A Sensitive Soul

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A Sensitive Soul

Andrew Coburn

"Metaphysics is your mind stretching its ignorance."

So said Frances Ray over white wine on the balcony of her friend's second-floor condo.

Husky and playful in tank top and shorts, she displayed scraped knees that mimicked

those of an overactive child. An atheist, she taught philosophy at a small Christiancollege north of Boston.

"What I'm saying is knowledge has limits. Ignorance has none."

"I'm astounded they keep you on," Amy Oliver said. "You don't have tenure."

"I come cheap. Plus the president fantasizes over me." Frances stretched her smile. "Sodoes the provost."

The buzzer sounded, and both women gave a start.

Rising on quick legs, her beauty a garment beginning to wear, Amy Oliver wondered

about the caller. Friend or foe? Good news or bad? She strode through French doors to

the intercom in the kitchen. "Who is it?"

"Your husband."

The voice, unnervingly familiar, caused her body to go still. "Don't do this."

"Do what?"

"My husband's dead."

For another minute or two she stayed on the line, listening with an unbelieving ear and

speaking from a raw throat. When she silenced the intercom, she shivered. She wanted

her life to be one foot in front of the other, nothing off course. Her return to the balcony,accompanied by ticking sounds in her head, was slow. Frances Ray was smoking a

cigarette, permissible out in the open air of the balcony.

"Who was it?"

"Dennis."

"This a joke? Dennis is dead."

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An anonymous bird flew by. It might not even have been a bird. Amy Oliver had an odd

expression on her face, as if her brain were not behaving. "He says he isn't."

"People don't come back, Amy. Not unless they're Jesus Christ almighty or stinkingLazarus." Frances Ray expelled a lungful of smoke, some of which exited her nostrils.

"Did you buzz him in?"

"I told him to go away."

"Do you think he will?"

"He has no choice," Amy Oliver said. "As you said, he's dead."

::

Some people claimed it wasn't a war, not officially. They called it an action, but soldiersdied all the same, some with their flesh ripped open for birds to fight over and peck at.

Some were dragged away by animals. Dennis Berube survived. He came home with the

shakes, along with a medal for bravery he didn't deserve and didn't display. Six monthsinto civilian life he began seeing a shrink named Wall, who had a vigorous head of hair

and a face of effortless expressions. Dennis, instead of relaxing, sat erect in a large

leather chair he was meant to sink into. "What's wrong with me, Doctor?"

Dr. Wall took a deep breath, preparatory to saying something, and then said nothing. He

found Dennis's sharply faceted face interesting while vaguely disliking the metallicquality of his voice. He wanted his patients to be highly unusual, challenging, engaging,

the sort about whom he could submit papers that would make him a force in his field.

Dennis pressed. "Please say something."

A previous patient that day had picked his nose and made it bleed. Dr. Wall had todispense several tissues. "I try to avoid giving easy answers, Mr. Berube. However,

speaking superficially, I'd say you're confused why you came home and your buddies

didn't."

"Is it as simple as that?"

Behind wire-rimmed glasses, Dr. Wall viewed him with tolerant eyes. "Nothing is ever

simple for human beings."

Dennis began scratching through the sleeve of his left arm, on and above the elbow,

deliberately, then vigorously. Dr. Wall recognized the problem.

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"I'm a medical doctor as well as a psychiatrist, so I speak with authority when I tell you

that eczema is stress on the skin. It paints itself on you and mocks your immune system.

It thrives on pollen, mold, spores, and anything else floating about. The higher the day'sheat, the happier it is and the giddier it gets."

Blood appeared on his sleeve, a few dots that grew into a stain. Dr. Wall freed a Kleenexfrom a box in his bottom desk drawer. Offered, it was immediately snatched.

"Thanks."

"Since the itch carries exquisite pain, you resort to savage scratching that shreds skin,draws blood, and leaves you drained. Its mission is pure misery."

"You sound like a fellow victim."

"In one way or another, Mr. Berube, we're all victims. But we must never become one

willingly."

The hour was up - the sharp ding from a timer said so - but inertia kept Dennis seated onthe edge of his chair. Another tissue was needed and was instantly supplied. "I don't sleep

well."

"I'll prescribe something."

"I have dreams."

"Everybody has dreams, even cats and dogs."

Dennis gripped the arms of his chair. His left pinkie was crooked, as if inadequately

attached to his hand. The doctor noticed it for the first time and wondered if it were a

birth defect. Dennis shook his head. No, his only war wound. "Over there, I did my best."

"We seldom know what our best is."

Dennis rose, stood tall, not quite straight. "The dead speak, but we don't have the ears tohear."

"They want their secrets safe. Till next time, Mr. Berube."

::

She relished the beauty of being near-naked on a beach with her body at its best, every

breeze a caress, every glance a compliment. She stood at the ocean's edge not for

romance but for splendor, for the freedom of youth, for awakening. She was a month out

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of college. Emerging from the surf, a man placed a hand hard on his hip, told her she

looked familiar, and asked her name.

Amy. His was Dennis.

She knew no Dennis. He, no Amy.

His wet hair was smoothed back, and his sunglasses were perfect circles. She tried to readhis face while editing away the glasses. His face was angular, not quite handsome, but

interesting. She tried to gauge his age but couldn't. She guessed anywhere from five to

ten years older than she.

