Before Chapter Twenty Two
In this chapter we meet a distraught, entangled Mrs. Geesky. She’s troubled. I won’t reveal what happens but after you’ve read the Chapter Twenty Two consider her situation from these teachings.
The Heart Sutra & The Diamond Sutra offer us some understanding of this character who appears to be an aggressive, distraught, wild person. A person who murdered her infant sister - a person who is infatuated with the Great Matter of death.
The two sutras known as threads of teachings tell us our true nature, our transcendent nature. whether wise or ignorant, is the same. In Truth all spiritual traditions recognize that our true nature is ONE!
The difference we see and experience in the other is a matter of ignorance and wisdom. It is not a matter of separation, but a matter of confusion and clarity. The ignorance of Mrs. Geesky confuses her and others whereas the wisdom of awareness brings clarity of mind.
The major problem for those covered with ignorance is that they tend to exclaim they know wisdom which is only talk. They lack insight. Their tendency is to pontificate with opinions and positions. They do not apply the teachings to themselves - but are forever blaming, condemning the external world.
Mrs. Geesky appears again and again as someone who follows the path of blame, shame and hate. This position is narrow and small whereas the mind of the great sage is intimate and ever available.
What is required?
Renunciation of ignorance and relinquishment of our tendencies and habits.
And…a teacher who is able to point you towards the Way.
Chapter Twenty Two - Misfortune
Misfortune
The faster the car accelerated the harder she pressed against the gas pedal, speeding through a stop sign. Wild, she jerked her head from side to side on the pretext of checking for pedestrians all the while saying repeatedly, “I need the good note, I need the good note.”
Thud!
Startled. Annoyed. She slams on the brakes. The tires squeal, the car swerves to a stop. She grumbles. Until she considers the possibility she may have hit an animal she stays put. She cries out. Holy Shit! Frantic, she gets out of the car and runs to the front.
“Who the hell are you?” She looks. She bristles. It’s a young boy untangling himself from his bike which has fallen on top of him. She screams.
“You hit my car! What’s the matter with you?”
“It’s not damaged.” He mutters while he grabs the handlebars to steady the bike upright.
“Watch where you’re going!” She assaults him with a correction. She indicts. “Your parents shouldn’t let you ride a bike. You obviously don’t know how to!”
The boy stands next to his bike, mute.
Mrs. Geesky checks the front fender of her car.
“You’re lucky. It’s not damaged.” The boy remains speechless.
“No damage. Do you hear me! No damage.” She shouts in his face for agreement. When the boy remains speechless, she tells him to move his bike off the street.
Once back in the driver’s seat she is shaken only by the delay. “What’s the matter with parents these days!” she yells, discharging blame. The thrust to get what she needed returns. ‘I need the good note. I need the good note.’ Over and over, she confirms it as she hurries towards the shop.
The front window says, “Welcome. Walk-ins Welcome.” The open invitation speeds her up as she fears she will be closed out before she can get what she wants. Thoughts cluster. I don’t need an appointment. She’ll see me. It says it on her window. No appointment necessary. She skips taking a photo of the window. Don’t waste time. I need the good note. I need the good note.
Armed with her insistent unsparing demands she opens the front door with a bang. The small bells batter against the glass in jarring clanks, certain to alert Susan Belle of a visitor. In a final flourish she grabs the clanking bells and gives them several hard shakes. That should get her attention! She judges with an unranked authority.
There is a faint smell of carnations in the room. The brass table lamp near the sofa casts a yellow tint across the wooden end table. Loretta’s shiny black snout nudges one of her drooping hands out of the way. With the way clear the dog sniffs across the hem of Mrs. Geesky’s dress. The dog’s head, like a shank of a moving sewing needle, continues up and down along the hem snuffling the bottom of her cross-body bag.
