Snow White and Rose Red

10

I felt like a teenager that Saturday afternoon.

When I was growing up in Chicago, the car of my dreams was a red Pontiac convertible. I imagined myself driving all over Illinois and Indiana with the top down on my red Pontiac convertible. I imagined willowy blondes turning their heads to look at me as I breezed by in my red Pontiac convertible, my hair streaming in the wind, a wide grin on my acne-ridden face. Instead, I drove my father’s Oldsmobile whenever he let me, and my pubescent conquests — few and far between — were limited to the back seat of that steamy green monster.

Today I wanted to be driving a red Pontiac convertible.

I wanted to zip out over the roads to Knott’s Retreat and leap out of the car without opening any of the doors, and run across the sparkling green lawn to where Sarah Whittaker, willowy and blonde, waited for her windblown White Knight. My Karmann Ghia was not a convertible, but I drove with all the windows opened wide to a day as fresh and as bright as Sarah’s green eyes and golden hair and radiant smile.

I was going to tell her that everything would be all right again. The bad guys would be thwarted, my fair Snow White would be released from the tyranny of the Seven Dwarfs who kept her captive against her will. Dr. Cyclops, Dr. Schlockmeister, the Prime Minister of Justification, the Black Knight, the Harlot Witch, Brunhilde, Ilse — all of them — would be forced to release their grip upon her and watch helplessly as she marched out into the free, sane world again.

She was wearing white.

She came running across the lawn with her arms widespread, skirts billowing, white peasant blouse slipping off one delicately rounded shoulder, long legs flashing in the sunlight, white sandals seeming to fly airborne over the dewy grass. It seemed for a moment that we would fall into each other’s arms like lovers too long parted, embrace fiercely, rain kisses upon cheeks and eyes and lips — but Jake was not far off, watching.

She took my hand.

“Oh, Matthew,” she said, “you’ll never know what joy you bring!”

“You look lovely,” I said.

“I’ve been sitting in the sun,” she said.

She was still holding my hand.

“Come, let’s walk to the lake. Oh, I’m so damn happy to see you!” she said, and squeezed my hand, and together we walked in dazzling sunlight to where the lake lay placid and still. I half expected to witness an arm rising from the water, Excalibur extended to the knight bearing glad tidings, Sarah’s White Knight.

Jake took up a position some hundred yards from us, leaning against the parchment-paper bark of a punk tree.

“It’s so long between visits,” Sarah said. She was still holding my hand. She kept squeezing it, as though reassuring herself that I was real. “When you aren’t here, I dream that you’re walking beside me, I pretend that Brunhilde is really you wearing an attendant’s disguise. When she watches me showering, I make believe it’s you watching me. When I lie alone in bed at night... forgive me, I know I’m saying too much. How have you been, Matthew? I kept hoping you’d call, why didn’t you call? If only you knew how much I was longing for the sound of your voice. You look so nice today, all cool and clean in your seersucker suit. I love your cheerful tie, too, is it Ralph Lauren? Promise me you’ll never change the way you comb your hair. I’d die if you started parting it in the middle, like Gatsby. He did part his hair in the middle, didn’t he? If he didn’t, he certainly should have. Listen to me rattling on, you’d think I loved the sound of my own voice. Do you like the sound of my voice, Matthew? you’ll notice I didn’t use the word ‘love.’ ‘Do you like the way I sound?’ the maiden asked cautiously.”

“I love the way you sound,” I said.

“Rambling like one of the keeners... Ululalia, here I come,” she said, and grinned like a six-year-old. “So,” she said, “what treasure, Uncle? Do you know the scene in Henry the Fifth, where the French ambassador brings him a gift from the Dauphin, and... Exeter, I think it is... opens the casket, and Henry asks, ‘What treasure, Uncle?’ and Exeter gravely replies, ‘Tennis balls, my liege?’ Do you know that scene? I just adore that scene because Henry tells off the ambassador with a sort of controlled rage, do you know the lines?”

