Beverly studies the human lynx, breathing slowly, deeply, awaiting her order. Finally Beverly decides it's time.
"Kill it," she orders.
Diana doesn't move. Beverly approaches the girl, then slaps her hard, smack!, across her face.
Diana, eyes front, lips trembling, receives the blow as her due. Beverly watches as the pale skin of the lynx's cheek turns pink, then red from the impact. Both understand the meaning of this chastisement. Delay and/or squeamishness will not be tolerated.
T@
"Kill! Kill the cat!" Beverly whispers her command, and this time an admonished Diana instantly obeys.
In a single, beautiful, scything balletic motion the tool executes the little creature. Afterward they both stare down at its rigid body, neck up, ice pick thrust through the throat deep into its tiny brain.
"Clean up the mess; deposit it in a trash can on the avenue; then report to me in my bedroom," Beverly orders. "I have a choice new punishment in mind for you, my dear. One that will, I'm sure, instill a greater eagerness to obey." Diana, braced, nods acceptance of this directive. As Beverly turns, she smiles quietly to herself.
The little lynx can't wait. She loves correction. She'll be lubricating like crazy by the time she mounts the stairs.
You told Tool to befriend the girl named Jess, the lovely, strong, brave gladiator at the dojo. You had in mind a kind of recruitment but naturally never mentioned your intentions.
After Tool flew down to Florida, slew Bertha Parce, and brought back your trophy, a hair curler found in a funny bright blue plastic box beside the old schoolmarm's bed, you quizzed her endlessly about the gluing of the bitch's vagina, what it felt like to stather in the gooey stuff, then squeeze the labia majora shut.
"Did she smell down there?" you inquired, grinning. "Like a rotten old fish, I bet," you added, pinching your nostrils with disgust. Your delighted interest in the aromatic dimension most definitely spurred Diana on. She described everything, as she'd been trained to do, in the most exhaustive detail. And you relished every word, for that was the bliss-the imagining of it, the reconstruction, the obsessive staging and restaging of the execution. Your recreations, fueled by Diana's reportage, gave you more pleasure, you were certain, than anything you might have felt had you gone down there and done the wonderful deed yourself. Your imagination, embellishing powerfully upon the details Diana provided, could create scenes far more intense than what had actually taken place.
It was so funny, Mama, when Carl went through the file and kept pulling out the reports I'd planted so carefully, ingeniously, and diligently through the years, flatly written case file summaries which contained no evaluations, no recommendations, and certainly no selfcongratulation. they purported to be simple factual accounts of Diana Proctor's treatment, and Carl kept quoting them to me, saying things like "Just listen to what you wrote, Bev!" and "Jeez, Bev, listen to this!" and "God's sakes, Bev, can't you see the forest for the trees?" He was using them, see, to try to convince me the little murderess had recovered and was ready for release. And I kept resisting: "I'm not sure, Carl"; "I might have overstated that, Carl"; "But don't forget, she killed them, Carl-killed them, then split their crotches with an ax!"
I toyed with him until I got him riled. I was acting like a hard-ass, he said, a tough bitch shrink, the kind he hated, and he was genuinely surprised since when he'd hired me, it was for my humanity, not my clinical skills or my degrees. What happened to my compassion anyway, he wanted to know, and had it occurred to me I might have spent too many years playing shrink-goddess to my patients, in the process losing sight of them as vulnerable human beings? At the very least I owed Diana the benefit of a doubt. I'd brought her along this far; why the hell couldn't I see she was ready to go the distance? And I just stared at him, Mama, until he started to rave:
What kind of a person was I? Had I become one of those neurotic power-tripping shrinks who refuses to let a patient go because they can't bear to relinquish their control?
See, Mama, he was using my own words to make his case, and the longer I refused to buy it, the stronger became his conviction he was right. In the end, when I finally relented, his investment in Diana's "rehabilitation" exceeded anything I could have worked up with a direct appeal. I homswoggled the little twerp, and he never knew it. I'm telling you, Mama, it was so damn funny to watch him fall so easily into the trap that took me the better part of five years to lay. Like taking candy from a baby. It was just, I don't know… hysterical.
There was another little trap I laid, not for Carl but for Diana. Call it my safety valve, Mama. I laid it… just in case.
The trap consisted of creating a traceable path between Diana and the signature, a path that would not run through me. So I instructed her to tell Carl, Sue Farber, the librarian, and a couple of her cronies among the patients that she was a sort of "wallflower type," and that was why she didn't like going to hospital dances. None of them would think anything of it, unless, of course, they were questioned about it later on. Then they'd all remember, wouldn't they? You bet they would! 1 also had her sign a note to me with a droopy flower leaning against a wall, a note I could plant without comment in her file. The best part of it was the way I persuaded Diana that the devalued flower she'd leave at each gluing would, in fact, be her signature.
A neat little double trap, if I do say so, for although she would only be the tool, she would think she was the artist!
Beverly Archer, wearing a prim navy blue wool skirt and freshly ironed white blouse, sits in a chair in her bedroom facing the full-length life-size oil painting of her mother on the wall. Diana Proctor squats on the floor between Beverly's legs, also facing the portrait.
The girl wears jeans but is bare above the waist.
"You know why we're facing Mama?" Beverly asks. "You do, don't you?"
Diana shakes her head. "I'm not sure," she whispers.
Beverly, tightening her grip by pressing her knees together, feels the girl shudder. The little lynx is afraid, she thinks. As well she might be, considering she's about to get it.
"We're facing Mama because we want Mama to see, Beverly explains patiently. "Isn't that right, my dear? I mean we do want that, don't we?" Beverly squeezes her again. "Well?"
"I guess so," Diana responds.
"Guess! Well, I assure you we most definitely do want her to see.
We want Marna to witness your correction." Beverly pauses. "You know why you're going to receive correction, don't you?"
"I think so," the girl mutters.
"Tell me?"
"Because I hesitated."
"You did, and now you're going to be punished for it."
Beverly does not feel unkindly toward Tool. On the contrary, she feels quite maternal toward her. But the tool has effed and must be disciplined. The principle of unquestioning obedience must be reinforced.
"You know I don't like to hit you, Diana. You know how much it hurts me," Beverly says. "I know," the girl concedes in a whisper.
"Especially as I understand what you went through as a child, the beatings you took from your grandmother. You know how much I despise brutality."
"Yes, I know that, Doctor."
"So you must concede that when I strike you, there has to be a very good reason?" The girl nods. "What you did before down in the cellar, hesitating, standing there petrified, not even acknowledging my order, was deserving of the good, hard slap you got, wasn't it?"
Beverly feels another wave surge through Diana. "Yes, I deserved it. I know I did."
"Well, what I'm going to do to you now is not like a slap at all. It's important for you to understand the difference. I slapped you to shock you into action. The purpose was to sting and stun, make you aware of your responsibility to obey. The correction you will receive now has an entirely different objective. It's to remind you of your status vis-hl-vis myself. What is that status, Diana?"