The two Harpies, yourteenmag.com
In the morning, the first day of the new year, it was little Roland waking us up. He was pulling on a handful of his mother’s hair as if it were some kind of alarm device and it was because she woke up. He had to go to the bathroom. He was potty trained, and she got up and took him into the unfamiliar room. After that, she brought him back to bed where he amused himself laying on his back and looking around, waving his hands around, while we talked.
“Claire” I began, “you were crying so much last night I wanted to ask why, but then I thought it best just to let you sob it out. But now I have to ask, why the tears?”
“It was relief at first. My mission is finally over, and I’m so glad to be back here with you. This plan was a huge turning point in my life, starting with the new year, and you allowed all that to happen the moment you let us in and were united with your son, at long last. I thought of what a kind person you were, after all the things I’d done to you, and what I’d done to others. The tears wouldn’t stop. I was overwhelmed with so much emotion.”
“What did you do to others?”
“I controlled their minds, secretly, their drift of thought, their attitudes and their votes in councils. I did this thousands of times to get old enemies to forget their differences and sign accords. And most of the time, by far, it was men’s minds I had to change.”
“How’s that” I asked, “how could you get so close to someone’s head?”
“It didn’t take long Roland, after all my experiments on you, to fine hone my talents. Pretty soon I was able to do it from across a room and not just one person at a time but a dozen, and no one ever had the slightest inkling that I’d been inside their head. That’s when I realized I had to commit myself to this mission. I was the catalyst for a change for the good, for peace, and the only one who could do it. When I ate the wafer in your bedroom with Scout standing here, I made her a silent promise to use any powers it gave me to make the world a better place, and I lived up to that promise.”
“So that’s how Naomi and Natalie received their posts and so many diplomats from around the world sat down together signing peace treaties?”
“Yes. Europe is restored with just a few concessions in the Baltic states to the Russians, which was quite a feat seeing as two years ago they’d overrun half the continent. The Middle East is now at peace. The Palestinians have their sovereignty and their land, less than they wanted, but happy with what they got now that aid is pouring in from around the world for them to develop it. India and Pakistan, China and India, one united Korea, I was a busy girl.”
“Will it last?” I asked.
“I don’t know” Claire responded. “It’s a fragile fabric. But if people follow their leader’s examples to live in harmony, it should last. Our greatest success has been in the last year when most of the world’s populations received the chip. It’s the greatest inducement to peace, not signed pieces of paper. There’s a great deal of goodwill and hope now in everyone’s outlook. ‘Health, happiness, harmony’ that’s the new world motto.”
“If that’s the case, Claire, you did the right thing. I suppose that if I was the pawn for a few years to make it happen, so be it. How can one person’s happiness stack up against millions? I know I don’t rate that high. So if you’re still madly in love with me make it up to me, show me. Spend your time with our little boy in this house. I don’t mean all your time but a good slice of it. But one last question, why did you quit?”
“Because I’m losing my powers” she said. “I’m probably at only thirty percent of what I was a year ago. The chips do wear out and die. I take the best care of myself and hardly ever drink. I know that destroys them faster. But they still fade and dim to nothing. Besides, that was always my agenda, to quit someday and return to you. It wasn’t an easy life. I must have spent a quarter of my time on planes, and the concentration and focus required of me every day was exhausting. Those few, sweet hours each month I was able to slip away here for one night were my only vacations, and I did savor them. I deceived you in every way regarding dates and times but never in the joy I had in being back in this house with you in my arms. But now I’m back for ever, and it feels great.”
She punctuated this sentence with a kiss.
Our child had climbed off the bed to explore the room and had just pushed open the door to the library, with its steep circular staircase. We retrieved him together and showered and dressed. At the breakfast table, with all of us gathered around, we had no high chair, so Claire took and placed little Roland in Scout’s lap. Scout fed him every spoonful of his oatmeal with intense concentration. Her only comment was: “I have to show this to Rebecca. This is amazing.”
As our breakfast broke up, I left the table to make a phone call to Rebecca’s parents and was accosted by Mary, with Naomi right behind her.
“Did it go well last night between you two?” was their first question.
“Ask Claire for an answer, or maybe not. She spent half the night crying on our pillow. But I think that resolved a lot of matters for both of us.”
Mary responded, “It’s because she loves you so much, Roland, and tears were her only way to express it. She knows she’s hurt you, but now that you’re back together all the hurt can be forgiven and repaired.”
Naomi joined in, “I think so too. You didn’t hear the way she spoke about you these last three years. She praised you constantly because she suspected all along that you knew what she was doing to you and yet you endured it for her. After your disappearance last summer you wouldn’t believe how distraught she was, how she came to all of us desperately asking for any clues. We knew you’d hooked up with Charlie because he was gone too, but we had no idea where. I saw how upset she was and that’s how I measure her love for you.”
“We’ll see, no more explanations. It’s deeds that count from now on” was all I could say.
Back in the kitchen, I asked Claire about what sort of life our child had since his birth. She assured me it was the best that money could buy, with three round the clock nurses in a mansion in Washington D.C. where she spent much of her time and most of her nights there with him. She told me that she purposely kept all males out of the house so that I’d be his first and only father figure and that she spoke of me often to him so that he’d be eager to see me. He was, in fact, very curious about me as she placed him in my lap. I spent the next hour showing him the house, just the two of us walking hand in hand. I showed him the bedroom that would be his and described the pictures on the wall. He looked on them with wonderment, perhaps not understanding a tenth of what I said. I spoke slowly and clearly as I described to him details about knights and ladies long ago, in an age long before either of us were born, pointing to the figures. But I didn’t dummy down my words. I despise what they call ‘namby-pamby’ talk. The sooner you teach children the correct words for each object, the better off they’ll be, and the more they’ll look up to you for not treating them like infants.
