DESMOND Chapter Three
Chapter Three
1958
Alan and Wendy sit together in silence. Alan consults his notebook while Wendy stubs out her cigarette in the planter. She tries to look away, but after a while she gives in - she wants to see his reaction to the story. She wants to know if he believes her. When he looks up from his notebook his face is a study of impassivity.
"So…" Alan ponders. "He didn’t say anything to you at all?"
Wendy regards Alan quizzically.
"No... No. He just made that crazy screaming sound I described."
Alan writes something briefly in his notebook. "I see. And then you managed to drag him out of there…"
Wendy leans back and rubs her eyes. This was the tough part…"I don’t really remember... I mean I must have somehow, they found us just inside the front door."
"Hmm…"
Alan begins to scribble more notes in his book. Wendy watches him with growing annoyance.
"Well…" Wendy demands, "Aren’t you going to ask me how I feel about what happened? I mean, isn’t that how this works?"
Alan finishes making his notes and looks up at Wendy.
"So how do you feel about what happened?"
Wendy leans back and stares at Alan for a long time. "I feel like I’m not sure if I can trust you just yet…"
"That’s understandable. This is a process, Wendy. It’ll run it’s course in it’s own due time."
"So... What exactly does that mean, Doctor?"
"It means you don’t have to say anything you’re not comfortable with yet."
Wendy regards Alan coolly. Alan continues to look back at her.
Alan holds the door for Wendy as the pair emerge into the reception area. He is speaking in an overly bright tone, a wan smile plastered across his face. "So I think we made good progress for a first session. We’ll pick this up again next week."
Wendy fidgets with her bag. "Sure…"
Wendy looks over to the spot where she had left Desmond- near the reception chairs and potted plants, in the light of a bay window.
Desmond is no longer there.
"He’s over here!"
Her heart regaining it's beat, Wendy looks over to Marie, the receptionist, who is sitting behind a large alcove desk. Marie is pointing to a spot behind the alcove that remains invisible from Wendy’s point of view.
Wendy walks quickly around the alcove to find Desmond in his wheelchair, directly facing Marie at her desk. Wendy turns to look at Marie.
"Why did you bring him over here?"
Marie looks back at Wendy with upturned eyebrows. She exhibits signs of nervousness; forced smile, rigid posture with hands gripping the armrests of her chair tightly.
"I didn’t! I just turned around and he was right here!"
Wendy looks at Desmond. Desmond looks at a corner of the ceiling.
"Really." Wendy's voice is like cracking ice.
Alan steps into the alcove behind Wendy. Marie tries to keep her tone even, but her eyes remained popped like deer in the headlights. "He must have wheeled himself over." She turns to Alan. "I didn’t even hear him, just turned around and there he was…"
Wendy crosses her arms. "He never wheels himself anywhere."
"Are you sure of that?" Alan places a hand on Wendy's shoulder.
Wendy grabs the handles of Desmond’s chair and roughly turns him away, brushing off Alan's hand. She wheels him into the waiting elevator and turns around to face the doctor and his receptionist.
"So I’ll see you next week?" Alan asks hopefully.
"Sure…"
1954
Desmond stands facing her, before the pictures on the wall, their life together laid out behind him. She sees a hand, her hand, as it lashes out and strikes Desmond in the face. Her fingers jolt from the impact. His glasses fly from his face but he doesn’t flinch or react. He just keeps staring at Wendy as she stands there, chest heaving.
Wendy's voice seethes with uncontrolled fury. "Just admit it you bastard! Admit that you’ve been fucking her!"
Desmond stands his ground and continues to stare back at Wendy. No bruises mark his face – his features remain calm and unruffled. He breathes steadily, and his eyes gaze into her with a deliberate and surgical precision. The hand she has struck him with quivers at her side. She raises it as though to hit him again. But then a brief instant of doubt causes her to hesitate, to think of just what they were doing, here. When Desmond speaks his voice is even and clear and completely in control.
"You know, it really disappoints me to see you acting this way."
1958
Desmond lies alone in bed. The wheelchair sits akimbo in the corner, as though left in haste. He lies on his side, eyes open, staring at the picture on the dresser across the room. It is Desmond and Wendy’s wedding picture.
Slowly Desmond’s eyes close.
Wendy sits on a stone bench in the backyard, a book in her lap. For now, she watches the sundial in the centre of the interlocking stone patio before her.
The sun shifts through clouds in the sky above. The sundial’s shadow creeps slowly along a track of engraved time. Petals fall from a lavender tree, covering the patio and sundial in quivering leaves of bright pink. She thinks briefly of Desmond, alone inside the house, but… No. Auto Mode. No thinking.
Wendy watches the sundial. The shadows grow strong, then dim. The Dial of the Sun Shadow crawls to a point on the stone.
Wendy lifts the book from her lap. She opens to a place she had bookmarked with a playbill.
Even though there is no one to read to, Wendy reads from the book out loud. Her voice is soft and wavering, seeming to modulate with the shifting of the clouds and sunlight.
"Through how many eyes do we see the world? Is it only two?"
She takes a breath. The world pulses around her.
"By any objective basis, it would appear that the only truly valid point of view is one’s own. The only real window onto the universe, from within the house of one’s own mind. But even if all reality to the individual is subjective in relation to the material world, there still remains the possibility of other options…"
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