Читать книгу Mood Swing - Jane Graves - Страница 8

It was five after seven when Susan trotted up the front steps of Andrews Hall, one of the stark concrete buildings that comprised the campus of Henderson Community College. She guessed the court had struck a deal with the college to use its classrooms, which made her wonder if the other students in the building knew they were sharing facilities with hardened criminals who could go nuts and take hostages at any moment.

Once inside, she hurried down the hall to room 124, rounding the doorway to find a tiny classroom, where four of the desks had been arranged in a circle. Two women and a man were already seated. Given the briefcase beside the man and the admonishing frown he gave Susan when she entered the room, he was clearly the instructor. An endomorphic little person, he wore tattered slacks that had lost their crease years ago, a plain white dress shirt with cuffs rolled to his elbows and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. And on his head was a tuft of hair so flaming red it would stop traffic on the tarmac at Dallas Fort Worth International.

She scurried into a seat and slung her purse over the back of it. “Sorry I’m late. I had an emergency at the hospital—”

“Seven sharp from now on. We have a lot of ground to cover.”

No problem. Next time she’d just walk out at a quarter to seven and leave the acute arterial bleeding for the next shift.

“This is our class, ladies,” he said. “I’m thrilled there are so few of you. Some groups are so large we have to move to another classroom, which, of course, is indicative of the societal trend toward the manifestation of anger in unhealthy and aggressive ways.”

Of course.

“I’m Dr. Hugh Danforth. I have a Ph.D. in behavioral psychology. It’s my job to ensure that when our eight weekly sessions are up, you’ll have the tools you need to face stressful situations in a constructive manner and perhaps—” he stopped short, fanning all of them with a supercilious stare “—keep the amount of time you spend in a court of law to an absolute minimum.”

Susan felt her eyes crossing. She was in for eight weeks of this? Danforth was clearly one of those guys who stroked his chin a lot and looked pensive, as if his brain was constantly at work on some esoteric Theory of Great Importance even as he was forced to muck around with individuals who didn’t share his stunning intellect.

Danforth consulted his notebook. “Which one of you is Tonya Rutherford?”

The woman to Susan’s right raised her hand, her metallic gold nails glinting in the fluorescent light. She had short, spiky hair in an unnatural shade of red-orange that was probably very fashionable, but it looked to Susan as if she’d dyed her hair with Mercurochrome. Her knit top and denim skirt showed way too much cleavage and way too much leg for a woman her age, which had to be close to forty. Then again, if Susan had been blessed with that woman’s generous C cup, instead of her own paltry A, and if her legs weren’t crawling with spider veins, maybe she’d consider baring a little more skin, too.

“What do you do for a living, Ms. Rutherford?”

“I own a hair salon.”

“Please share with the class why you’re here.”

“Uh…a judge sent me here?” Tonya replied.

“What was the nature of your offense?”

“Oh, that. My husband had me arrested for assaulting him.”

Okay, now, Susan thought. Maybe this class will be interesting after all.

“Specifically, Ms. Rutherford. What was the situation that culminated in your arrest?”

“Hmm. Let’s see…oh, yeah. I found out my husband cheated on me. I sent a few pieces of stoneware across the room in the general vicinity of his head. He called the cops and pressed charges. I ended up with a bastard of a judge who loves creative sentencing, so here I am.”

“I’d like to remind you, Ms. Rutherford, that had you not lost your temper and taken the unfortunate action you did, a judge wouldn’t have had the opportunity to exercise creative sentencing.”

The edge of Tonya’s mouth lifted in a screw you smirk. “Well, then,” she said, with extra emphasis on her healthy Texas twang, “I certainly apologize for my inappropriate observations about the inappropriate action the judge took as a result of my inappropriate anger.”

Somewhere in the middle of all that there was an inappropriate comment, but Danforth let it go. Either that or he wouldn’t recognize sarcasm if it bit him on the nose.

“Monica Saltzman?”

The woman to Susan’s left came to attention. Actually, she already was at attention, one of those women born with excellent posture who didn’t know the meaning of the word slouch. Dressed in a silk blouse and tweed pants with coordinating handbag and shoes, she was the picture of polished professionalism. As a nurse, Susan was good at spotting women who’d had work done, and this woman hadn’t. Still, at least at first glance, she could pass for thirty-five, even though early forties was more likely.

Susan, on the other hand, knew she looked every day of her forty-five years. Sitting there now between Miss Brass and Miss Class, wearing puke green scrubs and sensible sneakers, she felt like a frumpy nobody.

“What is your occupation?” Danforth asked.

Monica tucked a strand of her sleek, dark hair behind her ear with one perfectly polished nail and raised her chin, pausing a moment before speaking, as if she were one of those women who expected everyone to stop whatever they were doing and hang on her every word.

“I’m an executive assistant,” Monica said, then paused. “Was.”

“The nature of your offense?”

“My boss shared some rather disconcerting news with me,” she said. “I was quite justifiably angry, and I let him know how I felt about it.”

“In what manner did you express those feelings?” Danforth asked.

She stared at him evenly. “His Hummer may never be the same again.”

“Oh, yeah?” Tonya said, leaning in, her eyes wide with anticipation. “What exactly did you do to it?”

Monica’s chin rose another notch. “I put a flowerpot through the windshield.”

“That’s it?” Tonya slumped with disappointment. “So why did you get arrested for assault when it wasn’t a human being you beat up? I mean, it’s a crime to destroy personal property, but—”

“He was in the driver’s seat at the time.”

Tonya sat back, her grin returning. “Oh. Well. Now you’re talking.”

“And what was the disconcerting news that sent you on this rampage?” Danforth asked.

