Джон Макдональд - S*E*V*E*N

I believe that at that juncture I used one of Phyllis’s four-letter words. He promised that it would never happen again. Our marriage was in real danger. We did discuss divorce, but not only would it have led to vast legal and financial complications, it would have given every mischievous bitch in the countryside enough dirty conversation to last the entire winter.

Thus when the children were home, Jonathan and I were in the process of establishing a new relationship with each other because he had defaulted on the old one. Communication is so terribly important, I think. We were both making a sincere effort to understand each other. Oddly enough, one by-product of the effort to cement the cracks in our marriage caused by his dreary infidelity was an increased physical awareness of each other, and an appetite for sexuality, which was more like the first year or two of our marriage than anything which had happened since. What I am saying is that Norrie could have been acting just a little bit oddly during those holidays and I would not have noticed it.

But I certainly would not feel we were remiss in any action we took once we knew the gravity of the situation. In matter of fact, Jonathan arranged to have Norrie brought all the way from Boston to Philadelphia by private ambulance, with a nurse in attendance. We were not actually at the hospital when she was brought in, but we were permitted a short visit after she had been settled into her room in the psychiatric wing. It was terrifying to see not the slightest glint of expression or recognition in the eyes of one’s own daughter, to see her so scrawny and lifeless.

We got the very top talent available, of course. Dr. Grenko did not try to confuse us or deceive us. He was very gentle and very honest. He said that not many years ago a young person who had withdrawn to that extent had had very little chance of ever recovering. But there were drugs now which often helped a great deal, and there were new forms of crash therapy. He would not promise he could help her. He just said that the odds were, for the first time in medical history, slightly in his favor. He said that if he could help her at least it would be a dramatic and sudden improvement.

And it was, of course. They used psychic energizer drugs to encourage communication. They put her into group therapy with other young people. They used a closed-circuit television technique to get her to understand herself. She would talk into the camera, and then it would be played back and she would watch herself.

In April she began to come home for visits, and by the middle of the month she was able to live at home and go back for treatment at Dr. Grenko’s office. I drove her until he said she was well enough to drive her own little car. The school had arranged for a student to drive it back from Massachusetts when spring vacation started, along with her personal things out of her room, and her school notebooks and texts. A lot of her nice things were missing, but I was able to control myself and not scold her. Dr. Grenko had told us to try to act perfectly natural around Norrie, with the single exception of not criticizing her.

We did our best. I think it was rude and inconsiderate of her to leave the way she did, with just that casual little note on my dressing table. I very nearly lost my patience with Dr. Grenko when he seemed delighted that she had run away. It was even more annoying when he phoned three days later to tell me that he had heard from Norrie. He said she had rented a little cottage on a farm in an apple orchard, and she seemed very happy. She told him she could concentrate on her books and catch up, maybe enough to go back in early June and take her examinations. I asked him for her address, but he said that she did not tell him where she was. I was certain he was lying to me, but I don’t know what I could have done about it.

Of course, she did not go back and take her examinations. She did not come back until September. She was brown as an Indian. She had put ten thousand miles on her little car. She had been all over the country. Her hands were a mess because my darling had actually done physical manual labor on some sort of commune thing out in Arizona. She seemed very merry and bright and gay. She did not go back to school, of course.

She did not want to stay with us, and because she had turned twenty-one and had started to receive the income from the trust, there was nothing we could do about it. She took that little apartment in Upper Darby and began to do quite well with her little pots and figurines, getting them into handicraft shows all over the area and selling them for what I thought was quite a bit of money for such strange lumpy little things.

We thought it was a blessing when she began going with Paul Warcroft and they fell in love and decided to marry. He comes from a very good family. Hazzlet and Warcroft is a very conservative and successful investment banking house. Paul and Norrie had actually been in the same dancing class when they were small. He was three years older than Norrie.

I know what happened, of course. But I cannot see where Jonathan and I were at fault. Dr. Grenko did come to see us after he had talked to Norrie, and he did say that in his opinion it would be better if she waited a bit longer before marrying. It seemed to me at the time that it was none of his business, actually. Norrie had had her trouble a couple of years earlier, and she had gotten over it nicely.

We thought it would be a blessing for Norrie to be safely and properly married to a very orderly and levelheaded young man, someone she could lean upon. And it was a lovely, lovely wedding.

My name is Kellaher Mason. People call me Kelly. I was going to Boston U. at the time I met Norrie Ames. I used to run around with some pretty heavy people. Off-campus people. I got over it. They can run you into bad trouble.

Norrie was a pistol. She was racing her motor every minute. She wasn’t on anything. She had enough energy for four people, but I didn’t really get to know her. The way it happened, two of us went out to Coulter and brought Norrie and another girl whose name I forget into town on a Friday. We went to a party late Friday night and by then I was bombed out of my skull. I had a fight with Norrie. I don’t know what it was about. Anyway, the party was in somebody’s house and it had been going on for days.

A fellow they call Mush was there. A big evil fellow. I think he had played pro ball somewhere, and I don’t know how he made a living at the time. Something about gambling, I think. He was one of the early speed freaks. If I hadn’t fought with Norrie and if I hadn’t been so smashed on wine, I probably would have started a pretty good brawl when Mush tried to leave with her. She didn’t want to go with him, particularly. But it didn’t matter to me a bit.

So they left, and it was at least ten days later I ran into Mush. It wasn’t an accident. He had been looking for me. He was upset. He said he wanted to get rid of Norrie, but he didn’t know where she belonged and he couldn’t find out. He said she was acting pretty strange. He said that he thought maybe she was dying.

It scared me because it wouldn’t be impossible for somebody to trace back and find the other girl and get a make on me as the date she had when she left Coulter. Mush took me to his place. It was a mess. Unbelievable. A cave where bears live. He said she had been talking about how the inside of her head was shrinking into a red ball with everything all tangled up inside it so she couldn’t sort it out. Then she’d stopped talking at all.

He had taken her there right from the party, and he’d been balling her for ten days and nights, going out to get food and bring it back. He had scuffed her up pretty bad. He said she hadn’t been eating much of anything. I couldn’t get any reaction out of her. I got more scared. Speed makes a person sexy. For all I knew he had busted her up inside somehow.