The snow started up again and in the 15 minutes it took to drive to Matt's theater it was a blizzard. My wipers were no use and I was lucky to pull into the parking lot when I did because I could no longer see the road through the windshield. I got out of the car and the wind and snow burned my face. The front door of the theater lab was unlocked. It was a bright red door, visible even with everything else obscured by the snow. The building was open and I pushed my way inside the vestibule. The theater was dark. I had expected rehearsals for Matt's new play but I didn't see anyone. It must have been the weather. Matt must have sent everyone home. I could see there was a light on backstage, otherwise the tiny black box was dark.

"Matt?" I called out. I knew he was probably upstairs in his small office next to the lighting control box. When Matt didn't answer I walked through the small auditorium and could feel the nightmare rising again; I wasn't safe anywhere, it was following me. Lurking behind my thoughts and even the slightest anxiety beckoned it's growing potential to drag me under, into insanity. It was so familiar. I felt fingers on my neck and even the sound of my own footsteps, a muted thud from my rubber boot heels, kept me vigilant and fearful. Did I expect Jeff to walk calmly out from behind the deep burgundy stage curtains? Was I waiting for him to stand in front of me with the same expression he had those years ago pointing a gun at me, intent and determined to kill me.

"Eve?"

I jumped and cried out. When I saw Matt walking towards me I felt a wave of relief. It wasn't a calm relief because the vigilance was still there. In my state the relief I felt at seeing Matt felt like a respite before the final act.

"Everyone left," he said. He flipped a switch and the floor lights came on giving the room an amber, dim glow. It was barely enough to see by and mostly suggested light rather than something to see by. It suggested darkness more than light. "I sent them home. Come on up."

I followed him back stage and up the narrow stairs to his office. The space was small. I'd spent many hours in there talking and drinking red wine. He had two upholstered chairs, ratty and beat up. It was difficult to recognize that at one time they had been a gold velvet fabric. Over the years, the patches, often costume fabric, added a certain artistic quality to them. They seemed more like modern art with the silk, velvet, bright patterns, denim jigsaw that upholstered them.

"Here, sit down."

I removed my coat and hung it on the row of hooks along side hats and a couple of costume capes. I sat down as while he poured two glasses of wine.

He handed me one and then sat down on the other chair. "I called one of the actresses who lives nearby. You can stay with her tonight."

"I'd rather stay with you. I really need to talk. I think I'm losing my mind. I know I am."

"We can walk over to my apartment. Whatever you want to do. What's going on?"

I shook my head and took a sip. "I don't know if anything is going on. I'm going crazy, Matt. I mean it. I know I'm emotional and have had crazy times but this is real. I think I'm losing touch."

"What's going on?"

"Things have been spiraling since Christmas. I kept relying on work to keep me in control. I thought once enough time had passed it would recede. But, it won't. If anything it's getting stronger. Sometimes I don't know if I'm in reality.

"Why do you think Jeff is going to hurt you? What did he do?"

"Nothing or maybe somthing. I don't know--Remember I told you years ago I found a box of diaries and letters from Jeff's first wife, Margaret?"

"Yeah, you gave them to Clara."

"One of the biggest mistakes of my life—" I took a large sip of wine. Stared into the glass for a moment. "That's right. I gave them to Clara. She was in all that trouble with drugs. I thought it would help her find some peace."

"I remember you telling me. That was right before you got back together with Jeff."

I rolled my eyes and shook my head. "I don't know why I did," I whispered to myself. I knew it was a sore subject with Matt but he had always been open to talking about my problems with Jeff. About anything. "The other day I found another set of journals. They were buried in a box of Christmas things that had belonged to her. I had never noticed them before. I have so much junk from all the times I'd moved."

He nodded. Whenever I was with him, I would remember how attractive he was; then as we were talking or I was watching him on stage, rehearsing, I'd realize it and it would surprise me. He was wearing a black cotton t-shirt and kaki trousers. His hair was short and dark. His build was slender.

"So what did they say?"

"She's really crazy. Why didn't he ever tell me how disturbed she was?

"What do they say?"

"I brought one and I'll let you read it. She was really sick. She seemed like she was paranoid or hallucinating."

"I'm sure living with him wasn't exactly good for her mental state."

"No. it's really more than that. For all the times I'd thought I'd gone crazy—including now—it was nothing like that."

"Why did it upset you?"

"First of all the way she talked about the children was terrifying. She was hallucinating and describing the bizarre thoughts. Then, the way she retold incidents with Jeff. It was haunting. But, these weren't as psychotic as her descriptions of the children. There were elements of truth in her writing about Jeff. The things she'd said he'd say. I don't know if they were all accurate, but I recognized him. Some of what she said was true. Sometimes I think he has no conscious. Then--" I started to cry.

