Silent Screams - C. E. Lawrence [102]
“My God,” Lee said. “You’ve got to stop punishing yourself over her death. Take it from someone who knows.”
Nelson looked at his glass, and then at Lee. “How did you do it?”
“I don’t think we ever get over missing the people we lose. We just learn how to live with the loss.”
“I still can’t accept that I had no control over it.”
“It isn’t uncommon to feel guilty in a situation like this.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” Nelson answered, some of the old impatience creeping into his voice. “It’s just that—well, when it comes right down to it, I guess we don’t think of ourselves as ‘other people,’ do we?”
“No, I guess not.”
Nelson slumped in his chair and stroked Rex’s shiny golden fur. They matched almost exactly, master and dog—Nelson’s curly rust-colored hair was just a shade or two darker than the dog’s burnished red-gold coat. Rex leaned into his master’s leg, a blissful expression on his big, friendly face. The dog was Nelson’s perfect mirror image, a kind of reverse alter ego, as sweet and outgoing as Nelson was sour and mistrustful. Lee knew his friend’s behavior was a mask for an almost unbearable sensitivity, but few people saw through the mask. Lee had been allowed a glimpse of this, and over time Nelson had opened up to him—but he was one of the few. Karen was another, of course, but now she was gone.
Nelson broke the silence with a cough—the deep, rattling hacking of a lifetime smoker. Lee looked at him sternly. The whole apartment smelled of clove cigarettes.
“When is it you’re going to quit smoking?”
“For God’s sake, Lee, one thing at a time! I never smoked around her, you know,” he added. “Not even before she—”
“I know,” Lee answered. “I know you didn’t.”
“It was pretty funny, leaving my own apartment to smoke out on the street like some furtive teenager. We used to laugh about it,” Nelson said, smiling, and then his smile slid away. His face fell, and a sob raked his vocal cords, making a harsh sound. He regained control after a moment, though, and took a deep breath.
“It’s funny how so many other fears seem to spring from the basic fear of abandonment, isn’t it?” he said.
Lee looked into his glass of scotch, the tawny liquid catching the light refracted by the cut-crystal glass. “Yeah. You know, that’s even true for…” He broke off without finishing the thought, and looked away.
“What? True for who?”
“I was thinking about the case.”
Nelson sat back in his chair. “I’m listening.”
“I just didn’t think it was right, under the circumstances—”
“For God’s sake, man, you’ve piqued my curiosity now!” Nelson roared. “And do you think I want to spend all night moaning about Karen’s death? Please—distract me!”
“Okay. It’s not that big a deal, really. I was going to say that for him it’s also about abandonment.”
“For the Slasher?”
“Yes. Control, yes—but the roots are fear of abandonment.”
“But what does it get us—or where does it get us, I should say, that we haven’t already been?”
“He can’t even allow himself to experience normal sexual impulses toward women. I think they may be irretrievably locked for him now—sex, religion, and death—to the point where, in his mind, they represent the same thing.”
“And there’s the sadomasochistic aspect of Catholicism: the suffering Jesus, bound and bloody on the cross.”
“And Mary—always depicted as young and beautiful—looking up at him with adoration in her tear-swelled eyes.”
“You know, you’re right,” Nelson said. “I never thought about it. If Jesus really is thirty-three when he dies, then Mary has to be at least in her fifties, right?”
“Right. And this is in a sun-drenched climate before Botox and face-lifts, or even decent dental care. She’s going to look her age.”
“But she’s always depicted as young and beautiful—as if she were his sister rather than his mother.”
“Right,” Lee agreed. “Even more confusing for a young man who’s having trouble escaping a clinging mother.”
Nelson took a long swallow of scotch. “The less said about Catholic mothers, the better.”
Nelson had said very little