SECRET OF THE WOLF By Susan Krinard

“Well, what’s he like?” Irene came into the office—dramatically, as she always did, floating through the door in her silk dressing gown. Her faded red hair was loose in practiced disarray, and she wore enough face paint to be seen from the farthest rows of a large theater. She planted herself in front of Johanna and struck a provocative pose. “Come, now,” she said in theatrical tones. “Don’t even think of keeping him all to yourself.”

“I suppose you mean the new patient,” Johanna said dryly.

“Who else, in this dreadfully boring place?” Irene said with a sniff. “He’s the most interesting thing to happen here in ages. Such a handsome one, too.” Her eyes narrowed. “But you wouldn’t notice that, with your withered spinsterish ways. You never notice anything important.”

Johanna was used to Irene’s narcissism and occasional vindictiveness. One didn’t have a conversation with Irene unless it was entirely about Irene. “I noticed,” she said. “But I have been somewhat more concerned with the state of his health.”

“But he’s better now, isn’t he?” She stroked her hand—its delicacy marred by bitten fingernails—down her thigh. “You must introduce me to him as soon as possible. I can speed up his recovery.”

“I’ll introduce him to everyone once he’s ready,” Johanna said, her voice calm and authoritative. “For now, he needs rest.”

“Don’t try to fool me, Johanna,” Irene said, tossing her head. “You just want to keep him away from me. You’re afraid that when he sees me, he won’t even notice you. Who would?” Her ravaged face took on a faraway look. “When I was on the stage, no man could take his eyes off me. I was the toast of New York and every city I visited. My dressing room was always filled with flowers and suitors on their knees.” Her gaze sharpened and focused on Johanna. “It will be so again. Soon I’ll have all the money I need to get me back, and then—” She broke off in confusion and hurried on. “But you want to keep me here, a prisoner, because you’re jealous.” She hissed for emphasis. “You’re plain and dull and dried up as an… an old prune. You want to make me the same way—”

“I don’t want to make you anything, Irene, but happy,” Johanna said. Irene’s delusion was such that she could not look in a mirror without seeing the promising young actress she’d been at twenty—the girl she’d left behind thirty years ago, sexually exploited and abandoned by a former “protector,” lost to the stage and left to make her living through prostitution. She’d been declared mad and eventually found her way into the Schell’s private asylum as a charity case. Now she was a part of the “family,” if an occasionally difficult one.

Johanna opened another notebook and consulted the week’s schedule. “I think we should have another session soon.”

Irene primped and preened. “No time for that,” she said. “I must go back to rehearsals. I’m to play Juliet, you know, with Edwin Booth himself.”

She turned to go, swirling her dressing gown in a clumsy arc that was meant to be elegant. “Send the gentleman to me when he’s rested. You’ll rue the day if you deprive him of the opportunity to worship at my feet.” She laughed girlishly and swept back out of the room.

Cherishing the renewed quiet, Johanna closed her eyes. Irene had relapsed over the past several weeks, convinced that she was in the midst of rehearsals for a play that would never open except in her own mind.

Though it might require many more months, Johanna intended to help Irene become capable of living in the world on her own, even if it was as something of an eccentric. Irene was a gifted seamstress. If she could be made to leave some of her delusions behind, she could put her skills to good use and earn a respectable living. And she could rediscover some measure of happiness in herself.

But that meant facing what she didn’t want to face—the fact that she was fifty years old and completely forgotten by her supposed hordes of one-time admirers. If she could only see that there was a different kind of worth that did not depend upon the transience of the flesh…

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