose his beer.

  “We don’t have to wait until tonight.” She wrinkled her nose and looked down at him.

  Louis opened the front storm door quietly as was his custom and let himself into the house as quickly as possible to avoid leaking the AC out onto the porch. The living room was dark behind the heavily insulated draperies and closed mini-blinds. The air was scented vanilla from a candle sitting on the coffee table. The mellow smell made his mouth water. He went into the kitchen and turned on the fire under the kettle. For some reason, he wanted a cup of that green tea. While the water was heating, he headed into his bedroom to change into a pair of shorts and a clean blue tee shirt. A pang of guilt about Angelica Aliger made him opt for coffee instead of the tea. He held the metal gift box in his hand and thought of the woman who had given it to him. He put a spoon full of instant coffee into each of the two cups and added two spoons of sugar to his. The blue willow designs on the coffee cups reminded him again of Angelica Aliger. The thought of her made his guilt grow. He put her out of his mind and took a frozen dinner from the freezer. He didn’t even bother to check what kind of dinner it was before placing it in the microwave. It didn’t matter. He would eat it alone in front of the TV.

  A few moments later, he carried the two cups down the hall to Julia’s bedroom. The door stood open a crack. He could see her kneeling at the foot of the bed, rosary beads in her hand. Her upturned face expressed a serene quality that made him shiver. Louis looked down at the coffee and then retreated silently down the hall to the kitchen.

  Today’s mail was stacked, unopened, on the counter. He began to tear the envelopes open, brutally ripping through the invoices enclosed. Bills and more bills. Hospitals. Labs. Therapists. Radiologists. Collection agencies. Attorneys. Always the same. The rest were from Catholic organizations offering prayers and rosaries for contributions. Our Lady of This and Our Lady of That. Saint What’s-His-Name and Sister What’s-Her-Name. Prayers for sell. And Julia would send them money if he didn’t destroy them all. He tore them to shreds and slammed them into the trashcan along with the bills, threats and notices from creditors. White Cross. Gold Cross. Blue Cross. Now there was a real Cross to bear. He could barely keep up with the twenty per cent he owed after the insurance had paid all it would pay. They had really nailed him to it with their deductibles and co-insurance payments. All he knew was that he couldn’t even begin to pay all the medical bills Julia had accrued and, yet, he would have given every penny and robbed the bank, too, if money could have helped her. Six more months and she would be dead and he would spend the rest of his life trying to pay for the doctors who couldn’t save her. It wasn’t right at all! But then had come the final blow. Julia had refused more treatment. He didn’t know if it was because of the money or what. She had simply refused to take any of the treatments they had suggested because she said that it was not worth the pain. He leaned on the cou
nter and stared at the coffee in the cup. He needed a beer. He needed two beers. hell, he needed a bottle of whiskey.

  He had finished the dinner and was sitting in his favorite chair staring at the TV screen when Julia had walked up behind him and laid her hand on his shoulder.

  “Frank called,” she told him.

  “Yeah? How’s he doin’?” he asked.

  “He needs money,” she said quietly.

  “Tell him to try another loan,” he suggested. “How much does he need this time?”

  “He only needs twenty-five dollars. Just until he gets paid on the fifteenth.” She sighed and went around to sit on the sofa. “I already put a check in the mail.”

  “Oh,” Louis said shortly. “You think he’ll ever finish school? He’s been goin’ for six years now.”

  “He will be graduating in December, Louis. You know that. I intend to be there to see him get his Master’s,” she told him.

  Frank called his mother every other day like clockwork from Austin. He was not taking his mother’s illness very well. He had threatened to quit school and come home. That was not a good idea. Louis couldn’t support him and he doubted his son could find a good paying job in Magnolia Springs. No, it was better just to send him the money and keep him where he was. At least he would have a chance someday to make something of himself. Certainly, he and Julia had not been able to do much for him. Julia had only the one dream left. To see Frank graduate. Louis had no dreams. Only nightmares. He never knew how he would make it through next week or even the next day. He couldn’t even begin to think about December.

  “We will be there, won’t we?” Julia asked as she sat down on the sofa. He hated the look of desperation in her eyes.

  “Of course, we’ll be there,” he told her and forced a smile. “You gonna come down to the big deal on Saturday? You got to give me some moral support.”

  “I’ll try to make it down for a little while.” She smiled. “But not all day.”

  “Sure.” He didn’t believe her. “That new store, the New Castle Gift Shop? It’s havin’ it’s grand openin’. I’ll take you over there and buy you something special.”

  “Alright,” she agreed and closed her eyes. It almost seemed as if she had suddenly gone to sleep for several seconds, just sitting on the edge of the sofa. Her hair framed her face, long and brown, hardly any gray showing. He still loved her more than ever, but since she had accepted her fate, she had not been the same person he had been married to for so many years. It was almost as if he were living in some sort of Holy Shrine. He had always hoped that her dedication and faith would make up for his lacking in the religious department, but now he felt like a complete outsider. He wondered if she were already gone. It was no wonder that he was having trouble with the Angelica Aliger thing. Of course, he knew better than to try to justify it by using Julia’s illness as an excuse. Even he, Louis Parks, was not low enough to do that, but justified or not, he could not get his mind off Angelica even as he sat looking at his wife.

