Case of Lucy Bending (43 page)

"I'd never tell," Wayne said.

"I know you wouldn't, but sooner or later these things come out—you know that. Look, right now I won't say yes and I won't say no. I just want you to think about it. All right? If you finally decide you want to go, then come to me and I'll give you what you want."

"I have thought about it," the youth said. "I decided I got to get out of here."

"Oh? Why?"

"Because it's all shit."

"Sure it is," William Holloway said cheerfully. "And where do you think you're going to go where it's not all shit?"

"I don't care," the boy mumbled. "Anywhere different."

"What about your family? Your mother and father? Have you thought about how they'll feel if you just take off?"

"They wouldn't care."

"What about your friends?"

"I got no friends."

Holloway felt a throb so intense it gave him a headache. But despite his pain, he wanted to take on the boy's grief, too. He could handle it; he had the experience. It wasn't right for one so young to take that kind of punishment.

"I thought I was your friend, Wayne," he said.

"Well . . . yeah ... but you're old. You know?"

"Sure," Holloway said with a slanty smile. "I know."

He turned, leaned, stared closely at the poor, gnarled lad. He slid an arm lightly across Wayne's shoulders. He wanted to hug him close, kiss his bruises. But he staunchly resisted that temptation. Virtue, he told himself. Love.

"Wayne," he said, "I'm not going to give you a lot of bullshit about going through a phase, and everything will look better to you in a few weeks. Maybe it will, maybe it won't; I don't know. But I do want to tell you that you're not alone. A lot of other boys your age have felt the way you feel and have come out of it. I know you think it's the end of the world for you, but it doesn't have to be. Crazy things happen in life. Some good, some bad, I admit. But at your age, don't make up your mind that the way you feel now is the way you're going to feel for the rest of your life. You'll change. Everyone changes. Just leave yourself open to it; that's all I'm saying." "I'm still going," the boy said in a low voice. 'Tm getting out of here. There's nothing for me here."

"Where will you go?"

"I don't know."

"How will you live?"

"I don't care."

Holloway's arm trembled about the boy's shoulders. He restrained himself from gripping tighter.

"Look," he said earnestly, "I'm going to ask you something as a personal favor. Give it another month. Will you? Just a little more time to think about it. What difference can a month make? If you still feel the same way a month from now, then you take off."

"Well ..." Wayne said hesitantly. "You won't tell my father, will you?"

"Of course not. This is just between you and me."

"And if I decide to split, you'll give me some money?"

"Yes."

"A loan, like. I'll pay it back."

"Sure."

"Well, okay then." The boy scrambled to his feet. "But I still say it's all shit."

He went slouching away. Holloway watched him go, his empty arm lax, fingers digging into warm sand.

He drained his beaker of vodka and water, crunching the soft chips of ice between his teeth. If he could only keep stalling for time. Time to get to know the boy better. To advise him. Guide him.

That would be a virtuous, loving act—to rescue this sad, wounded boy and teach him how to live. How to recognize the glories and the flunks of this world. What had value and what was dross. How to reject today's delights for the sake of tomorrow's happiness.

All the things William Jasper Holloway had learned—too late.

He climbed briskly to his feet, went trotting back to his home for another drink. He was filled with sturdy resolution; he would save Wayne Bending. And he never, for a moment, doubted that the boy was worth saving.

He stood at the terrace railing, looking out at the black, trembling sea. He wondered where Wayne Bending was at that moment.

At home in bed, Holloway supposed. But awake. Perhaps lying naked with the sheet thrown back. Hands clasped behind his head. Staring sightlessly at the ceiling. He wished he could be with the boy. To comfort him.

No comfort from his father, that was for sure. Turk Bending went tap-dancing through life. His son's problems would amuse him. He would pay to get the kid laid, thinking that would solve everything. It did for Turk.

Look at the way Bending had immediately agreed when Jane had suggested skinny-dipping the night of the Empts' party. The man had no hang-ups. He didn't care; he just didn't care.

"And why didn't you join in?"

"The whole thing was infra dig. Disgusting."

"You've seen naked women and men before."

"Exhibitionism holds no particular delights for me."

"Don't be such a prig. It was just innocent fun after a drunken party. What's so awful about swimming naked in the sea?"

"Nothing. But, uh, married couples . . . That's just not, not, not
right"

"You think they fucked each other on the beach? Or in the water?"

"No, I don't think that. They just fooled around and had, ah, fun."

"So what was wrong with it?"

"Nothing!" William Jasper Holloway cried. "Nothing!"

He flung his empty glass over the railing onto the sand. With frantic fingers he unbelted, unzipped, and pulled down his shorts. Kicked them away. Yanked his shirt over his head. Naked, he leaped down the steps to the beach, went dashing to the Atlantic Ocean.

He went like the wind, feeling that he was swimming through cool air. Skin tingling. Belly jouncing. Testicles flopping. Bravely he plunged into the water, gasping. He waded, then dived, came up, swam out with thrashing strokes.

"Hoo-hah!" he shouted.

He flung himself onward until he tired. Turned onto his back. Floated. It was a wonder. The sea bore him up, fondled him. He rolled over and over, spluttering and coughing. He surface-dived, reared up, roaring with laughter.

