The Pandora Effect

by Olivia Darnell

“Oh, really?” He smiled at her and went around to open the driver’s door. She went to the passenger door and waited for him to unlock it for her.

  “Yes,” she said as she slid into the seat still holding the bagel.

  He took the bagel from her and rolled down the window far enough to toss it into the grass.

  “Where are we going?” She asked as he pulled away from the curb.

  “You’ll see,” he said. “If you must go, then just sit back and enjoy the ride.”

  “These people are so erratic,” she said after a moment. “They do the strangest things. They go to these fast food places, for instance. For breakfast, they order an English muffin filled with animal fat and chicken eggs. It contains hundreds of empty calories, harmful levels of cholesterol, too much sucrose and hardly any nutritional value. They not only eat it themselves, but they feed it to their children!”

  Perry looked at her. He’d never heard her ramble before.

  “A man goes out jogging for an hour. He comes home, flops in a chair, drinks a beer, eats a bag full of very salty, high fat potato chips, smokes a cigar and tops it off with chocolate candy. He takes dozens of vitamin supplements, ties an elastic strap around his leg and then jumps over the side of a bridge, almost frightens himself to death and then declares that he had fun. Why?” She looked at him in bewilderment.

  “Because,” he told her. “Just because.”

  “It is like their mating processes,” she said waving one hand in the air in front of her. “They engage in the activity far more than is necessary to ensure the propagation of the species.”

  “Do you still fail to see why?” He asked her. “They do things because they like to do them. There are three differences between humans and dolphins: an opposable thumb, an elevated sense of superiority and religion. You should make your next study in the sea. You may understand things more clearly.”

  “But dolphins do not have souls!” She said adamantly and looked at him. He thought Paula McDaniels might disagree with her statement. “These people are very frustrating. They engage in things they want to do, then they feel guilty and then they waste valuable time trying to make amends to one another. Why do they not show more constraint? They would have more time to devote to the things they should be doing.”

  “And what should they be doing, Angelica?” He asked her.

  She made no attempt to answer his question.

  “This universe is quite hostile,” he continued. “It is beautiful, but it is very dangerous and unfit for life in this form. There is a quote. ‘This universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly. It is simply indifferent.’ It is not quite accurate because the universe is extremely hostile to life, but it is truly indifferent to life. The goal of life is to be happy. The key to happiness lies completely within the grasp of every person. All they have to do is make the right decisions every minute of every day of their existence. An impossible task, therefore, happiness is a fleeting victory. People live through untold stretches of unhappiness just waiting for the next happy moment to come along. Avarice and evil abound. There are people who enjoy the misery of others simply because there is nothing better in their own lives. If they can cause someone else to be more miserable than they are, then, relatively speaking, they are elevated to a higher plane which makes them happy in a twisted way. What makes me happy does not necessarily make you happy.”

  “What makes you happy, Peregrin?” She asked. The question sounded so simple.

  “That is what I’m trying to learn,” he told her. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you wish to make other people happy with your little boxes?” She asked.

  He thought about the question as he drove across the bridge and pulled the Mercedes off the highway onto the steep gravel road leading down to the boat ramp. He had never had anyone ask him such a question and he had never considered it himself.

  “I’m not trying to make them happy,” he told her as he stopped the car on a small bluff over-looking the creek.

  “It would seem happiness can be something as simple as puppies playing with each other’s tails in the dirt,” she said. “I do not think consciously of being happy. It makes no relevant difference.”

  “That is because you’ve never played in the dirt. Perhaps it would make me happy to make you happy.”

  He got out of the car and went to open the trunk. She got out to follow him.

  “What are we doing here?” She asked looking around.

  Perry scanned the area for signs of other people. It was still too early for anyone to be up and about except the die-hard fishermen. One truck with an empty boattrailer sat parked near the ramp, but there were no signs of the boat or its occupants.

