“Maybe she didn’t know what was happening,” I said with a shrug. “Or maybe she was afraid he’d lay into her even worse than usual if she did anything.”
The Doctor’s face filled with a look that said he’d considered such suggestions many times. “As to her not knowing,” he said, “that seems unlikely, if not impossible, given her own violent relationship with the man. And as to her not wishing to incur his wrath-she did so deliberately far too often for me to accept that proposition. I have always known that his violence toward her gratified some perverse part of her psyche. But the violence toward my sister and myself? I don’t think she relished that.” He squinted a bit, and seemed to be struggling with an idea. “No, since we began this case, another possibility has presented itself to me-the thought that, although my mother cared for her children, their welfare was simply not her first priority. And the real question is not why that should have been so, but why it should have been such a difficult theory to either formulate or accept-why, indeed, it should have taken a murder case to make me think of it. After all, a man who makes his children of secondary or even minor importance, though he may be criticized by some, is hardly held to be unusual. Why should we believe any differently of a woman?”
“Well,” I found myself saying, simply and automatically, “because … she’s your mother. It’s only natural.”
The Doctor chuckled. “That answer from you, Stevie?”
I realized the stupidity of what I’d said, and tried to cheat my way out of it: “Well-it’s not like we’re talking about my mother-”
“No. In such discussions we never seem to be talking about anyone’s mother. We seem to be talking about what Sara would call an abstract-a myth.” The Doctor took out his cigarette case. “Have I ever told you about Frances Blake?”
“The woman you almost married when you were at Harvard?” I asked.
“The very same. She would have surprised you. Wealthy, a gadabout-fairly intelligent, but too personally ambitious to take the time to develop her insights. Just ask Moore. He quite disliked her.” Lighting his cigarette, the Doctor chuckled. “As I grew to, eventually.” He blew out some smoke, and his face took on a puzzled look. “She was not unlike my mother, in many ways…”
“So what was the attraction?” I asked.
“Well-in addition to some more obvious factors, she had a rather vulnerable side, one that seemed to allow her to understand the destructive foolishness of much of what she did. In my youthful naïveté, I believed I could nurture that side of her until it became dominant.”
“So-you wanted to change her?”
“Do I detect censure in your voice, Stevie?” the Doctor asked, laughing quietly again. “Well, you’re right to put it there. I behaved idiotically… Imagine, contemplating marriage to a woman simply because you perceive her as vulnerable to change. She wasn’t, of course. As pigheaded as… well. Set in her ways, shall we say.”
I looked down at the waters of the Hudson as they churned away from the bow of the steamer. “Unh-hunh,” I said, jabbing a finger on the rail in front of me and thinking about my own life as much as about the story I was listening to.
A big gust of cool wind hit the ship, and the Doctor drew his jacket tighter. “It was all unconscious, of course,” he said. “But then, one can be as foolish unconsciously as consciously, eh?” He took another drag off his stick and turned his back to the wind. “And then, as I grew older, I realized that my actions had embodied something more sinister than a simple desire to change Frances. I had actually believed that if she failed to change and continued on to the life for which her own silly desires had destined her, it would somehow be my fault.”
“Yours?”I said, looking up at him. “How did you figure that?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t ‘figure’ it. I felt it. I was an inexperienced young man, Stevie, one whose relationship to his own mother had failed in some central way. I couldn’t help but take the responsibility for that failure on myself-precisely because of all the things we’ve talked about. It’s ‘unnatural’ to hold your own mother accountable for terrible wrongs. So I buried such feelings, and looked for some other woman whose behavior I could alter. The only blessing is that another, equally primitive part of my mind told me I couldn’t sacrifice my entire life to such an endeavor. And so I said farewell to Frances.” He shook once in the wind. “Still, it’s an interesting technique-leaving one person behind in order to find her or him somewhere else. And in someone else.”
“Yeah,” I said, quietly amazed that-as usual-he’d been able to speak to exactly what was troubling me without ever mentioning my life at all.
Then I had a constructive thought of my own: “It’s kinda like what we’re doing on this job.”
“Indeed?”
I nodded. “We’re leaving Nurse Hunter in New York to go and find Libby Hatch upstate. Only difference is, they’re not like each other-they are each other. So maybe this time, that kind of technique can actually work-since it’s aimed at the right target.”
The Doctor considered that as he finished off his cigarette. “You know-you may have a talent for this sort of work, Stevie.” He glanced around, then stuck the butt of his cigarette into a nearby bucket of sand. “Well, this wind is stiffening. We’ve ordered breakfast. Steak and eggs for you. Come down when you’re ready.”
He gave me the quickest of glances, along with that fast but reassuring smile of his. Then, clapping his hands together, he walked back to the stairs-a bit unsteadily in that swelling, tidal portion of the lower Hudson-and vanished below.
I turned and looked back at the Palisades, feeling for the packet of cigarettes in my pocket; but then I decided against having another one. The horizon before me was beautiful, but it would be beautiful from our parlor, too, and I suddenly realized that my mood was changing, and I didn’t want to be alone anymore.
“Well, Libby Hatch,” I said, looking ahead at the long, wide stretch of the Hudson and then drumming my fingers on the rail as I turned away from it. “You got no place left to hide…”
I bounded down the stairs that the Doctor’d taken without ever glancing at the waters behind us.
If I had taken a peek in that direction, I would’ve seen a small steam launch what was trailing behind the Mary Powell as fast as its small engine would permit. And if, having caught sight of said vessel, I’d squinted and looked hard, it’s possible I would’ve made out a small figure standing in its prow: a figure whose dark features, bushy hair, and suit of baggy clothes I would’ve recognized. But no matter how hard I’d looked, I wouldn’t have seen the arsenal of strange weapons from the Orient what the mysterious little character was carrying-for those he kept hidden from view, until he was ready to strike.