The Green Eagle Score

1

”They’re going to do it,” Ellen said. “I know they’re going to do it now.” Shivering, she hugged herself and shook her head. “I thought it was just a dream for a long while, just a game they were playing. I thought my husband had learned his lesson, I thought he was too scared to try anything like that again. But it’s real, it’s going to happen, and this time he’s going to take Stan with him.”

Dr Godden said, “What makes you so sure?”

“The man who came today,” Ellen said. “The man my husband brought back with him from Puerto Rico.”

It was easy to talk to Dr Godden. She could fold her arms around herself an look at the intricate patterns in the Persian rug and tell him everything, everything that troubled her. She’d never been able to talk to anybody else like this, never in her life. Certainly not her parents, who listened only to judge, who were never anything in her life but judges, critical judges, prejudiced judges, hanging judges. And certainly not Marty Fusco, whom she now understood she’d married simply as an act of revolt against her parents and who had been no one to understand and help a person like her at all. There was no one, that was the bare fact of it, no one on earth to talk to, no one who would pay attention and try to see and understand and help. Until Dr Fred Godden.

It was the boy before Stan who’d first talked to her about going into analysis, and of course then she’d laughed at the idea, she’d thought analysis was for complicated neurotic people, movie stars and famous writers and society people and like that. Ordinary people like her didn’t go to psychoanalysts. But Bert—that was his name—did go to an analyst, because of deep-seated hidden fears that he was homosexual, and eventually he talked Ellen into going to Dr Godden, too. Not long after that, Bert moved to New York City, to Greenwich Village, to try to work out his problem down there, but by then Ellen had learned just how good analysis could be, and she’d kept on with it ever since.

It was Dr Godden who’d helped her get rid of all that leftover guilt she’d been carrying around, not even knowing it was there, weighing her down, making her do things that afterward she knew didn’t make any sense, things that only could wind up with her getting hurt again.

Because she’d wanted to get hurt, it was as simple as that. All the guilt her parents had saddled on to her, and then the guilt of feeling that she’d let Marty Fusco down, betrayed him, when she’d divorced him after he was sent away to prison.

But it had been the right thing to do. Because he hadn’t been the right man for her, he was only a symbol of a revolt that was now complete. She didn’t have to do symbolic things against her parents anymore, she was free of them now. So it was right to have divorced Marty, and that was the reason it was right and the real reason she’d done it, though at the time she’d told herself it was because of Pamela.

There was guilt there, too, guilt toward Pamela, feelings of inadequacy and fraudulence. It was all very confused still, very muddled and unclear, but they’d been working on it. hour by hour, three hour-long sessions a week, Monday and Wednesday and Friday, and they’d been getting closer and closer to the root of it all, and then this robbery business had come along, throwing everything out of kilter, and since then it seemed that was all she could ever talk about with Dr Godden.

Particularly in the last week, since Marty had found out where his so-called “organizer” was, at his ease between robberies down there in Puerto Rico, and Stan had offered to pay Marty’s plane fare down to talk to this man, this Parker, and bring him back. And now he was here, and it was real, and it was actually going to happen, and Ellen sat in Dr Godden’s office, hugging herself, staring at the complex patterns in the carpet, and felt the heaviness of inevitable disaster weighing down on her like a black raincloud. Because the man had come from Puerto Rico, and it was going to be done.

“Tell me about this man,” said Dr Godden. His voice, as always, was soft and gentle, but not at all dramatic like a hypnotist’s voice in the movies, the way she’d thought psychoanalysts’ voices sounded. And he didn’t have a beard, or an accent, or anything like that. He was just an ordinary man, perhaps forty-five , very well-dressed, balding, with a fringe of black hair over his ears and on the back of his head. He wore glasses with pale plastic rims, and he never took notes, and his eyes were unfailingly sympathetic behind his glasses, and if sometimes the hour went over a little he never rushed her, never complained, never cut her off.

She said in answer to his question, “His name is Parker. I don’t know what his first name, is, nobody said. I don’t like him.”

“Why not?”

“He’s—I don’t know, I look at him and I think he’s evil. But that isn’t right, exactly, I don’t think he’s evil. I mean, I don’t think he’d ever be cruel or anything like that, for the fun of it. I wouldn’t worry about leaving Pam around him, for instance. But—I know.”

“Yes?”

“He wouldn’t hurt Pam, but he wouldn’t care about her either. If something bad happened to her, he wouldn’t be pleased by it but he wouldn’t try to do anything to help her. Unless he saw some gain for himself in it.”

“You mean he seems cold?”

“He doesn’t care. There’s no emotion there.”

