Chapter 2
"I can't go back to Joe." Tammy played with the edges of the scarf knotted at her waist. "I just can't"
"Why?" Barnabas was irritated now. "Because he turned you over to Yolanda?"
Tammy nodded.
"And in your mind that settles it?"
She said nothing.
"So you think that it was directed against you personally?"
"I... I don't know what to think."
"You want an excuse to leave Joe and go back to Jake. Not because you love Jake, but because you think that you owe it to someone to do so. That you owe it to your people."
"I thought that I could work, between Joe and me, but it can't"
"Why? Because Joe is vulnerable to supernatural forces that overpower his will? Do you think that Jake would be less vulnerable? Are you? Did you fight off Yolanda any better than him?"
"No. I did not." she admitted
"It was not directed against you. It was against me. And you were included because you were my daughter, because I care about you."
Tammy lifted her head defiantly "I did not ask you to do that."
"No. You didn't But I care, anyway. Now I ask myself why I should. You are a spoiled brat and if you were any younger I'd turn you over my knee and wallop you."
"You wouldn't dare!"
"No. I wouldn't. Tammy. I know Jake. And he's wrong for you. Do you know why?"
Why?"
"He's one of those who take their bitterness on their women. He thinks that since white society has emasculated the black male, he should reassert his masculinity by beating on his woman. He'll talk about getting even with whitey. And he'll get even with you. And you have already been in bed with a white man. Do you know what kind of a handle it gives him over you?"
Tammy's eyes blazed. "You are wrong."
"No. I am not. And you know it. Why else come to me, ask me what I think? It is Joe that you want. And Jake's just working on your guilt feelings to make you do something that you don't want. He's wrong for you."
"And Joe is right?"
"That you have to decide for yourself. But I am certain bout Jake."
"He's... he's a brother."
"So is Idi Amin." Barnabas shook his head. "Tammy, forget the rhetoric. Think of what your marriage to Jake would be like. Think about the way he's pressuring you now. It is not that he loves you, or that you love him. It is that it is your duty to sleep with him. You don't have any duty of that kind. You owe something to yourself. You owe something to the people you like and care about."
"I owe something to my people."
"There are better ways to help than marrying Jake. You can give money to the NAACP. You can give time and skills. You can mentor young black girls You can become politically active. What you don't have to do is marry a man you don't love and who'll treat you rotten as if that was going to undo the years of slavery and racial discrimination."
Tammy grimaced. "You know, I have been thinking along the same lines."
"But felt guilty for doing so?'
"How did you guess?'
"There is nothing that you can teach me about guilt."
"Still, the way that Joe would not help me..."
"If it was Joe's throat that Yolanda wanted to cut, would you have been able to stop her?"
Tammy shook her head.
"You would not have been able to. And why did Yolanda did not choose him? Because he is not my son, because his death would not have hurt me as much as yours."
"I wish that I could feel closer to you... Damn it! I like you. But... but the ship was yours."
"I know. I know."
"So this is it?" Verhoff sneered "We just wait, out in the field, wearing these glasses and hoping that something comes our way?"
"Yes. That's how it is done."
"Doesn't seem to be very... scientific."
"Well." Xavier snorted. "Psychoanalysis is not very scientific, either."
"It is scientific! We have proof!"
"Sure. have you ever seen a complex? At least I got photos, even if they are a bit blurry. Have you got anything to show, except a bunch of words to which anybody can attach any meaning? It is a great party game. Only you get paid for it."
"Mr. Davenport. You don't understand the theory behind it! You don't appreciate Sigmund's genius!" in his anger Verhoff's accent became more pronounced, making him sound like a caricature of a psychologist of the Viennese school.
"No more than you can understand U.F.O.s"
"It is not the same thing!"
"It is not? You insult what I do. I insult what you do."
"But..."
Xavier made a quick gesture. "Wait. Up there."
"Where?"
"Up there. Don't you see it?"
"I don't"
"Over that tree."
"Nothing to be seen. It is just your imagination."
"It is right under your nose!"
"There is noting..."
He saw it. A kind of oval shape. And surrounded by flames."
"What is it?' he asked dumbly.
"You tell me, since you know so much."
"I... I never saw anything like it."
"Well, I did." Xavier took his camera and began shooting pictures of it. "And this time I am getting good shots of it."
"I wish I could see it close." Verhoff say.
"Why don't you fly up there? You can do it."
Verhoff turned into a bat. He hated doing it. It did not seem proper for somebody with an M.D. and a Ph.D., and had studied with Freud. Herr Professors do not turn into bats, as a rule.
But this deserved to be investigated.
Only it did not work. No sooner ha had gotten a bit closer to the object that it disappeared.
It put him in a bad mood. And he blamed Xavier for it.
He felt like going for Xavier's throat, but stopped himself in time. It would be hardly dignified.
He had made himself a fool..."
Xavier beamed. "I got it this time! Photos and a witness! You saw it, clear as day. You saw it, didn't you?"
Reluctantly Verhoff nodded.
"Attaboy! You saw it with your own eyes. It was no hallucination, was it?"
"No. It was not." Verhoff admitted reluctantly.
"Don't feel so bad. We all go wrong sometimes."
"Do you really think that Edmund should go to school with all those uncouth children?" Roger asked Carolyn."
"He needs and education. And you did not want him sent away to school. The only school here is with the villager's children. And the teacher is good."
"But still, to be together with the riff-raff... Why can't he have a proper governess like I had, or you had?"
"And look what a success we made of our lives." Carolyn said bitterly. "Maybe if we had been schooled with the other children we might have turned out better."
"Still, they are riff-raff and we are Collinses."
Carolyn sighed. "I tried getting a governess. You know what Miss Oates (or Overton turned out to be.).
"There was Vicky."
"Vicky does not talk to me anymore." This confession hurt Carolyn. She had, now that Vicky was gone, no friend to talk to. She had employees, clerks as the plant, or maids at Collinwood. But no girlfriend with whom she could share... Maybe if she had been raised different she would have someone to confide in. someone to gossip about all the new babies and pregnancies, someone to wonder when Hallie would announce she was pregnant.
Instead she was the Lady of the manor, She to be Obeyed. Obeyed, and not loved...
When she married Adam she would leave Collinsport. Would go to live in New York, make friends there. Choose someone to run the plant in her absence...
"Why can't you hire another governess? "Roger kept insisting. "If you worked at it, instead of groping Adam, you'd find someone."
"I cannot find anyone. We have been blackballed by the employment agencies. Bad things happen to governesses here. The best we could do was Martha Howard, and she refuses to set foot here."
"This one was Adam's fault. He is bad for you. Carolyn. Hasn't he done enough damage?"
"Adam was the latest, but our current bad reputation comes from you, dear Uncle. It was you who tried to shoot Phillip Todd and had to be sent away to "rest". It was you who attacked Delia Harding."
'"Look where she is now."
"And Roxanne Drew.:
"I was right about her, too."
"Right or not, we have a very bad reputation. We cannot hire governesses anymore. Either Edmund goes to school with the riff-raff as you put it, or he goes away to a private school away from here.."
"What about home schooling?"
"Will you teach him? You know that you are not qualified. And I know I am not."
"There has to be a way."
"There isn't. We have to make the best of it."
