Circe (22 page)

“Pria, I understand if you leave. I don’t deserve your baby or you. What I did with Cassie is unforgivable. I know that.”

“Shhhh,” she said. “Hush now. It’s too late. What’s done is done. Unfortunately, I love you. I’ve loved you since before you even knew who I was. You always think you saw me first, but I had seen you on campus. It’s funny because you always think that I didn’t want you. You always tell people how you seduced me and I was above it all, like I was a fairy who was above the lusts of the flesh. But I always knew you. I always wanted you. I had friends who you used and left and I knew that I could make you mine. I knew that if you felt like I hated you, you would want me more, so I played the role. I became inexorable to you. I made you mine and no matter how many women you fucked you always came back to me. You were always the most beautiful and brilliant man I had ever seen. So many women wanted you, but I won. I could never leave you. There were never any others for me. For you women are like beads you collect during Mardi Gras; for me there was always only you. You’re all I have ever wanted. You’re the only man I have ever known. This baby is yours.”

“You’ve always been smarter than me, haven’t you?”

“Of course.”

* * * *

The days grew colder than usual. In Mobile, this meant that the nights dipped down below freezing, leaving the subtle traces of winter in the air. The week Pria and I found our new house, ice hung from its roof like daggers. We looked forever amidst the cold and frost. Pria was looking for something she couldn’t define. She said she’d feel it when she found her baby's home.

I went back to work. I enjoyed working with Dr. Donalds and the team very much. We didn’t spend as much time wrapped in bureaucracy. I did at least three evaluations a day. We treated and worked to get people in the best place for them. I actually felt like I was helping people. I began to enjoy my work again. The psychiatrist on our team was a brilliant man. He was young and quick-witted. He was willing to try new things and always listened to every member of the team. Unlike Dr. Yoshi, he was the leader, and everyone listened to everything he said. It didn’t take long for me to forget about Cassie.

Dr. Donalds gave me the day off work to go with Pria to the Ob/Gyn before I even asked. It was like a cool breeze on a hot summer day. I had always had to beg and lie with Cassie, but Dr. Donalds just smiled and congratulated me on my new family. He talked jovially about his children and grandchildren and gave me tidbits of advice.

 Pria and I went to the Ob/Gyn for her first ultrasound. We were both full of apprehension. We had discussed it in depth and had decided to find out the gender of our baby. I knew Pria wanted a girl and she knew I wanted a boy. We decided it would be easier on both of us if there was no disappointment in the delivery room. I held Pria’s hand through the entire procedure. We both gazed at the monitor as if entranced. I could hardly tell what I was looking at. It just looked like smoke and fog to me. The nurse pointed to the screen identifying feet and arms that seemed like nothing to me and then she gasped.

“Oh my!” she exclaimed. “The doctor never heard two heart beats?”

“Not that he told us about,” Pria said.

“Well, this isn’t common. Usually we catch this sooner. You’re pregnant with twins!”

“Really?” Pria said. I could hear the fear in her voice and I knew she was thinking about that ridiculous psychic again.

“Look,” the nurse was saying. “Can you see that? There are two heads. Oh! And look at that, there’s a penis and there’s the vulva. A boy and a girl!”

“That is wonderful,” I said. “Now we both get what we want.”

“Cybil was right,” Pria said. Her expression was flat. I could tell she was upset.

“She also said you and the babies would be happy. So cheer up. You’re having twins. Twins.”

I lost part of Pria that day. I drove her home and she threw up. She sat on the couch staring vacantly at the television. She didn’t say anything or ask any questions. She seemed lost. I sat beside her for a long time, rubbing her feet and watching Lifetime television. She didn’t want dinner, but she threw up again.

“You can’t let some nut have this kind of effect on you,” I told her. “These types of readings can be explained in a lot of ways.”

“I know,” she said.

“There were positive things in what she said. She said you and the babies would be happy. She told you not to be afraid.”

“I don’t want to lose you,” Pria said.

“You’re not going to lose me.”

“Promise me you’ll never leave me.”

“I promise.”

