The nearly nude bodies of Jennifer L. Winger, 31 and her son, James Daniel Winger, 6, were discovered on a snowy hillside behind their Cross Keys home. Winger and her son walked into the orchard while temperatures were in the teens. Autopsy reports show the two died of exposure. Authorities said that tracks in the snow indicated Winger led her only son up the hill in an apparent murder-suicide. Winger's husband, an attorney with the firm of Winger, Shelton and Boze could offer no explanation for the tragedy.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch. January 23, 2001

 

he woman has not heard. Or is she not listening? There is a difference, the psychiatrist tells her. He writes this on a yellow legal pad. Hands it to her. She nods. "I try," she says. She wants to please him, to be agreeable. It is easier that way.

"What does it feel like, not to hear?"

The woman reads, waits for an answer to crawl through the twisted intestines of her brain. Finally, with satisfaction, she says, "Like seashells are covering my ears." The psychiatrist has a fondness for metaphors, she believes.

"So, you hear the ocean's roar?" he scribbles.

"Um, I suppose."

"And nothing more?"

"No, not right now."

"But sometimes?"

"Yes." The woman pauses, decides she must continue, knows she should be a good brown mouse. "Yes, sometimes, but the sounds are distant."

The doctor nods, writes. The woman can barely make out his scrawl. As always, toward the end of the hour, he has become impatient with this convoluted form of communication. If they had a chalkboard, she thinks, it might go faster, but she doesn't mind the plodding. It gives her time to unscramble his opaque squiggles, to fabricate an unconventional response.

She bends toward the light, screens her face with the legal pad, deciphers a word here, another there—hearing loss—psychological.

"Of course. Yes," she says. He has told her this before; explained that her impairment is not neurological; that it is a "conversion disorder," caused by some stressful event, or a deeply rooted internal conflict.

The woman accepts this diagnosis. She has no thoughts herself on the strange affliction. And it is unusual, he has told her, very rare nowadays. Freud would have delighted in your case, he had written. This made the woman feely slightly test-tubish, like the shriveled vertebrate in her son's microscope kit. But it also made her an enigma to him. This she enjoys.

She waits, watches him obliquely, senses his irritation. His elbows rest on the brown leather arms of his commanding desk chair. His fingertips are pressed one to one, delicately steepled.

He is talking. To her? To himself? His mustache twitches. His teeth are very white against the black, dummy-like hole of his mouth. Inwardly, the woman smiles. He looks so funny. As if his ventriloquist has gone away, left him propped there, some mysterious hand wagging his jaws.

"Doctor-Dummy," she thinks. No! She has said it aloud. She does this sometimes, inadvertently, because of the deafness. He looks at her quizzically. How stupid she is to say such a thing. She must apologize. But she doesn't.

"I . . . I have different names for you."

His eyebrows raise, descend, but he smiles benignly. He is a kind man, she knows. He has been trained to care, to cure—even Freudian throwbacks. She will not tell him why she called him Doctor-Dummy. Let him stew.

He rises, tosses the writing material on his desk. The gold Cross pen plops like an unaimed dart; the folded yellow layers of her life flutter, settle, close. The fifty minute brain-game is up for today.

She waits at the receptionist's window for the unnecessary appointment slip. She always comes at the same time, has been doing so every Tuesday and Friday, never missing a session, since the therapy began a month ago. Nevertheless, she must wait for the slip, must tuck it into her bag as if it were a ticket back to a station in her past, to that place where she took the wrong turning.

In the parking garage, she goes directly to her gray Audi. She is not forgetful of her surroundings. She can find her way home; the suburban neighborhood is familiar—Shoney's, Dunkin' Donuts, Sally Ann's Fabric Shop, Parkridge Elementary School. Her son, Jamie, is there now in first grade. Soon the bus will bring him home. She knows all this. Her mind continues to function. That should be enough to persuade her that she exists. Descartes had said so. But she is not convinced. If she could hear again, that would be convincing. Or perhaps not.

She drives carefully. The deafness requires her to be alert for other vehicles, for traffic lights and pedestrians. Of course, no people walk here in her secluded country subdivision. In the mornings and evenings they jog, but no one ever "takes a walk." The woman has thought that she would like to do this sometime, wander up the hill behind her house, through the old orchard, and on to the distant, undulating farmlands, but that would be trespassing, and her husband would not approve. He would frown, and the blue vein on his high, blank forehead would quiver ominously. She would never do anything to disturb the vein.

