Tightrope Walker (24 page)

I sat up in astonishment. “Daisy!
Married?
Congratulations!”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “I owe you for that. Obviously a million bucks attracts leeches and vultures which a person needs like a hole in the head. So stop in sometime and watch me burp babies and do the domestic, okay?”

From the small sounds that reached me from the corridor as she left I guessed that her departure did not go unnoticed by doctors, interns, patients, and visitors.

As for myself, now that my excursion into violence is over, I feel changed in a way that is not explainable except, perhaps, to say that I have moved from Victim to Survivor, a distance of no small import. Some things matter more to me now, and many things less, and the past not at all. A balance has occurred that astonishes
me: I am turning into a very agile tightrope walker, gliding across chasms and abysses without a glance below. I have no more nightmares and, ironically, now that I have come so very near to death it no longer haunts me. Joe says I am moving from Old Age to Middle Age and he suggests we get married in time for my Adolescence.

Amman Singh says that I have begun to walk the path to my Original Self. When I smile and ask him why he only quotes a proverb to the effect that no one can learn to live who has not learned to die.

What Dr. Merivale would say is something else again. As a matter of fact I met him just the other day on Main Street. He looked very trim, very well-groomed in his business suit, his face deeply tanned, which reminded me that May was always his vacation month, when he flew south to the Caribbean.

I said, “Hello there, Dr. Merivale!”

He stopped and looked at me, surprised. “Why—it’s Amelia, isn’t it?”

I’d forgotten how vague he could be; he’d always been nondirective as a psychiatrist and I suppose this enters subtly into the personality. He said, focusing on me reproachfully, “I’m sorry you’ve not come back for more treatment, Amelia, I feel your father would have wanted that. What have you been doing since I last saw you?”

I like Dr. Merivale, I really do. I mean, he held my hand for three difficult years and I am grateful for this but I was feeling mischievous that day. He had been away, of course, and so he’d not seen the newspapers, or the photograph of me being carried out on a stretcher from the Ebbtide Shop, with Joe in hot pursuit. I said gravely, “Well, Dr. Merivale, since I last saw you I’ve been looking for the murderers of a woman killed many years ago. I found them and was nearly murdered myself,
and now one killer is dead and the other arrested. I’ve found a guru of sorts, I’ve fallen in love, and I’ve lost my virginity. I really think I’ve been Affecting My Environment, don’t you? At last?”

It’s possible that the passing of a truck blurred my words, or it’s possible that Dr. Merivale is not by nature playful. His glance at me sharpened suspiciously and then retreated in haste. “Ah,” he murmured, nodding. “Mmmm … well, I hope you will still consider that typing class, Amelia. It’s so important—as I’ve stressed before—that we all have purpose in life.” And having said this he gave me a kindly smile and continued walking down the street.

I stood and watched him go, and I laughed. I mean, have you ever stopped to realize—not just the miracle that life is—but how basically comic it is despite its griefs? The wonder of it, as Amman Singh says, is that we take it so seriously.

One day, poised on my tightrope, I hope to manage a glorious cartwheel, or at the very least a pirouette.

In the meantime, however, I bought a flower from the vendor on the corner and carried it home to Joe.

Discover—or rediscover—Dorothy Gilman’s feisty grandmother and fearless CIA agent … Mrs. Pollifax!

THE UNEXPECTED MRS. POLLIFAX

THE AMAZING MRS. POLLIFAX

THE ELUSIVE MRS. POLLIFAX

A PALM FOR MRS. POLLIFAX

MRS. POLLIFAX ON SAFARI

MRS. POLLIFAX ON THE CHINA STATION

MRS. POLLIFAX AND THE HONG KONG BUDDHA

MRS. POLLIFAX AND THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE

MRS. POLLIFAX AND THE WHIRLING DERVISH

MRS. POLLIFAX AND THE SECOND THIEF

MRS. POLLIFAX PURSUED

MRS. POLLIFAX AND THE LION KILLER

MRS. POLLIFAX, INNOCENT TOURIST

MRS. POLLIFAX UNVEILED

Published by The Random House Publishing Group.

Available wherever books are sold.