He was aware of all of her: the sweep of her hair, the grains of sand in her navel, the

length and shape of her legs. Her polished toenails looked like precious stones. He

imagined her personal hair narrowed to accommodate her bikini.

"You're beautiful."

He was gripping her with a smile that wouldn't let go and was making her unduly awareof herself. His hands seemed on the verge of reaching for her. She spoke over the voices

of passing children.

"I don't think I've seen you here before."

"I wandered in. The seaside gives me the thrill of being alive."

She considered the words. "I think I can understand that."

When a big man wearing a black bathing cap lumbered out of the ocean, they turned to

watch him flop down on a spread towel. Breathing hard, shedding water, the cap still

sheathing his skull, he looked like a beached sea animal.

"Dennis, you said?"

"Yes." His smile lessened as his gaze wandered to the ragged surf. Waves bulged andbroke. "Are you here with someone?"

"A friend. Her parents have a cottage."

He took a deep deliberate breath, as if the air between them were full of meaning. His

smile regained its strength and turned so intense it threatened his face.

"This is how things begin," he said.

"What things?"

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"You know."

She became cautious. "I'm afraid I don't."

The man in the black cap struggled back to his feet and slowly returned to the water, to

the breaking waves, as if that was where he belonged, his home somewhere in the deep.

"Amy, you said."

"Yes."

"I wonder if the drowned ever find their breath and make it to shore?"

"I don't think that's a real question." She turned and pointed. "There's my friend." Coming

into view was a conspicuous shape in a one-piece bathing suit. Big bosom, big thighs,

banged-up knees. With a face that looked overdone in the sun and a stride clumsy and

wobbly over the hot sand. Amy waved. "Would you like to meet her?"

"Sure."

::

On the drive home to Haverhill, Frances Ray behind the wheel with a heavy foot on the

accelerator, Amy Oliver said, "So what did you think of him?"

"Something about him is off center. The real question is what do you think about him."

"I'd need to know more."

Is he worth the effort? That's what you have to ask yourself about any man."

They were on Route 495, the traffic heavy. They passed an eighteen-wheeler, which

made Amy hold her breath. "Could you slow down a little?"

Frances - who ran her watch a little fast, as if to be ahead of herself - eased her foot up,

though not much. The car was a red Honda, a graduation gift from her parents. "I'll say

one thing for him. He's not a Bible-thumper, which is in his favor."

"Is that the best you can say about him?"

"He's not all that bad-looking, if that's what you're after."

"I don't know what I'm after."

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Frances tossed her a sidelong look. "Then get a job. Be your own woman."

Amy sat straight. "I intend to."

::

Dennis Berube's resume showed four years of college followed by two years of

distinguished military service. The interviewer, a man with an oval body in a gray suit,

said in a hushed voice, "Lucky you came back from over there. My son didn't."

"Many didn't."

The interviewer's soft face lacked muscles to smile. "We'll give you a month's tryout. See

if you fit in."

They fitted him into a cubicle, where he familiarized himself with a computer, learned to

analyze government contracts, and, proving himself a step ahead of others, caught theattention of one of the vice presidents, a retired army colonel. Dennis soon became a

section chief and within the year was presenting papers in Houston and Palo Alto.

"Damn good work, Berube." The colonel, the hair on his head reduced to stubble and his

small eyes relentlessly blue, gave him an avuncular smile. "You wore the uniform, youdid the deed, time you reap the rewards."

He was the colonel's boy. He read the colonel's reports, improved upon them, and routed

them on. He was on the fast track, he was told, but at times he was not sure he wanted tobe. One of those times was when he received word that an old buddy of his had died in aVA hospital, a million things wrong with him.

The women in his life were occasional. None stuck, though some wanted to. The least

desirable was a divorcee who insisted they make love on their sides. She wanted their

relationship to be on equal terms. Another was highly conscious of ancestry. Hers wasnotable, his was not.

Dr. Wall considered him through narrowed eyes. "Are women a worry to you?"

"No." He was taken aback. "Why do you ask?"

"You lost your mother young."

He remembered thinking thieves had taken her away, leaving no traces in the snow thathad fallen during the night. The nun who took him under her wing told him that the

opposite of a snowflake is a firefly. Both, however, sparkle, she said. He didn't know

what that had to do with the theft of his mother, but it made him feel better. For a while.

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Dr. Wall said, "Have you thought about marriage?"

"Once. But nothing came of it."

"Whose fault?"

"No one's." He looked at the wall clock. He knew that time runs lazy on a mountaintop

and suspected the same was true in Dr. Wall's office. He spoke in a restless voice. "Will Iever pull myself together?"

Dr. Wall's mouth scarcely moved. "It could happen without your realizing it."

A Sensitive Soul, 2

Amy Oliver and Frances Ray lived on opposite sides of the street in nearly identical

houses that stared out at each other. Amy had the nicer yard, with a red maple in frontand lush forsythia in back. Frances, a climber, fell from the maple and broke hercollarbone. Amy had a Siamese cat, Frances a dog that died of distemper. Both girls

collected Nancy Drews, and each cherishedBlack Beauty.

At Girl Scout camp, they competed for merit badges, with Frances winning the most.

When a male counselor touched her inappropriately, she walloped him in the face,splitting his lip and skinning her knuckles. Amy hollered for help. Their first sexual

experience was with each other, silly stuff never mentioned again.