“Smells like what?” She asks the dog, “Can you smell it? I bet you can.” Mrs. Geesky bends down to lift the dog’s head up towards her face. “You do your job, don’t you?” The dog, her nose cuddled in Mrs. Geesky’s hands, pulls away and returns to a relentless interest in the bag. Mrs. Geesky smiles, identifying with Loretta and confides her affinity. “Yes. Yes. I know. I know. It drives you crazy. Me, too.” Mrs. Geesky, directed by her need, stands up brushing away the dog’s muzzle. Upset, Loretta shakes her head.
“Hell-oooooo.”
She listens for a response as the dog circles and follows her down the hallway towards Susan’s sitting room.
“Hell-oooooo.” She cries out again. With the second cry-out Susan Belle pops her head out of the doorway with a face of friendliness. “Good morning. I’ll be right with you. Please take a seat. I’ll be right there.”
Mrs. Geesky calls back with a sharp barbed reply. “You better be!”
Susan withdraws back. ‘Oh! This is the woman from before. The woman with Samuel. From the hospital! Oh dear, dear me.’ She chokes on the recognition while she leans against the inside door frame of her sitting room. Her friendly face dwindles as she rests head against the back of her hand. She grips the old frame to gather her strength. She realizes, for whatever reason she did not expect to see this woman again and admits to herself it may have been a wish. Even so she knows there is no preparation for what she needs to do. To go out into the front room and greet the woman as she would anyone who walked in off the street is her only option. Like Loretta she shakes and shivers her body to clear away the remnant of the prickling reproof.
Composure comes with closed eyes and a robust rub down of her hands along the sides of her skirt and a strong pull along the bottom edge of her jacket. “There.” She whispers to herself as though she must not reveal her fear. In a not uncommon moment, words came to raise her spirits. Words of the old man Samuel. ‘You are cutout for this work.’ In the solitude behind these walls a dry, ironic smile forms on her lips to which she replies in silence. ‘If you could see me now?’ She muffles a silly laugh with her hand over her mouth and wonders what he’d say now with her hiding from the woman in the front room. Puzzled by his confidence in this work she remains uncertain. ‘What am I doing?’ Her fondness for Samuel, for his old white-haired head, and his consistent search for meaning, bolstered her. ‘It’s not to be cutoff. Never to be cutoff.’ Those were his sentiments and with this recovered respect she walks through her doorway into the hall.
“Good morning.” Susan greets Mrs. Geesky who takes a small step backward.
“You said that already.” Mrs. Geesky pins Susan’s greeting as old.
“Yes. So, I did.” Susan confirms. ‘Don’t be cut off. Look for the meaning.’ These words ripple across her mind as does Samuel’s sweet, creased face.
Loretta continues to rummage the air around Mrs. Geesky, which Susan is quick to point out in a cheerful caution to the dog.
“Loretta, leave our visitor alone.” Susan glances into Mrs. Geesky’s face with a follow-up. “She seems fond of you. Do you want me to call her away?”
“Animals are fond of me.”
“Of course.” Susan submits. ‘I might not be cut out for this as much as you thought.’ Susan thinks as if she is talking to Samuel. again holding back a smile.
Slap! Slap! Slap!
Mrs. Geesky hits an envelope against the palm of her hand as she announces. “He said I had to see someone. I am seeing you. You are a doctor. I came for the good note.”
Slap. Slap! Slap!
Uneven, irregular in unmatched poses, the two women look at one another, Susan in the middle of the hall, hands clasped together around her mid-section, Mrs. Geesky at threshold between the front room and the hallway flapping a long white envelope against her hip. Loretta, head back, nose up continues in a curious circle around Mrs. Geesky’s cross-body bag.
Susan Belle breaks the silence with careful courtesy.
“Excuse me.” She stops to notice whether her small, conventional request for clemency is granted but before Mrs. Geesky can agree or disagree to it, Susan follows with…. “How can I help you?”
Mrs. Geesky, ever vigilant, more so this morning with her need to get a good note draws her eyebrows down as though to underline her one stipulation. “Have you written the good note?”
Susan breathes in expanding her chest. “I understand.” Her words come out as automatic as her breath.
Mrs. Geesky stomps forward by one step. “You can’t fool me.”
