The Scarred Man Read Online Free PDF

would answer with a listless shrug.
        Perhaps if she could have wept, it would have been better. I asked Newberry about that, and he agreed that it would be a good sign, the emotional logjam would be breaking up. But she remained dry-eyed. Or if she did weep it was secretly.
        Newberry tried probing my psyche too. He wanted to know how I felt about the fact that my wife had been raped. I didn't need a shrink to tell me that it had been an assault on myself as well. Stacey had been damaged to the very core of her being, and a worm had entered my soul. We, who had been as one, were now strangers. We were living together in a tiny space but going our own ways.
        "You will have to be very very careful with her for a long time," Newberry said.
        "I know."
        "And with yourself."
        "How so?"
        He looked at me over the tops of his bifocals, his balding skull wrinkled. "You strike me as a rather somber man."
        "Somber?"
        "Mrs. Shaw tells me you were a combat marine officer in Korea."
        "Yes."
        "Did you kill?"
        "Of course."
        "How did you feel about it?"
        "Great."
        "Would you like to try to understand your hostility toward me, Mr. Shaw?"
        "No."
        "I wonder why not."
        "Because I'm not coming to you for help, Doctor."
        "But you are trying to help your wife, aren't you?"
        "Yes."
        "Then surely you must understand that your own reaction to this whole thing is extremely important."
        "I don't much believe in psychiatry, Doctor."
        "What do you believe in, Mr. Shaw?"
        "In finding your own way."
        "But that's exactly what psychiatry is all about, Mr. Shaw."
        There was no point in going into it. We did not, as the kids say, have the right vibrations. I didn't want him chewing away at my psyche like a mouse nibbling cheese. Enough fragmentation had taken place already. It was up to me to try to put the pieces back together the best way I could.
        
***
        
        We were suffering from cabin fever on the boat-too much togetherness and not enough communication. A change of scene might do us both some good. We packed a bag and drove across the Venetian Causeway to the Beach, and checked into the largest and most impressive hotel we could find.
        They put us on the eighteenth floor, looking out over the sea. The Gulf Stream was a shiny purple mirror. Tankers crawled along its edge like toys. Below us the pool was a kidney-shaped aquamarine gem. Hundreds of bodies-appearing from above like fields of some curious pink plants-spread out in regular rows from the sides of the pool and across the gigantic terraces. The sounds of calypso music barely reached our balcony. White-coated waiters darted like watchful nurses among the naked, thirsty, embryonic forms broiling in the sun. From eighteen floors up, it was all rather foolish, but fun.
        That night we dressed carefully (on the boat we never wore anything but jeans and sweaters) and went down to dinner. We ate and drank too much, and both of us were trying hard to make it festive. It broke my heart to see the effort Stacey made. She would bubble on brightly for a minute or two, and then a pall of silence would grip us both. When she thought I wasn't looking, her eyes would become shiny with tears. All around us were people having a high old time. We danced but we were like wood in each other's arms. It was ghastly.
        We went to bed early in our twin beds. Stacey bathed and came out wearing her robe. She switched off the light before taking off her robe and getting into bed. We lay there in the dark in the smooth hum of the air conditioning, alone with our thoughts. Suspended in that glass and concrete bubble eighteen stories above the earth, I felt isolated from the world. Spaceman circling the spinning globe in the star-packed night. Alone in my softly humming