She stood suddenly, her back to the lake, sunlight streaming through the white cotton skirt and silhouetting her long legs. She raised one clenched fist to the sky, struck a kingly pose, and said in a deep voice quite unlike her own, “‘We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us. His present and your pains we thank you for. When we have match’d our rackets to these balls, we will in France — by God’s grace — play a set shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard.’ And then he really gets sore, Matthew,” she said in her own voice. “Don’t you remember the scene? He tells the ambassador — wait a minute, let me get in character again.” She cleared her throat and struck her regal pose again. In the same deep voice as before, but edged with menace now, she said, “ ‘And tell the pleasant Prince this mock of his hath turned his balls to gunstones, and his soul shall stand sore charged for the wasteful vengeance that shall fly with them.’ ” Her voice became increasingly louder and fiercer, her green eyes seemed to grow a shade darker. “ ‘For many a thousand widows shall his mock mock out of their dear husbands, mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down.’ ” And now her voice lowered to a whisper more threatening than a shout would have been. “ ‘And some are yet ungotten and unborn that shall have cause to curse the Dauphin’s scorn.’ Oh God, I love it!” she said in her own voice. “Don’t you love it when people cut other people down for trying to make fools of them? ‘Shall have cause to curse the Dauphin’s scorn.’ Don’t you adore the way that rolls off the tongue? Try it, Matthew,” she said. “you’ll see what I mean.”

“ ‘Shall have cause to curse the Dauphin’s scorn,’ ” I said.

“See?”

“Yes.”

She sat beside me on the bench again. She took my hand and squeezed it.

“Now tell me,” she said, and grinned again. “Do you think he was making a pun?”

“Who?”

“Shakespeare. When he says, ‘And tell the pleasant Prince this mock of his hath turned his balls to gunstones.’ Does he mean the tennis balls? Or does he mean the Dauphin’s balls? I used to wonder about that all the time. Am I shocking you again?”

“No,” I said.

“Good,” she said, and sighed in mock relief. “Do you ever think of me?” she asked suddenly. “When you’re not here, I mean. Or maybe you don’t even think of me when you are here, who knows? Maybe right this minute you’re thinking of a legal brief you have to prepare, or a tort — were you tort to prepare torts in law school? Do you think of me?”

“I think of you, yes.”

“A lot?”

“A lot.”

“I think of you all the time,” she said. “All the time. The only thing that keeps me from going nuts like all the rest of them is thinking of you. You have no idea what it’s like being here, Matthew. Anna the Porn Queen telling me day and night about the new movie she’s planning, asking me if I want to star in it, promising me she’ll make me famous, the poor soul. And Herbert the Hibernator...”

“Who?”

“Herbert Hyams. I call him Herbert the Hibernator because he thinks he’s a bear.” She laughed suddenly. “I know it’s hard to accept the notion that a human being can think of himself as a bear, actually believe he’s a bear, but that’s what Herbert believes. He asked all of us to call him Teddy. Not now, not while he’s in hibernation. He won’t be coming out of hibernation till May, which is when he says the winter will really be over and his coat will be nice and thick. Meanwhile, he doesn’t want anyone to talk to him. You can’t talk to a bear when he’s hibernating because it’ll upset his sleep and he’ll lose months and months of growing time. That’s what Herbert calls it. Growing time. If you try to tell him that a bear’s coat is thicker in the winter, when he needs it thick, and not in the springtime, when he comes out of hibernation, Herbert will say, ‘What do you know about bears?’ Totally bonkers, old Herbert.” She tilted her nose snootily, as if she’d just smelled something particularly noisome. “The people one must associate with in a dump like this,” she said, and laughed again.

“You’ll be out of here soon,” I said.

“Oh good, are we planning an escape?” she said, and clapped her hands together. “I’m crazier than usual today, don’t you think?” she said. “You drive me crazy, Matthew.”

“You’d better not be crazy next week,” I said.

“Why? What’s next week? Anyway, how can you tell a crazy person not to be crazy? Do you think we can turn it on and off? You turn me on, Matthew, did I ever mention that to you? Are you really getting me out of here?”

“I hope to.”

“Hope the Hopeful,” she said.

I smiled.

“Ah, he smiles, my champion.”

“Do you want to hear this, or don’t you?”

“Pray tell me, sir,” she said, and rose suddenly and extended her hand to me. I took her hand. We began walking around the lake. And it was summertime in Chicago, and on Lake Michigan there were sailboats on the water and somewhere someone was playing a banjo and I walked holding the hand of a sixteen-year-old girl with long blonde hair and sparkling green eyes and I told her of my dreams and the banjo plinked like splintered sunlight as we walked.