“I am not trying to fool you.” Susan claims from her position.
“I don’t want your understanding. I want the good note you promised to write. You either have the good note or not.”
“Yes. I understand.”
“Don’t start to lie to me.”
“I do understand.”
Mrs. Geesky stomps back, takes a noisy shallow breath before she shouts. “Stop repeating, I understand. I do understand. I told you I don’t want your understanding.” Her loud offense brushes Susan to lean back. Mrs. Geesky sees it and takes a long stride at Susan slapping the envelope once again against her hip. “Do you have the good note?” Her question threatens, her movement pushes a warning at Susan to come up with it or else.
Susan sidesteps toward the jamb of her sitting room doorway before she says in a clear, crisp voice.
“No.’
Just one word. A clear one word that levels the direction of the tête-à-tête leaving enough room for Susan to ask. “Do you want to talk about something?”
By this time Loretta has circled Mrs. Geesky several times with her nails extended and her rump lowered. It is obvious she is after the cross-body bag with her consistent, unyielding nudges and snuffles. Mrs. Geesky stiffens, pushes aside the dog’s muzzle when Susan safeguards Loretta.
“Loretta is interested in your purse. She won’t harm you.”
“Don’t repeat things. I know that! You don’t listen very well, do you?” Mrs. Geesky, annoyed with the deflection to Loretta berates Susan. Before Mrs. Geesky shouts out another rebuke Susan turns and shuns Mrs. Geesky with a wave of her wrist as she disappears through the doorway to her sitting room.
“Loretta! Come.”
Once Loretta is in the room Susan waits and listens for the telling sounds of the bells against the front door or the footsteps of Mrs. Geesky coming down the hall. It is silent. Loretta groans in relief as she drops her lanky long-haired body next to where Susan sits. “Good girl, Loretta. Good girl.” Susan listens. Still nothing. No one. Susan looks at Loretta as she marvels at the difference between dogs and humans as rooted in training and obedience. When she hears the water running in the small bathroom off the front room, she sits back in her well-worn chair to wait for Mrs. Geesky to come in on her own time.
Run down by the struggle, by her own misgivings.
‘I’m exhausted.’ She explains to Samuel as she blinks open her eyes to check on Loretta.
“What a lucky girl you are, Loretta.” Susan whispers over the head of Loretta in a fatigued voice. Once again, she closes her eyes. Not fit for today. I am not up for this today. These thoughts pile up into a heavier sluggish feeling. They are as relentless as this woman. Despite her tiredness Susan waits for other thoughts to surface when in a burst, a small burst of a bubble pops and Susan sees Mrs. Geesky entangled by her own threats. Everything she says is about her. Not me. Not Loretta. Not anyone else. Susan opens her eyes as the weakness in her body begins to lift. Everything she says, tells me about her. Before Susan can go much further, Mrs. Geesky enters the sitting room.
With the body-bag strap in hand Mrs. Geesky takes a seat in a single chair placed at an angle to Susan.
“I know the dog won’t hurt me. I know dogs.” Mrs. Geesky interrupts Susan’s awareness with a reasoned, less boisterous response. She is for this moment almost soft spoken.
Susan remains quiet, conscious of the shift in demeanor. Against the leathery backed chair Susan waits for Mrs. Geesky to dispose of what comes next. It is not a long silence, but enough for Susan to marshal her vitality.
“Did you write the good note?” Mrs. Geesky dashes her words across the scratched surface between them and waits for Susan to answer.
Troubled by the point-blank range of Mrs. Geesky’s question which leaves no room to go anywhere else, Susan thinks to herself, ‘Does she see everything as a blockade. A barrier?’
“To be honest….” Susan begins but expecting to be interrupted, she pauses. But Mrs. Geesky remains voiceless for a moment which is as unsettling as her shouting. Susan’s chest heaves up as she holds her breath then lets it go. It is with this release Susan realizes Mrs. Geesky went into the restroom to give her a chance to write the expected good note. ‘She’s given me time to come up with the goods.’ Susan sees this as benevolent.
