Note:  This story was not self-inspired.  I took a writing course taught by Pauline Bartel, who is arguably the best editor on the planet.  As an assignment, she had the class randomly pick strips of plastic from each of her hands.  The first strip was the ‘what-if’ strip; “what if the physician…”  The second strip was the ‘condition’ strip; “became a thief,” or “got abducted by aliens.”  My ‘what-if’ and ‘condition’ strips led to a story that wrote itself; it was complete almost before I felt I’d begun.  It was one of the most fun assignments ever given to me at any time, except for maybe those glamour photos I had to shoot back…..  Oh, never mind.  Thanks for this one, Pauline.

 

            Of all the people Mallory would have preferred not to see in her current situation, Alec Tremmell was at the head of the list.  Being confronted by him after her humiliating failure promised all the niceties of root canal, sans analgesics.  And there he was, stopping at the nursing station, chatting, briefly, flashing her one of those drop-dead gorgeous smiles.  Oh yes; this was splendidly more painful, thank you.

            She pulled over the thing they set your meals on and opened the little cubby.  The mirror was there, and even though it was made of plastic and the reflection quite poor, the reflection she saw gave ‘grotesque’ a new standard.  She closed the small door and, without realizing it, tried tugging at the covers as old instincts told her this was her only way to hide.  Of course, when the covers did not move it hurt her wrists and while she understood, it added to her growing frustration.  Karma was supposed to have a time delay built in, wasn’t it?  Whoever was in charge of it was asleep at the wheel today.  Briefly, she considered sliding out of sight beneath the sheet and abandoned the idea.  The nurses would only come and fetch her out, adding to her already colossal accrual of humiliation.

            When she looked back at him he flashed another smile, and spoke a bit longer with all three of the nurses behind the counter.  Mallory could see that, in just the thirty or so seconds since his arrival there, they too had fallen into the spell of Alec Tremmell.  Let’s see girls: he’s tall, trim, handsome, intelligent, sincere, and he dresses well.  Why are you paying attention to him?  Besides, though I hate it, he is here to see me.  And aren’t two of you married?

            Mallory would have sought further refuge in further unspoken accusations had not things taken a severe turn for the worse.  Alec arrived.

            “Nice room,” he said, looking about as he pulled a chair up beside her bed.

            “Fishbowl,” she corrected, avoiding his glance.  She could both smell his Country Gentleman cologne and feel her face begin to flush.

            “Can you blame them?” he asked, ever so perfectly.  The question seemed harmless on the surface and yet the steel barb within was unmistakable.

            “I guess not,” she said with a pout.  “I told them that I was okay now.”

            “Did you?  What do you suppose someone who wasn’t okay would tell them?” Alec Tremmell leaned back in the chair and put his hands behind his head.

            Finally, Mallory summoned the fortitude to look at him, ever so briefly.  “Why are you here?” she asked.  Immediately, her eyes went to her folded hands.  “I look terrible.”

            “That’s okay.  I’m not here for a date and besides, that would be against school rules.  I’ll agree that you look terrible though.  Do you want to talk about it?”

            “No,” she lied.  Dear God, all she had wanted to do was talk; to find someone, anyone, she could confide in.  If she’d been able to do that perhaps she wouldn’t be having this conversation in this place.

            “All right,” he said and got to his feet, slapping both knees.  “Perhaps I’ll try again some other time.  Probably not, but you never know.”

            As he put the chair back in its place Mallory said, “I didn’t say you had to leave.”

            Alec paused and looked at her with those always-surprising steel gray eyes and smiled lightly.  “Mallory, I didn’t come here to socialize.  I came here to try and help.  If you’re not ready for that well then, you’re not.  When you are ready, I may be there, but only if you wish.  As you don’t wish right now, I have things that need doing.”

            His words flowed smoothly lacking any traces of impatience or admonishment; all said with a quiet resolve that seemed what he was all about.  Mallory would have preferred a bit of ire and rancor.  She knew of these and how to trade in them, but this was simply disarming and made her want to cry.  Mallory never cried. 

            “I... I wish,” she said barely above a whisper as a tear escaped and she wiped it quickly with the shoulder of her hospital gown.  That it had escaped angered her and that provoked yet another tear.  Keep it up and you’ll be sobbing, she scolded herself as Alec Tremmell replaced the chair beside the bed and sat down, very close to her.  Then he did something unthinkable in Mallory’s world.  He leaned forward in his chair, put his arms around her and hugged her.  For Mallory, hugging was only done as a hopeful prelude to sex by boys she dated.  Now she was being held by an honest-to-God sex symbol and there was nothing passionate about it.  There was a warmth, a beguiling comfort that bombarded resistance, ripped chunks from her armor and suddenly Mallory was crying, spigots full open, and reservation cast aside.  The situation also made her more frightened and confused than she’d ever been, and this made her cry harder still.

            She had no concept of time nor of place.  The windows about her room had become opaque in her mind for the looks and thoughts of the nursing staff no longer mattered.  What was he doing to her?  What was this strange sense of safety he was infusing her with?  A long time later she was sup-supping like a five year old against his shoulder, and he was wiping her face with tissues.