“Oh, well,” Dr Godden said, and even though she wasn’t looking at him she could hear the gentle smile in his voice, “everyone has emotions. We all have them—you, me, everyone. Even this man Parker. Perhaps he has them bottled up more than most people, that’s all.”

”That’s just the same, then,” she said. “If he has them and keeps them inside, it’s just the same as not having them at all.”

“That’s very true. But of course you’re seeing this man while he’s at work, you might say. Perhaps in Puerto Rico he’s a very different kind of man. Perhaps there he relaxes and allows himself to feel his emotions.”

She shook her head. “I can’t imagine him ever feeling emotions. I can’t imagine him crying. Or even laughing.”

“Seems to me,” Dr Godden said gently, “you’ve turned this man into some sort of myth figure, something bigger than life.”

“I don’t know, maybe I have. I suppose I have. Because now it’s real, he means it’s real, it’s going to happen.”

“He’s the organizer you told me about on Monday.”

It always surprised and pleased her when he remembered the things she told him. He had other patients, he was being paid to listen to her, he didn’t have to remember, but he did. “Yes, he is,” she said. “He came up from Puerto Rico.”

“Has he met with Stan?”

“Stan took him out to the base today. That’s why I’m late.”

“Perhaps this man will decide the job is too difficult. Perhaps he’ll tell Stan it can’t be done.”

She shook her head stubbornly. “They’ll do it,” she said. “I know they will. I can see it in all their eyes.”

“The new man, too?”

“Him especially.”

“What do you see in his eyes?”

“I don’t know, it’s—it’s hard to explain. That he’s going to do it, that nothing will stop him from doing it.”

“Hmmmm. When do they plan it for?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Well, it would be a payday, wouldn’t it? Or the day before. When does the Air Force pay again?”

“The fifteenth. Next Tuesday.”

“Four days from now,” he said. “Can they get ready that quickly?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I remember, with Marty, it always took a week or two, sometimes more. They don’t even have all the men yet. Marty said it would take more than just the three of them.”

“So it would probably be the payday after next,” Dr Godden said. “The first of October. Let me see, that’s a Thursday. Three weeks from yesterday. They probably won’t want to stay around this area much longer than that. That is, if you’re right and they really intend to do it.”

“They’ll do it,” she said, in the tone of voice she might have used to say, everybody dies.

“We have three weeks to find out,” Dr Godden said. “But if it’s still in such early stages, I don’t think you can really be as sure as you are. You know what I think it is?”

“The same old thing,” she said, smiling a bit shyly at the pattern in the carpet, knowing what he was going to say.

“You tell me,” he said, urging her gently.

“It’s the feeling of being undeserving,” she said. “The feeling that I don’t deserve to have anything good, so I won’t get anything good. I’m sure they’ll do it because I’m sure they’ll get caught and then I won’t have Stan. Because I don’t deserve Stan.” She sneaked a quick look at him, saw his sympathetic face, his balding head gleaming in the light. Looking quickly back at the carpet she said, “I know that’s part of it. But that isn’t the whole thing. I mean, Marty did get caught.”

“Once,” Dr Godden said. “And how many times did he commit robberies and not get caught?”

“Oh, lots,” she said. She was no longer amazed at how easily she could talk with Dr Godden about robberies and criminals. It was almost as though he were a priest; different, but sympathetic, never judging, never condemning, never trying to force her to conform to what society might want. How many people could she talk to about Marty, be truthful, tell them her ex-husband was a robber, it was his profession? Most people would be shocked, they’d want to call the police or at least to stop having anything to do with her. But Dr Godden took everything just the same; calm and understanding and without judging. She could talk to him about anything, about sex or Marty or her parents or anything at all and it was never a problem.

Now, calm as ever, Dr Godden was saying, “Then there’s no reason to believe they’ll be caught this time. After all, Stan is the only one among them who isn’t a professional at this sort of thing.”

“But even if they don’t get caught this time,” she said, exploring her fear further now, “it won’t be any good. Stan will want to do it again, he’ll want to become like Marty. Or like the other man, Parker.”

“I see,” Dr Godden said. “You’re afraid Stan will turn out to be your first husband again.”

She nodded rapidly, frowning at the rug.

“That’s a not unusual fear among girls in your situation,” Dr Godden said. “But frankly, from what you’ve told me of Stan I think it more likely one taste of that sort of life will be more than enough for him. Who knows, the experience might be good for him, he might come out of it much more likely husband material than he went in.”

It was wonderful how Dr Godden always found a calmer way to look at things, a more pleasant way. And a lot of the time his way turned out to be right, and all her fears and doubts and premonitions turned out to be nothing but the old insecurity again, the old inadequacy and unworthiness.

“I guess,” she said hesitantly, “I guess the only thing we can do now is wait.”

“That’s all,” agreed Dr Godden.