  “I want to put this chest where no one will ever find it. There is a very deep channel under the bridge here and the bottom is very soft silt and mud. I’m going to take it down there and bury it.”

  He picked up the box out of the trunk and started off down the slanting bank.

  “Do you mean that you would make me happy by helping me with my research?” She called after him.

  “No, that is not what I meant,” he continued down the bank, his feet slipping in the loose gravel and sand.

  “Do you propose to go into the water?” Her voice was further away.

  He nodded his head and wished she would go back and sit in the car quietly.

  “But you will be soaked!” She called.

  He shook his head and took one last misdirected step which landed his foot in a tangle of vines. The chest continued its forward motion assisted by gravity, but his feet did not. He found himself tumbling down the bank alongside the wooden box until he and it reached the flat sandbar at the bottom of the hill. He picked himself up, checked for blood and broken bones. Finding none, he went after the chest.

  “Uh, oh,” he murmured to himself and stood staring at the hard packed, wet sand. The tape had not been strong enough to hold the lid shut on the box. It lay on it’s back with the lid open. The little boxes had been catapulted onto the sand bank. Most of them laid open by the force of the impact. The little scrolls of paper were scattered hither and thither.

  “Peregrin! Are you injured?!” Angelica called down to him.

  “No, I don’t think so!” he shouted and looked up at her in astonishment and then looked around at the scattered papers and open boxes. "Uh, oh," he said again.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven:.

  “Hon?” Julia bent over the bed in the private hospital room where they had moved Louis a short while before from the cardiac intensive care unit. She kissed his nose and he opened his eyes.

  “Julia?” He asked and squinted at her in the bright light from the window.

  He felt much better. In fact, he felt like getting out of the bed and going home.

  “Louie.” She smiled down at him. “You slept right through the doctor’s visit. He was absolutely amazed. He said that you’re practically ready to go home. He said he’s never seen anyone recover so quickly. You’ve set some sort of medical precedent or something.”

  “That’s wonderful,” he muttered, pushing himself up groggily. The worst thing about his feelings at the moment was the sense that he had slept too long and had a headache. The IV was still attached to his wrist, but the throbbing had ceased. The wires from the monitors were still attached to his chest. “When did he say I could get out of here?”

  “He didn’t say for sure, but he acted like it might be as soon as tomorrow.”

  She was beside herself with joy and it showed in her face and in her eyes. Louis hadn’t seen her look so good in over a year. Her long, dark hair fell about her shoulders in loose curls and her green eyes sparkled like he remembered from what seemed so long ago.

  “You don’t know how beautiful you are to me,” he told her and she squeezed his hand.

  “Let me raise you up a bit. Are you hungry?” She asked as she raised the head of the bed. “The doctor said you would have to eat and eat good, before he will consi
der releasing you. Now this food is not so great, but it’s something you have to do in stages. First the gelatin and broth and tea and then the next meal should be a bit better.”

  “Oh, please, not tea," he muttered.

  "What did you say, sweetheart?"

  "I’m starving to tell you the truth,” he nodded. “I could eat a horse.”

  “There are no horses on this tray,” she laughed and brought over the hospital tray with its assorted little cups of tasteless food.

  Louis resigned himself to the ritual and allowed her to fix everything just so before she began to spoon feed him every bite. He could have fed himself the meager meal in less than five minutes, but he couldn’t bring himself to complain as she seemed to enjoy her role as nursemaid so much.

  When he had finished the meal, she gave him the TV control and he began to ‘surf’ the cable channels available. Nothing was on worth watching, but it gave him something to do. Julia pulled up the chair next to the bed and sat down to rummage in her purse. Presently, she pulled out one of the little Pandora Boxes and set it on the bed table. Louis recognized it as the last one that he had bought and put in his truck along with the horrid Spanish galleon.

  “I found this in your truck,” she told him. “You bought it?”

  “Yes, I bought it for you,” he told her. “It was the last one.”

  “I already had one,” she said. “Perry Aliger gave it to me.”