“First, I must thank you for giving me the time to write it.”
“You don’t have it?” Mrs. Geesky clamps down on the end of the word don’t…uh.
In a more agreeable voice, Susan avoids a direct answer and asks, “Is there something we can talk about?”
Mrs. Geesky screws both her eyes up under her eyelids and mocks Susan. “No. There is nothing we can talk about.” She is haughty and self-important.
Susan wonders why Mrs. Geesky sees herself as self-important when she feels threatened. ‘Ah.’ Susan deduces to herself. Susan takes in a long breath and sits forward and addresses Mrs. Geesky by name.
“Mrs. Geesky, it is Mrs. Geesky, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Geesky does not answer, refuses to answer. The silence gives Susan the lead.
“Mrs. Geesky, please forgive me. My memory is selective. Not as strong as it once was which leads me to repeat myself. It sometimes is sticky for others…. for you…. making others…. giving you the impression, I am not listening. I know it upsets the flow. I…no…you are welcome here. That’s first and foremost.” She raises her index finger as she begins to stipulate to Mrs. Geesky not to interrupt. “But…”
“No BUT!” Screeches Mrs. Geesky as she sits back with her cross-body bag on her lap.
“Yes. Yes. Of course. No buts…”
“That’s better. And no, I don’t forgive you. You said you’d write me a note. A good note. I am her to get the good note.” Mrs. Geesky affirms her need.
There is no response. There is a pause.
Susan sits back and draws the hem of her soft gray skirt across the top of her knees then covers them with her interlaced fingers. Modest. Intentional. She speaks.
“It seems to me what you are really….” Once Susan gets to the word really Mrs. Geesky smashes the sentence with a forceful, “Stop! Stop right there. You have no right to tell me what I really anything. I came here for the note, and I am not leaving without it.”
“Did something happen?” Susan with a suddenness and force matches Mrs. Geesky’s outburst.
“No. No. No. No, you don’t.” Mrs. Geesky wags her finger in the air then drags her angled chair closer to Susan. She sinks down as she breathes out. “No. No.” she insists.
Her negative reiteration confirms Susan’s speculation. “Hmmph.” Susan answers back in obvious disbelief. It is this sound, this suspicious questioning sound that imposes on Mrs. Geesky to listen. Susan sees the shift.
Without permission, without consent Susan begins to speak with the authority of a woman who knows the laws of life, someone who sees through the resistance, the insistence…. and remembers Mrs. Geesky’s declaration, ‘I killed my baby sister.’
“Did something happen?”
For one second the events flash in Mrs. Geesky’s mind. The stupid, the rude neighbors, the interfering old woman, the Baines, the cleaning lady, the warning…. Without mentioning any detail, she pokes back. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t need the good note.”
“I have not forgotten. And I have rules, too. You need to hear my rules before we go on. I can’t. No. That’s not accurate enough. I know you need me to be as accurate as possible. The Good Note is putting the cart before the horse.”
“I won’t inflate my ability to say yes or no. I think you can see the danger in that, can’t you?” Susan does not wait for Mrs. Geesky to answer. “It is just hot air. If I answer. Pumping my old self up. You’d spot it.” Susan pauses and sees Mrs. Geesky’s face change just enough to show agreement.
Susan continues.
“I need the necessary time to prepare.”
“Prepare for what?” Mrs. Geesky butts in amplifying her voice.
“Yes. Good question. Very astute. On the money, as they say. I don’t know. I do know I need time to prepare for whatever may come up. I won’t pretend I am strong when I may not be able to answer your question. There are times I don’t know, times when I can’t figure something out. To write something as important as a good note requires that I know I can do it. And right now, I won’t do it because I do not know if I am able.”
Mrs. Geesky, razor-sharp…. incisive…. listens from the edge of her angled chair. “What are you able to do?” She speaks with a whip-like quickness wanting to strike Susan just enough to get her to move where she wants her to go.
