ELIZABETH MASSIE
Stephen
ELIZABETH MASSIE was born in Virginia and was a teacher for sixteen years. Her short fiction has appeared in many small press publications such as The Horror Show, Grue, Deathrealm, 2AM, The Blood Review, New Blood and Iniquities, along with the anthologies Bringing Down the Moon, Women of Darkness, Borderlands, Obsessions, Dead End: City Limits, A Whisper of Blood and Still Dead. Pan Books will publish her first novel, Sineater, in 1992.
She has also scripted a young people’s drug abuse drama, Rhymes and Reasons, which was produced by the PBS Network and won a 1990 Parent’s Choice Award. “Stephen” was nominated for the Horror Writers of America’s Bram Stoker Award and is a memorable story of twisted love and obsession that breaks all the taboos.
MICHAEL AND STEPHEN SHARED A ROOM at the rehabilitation center. Michael was a young man with bright, frantically moving eyes and an outrageous sense of nonstop, bitter humor. He had been a student at the center for more than a year, and with his disability, would most likely be there much longer. This was true, also, for the others housed on the first floor of the west wing. Severe cases, all of them, living at the center, studying food services, auto mechanics, computer operating, art, and bookkeeping, none of them likely to secure a job when released because when hiring the disabled, businesses would usually go for the students who lived on east wing and on the second floors. The center had amazing gadgets which allowed people like Michael to work machines and press computer keys and dabble in acrylics, but the generic factory or office did not go in for space-aged, human-adaptive robotics. And Michael himself was a minor miracle of robotics.
Anne arrived at the center late, nearly ten thirty, although her meeting had been scheduled for ten o’clock. The cab dropped her off at the front walk and drove away, spraying fine gravel across her heels. Inside her shoes, her toes worked an awkward rhythm than neither kept them warm nor calmed her down. A cool November wind threw a piece of paper across the walk before her. On its tail followed the crumbled remains of a dead oak leaf. Anne’s full skirt flipped and caught her legs in a tight embrace. It tugged, as if trying to pull her backward and away. In her mouth she tasted hair and sour fear. When she raked her fingers across her face the hair was gone, but not the fear.
The center was large and sterile, a modern bit of gray stone architecture. The largest building was marked with a sign to the left of the walkway. “Administrations and Admissions”. Almost the entire front of this building was composed of plate glass with borders of stone. Anne could not see behind the glass for the harsh glare of morning sun, but in the wind the glass seemed to bulge and ripple.
Like a river.
Like water.
“Christ.”
Anne scrunched her shoulders beneath the weight of her coat and glanced about for a place to sit and compose herself. Yes, she was late, but screw them if they wanted to complain about volunteer help. There were several benches just off the walkway, on the lawn, but she didn’t want to sit in full view. And so she took the walk leading to the right, following along until it circled behind the main building beside what she assumed was a long, gray stone dormitory. The walk ended at a paved parking lot, marked off for visitors and deliveries. She crossed the lot, skirting cars and food trucks and large vans equipped for hauling wheelchairs, heading for a grove of trees on the other side. A lone man pushing an empty wheeled cot crossed in front of Anne and gave her a nod. She smiled slightly and then looked away.
The trees across the lot encircled a park. Picnic tables were clustered beneath the largest of the oaks, and concrete benches made a neat border about the pond in the center. The pond itself was small, no more than two acres, but it was dark and clearly deep. Dead cattails rattled on the water’s edge. A short pier jutted into the water from the shore, with a weathered rowboat tethered to the end. Leaves were blown in spastic patterns on the black surface.
Anne sat on a bench and wrapped her fingers about her knees. There was no one else in the park. She looked at the brown grass at her feet, then at her hands on her knees, and then at the pond. The sight of the bobbing boat and the dull shimmering of the ripples made her stomach clamp. What a raw and ugly thing the pond was.
A cold thing, enticing and deadly, ready to suck someone under and drag them down into its lightless depths. Licking and smothering with its stinking embrace.
Phillip would have loved this pond.
Phillip would have thought it just right.
The fucking bastard.
If she was to go to the water’s edge, she thought she might see his reflection there, grinning at her.
But she did not go. She sat on the concrete bench, her fingers turning purple with the chill, her breath steaming the air. She did not look at the pond again, but at the grass and her knees and the picnic tables. She studied the gentle slopes the paths made about the park, all accessible to wheeled means of movement. Accessible to the people who lived here. To the people Anne’s mother had protected her from as a child; who her mother had hurried Anne away from on the street, whispering in her ear, “Don’t stare, now, Anne. Polite people don’t react. Do you hear me?
“There but for the grace of God go you, Anne. Don’t look now. It’s not nice.”
Anne closed her eyes but the vision of the park and the tables and the sloped pathways stayed inside her eyes. She could hear the wind on the pond.
“Damn you, Mother,” she said. “Damn you, Phillip.”
She sat for another twenty minutes.
When she crossed the parking lot again, her eyes in the sun and her hands in her pockets, her muscles were steeled and her face carried a tight, professional smile.
Janet Warren welcomed Anne into the center at ten-fifty six, barely mentioning the tardiness. She took Anne into her office, and, as assistant administrator, explained the functions of the center. She gave Anne a brief summary of the students with whom Anne would work, then led her off to the west wing.
