Fiction

A Sensitive Soul (Continued...)

by Andrew Coburn

"Yes."

"Try it and see."

"I don't have to. You're my mermaid."

"How's the eczema?" Dr. Wall asked.

"Comes and goes," Dennis Berube said.

"Most things do."

The chair of maroon leather with brass studs tried to engulf Dennis, but he held his own and kept his back straight. "Help me to be a stronger person, Doctor."

"Help me be a better doctor."

"I'm the patient, not you."

"How do you know? Maybe we treat each other."

He took a slow deep breath and spoke in a dull metallic voice. "I'm a coward."

"We keep returning to the war, don't we?"

"I'm still afraid of dying."

"Is that all?" Dr. Wall smiled broadly. "Without death, life would lose half its meaning. Imagine, if you will, Mr. Berube, living for eternity at only half your value. Think of the frustration."

"So you're saying death has its benefits."

"I'm simply saying it has its reasons. Way of the world. Light and darkness. Sunshine and rain. Here today, bye-bye tomorrow."

Dennis maintained his erect position in the leather chair, his hands gripping the arms. "You make it sound simple."

"That's the extraordinary thing, Mr. Berube. It is."

"Where does God figure in?"

"Who?"

Dennis looked curiously at the wall clock, as if the minutes were no longer moving. "You give me bent answers to straight questions."

"I'm not a clergyman. I'm not even a believer."

Dennis loosened his grip on the arms of the chair and relaxed. "I have some positive news, Doctor. I'm getting married."

Amy Oliver and Dennis Berube were married in a simple service performed by a justice of the peace, no parents in attendance. Amy's mother, like Dennis's had died young and her father lived on the opposite coast with his new wife and family. Dennis's father, who had not remarried, was working in Saudi Arabia.

The witnesses were Frances Ray and the colonel, with the colonel's wife, Faith, in attendance. In an aside, Faith murmured, "They seem perfect for each other."

"Amy said it was written on the waves," Frances whispered.

The honeymoon, all expenses paid, a gift from the colonel, was in Hawaii. Their first night, their arms around each other, Amy poised her lips near his ear. "We need each other."

Dennis tightened his embrace. "Yes."

"We're so close."

"Closer than seems possible."

Each relished the tenderness of their talk and then, legs tangling, reveled in the mindless animality of their act, one no less than the other. Later, when he was deep in sleep, she wished she could peer into his dreams without disturbing him and see herself as he saw her.

Over breakfast, when they talked about where they might live, Amy turned quiet, thoughtful. "I like it where I am. Frances already said she'd sell us her half of the cottage if that's what we want."

"I want what you want."

"I want a child."

"I want that too."

He brought few possessions to the cottage, among them a snapshot of himself in uniform. Helmeted and armed, positioned against a backdrop of broken trees, he looked like a fact of history. "My hero," Amy said, and he shook his head.

"I was anything but that."

Frances, who'd not yet moved out, said, "It's good you've tied the knot, Dennis. People who live alone begin to feel imaginary."

"You'll be living alone soon," he said. Frances was stretched out in front of the TV, her large slumberous legs bruised at the knees, one leg thrown straight, the other crooked. "I'm already half-imaginary." Within the month she was gone, an apartment in Haverhill, a teaching job at Collier Christian College.

A few weeks later the colonel, who had a grandiose house in Andover, saw the cottage for the first time and was not pleased. Running a hand over the suggestion of hair on his head, he said, "You can live better than this."

Wearing a wide-brimmed hat, the colonel's wife drew him aside. "You make a fine salary. The colonel feels you have a duty to live up to it."

"A duty? I'm not sure I understand that at all."

"Perhaps you should think about it."

Later, their visitors gone, Amy said, "Who do they think they are?"

"They've never had children. The colonel has sort of adopted me."

"What about her? Has Faith also adopted you?"

"She's more like a stepmother."

Before going to bed, they took a walk under a full moon that chromed the beach. In the hush of night, salt marshes spread their odor. Her hand in his, Amy confided, "I think I'm pregnant."

Dr. Wall said, "I'm happy for you."

"Amy's ecstatic. Boy or girl, doesn't matter." Dennis sat at ease in the massive leather chair. "I'm much stronger, Doctor. Loving someone gives you strength. Gives you purpose. It tells you what's important."

"I can understand that." Dr. Wall's eye strayed to a picture on his desk, that of his youngest daughter. Dennis gazed for a moment into space. "I've come to realize that war isn't the whole of human activity. It only seems to bulk bigger than everything else. A man looking into his wife's eyes is a much bigger event. So is a woman carrying a child."

