The Second Coming

herself will tell you, said Dr. Duk, that after receiving my own modified ECT, she feels better, relates better to people and her environment, speaks freely, eats better, sleeps better.
    Fried is crucified, said the radio.
    They all looked at Dr. Duk, she too.
    Dr. Duk smiled down at his little Dead-Sea-scroll Marlboro. Allison is giving us her own theory of why ECT works—which is as good as any, to tell you the truth. Namely that going through the ordeal of ECT is a kind of expiation for guilt. Having expiated, one naturally feels better.
    Guilt? said her mother, arching her back so suddenly that gold shivered and glinted. Guilt for what?
    That is something we might well get into, said Dr. Duk. Now. How does this grab you? I wonder if you two would be interested in coming up, participating in some family sessions. Some studies have been done on the subject and are quite promising. Come to think of it, I might just mention that our Founder’s Cottage here is available and you might consider that in lieu of the chalet—
    Look, Doc, said her father. He was on his feet and for the first time unsmiling. It made him look queer. White showed in the smoothed-out crow’s-feet. Taking off his new pink crinkly jacket, he draped it carefully over the back of the wooden chair. Now he faced them unsmiling but nodding, hands resting lightly on his hips (seeing himself, she knew, as General Patton surveying the mess at Kasserine Pass). Let’s get this show on the road, Doc.
    Show? said Dr. Duk, turning to her for translation.
    She translated: you and them but not me.
    That’s right, Doc. We got some business to talk over that Allison is not interested in. Could we talk in your office?
    Oh, said Dr. Duk. He rose in some confusion. Okeydoke.
    You know what we do at home, Doc, when we have a little problem, said her father. I call a conference, around the dining-room table, after Dinah the cook leaves. I believe in getting it all out on the table. Then we take a vote.
    Then the chairman decides, said her mother.
    Chairman? Again Dr. Duk asked her.
    Of the boring board.
    In the confusion of ushering them into his office, Dr. Duk got crossed up between wanting to please her father, wanting to get the show on the road, wanting to rent (or sell?) the vacant Founder’s Cottage, and forgot about her. Dr. Duk smelled the money, Kelso said. Your folks must have struck oil, babe. He forgot to call McGahey to come get her, forgot even to send her back to her room. They all forgot her.
    Alone in the parlor, she felt good. She had been given leave, sanction, through omission. She felt like a child left at the movies and forgotten. She could see the best part again.
    No sooner had the office door closed than she knew what she would do. Her father wanted to get down to business with Dr. Duk—bidness he called it—and the business had to do with her. Therefore it was her business.
    It, the moment of the closing of the office door, was the beginning of her freedom. As she sat alone, it crossed her mind for the first time in her life: What if I make the plans for me? What then? Is there an I in me that can start something? An initiating I, an I-I. What if I had left the black maid hanging out clothes, broke off the conversation and left, would it have killed her? Would my embarrassment kill me? Perhaps not.
    Why of all places, in this sour little parlor, should it have come to her, not only that she could make a plan but the plan itself? She knew what to do and how to do it. All her life she had watched people do things. She knew that Dr. Duk would be sitting behind his desk in the casemented bay. A Nikon camera fixed to a tripod stood next to him. One window, the one with the feeding station, was always cranked open in good weather. If an evening grosbeak or a goldfinch showed up, Dr. Duk could snap the camera by moving his hand only an inch or so to a remote-control device. Sometimes he kept the shutter switch in his hand. If she was talking to him and he heard a bird alight behind him, his eyes did not move from her face yet he seemed to be looking through the back of his head. A thick tree-sized pittosporum smelling of bitter bark covered window and feeding station.
    Under the station was a space, a little leafy room where one could sit in comfort on a limb of pittosporum.
    3
    Tuesday the man came again. Again it was she who saw him before he saw her. She was in the shadow of the rock filling a Clorox jug from