Anne entered Michael’s room after Janet gave an obligatory tap on the door. Michael grunted and Anne walked in, still holding her coat, which Janet had offered to take, clutched tightly to her stomach.
“Michael,” said Janet to the man on the bed. “This is Miss Zaccaria, the lady I said would be coming to help us out.”
Michael propped up on his elbow, straightening himself, patting his blanket down about the urinary bag as if it were an egg in an Easter basket. He gave Anne a wide grin.
“Well, if it ain’t my dream lady come to see me in the flesh!” he crowed. “Are you real or just a vision of delight?”
Anne licked her lips and looked back at Janet Warren. “Thank you, Mrs Warren. I’ll be fine now. I’ll let you know if we need anything.”
“Hell, I know what I need,” said Michael. “And she’s standing right in front of me.”
Janet nodded, her motion seeming to be both acknowledgment of what Anne had said and a sisterly confirmation of what she had come to do. Janet turned and left the room.
“Come on,” said Michael, and Anne looked back at him.
“Come on? What do you mean?” There was only a small comfort in her professional ability at conversation. It wasn’t enough to overcome her discomfort at seeing the physical form of Michael before her. He was legless, with hipbones flattened into a shovel-shaped protrusion. The thin blanket emphasized rather than hid his lower deformity. He was missing his right arm to the elbow, and there was no left arm at all. A steel hook clipped the air in cadence with the blinking of Michael’s eyes.
“Come on and tell me. You ain’t really no shrink, are you? I was expecting some shriveled up old bitch. You really is my dream lady, ain’t you?”
Anne focused on Michael’s face and took a slow breath. “No, sorry,” she said. “I’m from Associated Psychological. I’m a clinical social worker.”
Michael grappled with a button and pressed it with the point of his hook. The bed rolled toward Anne. She held her position.
“No, you ain’t. I dreamed about you last night. Dreamed I still had my parts and you was eating them nice as you please.”
Anne’s face went instantly hot. She could have kicked herself for not being ready for anything. “I was told you’ve had a rough time these past months,” she said. “Not getting along with the other students like you used to do. I’d like to help.”
“Sure. Just sit on my face for a few hours.”
Anne glanced at the withered body, then back at his face. Of all the students she would be working with through the volunteer-outreach program, Michael was the most disabled. “Is that all you think about, Michael? Sex?”
“When it comes to sex,” he said. “All I can do is think.” He laughed out loud and wheeled closer. “You like me?”
“I don’t know you yet. I hope we’ll like each other.”
“Why you here? We got shrinks. Two of them. You on’ field trip?”
“Field trip?”
“You know, like them school kids. Sometimes the local schools bring in the their junior high kids. Show them around. Let them take little look-sees. Tell them if they are bad enough and dive into shallow lakes or don’t wear their seat belts, God’ll make them just like us.”
Anne cleared her throat, and loosened her coat from her waist. “First of all, I’m here on a volunteer program. Until the new center is finished down state, there will continue to be more students than can be properly provided for. The center called on our association to help out temporarily. You are a student with whom I’ve been asked to work.”
“Student.” Michael spit out the word. “I’m thirty one and I’m called a goddam student.”
“Second,” Anne said. “I’m not on a field trip. I’m not here to stare. I’m here to help.”
Michael shook his head, then eased off his elbow to a prone position. “So who else is on your list besides me?”
Anne opened the folded paper Janet had given her. “Randy Carter, Julia Powell, Cora Grant . . .”
“Cora’ll drive you ape-shit. She lost half her brain in some gun accident.”
“. . . and Ardie Whitesell. I might like Cora, Michael. Don’t forget, I don’t know her yet, either.”
Michael sighed. “I don’t need no shrink. What the fuck’s your name?”
“Miss Zaccaria.”
“Yeah, well, I’m okay. I don’t need no shrink. Don’t need one any more than old roomie over there.” Michael tilted his head on his pillow, indicating a curtained corner of the room.
“Roomie?”
“Roommate. He don’t need no shrink, neither. I don’t ’cause I got things all figured out in this world. Nothing a little nookie can’t cure.” Michael looked at Anne and winked. “And roomie over there, he don’t need one ’cause he’s in some kind of damn coma. Not much fun to have around, you know.”
Anne frowned, only then aware of the mechanical sounds softly emanating from the corner. The drawn curtain was stiff and white, hanging from the ceiling-high rod like a starched shroud. “What’s wrong with your roommate?”
“Hell, what ain’t wrong? Come over here.” With a hissing of his arm, Michael rose again and clutched the bed switch, tapping buttons in a short series, and the bed spun around. The legless man rolled to the curtain. Anne followed.
Michael shifted onto his right side and took the curtain in his hook. “Stephen’s been here longer’n me. He ain’t on no shrink’s list.” Michael pulled the curtain back.
It was not registering what was before her that allowed her to focus on it as long as she did. There were machines there, a good number of them, crowded around a tiny bed like rumbling and humming steel wolves about a lone prey. Aluminum racks stood on clawed feet, heavy bags of various colored liquids hanging from them, oozing their contents into thin, clear tubes. A portable heart monitor beeped. Behind it, a utility sink held to the wall, various antiseptics and lotions and balms cluttering the shelf above. The rails of the bed were pulled up to full height. At one end of the mattress was a thin blanket, folded back and tucked down. And at the other end, a thin pillow. And Stephen.