The housekeeper, Mrs. Davidson, is waiting in the narrow closet hallway when the woman opens her back door. (Looking after her? Spying on her?) She brushes past the wash-dressed figure. "I'm fine," she says. "Everything's fine." She doesn't need more questions. Finds it impossible to issue orders. "Make whatever you want for dinner. I'm going to take a nap." Has she spoken aloud? Sometimes it is difficult to tell if sounds have emerged from her mouth, or if she is only wagging her lips like Doctor Dummy.

She goes upstairs, undresses, carefully hangs up the Claiborne suit, (a gift from her husband) removes her underwear and puts on the old terrycloth robe, one raveled shoulder held to the sleeve with a safety pin. She stretches out on the bed. She is exhausted from trying to please the doctor, and she is not getting better. Perhaps she will not go back on Friday. Why bother? She turns on her side and sleeps.

 

ater that afternoon, the woman's husband returns from his law office. Mrs. Davidson, who is beginning the dinner preparations, glances at the mantle clock above the quarried stone fireplace. It is early, not yet five.

He comes directly to the kitchen. "Is she home?" he asks.

Mrs. Davidson nods.

"Sit down," he says. "We need to talk." He mixes a drink, a Vodka Collins, hands her a bottle of bourbon whiskey. "Have one if you like."

"Well, just a dollop in my tea," says Mrs. Davidson. Her voice catches. "Is something wrong?" She wipes her hands on her bib apron, coughs to clear the rasp from her throat.

"No, nothing for you to worry about," he says. "The psychiatrist phoned me at work. He thinks she should be hospitalized."

"Well, I do declare," says Mrs. Davidson. She sits at the round kitchen table, runs a rough hand over the quarter-sawn oak boards, which she waxes and polishes daily. She pours a small amount of the Canadian Club into her empty teacup. Drinks it down. "Thank you," she says. "I do believe I needed a bit to settle my nerves. So he's going to put her in the hospital?"

"Yes. He thinks it's best. She's not improving, you know. He wants her to have more tests, another cat-scan. There may be some physical cause for her problem." The man removes his blue serge suit jacket, hangs it on the back of a pressed wood chair, loosens his tie, takes a sip of the Collins. His movements are efficient, electric. He sits. "How did she seem to you today?"

"Well," says Mrs. Davidson, "as far as I could tell, she slept all morning, but when she left for the appointment she looked fine. She was wearing that pretty purple suit, not much make-up, but then she never wears much."

"Did she say anything?" He runs his hand through his Robert Redford hair.

Mrs. Davidson talks to the buttons on his shirt. "She might have said goodbye. I can't recollect for sure. I knew she was going to the appointment. I don't bother her when she wants to be alone. It's not my place."

"That's all right. I understand. Do you remember if she was wearing a coat?"

Mrs. Davidson's face brightens. "No, no, she wasn't, but I thought to myself, she'll be in the car all the time and then in the building, so it won't matter."

The husband rubs his eyes, takes another sip of the Collins. "Do you know where I found her this morning? Out on the upstairs balcony with nothing on but that old robe. I don't know how long she'd been there."

Mrs. Davidson nods, looks into her empty teacup. "It's like she doesn't feel much. I noticed that the other day. Could it be a symptom?"

"I don't know, but it's best for her to be hospitalized. I want to tell you that things haven't been so good between us. I . . . we . . . have been considering a separation, but now—"

"Yes, I sort of gathered that."

He stands, drains his glass, takes it to the sink. He never has more than one drink. "I appreciate your staying on through these difficult times. I'll put a bonus in your check on Friday."

"Why, thank you. That's quite generous. Will you tell her now, about the hospital?"

"Yes, I hope she agrees, understands."

"Oh, she will. I know that," says the housekeeper. "She's always taken your advice as far as I could tell. She depends on you a lot."

"Maybe too much," he says. He shakes his head and strides from the kitchen.

 

he woman is in her son's room. She feels refreshed after the nap. She still wears the oversized bathrobe with its pinned sleeve. Her husband has given her other robes for Christmas, on her birthdays, but they hang in the closet, tags dangling, a thin veil of dust forming on their regal shoulders. She wears everything else he buys her. She likes him to go shopping with her, to select and approve. Surely she can wear one old thing that is comfortable and roomy, and hers, only hers.

The woman and her son are building a giant castle of Lego-type bricks. Neither talks. The boy has become almost as silent as his mother. She does not answer him when he asks a question, so he no longer asks.

The husband stands in the doorway, a pensive witness to the mute mother and son, to the intensity of their mute play. The woman scoots over to the boy's side of the castle, helps him with a difficult assembly, squeezes the stubborn pieces until they snap, hands the part to her son, her fingers lingering on his.

