No Chains Shall Bind Me (The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Seven) (19 page)

Daisy, sitting near her, snorted awake from her nap.  Definitely a lazy summer day, but her entire household
heard the clock of winter ticking, and Gail often metasensed the panic starting to build in her Transforms.  Daisy had come with her parents, but Abby had found a way to beg off on this visit.  The Perfesser had been far less than his usual ebullient self today as well, quiet and Van-like.  The only person he had talked to for more than a word or two had been Van.  Had he sensed the problems she and Van were having?

Daisy lit up a cigarette and stretched.  “So, do you think your household will be able to use those old stoves?”  She must have missed the earlier conversation on the subject, of all things off
talking with Kurt, doing some form of heavy business.

“Yes, if we get stuck staying here for the winter,” Gail said.  “One of those old stoves ought to be able to keep a tent or a shack warm.”  The Perfesser had donated his barn’s entire stash of pot-bellied stoves, ‘good enough for Ben Franklin, good enough for you’, to help them
prepare for winter.  She had no idea where he had gotten so many of them.  Perhaps they bred, like coat hangers.

“Gotta watch out for ventilation problems, though,” Daisy said.  “If they don’t draw right, they’ll kill you with carbon monoxide.”

Right.  She hoped someone in the household understood the problem, as she suspected the Schubers weren’t likely to be making any more trips down here.

“So, Daisy, how goes things?”  Gail knew the younger woman was sitting on something important.

Daisy sighed and took a deep drag.  “I’m in.  I accepted Cal Tech’s offer.  I leave in a little more than a week.”

“
Hot damn!” Gail said.  They must have done the paperwork for Daisy.  Bully for them.  “Congratulations.”

“Uh huh.  I may have bit off more than I can chew, though,” Daisy said.  “
After I accepted the offer, I talked for a couple hours to a woman counselor there.”

“Two hours?”

“Uh huh.  I was surprised they even have women counselors, but there’ve been enough problems integrating women into that place, that they apparently need her.”

Ouch. 
“I hear a problem,” Gail said.  Daisy was definitely out of sorts, conflicted and, if Gail read her correctly, scared.  She made a move to pat Daisy’s arm, before remembering Daisy’s hot horny eyeballs from Daisy’s first visit to the household.  Gail yanked her hand back and her face flushed.  Ever since she first got to U of M, she had realized how uncomfortable she got around people who were different from her.  Worse, it made her feel guilty, which didn’t help one bit.

“
The counselor warned me, specifically, that I shouldn’t let anyone find out I’m a lesbian,” Daisy said.  “I’m not, but the way people like them think, if someone even kisses another girl she’s a lesbian, even if she spends more time in bed with men.”

Gail’s face flushed harder.  She motioned for Daisy to continue.

“There’s been two beatings and one reported rape of lesbians on the Cal Tech campus in the past several years.”  Daisy sighed.  “So much for using the dyke excuse to keep the boys away.  I also got warned about having multiple on-campus boyfriends.  Apparently most of the Tech boys are so hard up for sex that if they learn about such things, they go all shark feeding frenzy on the woman, assuming anyone with more than one boyfriend will sleep with everybody.  Rape bait, to quote the damned counselor.”

Well, Gail thought, that is why the word ‘slut’ was invented, wasn’t it?  She didn’t say anything out loud, and chastised herself for
her thoughts.  From her own college experience, once a woman acquired the slut label, true or not, the group disapproval from the other women would be brutal.  One of her casual acquaintances at U of M got caught in this trap, and committed suicide before the psych counselors could convince her and her parents the best solution would be to transfer to another university.

Oh.

“No problem,” Gail said.  “Just don’t date any other students, ever.  Go off campus for your boyfriends and girlfriends.  Don’t let anyone on campus discover your bed habits.”  As usual, figuring things out for other people was far easier than figuring things out for herself.  This didn’t used to be the case.  Before she was a Focus, other peoples’ problems always stumped her, and she had a much better handle on her own issues.

Daisy blinked and
stubbed out her cigarette.  “Damn,” she said.  “Yah, that would work.”  She slumped back to lean on the Lightning Oak, and studied the sky.  “I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but I’m sort of glad to be leaving.  This place here is an ongoing disaster, and it’s not getting better.”