Anne’s coat and paper dropped to the floor. “Oh my dear God.”
“Weird, huh? I call him Head Honcho. I think he must be some doctor’s experiment, you know, keeping him alive and all. Don’t it beat all?”
On the pillow was a head, with black curled hair. Attached to the head, a neck, and below that a small piece of naked, ragged chest, barely large enough to house a heart and single lung. The chest heaved and shuddered, wires pulsing like obscene fishermen’s lines. That was all there was of Stephen.
Anne’s heart constricted painfully. She stepped backward.
“Nurses don’t like him. Can’t stand to touch him, ’though they shave him every three days. Doctor checks him nearly every day. Head Honcho don’t do nothing but breathe. He ain’t much but at least he don’t complain about my music.” Michael looked at Anne.
Anne turned away. Her stomach clenched, throwing fouled bile into her throat.
“Hey, you leaving?”
“I need to see the others,” she managed. And she went out of the west wing to the faculty restroom, where she lost her control and her lunch.
It was three days before Anne could bring herself to visit the center again. The AP partners were asking her for her volunteer hours chart, and as the newest member of the firm, she couldn’t shrug it off. And so she returned. Her pulse was heavy in her neck and the muscles of her back were tight, but she decided she would not allow herself more than passing acknowledgment of them.
She talked with Cora in the art room. Cora had little to say, but seemed pleased with the attention Anne gave her painting. Randy was in the recreation hall with Ardie, playing a heated game of billiards, wheeling about the table with teeth gritted and chins hovering over cue sticks. Anne told them she’d visit later, after the match. Julia was shopping with her daughter, and Michael was in the pool on a red inner tube.
“Hey, Miss Zaccaria!” he called when he saw Anne peering through the water-steamed glass of the door. “Want to come in for a swim? I’m faster in the water. Bet I could catch you in a split second. What do you say?”
Anne pushed the door open and felt the onslaught of chlorine-heated mist. She did not go any closer to the pool. “I never learned to swim, Michael. Besides, I’m not exactly dressed for swimming.”
“I don’t want you dressed for swimming. What fun would that be?”
Anne wiped moisture from her forehead. “How long do you plan to swim? I thought we could visit outside. The day’s turned out pretty fair. It’s not as cold as it has been.”
“I’m finished now, ain’t I, Cindy?”
The pool-side attendant, who had been watching Michael spin around on his tube, shrugged. “If you say so.” She pulled Michael’s wheeled bed from the wall and moved it to the pool steps. “Get over to the side so I can get you out.”
“Hey, Miss Zaccaria, do me a favor. My blue jacket is in my room. It’s one of those Member’s Only things. Anyway, I’m not real crazy about wind, even when it’s warm. Would you get the jacket for me? Door’s unlocked.”
Anne’s head was nodding as she thought, ‘Oh, Christ, yes, I mind.’ “No problem,” she said. She left the pool, telling herself the curtain was drawn.
They would always keep the curtain drawn.
Michael’s door was indeed unlocked. The students of the center kept valuables in a communal vault, and the staff moved about the floor frequently, so chances of theft were slim. Anne went into the room, expecting the jacket to be in plain sight, prepared to lift it coolly and leave with her self esteem in tact.
But she did not see the jacket.
She checked Michael’s small dresser, behind the straight-backed chair for visitors, in the plastic laundry basket beside the vacant spot where Michael’s bed rested at night. It was not there.
Anne looked at the curtained corner. Certainly the jacket would not be behind the curtain. There was no reason to go there, no reason to look.
She walked to the curtain and edged over to the hemmed corner of the heavy material. ‘It’s not over there,’ she thought. Her hands began to sweat. She could not swallow.
She pulled the curtain back slowly. And let her gaze move to the bed.
Again, it was a flash image that recorded itself on her startled retinas before she looked away. The head was in the same place, eyes closed, dark hair in flat curls. The neck. The breathing, scarred half-chest. Anne stared at the sink, counting, rubbing thumbs against index fingers, calming herself. She would look for Michael’s jacket. There was a chair like that on Michael’s side, and a laundry basket, although this one held no clothes, only white towels and washcloths. By the wall beside the sink was a pile of clothing, and Anne stepped closer to search through it. There were shirts, mostly, several pairs of shorts and underwear. And a blue jacket. Anne picked it up. She looked back at the small bed.
And the eyes in the head were open, and they were looking at her.
Anne’s fingers clenched, driving nails into her palms. She blinked, and glanced back at the pile of clothes, pretending she hadn’t seen the eyes. Chills raced tattoos up her shoulders, and adrenalin spoke loudly in her veins. ‘Leave now.’
Her hands shook as they pawed through the clothes on the floor, acting as though she had more to find. ‘Calm down. And leave.’
But the voice made her stop.
“I didn’t mean to stare,” it said.
Anne flinched, and slowly stood straight. She looked at the bed.
The eyes were still open, still watching her.
Her own mouth opened before she had a chance to stop it, and she said, “I was looking for Michael’s jacket.” ‘Leave now!’ cried the adrenalin. ‘That thing did not say anything. It can’t talk. It’s comatose. It’s brain dead. Leave now!’