"Daddy, Daddy," says the boy, "look what we're building." The husband squats on the floor, picks up a Lego part, rolls it between his fingers. He watches his wife. She smiles at him.

"That's great," says the husband, "just great. What is it?"

"The lost city of Ubar," says the boy gravely, "like in the Arabian Nights."

"Oh, yes. That was on cable last night, wasn't it? A documentary about an ancient, long-lost city."

"Uh-huh," says the boy. "It fell into a hole thousands of years ago, and got covered with sand. They showed a picture of what it looked like, so Mummy and I are building it."

"Ubar. How about that." The husband is silent for a minute. "I need to talk to Mummy," he says. The woman does not hear. He pulls on her ragged sleeve, motions her toward the door.

She looks at him, sees the tight lips, the pulsing blue vein. Something is the matter. Is it her fault? Please God, don't let it be her fault. Perhaps it is only a problem at the office. The vein has throbbed over many incidents—when his parents were killed in the automobile accident, when the dot-com market bottomed, when he told her some other terrible thing. What? Only that she was acting funny, not listening, not talking, and then there'd been the tests and Doctor Dummy. But the deafness isn't her fault. Or is it?

She does not want to go with him; would much prefer to stay here, safe in the fabled Lego ruins of Ubar. But she follows him to their bedroom, sits on the bed, smoothes the satin spread, waits, hopes that sounds will penetrate. He is like Doctor Dummy. He hates to write everything down. She knows he is talking, pacing in front of her. She watches his feet, brown wing tips striding, stopping now in front of her, his hand touching her chin, raising her face. She wants to close her eyes; knows she mustn't. She wants the vein to stop pulsing. She gets up, takes the pad and pen from the nightstand, hands it to him. She can see him sigh. He is a criminal trial lawyer. He expects to be heard.

"The doctor wants you to be hospitalized," he prints. Each word is carefully executed, the letters neatly formed. His handwriting does not scrawl. She admires the backward slant, has tried to emulate his style, but invariably her writing loops like icing letters squeezed on a cake—the penmanship of a child.

She looks up relieved. So that is all! Yes, she will do that. She nods, smiles.

Patiently he writes again. "The doctor wants you to have more tests. There may be some physical reason for your hearing loss."

She reads, waits for the words to travel, for some feeling to emerge. Relief? Hope? But none comes. Doctor Dummy has warned her that this might happen, that she might lack concern. La Belle Indifference, he had called it, and slyly waited, his praying (preying?) fingertips tapping like pincers. But why wouldn't she care? "Why?" she'd asked him truthfully for once. "Because unconsciously you don't want to get well," he had written. "There is something you don't want to remember." And she hadn't denied him his triumph, hadn't been able to call up a single metaphor from her treasured cachepot. But her husband isn't such a smarty.

"Oh, I hope that is the matter," she says. She takes his hand, presses it to her naked breast. They have not made love in a long time. But she is a desirable woman. She knows this. She has compared herself to the women in the magazines, found her body not lacking. He must be needful. He must. There are no other women in his life. Of this she is certain.

"I love you," she says. "I love you beyond endurance." She tries to look into his face, but he has turned away, removed his hand from her breast, politely, pointedly. Oh, it is no use, no use. What a mess she must be, but they will cure her at the hospital, won't they? She wants to ask this of her husband, wants a token of reassurance, but he has left the room without a footfall.

She pulls down the satin spread, the blankets, throws them aside. She feels feverish. This is what he does to her now. Makes her face flame. From what? Fear? Shame? Nonsense. Why should she be afraid of him, or—embarrassed? She bites her lip, lies on the bed. The room is an oven. Perhaps she should take some aspirin, get dressed, go to dinner, be with Jamie, but he has his father now. Better to stay here, close her eyes—just for the blink of an eyelash.

 

t is after midnight when the woman wakes, reaches for the comfort of her husband, remembers that he no longer sleeps with her—remembers about the hospital. She will try to get well. Then everything will be as it was before.

Mrs. Davidson has left a supper tray on the nightstand, but she isn't hungry. Has she eaten today? Probably not, but no matter. She goes to a window, the terrycloth robe trailing around her ankles.

The sky is moonlit and starry. She can see the hillside from here and the cherry orchard. Oh, look, she says to herself. Oh, look, the trees have blossomed. She can see the blooms so clearly in the white-lit night. And petals have fallen, covering the ground. If only she could smell the fragrance, and walk in the new grass, petals drifting into her hair like scraps of velvet, the warm spring breeze lapping her body.

