Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [75]
That had been my unspoken, underhanded, and unacknowledged modus operandi for the past three years. Funny how knowing it was your last week on earth could open your eyes to things that should have been obvious all along.
Before the syndrome, I’d had little time for real life. I’d been chasing the perfect woman, the one who would look good on my arm, the one other men would envy me for, the woman who wouldn’t leave me or get sick or go crazy or be anything but beautiful, the woman you could always count on with absolute certainty, the woman who existed nowhere on earth but in the deepest recesses of my brain.
After seducing each candidate with a sincerity that was believable primarily because I believed it myself, after earnestly convincing her of my fitness as a father, as a potential husband, as a lifelong friend, partner, and confidant, I would begin to discover minor aspects of her character that didn’t suit me. Eventually these token flaws would pile up and grow in importance until, after some days or weeks of torturing myself with indecision, I would make the inevitable announcement that we were getting too close; I would tell her I needed space. In other words, as several women had told me, I’d had my fun and it was time to move on.
Convincing them we were still friends was my own sick little mischief, which in my own mind managed to lessen the injury delivered but in fact only prolonged their pain.
Sincerity was the key, I’d found, when dealing with women. If you could fake sincerity, you didn’t have to fake anything else. My only defense was that I faked it so well that even I believed it was genuine. I was and always had been a genuine dope! As only a former Christian and a true idiot could, I believed my own patter.
Everybody has the capacity for self-deception, but I was the king.
Yesterday Stephanie made my jaw drop when she asked what woman had injured me so badly I felt the need to hurt all women. When you’re playing the kind of games I’d been playing and found yourself in the presence of a woman with that sort of quick insight, you ran like a scalded cat. I would have, too, if I hadn’t needed her help so desperately.
My mother had abandoned me at age eight. When she returned four years later, a meager two postcards and one belated birthday present in between, she became so self-conscious about relating once again to the religious rigmarole of the Sixth Element of the Saints of Christ, about fitting back into the hierarchy at Six Points, about being taken back by her husband, James, Sr., that she all but forgot me. I was twelve by then and not nearly the cute little button-nosed imp she’d left. In fact, I’d turned into something of a sullen brat. But then, even when her plate was almost empty, Mother had too much on it for me. By the time she returned, I was old enough to be bitter but proud enough to hide it, resentful enough not to forget but alienated enough to make sure it never happened again. I would die before I would put my trust in her.
Despite her cutting insights into my flawed psyche, I was surprised at how comfortable I’d been spending time yesterday with Stephanie. Not that I wasn’t still scared of her, mind you.
Not wanting to disturb their slumber, I stepped into a pair of sandals and went out back to the pasture. The morning air was clear and crisp. Intent on making each moment last as long as possible, I stood in the field under Mount Si, which rose to forty-one hundred feet over our house in a steep wall on the far side of the Middle Fork, firs clinging to the south end of the mountain, ragged rock screes and crags spanning the north end. Nobody ever visited our place without expressing wonder at how close the mountain was, at how majestic and awe-inspiring and downright frightening it was. Like Yosemite, people said.
On summer