In high school each regularly made the honor roll and participated in extracurricular

activities, though Frances was too clumsy to compete in sports. Terrible at tennis, shebroke her racquet in two. When Amy failed to make varsity volleyball, the coach told her

not to worry, her beauty was her passport to a larger life. She went to the prom with the

class president, son of the former mayor. Frances kept at a distance boys who wanted topenetrate her, and they were the only ones who tried to come near.

At Boston University she shared a dorm room with Amy, majored in philosophy, worked

part-time in the bookstore, and often studied late into the night. Her favorite philosopher

was Nietzsche, who, before he went mad, hugged a horse that was being beaten. She wasenamored with his sensitivity and his definition of truth, a mobile of metaphors subject to

revision.

Amy majored in English Lit and became depressed by the Romantic period, when poets

were sweetly consumptive and wrote in the blood they coughed up. Life was a downer,death an upper. She occasionally smoked pot, Frances never. Frances slept with a man

she didn't particularly like and told Amy, "I'm glad I got that over with." Amy had a fling

with an artist who took her to his studio to see his paintings, none finished, some notworked on in years. "I'll probably never finish them," he said carelessly, as if that in itself

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were an achievement, proof of a true artist. She eventually wrote him off as a lapse in

judgment.

Another lapse was a fellow whose face came at her too quickly, too presumptuously.Eldest son in a prominent family, he was wealthy enough to wear shirts with frayed

collars and start a trend on campus. He expected everything from Amy, as if it were hisbirthright. Ultimately denied, he was astounded, then insulted.

Amy attended services at Marsh Chapel. Frances wouldn't go through the door. Amocker, Frances said, "The only thing that could bring me into the fold is divine

inspiration when I'm picking numbers at the Megabucks terminal." She waved an arm.

"Other than that, if I were to be anything I'd be Catholic. The most pagan and

preposterous of all religions."

Both women graduated in the upper third of their class. Frances had in mind advanced

degrees and a paper on Nietzsche. Amy wasn't sure what she wanted to do. Did she want

to teach? She gave Frances a wild look. No! Did she want to go to Europe to meet men?No! If any were worthwhile, let them come to her. Frances had a suggestion. "Spend the

summer at the beach with me. Something is bound to wash up.

::

"Yes, go on," Dr. Wall said, and Dennis Berube spoke of stomping through secured

villages and avoiding bodies degrading in the ungodly sun, children among them. Some

bodies had been removed, but the gore remained. Along with the stench. And the flies.

"I didn't enlist. I was drafted the month I finished college. And four months after that, Iwas sent over. I could've gone to Canada. Should've but didn't." His sigh was self-

accusatory. "Why not. Dr. Wall?"

Dr. Wall, holding a tissue, spoke through a stuffed nose. "We do what we think is right at

the time. Occasionally it's neither right nor wrong."

In the heat of his inner ear Dennis heard the thwacking of helicopter blades and the roar

of his brain as he tried to escape the river, grabbing a vine with one hand, losing hold,

nearly ripping off a finger, the pinkie. "Two of my buddies went under, and I can't

remember their names now. Or their faces."

"Stop it!" Dr. Wall said.

He was scratching his arm, digging, drawing blood through his sleeve. His eczema

kicking up. "Could've saved at least one of them. Should've, didn't."

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"You can't blame yourself for everything." Dr. Wall spoke from under a heavy head of

hair that seemed to symbolize the world's weight. "Tell me about your work. Are you

getting along with the colonel?"

The waste, the overbilling, the colonel's downright fraud. "He's not an evil man. He

simply knows how to play the game."

"What game is that?"

Cheating and lying. Living and dying. "I don't know the game, only the rules. Too many

rules. Life should be simple."

"Life is what it is. That's what we must deal with." Dr. Wall snatched free another

Kleenex from the box on his desk and blew his nose. "Don't worry. It's past the catching

stage."

Dennis shifted uncomfortably in his chair. The wall clock was eating up the time. He hadmore to say. Dr. Wall poked at the Kleenex box.

"Would you like a tissue for your sleeve?"

He shook his head. His minutes were evaporating. "Those dead children. Those buddies

of mine who didn't make it. They don't exist anymore. Maybe they never did."

"They could be right here in this room," Dr. Wall said. "Listening to every word we say."

"Do you believe in ghosts, Doctor?"

"I believe in the human spirit. Yours, mine, and everyone else's."

::

Amy Oliver's first job was as an editorial assistant for a Cambridge publisher of religiousbooks and inspirational material. After a few months an editor professed love for her, but

she didn't trust his face, suspecting it shimmered with too much goodness. Besides, he

was not the sort of man who could draw her out of her dress, even with his theatrical

proposal of marriage.

A year later she was a legislative aide for a state senator who swiftly raised her in rank

above others in his office. Smitten, the senator wanted to leave his wife for her. Instead

she switched jobs, got an unlisted phone number, and for a while kept company with aninarticulate man who took her to action movies and bad restaurants.

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Approaching her twenty-fifth birthday, she experimented briefly with cocaine, quit one

boyfriend for another, lightened her hair, and interviewed successfully for a position at an

advertising agency, one of Boston's biggest. Her first day on the job the head of theagency stopped by her desk and called her Blondie. Without missing a beat, she said,

"What can I do for you, Baldy?" And was fired on the spot.