Oh, she will do it. She will walk in the cherry orchard at midnight. And Jamie, too. What a lark to take Jamie and frolic in the blossoms. Yes, she will do it, because it is her last night of freedom

The boy is sluggish with sleep. She touches her finger to her mouth, then to his, shushing him in the darkness. At the French doors that lead to the cedar deck, she can feel him straining against her, not wanting to leave the house. But why?

"We're going to play in the orchard," she says. "We're going to have such fun." She grasps his hand firmly, opens the paned doors. The wind billows her robe into a white cape, anoints the fire in her skin with balm.

Trustingly, Jamie walks with her down the steps, across the lawn, but he is speaking. From a great distance, from the end of a tunnel she hears the word, "Cold."

"No, no, it's not cold," the woman says. "Let's run, run away because we're on the lam, and we can."

It is spring and the breezes have crept in from the south lands, popping the cherry buds, bursting their winter slumber, scattering petals in the air, everywhere, delicate as eiderdown.

They are far away from the house now, high up in the orchard country. They must lie down, she decides, and watch the stars, watch the full moon until the sun shimmers it from sight.

She tugs the boy to the ground. But he seems to be frightened. He is struggling, trying to break free from her. How strange! What is there to be afraid of? She wraps her arms around him, cuddles him, strokes his hair, his face. She will sing to him. Yes, that will calm his fears. A lullaby? Hush Little Baby? No. He's not a baby anymore. One of the ballads from the old Joan Baez record? He likes those. Barbara Allen? No, that's a mournful dirge. The one after Barbara Allen? Of course, the one about the cherry tree. Yes, that will be perfect, if she can remember the words.

"Joseph and Mary." Yes. "Joseph and Mary walked through an orchard green. There were berries and cherries, as thick as might be seen . . .

"And Mary spoke to Joseph, so meek and so mild. Joseph gather me some cherries for I am with child.

"And—and Joseph flew in anger, in anger flew he. Let the father of the baby gather cherries for thee. Let—let the father of the baby gather cherries for thee."

She can remember no more. Has she sung or only thought the words? From a great distance, from a neighbor's house, far below, she hears a child whimpering. Who would let a child cry alone in the dark? Who would do such a thing? Never has she let Jamie cry in the dark. Not even when they had the nanny. She was always up, tending to him, nursing him, the dim light from the merry-go-round lamp illuminating his moist brow. Baby-dew, she had called the perspiration, and his mouth, feasting on her nipple would be as pink as an unfurling cherry bud.

He is quiet now, sleeping; his face resting near her bare breast; his fears calmed. They haven't romped, haven't played, haven't scooped up petals and thrown them at each other. But it so peaceful here in their white nest, petals drifting, enough to cover them. Soon his body grows white with the lovely flowers. She holds him tenderly, gazes up into the sky.

Where have the moon and stars gone? They were here a minute ago, weren't they? Perhaps it has clouded over. A storm must be brewing. Oh, what a pity. They will have to go home.

"Jamie," she says, "wake up now. We must go back." She shakes the small, still frame cradled in her arms. "Jamie, wake up!" Oh, it is no use. She will have to carry him.

But what is this—mush? Is it raining so soon? Their bed of petals is a soggy bower. A spring shower has blown in on the south wind, and she hasn't noticed. She must get Jamie home.

She struggles to rise, feels her body shudder, stiffen, collapse. What is the matter with her? Why can't she get up? She must call for help, but her mouth will not open, and her tongue is rigid as wood, axed wood in August, cherry wood splintering. She had heard it, as the curtain fell on Chekhov's masterpiece, and the horror numbs her then as now.

But there is no horror here, she reasons, only a delightful lethargy, a warmth surrendering her. So she will rest for a while and let Jamie sleep until her strength returns. But she shouldn't close her eyes. No, she mustn't sleep. It is raining and Jamie catches cold so easily, and a fogbank is moving in. There is mist on her eyelashes and she cannot raise her hand to brush it away, so she will close her eyes just for the blink of an eyelash.

Yes, and remember that he loved her. Once. But his mouth, that horrible time, with its black dummy-like hole when he told her. Told her what? What? And the vein had pulsed and she couldn't stand it. But no matter, for—for the rose grew round the briar of Barbara Allen. Joseph, gather me some cherries, for I am with child. Joseph? Joseph! Gather me some berries for I am meek and mild.

[END]

© Em Kersey 2003