The eyes blinked, and Anne saw the muscles on the neck contract in a swallowing reflex. “Yes,” it said. And the eyes closed. The whole ragged body seemed to shudder and shrink. It had gone to sleep again.
The jacket worked in Anne’s fingers. Michael was in the pool, waiting for her. ‘It’s brain dead, Anne. Get hold of yourself.’ “Stephen?” she whispered.
But it did not open its eyes, nor move, and Anne took the jacket down to the pool where Michael was fuming about on his bed, spinning circles around the yawning attendant.
“So I store my stuff on Stephen’s side of the room, ’cause he don’t complain none. And when I get visitors they don’t think I’m a slob. Nurses don’t care. I get the stuff from over there into my laundry basket when it’s really dirty.”
Anne was in Michael’s visitor’s chair. He was on his side, his gaze alternating between her, his hook, and the curtain.
“He’s never complained to you?”
Michael chuckled shallowly. “You serious? He’s in a coma, I told you already. Listen to this, if you don’t believe me.” Michael reached for the sleek black cassette player on the night stand beside the bed. He pushed the switch, and an instant blast of heavy rock shattered the air. Above the shrieking guitars and pounding percussion, Anne could hear the sudden, angry calls from the neighboring students.
“Go, look, quick,” Michael shouted over the music. “Go see before those damned nurses get here.”
Anne shook her head, smiling tightly, brushing off the suggestion.
Michael would have none of it. “Shit, just go on and look at Dead-Head Honcho.”
“I don’t think it’s my place to bother him.”
“Get on now, the nurses are coming. I hear them damn squeaking shoes down the hall!”
Anne got up and looked behind the curtain. The head was silent and motionless. The eyes were closed.
“What’d I tell you? Deaf, dumb, blind, and in a coma. Sounds like hell to me, and God knows I seen hell up close myself.”
“You have?” Anne went back to her chair. “What do you mean, you’ve seen it up close?”
“Look at me, Miss Zaccaria. You think the love of the Lord do this to me?”
There were then three nurses’ heads at the door, clustered on the frame like Japanese beetles on a rose stem. “Turn that down, Michael, or the player’s ours for the next week.”
“Shit,” said Michael. He grappled the button; pushed it off. “I ain’t no goddam student!” he told the nurses who were already gone. “It’s my business how loud I play my music!”
“Tell me about your accident,” said Anne. But she was thinking, ‘Hell, oh, yes, it must be like hell, living in a coma.
‘But he’s not in a coma. He is conscious. He is alive.
‘And when you are already in hell, what is hell to that?’
Her next session with Michael was canceled because he was in the infirmary with the flu. And so Anne sought out Julia, and spent an hour with her, and then with Cora, who did not want to talk but wanted Anne to paint a picture of a horse for her. Randy and Ardie were again at the billiard table and would have nothing to do with her. Then she visited the faculty lounge, and listened with feigned interest to the disgruntled banter and rehab shop-talk. A few questions were directed her way, and she answered them as cordially as possible, but she wanted to talk about Stephen. She wanted to know what they knew.
But she could not make herself bring up the subject. And so she went to the west wing, and let herself into Michael’s unlocked room.
She went to the curtain and took the edge in her fingers. Her face itched but she shook it off. ‘No,’ said the adrenalin. “Yes,” she said. And she pulled the curtain back.
The tubes flowed, nutrients in, wastes out. The monitor beeped. Bags dripped and pumps growled softly. Anne moved to the end of the bed. She forced herself to see what was before her, what she needed to see, and not be distracted by the machinery about it.
The flesh of the chest twitched slightly and irregularly with the work of the wires. Every few seconds, the shuddering breath. It would be cold, Anne thought, yet the blanket was folded back at the foot of the bed, a regulation piece of linen which served no purpose to the form on the pillow. With the wires and tubes, a blanket would be a hindrance. The neck did not move; swallowing was for the wakeful. The head as well did not move, except for the faint pulsing of the nostrils, working mindlessly to perform their assigned job.
Anne moved her hands to the railing of the bed. She slid around, moving along the side to the head of the bed. Her feet felt the floor cautiously as if the tiles might creak. She reached the pillow; her hands fell from the railing. Her face itched and again she refused to give in to it.
Through fear-chapped lips, she said, “Stephen?”
The monitor beeped. The chest quivered.
“Stephen?”
The sleeping face drew up as if in pain, and then the eyes opened. As the lids widened, the muscles of the cheeks seemed to ease. He blinked. His eyes were slate blue.
“I hope I’m not bothering you,” she said.
“No,” he said. And the eyes fluttered closed, and Anne thought he was asleep again. Her hands went to her face and scratched anxiously. She pulled them down.
Stephen’s eyes opened. “No, you aren’t bothering me. Why would you think that?”
“You were sleeping.”
“I always sleep.”
“Oh,” Anne said.
“You’ve been spending time with Michael. What do you think of him?”
“He’s . . . fine. It’s good to spend time with him.”
The head nodded, barely, sliding up and down the pillow, obviously an effort. “You are Miss Zaccaria.”
“Anne,” she said.
“Anne,” he repeated. His eyes closed.
“Do you want me to go now?”
His eyes remained closed. “If you wish.”
“Do you want me to?”
“No.”
And so she stood those very long minutes, watching Stephen slip into sleep, trying to absorb the reality of what was before her, counting the beepings of the heart monitor.