Matt stood and grabbed a folded up bandanna from the floor to ceiling bookshelf by his desk. "It's clean," he said, "I just bought a bunch of them." He handed me one.

I looked at him and laughed for a moment. I wiped my eyes. "why did you buy a stack of bandannas?"

He laughed. "I don't know, but they were on sale at the 5 and dime. Maybe I'll write a western."

"I'm sure you'll find a use for them."

"What else did it say?"

"She wrote about when I was in the hospital." I held my breath for a moment.

"And?"

"It wasn't much, but the way she said it. I'd read it to you but Jeff took that journal and threw it away."

Matt raised his eye brows. "Why?"

I shook my head. "That's what started this whole thing with him. You know about the time he almost killed me."

"I know the whole thing Eve. We've talked about it many times."

"Yes. I suppose you do. I forgot telling you."

"You've told me the story many times."

"This whole thing sounds more like a play than real life. Once I opened the journal and started reading, I felt as if it's Pandora's box. My mind has been playing tricks on me ever since. I don't know if I'm remembering correctly, but I would swear Jeff told me just the other night that he'd kill me if I slept with another man."

"He's threatened it before."

I nodded, "yes now that you say it. It was. That was when I was having an affair. That's the period in our marriage when he was so violent." Just then there was the thud of the theater door downstairs. I jumped. I was hysterical. "lock the door to the office, Matt." I stood up. Please!"

"It's all right. Eve. I'll go down."

"My car is in the parking lot. I'm sure he's seen it. He must have called home—" I heard footsteps ascending the stairs towards the office.

Matt took on a look of concern. "Hello?" he called out and stood up.

"Matt," It's me, "Eileen," a woman's voice called. Again, the terror subsided, but I was still drowning. It was part of a series of escalating conflicts. I wanted to go somewhere safe, but I didn't know where to go or what to do.

A petite woman in her thirties walked into the office. She had long black hair and was made up. I noticed she was very pretty with striking green eyes. "Hi," she said to me. She looked at me and I must have looked completely distraught. She looked at Matt. "Is everything OK?"

"Elieen, This is Eve."

I smiled at her, "I'm sorry we're meeting under these conditions."

"No. Don't apologize. Matt said you may want to stay at my place tonight. I live just a few blocks from here." The thought of walking a few blocks with a young woman terrified me but I didn't want to let on. "Thank you for coming out in this weather, but I think I'll stay at Matt's tonight. I hope it wasn't too much trouble walking over here?"

"No. I love the snow. It's really beautiful. It's a blizzard, but it feels ethereal. Like I've died and gone to heaven."

Neither of them noticed the dark irony in what she'd just said.

"Here," Matt offered. "Why don't we walk you back home and then Eve, you and I can head back to my apartment. I'll make you some dinner."

Honestly, I didn't remember walking at all. My recollection started as Matt locked the bright red door of the theater and the cold wind blowing snow that felt more like thick clouds than precipitation. Then, it all went black. My memory came back to me when Matt and I were sitting on his futon drinking another glass of wine.

"My memory is failing me." I said.

"Something has stirred things up. These diaries. Maybe you shouldn't read them."

"That's just it. I can't stop. There is something there I need to know. At the same time it has caused the past and present to crash into one another. Thing are all mixed up. And it's a big cyclone with Jeff in the center."

"Ok."

"Maybe it's that her diaries were written when I was in the hospital. Did I tell you that she wrote about the mental hospital."

He nodded. "This whole thing is worrying me. You did tell me."

"Can I read you some of it. Tell me what you think. I'd found two journals in the box. Jeff said he destroyed the first one. I told you that didn't I?"
"You said he took it. You didn't tell me he destroyed it."

This second one was close to the time she killed herself." I looked at him. "the thing is she wrote over and over that Jeff was going to kill her."

He nodded but seemed skeptical.

"Why? You don't think he said those things?"

"I don't know Eve. Read me some of it. I'll tell you what I think. Come into the kitchen and read it to me. I'll make you a grilled cheese and a cup of soup."

"I'm not hungry."

"Please. My Jewish mother would be appalled if I didn't feed you in your condition." He smiled at me.

"I miss your Jewish mother, how is she?"

"The same. She misses you. She still asks about you. Every time I see her."

"I miss her too."

I got up and unzipped my overnight bag. The crazy feeling was still there. Like pin pricks in my thoughts. Letting in a liquid fear. Black. Poisonous. For an instant I thought Jeff had somehow gotten into my car while I had been parked at the Art Institute. Maybe I'd lost track of time watching him walk through the accumulated snow, down the walkway and back into the museum. I imagined him stealing this journal too. These thoughts were so quick and piercing that they came in instants between moments of sanity.

He stood up and turned to walk into the kitchen but stopped when he saw the book. He walked over. "This is it?"

I nodded.

"Wow." He rubbed his hand over the brown leather.

