A Lady Under Siege (27 page)

“Or maybe you wish to soften my heart, in order to win me, and thus win your Meghan too.”

“You’re clever to think of that, for that was exactly Derek’s idea. But Meghan disallowed that plan. She forbade it. She’s on your side now. The women have banded together. And I suppose the men have too.”

37

A
nne had opened her office window, hoping to catch a breeze on this muggy afternoon, and now noise from the street intruded. Grinding truck gears and the roar of transit buses combined with the stifling heat to give Meghan a nasty headache. Anne fetched her a glass of water and she drank the whole thing down in one go, finishing off with a gasp of satisfaction. “Whew, that’s better, I hope it helps—I’m not thinking straight,” she complained.

“Don’t worry about it,” Anne replied. “Often the best sessions happen when people aren’t a hundred percent. Things pop up from the subconscious that surprise you. Now catch me up. What’s been happening to you?”

Meghan dutifully described it to her—how Sylvanne had lured Thomas to her bed, and swiped at him with the knife, and how he had subdued her, and then so nearly taken her. “I’ve been feeling so guilty about it, because Derek encouraged him to go through with it, and I did nothing to dissuade him.”

“Derek, your neighbour?”

“That’s right.”

“He’s now talking to Thomas?”

“He says so. I’m still not a hundred percent sure he’s sincere. He claims he’s on board now, that he’s my sidekick, or I’m his, but I’m not sure he really believes me even yet. Not that it matters—he doesn’t have to talk to Thomas directly anyway, Thomas knows his thoughts.”

“And what does Derek think?”

“He thinks the best way for Thomas to woo Sylvanne would be to stop mentioning me. Every time Thomas speaks to me through her, she thinks he’s off his rocker, and you can’t fall in love with a man if you think he’s insane. So that means I’m the romance killer in the equation. He’s better off totally leaving me out of it.”

“And why is it so important that they have a romance?”

“I’d just like them to,” Meghan said. She could feel herself turning red, because the real answer, the vital truth, was more selfish.

“You say Derek encouraged Thomas to have sex with her against her will?”

“Not exactly against her will, but he encouraged him to go for it, thinking she might get caught up in it. Of course he couldn’t have known how it would play out.”

“You say in hindsight you should have dissuaded him, but at the time you didn’t. Why?

Meghan hesitated. “I did want Thomas to make love to me,” she admitted. “And the first part, the prelude—the undressing, the first touches—it definitely was everything I hoped it would be.” Becoming self-conscious, she cut herself short.

Anne waited for her to continue. “This is a place you should feel safe,” she said gently. “I’m not here to judge you. The worst thing you can do is censor yourself. Try to tell me exactly what you’re thinking, as the thoughts come to you.”

Meghan took a deep breath. “I guess I was going to say that I really wanted him. When she brought him to her bed I was totally ready for her to yield to him, I was
hoping
she would yield to him, but then the knife came out, and everything changed. He pressed ahead, but Sylvanne wasn’t yielding anymore. I was left feeling her fury, her disappointment, her hatred, of him and of herself. But underneath all that, what I felt most was my own longing, my own desire not getting fulfilled.”

“It’s not a rare occurrence for two people to feel a desire that can never be fulfilled,” Anne said. “For example when one or both are already married to someone else. Literature is full of couples like that, and if the lovers do link up the results are usually disastrous.”

“Thomas and I are both single, at least,” Meghan said, managing a faint smile.

“Still, you’re experiencing a kind of fixation on someone you can’t have, not unlike, say, a woman who falls for a married man. In that case the best thing is to get over the fixation and move on.”

“But there’s another option we haven’t tried yet,” Meghan said tentatively. “It was Derek’s idea, but Thomas gave it the seal of approval last night. He said if I were to make love to Derek, he’d feel it. He said we could reach each other that way.”

“Derek. The same man you describe as an obnoxious boor.”

“He’s not always so bad. He’s helped me out reading medical books. He’s very good with Betsy. I know it sounds strange.”

“And Derek is agreeable?”

“He suggested it. I was ambivalent about it when he said it, but now that Thomas is eager, I’m leaning that way.”

“And what are you planning on saying when you see Derek next?”

“I don’t know,” Meghan lied, for she had already made up her mind. She lowered her head, afraid to meet Anne’s eyes.

“Do you ever face up to the fact you will never be able to truly meet Thomas?” Anne asked. “If he existed at all, it was far away in time, in the distant past. For now, he exists, and always will, only when you dream.”

“You make him sound like a figment,” Meghan objected. “He’s more than that. He’s proven that.”

“Has he?”

“He thanked me for my medical advice. He told me all about Derek’s visit to his mother, something I couldn’t have known.”

“He told you about it in your dreams. People do occasionally dream things that turn out to be true.”

“He’s more than a dream.”

Meghan’s face was set in hard defiance. Anne looked at her and thought for a moment. “I’m going to suggest something,” she said finally. “I’m going to give you a prescription for a specific sleeping pill. One of its side effects is that you will not have dreams, or rather if you do, you won’t be troubled by them, because you won’t remember them.” She went to her desk and scribbled a prescription on a pad, then handed it to Meghan.

“You’re telling me to get over him.”

“Let me put it this way—for an attractive, newly single woman like yourself, there are plenty of potential partners around with advantages over Thomas, or Derek.”