Again the eyes opened. “You are still here.”
“Yes.”
“How long has it been?”
“Only a few minutes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, that’s all right. I don’t mind.”
Stephen sighed. “Why don’t you sit? There is a chair over there somewhere.”
“I’ll stand.”
“Michael is wrong. I do mind his music. I hate it.”
“I could ask him to keep it down.”
“It’s not the volume. It is the music. Music was created for movement, for involvement. I feel a straight jacket around my soul when Michael plays his music.”
Anne said nothing for a moment. Stephen looked away from her, and then back again.
“Why do you let them think you are comatose?” Anne asked.
“That way I can sleep. When I sleep, there are dreams.”
“What kind of dreams?”
“Ever the clinical social worker,” said Stephen. And for the first time, a small smile crossed his lips.
Anne smiled also. “That’s me,” she said.
“My dreams are my own,” he said. “I would never share them.”
“All right.”
“And I would not ask you to share yours,” he said.
“No,” said Anne.
“I’m tired,” he said.
And when she was certain he was asleep once again, Anne left.
“I liked college, my studies there. The psyche of the human is so infinite and fascinating. I thought I could do something with all I’d learned. But I wasn’t smart enough to become a doctor.”
“How do you know?”
Anne shrugged. “I know.”
“And so you are a therapist,” said Stephen.
“Yes. It’s important. Helping people.”
“How do you help?”
“I listen to them. I help them find new ways of seeing situations.”
“Do you like your patients?”
“I don’t call them patients. They are clients.”
“Do you like them?”
“Michael asked me something like that when we first met. He wanted to know if I liked him.”
“Do you?”
Anne crossed her feet and angled her face away from Stephen. There was a lint ball on the floor by the bed. The nurses and orderlies were obviously quick about their business here.
“Of course I do,” she answered.
“That’s good. If you like people you can help them.”
“That’s not a prerequisite, though. Liking them.”
Stephen closed his eyes momentarily. Then he looked at Anne again. “You have a husband?”
“No.”
“A boyfriend, certainly.”
“No, not really. I’ve not wanted one.” Anne hesitated. “It’s not what you think.”
“What do I think?”
“That I’m a lesbian or something.”
“I haven’t thought that.”
“I’m not.”
“You have family, though.”
Anne’s crossed arms drew in closer. Family, yes, she did. God knows what wonders she could have accomplished had it not been for her beloved family.
“A mother,” she said. “An older brother.”
“What are their names?”
“My mother is Audrey. My brother . . .” Suddenly Anne was acutely aware of the utility sink behind her. She could see it brimming with water, cold water, stopped up and ready . . . “My brother’s name is Phillip.”
“Are you close?”
Anne’s shoulders flinched at the nearness of the sink. Dark water; thick, stinking, and hungry water. Eager. She swallowed, then looked down at her hands. ‘Pathetic things,’ she thought. She flexed them. ‘Goddam it all.’ She looked up at Stephen. His forehead was creased, with a barely discernible shadow over his eyes.
“Sure,” she said. “We’re close.”
Then Stephen went to sleep. Anne stared at the dust ball, and at the tubes running from beneath Stephen’s ribs. And her fingers, wanting to move forward, were stopped, and were locked onto her lap like a colony of trapped souls.
Janet Warren was chuckling as she ushered Anne into the office. “It’s no big deal,” she said, obviously seeing through Anne’s tight smile. “Honestly, I just want to talk with you for a minute.”
Anne took one of the chairs that sat before the desk; Janet sat on the edge of the desk.
“It’s Julia,” Janet said.
Anne recrossed her arms and frowned slightly. “Julia? What’s wrong with her?”
“Now, don’t get me wrong. Sorry, I don’t need to talk with you like that. You know what you’re doing, you know how people react sometimes. I’m sure you’ve had clients freak out during sessions, things like that.”
Anne said, “Certainly.”
“Julia went a little crazy after your last visit. She started throwing things; she even threatened bodily harm to herself if you came back again.”
“Mrs Warren, certainly you don’t think . . .”
“I don’t think anything, Anne. We’re in this together, remember? Julia has always been easily set off. It seems you remind her of someone she hated back when she was a child. In school, somewhere back then. You’ve done nothing wrong. As a matter of fact, you seem to be making real progress with Michael.”
Anne tapped the rug lightly with the ball of her foot. “Michael likes to joke around. I seem to be a good receptacle for that.”
“So be it,” said Janet. “That could be just what he needs at this point.”
“Yes, I believe so.”
“So what I wanted to say was just forget about Julia for the time being. I’ll get another volunteer assigned to her. With your own work at the Association, I’m sure a smaller volunteer load won’t disappoint you.”
Anne nodded, stood, and started for the door. She turned back. “Mrs Warren, what do you know about Stephen?”
“Stephen?”
“Michael’s roommate.”
“Ah, yes,” Janet said. She slipped from the desk top and went around the desk to the swivel chair. She did not sit. “It may sound bad to say that we assigned Michael to that room because we didn’t think any other student could tolerate Michael and his moods. Stephen’s in a coma; you probably already know about that. We have brainwaves, and they seem quite active, but who can figure what kinds of unconscious states the human can fall into? But whatever it is, Stephen is not to be disturbed. I would appreciate it if you would remind Michael to stay on his side of the curtain.”