            Finally, he spoke, more gently still and somehow with more strength.  “Enough of that for now, Mallory.  Now it’s time to tell me why an extraordinarily intelligent and simply beautiful fifteen year old tries to kill herself.”

            “I don’t know,” she said and felt another batch of tears lining up inside her.

            “Yes, you do,” he insisted.  “You did it.  It’s time to tell me why.”

            “Why you?  Who sent you here?  Did my folks call you?”

            “Barry called.  Actually, he came to visit me.  He’s really quite frightened.”

            It was all Mallory could do to keep from breaking out in another flood of ‘eye pee,’ as her mother called it.  Of course her kid brother was scared.  His only protective barrier wasn’t there.  They had talked, or rather she had talked, many times to him about Alec Tremmell.  That thought suddenly frightened her.  Only Barry knew how she adored this man.  “Why did he think you’d even show up here, I wonder?”

            Alec smiled and said, “Someone told him I cared about people.”  He would not betray the trust Barry had forced upon him.  Barry had told him much more than his sister would have ever wanted.

            Mallory lowered her eyes and smiled.  “I said you gave that impression.”

            “Okay, suppose I do.  If that were the case, I’d want to know why you did it, Mallory.  I’d want to understand.”

            “Yeah, yeah, and convince me that it was a stupid move and perhaps extract a vow that I’d call you if I ever considered it again.”

            “Mallory; I know as well as you do that, in such circumstances, promises are meaningless.  I’m the last person to sit in judgment, so let’s give me the benefit of the doubt, and try to accept that I just want to understand.  Somebody should.”

            “Why?  It’s my life, isn’t it?”

            “That was a good movie.  In this case, the premise is wrong.  Mallory, while we’re always talking to our high expectations for kids (and you are one still) the truth is we expect very little from them.  We expect respect.  We expect them to grow up, and in doing so to not hurt themselves too badly, and to become wary about doing things that are permanent.  That’s about all.  Those expectations are both reasonable and appropriate.  Until you’re on your own, properly on you own, and not living off someone besides your parents, no, it’s not your life and you have no right to screw it up.  It won’t be Mallory’s life until Mallory is fending for Mallory.  You are wrong on two points: it is not your life yet and you have no reason.”

            “You don’t know.  You just don’t know.”

            “I know more than you think,” replied Alec sitting sideways in the chair and draping his arm over the back.

            “What do you know?” she asked, giving him a sidelong glance.

            “Life is full of coincidences.  See that nurse out there, writing on that wall schedule?”  Mallory nodded.  “Well, I’m going to tell you a secret; one you must never tell another soul, okay?”

            Mallory hesitated and sounded reluctant as she said, “Okay..”

            “Well, she and I went from first grade through two years of junior college together.  For a while we even lived together.  Strictly because she and I are still close, and because she thought I was here to help, she told me about your operation.  Is that what this is all about?”

            Mallory glared briefly at the nurse and then forgave her.  “Yes,” she said, knitting her fingers and staring at them.  After nearly a minute of silence she said, “It’s just not fair.”

            “What’s not fair?  I was told that the operation was a complete success.”

            “Yeah, but the patient died.”  Mallory looked out into the early twilight, this time successfully holding back the tears.

            “How’s that,” Alec asked.

            “It’s too big.  You don’t know all of it.  You can’t.”

            “Then you’ll have to tell me,” he said, leaning forward, prepared to listen.  After several seconds he said, “Synopsize.  Don’t give me all the gore, and I’ll simply take your word for it.”

            “Yeah?  Well, I really wanted to have kids; my own kids; kids I could raise and love and.. and.. and I don’t mean now.  I mean when I was out of school and college and on my own.”

            “And now you can’t.”

            “Ovarian cancer is for grownups; women who’ve dropped a litter and don’t need any more.  I’m just fifteen.  You want a real kick?  I’m still a virgin.”

            “Well, I hope so.”

            “What?”

            “I said, ‘I hope so.’”

            “What are you talking about?”

            “Mallory, sex is for adults; people living on their own.  Personally, I believe it’s for people in committed relationships only (read married comma legally).  Also, you’re too bright to line out the rest of your life, or at least I thought you were until today.“

            “I’m looking for a word..”

            “Let me help you. Try ‘anachronism.’  ‘Arcane’ would be hurtful.”

            “It’s really important to you.”

            “The rules?  You bet.  They’re all that separate us from chaos.  I didn’t always believe it but now I know that the rules are more important than the game.”

            Mallory wrung her fingers as she stared at them, afraid to look into his eyes.  She knew he would see how smitten she was.  “You’ve never had a dream taken away from you,” she said quietly.  “Everything works for you.  You make all the right pieces fall in place.  It’s never that way for me.  I have to set it all up and make everything just right for anything to work, even simple things.”

            Alec Tremmell listened carefully and watched the girl’s every move.  Her school record was crammed with superlatives, including one the distressed him: perfectionist.  In just half a dozen years she would be world class in both intelligence and beauty, and he knew that for whatever reasons, in this room and on this date, the fates had charged him with facilitating that outcome.  The muscles in the fleshy part of his left hand began twitching and he put the hand inside his jacket pocket.

