Chapter 3 3

Jessie closed her eyes tightly. Six years ago, she had received a five-month, half-finished counseling session.She hadn't told Gerald about it, because she knew he'd mock her...and perhaps feared she'd reveal something.She complained that her problem was nervousness.Her therapist, Nora Calligan, taught her a simple relaxation technique. Most people associate counting to ten with Donald Duck trying to hold back his temper, Nora said.But what the Tens method really does is give you a chance to readjust your emotional control wheel... who doesn't need to readjust their emotional control at least once a day, probably has a much worse problem than you and me.

The voice was clear, too—clear enough to put a thoughtful smile on her face. I liked Nora then, very much. Did Nora know then?She was a little surprised to find that she couldn't recall exactly, nor could she remember why she stopped seeing Nora on those Tuesday afternoons.A whole bunch of things—group money, the Court Street homeless shelter, maybe a new library funding campaign—all at once, she thought.As the new-age silliness of punchlines points out, lies come.In any case, it may be best not to consult.If you don't draw a line somewhere, the therapy will just keep going until you and your doctor are staggering along to meet at the big group forum on making friends in heaven.

That's okay—count it, starting at your toes, the way she taught you. OK - why not? One is the feet, ten little toes, cute piglets, all in a row. It's just that the eighth toe looks ridiculous.The two big toes look like the heads of a pair of pointed hammers. The second is the legs, beautiful and slender. Well, not that long - she was 5.7 feet tall, after all, and with a long torso - but Gerald declared it was still her best figure, at least in the erogenous area.This statement, which often amused her, seemed perfectly sincere to him.Somehow, he overlooked her ugly knees, like the knots of an old apple tree, and her rounded upper buttocks.

The third is sex, right and wrong. It's a bit of a fine line—a bit too good, many would say—but it doesn't quite make the point.She raised her head slightly, as if to look at the body part mentioned, but her eyes remained closed.In any case, she didn't need to use her eyes to see.She lived with this particular body part for a long time.Between her hips is a ginger triangle with curly hair surrounding a modest-looking slit that has all the artistic beauty of a poorly healed scar.This thing--this organ which is really nothing more than a deep groove held up by crossed bands of muscles--seemed to her an improbable source of mystery, but in the minds of all men it certainly resides in the status.It's a magic ditch, isn't it?In the animal world, even the wildest unicorns can end up in its trap.

"It's an excuse, what kind of nonsense," she said.She smiled, but didn't open her eyes. But that's not bullshit, not quite.That slit is what every man desires - at least the ones who are after the opposite sex.But that object also often arouses contempt, suspicion, and loathing they cannot explain.You can't hear that deep anger in all their jokes, but it's in quite a few of them, and it shows itself like a bruised wound: What is a woman?It is a life support system because of its genitals. Stop it, Jesse.ordered Mrs. Burlingame.Her voice was irritated, disgusted.Stop now.

This, Jesse decided, was a pretty good idea.She turned her mind back to dozens of methods.Four is the hips (too wide).The fifth is the belly (too thick).The sixth was the breasts, which she thought were her best parts—those smooth curves with blue veins looming beneath them, which she suspected Gerald resented a little.In his magazine inserts, the girl's breasts don't show any ducts under them, and the magazine girls don't have any hair on their nipple halos. Seven is her excessively broad shoulders, eight is her neck (which used to be beautiful, but it has undoubtedly become thinner in recent years), nine is her gradually tapering chin, ten is—

Wait a minute!Damn it, just wait for a while!The voice that wasn't nonsense broke in suddenly and angrily.What kind of stupid game is this? Jessie closed her eyes tighter, horrified by the deep anger in that voice, frightened by its separation.In anger it seemed nothing like a voice coming from the center of her brain, but like a real disturber—an alien ghost trying to haunt her.Like the ghost of "The Exorcist" Pazuzu haunting the little girl. Don't want to answer that question?Ruth Neary - also known as Pazuzu - asked.Well, maybe that question is too complicated.I'll make it super easy, Jesse: Who turned Nora Calligan's lamely rhymed relaxation verses into self-loathing spells?