“Of course I will,” said Anne.
“Thanks.”
Anne looked out the office door, toward the activity in the main hall. Several wheelchaired students were talking with visitors; family, possibly. She looked again at Janet. “Before Stephen came here, who was he? I mean, what did he do?”
Janet sat, and dug her fingers beneath a pile of manilla folders, in search for a particular one. “What? Oh, music, he was a musician. A pianist. On the way up, I was told. Into classical concerts, things like that. A pity.”
It felt as though cold water had been poured over Anne’s lungs. She held her breath and slid her balled fists into her pockets. “And what,” she began, “happened to him?”
The phone burred on the desk, and Janet raised an apologetic hand to Anne before picking up the receiver. She dropped to her seat with her “hello”, and Anne left the office.
Michael seemed glad to be out of the infirmary. He waggled his eyebrows at Anne as she came into the room and raised up on his elbow. “Miss Zaccaria! Did you miss me?”
Anne sat in the visitor’s chair. “Sure, Michael. Are you feeling better?”
Michael snorted. “Not a whole hell of a lot better, but enough to get me out of there. God, you should see the nurses they have for us sick students. The old ones all look like Marines, and the young ones look like willing virgins. Like going from hot to cold and back to hot again all the time. It’s enough to pop your nads, if you got some.”
“Are you well enough to start back into the electronics program? You haven’t done anything for nearly a month; and you know you can’t stay unless you are working toward a future.”
“I’ve been sick. I had my emotional problems, right? I mean, you can vouch for that. That’s why you’re here.”
Anne scratched her calf. “You have to look at your goals, Michael. Without goals you just stay put in time, and don’t make progress.”
“I got a goal.”
“What’s that?”
“To get my butt scratched. You ever scratch your butt with a hook?”
Anne shook her head.
“You scratch my butt for me, Miss Zaccaria?”
“Michael, don’t start . . .”
“I ain’t trying to be gross, honest. I just got an itch.”
“Michael, it’s not my place to do that. There are nurses.”
“Tell me about it. Okay, then my back. You scratch my back? Please?”
Anne felt her hands catch her elbows. She sat straight, shifting as far from Michael as she could without getting from the chair. “I’m not supposed to.”
“Why?”
“I just can’t. It’s not professional. Therapists aren’t supposed to touch clients.”
“I’m not talking like you being my shrink now. Just my friend. Please. My back itches.”
“No, Michael.”
Michael was silent for a moment. He looked away from Anne, and studied a faint spot on his blanket. When he looked back, his face was pinched. “I ain’t trying to be gross,” he said softly. “How about my face? Can you scratch my nose for me?”
Anne, slowly, shook her head.
“Please,” he said. “Nobody ever wants to touch me.”
“I can’t,” said Anne.
Michael watched her, and then with a quick motion, he reached out and jabbed the play button on his tape player. Shrieking music cut the air. “Fine,” he cried over it. “Sorry I asked. I didn’t mean it, anyway. It was a joke. A butt scratch, shit, I just wanted a butt scratch for some jollies is all.”
And then the nurses came and threatened Michael and he turned the music off.
“One of the last sets of visitors I had was quite a long time ago,” said Stephen. “But it is one I’ll never forget.” He blinked, and his dark brows drew together, then apart. A strand of black, curled hair had been moved nearly into his eye, and Anne wondered what it would be like to reach out and push it back. “They were from a church. Pentecostal something. Holiness something. Young people, all of them. Neatly dressed, each in a pure white outfit that made me think of angry young angels. Even their Bibles were white. They didn’t want to be here; I could hear them whispering behind the curtain. They were very frightened. But the leader, a young girl of about eighteen, quieted them, saying ‘Even as you do it unto the least of the flock you do it unto Jesus.’ And in they came, smiles flashing. The girl told me I needed to turn my life around, I needed to turn to the Lord. I told her I wasn’t turning anywhere, couldn’t she see that? She became flustered with my responses, then furious. I believe I was supposed to shake in the presence of their godly and bodily wholeness. Her face was as paled as her dress. When she finally ushered out her little group, she told me ‘You better accept the love of the Lord. There isn’t anyone else in this world who would love something like you.’”
“Christ, Stephen.”
“No, it’s all right,” he said. His eyes closed, held, then opened slightly. “It was a long time ago.”
“You said one of the last sets of visitors were the church people. Who were the last?”
“Two insurance salesmen. I saw who they were, and went to sleep. I think they were more than relieved. I’ve been asleep most of the time since.”
“Stephen.”
“It’s all right,” he said. “Really.”
Stephen shut his eyes. Anne watched his face. The nurses had done only a fair job of shaving. There was a small red cut on his chin. Then Stephen looked at her.
“Why wouldn’t you touch Michael?”
Anne started. “You were listening.”
“Yes.”
“I can’t. It’s not part of the job, you know. People might take it the wrong way.”
“Why are you a counselor, Anne?”
“So I can help people.”
“There are lots of ways to help. Doctors, physical therapists, teachers.”
“Yes.” ‘But they have to touch people. I can’t touch, not now, not ever. Phillip touched me. Sweet God, he touched me and touching is nothing but pain and . . .’
“Your family hoped you’d be a counselor?”