She hired a lawyer, who saw merit in her case and took it on contingency. In a coffee

shop on Tremont Street he said to the agency's attorney, "Blondie. Baldy. Tit for tat. Dowe want a pissing contest in open court?" The suit was sealed over their unfinished

coffee, a check issued to Amy within the week.

Months had passed since she'd been in touch with Frances Ray. They met for breakfast in

the Back Bay, Amy the nibbler, Frances the big eater. Eggs, bacon, buns. More butter,please. Frances had completed her dissertation on Nietzsche and soon would take her

place in the world of Ph.D.'s and would-be geniuses.

Amy clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. She wanted a child but wasunwilling to have one by any of the shallow men slipping in and out of her life. She

wanted a home. Her basement apartment in Cambridge was not one. She wanted to plant

herself in a garden and grow another life.

Frances said, "I guess I haven't told you. My parents have retired to Florida. They gavemy brother the Haverhill house, I got the cottage at the beach."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Sell it."

"I'll buy it."

::

When Dennis Berube expressed concern over a document he had signed, the colonel

slung an arm around him and said, "Let me worry about it. This is the way things are

done. Always have been, always will be."

He met the colonel's wife, Faith, when he was invited to their vacation home, a mockmansion on the shore of Lake Winnipesaukee. Faith, an attractive fifty-year-old, took him

for a walk along the lake, where leaves were changing character, the colors glorious.

Wearing her hair pulled back, she had on a cardigan, jeans, and ankle boots.

"The colonel and I have no children. I suppose you know he sees you as a son he never

had."

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Dennis did not know quite what to say and, saying nothing, surveyed the serene surface

of the lake, where, he had read, a recent boating accident had taken the lives of a mother

and child.

"There's nothing he wouldn't do for you, Dennis."

With a quick step he avoided smut left by a skunk. Danger was everywhere. To his right,

thorns were aimed like steel darts to fire at him. He said, "I guess that works two ways."

"Everything does, Dennis. It's a two-way world."

He agreed. In and out.

::

Amy Oliver couldn't afford to buy the whole cottage, so she bought half. She and Frances

Ray winterized it and shared it. Frances landed a teaching position at nearby CollierCollege, and Amy stayed in the cottage at her computer, her employer a textbook

publisher in Connecticut. On weekends the two women walked a cold beach littered by

long strands of kelp that resembled washed-up serpents.

Amy said, "We could be in the midst of a Grimm tale. Must be ogres about somewhere."

Frances's foot slipped, and her knee scraped against a barnacled boulder. A couple

emerged from the ocean in wet suits. The man's suit was black, the woman's orange, the

colors of Halloween. And of bloodsuckers.

"There are our monsters."

Frances sighed, her eye traveling to the white crusts of breakers. "Monsters areeverywhere."

On a November evening they drove a few miles up the coast to a roadhouse, where the

music was country. The men and the women with them drank their beer straight from the

bottle and stomped their feet to the piped music. Not a soul in the house who didn't adoreWillie Nelson and venerate Patsy Cline. With a scholarly eye, Frances viewed the men,

for the most part bruisers with bellies hanging over studded belts.

"Fits," she said.

Amy followed her eye. "What does?"

"Nietzsche said the abdomen is the reason man knows he's not a god."

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A heavy man in a sweatshirt and roomy work pants bulled his way from the bar to a

nearby table and challenged a chair with his weight. Amy said, "Nobody's tried to hit on

us."

"They probably think we're dykes."

"What are we?"

"Whatever we want to be, whatever the hell that is."

"Don't we know?"

"Deep inside we do. We just don't know how to listen to ourselves."

They were drinking Sam Adams from glasses they had requested. From the bar, in an

excess of machismo, curses exploded from two men in contention for a woman with a

tough face and a long braid dangling down her back. The bouncer shouted, "Take itoutside!"

Amy said, "Do you remember when I wanted to be Heathcliffe's Catherine? High school.Mr. Freeman's class?"

"I remember I was still going to church, but I never had the Christian view. I had my

own. Now Nietzsche's." Ignoring her glass, Frances swigged from the bottle. "Putting a

preacher in a pulpit is like piling bullshit on a platter. Sunday servings. Food for thefaithful."

"I was Zhivago's Lara."

"You were always looking for something that wasn't there. I stopped doing that when I

realized Christianity was paganism repainted. Aristotle writ large."

The two men with the tough-looking woman had calmed down. Bottles clinked. HankWilliams began to wail Lovesick Blues. Amy speculated that the two men were probably

no great shakes in bed, mama's boys under the covers, more crybabies than lovers. Then

she sighed. "Are we becoming bitter women, Fran?"

"Impossible not to be. We live in a man's world, and look what they've done to it."

Someone with bushy brows and a beard approached their table and stood like a largeobject that had been delivered and needed to be signed for. After a hesitation, he

mumbled through the hair circling his mouth. Amy, catching none of the words, glanced

at Frances.

"He wants to buy us a round."

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Amy glimpsed a wedding ring and imagined him dragging his wife by the hair to the

bedroom. She altered the image after looking up into his eyes, pebbles on the beach,

speckled and smooth, the sort children collect. Then another face appeared, that of thebouncer.

