Stephen White - Warning Signs

"I did. That's the night we made love for the first time." Her head lolled back and she stared at the sky. "I almost didn't do it because, in some sick way, I knew right from the start that I was doing it partially for Susan. Like a gift. But I really liked Royal, so I knew I was doing it for me, too. I was having my cake and eating it, too. I can't think of another time when that's been true in my life. Not one."

"I don't think I understand how it was a gift for Susan." Whether or not I understood wasn't particularly relevant. What I was really saying was that I suspected that Lucy didn't truly understand how it was a gift for Susan.

"As long as Royal and I were involved, he wouldn't have a reason to leave her right away. Susan had told me that she thought their youngest daughter could help her out when she got out of school the following spring. My relationship with Royal bought Susan time."

Using my office voice, a voice that sounded foreign to me out here among the rocks and pines, I said, "So you convinced yourself that having sex with Royal was an act of generosity to your mother?"

She registered my change in tone. She stilled and asked, "What do you mean?"

I allowed the vinegar of incredulousness to seep into my words. "By sleeping with her husband you thought you were being generous to her?"

"As long as I was involved with him, I didn't think he'd leave her."

I could hardly believe the level of denial that I was hearing. It bordered on hysteria or dissociation. But if Lucy's denial were doing its job protecting her ego from the rage she obviously found so intolerable, she would be almost immune to gentle confrontation from me. Part of me felt I should turn and walk away from Lucy's defenses, leaving the thick insulation undisturbed.

Part of me-maybe unfortunately-didn't. I wouldn't put it past Susan to snare Lucy into some kind of evil, but I truly doubted that Susan's motivation would have anything to do with prolonging the Petersons' marriage. I said, "And you believed… that what you were doing was… uncomplicated? Just a favor to your mother? Like bringing her hot meals occasionally?"

My words were more generous than my thoughts. In my head I was thinking that Lucy had been sticking a dagger into her mother's heart and had somehow convinced herself that the act was bypass surgery.

Could she have performed a similar operation on Royal? I wasn't sure. I just wasn't sure.

"No, of course not. I knew it was weird, that part of it. But the other side of it was that… Royal was special to me. I knew that I was getting what I wanted from him. That came first. I'm not blind about all this. If it was just about Susan, I wouldn't have done it."

I sighed involuntarily, and ratcheted up the confrontation. "I think maybe you've been kidding yourself, Lucy." I was eager to be certain that my words had registered, but she didn't look back at me. I continued. "I don't think your decision to sleep with Royal was anywhere near as uncomplicated as you would like to think."

I gave her a chance to reply. She passed on the opportunity. I went on. "If-and it's a big 'if'-Susan was really inviting you to get involved with her husband, what she was really inviting-Look at me please, Lucy." I was mildly surprised that she turned toward me. "What she was really inviting was your hostility, and you fell right into her trap and complied. She held out a noose and you agreed to close it around her neck."

I watched Lucy's jaw tighten, watched her eyes narrow. A gust of wind blew her hair across her face. She threaded it away with her long fingers. "You think that's what I did? I did this to… hurt her?"

She looked baffled, almost disoriented, as she recognized with alarm that I'd been busy setting up an ambush on her denial.

I decided to give understatement a chance. "I think you may want to look at it, Lucy."

"She wanted me to punish her?" The question was naive. This was virgin territory for Lucy. I continued to fight astonishment that, despite the events that had transpired since the night Royal was killed, Lucy's defenses were so resilient.

I shrugged. "That's part of it. Assuming she knew what was going on, the other part is that she also wanted to injure you as well. The hostility cut both ways. I'm afraid she accomplished that, too. Didn't she?"

Lucy shook her head as though my words stunned her, but when she spoke again she ignored my question, returning instead to the issue of her own rage. Her cheeks drained of color as though they'd suddenly been bleached. "That makes me what? Sadistic? To my own mother? Is that what I am-a sadist?"

"I don't think the label is necessary or helpful."

"What, then? What is necessary?"

"The awareness of how furious you've been at her. Maybe that's a good place to start. That's precisely what she took advantage of, Lucy-your anger. She knew all about your anger."

Her shoulders hunched upward and her body began to sway back and forth like a sapling against the breeze.

I put a hand on her upper arm and told her that I needed to sit. She sat with me. Still way too close to the edge for my comfort, but at least we were sitting.

Lucy's sobs were almost drowned out by the gusting wind. I had to struggle to make out her next words. "I could've fallen in love with him. Maybe I did. It wasn't all about Susan."

I weighed her thoughts for further evidence of rationalization. But I knew I'd been witnessing evidence of something else, something more pathological than a garden-variety ego defense. Could it have been possible that her rage at her mother was really as isolated as it appeared? Had she been so incapable of seeing how Susan had been hurting her all over again? So out of touch with her own agony? And so unwilling to see her own vicious response toward her mother?

It seemed like time for me to say something. I said, "This wasn't about Royal, Lucy."

"It wasn't?" The sound of her question was so puerile it was as though I were watching a child move from doubts about immense bunnies to recognition of the fact that Easter morning was a fiction.

I shook my head. "No, it wasn't."

Lucy said, "I wondered if she knew."

I didn't respond.

Lucy went on. "I don't know if she knew. Royal thought she suspected, but I didn't see how she could really know. We met at their house. He'd give her some sleeping medicine before I came over. That was the arrangement. I'd park on the next block and come in through the backyard. Royal and I would get a few hours together." She wiped her eyes with her fingertips and wet her lips with her tongue as she scanned the sky.

Reality was settling the way that dust coats a mirror.

"God, it was hostile, wasn't it? What I did."

I replied, "And what she did. And what Royal did."

In a quick motion she popped to her feet and circled me on the rock. The abyss in front of me felt as though it was pulling at us with the force of a vacuum. For a fleeting moment the image of a bloody confrontation between Royal and Lucy filled my awareness. I considered the possibility that she was intending to jump off the rock, and I wondered if I was strong enough to stop her. I knew I wasn't.

Before I could decide what to do, she stopped wandering around the rock and lowered herself to a squat again. She was slightly in front of me, inches from the edge. "Am I crazy, Alan? How crazy do you have to be to do what I did?"

I thought, What did you do ? I said, "You're not crazy, Lucy."

"But I have problems, don't I?"

I revisited understatement. "Yes, Lucy. I think you could use some help."

A fter a fewminutes of silence she said, "After I went out with Grant for a while, I decided what I was doing with Royal was crazy and I decided to break it off. The night Royal was killed, I'd told him it was the last time."