Marcia Talley - Unbreathed Memories

“When I get everything ready to go, I’ll send the other Mrs. Ives up to tell you. Then you just speak into the microphones in a normal voice.”

“Like this?” I leaned close to the microphone and intoned, “ ‘ ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves…’ ”

He raised both hands, palm out. “Not that loud, Mrs. Ives.”

I straightened and took a step backward. “Like this? ‘… did gyre and gimble in the wabe.’ ”

He smiled a thin-lipped smile. “Much better.” He executed an elegant about-face. “About five minutes,” he called over his shoulder, and disappeared back down the rabbit hole.

“ ‘All mimsy were the borogoves,’ ” I continued, addressing the board on which the numbers for the hymns for the Seventh Sunday after Epiphany were displayed: 119, 123, and 128. I recognized 128-“We Three Kings.” I tried out the tune with “and the mome raths outgrabe,” but it didn’t fit.

“Very enlightening.” The familiar voice of Dr. Voorhis, smooth as satin, came at me out of nowhere.

“I haven’t gotten to the best bits,” I said into the shadows. I tried not to think about the Jabberwock, especially the bit about the vorpal blade that went snicker-snack.

Voorhis emerged from the baptistry alcove just to my left and stood squinting up at me in the dim light.

“You’re early,” I said, stating the obvious.

“I like to be prepared.” It was a statement of fact, cool and dispassionate. “I knew who you were, you see.”

“How? My note was anonymous.”

“When you telephoned Claudia pretending to be from the police, Claudia was concerned. She called me. I simply dialed the number that had appeared on her caller ID. Need I tell you that it didn’t ring at the police department?” I remembered, sheepishly, the threatening call my mother had answered on my phone. “I was going to pay you a visit in Annapolis, but then your note arrived.” His teeth, long and narrow, flashed white. “This arrangement is much more convenient.”

I wondered how long he had been standing in the alcove, listening. If he knew about the microphones, my proverbial goose would be cooked. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“There’s a side door, Mrs. Ives.” He gestured toward the baptistry behind him. “It responded conveniently to manipulation by credit card.”

“I see.”

Voorhis took a tentative step forward, then paused in the side aisle, blocking my view of a marble memorial shelf on which someone had placed a vase of fresh flowers. “You said you had something to discuss, Mrs. Ives. So, here I am.” He waved a ringed hand. “Discuss.”

My fingers found the toggle switch on the lectern. Praying it wouldn’t respond with a telltale click, I turned on the microphone. I steadied myself with both hands gripping the lectern. “The very fact that you’re here, Dr. Voorhis, answers one question.”

“And that is?”

“That you sexually abused your daughter, Diane.”

“Abuse?” His hand rested on a pew. I could see the glint of a stone in his Johns Hopkins ring. “What nonsense! I loved my daughter, and she loved me. She was my joy, and I hers. Our times together were… special.”

My stomach lurched, and it was all I could do to keep from throwing up. I could tell by the expression on Dr. Voorhis’s face that he actually believed what he was saying.

“But she was only a child!”

He shook his head. “You don’t understand. I didn’t abuse Diane.” He addressed me as he would a difficult and not very intelligent child. “Mrs. Ives, Mrs. Ives. How can it possibly be abuse, when she enjoyed it, too?”

My head reeled. I tried to imagine what I would do if I caught Paul fondling Emily. I felt like flying across the sanctuary and tearing this creep’s face off with my bare hands, slowly, strip by painful strip.

“Your wife found out about it, didn’t she?”

His silver eyebrows nearly met. “My wife?”

“The first Mrs. Voorhis. She couldn’t live with that knowledge, could she?”

“What do you know about that?”

“I can read old newspapers, Dr. Voorhis. I know about the suicide note.”

Suddenly I began to panic. What if the lectern mike wasn’t patched in? What if Lionel had actually thrown the switch when he was showing it to us earlier? What if I had turned it off instead of on? I would have to lure the doctor closer to the microphone in the pulpit.

I stepped out from behind the security of the lectern feeling small and vulnerable. Dr. Voorhis stood only twenty feet away.

“You don’t know anything, Mrs. Ives. My wife was deranged. That note you refer to was full of delusional crap.”

“If it was all crap, why did you leave Waterville?”

“Small town. Smaller minds. There were some who believed the lies Fiona told about Diane and me. She was a disturbed woman, Mrs. Ives. Very disturbed.” He took another step in my direction and I retreated, inching toward the pulpit as casually as I could without alarming him.

“But Diane came to believe it, too, didn’t she, Dr. Voorhis?”

Since our conversation began, the doctor’s attention had never wavered from my face, but he stared at me then with frightening intensity. “It’s a dangerous thing when a doctor wanders down a pseudoscientific path and suddenly begins to believe all the garbage she’s been peddling.”

“Tell me, what happened the afternoon she died?”

We stood face-to-face, separated only by the three steps that led from the sanctuary up to the chancel. “She said she had something important to ask me.” He smiled, remembering. “Diane was always asking me for advice about something-taxes, investments. So when I got to her office I was completely blindsided. To put it simply, she attacked me. She held me responsible for her mother’s suicide, for having to leave her friends in Waterville.” He stroked his tie. “Seems I’d ruined her life. Balls! She was a successful student because of me. She became a respected therapist because of me!”

“Why did you kill her?”

He thrust a hand into his jacket pocket, and I held my breath. Did he have a gun?

“I didn’t mean to,” he said at last. “It was an accident. Diane threatened to ruin my career. I tried to talk sense into her, of course, but I’d never seen such hate! After all I’d done for my daughter, she was out to ruin me.” He touched a spot on his cheek, as if it were still tender from a blow. “She came at me, swinging with both fists. Then she started screaming. She was hysterical. I just wanted to calm her down, for Christ’s sake. Somehow we ended up on the balcony… I’m not sure what happened next. She just tumbled over the railing.” Voorhis’s dark wool suit, so well-tailored only minutes before, suddenly didn’t seem to fit correctly. “I loved her so much…”

“You have a curious way of showing it.”

“Ah, yes. The abuse. That’s a laugh!” He paused, one hand still in the pocket of his jacket. “She started it, you know. When she was three. She loved to take a bath with her daddy. Then when she was five, she kept crawling into my bed, begging for a back rub. At first it was just cuddling. But then…” He lounged against the first pew, lost in thought. “Such a sexy little girl. So provocative, I couldn’t help myself; no man could. You should have seen how she dressed in junior high-those skintight miniskirts and low-cut tank tops. Half the time she didn’t even wear a bra. I begged Fiona to do something about the way Diane dressed, but she didn’t. Oh, Diane knew what she was doing, all right.”

“That is sexual abuse,” I insisted. “No matter what her age, no matter what your relationship with her was, you had all the power. And if you used that power to pressure your daughter into a sexual relationship, your wife was right. Diane was being abused.”