Strangers (34 page)

“Of course, Beth,” Jan Pretre said, “If you were released, then for your own good, your husband and I, as your doctor, would have to arrange for a sanity hearing. You’ve had a Psychotic episode. You might have harmed yourself or someone else. You’ll be found incapable of making your own decisions and
. .
.”

His words were a droning blur. She couldn’t stand to look at him. She studied her calves. They were stubbly; she hadn’t shaved her legs in… how long?
God, how long would she be here?

“Beth?”

She didn’t raise her eyes but she nodded let him know she heard him.

“Let me help you. Cooperate with me.”

She had no choice. She would
pretend
to cooperate. She nodded.

“Good, Beth. That’s better. Tomorrow we’ll schedule you for electroconvulsive therapy.”

She forced herself not to give a damn. He could schedule her to be strung up by the thumbs while hot coals were applied to her feet. She would go along with whatever he wished, and get out of this madhouse.

She smiled at him. She made sure the smile was shy and hinting at sadness, that it was acquiescing and, more than anything else, trusting.

“Anything you say, Dr. Pretre,” she said.

“That’s good, that’s just fine.” She lay on a heavily cushioned table. To prevent injury during the convulsion she’d undergo, she had been given a muscle relaxant. She was also receiving a daily dose of 1,500 milligrams of Thorazine, a powerful tranquilizer, and she felt as limp as laundry on a line.

She was surrounded by male and female nurses and attendants
. It was their job to hold her down. “Open your mouth, please.”

She opened her mouth for the rubber bite plate. Whatever they demanded—“Swallow these pills, let me have your arm for this shot, please roll over, turn yourself inside out,” she would go along with them. That is, the Beth they
thought
her to be would act as submissive as an abused puppy.

But there was another Beth. That was the one buried deep within her. That Beth knew she was not insane, would not let them make her insane, and would hold onto her sanity no matter what!

Graphite salve was smeared on her temples. She bit into the mouth guard. There were heavy hands on her arms and legs. The electrodes were touched to her head.

Blackness in the shape of a huge rectangular sheet of metal dropped on her. She thought I
am dead!
and
then she floated away, rising, buoyant and liberated. She gazed down at the Beth who was writhing, eyes rolling wildly, limbs thrashing despite the efforts of those trying to keep them immobile.

Jan Pretre was below her, watching the convulsing Beth, never realizing that there was
another
Beth. Contemptuously, she mocked him with a line from
Peter Pan,
the book her mother had given her for her seventh birthday; Peter, about to be run through by his arch-enemy, Captain Hook, looked the heartless pirate in the eye and said,
Do your worst, you old codfish!

In the weeks that followed, Beth Louden’s Psychotherapy was intensive and eclectic. Dr. Pretre was convinced of the efficacy of shock, and so he had 100 volts sent through her brain three times a week, but hers was an unusual case and there were other potentially beneficial approaches. He experimented with heavier dosages of the tranquilizer Thorazine, then, not pleased with the results,
administered
a drug with an opposite effect, Tofranil, a psychic energizer. Beth went without sleep for fifty-eight straight hours,
then
collapsed.

He tried narcoanalysis, sending her into a “twilight sleep” with sodium amytal. During one narcoanalytic session, she—the
real
Beth—almost gave herself away. Calmly, in a drug thick voice, she said, “I’m fooling you, you know.”

“What’s that?”

“I…I don’t know.”

“How are you fooling me, Beth?”

“I mean I was fooling myself, Dr. Pretre, you know, that Michael was doing horrible things. I even thought you were helping him, that you were part of a plot against me.” She began to cry. “Oh, Dr. Pretre, help me so I won’t fool myself ever again.”

Do your worst, you old codfish!

After that she knew that though she had been careful, she must take still greater precautions not to reveal herself. There had to be a hidden and safe and faraway place to send the real Beth when Jan Pretre tried to ferret her out, to seize her and destroy her.

She created one.

The garden spreads for acres and acres, so great a distance that the flowers blend into the sky at the horizon line. Roses and zinnias and peace and tulips and geraniums and love and the thousands of perfumes coalescing into one heady aroma, the scent of Beth’s garden

there
is no fear

are
no wicked secrets

is
no death

She had a refuge. She stole away whenever Dr. Pretre came too close.

The petals of a tulip are as soft as a dream.

Michael came to visit. “Yes, I am feeling so much better, Michael. Yes, I do want to come home.”

There is nothing more beautiful than the purple of my morning glories.

Sometimes Michael brought the children. “I’m sorry, girls. I didn’t mean to scare you. I was sick. But I’m going to be better soon and everything will be fine.”

Quick, come with me. Safe in my garden, the flowers bloom and you will bloom with them, safe from harm, safe with me!