She put her head in my lap and I kissed her forehead over and over again. I called in sick for the next four days and Pria and I never left each other’s sight. We found our new house and signed a contract. The house was lovely. It was a pale blue cottage by a lake. You could almost see it filled with baby toys and basinets. It was perfect. The grass was thick and lush. There was a wooden play set in the back. The yard was fenced in for the dog. It felt like home.

Pria’s father gave us money for a down payment and closing costs. He said it was a beautiful house, sitting on a river near the outlet malls in Foley. There was a huge room upstairs that Pria thought would be perfect for the nursery. For the first time since we had seen the psychic, she was happy. She smiled as she talked about where we would put the cribs, and the decorations she’d put in the nursery.

I stood outside and talked with Ron while her mother and she walked through the house discussing furniture and paint colors. We shivered and talked about work and family. Ron put his hand on my shoulder and slipped a wad of hundred dollar bills in my pocket. “Buy my daughter something nice,” he whispered. “She needs to feel loved.” I thanked him and bought Pria some maternity clothes.

 Things seemed to get better. We would be able to move into the house in sixty days. Pria put in a two month notice at work as soon as she knew the house was final. She was relieved and she said that the people at work were relieved as well. They didn’t want to deal with Pria and her health problems. They wanted an employee who was healthy and single. They wanted someone who lived for their job.

 I went to my father’s old office and talked to the other people working there to make sure they were still willing to give me a chance there. Everyone was happy to see me. We reminisced about my father and talked about the practice. They told me about the different types of clients they saw and described a typical day. Finally, they took me into my father’s old office. This would be mine. There was still a picture on the desk of my mother, holding me in her lap, with Jeff and Jeremy standing beside us. I would fill the void left by my father. I would take his place. Our future was set in stone.

I went back to work after taking a week’s sick leave. I thanked Dr. Donalds profusely and he said he understood. He said that the babies would change our lives forever and that it was appropriate to take time to digest the change. He seemed happy to give me anything I needed and he enjoyed reminiscing about his family. I left earlier than I had ever left with Cassie and waited by my car in the cold for Andy and John.

I saw her again. I did not smile this time. Jane. She stood on the stairs looking at me. She walked slowly towards me, she sauntered. She always looked so happy, so benign.

“Roy misses you,” she said.

“He thinks you’re a ghost,” I responded.

“I’m no ghost,” she answered.

“Who are you?” I asked again.

“I’m Jane. I’m Cassandra. I’m Dr. Bosarge. I’m you. I’m Circe,” she answered and disappeared into the mist. I flinched. I was left cold and confused. By the time Andy and John arrived, I had convinced myself I had dozed off.

They emerged an hour late looking sullen and disgruntled. I had my car warm and they leapt in gruffly.

“How in the hell did you deal with her?” Andy asked.

I shrugged. “To be honest, it almost ruined my marriage.”

“Really?” Andy said. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea what you were going through. That woman should lose her license. She isn’t a psychologist; she’s a witch doctor with a diploma.”

“I can’t even decide what kind of psychologist she is,” John said. “I don’t see her enough to make those kinds of judgments. The most I see of her is her criticisms on post-it notes.”

“It isn’t her post-its that bother me. There is something seriously wrong with that woman. You know she has books on witchcraft in her office. Not that touchy feely new age bullshit all my high school friends were into, but like old school black arts. Have you listened to her talk? She’s crazier than half the people in the hospital. She collects memorabilia from everyone who was tortured here. Who the hell does that?”

“I just can’t help but wonder why Babcock keeps her on. Babcock seems so grounded. I know she runs a tight ship. Why would she keep someone as completely backward as Dr. Allen?”

“I think Cassie can be superficially charming,” I answered. “She passes her interns' work off as her own and as long as no one reports her she seems to be incredibly efficient.”

“What the hell does she do with her time?” Andy asked. “I know she isn’t in treatment team or with any patients.”

“She used to tell me she was on the third floor a lot,” I answered.

“No. I work with Roy on the third floor and I don’t see her but, like, every other day up there. She has to be doing something else with her time,” John retorted.

 “Apparently, she spends all of her time bleeding our reports and looking for new ways to torture us,” Andy said glumly.