“
Uh huh,” Gail said, her voice quiet.

“That boss man of yours, Bart, well, he looks ready to lock you in chains.  The way he glares at you when your back is turned is not to be believed.”

“Tell me.”  Gail suspected as much, but, truthfully, despite all the tricks her Focus transformation had given her, the one thing she couldn’t do was read a non-Transform when she wasn’t looking at him.

“
It reminds me of the look John kept giving Sebby – biker friends of mine – before he blew his stack and knifed Sebby bad,” Daisy said.  “John’s in the pen for a few years, and Sebby still hasn’t healed up to where he can ride again.”  Motorcycles, presumably.  “Fear and loathing are both bad shit.  Fear that bad gets inside a person and doesn’t ever give up.”

“Do you have any suggestions about what I might do?” Gail said,
earnest, not sarcastic.  She was familiar with Bart’s fears, and she, too, feared Bart might break, take the final step, and enslave her.

“Sorry, I don’t have any good ideas,” Daisy said.  “All I know is that you need to strike first, get him before he gets you, and
whatever you do needs to be big.”  Daisy paused, shook her head, and lit up another cigarette.  “So, Gail,” Daisy said, her voice now turned ‘girl’.  “What’s going on between you and Van, anyway?”

Gail’s face flushed again.  She wanted to run, run and hide, do anything but talk about her and Van. 
How she kept thinking about how much simpler her life would be if she let herself continue slipping toward being distant, alone and unloved.  She looked at Daisy, and if she ran, Daisy would chase her down.

Cornered, she leapt in, anyway.  “Well, you see…”

Life sucked.

(21)

“Hi,” Gail said.  She knelt down by Melanie,
joining the Transform as she picked cucumbers in the hot late August sun.  Melanie gave Gail a half-second glance, and went back to the cucumbers.

“Focus.  What can I do for you?”

Well, how about not avoiding me, Gail didn’t say.  She had left word she wanted to speak to Melanie three times.  Nothing.  Now, she had to force the issue.  “I want to talk.”

Melanie
picked three more cucumbers and didn’t answer.

This was bad.  Back at the house, someone cranked up a radio playing
‘Born to be Wild’, quickly followed by several bellows of “turn that damned thing down!”  Gail had to smile.  Whatever anyone might say about her household, shy and polite wouldn’t be on the list.

“You don
’t like me, do you?” Gail said.  Shy and polite, indeed.  If you couldn’t force a confrontation when necessary, you should have stayed in the womb.

Melanie paused.  “I
’d rather not talk about this, Focus.”

This wasn
’t going to work.  All Gail got from Melanie was fear.  “Time to take a break from the cukes,” Gail said, final and definite.  “Come on and join me, under the Lightning Oak.  I’ve got lemonade.”  Melanie sighed, stood, and patted out the wrinkles in her pastel yellow frumpy dress.  Gail led her away, to the Lightning Oak.

“So,” Gail said, fifteen minutes later, after having failed at over a half dozen conversational gambits.  She swore the water froze out of the air after she politely asked Melanie where she had gotten her dress.  “Go ahead.  Give it to me.  Whatever you want to say, say it.”

Melanie turned away.  She wanted to leave.  Run and hide.  Leave the household altogether.

Impossible for a Transform, of course.

“I hate you,” Melanie said, her voice low and rough.  “I hate you for transforming, and
I hate you for making me a Transform.  Everything I once knew is lost.”

Oh, shit.  Gail wanted to respond, to protest, but she didn
’t.  The whole point of these conversations with her Focus attendants was to listen.  However, she didn’t get any hate vibes from Melanie.  Uncomfortable, yes, confused, yes, hating, no.  She remembered her first household meeting, when Melanie had smiled and given Gail her seat.  Those weren’t actions driven by hate.

“Ummm?” Gail said.  Melanie didn
’t even twitch.  “I didn’t want to transform, either.”

Melanie picked up a twig and broke it, sharply, into
small pieces.  Each one she tossed away in anger.  Gail waited, patient.