He took in mouthfuls of the ocean and immediately spat them out. He urinated, leaving a warm patch, and swam away from it. He danced on the soft waves, cavorting. Oh! Oh! He writhed in this cuddling medium, luxuriating in its embrace.

Then he swam back to the deserted shore. He looked for the moon, wanting to howl at it, but it was gone. He began to run up and down the beach to dry, slapping shoulders and thighs, whooping deliriously. He was free. Free! The world belonged to him.

He had dashed past the Empts' place when he saw, in the gloom, a flashlight beam, a white puddle, jerking across the sand toward him. And behind, dimly, two hulking figures.

Muggers! Muggers!

Alarmed, the naked William Jasper Holloway, bank president, turned and began sprinting desperately for his own home. But he was plump, winded, the sand was soft. He floundered, stumbled, his breath coming now in great heaving sobs.

He looked over his shoulder. The assassins were closer, running faster than he. There was a pain in his side that threatened to split him wide open. He choked, faltered, and then they were on him, reaching with clawing hands.

He fought hysterically, punching out, kicking. And when they swarmed over him, he tried to knee them, screaming, biting anything that came close, yelling for help, kicking, fighting for his life.

When the phone rang on Ronald Bending's bedside table, it awakened him from a glorious dream. He could not remember the details, but he knew it had been glorious.

He fumbled for the lamp switch, got some light. Grace was turned onto her side in the other bed, sleeping soundly. Ronald picked up the phone.

⁴⁴
'Lo?"

⁴
'Turk ?"

"Yeah. Who's this?"

"Uh, Bill Holloway. Listen, Turk, you've got to help me. I've been arrested."

"Arrested? Jesus Christ! For what?"

⁴
'I bit a policeman."

Levin imagined that most laymen thought of psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychoanalysts (even marriage counselors!) as wise, kindly, sympathetic, understanding folks, a little like Lionel Barrymore at his disarming grumpiest. There may have been therapists like that, but Levin had never met any.

Sympathy and understanding were fine qualities, no doubt of that, but they were of little value when treating a grown man who insisted on exhibiting himself in the meat sections of supermarkets, or a ten-year-old boy who delighted in setting fire to cats.

Levin believed his work required an adversary relationship with his patients. There was an element of priestliness in his role. He did not think he was wrestling with the Devil for a sinner's immortal soul, but his job usually made a struggle with the patient inevitable.

This struggle was to illume the dark side of the moon (psyche) and hope that light might be the first step toward mental and emotional health. The patient resisted this reveal-ment of his innermost secrets, since it would leave him open, raw, vulnerable. In this sense, every patient was an opponent.

In the case of Lucy B., Levin remained convinced that her aberrant behavior resulted from a psychic trauma not of her making. She was concealing the wound, and her parents (one or both) were similarly burying it. It would take more than sympathy and understanding to dig it out.

"Good afternoon, Lucy," he said, unable, as always, to refrain from smiling at her radiant beauty.

"Hello, Doctor Ted," she said pertly, twirling for his inspection. "Do you like my dress? It's new."

"Very pretty," he said, nodding approvingly. "It makes you look grown up."

"That's what I thought," she said, looking down at herself. "I'm getting too old for white things with sashes. I wanted black, but mother insisted on this blue. But I do think it makes me look more, uh, sophisticated—don't you?"

⁴
'No doubt about it."

"Well ..." she said, lifting herself into the armchair. "What are we going to talk about today?" She smiled at him brightly.

"What would
you
like to talk about?"

"Umm ... I think I'd like to talk about when a man and a woman get married, well, they have babies—you know? But they don't
have
to be married, do they? To have kids?"

"No."

"That's what I thought. But I was talking to Elizabeth McCarthy, she's a friend of mine, and she thinks people have to be married before they can have children. My goodness, I told her, that's silly. So I'm glad to find out from a doctor that I was right. Could I have a baby, Doctor Ted?"

"Not now, no. You're not old enough."

"How old do I have to be?"

"It depends," he said cautiously. "But you don't want to have children until you finish school and graduate from college. And maybe by that time you'll feel differently about it."

"I might and I might not," she said airily. "Sometimes I think I would like to have a baby all my own right now."

He peered at her owlishly. "A boy or a girl baby?"

"A girl," she said promptly. "All my very own. I'd bathe her and powder her, like they do, you know. And I'd dress her up so pretty."

"Like a living doll?"

"Yes, just like a living doll. And I'd love her so much. I'd just love her to death. I'd kiss her all the time and hug her, and I'd spank her when she was bad. But she'd never be bad because I'd love her so much."

"Like your mother loves you?"

Pause. "Yes. But better."

"Better how?"

"Oh . . . you know."

"No, I don't, Lucy. Why don't you tell me. How would you love your baby better than your mother loves you?"

"Just more," she said. "Just all the time. Every second of every minute of every hour of every day!" She finished this declaration triumphantly.

But Levin thought she was deliberately beguiling him. He had, constantly, to remind himself of her slyness. It was her physical beauty that made him forget her cunning.

"Your mother loves you every second," he said. "Doesn't she?"

"Sometimes," Lucy said. "But she's awfully busy."

"She's never been mean to you, has she?"

"You mean like whip me? Of course not."

"Or your father either?"

"Oh, he'd never do that," she said, laughing. "He's so funny."

"Funny?"