“Just ignore her,” I said. “The next few months will go by more quickly than you think and then we can all leave and start our real lives. Speaking of which, when is the big day, John? Aren’t you getting married? Pria has been looking for the invitation, in between bouts of morning sickness.”

John laughed. “Has it been that bad? We aren’t quite there yet. I think it’s going to be a small ceremony, maybe at the basilica. We’re still waiting on confirmation of the date.”

“Well, you better get married before Pria has her babies, because I don’t think she’ll care after that.”

“Babies?” Andy asked.

“Yeah, we’re having twins.”

We had John, Angela, and Andy over for dinner that Friday. Pria cooked a Thai dish that set our mouths on fire. It was splendid and intense. We all drank too much, except for Pria, and sat on the back porch laughing at Dr. Allen. It was good to be on the other side. To listen to other people’s stories about the mad psychologist rather than to be the one telling them. There was always so much to talk about that one night didn’t seem long enough. Everyone talked about their futures. Marriages, houses, jobs, and babies flitted in and out of the conversation. The stars smiled down upon us in our delight. Ambition filled the yard and dreams of family and love. Even Andy talked about the new man in her life. She mourned her prior failures to commit and confessed that she did want a child, someday.

Pria and I cleaned up quickly and fell into bed. I slept deeply with the liquor as my sedative. I woke up around 3 a.m. to the sound of the wind catching the branches of the old oaks above me. All the windows were open and the room was cold. I closed the windows and went to look for Pria. My head pounded with the excess alcohol I had drunk and my vision was still a little blurry.

I found Pria sitting in the living room with her knees drawn up to her chin. The dog was sitting next to her on the floor, licking her hand. She was staring fixedly at nothing and there was a puddle of blood at her feet.

“My God Pria!” I yelled. “What happened?” I pulled her up and began to look for the source of the blood. I lifted up her night gown to find her belly covered in what looked like cat scratches. “What happened? What are you doing?”

She looked at me. “I thought I was still asleep. I’m sorry.”

“What happened to your belly?”

She looked down at her stomach and put her hand on the open wounds in disbelief. “I thought it was a dream.”

“What?”

“The creature. It was tiny like a cat. I woke up and it was on our bed. I got up to throw it out. I didn’t know what it was and it did this. I must have been still partly asleep. It was probably a cat. It couldn’t have been what I thought it was. It was angry.”

I took her to the bathroom and carefully cleaned all of her wounds. I covered them in bandages and kissed each one. “It must have been a stray cat,” Pria whispered. “I opened the windows because I was hot and it must have come in through the windows.”

I nodded. The wounds almost looked self-inflicted, but the claw marks were too small and close together. I had seen plenty of self inflicted scratches at Circe and none of them looked anything like the wounds on my wife. They were sharp and deep, done by an animal. An animal with terrible strength. Memories of old dreams crept up over my senses, filling me with irrational dread. I could still remember Circe standing in my kitchen with her familiar on the counter before me. The memories were so vivid they seemed more like flashbacks, like I was the victim of some horrible crime whose images couldn’t be erased from my mind. I shivered. I could almost see the beast on the bathroom floor, clawing the tile and writhing with some feline, serpentine hunger that came from someplace more basic than its gut. It looked up at me from the shadows, calling its master with its howl. I blinked, dispelling the memory and returning my attention to my mangled wife.

I comforted my wife with all of the sweetest lies. I told her that I had seen a stray cat in the yard just yesterday. I told her the dog had barked at it for over an hour. I smiled as I told her I had left a crust of a sandwich on the nightstand before I went to bed. I explained to her how it must have been the food that lured the beast in. My very disposition was a lie. I covered fear with pretty smiles and falsehoods so elegant they lingered in the air like a kind of symphony. I did not tell her I had seen the beast. I wouldn’t have even known how.

The hospital, Circe, seemed colder to me when I was at work. All the halls felt longer and the old hospital loomed over my office window like a ghost, condemning me for my sins. Things began to change for me. Everything should have been better. Dr. Donalds was an intelligent and supportive supervisor. He was always willing to spend extra time with me. He always wanted to help me learn and grow. He came to all the treatment planning meetings and took me to court with him. He wanted to model what it was to be a good therapist.