Susan drew back. Rampage? As if she were Godzilla ravaging Tokyo?

“I don’t see the need to go into the details,” Monica said.

“Part of the therapy is recognizing what triggers your anger, and unless I know your threshold—”

“Fine,” Monica said. “If you must know, he promised me a job, then turned around and gave it to somebody else. So you see, what I did was perfectly understandable.”

“No, Ms. Saltzman. What you did was criminal.”

Monica opened her mouth as if to reply, then closed it again, a slightly more refined version of Tonya’s screw you smirk edging across her face.

Danforth scribbled something in his notebook, then turned his gaze to Susan. “You must be Susan Roth. Your occupation?”

“I’m an E.R. nurse.”

“Please share with the class the act of violence that caused you to be here today.”

Good Lord. This was beginning to feel like third grade show-and-tell and the Jerry Springer show all rolled into one.

Susan told her story, emphasizing just how much of an intrusive little geek Dennis was before she revealed what led to her handprint on his throat. She thought she’d been pretty comprehensive, only to have Danforth bug her for more details.

“I just threatened him,” Susan said. “That’s all.”

“Verbal threats frequently precipitate physical violence. Once spoken into being, they have a way of manifesting themselves into reality. It’s the continuum of violence. What did you threaten to do?”

Susan looked at the other women, who were suddenly paying close attention, then back to Danforth.

“If you must know, I threatened to rip off his balls and toss them into the hospital cafeteria’s soup of the day.”

Danforth’s already pale complexion turned as white as Elmer’s glue. Gradually he moved behind the lectern, as if he felt the need to have something substantial between Susan and his privates.

“I see,” he said. “We’ll…uh…be doing some cognitive restructuring exercises aimed at preventing that kind of behavior.”

Tonya turned to Danforth. “So you actually think if she doesn’t have all her cognitive whatever restructured, someday she’s actually going to tear the guy’s balls off?”

Danforth cleared his throat. “I’m merely saying that if one can control one’s verbiage, one can frequently control one’s behavior.”

“It wasn’t as bad as it sounds,” Susan said. “Really. I swear it wasn’t.”

“So you have no remorse for the act,” Danforth said. “You’re merely sorry you were arrested for it?”

“Well, no, I didn’t mean—”

“We’ll be working on that.”

Susan glanced at Monica, then Tonya. They matched her subtle eye roll with ones of their own, bringing them into conspiracy together with a single common thought: No matter what this idiot says, sometimes when people get out of line, you just gotta let ’em have it.

Danforth launched into a lecture about the difference between assertion and aggression, and, for the next hour and a half, Tonya interrupted him every few minutes to ask him to define the terms he was using, such as cognitive distortion and neuroanatomy of anger. Susan got the feeling Tonya didn’t give a damn about the definitions, but she sure liked messing with Danforth. Monica spent most of the class wearing a distinctly bored expression as if all of this was so not worth her time.

Susan occupied herself by going over her mental to-do list, which she had to kick into action when she got home: check to make sure Lani had done her homework; do a load of laundry so she’d have something to wear to work tomorrow; pay the overdue electric bill; call Don and remind him about Lani’s basketball game. Then take a shower, climb into bed and dream of a world where money was plentiful, conflict was scarce and she had at least a few hours a day when she wasn’t somebody’s mother, somebody’s nurse, somebody’s ex-wife, or, in Dennis’s case, somebody’s worst nightmare.

Finally, at ten till nine, Tonya asked Danforth if he thought there was any difference between being angry, being livid and being pissed off. He looked at her dumbly for a moment. Then he took off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose and dismissed class.

Susan left the classroom and headed for the bathroom. Tonya and Monica followed. They each went into a stall, and a few minutes later they were standing at the sink.

“Could you believe that guy?” Tonya said, swiping on enough lipstick to send Maybelline stock soaring. “I’ve never seen such a self-important little creep in my life.”

“He’s definitely on my top-ten list,” Monica said, touching up her makeup with the precision of a micro-surgeon. The compact she held looked unfamiliar to Susan, which meant it had come from somewhere besides Walgreens.

“Cognitive restructuring,” Tonya muttered. “Please.” She held up a middle finger. “Wonder how he’d like to restructure this?”

Monica raised an eyebrow. “You’re not a particularly subtle person, are you, Tonya?”

“As if you are? I noticed you made a pretty obvious statement with that flowerpot.”

“Yes. Well.”

“Not that I don’t admire you for it. A boss who promises you a job and then gives it to somebody else had better expect a faceful of broken glass.” Tonya leaned into the mirror to wipe a stray bit of lipstick from the corner of her mouth, which made her too-short denim skirt hike even farther up her thighs. “And the little geek you went off on deserved it, too,” she said to Susan. “So what if you threatened to castrate him? You were in a hospital, weren’t you? They’re doing wonders these days with all kinds of reattachment surgeries.”

Susan smiled. After her ex-husband, her daughter, her coworkers and a certain Dallas County judge had acted as if she were criminally insane, she liked having somebody’s stamp of approval, even if that somebody was just as criminally insane as she was.

“And if your husband cheats,” Susan said, “I think he should expect a few flying dishes.”

“I agree,” Monica said.

So they’d reached a consensus. They’d all been railroaded. Susan suddenly felt a weird kind of camaraderie she hadn’t expected, as if it were the three of them against Dr. Pompous.

She said goodbye to the other women and left the bathroom, thinking about the hundred other ways she could productively spend this one evening a week. Then again, the women’s magazines always said that a working mother needed a hobby or activity away from her family and coworkers that was uniquely her own. Courtesy of the criminal justice system of Dallas County, it looked as if Susan had found one.