“I was raised strict,” Melanie said
, five minutes later.  Gail bit her tongue on the obvious ‘I would have never guessed’ rejoinder.  “My people believed in heaven and hell, literal and inevitable, and in the rapture, the great tribulation and the second coming.  My minister taught us to beware the Antichrist, and to await as the sign the building of the Third Temple in Jerusalem.”

Gail nodded.  She knew the type.  “No drinking, smoking, sex, dancing or card playing?”  In Michigan, there were enough Christian Reformed around
for the rest of the population to understand what they and their spiritual brethren were about.

Melanie nodded.  “I was supposed to leave high school as soon as it was legal, to get married and fulfill my prophetic heritage
, as a woman, to birth lots of babies.  I decided I didn’t agree.  I left home under threat of physical confinement, but I vowed to them, and to myself, to live a pure Christian life, just not theirs.”

Gail nodded, not quite sure what to make of Melanie
’s comments.  How medieval!  She had talked to people from strict religious backgrounds before, but never anyone who had to run away from home to finish high school and avoid an arranged marriage.  She made helpful happy prompting noises, though, and forced a sympathetic expression across her face.

“I found new people, kind, gentle and wise Christian people, in the Ann Arbor area.  They supported me and kept me off the streets, thank the Lord.  I got a job packing vegetables and got my GED.  Later, I went to night school and got an Associate
’s degree in business, which got me my U of M job.  Until I transformed, I still went to night school.  I wanted to teach High School.  Experience for real what my overzealous parents forbade me.”

“Then I came along and ruined everything,” Gail said.  The household had an epidemic of
‘I came along and ruined everything’; she couldn’t blame them, either.  She thought the same way.

Gail poured Melanie another glass of lemonade. 
Melanie took the glass, and turned away.

“The thing is, I don
’t want to hate you,” Melanie said.  “I know, in my mind, that you didn’t ask for this, any more than I did.  It’s, just…”  She put her chin on her fist and fought tears.  Sunlight peeked through the leaves of the Lightning Oak, glinting off Melanie’s blonde hair.  “Unfair.”  She repressed a sob.  “The unfairness ruins everything.”

“Tell me,” Gail said.  She didn
’t understand Melanie.  She really didn’t understand Van’s short grunts proclaiming Melanie one of his, that is, super-smart.  She seemed to be a typical worship-the-Bible-as-a-heathen-idol fight’n fundy.

“Up until several weeks after I transformed, I believed Transforms were the willing servants of the Antichrist, the hidden mover behind all evil, the hand of Satan on Earth.  All Transforms.  Yet, here I was, a Transform.

“Leaving home was my only possible grievous sin.  Don and I were engaged, but we hadn’t had carnal relations.  In the dark days in the Clinic, I decided if God damned me for exercising my free will, then all humanity was similarly damned, and my parents and their pastor’s dispensationalist theology was full of beans.  Free will as evil?  Every man with power I ever knew, back home, utilized his free will to the utmost, often with sinful impunity.  Why weren’t they transformed?”

Did Melanie just say what I thought she just said? Gail asked herself.  Surely not.  That sort of thing didn
’t happen in this day and age.  The last place she would ever look for child rape cases would be among the holy and devout.  “Impunity is one of the darker aspects of evil,” Gail said, avoiding her suppositions.  “Anyone who believes ‘I can do this, regardless of all other considerations, just because I can get away with it’ has fallen into evil.  Uh, into sin.  Mortal sin?”  Gail realized she would need to get slicker with her commiserations and her presentations, if she was going to be her Transforms’ den mother.

Melanie
’s eye flicker told the tale: Gail didn’t understand Melanie’s real point.  Melanie turned away in disgust.  Gail winced and beat her hand on her knee, pissed off at the opportunity she just lost to connect with Melanie.

“I must be just about on the
Antichrist level to you, myself, then,” Gail said, quiet.  “Woman, in college, almost with a journalism degree, living with a man, going to parties…” Gail paused, and continued, unable to stifle herself this time “…even dancing and playing cards.”  She had so wanted to like Melanie, but how could she like someone so screwed up in the head?  She wasn’t sure she would ever forgive Van for his comment saying she and her attendants were, at their cores, all the same.  “You must think I practically demanded Transform Sickness to strike me from above.”  And take her with me.  Ick.