T. Boyle - Riven Rock

Kempf’s face fell open like a book, only it was an unreadable book — a psychology text, written in German. “Why, yes,” he said, “of course. That’s the whole idea. To show him that women are no different from you and me, from men, that is, and that they’re as natural a part of living in the world as trees, flowers, gophers and psychologists. The more women we introduce him to, the more—”

He was interrupted by a knock at the door. It pushed open partway and Butters’ face, flushed and startled-looking, appeared in the aperture. “Mrs. McCormick to see you, sir. And Mrs. Roessing.”

Katherine stalked into the room then, her heels punishing the floorboards, Mrs. Roessing following languidly behind. “I just can’t stand it,” she announced, addressing Kempf, who’d stopped his pacing and was posed in front of the painting in the exact attitude of Charcot. “And frankly, Dr. Kempf, I don’t care what your opinion or advice is on the subject, but Jane and I have come to take my husband out to luncheon — a proper luncheon — at our hotel.”

The doctor blanched. He looked like Valentino facing down a bull in Blood and Sand —sans the mustache and excess hair, of course. “I can’t allow it,” he said. “Not today, of all days.”

Katherine was in a state, all her Back Bay debutante’s ire aroused, the crater visible between her pinched brows, her eyes incinerating all before her. She wouldn’t be denied, not this time — O‘Kane could see that, and he began to feel very uncomfortable indeed. “What you will or will not allow is beside the point, Edward,” she said, “because I’ll have you out of here in two shakes if you continue in this obstinate—”

“Your fellow guardians may have something to say about that.”

“Well, do you hear that?” Katherine huffed, looking to Mrs. Roessing for support; to her credit, Mrs. Roessing merely seemed embarrassed. “The insolence of the man. I’ll see Cyrus and Anita in court — and you too. It’s high time I had the guardianship of my own husband, and we’ve come this far, with our lovely beach parties and, and”—here she faltered, the voice gone thick in her throat—“and Muriel and all the rest, and I won’t see it spoiled now, I simply won’t.” She shot a look at O‘Kane, as if to see if he was going to offer any protest, and he dropped his eyes.

“All right, Jane,” she said then, her voice brisk and businesslike, “let’s go fetch Stanley.”

There was a moment of hesitation, Kempf giving O‘Kane a sour look as the two women slammed out the door and down the steps to the path that led to the main house, their shoulders squared, hats marching in regimental display, and then he said, “Come on, Eddie, we’d better get over there and see that Martin doesn’t open that door — or if he does, well, I won’t answer for it.”

They weren’t more than two minutes behind the women, but by the time they reached the main house, with its door flung open wide and a faint cool breath of lemon oil and furniture wax emanating from somewhere deep inside, Katherine and Mrs. Roessing were already at the top of the stairs, on the landing, and Katherine was shrilly demanding that Martin open the door. Mr. McCormick was bent over the table in the upstairs parlor at the time, rocking back and forth and chanting his mantra— one slit —over and over, while he worked at drawing a continuous line down the center of a hundred or so sheets of the finest handmade cotton-rag sketching paper, front and back. He was still in his robe and pajamas, having refused to dress that morning, an act of insubordination Kempf overlooked because of Mr. McCormick’s highly discomposed state. O‘Kane was just coming up the stairs at this point, and all he was able to see at first was some sort of commotion, but Mart later filled him in on the details.

The moment the women had appeared on the landing, Mr. McCormick snapped to attention. He stopped rocking, stopped chanting, threw down his pencil. “Martin,” Katherine demanded, “open this door at once. Jane and I are taking Mr. McCormick out for a proper lunch.”

In the absence of Kempf and O‘Kane, Mart was slow to react, a farrago of conflicting loyalties — he knew perfectly well that Mr. McCormick wasn’t himself and he knew what had happened the night before and what it meant, and that opening the door would lead to trouble, he was sure of it. On the other hand, Mrs. McCormick was the ultimate authority here, the president, Congress and Supreme Court of Riven Rock all rolled in one. “I’m coming,” he said, though she could plainly see through the grid that he wasn’t, that he was delaying, pretending to fumble in his pockets for the keys, and she became impatient and began to rattle the bars. There she was, in her tailor-made clothes and half-a-melon hat, her slim gloved fingers wrapped round the impervious iron bars, tugging in impatience as if it were she who was locked in and her husband roaming free.

The bars rattling, his wife’s fingers and her white throat, the petulant crease over the bridge of her nose, the pique of her eyes and the set of her hat: suddenly Mr. McCormick came to life. In two bounds he was at the door, and though she drew back instinctively and Mrs. Roessing cried out and Mart rumbled up out of the chair, Katherine was caught. Mr. McCormick had her by both wrists, all the incensed, aroused, preternatural strength of him, his rotten teeth and his close and personal odor, and he drew her to him, Sam Wah all over again, and then snatched a hand to her throat, clamped it there like a staple, forcing her head back, and he was whinnying in his excitement: “A kiss! A kiss!”

O‘Kane was the one who broke his grip and then he was pinioned there in Katherine’s place, Mr. McCormick like the tar baby, stuck fast now to his wrists, Katherine staggering back from the door, the wreck of her bloodless face, Mrs. Roessing already wrapping her in her arms and Dr. Kempf’s voice gone high with agitation: “You see? You see what happens when you interfere?”

And all of them — O‘Kane and Mart, Mrs. Roessing, Kempf and even the furiously tugging and whimpering Mr. McCormick — looked to her for a response. She held tight to Jane Roessing, her hat askew, the red marks of her husband’s fingers melting into the chalk of her throat. “I blame you for this,” she said finally, all threat and defiance, glaring at Kempf as if to incinerate him on the spot. “You’re alienating my husband’s affections, that’s all you’re doing with your, your precious psychoanalysis — and that’s just what the McCormicks want, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

Kempf held his peace. Mr. McCormick dropped O‘Kane’s wrists and worked his arms back through the bars — he looked dubious and bewildered, as if he’d just gotten off a streetcar at the wrong stop. Mrs. Roessing reached up to straighten Katherine’s hat and mumured something to her, and then the two of them were receding down the staircase, their hats in retreat.

“You know what’s wrong with that woman?” Kempf said as soon as she was out of hearing. Mr. McCormick stared wildly through the bars. Mart hovered helplessly in the background, undecided as to whether he should tackle their employer from behind and bind him up in the sheet restraints or just let it go and settle back into the personal hollow he’d eroded in the pillows of the couch over the course of the stultifying months and obliterative years.

“No,” O‘Kane said, and he was interested to know, vitally interested, “no, what’s wrong with her?”

“It’s a prescription I’d give her, really — one of Freud’s.” Kempf tugged at his sleeves and then brushed down his jacket with a flick of his fingers, as if to rid himself of the residue of what had just transpired. “Do you know Latin, Eddie?”