Dr. Wall appeared to agree, for he scanned pictures of all his daughters arranged on his desk. Once he had diagnosed Dennis as a probable suicide, if not soon, then in a year or so, but he had gradually revised his finding. "The absolutely glorious thing about the human spirit, Mr. Berube, is man's ability to produce meaning out of meaninglessness. We do it every day."

We make war every day. How do we explain that?"

Dr. Wall smiled over the opportunity to respond with a line from one of his professional papers not yet delivered. "Living is natural. Dying is natural. War is defecation."

"Also natural."

Dr. Wall's smile broadened. "You got it!"

Frances Ray's apartment near Collier College accommodated a treadmill she hadn't used but intended to. Weight gain, along with an ill-fitting bra that left her floppy, made her feel like a cow of plenty. Munching toast while on the phone, she said, "It's unnatural eating alone. That's why I eat more than I should."

"You're not the only one gaining weight," Amy Oliver said.

"But you're eating for two." Frances licked her fingers. Peanut butter overwhelmed the toast. "Are you happy, Amy?"

"Positively. I've always wanted chivalry from a man, courtly love, and sure signs of a sensitive soul. Dennis has that and more."

"You have your Dennis, I have Nietzsche. Another sensitive soul." Frances clumsily lit a cigarette, smoking a part of her effort to lose weight. "Poor Nietzsche was too sensitive. He spent the final ten years of his life counting his toes, afraid they weren't all there."

"Dennis is sure-footed. He knows where he stands and where he's going."

"Lucky fellow." Frances looked at her reflection in the toaster. Her face puckered when she drew on the cigarette. Her father had smoked. A certain look from him on a Sunday afternoon had caused her mother quietly to lay the newspaper aside and trail him up the stairs. Not until years later did she realize the significance.

Amy said, "How are things at the college?"

"Married guys are putting the make on me. Like I'm supposed to be flattered." Her thoughts went to the provost, whose trousers were thin, his arousals obvious. Then there was the president, whose devouring kiss left her sick to her stomach. Ugh! She shoved his away. No more of that stuff!

"You still there, Amy?"

"Dennis just walked in."

"Go to your man," she said and rang off.

Amy miscarried at the start of her fourth month, a devastation that threatened the two of them. Uncertain was whether she could ever carry a child to term. "The husband's taking it worse," the doctor said to the attending nurse, a mother who'd had miscarriages of her own. "Win some, lose some," she said.

Dennis felt at fault. During her pregnancy, he had envisioned her as holy, as if he'd detached her from a scene in a stained glass window. Now he felt that he had defiled her. "We pay a price for what we do wrong," he said in a hollow voice.

She had the strength, he the need. She held his hand, the one with the little finger he'd nearly torn off. "You've done no wrong, Dennis, so you can't blame yourself. We'll try again. We'll make it work this time. We love each other."

"Maybe I don't have what it takes."

"You're my man." Her arms went around him. "You'll always be my man."

A week later, early May, they drove from the coast and went walking in woods, everything in motion. Every bird was a bugle, a whistle, a call to arms. Amy felt she could hear the thunder of trees breaking into full leaf. Dennis heard a different thunder and for the first time offered her details of his time in combat. Explosions that ravaged his ears, bits of men floating in the water, fish food, never should've tried to cross that river, heroes lacking the courage to be cowards, orders to be followed.

Amy sought his hand. "It's over."

The woods gave way to a meadow, where they felt the weight of sunlight on their faces. Beyond the meadow were swamp pines tall enough to spear clouds. Dennis imagined himself wielding one to attack the forces of nature.

Amy had his hand again, squeezing it. "Will I always have you?"

"Always," he said. "I swear."

The industrial plant was low-lying, spread over acres, horseshoed by fully loaded parking lots, and patrolled by security personnel, not all of them in uniform. Dennis, with some apprehension, passed through the metal detector at the front door and gained further entrance with the use of a magnetized card. One corridor led to a deeper one. Fast-stepping colleagues slipped in and out of cubicles. Trembling, he eyed them as troglodytes in business suits. Passing his own office, he reached the colonel's and swept in.

"Is he expecting you, Mr. Berube?"

The colonel's secretary was a slight woman thin enough to be made of nearly nothing. Dennis merely smiled in passing and entered the inner office, nicer than most others, and closed the door behind him.. When the colonel glanced up from his massive desk, Dennis saw a Neanderthal wearing a necktie.