"Roy here bothering you?"

Frances spoke fast. "He's a good boy. Aren't you, Roy?"

Roy's smile cut through his beard. All the same, the bouncer led him away as Patsy Cline

sang Crazy.

In the car, driving back to the cottage, Frances said, "The fellow back there, he was

harmless, you know."

Amy nodded. Roy. Roy was his name, and he reminded her of a Sylvia Plath line that

likened a child's smile to "found money." Moments passed. "I need a change in my life,Fran. Something drastic."

Frances swerved onto the rough road leading to the cottage. "Be careful. You might get

what you wish for."

::

On clement mornings she carried a thermos of coffee down to the surf to watch the winter

sun come up and to sort her thoughts, none of which she recorded in her pocket notebookfor fear she might use them against herself.

Each day she was at her computer, copy-editing a critical study about Hemingway, whose

novels she had never particularly enjoyed; another about Norman Mailer, whose assault

on his wife she had detested. Intermittently she gazed out the window to the crash of the

surf and pictured Virginia Woolf wading into a wave, surprised to find the water salty,not fresh.

Frequently, not always with Frances, she took evening strolls on the beach, long ones as

daylight lengthened, as if she were seeking the shadows. Usually she came upon other

strollers, neighbors who inhabited the white line of cottages beyond hers. Then on anevening in late March she saw a stranger plodding her way, hands in his jacket pockets,

eyes leaping toward her. He stopped abruptly and spoke.

"Do you remember me?"

"Yes," she said without hesitation. "A number of summers ago."

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"What's my name?"

"Dennis. What's mine?"

He pretended to draw a blank. Then smiled. "Amy."

Simultaneously they turned to face the surf, waves rising, bulging, and bursting, gulls

sweeping over them. Standing close to her he extended his gaze.

"If I swam out far enough, would I meet a mermaid?"

"Is that a serious question?"

"Yes."

"Try it and see."

"I don't have to. You're my mermaid."

A Sensitive Soul, pp. 3

"How's the eczema?" Dr. Wall asked.

"Comes and goes," Dennis Berube said.

"Most things do."

The chair of maroon leather with brass studs tried to engulf Dennis, but he held his ownand kept his back straight. "Help me to be a stronger person, Doctor."

"Help me be a better doctor."

"I'm the patient, not you."

"How do you know? Maybe we treat each other."

He took a slow deep breath and spoke in a dull metallic voice. "I'm a coward."

"We keep returning to the war, don't we?"

"I'm still afraid of dying."

"Is that all?" Dr. Wall smiled broadly. "Without death, life would lose half its meaning.

Imagine, if you will, Mr. Berube, living for eternity at only half your value. Think of the

frustration."

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"So you're saying death has its benefits."

"I'm simply saying it has its reasons. Way of the world. Light and darkness. Sunshine and

rain. Here today, bye-bye tomorrow."

Dennis maintained his erect position in the leather chair, his hands gripping the arms."You make it sound simple."

"That's the extraordinary thing, Mr. Berube. It is."

"Where does God figure in?"

"Who?"

Dennis looked curiously at the wall clock, as if the minutes were no longer moving. "You

give me bent answers to straight questions."

"I'm not a clergyman. I'm not even a believer."

Dennis loosened his grip on the arms of the chair and relaxed. "I have some positive

news, Doctor. I'm getting married."

::

Amy Oliver and Dennis Berube were married in a simple service performed by a justiceof the peace, no parents in attendance. Amy's mother, like Dennis's had died young and

her father lived on the opposite coast with his new wife and family. Dennis's father, who

had not remarried, was working in Saudi Arabia.

The witnesses were Frances Ray and the colonel, with the colonel's wife, Faith, inattendance. In an aside, Faith murmured, "They seem perfect for each other."

"Amy said it was written on the waves," Frances whispered.

The honeymoon, all expenses paid, a gift from the colonel, was in Hawaii. Their first

night, their arms around each other, Amy poised her lips near his ear. "We need eachother."

Dennis tightened his embrace. "Yes."

"We're so close."

"Closer than seems possible."

Each relished the tenderness of their talk and then, legs tangling, reveled in the mindless

animality of their act, one no less than the other. Later, when he was deep in sleep, she

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wished she could peer into his dreams without disturbing him and see herself as he saw

her.

Over breakfast, when they talked about where they might live, Amy turned quiet,thoughtful. "I like it where I am. Frances already said she'd sell us her half of the cottage

if that's what we want."

"I want what you want."

"I want a child."

"I want that too."

He brought few possessions to the cottage, among them a snapshot of himself in uniform.Helmeted and armed, positioned against a backdrop of broken trees, he looked like a fact

of history. "My hero," Amy said, and he shook his head.

"I was anything but that."

Frances, who'd not yet moved out, said, "It's good you've tied the knot, Dennis. Peoplewho live alone begin to feel imaginary."

"You'll be living alone soon," he said. Frances was stretched out in front of the TV, her

large slumberous legs bruised at the knees, one leg thrown straight, the other crooked.

"I'm already half-imaginary." Within the month she was gone, an apartment in Haverhill,a teaching job at Collier Christian College.

A few weeks later the colonel, who had a grandiose house in Andover, saw the cottagefor the first time and was not pleased. Running a hand over the suggestion of hair on his

head, he said, "You can live better than this."

