The Green Eagle Score

5

Do you know what strikes me as significant?” Dr Godden said.

Ellen had been silent the last three or four minutes, just sitting there with her arms around herself, her eyes fixed on the patterns in the carpet, her mind churning as she tried to find something to talk about and there continued to be nothing, nothing at all. Dr Godden always told her not to worry about the silences, to be silent when she felt like being silent and talk only when she felt like talking, but she hated to have the time go by and her not saying anything to him, not accomplishing anything with him. They’d done so much good together already she was impatient to get on with the job, to accomplish everything, to make everything as good as it could possibly be.

This was one of the few times he’d ever broken into one of her silences, and it surprised her almost enough to make her look at him. She checked the head movement in time, turned it into a negative shake, and said, “No, I don’t.”

“You can’t think of anything to talk about,” he said. “And I would guess that’s because you’re trying very hard not to think about a particular subject. Do you think that’s possible?”

“I don’t know,” she said, though the suggestion did make her tense. “I can’t think of any subject.”

“You can’t? Well, here it is Monday the twenty-first, and do you know the last time you mentioned the robbery to me? Exactly one week ago. Last Monday. Not a word since then. Wednesday you talked about your mother, Friday you talked about your baby, and today you haven’t been able to talk about anything. But the robbery is a scant ten days away, and up until last Monday it was a very strong and important subject to you.”

He stopped talking and that meant she had to say something, had to respond in some way. She searched frantically for words, finally muttered, “I don’t know, I guess I just don’t have anything to say about it any more.”

“Have you been attending their meetings, as I suggested?”

“Yes.”

“Listening to their plans?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that something to talk about? Their plans?”

“I guess so.” She shrugged awkwardly, her face twisted by concentration. “I guess I just don’t want to think about it anymore,” she said.

“You mean you don’t listen to their plans?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Then you still are interested, you do still think about it. But you don’t want to talk about it. Why do you suppose that is?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

He began to throw out hypotheses, the way he always did. “Could it be because you don’t trust me? Or because you now think the plan will work and you were foolish to have worried so much? Or because you now feel attraction again for your husband? Or perhaps for the other man, Parker?”

“No!” she said, so loudly and abruptly she surprised herself. Then she sat there and listened to the word, echoing and reverberating and revealing her to herself, and she saw that she had been staring at one corner of carpet because a line there, a series of lines there, reminded her vaguely of Parker’s face in profile, cold and hard and aloof.

“What is Parker to you?” Dr Godden said, “Is he the Parent, the stern parent? Is he the father?”

‘Cold,” she said, not entirely sure if she meant Parker or herself or both, or even how many different ways she might mean it about either of them.

”The one you don’t deserve?”

“Wednesday,” she said, talking in a monotone, almost a whisper, “Stan was going to be out all night. I asked Parker to stay overnight. I didn’t make it sexy, I just asked him. I didn’t know that’s what I meant, but it was. I’m not sure if he knew.”

“Did he stay?”

“No. He left, and I felt relieved. I was glad he hadn’t stayed, but I’d had to ask him.”

“You were relieved to discover you were still unworthy?”

“I suppose so, I’m not sure.”

“What do you feel about this man Parker now?”

“I think I hate him,” she said. “I’m afraid of him.”

“Because he would be justified in punishing you for your hatred,” he suggested. “Because he has done nothing to you directly to justify your hating him. That’s why you’re afraid, the fear is a way of feeling guilt.”

Sometimes the answers were too complicated for her. All she could do now was shake her head.

“Perhaps on Wednesday,” he said, “you’ll feel like talking about the robbery again. Perhaps you’ll understand your feelings better then.”

“I’ll talk about it now,” she said. “Now that I understand this, I want to talk about it, honestly.”

“There’s no time now,” he said, and his voice didn’t sound quite as sympathetic as usual. “We’ll see what happens on Wednesday.”

Now she did feel guilty. She’d been keeping the plans from Dr Godden for no reason, making him feel she didn’t trust him, causing a rift between them just when she needed him the most. “I’ll tell you the whole thing on Wednesday,” she promised.

“If you feel like it,” he said.