"Sir, I'm resigning." He spoke fast, too fast. "I can't go on helping you and the company defraud the government."

The colonel traced a hand over the stubbly hair on his head, as if to summon patience. "My boy, we are the government."

"That doesn't excuse what we're doing."

The colonel's eyes burned blue. "Read history, Dennis. Consider the Roman Empire's astounding accomplishments. The engineering and architectural marvels, the stunning governmental and military machinery. All of it achieved in an atmosphere of corruption and greed. It's the way the world works. You think you can change it?"

"Maybe not, but I can't go on doing what I've been doing. I plan to see the U.S. Attorney."

"You'll only hurt yourself. Not me and not the company." Somewhat sadly, the colonel shook his head. "I don't understand. I've treated you like a son."

"I'm not your son."

The colonel's eyes burned bluer, harsher. "If I'd had a son, he sure as hell wouldn't have been married by some justice of the peace. He'd have chosen a church. A minister of God would've given his blessing."

When Dennis turned to leave, the colonel came forward in his executive chair. "Hold on! Before you do anything crazy, do yourself a favor, talk this over with Faith. She explains things better than I do. If she can't change your mind, then do as you see fit."

"I don't want to talk to your wife."

The colonel picked up the phone to alert her. "I've done much for you, Dennis. Do this for me."

Dennis drove into the growing town of Andover, where all the new and newish houses were of manorial pretension. The colonel's was of extravagant design, with stone statuary on the lawn and metal beasts at the mouth of the drive. Dennis left his car near ornamental shrubs and, following instructions, mounted the veranda, strode left, rapped on glass doors, and stepped inside.

On a card table was a completed picture puzzle, filling a TV screen were lovers in a long-running soap, and on the sofa lay the colonel's wife, who rose reluctantly, annoyed. The remote killed the couple in the middle of a kiss. "I don't know what the colonel expects from me. If you want to destroy your future, that's your business."

He said nothing.

"You didn't go into anything blind, Dennis. Your eyes were open."

He was aware of that. He would admit everything, deny nothing.

"The games you boys play." She shook her head. "What game are you playing, Dennis? The good soldier? My brother had a box of plastic ones."

"Are we through, Faith?"

"That's the first time you've used my first name."

"I feel like I know you now."

"Good-by, Dennis."

She retrieved the remote, and he left. He drove slowly, carefully, much on his mind, but he sped up on the Interstate when his mind raced ahead of itself and an eczema itch caused him to scratch through his sleeve. He slowed considerably when he reached the coastal road and on impulse pulled over at a roadside convenience store that sold wine.

Minutes later he emerged from the store with a bottle for himself and Amy for a celebration of sorts, a weight off his shoulders. As he rounded the front of his car, a heavy-duty pickup riding high on its wheels swerved off the road and sped straight at him. He heard it before he saw it. What the hell! In the next instant he was struck, propelled, and broken beyond repair, his skull part of the pavement.

The bottle of wine rolled away intact.

Frances Ray addressed her class. "We speak of God as a perfect being, but why should that be true? Why can't God be imperfect? His flaws would explain much about what goes wrong in this world. And we all know plenty does."

The provost, who'd grown a mustache in a vain effort to distinguish his face, was sitting in the back of the classroom. His eyes targeted Frances, who ignored him.

"Essentially," she went on, "God is awe. He is the lightning that precedes thunder. He is the eye of the storm. He is she, the yolk of the egg."

The provost took a small breath and with two strokes smoothed his mustache, a shade different from that of his thinning hair. Frances's hair had recently been colored. A bearded student raised his hand.

"You once said God thought himself up."

"I was being cute. In the world of believers, God exists. In the world of nonbelievers, God does not. In the world of half-believers, God is watered whiskey."

The provost coughed loud enough to turn heads. Then he left as quietly as he had arrived.

Frances was summoned to his office that afternoon. Her patience was thin. "I hope this is nothing petty. My best friend is burying her husband tomorrow."

"This won't take long. You've been warned before, Frances, many times. This is a Christian college."

"But not the Dark Ages."

"I'm sorry, Frances. We can't keep you any longer."

"Of course you can." Her smile was only slightly smug. "Otherwise you and the president will be hit with sexual harassments suits."

"We've already figured that into the mix. You don't have a case."

"Try me." She rose huskily, strode to the door, and glanced back. "By the way, that silly mustache doesn't do it."

Amy Oliver sold the cottage, bought a condominium in Haverhill, and stayed close with Frances. "Sometime I feel you're the only proof I have that he existed. If I had had the child, that would've made it real."

