mask of hostility is a defense mechanism.”
“Now, Ran, you don’t have to spare my feelings. I don’t care what he thinks of me.”
“No, it’s the truth. Will had a—well, call it an unfortunate love affair.”
“Call it anything you like. I’m not interested.”
“I knew Sue in grade school,” Ran said with areminiscent gleam in his eyes. “She had red-gold curls and blue eyes. And the way she walked, even then…”
“Never mind your lecherous preadolescence. I gather Sue was La Belle Dame sans Merci. I hope she gave it to him good.”
“She did.”
“Ran, I couldn’t care less about Will’s broken heart. So he’s prejudiced against women. That’s about as logical as hating Frenchmen because one Frenchman picks your pocket in the Metro. What really concerns me is why you brought Mary here. Wouldn’t she be better off in town, with decent doctors close at hand?”
“I told you, she won’t see a psychiatrist.”
“But at least you’d have them near, so that you could take immediate advantage of a change of mind. Here, you’re hours away from professional help if she should agree to see someone, or if…”
I didn’t need to go on. We both knew what I meant: or if she got worse.
“That isn’t going to happen,” Ran said angrily. “And if it should—well, whatever you think of Will’s qualifications as a psychiatrist, he’s a first-rate doctor. He could take whatever emergency measures were needed.”
I shivered. The picture was an ugly one: Mary struggling and violent, having to be subdued by an injection before being carried off, an inert,hoarsely breathing bundle, to a padded cell in Boston or New York. Shades of Le Fanu and Wilkie Collins…But it could happen.
“But here, of all places,” I argued. “Talk about isolation! Don’t you ever have storms, times when no one can get off the island?”
“Not these days. You’re a hopeless landlubber, Jo.”
“Even so…I didn’t even know you had a house here. You lived here when you were small?”
“Everybody lived here when I was small,” Ran said, with a faint smile. “My grandfather was still alive; he was the patriarch of the clan, he gathered in loose relatives. Mother came here after Dad died, and we stayed till she remarried. Mary fell in love with the place when we came up this spring to settle my great-aunt’s estate. When I suggested we get out of the city, she wanted to come here.”
“I see.”
I saw a number of things; one of them was the way Ran was drinking. He was on his third now, and all three had been pretty dark. This was a new habit, and one which filled me with disquiet.
“I’m glad you do,” Ran said. “Are you willing now to acquit me of kidnapping my wife and carrying her off for my own sinister purposes?”
“I never thought—”
“Naturally you’re partisan. I want you to be.I want somebody—somebody who is on Mary’s side.”
I stared at him.
“I know,” he said, not looking at me. “But try to understand, Jo. When two people live as closely as Mary and I do—not just the ordinary closeness of marriage, we’ve always had more than that—emotions are never simple. I love her. But my ego is so wound up in her that her unhappiness makes me feel guilty and resentful. I can’t admit that I’ve failed, so there must be something wrong with her. Most of the time I feel love and compassion and a desperate desire to help. But there are moments when—when I want to grab her and shake her and yell, ‘Snap out of it! Stop acting so childish!’ Now tell me what a louse I am.”
“I don’t think you’re a louse,” I said. “I think you’re a rare bird—an honest man. I know a little something about twisted emotions myself.”
He looked up at me, his face a mixture of gratitude and relief.
“Thanks, Jo. I’m sorry; I’ve let my worries make me selfish. Have you had a bad time this past year?”
“No. No worse than…Forget it, Ran. Your worries are my worries,