  “What?” He turned slowly to look at her. He felt the stirrings of anger, but forced himself to take a deep breath and closed his eyes. He had to go home! He couldn’t go into another of those alarms or whatever it had been before. “Why... when did he give it to you?”

  “He came by the house Friday morning,” she told him. “He brought one that he had forgotten to give us when we visited them. We had some tea and he told me the story of the pattern on Grandma’s blue willow dishes. You know which ones I’m talking about? I’ve always wondered about that... anyway, he’s so full of stories, Louis!”

  “Among other things,” Louis said quietly. His pulse was slowly quickening. He could hear the monitor beeps increasing.

  “I want you to write something on the paper and put it in the box,” she told him point blank.

  “That’s ridiculous!” A hint of anger entered his voice in spite of his efforts to remain calm. “That’s just one of his stupid stories.”

  “It’s not.” She looked at him frowning and seemed to be near tears. “It really works.”

  “Julia.” Louis reached to take her hand. “This is nonsense. Did he use that to get to you?”

  “Get to me?” She narrowed her eyes and her frown deepened and her cheeks flushed. “You aren’t accusing me of something, are you Louie? Mr. Aliger is a very nice man. He’s very interesting and so unusual. I can’t explain it exactly, but I know that I’m well now. I can feel it. I know.” Her tone was very, very serious.

  “Julia!” Louis snapped his head up to glare at her. Why was she tormenting him with this bullshit? If Perry Aliger had convinced her that he could cure her and then had taken advantage of her weakened state to... to... He, Louis Parks, would get out of the bed and go kill him right now! The monitors went wild and alarms sounded in the nurse’s station.

  A young man dressed in a white smock and plum colored surgical pants rushed into the room to check the monitors.

  “Mr. Parks!” The man pumped the blood pressure cuff manually and waited for a reading. “You have to lie back and rest! Now be still while I check your BP.”

  A nurse came in to check the monitors again while Louis laid on the bed, frustrated and irritated.

  “Here’s the problem,” the nurse said perkily as she held up a loose lead. She plugged it back into the machine and punched several buttons. “You have to stop moving around, Mr. Parks. I’m going to bring you something to help you relax.”

  “No!” He raised his head in protest. “Just leave us alone. I want to talk to my wife.”

  “We can’t leave you alone, Mr. Parks.” The nurse frowned at him as if he were a silly school boy. “Doctor’s orders.”

  Something inside of Louis snapped and he sat up suddenly in the bed to take hold of all the wires at once and pulled on them viciously. The male attendant grabbed his arms and tried to pin him to the bed. The nurse grabbed hold of Julia to pull her toward the door. Another nurse entered and then another dragging a crashcart with them.

  “Julia!” Louis shouted to her as she was dragged away. “Don’t let them keep me here. I want to go home!”

  Julia stood in the hall in shock as more hospital personnel rushed into the room. She could still hear Louis shouting and cursing and calling for her to do something. She burst into tears and ran to the waiting room at the end of the hall.

  Thirty minutes later, the nurse summoned her to her husband’s room. It was very quiet. The drapes were drawn over the window. Louis lay on his back staring up at the ceiling. His monitors and IV had been replaced and his wrists were now strapped to the bed railings.

  “Louis?” She asked timidly and sat on side of the bed near his knees.

  “Yes?” He answered serenely.

  “I’m sorry I upset you,” she sniffed and patted his leg.

  “Is all right,” he told her. “Ev’rythin’ is jus’ fine.”

  “You talk. I’ll lissen,” his speech was slurred. “I wanna hear all abou’ it.”