Susan feels the crack, the cutting edginess from the speed of Mrs. Geesky’s delivery. “Less and less. I can do less and less. I don’t make deals. No bargains. I come here.” Susan pats the front edge of the worn leather. “I sit and wait. And there is no guarantee in that.”
Mrs. Geesky is troubled. Her cheeks sink along her face bones making her look a little whipped, but not beaten. She moves in a blocked, blunt manner and makes a move as though she is about to stand up but doesn’t. Instead, she raises her voice. “I don’t care about your less and less. What are you able to do now?”
“Uh huh.” Susan stops her desire to play with Mrs. Geesky. Too soon. She thinks. She studies what Mrs. Geesky doesn’t care about. Susan mulls over Mrs. Geesky’s words…. able to do now…. and wonders if Mrs. Geesky wants to know what she can do right now. She takes a chance and with confidence repeats what she has already said.
“Less and less. No deals. No bargains. I won’t haggle with you. I won’t make a pact or contract.”
“You keep telling me what you can’t do.” Mrs. Geesky catches herself and adjusts her words with a backhanded correction. “Sorry, what you won’t do.” Mrs. Geesky stops and glares at Susan. “That’s right, isn’t it? You won’t?”
Susan catches on and in plain language nods her head. “Yes. You got it. Won’t is right.” Susan looks at this last lash as evidence of a little more defeat, a small weakening. Not a routing by any means, but a small dispersal, a thinning out.
“Why should I come here?” Mrs. Geesky gestures her hands to include the space.
“I don’t know.”
Mrs. Geesky draws down her eyebrows. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
“Maybe you shouldn’t.” Susan sends these words across to Mrs. Geesky as if she has drummed a rat a tat tat on a tabletop.
“What?” Mrs. Geesky squawks.
“I don’t know if you should come here or not. Maybe you shouldn’t? Maybe you should? I don’t know.” Susan without approval, without protest wraps her hands around the top of her crossed knee raising it up just a bit. She remains still and waits.
Mrs. Geesky exhales through her nose as she clenches her lower teeth against the back of her upper jaw. She coughs in such a way as to alert Susan she is about to take control of the conversation.
“Two can play at this game.” Mrs. Geesky antes up as if she has been dealt an Ace of spades.
In a thin effort to mimic Susan, Mrs. Geesky crosses her knee raising it up as a reflection of Susan’s earlier move. She sits back in her chair. “I get it.” She puffs out. “Two can play at this game.” Mrs. Geesky repeats as she folds her hand on top of her raised knee and smiles. Full of her haughty rhetoric she feels safe, but not for long.
“I get it.” She expurgates to a lean three words. “I get it.”
The two women face each other. Silent. Unflinching. Susan needs no mollifying. She is an old hand at being silent. Mrs. Geesky finds the silence provocative. She breaks first.
“You think you have the upper hand. You don’t. I told you…. two can play this game. I get it. You want me to decide for myself.” She looks up about to wink at Susan but holds back when she sees Susan remains faithful to the silence. “Ok. O. K. I get it. It’s up to me. That’s it? Right.” Her last words are inadequate.
Susan recognizes the ineffectual effort to dominate. She notices how Mrs. Geesky fails in her effort to gain victory and then decides to clarify her rules.
“Mrs. Geesky, let me clarify. I do not care one way or the other.”
“Who does?”
“I don’t know.”
Mrs. Geesky slips down just a little against the back of her chair. She is not sufficiently expert in being bested. She feels outdone but does not understand, does not recognize where she is. Like a young untrained animal trapped in a ravine she scrambles back up the muddied embankment of Susan Belle’s amplification. She barks and growls back.
“Don’t pull this on me. You can’t get away with this. I’ll bring you up on charges. I know the law. You are a fraud. I know it. I can spot it. You know it. You are a quack.” She shakes her head at Susan. Her face grimacing, she shouts. “You pretend to care. You say everyone is welcome. What a liar you are.”
Each derisive accusation slides off Susan as she asserts her feet along the plane of the floor. She is planted. Her mind unyielding. Mrs. Geesky’s sticks and stones miss their intended target.