“No, I don’t think it mattered to them.” ‘. . . anger and disgust. Touching is filth, degradation. It is losing control.’ Anne’s feet planted squarely on the floor. She was ready to run. ‘Touching is cold and hateful, like putrid, black water.’
“Tell me about your family.”
“I already did.”
“You have a mother. A brother.”
“I already did!” Anne’s hand flew to her mouth and pressed there. She had screamed. “Oh, God,” she said then. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.”
Anne’s throat felt swollen. She swallowed and it hurt. “I didn’t mean to shout. It was rude.”
“It’s all right.”
“Stephen,” Anne began, and then hesitated. She inched herself forward on her chair. Stephen’s eyes watched her calmly, and they were not eyes of a blue and frightening ocean, but of a blue and clear sky. She saw an understanding there, and she wanted to reach out for it.
She wanted it, but knew the only way to have it was to touch it.
She sat back. “Good-night, Stephen,” she said.
“Good-night,” he answered. And he slept.
Randy was being released from the center. The staff threw him a good-bye party, complete with balloons and ridiculous hats and noisemakers which Randy pretended to hate but obviously loved. He made a point of hooting his paper horn into the ear of everyone present. Randy had landed a job in the camera room of the local newspaper. His going away gift was a framed, fake newspaper front page, complete with the headline “RANDY MYERS, AKA CLARK KENT, SECURES POSITION AT DAILY PRESS.” Beneath the caption was a large black and white photo of Randy, cigar in teeth, leaning over the billiard table. A cue stick was in his hand.
“I taught him everything he knows,” said Michael, as he looped about among the partiers. “He ought to take me with him, or he’ll just make a mess of things.”
Anne left in the midst of the hubbub and went down to the pond behind the Administration Building. The sky was overcast, and mist covered the algaed water.
Water, the dark trough of fears.
She stood beside the edge. The wind buffeted her.
Her mind, wearied, could not hold back the rush of memories.
Phillip, as a boy, touching Anne in secret. First as a game, then as an obsession. Anne growing up, Phillip growing up ahead of her, and his touching becoming even more cruel. His body heavy and harsh; his immense organ tearing into her relentlessly. Anne crying each night, knowing he would come to her and would have no love for anything except the sensation of his own explosive release. Phillip swearing that if she told anyone, he would kill her.
Anne, promising herself over and over that if she was not killed, she would never let this happen again. She would not touch or be touched.
And then came the night when Phillip decided blood would make it more rewarding. He was tired of the same old thing; he said he was going to change Anne just a little, like a sculptor changing a piece of clay to make it better. With the door locked and his underwear in Anne’s mouth, he carved. He took off her little toes, stopping the blood with matches and suturing with his mother’s sewing kit. He decorated her abdomen with a toothed devil face into which he rubbed ink from Anne’s cartridge pen. Across her breasts he etched, “Don’t fuck with me.” The ink finished it off.
The next morning, Mother wanted to know why there were stains on the sheets. She accused Anne of having a boyfriend in at night. She shook Anne until the confession was made. Anne took off her bedclothes and her slippers. Mother shrieked and wailed, clutching her hair and tearing hunks out. Then she said, “The grace of God has left you! You are one of those deformed creatures!”
Mother confronted Phillip.
Phillip killed Mother in the tub that evening with scalding water and an old shower curtain.
Then he had found Anne, hiding in the garage.
Anne doubled over and gagged on the bank of the pond. She could still taste the sludge and the slime from so many years ago. She drove her fists into the wall of her ribs, and with her head spinning, she retched violently. At her feet lay brown leaves, stirred into tiny, spiraling patterns by the wind and the spattering of her own vomit.
She wiped her mouth. She stood up. Her vision wavered, and it was difficult to stand straight.
She made her way to Michael’s room.
Michael’s tape player was on the bed table. Michael had left it on, though softly, and as Anne picked it up she could feel the faint hammering of the percussion. The player was slender and cool and Anne could wrap both hands about it easily. Much like Phillip’s cock, when she was just a young girl. With a single jerk, she pulled the cord from the wall. The table teetered, then crashed to the floor. The music died in mid-beat.
Anne hauled the player, cord dragging, to Stephen’s side of the room. There was sweat on her neck, and it dripped to her breasts and tickled like roach legs. She ignored it. Stephen was asleep. Anne threw the player into the sink and it shattered on the dulled enamel.
“This is for you, Stephen,” she said. “No more music. You won’t have to suffer it anymore.”
She ran the water until the heat of it steamed her face and stung her eyes. She grabbed up the pieces of broken player and squeezed them. Sharp edges cut into her hands and she let the blood run.
“And this is for you, Phillip. Goddam you to whatever hell there is in this world or the next.”
She looked at Stephen’s bed. He was awake, and watching her.
“Anne,” he said.
Anne wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Blood streaked her chin.
“Tell me, Anne.”
“My brother killed my mother. Then he tried to kill me.”
“Tell me.”