Vern and Laura Engelking came to see her. “I’m blessed to have such wonderful friends. Thank you. Thank you.”

I am in

my
garden and in

my
garden I live and am safe

I live I live I live

I LIVE!!!

“Beth won’t be any more trouble, Michael,” Jan Pretre said.

“Trouble? She’s so spaced out she’s a goddamned robot,” Michael said. He and Jan Pretre sat in a consultation room off the main lobby of Prairie Hills Sanitarium.

“She’s docile enough,” Jan Pretre agreed. “Her will is virtually destroyed. We’ve given her what amounts to a prefrontal lobotomy except that we didn’t have to do the actual cutting. Tell her to ‘stand up and she’ll stand up, but be sure you remember to tell her to sit down or she’ll keep on standing until her feet rot off at the knees.”

“I don’t think she’ll have to wait that long
,—
will she, Jan?” Michael said.

Quietly, Jan said, “Not many days from now, we’ll be in a new year, Michael. A
new
year…for everyone.”

“Jan…

“There’s nothing to talk about now,” Jan said, cutting off the conversation with a brusque wave. “You take Beth home. Remember, though, she isn’t always in contact with reality. She drifts away.”

Michael nodded. The only reality Beth had to be in contact with would be the reality of death when he killed her.

As he drove to Park Estates, he thought he heard Beth quietly say, “Codfish.”

It was Wednesday afternoon, December 21.

— | — | —

THIRTEEN

“DON’T YOU think it’s a good idea for you to give the kids a call?” Michael asked. It was 11:30 Thursday morning. Wearing a green and white checked flannel shirt and corduroy slacks, Michael sat across the butcher-block table from Beth. She was in a simple light blue housecoat that, he thought, seemed about ninety-eight sizes too large for her. Beneath her vacuous eyes, there were craterlike black circles. Her face was pinched and drawn, so pale that her freckles looked like punctures.

“What’s that?” she said.

“Marcy and Kim,” Michael said. “You do remember the precious little tykes, don’t you? I’ll bet they’re just dying to hear from their dear mommykins right now.”

Yesterday, before going to Prairie Hills Sanitarium to get Beth, he had taken the children to the Engelkings. That was Laura’s idea.
You could always count on Laura for helpful ideas, when it was time for Vern to kill her, she’d probably suggest a practical way to keep the mess to a minimum.
The kids were on Christmas vacation and so, with no school to worry about, it might be better for everyone if Beth had a quiet few days at home with Michael to get back to her old self.

Shit, if you wanted to find Wonderful Wifey’s “old self,” you could start looking somewhere past the rings of Saturn. Tack a sign on her forehead: CLOSED FOR THE DURATION.

“Yes, I should call the children,” Beth said. Her voice was throaty and autistically flat. She rose like a marionette manipulated by a spastic puppeteer. She shuffled to the telephone on the kitchen counter. There was a slipper on her right foot; her left was bare.

Beth picked up the phone. She said, “The children… Where did they go?”

He told her.

She said, “I forget the number.”

“Well,” Michael said, “try to recall it. Let’s see you think as hard as you can.”

Beth gripped the receiver with both hands. She closed her eyes after a few seconds opened them and said with a defeated shrug, “I really can’t.”

“That’s all right, honey,” Michael grinned. “You gave it your best shot. Hell, you get ten points for trying.” He gave her the number, one digit at a time and, her face tense with concentration, she pushed each button in turn.

“Hello? Hello, Laura. This is Beth… I’m all right. Yes. I want to talk to… I want to talk to Marcy and Kim.”

Michael decided she really didn’t have all that much—to say to the girls. A couple of “yesses,” a single “no.” “Oh, I want to see you soon,” and “I love you” and that was damned near Beth’s conversation with the kids, verbatim. He imagined it probably used up what remained of her vocabulary.

“All right,” Beth said, “I’ll put him on.”

She stiffly held out the telephone toward him. Sure, he was the “perfect pop” so the kids wanted a word with him. That is, Kim was going to remind him that she had her heart set on roller-skates for Christmas and her own Atari, and what about a dog? And Marcy was going on, “Oh, Daddy, I miss you” to him.

He took the telephone. “Hello?”

“Michael?”

“Yes, Jan,” Michael said.
Surprise, surprise—another Jan and Vern bit of business that didn’t include him?
Aw, c’mon, pallys, he knew the secret handshake and everything!

“Laura asked me to drop over here, didn’t you, Laura?”

So Laura was within earshot. That meant Jan would be watching what he said.

“Laura suggested I have a chat with Marcy and Kim, to explain about Beth,” Jan continued. His voice was professional, a blend of Leo Buscaglia and Mr. Rogers. “It could help make their adjustment to the situation somewhat easier. But you’re their father and I didn’t want to do that until I’d spoken to you about it.