Gwen, in Green

The dream was back, in altered form. The pain was a rending one, not a swift, cutting pain. It was brutal, all-­powerful. She fought it in her mind, tried to overcome, could not even awaken and thus drive it away. Behind the pain, the rending, tearing, brutal power, was something new, an awareness, a wistful memory almost touchable, but not quite. Waking, finally, she tried to analyze it. Her memory held tantalizing glimpses of a parklike expanse, of growing things, but nothing she could identify. Strange. A feeling of eternal peace.

The dream became recurrent. First there was raging pain, and then that glimpse of heaven and peace. She was still having the dream when she kept her next appointment with Dr. King. She did not mention it. Instead, feeling that she had to give him something, she talked about her mother. “Ah,” he kept saying, his Freudian nature gratified. He felt that at last they were getting down to it. “Ah, ah, I see. Why, do you suppose? Yes. Go on, please.”

George had come with her this time. She’d asked that her appointment be changed, for that week only, to Friday, since he needed to make a trip to the city for supplies. He came in just as the interview was over. Ruth, the white-­clad, wrinkled nurse with the silvery hair, said, “They’re finished. You can go on in.”

Gwen and Dr. King were talking about the next appointment. George, not wanting to interrupt, walked around the office and spotted something in his field. “Fantastic machine,” he said, when the appointment time was settled and Gwen was gathering her purse and straightening her skirt.

“Oh?” said King. “You’re familiar with a polygraph?”

“Not really,” George said. “I’ve read a bit about them.”

“King’s folly,” the doctor said. “An expensive toy. It hasn’t worked since I bought it.” He chuckled. “Of course, my experiments with it so far have been with myself and with my office nurse.” He brushed at his vest. “Perhaps we don’t get good readings because we’re both so old we have no blood pressure.”

“I understand that the operation has a lot to do with the operator’s knowledge,” George said innocently. “Not that I’m saying you don’t know how to operate it.”

King chuckled again. “You may be right. But I do think there’s a malfunction. I’m waiting for the factory man to come. He makes regular trips to the area to service the various police gadgets, but trying to get him to make a special trip is, I’ve found, impossible.”

“My husband can fix anything electronic,” Gwen said.

“Oh?”

“Well, I don’t know anything about this particular machine,” George said.

“My main interest is in the movements of electro­dermal currents,” King said. “I bought this expensive toy thinking that I would prove some theories I have regarding emotions. But the electrodes here give absolutely no readings.”

“Well,” George said, “the principle behind the thing is simple. If I had the schematics—”

“I think, yes,” King said, digging into a drawer, coming up with a thick book of electrical diagrams. “If these mean anything to you.”

George thumbed through them and found the one he wanted. He furrowed his brow in thought. “Couldn’t be but one or two things,” he said.

“Young man,” King said. “If you could fix this diabolical thing I’d be forever grateful.”

“Well, I don’t have any equipment here,” George said. Gwen could see that he was interested. Being able to put his hands on a new and complicated piece of electronic gear was pure bliss to George.

“Take it with you. It’s taking up space, gathering dust. I used to have the couch here.” Dr. King gestured. “Where it is now the sun gets in my eyes unless I close the shades.”

“In an M.G.?” Gwen laughed.

“I can come over in the pick-­up,” George said, hooked.

He did. He arose early the next morning, leaving Gwen asleep, with a note on the bedside table. She was awakened late by the growl of the heavy equipment. At first, she thought it was across the waterway, where the cranes and drag lines and earth movers were piling a fifteen-­foot-­high dike to hold stinking marsh mud. Then she realized that they were closer. She’d had the dream again. She was not refreshed by her night’s sleep. She dozed. She awoke, screaming aloud. She had experienced the sensation of having her upper torso twisted and ripped away from her lower body.