Wearing a wide-brimmed hat, the colonel's wife drew him aside. "You make a finesalary. The colonel feels you have a duty to live up to it."

"A duty? I'm not sure I understand that at all."

"Perhaps you should think about it."

Later, their visitors gone, Amy said, "Who do they think they are?"

"They've never had children. The colonel has sort of adopted me."

"What about her? Has Faith also adopted you?"

"She's more like a stepmother."

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Before going to bed, they took a walk under a full moon that chromed the beach. In the

hush of night, salt marshes spread their odor. Her hand in his, Amy confided, "I think I'm

pregnant."

::

Dr. Wall said, "I'm happy for you."

"Amy's ecstatic. Boy or girl, doesn't matter." Dennis sat at ease in the massive leather

chair. "I'm much stronger, Doctor. Loving someone gives you strength. Gives you

purpose. It tells you what's important."

"I can understand that." Dr. Wall's eye strayed to a picture on his desk, that of his

youngest daughter. Dennis gazed for a moment into space. "I've come to realize that war

isn't the whole of human activity. It only seems to bulk bigger than everything else. A

man looking into his wife's eyes is a much bigger event. So is a woman carrying a child."

Dr. Wall appeared to agree, for he scanned pictures of all his daughters arranged on his

desk. Once he had diagnosed Dennis as a probable suicide, if not soon, then in a year or

so, but he had gradually revised his finding. "The absolutely glorious thing about the

human spirit, Mr. Berube, is man's ability to produce meaning out of meaninglessness.We do it every day."

We make war every day. How do we explain that?"

Dr. Wall smiled over the opportunity to respond with a line from one of his professional

papers not yet delivered. "Living is natural. Dying is natural. War is defecation."

"Also natural."

Dr. Wall's smile broadened. "You got it!"

::

Frances Ray's apartment near Collier College accommodated a treadmill she hadn't used

but intended to. Weight gain, along with an ill-fitting bra that left her floppy, made herfeel like a cow of plenty. Munching toast while on the phone, she said, "It's unnatural

eating alone. That's why I eat more than I should."

"You're not the only one gaining weight," Amy Oliver said.

"But you're eating for two." Frances licked her fingers. Peanut butter overwhelmed the

toast. "Are you happy, Amy?"

"Positively. I've always wanted chivalry from a man, courtly love, and sure signs of a

sensitive soul. Dennis has that and more."

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"You have your Dennis, I have Nietzsche. Another sensitive soul." Frances clumsily lit a

cigarette, smoking a part of her effort to lose weight. "Poor Nietzsche was too sensitive.

He spent the final ten years of his life counting his toes, afraid they weren't all there."

"Dennis is sure-footed. He knows where he stands and where he's going."

"Lucky fellow." Frances looked at her reflection in the toaster. Her face puckered when

she drew on the cigarette. Her father had smoked. A certain look from him on a Sunday

afternoon had caused her mother quietly to lay the newspaper aside and trail him up thestairs. Not until years later did she realize the significance.

Amy said, "How are things at the college?"

"Married guys are putting the make on me. Like I'm supposed to be flattered." Her

thoughts went to the provost, whose trousers were thin, his arousals obvious. Then there

was the president, whose devouring kiss left her sick to her stomach. Ugh! She shoved

his away. No more of that stuff!

"You still there, Amy?"

"Dennis just walked in."

"Go to your man," she said and rang off.

::

Amy miscarried at the start of her fourth month, a devastation that threatened the two of

them. Uncertain was whether she could ever carry a child to term. "The husband's takingit worse," the doctor said to the attending nurse, a mother who'd had miscarriages of her

own. "Win some, lose some," she said.

Dennis felt at fault. During her pregnancy, he had envisioned her as holy, as if he'ddetached her from a scene in a stained glass window. Now he felt that he had defiled her.

"We pay a price for what we do wrong," he said in a hollow voice.

She had the strength, he the need. She held his hand, the one with the little finger he'dnearly torn off. "You've done no wrong, Dennis, so you can't blame yourself. We'll try

again. We'll make it work this time. We love each other."

"Maybe I don't have what it takes."

"You're my man." Her arms went around him. "You'll always be my man."

A week later, early May, they drove from the coast and went walking in woods,everything in motion. Every bird was a bugle, a whistle, a call to arms. Amy felt she

could hear the thunder of trees breaking into full leaf. Dennis heard a different thunder

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and for the first time offered her details of his time in combat. Explosions that ravaged

his ears, bits of men floating in the water, fish food, never should've tried to cross that

river, heroes lacking the courage to be cowards, orders to be followed.

Amy sought his hand. "It's over."

The woods gave way to a meadow, where they felt the weight of sunlight on their faces.

Beyond the meadow were swamp pines tall enough to spear clouds. Dennis imagined

himself wielding one to attack the forces of nature.

Amy had his hand again, squeezing it. "Will I always have you?"

"Always," he said. "I swear."

:: Sensitive Soul, pp. 4

The industrial plant was low-lying, spread over acres, horseshoed by fully loaded parkinglots, and patrolled by security personnel, not all of them in uniform. Dennis, with some

apprehension, passed through the metal detector at the front door and gained further

entrance with the use of a magnetized card. One corridor led to a deeper one. Fast-

stepping colleagues slipped in and out of cubicles. Trembling, he eyed them astroglodytes in business suits. Passing his own office, he reached the colonel's and swept

in.