"It's like a tome."

"It is. One of two."

I opened to a random page in the middle of the diary while Matt

#75

This one's different. Anna. The house full of us are building our own little houses around ourselves. Something is coming, knocking on our doors. What does the housestaff care? What do the children care? It's me. I have to barricade these doors, but what am I to do about the windows? Even the pains are thin. The wood is rotten. I can't stay in this cold house any more. No food.

Anna. That's what he talks about. So, it seems that Anna doesn't like children—what wicked step mother does. Of course I haven't seen her, but if I look out the window—more like a keyhole I'd say—if I look when he leave, I know she is thin. She's a brunette and very sophisticated. I ask him and he gives me that suspicious look as if I've gone through the things in his study. I have. There is one drawer in particular, it's full of drawings of the girl. The mother of his other children.

I tell him I've seen them "go and get her, please. Let me go too." Things have changed. He tells me, as soon as I'm dead, he'll fetch her. She'll take care of his children and he and Anna can be together.

I talk with him as though he's a reasonable man and we are conducting a business deal. "but why kill me, when I want to leave?"

"you have no place to go."

"Dotty is my friend. She'll take me in."

"you're bat crazy." He says. "do you think anyone would take you in? Then what would I do with three women on my doorstep."

Then I realize the number three is a curse. Three women. Three children. Even the month. After all it's March.

I see you. I see you reading my words. How do you like the thoughts of a dead woman? Likely I'm a ghost by the time you read these words. Likely you are too.

I looked up at Matt. He stared at me for a moment and shook his head.

My hands were trembling. "what do you think?"

He shook his head again. Ran his hand through his hair. "Eve I never say it but –I'd never defend Jeff—but his first wife was completely mad. Honestly, I couldn't write a character this psychotic. Maybe now I could."

"but everything is peppered with the truth. Anna?" I felt myself growing angry. "He brought me here to marry her. He did marry her. I did take care of his children. I raised them, Matt. You know I did. You were there. He was with Anna. What the diary said was true."

"I don't know."

I started to cry. "Isn't it something that what she wrote happened?"

"Why would he stay married to you for those first five years if that was the case?"

"What difference would it make to him? He could have both of us and when the right time came he left me."

"Eve..."

"He was obviously with her." I shook my head.

I hardly slept. The night was interrupted with dreams and grotesque images. It was mostly the hospital. How had I forgotten all those women? They came back to me one after another. The ones with the lobotomies shuffling their stocking feet, even young women with white ankles and thin purplish-green veins visible. Their eyes were ghostly, empty. In my dreams I tried to steer away from them when I saw their rigid motions, their drool. But as nightmares are, I couldn't move fast enough. The hallways had angles and bright white light. I could smell the horrible hash. The horrors were punctuated with calm. And there in the dream I'd wake to Nellie the girl who helped me get out.

In the middle of the night I saw him, the doctor who'd ordered me out of bed, had me submerged up to my neck in ice cold water. The matron who read a book while he stood over me and watched my naked body shiver. He was smoking a cigarette.

I screamed and sat up in bed.

Matt woke and came over to me, "Eve? Are you all right."

I was so hysterical I couldn't speak all I could do was cry. Then an eerie calm came over me. I could hear Matt's words but everything was perfectly numb. It was like watching wind shake branches and rain falling through a closed window. I could see the movement. I knew there must be noise and cold, but it was just a slow-motion silent scene before me.

"Eve. What can I do? What happened?"

Silent tears rand down my cheeks. I was frozen. "I'm all right." I whispered. "I'm going back to sleep." I lay down but I didn't sleep. I tried to remember his name. The doctor. I couldn't. I recalled that it was the next day that they'd gave me the shock treatment. They'd known the court had ordered my release, scheduled it for a Wednesday. On Tuesday they wheeled me into the operating room, my hands and feet bound with leather straps. I'd thought for certain that they were going to give me a lobotomy. I thought they were going to extinguish my spirit. All I could think about was my infant son. I wouldn't be able to love him any more. I thought of Margaret. Was that how she went crazy? Was that why? Had Jeff sent her someplace and had surgery performed? Was that what made her crazy?

  When I woke the next morning, I felt worse than before. I got up before Matt and got dressed. I fixed a pot of coffee and sat down with the journal. I could hardly read. I had one persistent thought—it was an imperative—I needed to speak to Jeff. I needed, once and for all, to tell him I know the truth about him.

Matt got up about and hour after I did. When I heard him rustling I fixed him a cup of black coffee and walked over to the futon. I sat on the bed next to him. He sat up.

"Thanks," he smiled at me.

"Matt. I've thought about it. I'm getting dressed. I'm going over there right now."

"Where?"

"To the studio."
"Eve, there's two feet of snow out there."

"I'll call him then."

