Tom nodded, but his eyes were clouding over again.
“I’m okay, Tom, I’m not crazy.”
“Of course you’re not.”
“I died. I left my body. I saw the doctors, everything. I wanted to stay dead. It was so wonderful, Tom. Then I saw Danny and he spoke to me, told me that it wasn’t time yet, not yet the end of my lifetime.”
Tom nodded. “Jennifer, you’ve got to sleep. Why don’t you try to sleep.”
Jennifer smiled. He didn’t understand what she was talking about. Of course not. He hadn’t died and come back to life. She closed her eyes. Yes, she should sleep. She needed to rest and regain her strength. She had so much more to do. It was time.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
TOM WATCHED JENNIFER PACK. He had made himself another drink and now stood in the doorway of her bedroom as she went back and forth from the closet to her suitcase on the bed.
“Are you going to say anything at all, Thomas? Or are you just going to stare at me all evening?” Jennifer asked. She was holding up a white cotton blouse by the shoulders and deciding whether she should pack it for Minnesota.
“You know what I think,” he answered back. The two double scotches he’d downed had put an edge on his voice. “You’ve just got out of the hospital. You need to rest, not take a goddamn trip out to the middle of nowhere!”
“I have to do this my way,” she said.
Tom nodded and sipped the scotch. “It’s going to be fucking cold out there,” he said softly, as if to make amends. “Why does she live in Minnesota, anyway?”
“It’s where she is from.”
“She knows you’re coming?”
“Yes, of course.” Jennifer decided against the blouse. “Eileen telephoned her at the farm—that’s what the center is called.” She hung up the blouse and reached to the top shelf to pull down her heavy wool sweater, while she waited for his next question. It was as if they were playing tennis, lobbing responses at each other. Then she stepped away from the closet, turned, and faced him.
“Tom, I told you. I’m being driven nuts by this, too. I don’t want to have ‘out-of-body’ experiences. I don’t want to know that I can suddenly turn into some sort of caveman who can kill people with a blow of his fist. I don’t want to think that every time I’m threatened, I’m going to turn into a freak.”
“Jenny, you don’t—”
“Yes, I do. Let’s not gloss over it, okay? Maybe those people deserved to be killed. Maybe they were scum, or whatever you called them, but then so am I. I killed them. Maybe not me, but some part of me. A past-life person.”
“Oh, for chrissake!”
“Give me a chance, Tom.” She stared up at him. “Let me go find out what’s wrong with me, okay?” Her eyes had swelled up with tears, and to keep herself from crying, she turned to the bed and continued to pack.
“I talked to a couple of shrinks,” Tom said slowly, coming into the room.
“Of course,” Jennifer replied.
“Of course, what?”
“Of course you would talk to someone. That’s you.” She glanced up to show she wasn’t upset with him. “What did they say?” she asked, softening her voice.
“I spoke to Dr. Senese, the one I saw for a while after I broke up with Helen. I told him about this woman, Phoebe Fisher.”
“And Kathy Dart.”
“Yeah, about all this goddamn channeling shit.”
“Tom, please!” She felt a wave of anger and immediately tried the exercise Phoebe had taught her, focusing her attention on the word love. Gradually she felt her body ease and the tension diminish. She glanced at Tom. He was sitting on the edge of the bed now, his drink still in his hand. She noticed that he had put on weight, that there was a new roll of fat around his middle, and that his shirt had grown tight at the neck. He was like an animal, she thought, who stored up fat for winter. Perhaps he had stopped jogging. She had not run since her Washington trip. She was afraid to run, afraid of what might happen to her body.
“Senese says that these channelers are suffering from personality dysfunctions. According to him, a fractionalized piece of their personality gains control. You’ve read about these multiple personality cases.”
“Multiple personalities, Tom, happen within the same person. Habasha was a living person from another time period. Dance is from another galaxy. It’s not the same thing.”
“Oh, for chrissake.”
“Tom, I’m not asking you to understand any of this, either. I just want you to have some faith in me, that’s all. I want you to be at least as supportive as Eileen Gorman.”
“That loony! I talked to her at the hospital when she came to see you. She’s out of her fucking mind!”
“Tom! How dare you!” Jennifer threw down one of the sweaters and turned on him. “Eileen has been absolutely wonderful, coming to me when I need her, listening, understanding. How can you sit there and
and
” Jennifer felt a surge of rage sweep through her body. There was a pattern to her primitive urges. They sprang from the base of her neck, shot down across her chest, and poured strength through her body; the result was an overwhelming urge to attack. It was becoming worse, she knew. Each time the rage returned, it came in stronger waves, and sometimes she realized she wanted to sink her teeth into someone. She could feel the desire to satisfy that pleasure. It was like having sex—once she spun off into an orgasm, she never wanted it to stop. She wanted only to ride the waves. She took several deep breaths and brought herself under control.
“If you hadn’t met her in Washington, then none of this nonsense would have started in the first place,” Tom shouted back.
He was drunk, Jennifer realized, drunk and angry and threatened.
“It would have happened anyway, Tom,” she answered. “It was meant to. These events aren’t coincidences or happenstance.” She looked across the bed at her lover. “Let me work this out my way,” she told him.
Tom stood staring at her in the dumb way drunks do when trying to comprehend. She went back to packing but watched him out of the corner of her eye. She was leaving first thing in the morning; Eileen was coming in from Long Island to pick her up, and they were going to drive together to Minnesota.
She could send him home in a taxi, Jennifer thought, or let him sleep there tonight. He’d be sick in the morning.
“Tom, why don’t you go into the living room and lie down on the sofa?” She encouraged him with a smile, but his eyes had glassed over, and he kept swaying against the bed. She went to him and took away his drink. “Come on into the living room, honey,” she whispered.
“You’re leaving me, I know,” he mumbled, but let himself be led away. “You’re leaving me because I didn’t do anything about Helen.”
“Darling, I’m not leaving you. I’m going to see Kathy Dart and talk to her about what is happening to me. I’ll be coming home to you soon. And I’ll be okay again.” She spoke brightly as she eased him from her bedroom. Now his full weight was against her, and she had to struggle to keep him from toppling them both over. Where was her strength when she needed it, she thought, gasping for breath as she slid him down onto the sofa. When Tom dropped onto the cushions, Jennifer sank to her knees.
At least he would sleep until early morning. And he wouldn’t hurt himself. She slipped off his shoes and pushed his legs up onto the sofa, then loosened his shirt and his belt. She peeled off his black socks and dropped them into his shoes, then went back into her room, took the extra quilt from the cedar closet, and tucked it around him.
He was already sleeping soundly. Jennifer knelt beside him and gently caressed his face. The deep sleep had swept away all the tension; he looked like a teenager, with nothing more on his mind than the pleasure of a wet dream. She leaned forward, kissed his cheek, and whispered, “I love you.”