"Is he expecting you, Mr. Berube?"

The colonel's secretary was a slight woman thin enough to be made of nearly nothing.Dennis merely smiled in passing and entered the inner office, nicer than most others, and

closed the door behind him.. When the colonel glanced up from his massive desk, Dennis

saw a Neanderthal wearing a necktie.

"Sir, I'm resigning." He spoke fast, too fast. "I can't go on helping you and the companydefraud the government."

The colonel traced a hand over the stubbly hair on his head, as if to summon patience.

"My boy, we are the government."

"That doesn't excuse what we're doing."

The colonel's eyes burned blue. "Read history, Dennis. Consider the Roman Empire'sastounding accomplishments. The engineering and architectural marvels, the stunning

governmental and military machinery. All of it achieved in an atmosphere of corruption

and greed. It's the way the world works. You think you can change it?"

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"Maybe not, but I can't go on doing what I've been doing. I plan to see the U.S.

Attorney."

"You'll only hurt yourself. Not me and not the company." Somewhat sadly, the colonelshook his head. "I don't understand. I've treated you like a son."

"I'm not your son."

The colonel's eyes burned bluer, harsher. "If I'd had a son, he sure as hell wouldn't have

been married by some justice of the peace. He'd have chosen a church. A minister of God

would've given his blessing."

When Dennis turned to leave, the colonel came forward in his executive chair. "Hold on!

Before you do anything crazy, do yourself a favor, talk this over with Faith. She explains

things better than I do. If she can't change your mind, then do as you see fit."

"I don't want to talk to your wife."

The colonel picked up the phone to alert her. "I've done much for you, Dennis. Do thisfor me."

::

Dennis drove into the growing town of Andover, where all the new and newish houses

were of manorial pretension. The colonel's was of extravagant design, with stone statuaryon the lawn and metal beasts at the mouth of the drive. Dennis left his car near

ornamental shrubs and, following instructions, mounted the veranda, strode left, rapped

on glass doors, and stepped inside.

On a card table was a completed picture puzzle, filling a TV screen were lovers in a long-running soap, and on the sofa lay the colonel's wife, who rose reluctantly, annoyed. The

remote killed the couple in the middle of a kiss. "I don't know what the colonel expects

from me. If you want to destroy your future, that's your business."

He said nothing.

"You didn't go into anything blind, Dennis. Your eyes were open."

He was aware of that. He would admit everything, deny nothing.

"The games you boys play." She shook her head. "What game are you playing, Dennis?

The good soldier? My brother had a box of plastic ones."

"Are we through, Faith?"

"That's the first time you've used my first name."

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"I feel like I know you now."

"Good-by, Dennis."

She retrieved the remote, and he left. He drove slowly, carefully, much on his mind, but

he sped up on the Interstate when his mind raced ahead of itself and an eczema itchcaused him to scratch through his sleeve. He slowed considerably when he reached the

coastal road and on impulse pulled over at a roadside convenience store that sold wine.

Minutes later he emerged from the store with a bottle for himself and Amy for a

celebration of sorts, a weight off his shoulders. As he rounded the front of his car, aheavy-duty pickup riding high on its wheels swerved off the road and sped straight at

him. He heard it before he saw it. What the hell! In the next instant he was struck,

propelled, and broken beyond repair, his skull part of the pavement.

The bottle of wine rolled away intact.

::

Frances Ray addressed her class. "We speak of God as a perfect being, but why should

that be true? Why can't God be imperfect? His flaws would explain much about what

goes wrong in this world. And we all know plenty does."

The provost, who'd grown a mustache in a vain effort to distinguish his face, was sittingin the back of the classroom. His eyes targeted Frances, who ignored him.

"Essentially," she went on, "God is awe. He is the lightning that precedes thunder. He is

the eye of the storm. He isshe, the yolk of the egg."

The provost took a small breath and with two strokes smoothed his mustache, a shadedifferent from that of his thinning hair. Frances's hair had recently been colored. A

bearded student raised his hand.

"You once said God thought himself up."

"I was being cute. In the world of believers, God exists. In the world of nonbelievers,God does not. In the world of half-believers, God is watered whiskey."

The provost coughed loud enough to turn heads. Then he left as quietly as he had arrived.

Frances was summoned to his office that afternoon. Her patience was thin. "I hope this is

nothing petty. My best friend is burying her husband tomorrow."

"This won't take long. You've been warned before, Frances, many times. This is aChristian college."

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"But not the Dark Ages."

"I'm sorry, Frances. We can't keep you any longer."

"Of course you can." Her smile was only slightly smug. "Otherwise you and the president

will be hit with sexual harassments suits."

"We've already figured that into the mix. You don't have a case."

"Try me." She rose huskily, strode to the door, and glanced back. "By the way, that silly

mustache doesn't do it."

::

Amy Oliver sold the cottage, bought a condominium in Haverhill, and stayed close with

Frances. "Sometime I feel you're the only proof I have that he existed. If I had had the

child, that would've made it real."

"It was real, Amy. Every bit of it was real."

She stayed in touch with the police, but there were no new leads to identify the hit-and-

run driver. For all she knew, it could have been a phantom.