"It was real, Amy. Every bit of it was real."

She stayed in touch with the police, but there were no new leads to identify the hit-and-run driver. For all she knew, it could have been a phantom.

The colonel and his wife were kind to her, and the company granted her a small pension, along with health insurance, which covered counseling. She began seeing Dr. Wall when dreams disturbed her sleep, though Dennis was never in them. Why not? He was her husband, her love. For God's sake, her life!

"Too soon," Dr. Wall suggested.

"He was slow to tell me things. He told me little about his work, as if that were a separate and secret part of him."

Dr. Wall gave her something to make her sleep better.

"I have to ask, Doctor. Do we owe anything to the dead? People who were and now aren't."

"I'm not sure I know how to answer that."

"Let me put it another way. Do the dead owe the living anything?"

Dr. Wall thought for a moment. "I'd say all debts are canceled."

"I don't think so, Doctor."

On her next visit, she was shaking. "The phone rang--my friend was there, she heard it ring too--it was Dennis. He told me he was alive. I didn't believe it at first, but now I'm not sure."

"How have you been sleeping?" Dr. Wall asked.

Fine. In a dream she had found a two-word note from him. I am. Meaning yes, he was still alive, still breathing, still kicking.

"Dreams can seem very real," Dr. Wall said.

"This one was."

Frances Ray gave her final lecture at Collier College. The classroom was packed. "God," she said, "created the world by hurling atoms in the air and letting them fall as they may. The mystery is how some of those atoms developed into you and me. It's not too far a leap to imagine God saying, 'Now how the hell did that happen?' And Darwin piping up, 'May I offer a suggestion, sir?'"

Later that day, at a small party attended by a few brave faculty members and no one from the administration, Frances was presented with a leather-bound copy of Thus Spake Zarathustra. With a tear in her eye, she said, "Nietzsche, poor bastard, died demented. Tertiary syphilis."

In the evening she and Amy Oliver dined at a restaurant with a raftered ceiling, from which hung a jungle of plants. "Like eating in a God-damn greenhouse," Frances said. "Better hope they didn't hit the food with bug spray."

Frances ordered big, Amy small, just a salad and then ate only the mushrooms in it, her mind elsewhere. She wanted to be little again, when her mother held her hand while crossing the street. Though she didn't believe in heaven, she hoped her mother was there, poetic justice for an earthly life cut short.

Frances wielded a fork and steak knife. "Maybe we should consider sharing digs again."

Noncommittal, Amy concentrated her attention on a neglected black olive, the taste of which she could never bear. She ate it anyway, and made a terrible face.

"He's not coming back, Amy."

"I know that."

"I wonder if you do. He's gone, Amy. He's in the ground."

Their attention was taken by a heavy man at the next table. A gold crown had fallen from his mouth and landed on the edge of his plate. Amy thought it was a cufflink, and Frances didn't know what it was.

Amy, adjusting her breath, said, "Have you noticed? Nowhere and everywhere have the same meaning."

A retired couple taking an evening stroll glimpsed a woman standing at the surf; her back to them. They had seen her before, but from a distance. She had looked familiar then and more so now. The man said, "I'm sure that's her."

"She looks lost," his wife replied.

"Hell, she knows where she is. How can she not?"

"I don't mean that kind of lost."

Amy Oliver was staring up at the moon. Misted over, it looked like a wafer of metal covering a hole high up. Then she began gazing at incoming waves, any one of which could deliver Dennis alive and whole, a life rejoined. When she blinked, the moonlight played tricks. For an instant she saw him wading in, but the figure was opaque, not a man at all, merely a figment. Her smile held more irony than bitterness.

"Hello. Dennis," she whispered to the salt air. "I wish you were real, the world were not."

An hour later she was still on the beach, her movements dictated by the swish of the tide. He wasn't coming. She knew he never would, but it was pleasant to pretend otherwise. Without meaning to, she stepped into a hollow of tidal water and soaked her sneakers, which at once gave her a chilling sense of what a drowning man might feel.

Seconds passed before she realized someone was approaching her from the left, a youngish man in a town police uniform. He asked if everything were all right. Everything was fine. He stepped closer for a clearer look at her face. "People who bought your cottage, ma'am, they're worried about you."

She smiled. "No need."

He studied her. "You're not thinking of doing anything foolish, are you?"

"No, Officer, I'm not. I'm with my husband."

Adjusting his visored cap, the policeman scanned the moonlit beach. "I don't see him. Where is he?"

"Everywhere," Amy said.