Stephen King - Different Seasons

You can understand that the whole process was utterly dependent on the patient's state of mind. The Breathing Method was uniquely vulnerable, uniquely delicate, and if I had a good many failures, I'd explain them this way - what a patient can be convinced of by her doctor she may be unconvinced of by relatives who raise their hands in horror when told of such a heathenish practice.

From this aspect, at least, Miss Stansfield was the ideal patient She had neither friends nor relatives to talk her out of her belief in the Breathing Method (although, in all fairness, I must add that I doubt anyone ever talked her out of anything once she had made up her mind on the subject) once she came to believe in it And she did come to believe in it 'It's a little like self-hypnosis, isn't it?' she asked me the first time we really discussed it I agreed, delighted. 'Exactly! But you mustn't let that make you think it's a trick, or that it will let you down when the going gets tough.'

'I don't think that at all. I'm very grateful to you. I'll practise assiduously, Dr McCarron.' She was the sort of woman the Breathing Method was invented for, and when she told me she would practise, she spoke nothing but the truth. I have never seen anyone embrace an idea with such enthusiasm ... but, of course, the Breathing Method was uniquely suited to her temperament There are docile men and women in this world by the millions, and some of them are damn fine people. But there are others whose hands ache to hold the throttles of their own lives, and Miss Stansfield was one of those.

When I say she embraced the Breathing Method totally, I mean it ... and I think the story of her final day at the department store where she sold perfumes and cosmetics proves the point The end of her gainful employment finally came late in August. Miss Stansfield was a slim young woman in fine physical condition, and this was, of course, her first child. Any doctor will tell you that such a woman is apt not to 'show' for five, perhaps even six months ... and then, one day and all at once, everything will show.

She came in for her monthly checkup on the first of September, laughed ruefully, and told me she had discovered the Breathing Method had another use.

'What's that?' I asked her.

'It's even better than counting to ten when you're mad as hell at someone,' she said. Those hazel eyes were dancing. 'Although people look at you as if you might be a lunatic when you start puffing and blowing.'

She told me the tale readily enough. She had gone to work as usual on the previous Monday, and all I can think is that the curiously abrupt transition from a slim young woman to an obviously pregnant young woman - and the transition really can be almost as sudden as day to dark in the tropics -had happened over the weekend. Or maybe her supervisor finally decided that her suspicions were no longer just suspicions.

'I’ll want to see you in the office on your break,' this woman, a Mrs Kelly, said coldly. She had previously been quite friendly to Miss Stansfield. She had shown her pictures of her two children, both in high school, and they had exchanged recipes at one point. Mrs Kelly was always asking her if she had met 'a nice boy' yet That kindliness and friendliness was gone now. And when she stepped into Mrs Kelly's office on her break, Miss Stansfield told me, she knew what to expect.

'You're in trouble,' this previously kind woman said curtly.

'Yes,' Miss Stansfield said. 'It's called that by some people.'

Mrs Kelly's cheeks had gone the colour of old brick. 'Don't you be smart with me, young woman,' she said. 'From the looks of your belly, you've been too smart by half already.'

I could see the two of them in my mind's eye as she told me the story - Miss Stansfield, her direct hazel eyes fixed on Mrs Kelly, perfectly composed, refusing to drop her eyes, or weep, or exhibit shame in any other way. I believe she had a much more practical conception of the trouble she was in than her supervisor did, with her two almost grown children and her respectable husband, who owned his own barber-shop and voted Republican.

'I must say you show remarkably little shame at the way you've deceived me!' Mrs Kelly burst out bitterly.

'I have never deceived you. No mention of my pregnancy has been made until today.' She looked at Mrs Kelly almost curiously. 'How can you say I have deceived you?'

'I took you home!' Mrs Kelly cried. 'I had you to dinner... with my sons.' She looked at Miss Stansfield with utter loathing.

This is when Miss Stansfield began to grow angry. Angrier, she told me, than she had ever been in her life. She had not been unaware of the sort of reaction she could expect when the secret came out, but as any one of you gentlemen will attest, the difference between academic theory and practical application can sometimes be shockingly huge.

Clutching her hands firmly together in her lap, Miss Stansfield said: 'If you are suggesting I made or ever would make any attempt to seduce your sons, that's the dirtiest, filthiest thing I've ever heard in my life.'

Mrs Kelly's head rocked back as if she had been slapped. That bricky colour drained from her cheeks, leaving only two small spots of hectic colour. The two women looked grimly at each other across a desk littered with perfume samples in a room that smelled vaguely of flowers. It was a moment, Miss Stansfield said, that seemed much longer than it actually could have been.

Then Mrs Kelly yanked open one of her drawers and brought out a buff-coloured cheque. A bright pink severance slip was attached to it. Showing her teeth, actually seeming to bite off each word, she said, 'With hundreds of decent girls looking for work in this city, I hardly think we need a strumpet such as yourself in our employ, dear.'

She told me it was that final, contemptuous 'dear' that brought all her anger to a sudden head. A moment later Mrs Kelly's jaw dropped and her eyes widened as Miss Stansfield, her hands locked together as tightly as links in a steel chain, so tightly she left bruises on herself (they were fading but still perfectly visible when I saw her on 1 September), began to 'locomotive’ between her clenched teeth.

It wasn't a funny story, perhaps, but I burst out laughing at the image and Miss Stansfield joined me. Mrs Davidson looked in - to make sure we hadn't gotten into the nitrous oxide, perhaps - and then left again.

'It was all I could think to do,' Miss Stansfield said, still laughing and wiping her streaming eyes with her handkerchief. 'Because at that moment, I saw myself reaching out and simply sweeping those sample bottles of perfume - every one of them - off her desk and onto the floor, which was uncarpeted concrete. I didn't just think it, I saw it! I saw them crashing to the floor and filling the room with such a God-awful mixed stench that the fumigators would have to come.

'I was going to do it; nothing was going to stop me doing it. Then I began to Breathe, and everything was all right. I was able to take the cheque, and the pink slip, and get up, and get out. I wasn't able to thank her, of course - I was still being a locomotive"

We laughed again, and then she sobered.

'It's all passed off now, and I am even able to feel a little sorry for her - or does that sound like a terribly stiff-necked thing to say?'

'Not at all. I think it's an admirable way to be able to feel.'

'May I show you something I bought with my severance pay, Dr McCarron?'

'Yes, if you like.'

She opened her purse and took out a small flat box. 'I bought it at a pawnshop,' she said. 'For two dollars. And it's the only time during this whole nightmare that I've felt ashamed and dirty. Isn't that strange?'

She opened the box and laid it on my desk so I could look inside. I wasn't surprised at what I saw. It was a plain gold wedding ring.