The colonel and his wife were kind to her, and the company granted her a small pension,

along with health insurance, which covered counseling. She began seeing Dr. Wall when

dreams disturbed her sleep, though Dennis was never in them. Why not? He was her

husband, her love. For God's sake, her life!

"Too soon," Dr. Wall suggested.

"He was slow to tell me things. He told me little about his work, as if that were a separate

and secret part of him."

Dr. Wall gave her something to make her sleep better.

"I have to ask, Doctor. Do we owe anything to the dead? People who were and nowaren't."

"I'm not sure I know how to answer that."

"Let me put it another way. Do the dead owe the living anything?"

Dr. Wall thought for a moment. "I'd say all debts are canceled."

"I don't think so, Doctor."

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On her next visit, she was shaking. "The phone rang--my friend was there, she heard it

ring too--it was Dennis. He told me he was alive. I didn't believe it at first, but now I'm

not sure."

"How have you been sleeping?" Dr. Wall asked.

Fine. In a dream she had found a two-word note from him. I am. Meaning yes, he was

still alive, still breathing, still kicking.

"Dreams can seem very real," Dr. Wall said.

"This one was."

::

Frances Ray gave her final lecture at Collier College. The classroom was packed. "God,"

she said, "created the world by hurling atoms in the air and letting them fall as they may.The mystery is how some of those atoms developed into you and me. It's not too far a

leap to imagine God saying, 'Now how the hell did that happen?' And Darwin piping up,'May I offer a suggestion, sir?'"

Later that day, at a small party attended by a few brave faculty members and no one from

the administration, Frances was presented with a leather-bound copy ofThus Spake

Zarathustra. With a tear in her eye, she said, "Nietzsche, poor bastard, died demented.Tertiary syphilis."

In the evening she and Amy Oliver dined at a restaurant with a raftered ceiling, from

which hung a jungle of plants. "Like eating in a God-damn greenhouse," Frances said."Better hope they didn't hit the food with bug spray."

Frances ordered big, Amy small, just a salad and then ate only the mushrooms in it, her

mind elsewhere. She wanted to be little again, when her mother held her hand while

crossing the street. Though she didn't believe in heaven, she hoped her mother was there,poetic justice for an earthly life cut short.

Frances wielded a fork and steak knife. "Maybe we should consider sharing digs again."

Noncommittal, Amy concentrated her attention on a neglected black olive, the taste of

which she could never bear. She ate it anyway, and made a terrible face.

"He's not coming back, Amy."

"I know that."

"I wonder if you do. He's gone, Amy. He's in the ground."

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Their attention was taken by a heavy man at the next table. A gold crown had fallen from

his mouth and landed on the edge of his plate. Amy thought it was a cufflink, and Frances

didn't know what it was.

Amy, adjusting her breath, said, "Have you noticed? Nowhere and everywhere have the

same meaning."

::A retired couple taking an evening stroll glimpsed a woman standing at the surf; her

back to them. They had seen her before, but from a distance. She had looked familiarthen and more so now. The man said, "I'm sure that's her."

"She looks lost," his wife replied.

"Hell, she knows where she is. How can she not?"

"I don't mean that kind of lost."

Amy Oliver was staring up at the moon. Misted over, it looked like a wafer of metal

covering a hole high up. Then she began gazing at incoming waves, any one of whichcould deliver Dennis alive and whole, a life rejoined. When she blinked, the moonlight

played tricks. For an instant she saw him wading in, but the figure was opaque, not a man

at all, merely a figment. Her smile held more irony than bitterness.

"Hello. Dennis," she whispered to the salt air. "I wish you were real, the world were not."

An hour later she was still on the beach, her movements dictated by the swish of the tide.

He wasn't coming. She knew he never would, but it was pleasant to pretend otherwise.

Without meaning to, she stepped into a hollow of tidal water and soaked her sneakers,which at once gave her a chilling sense of what a drowning man might feel.

Seconds passed before she realized someone was approaching her from the left, a

youngish man in a town police uniform. He asked if everything were all right. Everything

was fine. He stepped closer for a clearer look at her face. "People who bought yourcottage, ma'am, they're worried about you."

She smiled. "No need."

He studied her. "You're not thinking of doing anything foolish, are you?"

"No, Officer, I'm not. I'm with my husband."

Adjusting his visored cap, the policeman scanned the moonlit beach. "I don't see him.

Where is he?"

"Everywhere," Amy said.

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My Father Remembers Blue Zebras

by Judy Halebsky

He remembers that he lost his wallet

he knows about the rainshadow

and the string of islands off the coast of Vancouver

oboeru to rememberalso means to learn

I try to keep track of what he put where

the small green car we called Cricket

the second time he got drafted

and Aunt Ninas husband, he's a nice guy but he's a fascist

he's asking me againwhere do you live

oh, you're in school, what do you study

how far off coast do you have to goto be sheltered from the rain

that's wonderfulDad says, that's wonderful

The WriterRichard WilburIn her room at the prow of the house

Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,

My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing

From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys

Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff

Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:

I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,

As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.

A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,

And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor

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26/26

Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling

Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;

How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;

And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,

We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature

Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove

To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,

For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits

Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,

Beating a smooth course for the right window

And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,

Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish

What I wished you before, but harder.

A Sensitive Soul

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Transcript of A Sensitive Soul