Anne looked at the dead player in the sink. The hot water continued to run. Anne could barely catch her breath in the heat. She stepped back and licked the blood from her hands. “He tried to kill me. He was fucking me. Ever since I can remember, he was fucking me, hurting me, and enjoying it like any other boy would enjoy baseball.” She turned to Stephen, and held out her wounded hands. “Touching is wrong. And he knew it. When Mother found out, he killed her. He took me down the back road to the water treatment plant, and threw me into the settling pool. It was not deep, but I could not swim, and the bottom was slick with sludge and it was rancid, Stephen, it was sewage and garbage, and I slipped under and under and every time I came up Phillip would lean over the rail and hit me with a broom handle. It was night, and I could no longer tell the difference between up and down, it was all black and putrid and I couldn’t breathe. Phillip kept hitting me and hitting me. My blood ran into the sewage and when I screamed I swallowed the sludge.”
Anne moved closer to Stephen’s bed, her hands raised.
“Someone heard us. Phillip was stopped and arrested. I spent a good deal of time in the hospital, with concussions and infections. Phillip has since moved out of the country.”
Stephen watched between her bloodied hands and her face.
“I wanted to help people,” Anne said. “I don’t think I ever can. Phillip has seen to that.”
“Yes, you can.”
“Tell me, Stephen. What can I do for you?”
Stephen sighed silently, his chest lifting then falling. His head rolled slightly to the left, and he stared at the light above the bed.
“Love me,” he said finally.
His eyes blinked, the light reflecting tiny sparks. He looked back at Anne. His mouth opened, then closed. His jaw flexed and he licked his lips with his dry tongue. “Love me,” he said.
Anne hesitated. Then slowly, she lowered the side rail of the bed. She knelt beside the bed and put her head onto the pillow beside Stephen. For a moment she held still, and then she brought her hand up to touch Stephen’s lips with her fingers. They did not move, yet she could fee the soft blowing of his breath on her skin.
She moved back then. Stephen watched her. Then he said, “You knew about my music.”
Anne nodded.
“My dreams are different now.”
Anne nodded.
After a long moment, he said, “Anne, love me.” His voice was certain, kind, and sad.
Anne touched her face and it was hot, and wet with the steam and her own sweat. She touched Stephen’s face and it was fevered. She traced his cheekbone, his chin, his throat, and the damp, tendoned contour of his neck. She let her palm join her fingers, and felt slowly along his flesh among the myriad of tapes and tubes and wires. When she reached his heart, she pressed down. The beating quickened with the pressure, and Stephen moaned.
“That hurt,” Anne said.
“No.”
Anne stood straight. She unbuttoned her blouse and let it drop from her shoulders. She could not look at Stephen for fear of revulsion in his eyes. She removed her bra, and then slipped from her skirt and panties.
She looked at Stephen, and thought she saw him nod.
Anne climbed onto the foot of the bed. Beneath her knees the folded, unused blanket was cold. She moved forward, and bent over Stephen’s body. Around her and beside her was the tangle of supports. Her body prickled; the veins in the backs of her hands flushed with icy fire. She tried to reach Stephen, but the web held her back.
“I can’t,” she said.
Stephen looked at her.
“These are in the way. I can’t.”
He said nothing.
And Anne, one by one, removed the web which kept her from him. She loosened the wires, she withdrew the needles, she pulled out the tubes. She touched the bruises and the marks on the pale skin. “I do love you,” she said.
Anne lay with Stephen. Her hands were at first soft and tentative, then grew urgent, caressing his body, caressing her own. As she touched and probed and clutched, her fingers became his fingers. Gentle, intelligent fingers studying her and loving her.
Healing her.
She rode the current, rising and falling, her eyes closed. Stephen kissed her lips as she brought them to him, and her breasts as well, and as she lifted upward, he kissed the trembling, hot wetness between her thighs. She stretched her arms outward, reaching for the world, and then brought them down and about herself and Stephen, pulling inward to where there was nothing but them both. His breathing was heavy; her heart thundered. An electrical charge hummed in the pit of her stomach. It swelled and spread, moving downward. Anne opened her mouth to cry out silently to the ceiling. The charge stood her nerves on unbearable end, and it grew until it would hold no longer. The center of her being burst. She wailed with the pulses. And she fell, crumpled, when they were spent.
“Dear God,” she whispered. She lay against Stephen, one hand entangled in the dark curls. Their warmth made her smile.
Her fear was gone.
Then she said, “Stephen, tell me. Only if you want. Why are you here? What put you in this place?”
Stephen said nothing. Anne hoped he had not slipped into sleep again.
“Stephen,” she said, turning over, meaning to awaken him. “Tell me why you had to come to the center. What happened to you?”
Stephen said nothing. His closed eyes did not open.
Anne pressed her palm to his heart.
It was still.
The party was over. Back in the recreation hall, Anne could hear Michael tooting his paper horn and calling out, “Hey, Miss Zaccaria, where are you? I’m ready to give you that swimming lesson. What about you?”
The water in the pond did not move. The breeze had died down, and the mist was being replaced by an impenetrable fog that sucked the form and substance from the trees and the benches around the surface of the blackness.
There were leaves at her feet, and she kicked them off the edge of the bank and into the pond. Small circles radiated from the disturbances, little waves moving out and touching other waves.
Anne took off her shoes, and walked barefoot to the end of the pier. The boat was still moored there, full of leaves.
The deep water below was as dark as Stephen’s hair.
Some have their dreams, others nightmares.
Stephen had his dreams now. Dreams without end.
Amen.
And Anne would now accept her nightmare.
The leaves on the water were kind, and parted at her entrance.