            “It doesn’t just work for me, Mallory.  I don’t think it does for anyone.  I do work damn hard at making my life look easy but it’s not.  The one thing I don’t do is give up on things; not until I know there’s no rationale in going further.  Then I cut things off cleanly.  Frankly, you haven’t reached that point yet; you don’t have a reason.  You, young lady, are going to have children.”

            Mallory gave him a curious look.  “I believe it was you who told a room full of people something like, ‘no eggs; no primates.’  Are you rescinding that or have I been relocated into some new order; a turnip maybe.”

            “Never turnips.  They have stronger survival instincts.  Look, Mallory, qualifying as a great parent doesn’t require egg donation and a painful end to months of looking like a pear.”

            “I wanted my own kids.”

            “I’m trying to tell you something here.  You want to listen?”

            “I know all about adoption.  You go someplace like Catholic Charities, lay out a few grand and buy a baby.”  She turned her eyes to the nursing station.  “Somehow it takes something away from it all when babies are a commercial item.”

            “You know it ill behooves youth to wallow in cynicism.”

            She looked him in the eyes and shot back, “Cynic: One who sees things as they are and not as they should be; hence the habit among the Scythians of plucking their eyes to improve their vision. - Ambrose Bierce.  I learned that in Mister Pollard’s class.”

            “Never liked Pollard.”

            “Can’t say I blame you,” she smiled slightly.

            “Do like Bierce though, but then he was writing that stuff for money.  People will write and say the damnedest things for money.”

            “And institutions will trade babies for the stuff.  No thanks.”

            Alec visibly bristled and leaned forward.  “You’re very bright and very clever and pathetically young and uninformed, young lady.  Just for the record, adoptees, in study after study, do better in just about every way imaginable.  They grow up more secure, better adjusted, more confident, and better off in any way that relates to parental nurturing.  They never for a second have to question whether or not their parents wanted them.  The good adoptions services go out of their way to guarantee that the children will have above average standards of living and be exposed to higher standards of behavior.  Do your homework, young lady.  Find the studies and read them.  And get rid of that five and dime thinking.”

            “Five and dime thinking?”

            “Yeah.  It’s the stuff people do when they arrive at a cockamamie conclusion and then defend it against all reason.  Simply, Mallory, you don’t have all the facts and you’re not out searching for them.  Also, as a virgin, the decision to have or not have children is still a few years down the road for you.  Don’t ever decide anything until the time has come to do so.  Learn that one and you’ll know more than nearly every educator I know.”  Alec became aware of how strident he was sounding and collected himself.

            “I must be going,” he said and stood to leave.

            “Mister Tremmell?” she asked in a quiet voice.

            Alec paused and looked.  “Yes Mallory?”

            “What was that all about?  Tell me the truth, please?”

            Alec nodded and walked to the door using his right hand to open it.  Just before exiting he smiled one of his best smiles and said, “I told you that life was full of coincidences.  I was adopted, Mallory.”  He gave her a wink, a nod, and left.

            As he rode down in the elevator he reviewed his situation; sensations without cause; radiating pain; diminishment of voluntary muscle control.  He was tracking quite nicely.  He drove towards home slowly taking the path through the park to look at the turning foliage in the fading light.  On the seat beside him, sitting exactly where it had for the past three months, was the report from his visit to Massachusetts General Hospital.  They were very good there, he thought.  They had been sympathetic without patronizing, and admirably frank.  He pulled up beside the pond and shut off the engine.  As he pulled the small bottle from he pocket he reflected on how beautiful the world was at times, and removed the cap.  In a day, perhaps two, he would not have been able to do so.  Alec removed a pen from his pocket and wrote four words on the jacket of the report, then signed it.  After putting the pen away he hoisted the bottle up as though toasting the heavens, gave a wink to the sky that was still laced with bright pastels, and drank the contents down.  The last things Alec Tremmell ever saw were the words, “This is the reason,” and his signature beneath them.

 

 

Note:  This small effort owes its existence to Pauline Bartel, published author and professor of my creative writing course.  She handed us assignments and I wound up with, “What if the teacher contracted a fatal disease?”  The teacher, Alec Tremmell, is a pure fiction; perhaps a concocted image of the teacher I always thought I could have been, albeit considerably less attractive.  Mallory is not quite so.  In fact, she is a composite of several children I have known personally who were raised with one or both parents in that vague category termed dysfunctional.  For the most part, these parents are alcoholics, but some are compulsive gamblers, workaholics, or abnormally promiscuous.  As is often the case, one child at some point assumes the responsibility of keeping the family at a minimal level of function.  Some excel and others do less well.  For all of these children, their youth is abbreviated and they are thrust into a very adult world long before they should be.  While these children usually are extraordinarily adept at handling the world outside themselves, it is often this extreme focus on that world, and the lack of time to attend to their own lives, that makes them vulnerable.  When something personal occurs they are often unprepared to deal with it and become derailed.  It is for all the Mallorys in the world that this was written; not just Pauline’s approval.  There are those of us who truly understand you, Mallory, and who truly care.  Keep on keeping on and if you ever can reach out, we’ll be here for you.