  “Hearts!” Angelica said suddenly, which caused Perry to jump. He had been lost in his own thoughts or someone else’s, he wasn’t quite sure which. They sat together in the alcove overlooking the street. The rain which had begun some three hours earlier had washed the street clean below them. The street lights glistened in the rushing water flowing along the curbs. A smooth shimmer of water flowed over the old glass of the windows giving the view a surrealistic glaze. Lightning flashed in the sky, intermittently accompanied by its thunderous voice which rolled and shuddered across the sky causing the panes to vibrate and shake in their frames. Perry liked the rain and he loved the lightning as long as it was not too very close. He looked at her in surprise. She rarely showed enough spontaneity to catch him off guard.

  “These people put too much into that word.” She looked at him. “I have been giving some consideration to your fixation on words. It seems that you may have found some small bit of information that I had failed to properly include in my work. For instance, the word ‘heart’. There are so many derivatives and permutations in this language, one could be talking about the circulatory organ at one moment and then be expounding on some great emotional issue the next. Take heart. Have heart. High hearts. Brave hearts. Black heart. Good heart. Heart of gold. Heart of stone. Cold-hearted. Hard-hearted. Take enlarged heart and big-hearted. They are two phrases with syntactically identical connotations, but are absolutely unrelated. One would make an embarrassing faux pas to suggest that a generous person had an enlarged heart meaning that they were suffering from a serious medical condition when, in fact, they were merely acting out a generous deed. The heart pumps blood to the brain. The very sentiments associated with the human heart are those which place the most stress on the organ in question. Do you realize that some people have been known to die from broken hearts? Not broken in the sense that something is mechanically wrong with them, but rather that something is emotionally wrong. It is ridiculous to attribute emotions to a muscle. They may as well attribute anger to kidneys. “

  Perry sighed. It had started out most promising, but her last statement caused him to blink. He was, however, immensely pleased that she had given something he had said at least a bit of consideration.

  “I carry from my mother’s womb a fanatical heart,” he quoted from his yellow book. “They are fanatics. Each of them is a fanatic about one thing or another. Everyone of them carries a passion in his or her heart. It is what gives them drive and purpose. Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aims.”

  “They do not carry passions in their hearts, Peregrin.” She looked at him benignly. “They carry passions in their emotions and emotions are contained within the brain. What they fanaticize is love. Love is a very powerful emotion. I suggest that you steer clear of it at all costs. They smother each other with it or starve each other for it. Always ready to give it and then equally ready to take it, but it would seem that those who give it, rarely come into contact with someone who is mutually interested in reciprocal accommodations. That leaves one giving and one taking. Not a healthy arrangement.”

  “Do you speak from experience or observation?” He raised one eyebrow.

  “Observation only,” she told him. “One does not need to experience something to understand it. I have never entered the event horizon of a black hole, but I understand the concept and the mathematics quite well. It would be a foolish endeavor.”

  “To enter an event horizon? Or experience love?” He asked, typically attempting to aggravate her.

  “Both. It would most likely result in the same outcome. Total destruction.” She narrowed her eyes to look at him suspiciously. “Caution is advisable in either case.”

  “Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness. To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.” Perry quoted two more lines from his infamous yellow book. He felt her eyes on him with smug satisfaction.

  “Do you really believe your poets?” She asked him. “Words are so very easy to string together. One can say anything, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that what one says is true. Would you freely give another the virtual power of life or death over you? That one word spoken in anger, or worse, some word left unspoken, could stab you emotionally with the same effect as a dagger? Could you do that? Would you be so irrationally inclined?”

  “Those were not the words of poets. And not everyone can string together words to such affects and effects. But listen to what Mr. A.E. Housman had to say about it:

  When I was one and twenty

  I heard a wise man say

  Give crowns and pounds and guineas

  But not your heart away

  Give pearls away and rubies

  But keep your fancy free

  But I was one and twenty

  No use to talk to me.”

  “What does that have to do with you?” She asked. “Does it mean you consider yourself yo
ung and foolish? Or do you mean that even though you know the inherent danger in participating in these emotional episodes, you would do so willingly and take the risk?”

  “Yes, exactly,” he said. “All the above. I am young and foolish and wise and old and I would love to participate in all the facets of emotional hedonism. And allow me to digress a bit to your previous comment concerning the fact that you cannot understand things without experiencing them firsthand. How can one judge something either personally or professionally without experiencing it? How can the scientist really know how the lab rat feels? He can make empirical observations of the rat’s behavior and response to stimuli, but he can never, ever know what the rat is thinking. So you see, he can make no valid inferences or conjectures as to why the rat responded the way it did. The scientist may assume that the rat jumped because it was shocked, but he can never know for sure. One rat might jump when it’s shocked and another might simply fall over and kick its feet. One rat might actually like being shocked while another might find it intolerable. The scientist, in effect, is bound to judge the rat based upon his own experience. The scientist knows, from experience, that he would jump if he were shocked. He observes the same behavior in a rat and assumes that the rat jumped for the same reason. He could be wrong. The rat may have been jumping for joy when the scientist pressed the button. How can one know it wasn’t so? And don’t tell me that repeated experimentation yielding the same results is proof. Repeated experiments will only reinforce the jumping for joy if the rat actually enjoys the shock and still, the rat will jump, but not for the reason the scientist thinks. Like searching for the white swans, when one should be searching for the black one.”