Claire was waiting for us on the back deck after our house tour with a big smile. Scout and Rebecca were standing right behind her staring intently, like two Harpies ready to pounce upon their prey and glide the innocent boy into their private fairyland.
This made me wonder about my son's fragile mentality, surrounded only by women so far, and now in my own house hardly any different, spoon fed by teenage girls and about to be coddled, overly so, with Naomi, Mary, and Monique in the wings just dying to participate.
But then I thought, “If he’s in my hands now he’s gonna have the education that will round him out. Even in fairy tales and children’s books, which I’ll read to him every night, will be my perspective, the comments, the precepts of an independent mind. We’ll start with ‘La Fontaine’. This little boy is mine.”
“Abbotts first” I announced. I took Claire by the hand and led the group next door through the broken wall.
“From now on” I began, looking back, “my son’s name is Rollo, understood.”
“Got it” was Scout’s swift reply. “But we get to play with him, don’t we?”
“You can’t treat him like a doll” was my reply. “What are you two girls scheming?”
“We’ll be practicing mothers” Rebecca said.
I turned to Claire, “what do you think. It’s your call. I trust Scout and Rebecca as good influences, but you must appreciate my fear for undue female influence over a boy’s brain and I don’t want him spoiled. He needs to learn to do things for himself.”
“We’ll all be teaching him how to do that, you especially. They’ll only be wrapping him in love, and what harm can that do.”
“Wrapping him in their charms” I replied. “But I don’t mind. It’s his introduction to the world as is.”
Next door the show began. I took this as a good point for an exit and asked Claire to join me on our back deck, alone.
“Claire, the past is over. I’m free of your tricks, and that’s the way it’s going to be from now on. Drinking with the boys and fresh air and the mountains did the job for me. I think I’m going to keep that habit up, every summer, for years to come. I’m pretty much chip free in my head and can feel it. As I look at you now, I see you as you are. You’re the woman I love, but at the same time, you’re just a part of my life, not nearly the whole of it.”
“I know now that you manipulated my thoughts with your programs and loops. Why the hell did you have me constantly rearranging my books?”
“Because when we first returned you were so happy restoring this house, especially the library, pulling the books one by one out of the panic room and basement and lovingly putting them back in their former slots. I wanted you to be that happy every day while I was gone, so that’s the loop I created.”
“So why didn’t you let me read the books” I asked.
“That was a painful decision” she answered, “and I’m sorry for it. But I was scared that if I let you read, a portion of your mind, your consciousness, would return and see my spell. So I had to forbid it. But you see I changed that program as soon as I could improve it. It hurt me so much that first year, knowing I was enslaving you.”
“So then you developed the Machiavellian trick of making me think I was in control of things while I was still your pawn.”
“Yes, and that allowed me to restore your free will, your whole identity to do whatever you chose to do. You became Roland once more. The light in your eyes lit up again, and I was so happy to share it, a complete you.”
“Except for the matter of your absences” I added.
“Yes. I knew you would never accept a relationship where I’d only drop by one brief night a month. So I fooled you into thinking I’d been here two or three nights every week. Your diary keeping was a nice try. What you didn’t realize is that we rewrote it together every time I did return, sitting together at your desk. I loved those long hours. It was as if we were composing the story of a perfect life together, a love story, hand in hand. When we finished, I’d erase your memory of the rewrite and make it all seem real.”
“But you must have caught on somehow, didn’t you, with your long absence last summer” Claire continued. “Tell me how you found out. What clever trick did you use? I thought my spells were perfect?”
“Pure chance” I replied. I told her the story of the roses.
“One other thing, Claire, I know this is a sensitive question but you know every detail of my existence over the last three years, and I know nothing about yours, and this is unfair, so I have to ask. Did you sleep with other men on your diplomatic missions?”
“Of course not Rolland. I’m in love with you” she replied as if piqued.
“But you’re so beautiful and I’m sure in a world of powerful men and backroom sessions and late night meetings that many made advances.”
“Yes Roland, many did, by the dozens. But you forget, I didn’t have to.”
‘What do you mean by that” I asked, surprised.
“You know my powers. I could slip any movie I invented into their minds, and to them, that was what really happened. I would use the settings we were in, the fine hotel restaurants and bedrooms and make them think they’d conquered me. I could do this with a blink of an eye and often did, especially with the senior politicians. That put an end to their approaches, and they were so much nicer to me, so much more compliant the next day.”
“I’d guess that would make them come after you all the more.”
“I could do a million things. I could make them think of their wives and daughters and feel guilty, or make them go chasing after some other woman, imagining themselves madly in love. Or I could put them in a sober frame of mind bent on business. It was all so easy. I had so much power.”
“I hope you didn’t make me fall in love with you with the blink of an eye.”
“Of course not darling. You made me fall in love with you, your mind, your character, everything about you. And I didn’t have those powers when we first met. I was in love with you the day before we met, just listening in on your golden words, your enlightened views about the chips, wanting to help all mankind, and the kindness in your voice and the way you managed people. That’s why I had to meet you.”
“So, an innocent, love-struck maiden day one, a sorceress one week later. Is that the female mind? It has all the ingredients of a Broadway musical, don’t you think?”
I wasn’t exactly a ‘love-struck maiden’. I was about to take down the world wide web. Or maybe I was, in the matter of love, an innocent, foolish virgin. The fact is that my heart is all yours, my dear. And with you, I never cheated about love, and never will.”
I believed her implicitly, completely. It was for my peace of mind. The matter was settled, and I’d never question it again. I told her so, for which she thanked me. If you’re going to love someone you have to give them this degree of trust and fidelity until proven wrong with hard and ugly facts, and without doubts and suspicions until that day.