No one.Submissively she thought of the answer, and knowing at once that the voice that wasn't nonsense would never accept it, she added: That Mrs. Burlingame, it was she. No, it is not.Ruth's voice answered immediately.It sounds like she spurned this silly attempt to deflect responsibility.Mrs. Burlingame was a little silly, and she was terrified at the moment.But she's a sweet girl at heart, and she always means well.Whoever it is, adapting Nora's entry is actually detrimental, Jesse, do you see that?didn't you- I can't see anything because my eyes are closed, she said in a trembling childish voice.She almost opened her eyes, but something told her that it wouldn't make the situation better, it would only make it worse.

Who is that, Jesse?Who told you that you are both defensive and useless?Who made Jerold Burlingame your lover, your prince charming?Maybe you picked him years before you actually ran into him at that Republican fraternity?Who decided that he was not only the one you needed, but that he was just right for you? Jessie made a tremendous effort to clear the voice from her mind—she strongly hoped, all voices.She began to chant the mantra again, out loud this time. "One is the toes, all lined up in a row. The second is the legs, beautiful and slender. The third is sex, right and wrong. The fourth is the buttocks, the curves should be soft. The fifth is the stomach, which stores the food I eat..." she remembered There is no rhyme left of "Maybe it was a fluke."She very much suspected that Nora had made it up hastily herself, perhaps to publish a kind of sentimental, compassionate, self-help magazine.magazines on the coffee table in her waiting room).So she continued without rhyme: "Six is ​​the chest, seven is the shoulders, eight is the neck..."

She paused for breath, and was relieved to find that her heart had slowed from a wild beating to a rapid beating. "...nine is the chin, ten is the eyes. Open your eyes wide!" She did what she said, and the bedroom scene burst into view, bright and clear, somehow new, and at least temporarily—almost as exciting as the first time she and Gerald had spent summer in this room. happy people.That was a few years ago, a year that had a sci-fi vibe that now seems irrevocably gone. Jesse looked at the gray barndoor walls, the high white ceiling reflecting the glimmer of the lake, and the two large windows on either side of the bed.The window to her left looked west, and from it she could see the sloping lot beyond the pier and the stunning blue water of the lake.The window to her right showed a less romantic vista, the driveway and her old gray dame, a Mercedes.The car is now eight years old and the rocker panels are showing the first small spots of rust.