In her next barrage Mrs. Geesky points one finger through the uneven air towards the front window. “YOU wrote it on the window. Putting it in writing means something, even you said that. YOU wrote everyone is welcome.” Mrs. Geesky screams. “YOU lied!” YOU lied!”
Susan weathers the onslaught, the rain of questions, the hailstorm of accusations and stays still and silent until Mrs. Geesky shudders from her own torrent. Shudders and shakes her body like a dog shaking off after a threatening attack. She hangs her head in exhaustion but not despair.
Susan speaks.
“Everyone is welcome here.”
Her words are even, soft….and clear. She does not move as she speaks to them.
Mrs. Geesky lifts her head. She pushes her bottom lip by lifting her lower jaw forward. With a trickle of common sense, she does not volley back. She stares at Susan. With arms slack, crossed limp in front of her chest, she begins to rock back and forth.
Susan does not speak.
“It was a disgrace!” Mrs. Geesky contends. “It was such an insult. They called the cops. An old woman interfered. I had to get him. He was dead under the car.” Mrs. Geesky looks at Susan who has not moved and stresses, “Old men are different than old women!’
Susan Belle slides the palm of her hands along each of her thighs in a concurrent backward flow until they stop at her torso. She listens.
Susan begins to see Mrs. Geesky in a different context. Susan recognizes that this woman finds everything insufferable except when it comes to animals.
“The day of reckoning will come. I assure you and THEM! I will have my day in court. Just wait and see. The blasphemy of the dead. It’s a dread beyond words. A dread. I was under the strictest right and they….” At this point Mrs. Geesky sucks the saliva between her teeth then sucks her cheeks in, smacking her lips together. She shifts. “I had every right to get him! He was a very old, old cat. The old woman, what does she know? She knows nothing about the Great Matter. His body shall not remain all night on the ground, but you shall bury him the same day…. I follow that law. It’s nonsense when the coppos come and try to tell me otherwise. They think they can just tell me what the law is. I know the Great Matter. I know the law. I don’t break the law!”
“They said I have a stack of wrongs against me. I am not afraid to be handcuffed. I’ve been handcuffed before. Do you know what they said?”
Susan shrugs and says with a shudder, “I don’t know.” Mrs. Geesky stops.
“You better listen!” Mrs. Geesky threatens as though Susan is a child. Susan remains still, hands still, feet on the floor, knees together. Appears inanimate.
Mrs. Geesky maintains her invective pace. “The whole neighborhood is in on it. Two calls in one night. Ha! Three calls, four calls. It’s all the same to me. I follow the rules. There are rules for the Great Matter. And the rules are clear cut.” She repeats in a low voice as if what she says are sacred words, “His body shall not lay all night on the ground.”
Susan hears the change but remains as she was. She studies Mrs. Geesky and realizes it is the cat’s body that shall not lie all night on the ground.
“In the end, the coppos agreed. I didn’t go anywhere in any handcuffs once the coppos saw the body. They told me to get my gear and go home. Take the body and go home.” Mrs. Geesky squeezes her fingers around the cross-body bag. “I still can bring them up on charges. I’ll have my day in court. I keep a list. Every day I add to the list. Mind your own business. That’s what I told them.”
Mrs. Geesky pauses. The air continues to echo her tirade. There is hate in her face, Susan thinks. She’s using hate. Mrs. Geesky relaxes her arms and asks Susan, this time in a more perfunctory manner as though her habit is implacable. “Will you write a good note?” Susan sees the strength of the cold-hearted tendency and takes it as an opportunity to leap over Mrs. Geesky’s inclination.
“We are restricted by the facts we know leaving us to make use of them in some way that makes sense to us.”
Mrs. Geesky’s shoulders draw up as she tries to take in Susan’s words. After a short pause with shoulders back at attention, she approves part of what Susan mentioned. “I keep track of the facts.”
“Yes. I’d think you would.” Susan wants to smile but resists thinking it might rile up this vulnerable and exposed woman who knows only one way; to defend and attack with the law, but law she knows.
