Marcia Talley: Unbreathed Memories

I studied his face, searching it for signs of understanding. “Dr. Voorhis, even if Diane walked into your bedroom stark naked and came on to you, as a responsible adult you should have said, ‘Whoa. We’ve got a problem here.’ You were her father ! Why didn’t you get her some professional help?”

He looked confused. “One night not long after Diane turned fourteen, she asked me to stop. And I did. It was over.”

That may have settled the matter for him, but not for me. “But, Dr. Voorhis…”

He advanced. “How can I make you understand?”

I retreated. I raised my hand as if to steady myself against the pulpit, but I was carefully feeling around for the microphone cord. If Voorhis got any closer, I planned to grab the microphone and scream the church down. I know it sounds insane under the circumstances, but I almost smiled, imagining Lionel sitting down below in his headphones, fiddling with his dials. I would rupture his eardrums for sure.

“That day in her office, she said she hoped I’d get AIDS or Alzheimer’s disease. She told me she’d dance on my grave the day I died.” Tears glistened in his eyes and he seemed somewhere far away. “She was Daddy’s special little girl.”

My searching fingers found the microphone cord, and as I began to curl them around it, Dr. Voorhis suddenly snapped to attention and took another step toward me. “As much as I loved her, I couldn’t afford to have this become public knowledge.”

I stalled for time. He was so close that I could tell that the paisley swirls on his tie were actually multicolored fish. “You got away with it before, in Waterville,” I said. “You could get away with it again.”

“Ah, but that was a very different time and place, Mrs. Ives. Very different. Nowadays, a man can be branded guilty of sexual abuse on the flimsiest of evidence-branded with an indelible A, if you will, that all the evidence to the contrary cannot erase. No, I can’t afford to have even a hint of this known. I work with children, Mrs. Ives. It would ruin me.”

His voice was steady and so calm that I was totally unprepared for what came next. Voorhis’s arm shot out and circled my neck in a dangerous embrace, slamming my forehead against his chest. I managed to grab the microphone cord, but it dangled loosely from my hand.

Voorhis reached around me with his left hand. I felt it slide slowly, almost sensuously down my arm until his hand reached mine and he was able to prize the microphone from my fingers. His arm tightened around my neck, like a vise, and my nose was squashed flat against his tie. I could barely breathe, let alone scream.

A sudden jerk nearly snapped my neck. Voorhis had yanked the microphone cord from its socket. Seconds later, he looped the cord around my neck and was using both hands, those hands that should have been dedicated to healing, to draw the cord tight. I couldn’t speak, swallow, scream, or breathe. I clawed at the ever-tightening cord, but couldn’t get my fingers under it.

I aimed a knee at his groin. A yelp told me I’d made contact with the target, but the pressure around my neck only increased. Voorhis’s face, inches from my own, remained impassive. Except for a thin sheen of sweat across his brow, he could have been preparing his taxes or waiting in traffic for a light to change. The space behind my eyes turned red with the pulsing blood inside my head, then black, as waves of darkness washed over me. My knees buckled.

When you’re dying, they say your life passes before your eyes. Not so. My last thought before I slipped into unconsciousness was Listerine. His breath smells of Listerine. Imagine! Remembering to use a mouthwash before setting out to kill somebody.

Suddenly I could breathe, and the pressureon my neck was replaced by a heavy weight across my legs. Connie’s face swam into view. She stood over me, a towering giant, Brünnhilde wielding a wooden pole. At the other end of the pole dangled the Maryland state flag. “Are you OK?” The flagpole clattered to the floor as she bent to help me up. But first she had to roll Voorhis away with a push of her foot.

Free of my attacker, I sat on the chancel steps, rubbing my throat. It hurt to swallow, and I was certain my voice box had been badly bruised. I looked at the doctor, whose head was gashed and bleeding profusely. “Is he dead?” I croaked.

“I doubt it. I just knocked him cold.”

“Thank God you showed up! I wondered what had happened to you. Couldn’t you hear what was going on?”

“Every word. Lionel switched on at the beginning of Voorhis’s sad tale and recorded almost everything.” She waved toward the hidden staircase. “I’ve been standing just inside the stairwell over there.”

“No rush, I was just being strangled.”

“Well, I didn’t want to interrupt until he was finished confessing.”

I rubbed my neck where the impression made by the microphone cord had bitten deeply into my flesh. “You could have made your presence known a tad sooner. I really thought I was going to die!”

Connie checked to make sure Voorhis was still out of it, then knelt in front of me. “As soon as he made a grab for you, I ran. I was going to jump him, but then I saw the flag and thought a piece of wood might be a more persuasive weapon than my bare hands.”

Connie turned to Dr. Voorhis. She slipped out of her cardigan and used it to staunch the blood that was gushing from a wound on his scalp. When Voorhis began to move, his legs twitched, then he groaned. I grabbed the man’s ankles with both hands and sat on his legs to keep him from getting away.

“It’s a small cut,” Connie announced, touching Voorhis’s forehead with her fingers. “Might need a few stitches is all.”

Voorhis stirred, his head flopped to one side, and he stared into the dark with unfocused eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said.

I felt no sympathy for the bastard. “Sorry for what you did or sorry you got caught?”

“I’ve lost everything.” He closed his eyes. “Fiona, Diane, Loraine…”

“Who’s Loraine?” Connie wanted to know. She rolled up her stained sweater and slipped it between Voorhis’s head and the cold stone floor. “Don’t move,” she ordered. “There’s an ambulance on the way.”

I was surprised. “Ambulance?”

“Lionel called nine-one-one,” Connie said. As if hearing a summons, the Senior Warden appeared from behind the pulpit. He studied the three of us. We must have appeared a strange triptych arranged up there between the pulpit and the lectern. With his hands clasped in front of him, Lionel glanced about as if looking for something to do. He picked up the lavalier mike from where it lay on the floor and returned it to its proper hook in the pulpit, not noticing the severed wire. A look of disapproval told me we were naughty children who had just messed up his sanctuary with a bit of roughhousing. He began to wring his hands like Uriah Heep. “I never…” he began. Then, “Nothing like this has ever…” He sputtered on for a few seconds, but failed to form a single coherent sentence. He pointed to the blood on the stone steps. “I’ll just get… No, I suppose the police will be wanting to see that.”

Suddenly, Lionel glanced over his shoulder toward the west doors as if something outside had attracted his attention. “I’ll just see if they’re here yet. They’ll be wanting the door unlocked, I suppose.” He stood for a few more seconds, rocking back and forth on the heels of his shiny vinyl shoes. “Shall I?”

Connie kept a firm grip on Voorhis’s upper arm, while I continued to perch on his legs.

“Yes, Lionel. You go ahead and do that.”

Encouraged, he turned smartly on his left toe and scurried down the center aisle, gradually disappearing into the shadows at the rear of the sanctuary, his keys jangling as he walked. The distinctive sound of a dead-bolt lock being thrown echoed through the quiet sanctuary followed by a click. A soft light illuminated the west door.