Just across from the bedroom, she saw a framed canvas of batik butterflies hanging on the wall above the dresser.She remembered without any surprise that it was a present from Ruth for her thirtieth birthday.Here, she couldn't see the tiny signature sewn on with red thread.But she knew it was there: Nierduan, eighty-three, another year of science fiction. Not far from the butterfly (and clanging, though she never mustered up the courage to point it out to her husband), hanging from a screw was Jerrod's fraternity beer mug, named after a Greek letter, in a college fraternity In the world of the club, P star is not very bright - other members used to call it Alpha Grab A Hoe - but Jerrod wears this brooch with wayward pride, hanging his beer mug on the up the wall.And, when they come here every June, they drink it with their first beer of the summer.It became such a ritual that sometimes—long before today's ceremony she wondered if she was sane when she married Gerald. Someone should have come to end this.she thought wearily.Someone really should come, because, look what's going on. On the chair on the other side of the bathroom door, she could see the beautiful little culottes and sleeveless dress she was wearing today, it was so warm and out of season in autumn.Her bra was hanging on the bathroom doorknob.A ray of bright afternoon sunlight fell on the bedspread and her legs, turning the fine hair on her upper buttocks to gold.The sunlight is not directly on the square in the middle of the bed at one o'clock, nor is it a rectangle at two o'clock.This is a broad band that will soon narrow into a strip.Although the power outage messed up the reading on the digital radio clock on the dresser (it flashed the numbers 12:00AM over and over like a bar neon sign incessantly), the Sunbelt told her it was almost four o'clock.Before long, the narrow strip of sunlight would slide over the bed, and she would see the shadows in the corner and the little table by the wall.As the strip of light turns into a thin line, it first slides across the floor, and then climbs up the far wall, retreating as it moves, and at this time, shadows will crawl out from every corner, spreading like ink to the entire room, engulfing as it expands sunlight.The sun is going west.In another hour, at most an hour and a half, it will set.In about forty minutes it will be dark. The thought didn't cause panic—not yet, at least, but it did cast a melancholic film over her mind, a damp feeling of dread over her heart.She saw herself lying here, handcuffed to the bed, with Gerald dead under the bed beside her.She watched them lie in the dark.The man with the chainsaw has long since returned to his wife and children, to the brightly lit home.The dog also wandered away.Only that damned loon was still looking for a mate on the lake—only him and nothing else. Mr. and Mrs. Gerald spend their last long night together. Beer mugs and batik butterflies make for unpleasant neighbors that can only be tolerated in a year-round house like this.Looking at them, Jessie thought, it was easy to look at the past, and it was just as easy (though much unpleasant) to imagine, loosely, possible future scenarios.The really hard work is staying in the status quo.But she thought she'd better do it the best she could.If not, this embarrassing situation may become embarrassing.She couldn't count on some god of rescue to drag her out of her current embarrassing situation, but that would be unpleasant.However, if she managed to escape herself, things would be different.She would be spared the embarrassment of lying almost naked while some governor's deputy unlocked her and asked her what had happened while staring long at the white flesh of the new widow. Two other things will happen.She would have to pay a high price to make them go away, and she couldn't do it, even temporarily.She needs to go to the bathroom, she's thirsty.At this moment, the need to urinate is stronger than the need to drink water.However, she also desperately wanted water, which also made her anxious.It wasn't a big deal, but if she couldn't shake off the handcuffs and come to the tap, things might change, in ways she didn't want to think about. It would be funny if I died of thirst two hundred yards from the Ninth Great Lake in Maine.she thought, and then she shook her head again.This is not the ninth largest lake in Maine.What has she been thinking?This was Lake Dakskau, the lake she had gone to with her parents and sister all those years ago.Back to those voices, back to— She struggled to stop her thoughts.It's been a long time since I've been to Daxko Lake.She didn't want to think about it at the moment.Handcuffed or not.Better think about thirst. Why don't you think about it, baby?It's a psychosomatic, that's all, you're thirsty because you know you can't get up, you can't get water.It's that simple. Not so.She got into a fight with her husband, and she kicked him quickly, causing a chain reaction that ended in his death.She herself was living with the fallout from a major hormonal spill.The term for this is shock.One of the most common symptoms of shock is thirst.Perhaps, and count myself lucky, she wasn't thirstier than before, at least for now.and-- And what can she do about it. Gerald was a fellow with many odd habits, one of which was keeping a glass of water on his side of the bedside shelf.She turned her head to look to the right, and yes, there it was, a full glass of water with a handful of melting ice floating on it.Doubtless the cups were placed on cushions, so that no water would remain on the shelves—such was Gerald's style, with such thoughtful consideration of trifles.Condensed water droplets cling to the cup like beads of sweat. Looking at this, Jesse really felt thirsty.She licked her lips.She moved as far to the right as the left cuff would allow.Only six inches, but that brought her to Gerald's side of the bed.This movement also revealed some dark spots to the left of the bedspread.She stared blankly at the spots for a moment before remembering how Gerald had emptied his bladder in the final agony.Then she quickly turned her gaze back to the water glass, which was sitting on a round piece of cardboard that might have advertised some brand of yuppie beer, probably Baker's or Heineken. She reached up, and she reached slowly, wishing she had reached long enough, but it wasn't enough—her fingertips were three inches from the cup.A pang of thirst—a tightness in the throat, a tingling in the tongue—comes on and goes away. If no one comes by tomorrow morning, or if I can't find a way to free myself, I won't even be able to see the glass. There is a cold rationality to this idea, which is terrifying in itself.But she wouldn't still be here tomorrow morning, that was the way it was.The idea is utterly ludicrous, absurd, and stupid.Not worth thinking about.it-- stop.No nonsense voice said.Please stop, so she stopped. She had to face the fact that the idea wasn't exactly ridiculous.She refused to accept or even consider the possibility that she would die here - of course, that would be foolish.But if she didn't sweep the cobwebs off that old thinking machine and get it going, she was sure to have some long, hard times. Long, hard...maybe painful.said Mrs. Burlingame nervously.But that pain would be an act of redemption, wouldn't it?After all, this is your own fault. Hope I'm not annoying.However, if you let him vent— "You're annoying, Mrs. Burlingame," said Jesse.She couldn't remember ever speaking out loud to these voices in her head before.She wondered if she was going crazy.She decided she wasn't talking too much nonsense by any means, at least for the time being. Jesse closed his eyes again.