“I’m going to have to get a bit technical about this,” I said, “so if it gets too complicated...”

“I love complicated things,” Sarah said.

“Okay, this is from the ‘Guardianship’ chapter in the Florida Statutes — the section titled ‘Termination.’ ”

“That sounds so final,” Sarah said. “Termination.”

“That’s what we’re looking for,” I said. “Termination. An end to all this.”

She squeezed my hand. “And a beginning,” she said.

“What I want to explain is the procedure for... well, what it’s called is ‘restoration to mental or physical competency.’ ”

“Yes, Matthew,” she said, and suddenly she became quite serious, her head turned toward me as we walked, her eyes alert and searching.

“Section 4 of Chapter 744.464 states: ‘Any relative, spouse, or friend of an incompetent’ — I consider myself your friend, Sarah — ‘may petition in the county where the person was adjudged incompetent — or where the person is living on the date of the petition — to determine whether he is still incompetent and unable to manage his affairs.’ I’ve already filed such a petition with the Circuit Court. I have a copy here if you’d like to look at it. The important language in it is: ‘Wherefore, this petition requests that an examination be made as to the mental and physical condition, or both, of the said Sarah Whittaker as provided by law, and that an order be entered determining the mental and physical competency of said person.’ You could have petitioned on your own behalf, Sarah, but I think it carries more weight signed by the required three citizens of the state.’“

“Who did sign it?” Sarah asked.

“I did. And my partner, Frank Summerville. And an associate named Karl Jennings.”

“Thank you,” she said softly.

“I expect to have an order summoning examination within the next several days. Which brings us to another section of that same chapter. Section 1(a) states: ‘When a person has been declared incompetent and is hospitalized at a treatment facility’ — Knott’s Retreat is a treatment facility, of course — ‘and becomes capable of managing his own affairs, he may be issued a certificate of competency signed by three members of the medical staff at the treatment facility—’ ”

“Forget it,” Sarah said. “You’d never get any of the shrinks here to sign such a thing. Not with Cyclops in control.”

“I realize that,” I said. “Which brings us to section 1(b). Are you listening?”

“Please,” she said, and gave a small nod.

“Section 1(b) says: ‘A certificate of competency may also be issued at a designated receiving facility upon the recommendation of two members of the medical staff and a third responsible person.’ ”

“A receiving facility would be someplace like Good Samaritan,” Sarah said.

“Yes, the Dingley Wing.”

“They thought I was nuts, too.”

“There are other receiving facilities in Calusa County,” I said.

“Go on,” Sarah said. She was watching me intently now. We had, in fact, stopped walking. Out on the lake, a fish jumped.

“I’ve asked the court to specify an examining committee at Southern Medical, the Arlberg Receiving Facility there.”

“You mean I won’t have to be examined here? Or at Good Samaritan?”

“Not if the court orders a committee at Southern Medical.”

“But will it? The court?”

“Judge Latham — to whom I petitioned — is a fair and honest man. I think he’ll recognize the need for an unprejudiced examination.”

“Cyclops’ll never let me out of here. Not for a minute.”

“I’ve already spoken to Dr. Pearson about having you removed temporarily to Southern Medical — if that’s what the court orders.”

“And he refused, of course.”

“On the contrary. He seemed positive that independent observation and examination would only confirm the findings here at Knott’s Retreat.”

“That I’m totally bananas.”

“That’s his belief.”

“He actually said I could leave here?”

“If the court so orders. And in the presence of an attendant, of course.”

“Jake?”

“He didn’t specify which attendant.”

“To go to Southern Medical? In town?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t believe it. When is this supposed to happen?”

“As soon as I get the court’s response. Next week sometime, I’d guess.”

“How long will I be there? At Southern Medical?”

“For however long it takes to determine your status.”

“Whether or not I’m ‘mentally competent,’ you mean.”

“Yes. you’re not worried about that, are you?”

“No, but I’m suspicious. Will Cyclops be there?”

“I doubt it. Why would that matter, Sarah?”

“Because then he’ll be able to spread his poison, you see.”

“His poison?”

“he’ll tell them I’m crazy.”

“I’m sure the court would want an examination totally free of prior judgment.”

“What does that mean? No records from Knott’s?”

“Well, I don’t know about that.”

“Will Jake be with me while I’m there?”

