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.’He walked back across the bridge in a euphoria of success, burst into the beer parlor at the Helen’s and said, ‘I made it.’ They didn’t believe him at first.Then he did a B & E and went on a five-day bash.The West Van trip had ended rather disastrously for me.I’d rushed back that morning to see the Nut Lady.‘You’ve got to put me away,’ I said.Now I was seeing a therapist.When Ben signed himself out of Essondale, I had a long talk with the doctor in charge.Crease, I mean.Crease.‘You might need some supportive therapy yourself,’ he said.‘But what’s wrong with him?’‘The prognosis is not good,’ he said.‘He’s a latent homosexual.’I didn’t believe it.I still don’t.‘We don’t usually do this, especially if you yourself were to con­sider therapy, but we think you had better think about getting a divorce.’‘Can’t he get therapy?’‘We don’t recommend it,’ the doctor said.‘But you might con­sider the clinic.It’s free.’Free.Yes, well, thank you very much but I pay my way.If it’s free, how can it be good? I thanked him very much and went back to the house.In the mornings, Ben slept.Around noon he would get up and go down to the dining room where Francie was working on her correspondence lessons.Like me, she was exempt from public school because of ill health.Actually, she could have gone, but she hated the confusion.It was easier to whip all the lessons off in one fell swoop and then concentrate on life.I was upstairs at the desk but I could hear snatches of the con­versation:‘What you do is get hold of some potassium cyanide,’ Ben is saying.‘And then you put some in a tablet, one of those cylin­der tablets you can put together.Then you get a lot of other tablets the same shape, colour, and you put them in a bottle and you take one a day, only they don’t have anything in them, or maybe baking soda, and then that way it becomes habitual.’‘But how do you get hold of the potassium cyanide?’ Francie says seriously.‘Yes.That’s the problem.Vicky could have got it if she were still at the lab.’And then there was the sure-fire bathtub method: ‘But Ben, if you turn off the lights, you won’t be able to see to get your wrists in position for the razor blades.’‘Oh yes, that’s right,’ Ben says.This is the one where he gets into a hot bath so he can’t feel a thing, and the machine comes down, automatically, and slice.The lights had to be out so he couldn’t see the water turning red.Francie comes up from the States and I say to her, now, ‘What else happened that fall? I can’t remember clearly.What were Ben’s great suicide plots?’‘Oh god, I don’t know,’ and she laughs.‘Ben was great.’‘Great?’‘He was so funny, even about suicide.The Rube Goldberg varia­tions.He was so great.’‘I can’t remember.About his jokes.I know he was funny.But I can’t remember.It’s not fair, not to put in how funny he was.But I can’t remember.What happened? I can’t remember.How did you go? I don’t even remember your going.’‘I had appendicitis.Don’t you remember?’‘Did you? Did you have them out?’‘It.I had it out.Don’t you remember? I had to go home.They went swish! and it popped out.’‘I don’t remember.I can’t remember about your appendix.’ And later, when she is having a bath, I go in to make sure.Yes.There’s a scar.‘My god,’ I say.‘Well, you were pretty far away, that fall.What a weird time! And I’m coming out of the ether and the nurse says, “How far gone are you, dear?” Because I hadn’t had my period for four months.’‘Oh that’s right, what was his name?’‘Carlos Johnston,’ Francie says gloomily.‘Didn’t I call the police because you were out late?’‘Yeah.Boy, was I furious.Don’t you remember, Mom came out and took one look at him.Big black booger, and she whisked me home?’‘And he raped you,’ I say, feeling the old fear; the old guilt.I hadn’t looked out for her.But Francie doesn’t answer this.‘What was I?’ She is sitting soaping her breasts in the tub.‘Was I fourteen or fifteen?’ We work it out.Fifteen.When Jocelyn came home from class, Ben would tell her all over again.At least, that’s how I remember those months.I wore an eighteen-and-a-half size dress.I was enormous.But Jocelyn’s version is quite different.One day her creative writing instructor phoned me and told me she’d written ‘a very interesting play.About you.’‘Can I read your play?’ I say to Jocelyn.She is cuddled up on the front room sofa with David.I am trying not to show how much this bothers me.Public displays of affection, ugh.‘No, Vicky.I couldn’t.’So I sneak it.One day when she is out, I take it from her desk and I read it.It’s lying right on top, she trusts me that much.On the cover it has ‘A’ and ‘Most interesting.’Is that true, about Joss cuddling with David? No.They still don’t.When he got home at Christmas, the most they did was touch each other lightly on the shoulder.David is even worse than me about public affection.It is all in my mind.They are just sitting there, but the charge is high.It is called Merry-Go-Round and is all about a successful wo­man writer who lives in a big old house with her sloppy sister and her emasculated husband.She is beautiful and competent, and nags everyone about cleaning up the mess.Her husband sleeps all day and the beautiful writer comes into his room, picks up his canister of pencils and dumps them, crash! onto the floor.To wake him up.To make him feel guilty [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]