“I thought I was your special case, that you’d want to see this all the way through, not cut it short with medication,” Meghan protested.

“As a doctor it’s my duty to act in your best interest. If I see that you’re starting to engage in behaviours that are self-destructive or inappropriate, then I need to intervene.”

Meghan looked at the prescription in her hands. The writing was a typical doctor’s scrawl, indecipherable to her. “I don’t think I’m ready for this,” she said. She folded the paper in half, then half again, then wrapped it like a cast around her index finger. “I don’t want to suppress it. Just the opposite, really—I feel what’s happening to me is something organic, something alive, and I want to respect it, and let it live. Cutting it off now would be like cutting down a strange tree that’s about to flower. I want to see what the flowers look like.”

“Well, it is your call,” Anne replied. “I’m still very interested in what’s happening with you, and I do want you to come back again next week. But you know my opinion.”

“When Jan told me about you, she said you were into the occult, that you studied witches.”

“I did. I do. But not because I believe in their world-view, in fact just the opposite. I study them as a rationalist, because I don’t believe the things they do, and I’m interested in what makes them believe it. But that doesn’t mean I’m not sympathetic to them. In fact I envy them the certainty of belief.”

“You don’t believe them—that means you probably don’t believe me.”

“Here’s how I operate,” Anne said. “I act like I believe everyone I see, because they need that to open up to me. On a certain level, I try to stay with them—if it’s real to them, it’s real to me. I also try to think of them as a best friend would, look out for them, and offer them the best possible advice I can give. And I’ve given you my advice.”

“Okay,” Meghan said. “I think I need to go kill a bottle of Chardonnay with Jan, my
other
best friend. I need it. Job sucks, house sucks, divorce sucks, relationship with Betsy sucks—the only thing I look forward to is my time with Thomas,” she mused. “Whatever it is, I’m grateful for it. It’s teaching me a lot. If I take some drug to cut myself off from it, I’ll never know how it’s meant to end. I’ve got a part to play, and I want to follow it through to the bitter end.” She paused a moment. “You think I’m on the verge of doing something self-destructive, but I’d be doing it for love, and all love has an element of self-destruction, don’t you think? Giving yourself completely to another, you lose something of yourself.”

“I call love self-altering,” Anne replied. “In love we alter ourselves to please the loved one. But in your case this loved one is not physically present, yet to reach him you’re willing to offer yourself to a man you don’t even like. And that I would call self-destructive.”

“Enemies with Benefits,” Meghan muttered to herself.

“Pardon?”

“Nothing. I’ll look for Thomas first. He told me he could see me in Sylvanne’s eyes, a ray of light through dark shutters. Unless I see the same glimmer in Derek’s eyes, unless I’m certain Thomas is there, and feel a connection to him, I won’t be able to go through with it.”

“You felt so guilty when Sylvanne suffered,” Anne reminded her. “What about Derek? He won’t be raped or violated as Sylvanne almost was, but in a similar way he will be used, even if he enters into it willingly.”

“Derek I don’t worry about,” Meghan said. “He’s a hedonist. On that level he’s going to love it.”

38

D
erek was checking ashtrays for a cigarette butt long enough to smoke. He found one on the kitchen counter; out the window he caught a glimpse of Betsy on the steps of her deck next door. He went out to see her.

She was dressed nicely, for a party or family gathering, he thought. She’d tucked the hem of her skirt into her waistband, and was balancing on the unicycle, riding it back and forth a foot or two, but still keeping hold of the deck railing. “You’re getting it,” he said. “Next step is letting go. What’s with the duds? What’s the occasion?”

“Church.”

“Is it Sunday?”

“According to those who follow the Christian calendar, yes,” she replied, feeling very clever.

“Aha. You believe in God and all that, do you?”

“God created the world. If he didn’t, who did?”

“Well it wasn’t me, I’d have done a better job. You would’ve too. Just think what the world would be like if you could invent it from scratch.”

“There’d be no pollution, everywhere would be a park, and there’d be unicorns.”

“Perfect,” he replied. “I didn’t even know you went to church.”

“My mom says it’s important I learn the Bible so I’ll get all the referrals to it in books and art when I’m older.”

“Good thinking. Planning for tomorrow today, that’s your mother. Only problem is no one’s going to look at books and art by the time you’re twenty, it’ll all just be tweets about pop stars.”

Meghan came out. “C’mon Betsy, we’re late. We gotta go.”

“You’re late. I was ready.”

“Whatever.
We
are late.”

“No, not we, because you don’t even go to church.” Betsy said. She turned to Derek and added, “She just drops me at Sunday school and goes shopping.”

“Grocery shopping, not fun shopping,” Meghan clarified. “C’mon, move your butt.”

T
EN MINUTES LATER
D
EREK
was surprised to find Meghan at his door. “What’s up? What happened to shopping?” he asked.

“Shopping I can do with Betsy. This is the only hour I’ll get all day to do something for myself, so I figured I’d take a break from being Supermom. Can I come in?”

“Of course, of course.”

He led the way to his living room. Once there she didn’t sit down, so he didn’t either. She said, “I need to look into your eyes.”

He let her do it. Her gaze unsettled him. It was unwavering, piercing, probing. “Come closer,” she said. She continued to stare deeply and directly at him. They stood toe to toe, their faces mere inches apart. He had an urge to wrap his arms around her.