I was sitting In Martin Wallace’s office recounting to him the events that led to my seeking psychiatric counseling.
I was trying to put together the pieces of my shattered life, unaware of who or what had brought about my fall from grace, and one name kept cropping up—Jeanne Dubois, a beautiful colleague with whom I had a brief but failed love affair.
Of course, Martin seized upon this relationship as somehow holding the key to my present predicament and honed in on the idea because he was convinced one of my past lovers was trying to take revenge on me by ruining my career.
“Tell me about Jeanne,” he said, staring out his office window making it appear a routine request, but of course, it wasn’t
“Well, if you’re trying to build a case against Jeanne,” I said, “I can say this in her defense—I never mentioned to her that I had trouble with commitment. But I found it hard to stay with any one woman for too long and most relationships I ended after several months.”
Wallace nodded and scribbled a note, making me feel I had to elaborate.
“Don’t get me wrong—I’m not player—I just get to a point in a relationship where it becomes boring and repetitive, and I refuse to go through the motions. I honestly felt women would appreciate my honesty, but obviously, I was wrong.”
Martin Wallace’s ears perked up. “Why would you say you were, ‘obviously wrong’—what happened to make you believe that?”
I sighed and resigned myself to reliving the nightmare.
”Madeleine, the Department secretary received a box of flowers delivered to me at the college. She said the delivery person was a Goth-type girl—you know the type—black hair, black lipstick, black painted nails.
Anyway, I opened the box of flowers and found a card from a flower shop called The Devil’s Dozen and a typed note simply stating, You’re a marked man.”
Wallace whistled softly. “That’s intimidating.”
I nodded. “It was—but it was only the beginning.”
I continued on. “A few days later, Madeleine and a few of my colleagues received explicit photos of me in a compromising position with a woman I dated six months ago.”
Wallace stopped writing and looked at me.
“I was tempted to contact the woman and ask if she was angry or bitter towards me. But I recalled we parted amicably and she didn’t seem upset. I also recall her saying she had seen the writing on the wall and anticipated my ending the relationship. She wished me well, and that was that.”
Wallace leaned back in his chair.
“I concluded she was unlikely to have sent the photos and damage her own reputation as well.”
”Okay, so we can rule this woman out.”
I nodded.
“Then, a week later, Henry Withers, the Department Chair received an envelope containing half a dozen explicit photos of me with a different woman—a colleague I dated a year ago.”
He arched an eyebrow on hearing this.
“This time, I approached the woman and discovered that her friends had also received the photos and she was incensed and had launched a complaint to the University and a member of the Vice Provost’s Group had already been in touch with her.”
“How did you feel when she told you this?””
“I was devastated. She told me she was convinced it was me because the photos were so intimate, but when she saw my reaction, she regretted not coming to me first. And so it continued until even the Dean himself received photos, and he was warned that the next step would involve sending them to my students unless I resigned.”
“So that explains why you’re here—time on your hands,” he smiled acerbically.
I grimaced at his dark humor.
“He suggested a temporary leave might be prudent, and within days I was on leave for an unspecified period of time until the matter could be resolved.”
“So, what made you begin to suspect Jeanne?”
I shrugged. “It was just a hunch—I had no real proof, but there was something niggling at me from the moment I met her, even as I flirted with her and fell under her spell. There was something vaguely familiar about her—something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, but knew was there.”
I stopped to picture her on our dates—the strange warning signals I overlooked at the time.
“Occasionally, there’d be a nuance in the way she said something—the way she’d tilt her head and smile seductively, or even the scent of perfume she wore. Whatever it was, I pushed it into the background and focused entirely on romancing this intriguing woman and winning her heart. I remember thinking that maybe this was the one—the woman with whom I’d gladly spend the rest of my life.”
Wallace looked at me earnestly, trying to weigh the significance of what I told him.
But I felt embarrassed to admit that even then, a shadow fell across me.
I could almost sense the faint outlines of cord or twine as if I were caught in some kind of net.
I knew I had been blinded by Jeanne’s charms and even sitting in Wallace’s office I found it hard to admit I was caught, but I was helpless as a fly in a spider’s web.