CROSSROADS --  PART 4
 PREVIOUS PARTS APPEARED IN SEPT - OCT - NOV. 2014 
BY:  DOLA  DUTTA ROY
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

As days went by, Naomi started looking grey again in her drab and dowdy clothes. Her hair was no longer tied up in fancy ribbons or twirls. She moved about in a daze, talked less and played the violin more often. Mostly sad tunes. She struggled with her interlude with insanity every now and then. However, she grew cautious with threats from Helen and desperately tried to come to terms with what was doled out to her by fate.

Christmas had come and gone. Helen returned from another visit to her daughter in Irvine and immediately announced that she was going to get her bunions fixed. She called both Naomi and me and showed how ugly her feet looked with the bunions protruding menacingly from her shoes.

This hurt her vanity. However, there was a minor problem. A new boarder was coming in to fill Tim’s place.

Peter McCullough was to join Claremont McKenna and had responded to Helen’s ad in the Claremont Courier. He needed to be shown around. Both Naomi and I agreed to do the needful while she would be away and asked her to relax.

When Helen returned from Mt. Sinai after the surgery we put her in bed. But what worried her was that schools were getting ready for Registration and Peter hadn’t shown up yet.

Just the day before Registration at the Claremont Colleges, a Toyota truck rolled in through the gate, in the afternoon. I looked out. The truck had a load of cardboard boxes and a large suitcase. The guy who jumped out of the front seat was massive. Not less than six feet, two inches in height, he had a sun burnt face and floppy flaxen hair. I opened the door for him and noticed that he had pale grey eyes that made him look unmistakably Nordic.

In a flat, matter-of-fact voice he asked for Helen and forwarded a note that he had received from her.

It was Peter McCullough. Finally!

I showed Peter to his room and parroted what Helen had briefed me to say. He looked at the size of the room and grimaced. Then with a shrug he quietly handed me an envelope which obviously had cash in it. His first month’s rent and the deposit amount meant for Helen.

That was Peter McCullough – big, strong and silent.

Peter was quiet and mostly in his room when he was home. For a big man he moved around with quick and feline grace. It took Naomi a bit of time to catch his attention.

Helen was on her feet again; rather on her crutches and back to her shrewd self.

It was not even seven in the morning when we were startled to hear the lawn mower rolling in the backyard one Sunday. Zachary, the guy who raked and mowed the lawn, was still on leave. I got curious and put on my housecoat to check out what was going on.

I found Naomi staring out into the backyard with her cup of coffee in hand watching Peter doing the mowing, evidently at Helen’s behest. In his t-shirt and by the look in Naomi’s eyes – Peter looked definitely attractive. She turned to me and smiled a mysterious smile.

“Didn’t realize he was this handsome,” she whispered and winked. I gave her a look of mock concern and we both laughed. “Oh, no!” I mouthed. ”Don’t you start dreaming again!” But I was sure that another chapter in her life was going to unfold itself rapidly.

“Isn’t he a sweetheart?” Helen croaked over her cup of tea at the table. “Zach is still unavailable, so I asked Peter to do the lawns for me. Of course, I’ll pay him for that,” she said holding up her chin and the cup in her hand with a firm grip.

“Good for you,” I said.” You take it easy.”

Very soon, Naomi was back to her jubilant self. She was flying again, buoyant with confidence. Like an unanchored ship reaching out for the deep blue sea, she was bouncing and bobbing with joy.

Peter was a good listener who personally preferred monosyllables. It suited Naomi who usually became garrulous whenever she felt comfortable with a guy. However, no one was complaining.

When the spring clouds floated in, the flowers began to bloom in the backyard and the sun seemed a bit generous, Naomi would spread herself on the grass in feminine outfits and pore over a book looking pretty as a picture. And this she did when Peter would be around and Helen would be away either to the Community Centre or to do library work. Then the two of them would sip wine and fight for a piece of the same apple.

I was quite sure things would look up for Naomi eventually, but was certainly not prepared for the next big episode in her life.