  Julia began again to tell him about Perry’s visit. It was very hard to focus on her words, a monumental effort, in fact. The more she talked, the more he began to unravel what Perry had told him at the dance. He had allowed his own guilty conscience and his suspicious mind to overload his imagination! He felt like a fool! He was a complete idiot! He hoped that Perry Aliger did not know what had really happened and he hoped that Aliger never found out what he’d imagined. Julia talked on and on and a bit of anxiety returned in spite of the heavy sedative. She actually believed the legend of the silly little box. He thought vaguely that he could have handled her imagined infidelity better than this new development. How in the world was he ever going to convince her it was nonsense and that she was grasping at straws? Add to that the fact that if he did convince her, he would be dashing her hopes and by extension telling her in so many words ‘Give it up, Julia, you’re going to die!’ How could he do that? Why should he do that? If her belief was a tonic, who cared how long it lasted? If she got some relief and a bit of enjoyment before it was all over, why ruin it? He would even write something on the paper if that’s what she wanted. Anything she wanted. Louis felt his eyes closing. He felt very, very good.

  Tyler knocked on Sam’s front door and then hesitantly tried to peer through the tall glass window beside it, hoping the man would not take a pot shot at him through the frosted glass. What the hell was he doing in there? How had he, Tyler McDaniels, become mixed up in Sam Morris’ personal problems? If Sam wanted to shoot himself over some bullcorn voodoo story that Perry Aliger’s brother had told him, what business was it of his? Tyler shook his head, took a deep breath causing his ribs to throb and punched the doorbell. He glanced back at his truck were he could see his aunt Mary’s worried face watching him from the passenger’s seat. Mildred Morris sat next to his aunt chewing her fake fingernails. And how had he allowed them to talk him into bringing them both along?!

  “Damn it all!” He cursed himself and laid on the bell simultaneously pounding on the door with his fist. Might as well go on and get shot and get it over with. His baby would be an orphan, his wife would be a widow and he would be out of his misery all at once. He had wanted to call the police, but Louis was in the hospital. He had wanted to call the paramedics, but they would have called the police. Mildred had become hysterical when he’d tried to persuade her to do the sensible thing. She actually believed the crazy story Sam had told her.

  He had relented and loaded them in his truck. Mildred had brought along Aunt Mary’s Pandora Box, holding it in her hands as if it were some sacred icon. Her t
heory was that if they went along with Sam’s delusion, he would be alright if Mary wrote something on the paper for him and put it in the box. He'd give up the pistol and maybe then they would be able to convince him to go to the hospital to get checked out.

  The only problem, of course, was that Tyler would have to get Sam to come to the door and let them in. Tyler raised his fist to beat on the door again then stopped as the big black door swung open very slowly.

  Sam stood framed in the doorway blinking at the bright sunlight with a dazed expression on his face. He looked waxy and sweat poured down his face. His eyes were red-rimmed. Muddy stains covered the front of his formerly pale blue shirt. He wore no shoes and one sock was missing. Just as his mother had described, he held a nickel plated automatic pistol in one hand and a half-empty bottle of whiskey in the other and the unlit stub of an expensive cigar clenched in his teeth. He squinted at Tyler as if he did not recognize him and leaned to one side slightly to peer at the truck in the driveway. Tyler thought for a moment he could have been in a poorly made Clark Gable movie when Sam expelled the cigar stub with a blast of air and squinted past him.

  “Mother?” He said as if in a trance and then started to turn away.

  “Wait! Wait! Sam, wait!” Tyler said, but dared not touch him. “We brought the thing.. the box! My aunt’s box!”

  Sam stopped, but did not turn around.

  “Where’s Maureen?” Tyler asked him for lack of anything else to say. “Is she here? Will you please put down the gun? You’re scarin’ your poor mother to death, Sam.”

  “Maureen’s not here and frankly, I don't give a damn,” Sam said quietly.

  Tyler almost laughed and then coughed instead and grabbed his poor ribs.

  Sam turned partly around to look at Tyler and the expression on his face made Tyler shiver. “Tell them to come in. I won’t hurt anyone. Who’s that with Mother?”

  “My aunt Mary,” Tyler told him. “The box belongs to her, remember?”

  “Oh, yes,” Sam nodded. “Did she give it to my mother?”