Clear And Convincing Proof. Kate Wilhelm

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СКАЧАТЬ matter. You signed it and you were of age, and presumably in your right mind. You agreed that if you want out before ten years pass, you will take with you no more than you brought into the marriage. No settlement, no alimony, nothing. On the other hand, he can kick you out at any time if you fail your wifely duties, commit adultery, turn into a drunk or an addict…. Very generously, he agreed that if he’s the one to end it, he’ll give you severance pay, so to speak—three months’ living expenses. Mrs. McIvey, why did you marry the guy?”

      “I loved him,” she said in a low voice. In a lower voice she added, “I believed he loved me.”

      It had been more than that, and less, she had come to realize. At twenty-two she had been thrilled to be noticed by the older, brilliant and very rich doctor. And she had been infatuated, blind and deaf to the advice of her parents, Naomi, a few friends. David had been devastated by the divorce his first wife had instituted; she had cleaned him out, he had admitted. His child support payments were astronomical, with access to his two children severely limited. He desperately wanted a decent home life, a companion, a wife. Two months after they met, he and Annie were married.

      The lawyer gave her some advice that day. Start a journal, write down the schedule you have to maintain and what happens if you are late. Keep a record of what you do every day for a few weeks, and after that, note any changes. Keep your journal in a safe deposit box, or under lock and key at home.

      She listened and later followed his advice, but she didn’t get a safe deposit box. It was impossible to imagine David reading her private journal; he neither knew nor cared what she did as long as he was not thrown off his schedule. He wanted his breakfast to be ready at six-thirty, and then to be driven to the office. He could drive but he didn’t like to; she had become his chauffeur. She returned to the surgical offices at twelve-thirty to take him home for lunch—which she prepared—and then was back to get him at four-forty-five. What she did the rest of the day he never asked.

      But the attraction of a never-ending vacation soon palled. They lived in a condo complex, where it appeared that the other women were professionals who worked, or had small children, or were a good deal older than she and played bridge. David’s schedule precluded day-long shopping with lunch outings. She could not take a run up to Portland for the opening of a museum show or art gallery. She could not spend all afternoon playing bridge, which she didn’t know how to play to begin with. Invitations from other women in the complex dwindled to nothing within a year. Since a housekeeper-cook came every afternoon to clean and prepare dinner for seven-thirty, she didn’t change sheets, dust books, scrub a bathroom, learn new cooking skills. Even Saturdays were rigidly scheduled, at least the mornings were. David jogged on Saturday morning; she took him to the Amazon Trail at eight-thirty and picked him up again exactly one and a half hours later.

      They seldom entertained or accepted invitations, although they did go to an occasional concert or play, and once or twice a month they had dinner with his mother.

      He could be tender, and even passionate, she also wrote in the journal. His passion during sex had excited her to an extreme. It was the passion and abandon of stories, of dreams, and she thought that was why she had been determined at first to make it work. She had felt certain that that passionate other would come to the surface all the time, that he would unfreeze, relax, that his rigidity was caused by fear that she would desert him the way he said Lorraine, his ex-wife, had done. After the second year she had abandoned that hope. Not Jekyll and Hyde, but rather Don Juan in bed and Cotton Mather out of bed. Medicine was his god, the operating room his church, the scalpel his scepter.

      What she could do, she had decided, was spend time at the clinic, where she felt comfortable and relaxed, and where the only friends she had in Eugene could be found. In many ways being a volunteer was better than working full-time at a salary that barely paid subsistence wages. She had told Naomi years ago that she planned to work and save for a number of years, and then take time off, travel, see New York, Paris…. Working full-time, she had been able to save nothing.

      Gradually she had come to realize that she was changing, not David. She was the indentured servant, she thought, a bonded servant whose reward would come after serving for a certain number of years.

      She would be thirty-two when the ten years were up; she would still be young. Think of it as working and putting money aside to fulfill dreams later, or like being imprisoned for a crime you didn’t commit, she told herself. You can endure anything for a limited time, if you know when the end will be. She endured and followed his schedule and rarely was late, and she counted the months ahead, the months already passed. She kept a faithful record of her days, which were blameless, virtuous, along with his deeds and words and her accommodation.

      And when her servitude ended, she reminded herself now and then, she would make his first wife look like a piker.

      3

      Three afternoons a week Erica walked to the clinic to read to the patients. Her audience changed from week to week, sometimes from day to day, but those who attended were almost excessively grateful.

      Since she arrived so late in the afternoon, she had reflected during the first week, her chances of meeting many people were limited. Accordingly, she began to get there by four-thirty, sometimes earlier. She had met Dr. Boardman, a tall craggy man, with prominent bones, big hands and a kindly, somewhat abstracted manner that suggested he was paying little attention to those around him. A mistake, she had come to realize. He and Naomi were parents to the clinic and he was looked on as a mentor, a guru or confessor, to whom people—staff, as well as patients—took their problems, whether personal or medical. She had met people in the offices, nurses, everyone in the kitchen, a number of volunteers. She saw Annie now and then, but never to talk to her. Although she was apparently there every day, Annie always left at just about the same time that Erica arrived.

      Erica made it a point to stop by the reception desk to chat with Bernie Zuckerman often. Bernie was a stout woman, dimply and cheerful, in her forties. Bernie was always the first to know anything happening at the facility, and although she might have been able to keep secrets, it had not yet been demonstrated. Most people at the clinic visited with her habitually, and that was where Erica had met the ones she knew. But she had not met many of the therapists yet. They were usually gone by the time Erica finished reading.

      That day, the first of August, Erica stopped at the kitchen, as she always did, to get a glass of ice water and chat a moment with Stephanie Waters. When Bernie introduced her as the cook, Stephanie had said indignantly, “I am not a cook. I am a nutritionist.” She was fifty-plus, stately, with burnished copper-colored hair, a figure that was without a curve from shoulders to hips, and she was a dictator in the kitchen.

      After leaving the kitchen, while passing a therapy room, Erica heard Darren’s low voice from beyond the door that was ajar.

      “See, it’s like this. You already learned all this stuff once, and your brain said, that’s it, done. Then whap, the part of the brain that knows how you walk got zonked right out of business. We’re going to teach some other part to take over its job. Most of your brain, everyone’s brain, is just sitting there not doing a thing until there’s some learning to do and then lights go on all over the place. Let’s watch the video now. See that little fellow crawling around? He’s decided it’s time to get up and walk. That’s hard-wired in, to get up and walk, only the brain doesn’t know yet exactly how legs and feet work, or just where they are, or how to keep balance. Watch. There he goes…. Whoops. Wrong move.”

      Erica hardly dared to breathe, listening. Darren’s voice was deep and low, not laughing, but amused and easy.

      “Up again, try again…Whoops, down again. He’s starting to get frustrated. Don’t blame the little guy. That’s hard work he’s doing, СКАЧАТЬ