“Fate misunderstood…” Mrs. Geesky restates her censure. “The cops and the neighbors don’t understand.”
“Not many of us do.” Susan risks the disruption and follows up with a question. “May I ask, Mrs. Geesky, what you’d like in the good note?”
“You’re the DOCTOR!” she ramps up.
“Yes. I am. Your work….”
Although a plain word, this word work seems to bring up yet another flame.
“Mister. Mister Robert Kirkwood.”
Susan frowns then assumes the woman is speaking of her boss.
“Oh. I see. Mr. Robert Kirkwood. I should address the note to him?”
“The good note! “she insists.
“Of course. The good note.”
“Stop repeating what we’ve covered. It makes you stupid. And I don’t want a stupid doctor to write a good note.”
Susan refrained from saying another word. She began to think Mrs. Geesky knew vastly different facts about work which meant she may in a real sense know truly little about a good note. She knew only about the rules of what she called the Great Matter.
In the driest voice Susan Belle starts again. “Anytime one of my dogs died I found myself in an odd but painful feeling of being crushed. Even as a child…and it might be more accurate to say…. particularly as a child, I felt this terrible, tightness in my belly. I couldn’t eat.”
“You are NOT a child!”
“That’s true. And what is true is when one of my dogs dies now, I still feel this terrible tightness. And I can’t eat.”
“Some things never change.”
Susan wants to ask Mrs. Geesky why that is, but refrains. She knows it would lead to digression. It was enough for her to hear Mrs. Geesky say, things never change.
“Your dog dying has nothing to do with my good note.”
Susan vigorous. “How is it that you have come to such a conclusion?”
“Dogs don’t need a good note. I do.” she says as if she tasted something tart.
“I see.” Susan says a bit deflated. “Then tell me, what does Mr. Robert Kirkwood need?”
“I have NO idea. YOU are the DOCTOR.” Mocking.
“Did he say why he was asking for the good note?”
“He got a complaint. And I know who complained.”
“Do you mind telling me about the complaint?”
“Yes, I mind.”
“Mrs. Geesky, without knowing anything about your work or the complaint against you I am in the dark as to what you need.”
“There is no need to be nasty.”
Susan, a quiet thinker, considers her options and recognizes if she denies being nasty another skirmish will arise. And on the other hand, if she ignores it, she remains in the dark. She decides to remain silent.
After savoring her small triumph, Mrs. Geesky offers an interpretation of Susan’s silence. “Good. Good. Silence means consent.” Susan is acquainted with this verbal trap and again remains in silence. “Good. Good.” Mrs. Geesky a tad more prideful, “Consent again. You were nasty, just admit it. Uh. But you already have.” Mrs. Geesky throws a direct line at Susan.
Susan knew the silence seemed to up the risk for Mrs. Geesky in an imagined inner conflict. Susan decides to speak.
“You remind me of many people I have read about.”
Before Mrs. Geesky can object Susan adds. “But you don’t want to hear about them today. We’ve talked quite a bit. I must admit I am feeling pinched and hungry. I could do with a bite of food and something to drink.”
Mrs. Geesky is jostled by Susan’s comparison to unknown others. Feeling elbowed but without rancor Mrs. Geesky gives herself over to an admission of not knowing. “I don’t know,” she says, as she beaches her head in the palms of her hands. For reasons not clearly offered, Mrs. Geesky appears groggy as though she had gotten to the end of something unexpectedly.
“Don’t think I have forgotten. NO! You better understand. I’ll be back. You owe me a good note.”
With this weakened rush at Susan, Mrs. Geesky wraps her arms around her leather pouch, tilts forward and lurches out of her chair. Loretta moans when Mrs. Geesky totters across the room to the door. Minutes earlier Mrs. Geesky had been brash, combative but when she hears Loretta’s low-pitched moan she stops, placing one hand on the door jamb, and turns. Less anticipatory, more timid and unsure she speaks to Loretta culling the dog’s favor.
“Yes. What a good girl you are.” She then walks out.
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