Cat In An Alien X-Ray

“No, but it’s a word meant to hurt, label, denigrate. And most often, it isn’t true.” Matt wanted to strip the shock value from her words, to depersonalize the dialogue.

He realized he was being as manipulative as she was, but maybe that was what it took to cut through thirty-some years of abuse, fury, and hatred.

He went on, “If your mother was put into a Magdalene school, she was an unpaid laundry worker, a virtual domestic slave. Those are labels I’ll accept.”

“With nuns and priests as the warders.”

Matt appeared to mull her words. “Yes. Warders is a good way to put it.”

His agreement aggravated her more than any diatribe would.

She grabbed the razor again and leaped to the floor. She flew at him, flying hair almost blinding her. Matt stood even faster, intercepted her right wrist, and pulled it down toward the floor. It was easy to push a foot out from under her, so she tumbled over onto her side.

She curled into a ball, the reflexive position revealing more about her early life than a hundred hours of “therapy” talk. He could hardly hear the low keening, but saw a trio of ruby red blots on the marble floor.

He bent over her. “Have you hurt yourself!”

“No! You did!”

The razor had fallen a few inches away. He grabbed it before she could. Her hand must have hit the floor with the open blade clutched in her palm. He shut it and closed the blood-dewed cutting edge out of her sight and put it in his pants pocket.

“Come on. We’ll clean that up.”

He was careful not to use her name. Anything that put her back into the dreadful past might push her into hysteria again.

Funny. Everyone took her for a stone-cold killer, including himself. That was only a pose. What she really was might be even more dangerous.

She let him lead her into the bathroom, to the marble sink with its 24-karat gold-clad faucets.

She hung over it, panting, as he ran cold water on her bloody hand and jerked tissues from a golden box to wrap her palm. King Midas must have had a frenzy in this bathroom.

Kathleen let herself sag against the sink stand, ironically accomplishing his dangerous and touchy mission for him. His supporting arm had pushed up the filmy top, exposing her spine and a lot of back.

White. Clear of scars. He almost let her slip in shock, and had to clamp her ebbing body close, her heavy hair against his chin and chest.

He realized this was supposed to be seductive, but his now ruefully regarded years of wrought-iron celibacy had made him seduce-proof.

“Here, a towel.” He grabbed an ornately embroidered finger towel and wrapped it around the cut hand. “Let’s get you back into the bedroom.” She’d take that move as a sign of victory.

He steered her out onto the bed, then peeled open the towel. It had absorbed some blood from the short cut, but the flow was already slowing.

He plumped the scratchy brocade pillows behind her and settled her back like an invalid.

Then he sat again in his usual chair against the wall.

It was hard to be seductive with a huge towel wrapped around one hand.

“You’re good at first aid,” she said, unaware of delivering her first compliment. “Did your stepfather hit you?”

Matt shrugged.

“Did he, did he? He must have!”

“Then why ask me?”

“I want to make you tell the truth.”

“You don’t have to make me. Yes, he yelled at me, cursed at me, and he hit me when I stood between him and my mother.”

“When was that.”

“Every time.”

She fell silent. No one had stood in front of her.

“Look,” Matt said. “I know Cliff Effinger was a piker in everything he ever said or did. He was even a failure at being abusive. I know now what I went through was minor compared to some.”

“And I’m that ‘some.’”

“No. You are the one. A one. The only one I’m talking to at this moment.”

“But you don’t want to be.”

“True.”

“You don’t want me to exist.”

Matt didn’t have to think before he spoke. “I don’t want anyone who’s been through what you have to exist, but the world won’t let that happen.”

“You are the world.” She spun away on the bed. Again revealed the back he’d needed to see. He was glad no signs of further abuse showed, even from the cat pack. “We are the world.”

She quoted the happy, sappy soft drink song of eighteen million TV commercials ago. He remembered crouching on the floor in front of the TV set in an unhappy house and seeing all those happy people singing that they’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.

Yeah, he had felt that he could do that at one time. Still did.

It occurred to him that Kathleen’s dedication to the IRA might have been genuine.

I’d like to buy the world … a soft drink and then what? Call man’s inhumanity to man, woman, and child done?

He approached the bed. He pulled the shut razor from his pocket. He opened it. He laid it on the bedside table.

She didn’t move. She left her vulnerable back—that he’d so needed to see to convict her of another wrong—exposed.

Mission accomplished.

He left, without her moving or speaking for once. Just bleeding a little.

And breathed a deep sigh of relief outside the door.