This question mark still hovered over jonnie as she sat with the others in Durango’s oflice and waited for the detective to appear. Trying not to think of it, Jonnie looked out of the corner of her eye at the girl seated on the folding chair to her left. Another one! A pussycat female trying to hide the fact that she wanted other female! Jonnie noted the wedding ring she wore. Married! Just like the slut in the bathroom! just like Dr. Mavis Golden! A weak sister pretending to the frilly femaleness husbands want while all the time she really wanted was another woman! Jonnie stared hatred at the girl.
The girl intercepted Jonnie’s gaze without bothering to interpret it. To her the eye contact was merely an encouragement to ask Jonnie if she had a cigarette.
“No.” jonnie told her shortly. And a moment later she deliberately produced a full pack, took one out, and blithely lit it. The look she shot the girl was purposely hateful.
The girl — Mrs. Anne Yolan was her name-—recoiled from Jonnie’s gaze. Now why did she do that? Anne wondered. She looks at me like she really hates me, and I never even met her before. I wonder if she was one of Dr. Golden’s patients?
The question made her think of Dr. Golden -- and then of her husband, Paul Yolan. “He persecutes me constantly,” Anne had told Dr. Golden the first time she’d gone to her for treatment. “I married a man who’s out to destroy me. You wouldn’t believe some of the things he does.”
“Tell me about them,” Dr. Golden had said quietly.
“He—tells stories about me. To the neighbors and our friends and even our families sometimes, I mean. He tells them things to make it look like I'm out of my mind.”
“What sort of things?”
“I’m not sure. They won’t tell me. But I know he does. I can tell from the way they look at me.”
“How do they look at you?”
“As if they think I’m crazy. As if they think I should be put away. I know that’s what they think. All of them. They’re all afraid of me and think I should be put away. And they’re all plotting and scheming with Paul to do just that.”
“You think he’s setting them against you.”
“I don’t think it. I know it. And he does other things, too.”
“What other things?”
“He puts things in my food. In my coffee. Drugs. To keep me from sleeping nights. And to make me want sex.”
“I see. And do they work?”
“Oh, yes. Sometimes I go for a whole week without sleeping. And sometimes I’m just aching for sex all the time because of the drugs.”
“Do you feel that your husband takes advantage of your erotic state at such times?”
“Oh, he tries. He’s always at me to make love; Every night. But I outwit him.”
“How do you outwit him?”
“I pretend to be asleep so he won’t touch me. And then when the drugs are affecting me really badly, I get my relief somewhere it's safe.”
“Safe? Could you explain what you mean by that?”
“Not with Paul. Not with any man. They’re all the same. They’re all out to get me just like he is.”
“You have sex with women, then?”
“That’s right. It’s safer.”
“I see. Well, tell me about it. Why is it safer?”
“Other women are soft, like me. They don’t hurt like men do, like my father hurt my mother, like Paul hurts me. They make love gently. They’re not out to destroy me the way Paul is.”
It had taken Dr. Golden almost five years to bring Anne Yolan around to the realization that her husband wasn’t really out to destroy her. It took all that time to make Anne see that the persecution was something she’d imagined herself. And, throughout, Anne had continued to have regular Lesbian relations with other women. Yet, even with Anne’s intellectual acceptance of the reality, her emotional adjustment was tenuous. Her relations with Paul changed from hatred on her part and patience on his to timid confusion for Anne and growing impatience for him.
“I’m not afraid of him any more,” Anne had told Dr. Golden less than a week before the murder. “I don’t think he’s persecuting me any more. But how just the sight of him fills me with this terrible guilt.”
“What do you feel guilty about?”
“All those women I let make love to me. How Paul would hate me if her knew!”
“Are you sure that he’d hate you?”
“Of course!” Anne had thought a minute and when she spoke again her voice was unsure of itself. “Wouldn’t he?”
“Not necessarily. He might be much more understanding than you give him credit for being.”
“Then you think I should tell him?”
“That’s for you to decide,” Dr. Golden told her non-commitally.
“But am I well enough to make such a decision?”
“I think so. Your paranoid delusions seem well under control. You see them for what they are. And they recur far less frequently than they once did. Of course, only events themselves will show just how healthy you are. But I believe you’re capable of making your own decisions and facing the consequences of them.”
And that, Anne Yolan thought now as she waited in Durango’s office, was where she was wrong. If she had been able to foresee the consequences, she never would have made that statement. And I never would have told Paul the truth about myself.
Outwardly, Paul’s reaction had been calm. Too calm. He hadn’t shouted, or banged his fist on the table, or struck her, or anything like that. He’d heard out her confessions of Lesbianism in silence, only a little muscle twitching at the corner of his mouth giving away what he was feeling. And when she was through, he’d spoken only five words, and spoken them quietly:
“Anne, I want a divorce.”
She had pleaded, and he had repeated the words a few times. As her begging grew hysterical, he’d stopped repeating them and merely sat calm and silent. Her hysteria built on itself and she was screaming at him then, accusing him of torturing her, of having driven her to other women for sex, of not being man enough to satisfy her, of being a sex maniac whose demands on her were monstrous, of doping her food and spreading lies about her-—all the old paranoid convictions and some new ones. Still Paul merely sat there, making no attempt to defend himself against the heinous torrent of words she fired at him. Only when she ran out of words and began hurling objects—-an ashtray, a fruit-filled jar, a paring-knife—did Paul finally get up from his chair. He went quickly into the bathroom then and locked the door against her onslaught.
Alone, something snapped inside Anne. First she was filled with terror and crouched low on the kitchen floor. She fancied she saw faces peering in at the windows, hands holding weapons and pointing at her, Paul laughing and screaming her shame to the world. Slowly the fear subsided, to be replaced by her old paranoid cunning.
She saw it all now. It Wasn’t just Paul. They were all in on it. Yes, not just the men, but the women as well. All the women in whose arms she’d lain these past years. See heard the ominous echo of all the words of endearment they’d murmured to her, the ominous echo convincing the world that Anne was evil and must be destroyed. And she saw the face of the mastermind directing this whole monstrous scheme aimed at her destruction. It was the face of Dr. Mavis Golden!