"Eve. I don't think he has the answers."

I took a deep breath, looked around for my cigarettes. They were on the table next to the Matt. I reached over and picked up the pack. I took one out and lit it. "What does that mean? Of course he does."

"What do you think he's going to say?"

"Are you defending him?"

"Hell no."

"I'm going crazy. Honestly. I'm afraid. I can't remember things and then after I read the diaries I'll ... everything becomes very strange almost like things around me are melting. I feel like she's cursing me. You read the last sentence I'm a ghost. You are too. I'm afraid. I think I've gone crazy--"

"Eve. You haven't. I don't know why but it's all surfacing. You've been through things that other people haven't. Maybe you had to pack it all away while the kids were small. Now it's just you and Jeff. It exposed."

"Other women have experienced what I did. I've witnessed it."

"OK." He said softly, "but even so. It doesn't change what happened to you."

"What he did."
Matt nodded. "He did it. But it's inside of you. You're the one left to contend with it. Not him. I just don't know he can do to change things at this point. It's done. Now it's coming back to haunt you."

"Do you think I should stop reading?"

"I don't know. It seems to me in all the plays and novels I've read, pushing things down makes a woman crazy, Madame Bovary, Blanch Dubois. Then there's A Doll's House. Nora made it out by not pretending any more."

I shook my head. That was something I remembered about Matt. His thinly disguised judgment of my choices. "That's all pretty transparent Matt."

"What is?"

"The comparison. Don't turn this into a play. I'm not Madamn Bovary or Blanch Dubois."

"Why didn't you say "you're not Nora Helmer?"

"Stop it." My anger made me feel stronger momentarily. I shook my head. I walked over to the window and looked out. The roads had been plowed. I could make it back home.

"I'm sorry." I looked up for a minute. He got up and put a piece of toast in the toaster. He took a jar of peanut butter out of the fridge.

"You won't judge me if I call him?" I turned back to him. "I'd like to talk to him."

"Eve. Of course. Would you feel better if I gave you some privacy? I'll walk over to the theater and you can call me when you're done I'll come back and get you."

Fear descended again. Everything was a nightmare. I thought for a moment maybe Margaret was right. Maybe I was a ghost. A part of me was dead. I didn't want Matt to leave. I was afraid Jeff was waiting outside. That he'd put his hands around my neck and he'd squeeze the life out of me. I was afraid he hated me.

"What if he's outside, waiting for you to leave? That way he can come. I won't be able to keep the door closed if he pushes his way in."

Matt looked concerned. He looked frightened too. I think it was because of how crazy I was acting. "Why don't I wait outside in the hall way? Will you feel better?"

I thought about it for a minute. "I suppose if I call home and he's there then I'll know he can't get here for a while. I could leave after the call and walk over to the theater. Maybe you could wait in the hallway until I'm sure he's at home? That'll give me enough time to get to the Lab."

Matt walked over to me. "Jesus Eve. Did he threaten you again?"

I shook my head. "I don't remember."

He let out a breath. "Will you really be all right if you know he's at home? Why don't you walk back to the studio with me and you can call from the office and I'll be on the stage during rehearsal."

I felt a wave of relieve wash over me. "That's a good idea." I started to cry. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry Matt."

"You don't have to apologize. I care about you. I know you're not crazy."

That was the most sobering thing I could have heard. I was crazy but Matt didn't see me that way. He walked over and put his arms around me.

I felt a little hopeful during our walk to the theater. The sky was bright blue and again, the snow was glistening as it melted under the increasing temperature. The storm was nearly over for the moment and it was like an exhalation. Although I hadn't slept well, I felt myself coming back to my senses a bit. I'd go back to work on Monday and this business with Margaret's diaries would subside, maybe it wouldn't submerge itself below the earth again but perhaps, it would lead me to some peace.

Someone had shoveled the sidewalk most of the way to Matt's theater. There were large chunky mounds of snow encasing us from the plowing that must have gone on throughout the night. I was bundled up in my warm coat, scarf and knitted gloves. Matt wore a pea coat, scarf. He reached over and took my hand. We walked that way for a few minutes in silence. We turned the corner past a small delicatessen and I stopped for a minute. He stopped too.

I looked at him, That was a shitty thing to say about my life being like one of those stories."

He sort of frowned. "I'm sorry. I don't know why I said that."

"I'm not like any of them. Every one of those stories were constructed by men—feminists or not—commentary on the plight of women or not—you don't know what I've had to do."

"No. You're right. I'm sorry."

"Ok." I smiled at him, "it's ok. I just wanted to make that clear."

"You're completely right. I really shouldn't have said something so callous. But I really did see you more as a Nora than a Blanche." He smiled again and pulled away as if I might hit him.

I smiled at him. "you can't let it go. You had to slip it back in."

He laughed. "I'm just teasing."