* * *

9.

There was first a tap on my door and then a banging that woke me up. My first impression was – must be the rattling of the innumerable quakes California experienced intermittently. But it was fist pounding away on wood.

I had taken a sleeping pill to get some undisturbed rest but I shot up from bed when the banging got louder and more intense. At the other end of the door, Helen stood in her nightgown with soft curlers in her hair. She looked old and tired.

The moment I widened the door, she grabbed my hand and said,” A terrible, terrible thing has happened.” She covered her mouth and choked.”Come ‘n look for yourself,” she started panting.

I realized she was agitated beyond words. Before I knew it, she was  pulling me along and stopped  in front of Peter’s room. The door was ajar and there was a gaping wound on its body. Somebody had kicked it really hard to break it open. Standing at the door what I saw chilled my veins. Helen prodded me to look inside but I stood there mute and shaken.

Naomi was lying in a pool of blood oozing out of her left wrist and Peter was hovering over her holding his abdomen with his left hand. There was blood seeping through his fingers! Naomi had passed out. I looked at Helen and then at Peter. For once I saw some emotion playing on his otherwise imperceptible expression. What he said was not hard to believe.

Peter was confounded by Naomi’s irregular behavior, her theatrics and melodrama and had asked her to leave him alone and that’s when somewhere some cord had snapped. He looked up to point at a sharp knife next to Naomi’s inert body.

“Don’t you touch it,” screamed Helen and Peter recoiled.

By then we heard clicking of boots down the hallway and sirens cutting through the night air.

While Peter and Naomi were getting medical attention at the Police Hospital, we got grilled by  the officers.  When the truth came out, I was not surprised.

Evidently, Naomi had been busy casting her love spell on Peter with much sincerity. She expected an emotional commitment in return. However, Peter, with his inborn male genetic disorder, had a commitment phobia. He demanded that their relationship have no strings attached as he had a girlfriend back home in Phoenix whom he cared for enormously. She was going to join him soon in the Fall session at Pitzer College. Till then he was available. This was indeed a cultural phenomenon I couldn’t understand.

Naomi was shell shocked! She didn’t appreciate the deadline for her emotional involvement. It was not easy for her to accept duplicity of any kind anymore. She felt used and about to be dismissed one more time. With her pride hurt, she grew vengeful. This time she was going to take on the offender -- one who gave her pain.  With all the rage steaming inside over the years, she chose to engage in an unimaginable violation of human dignity, by emasculating him that would maim him for life.

Ben Goldberg came down and fought the court battles and so did Peter’s family. The media channels loved the ratings that were spiraling upwards in their favor.

To our relief, the story soon stopped making headlines and got replaced by newer and fresh crimes in the newspapers and TV. There were perhaps some unknown dealings behind the scene as well, but the community was aghast. 

Naomi was indifferent to all this commotion as she had slipped into a world of her own where she raged and talked to invisible friends and figures. Ben took her away to New York. Soon it became common knowledge that she was in the confines of an asylum. She was diagnosed with Manic Bipolar Disorder.

This certainly filled me with sadness. I was distressed for quite sometime thinking of her and often wondered if she was a victim of circumstances or the architect of her own fate! I found no answer to all those questions in my mind.

For years I thought of Naomi, complete with her tragic flaws, a whimsical and mixed up person, fighting invisible enemies. I wondered if she could ever be her normal self again and lead a happy life; within and without. I feared if she would fail to rise above her agonizing plight -- or succumb to it most ungraciously. But I had no access to that knowledge.

Some years later Naomi Goldberg made headlines again.  Her picture appeared with many others in tabloids and newspapers as one of those who took recourse to self-immolation to save a cult-camp from unreasonable investigation, humiliation and gross injustice meted out by the State of Wyoming.

I was certain that Naomi Goldberg left the planet, perhaps, mourned by no one.

************ THE END***********

Dola Dutta Roy

Calcutta, India