“we’re not even sure it’ll be Jake who—”

“Whoever — Brunhilde, Ilse. Will an attendant from Knott’s be with me all the while I’m at Southern Medical?”

“I don’t see why anyone would have to remain with you. The examining physicians—”

“God, Matthew, suppose they decide I am nuts?”

“I hardly think that will be the case.”

“But... suppose?”

“We’ll worry about that if it happens. I’m sure—”

“God, I’ll be in here forever!”

“I feel certain they’ll find you competent,” I said.

“Hoo, listen to the big psychiatrist,” Sarah said, and smiled. “What then? Suppose they do decide in my favor?”

“Upon issuance of a certificate of competency, it’ll be sent to the court where you were originally found incompetent.”

“Oh shit, Judge Mason again.”

“Not necessarily. The statute doesn’t specify a particular judge, only the court. In this case, the Circuit Court.”

“Because he’s in my mother’s pocket, you know. That’s how I got in here to begin with. Because of Mason.”

“Well... in any event, there’ll be a hearing to determine competency, and if the court finds you quote of sound mind and capable of managing your own affairs, you shall be immediately restored to your personal liberty unquote.”

“Amen,” Sarah said. “How do I get there? To Southern Medical? In a padded ambulance or something?”

“I’ll pick you up,” I said. “The attendant will be with us, of course. I’ll have to rent a bigger car. The Karmann Ghia’s got only that little back seat, not even a seat, really.”

“Is that what you drive? A Karmann Ghia? Do you realize how little I know about you? You know everything there is to know about me—”

“Hardly,” I said.

“Tell me about yourself, Matthew. you’re not married, are you? God, I’ll kill myself if you’re married. Tell me all about yourself.”

We sat on the closest bench and looked out over the lake, holding hands like lovers, though Jake was never very far away, and I started to tell her “all about myself.” And because she’d asked me if I was married, the first thing I told her was that I was now divorced. She wanted to know all about my former wife — was she a nice person, had I loved her very much, what color was her hair, how tall was she, was she very beautiful, did I call her Susan or Sue or Suzie — and then she asked which one of us had wanted the divorce. So I told her all about my affair with Agatha Hemmings, the passion of my life, or so I’d thought at the time...

“Did you love her more than Susan?” she asked.

“I thought I did, yes.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I haven’t seen Aggie in years,” I said.

“Is that what you called her? Aggie?”

“Yes.”

“That’s very pretty, Aggie. Was she as pretty as her name?”

“I suppose so.”

“What color hair did she have?”

“Black.”

“But blondes have more fun, don’t they?” she said, and grinned. “Especially in the booby hatch. Tell me what happened after the divorce. Do you have any children? Do they live with you? Where do you live?”

So I told her about my daughter, Joanna, and the trouble I was having right now because Susan wanted to send her off to a school in Massachusetts...

“How old is Joanna?” she asked.

“Fourteen,” I said.

“Oh my,” Sarah said. “Almost a woman.”

“Almost,” I said.

“What color hair does she have?”

“Would you mind telling me what this fascination with hair is?” I said.

“Well, your wife Susan had brown hair...”

“Still does.”

“And your girlfriend Aggie had black hair...”

“Yes?”

“So what color hair does your daughter have?”

“Blonde,” I said.

“Ah. Like me.”

“Yes.”

“Is she pretty?”

“I think she’s beautiful.”

“Do you think I’m beautiful?”

“I think you’re very beautiful.”

“Am I more beautiful than Joanna?”

“you’re both very beautiful.”

“Who else do I have to worry about?” she said.

“You don’t have to worry about anyone,” I said.

“Not even Joanna?”

“Of course not. I want you to meet her one day. Once this is all over with—”

“Oh, I’d love to meet her,” Sarah said, and suddenly she kissed me.

I didn’t know whether Jake was watching us or not.

I didn’t care.

I knew only that I had never been kissed like that in my life. Not as a boy, not as a man. There was fierceness in that kiss... urgency... anger... unimaginable passion. I felt for a moment as though a succubus had attached itself to my mouth, trying to draw the very breath of life from me. Sarah’s hands were at the back of my neck; I could feel her fingernails digging into my flesh, feel her teeth on my tongue. I fully expected to taste blood in my mouth. And then she pulled away from me.

And smiled.

And said, “You’d better be true to me, Matthew.”