Cradle of the Serpent: A Man and a Woman's Imperfect Love

By Linda Lee Greene

What do you do when your spouse of twenty years is revealed to be unfaithful, a misdeed disclosed to you and the world simultaneously in news bulletins splashed across the broadcast and print media?

How do you keep your entire world from collapsing when, among the tragic consequences of the affair, your husband’s mistress is murdered and he is permanently paralyzed from his shoulders down in a double shooting by the woman’s former lover?

Archaeologist Mrs. Lily Light grapples with these horrendous challenges in master storyteller Linda Lee Greene’s “Cradle of the Serpent,” a lyrical, lush, and compelling tour de force that will keep you up at night reading.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Mar 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781619846357

Book preview

CRADLE OF THE SERPENT

Also By Linda Lee Greene

ROOSTER TALE

GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS

JESUS GANDHI OMA MAE ADAMS – Co-author

CRADLE OF THE SERPENT

A Man and a Woman’s Imperfect Love

A Novel

By

Linda Lee Greene

Cradle of the Serpent

A Man and a Woman’s Imperfect Love

Linda Lee Greene

Copyright © Linda Lee Greene 2016

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means including reprints, excerpts, photocopies, recordings, or any future reproduction methods without the express permission of the author at [e-mail].

Published in the United States by Gatekeeper Press

3971 Hoover Rd. Suite 77

Columbus, OH 43123-2839

ISBN: 9781619846340

eISBN: 9781619846357

The cover photograph by Thomas T. Johnson of Locust Grove, Ohio was taken at the Great Serpent Mound Crater while the sun was setting. Johnson’s magnificent photography can be viewed on Facebook at ALTERNATE UNIVERSE HOUSE OF PHACOPS CENTER OF LEARNING ROCKSHOP

Contents

This book is dedicated to my best friend Allen Ray Imler, the person without whom my style of living would not have been possible during the past several years. His kindness, devotion, and generosity have been unparalleled by any friend I have ever had. With his long ponytail, his two-day growth of whiskers, his uneven, and perpetually jeans-clad appearance, he is sometimes taken for a person of menacing character rather than one of the truest and sweetest persons on Earth, a person of unassailable honesty and integrity. He is a fine human being—quality personified.

In addition, it is to Allen that I owe the opening of Cradle of the Serpent. Other than my dropping my spaghetti strap and our becoming lovers and ultimately marriage partners, the letter in the introduction of this book describes the way he and I actually met. Allen rescued me that snowy, Thanksgiving-weekend morning just as depicted in these pages, and he has been rescuing me ever since that day. When we met, both Allen and I were working through the fallout of love relationships gone sour, and in short order we realized that each of us needed a friend rather than a lover, and that is what our relationship has remained—a committed, platonic bond, one that without any reservations on either of our parts will endure for the rest of our lives.

When I reflect upon my friendship with Allen, I recognize God’s Hand in it. It is a blessing, pure and simple, and it allows me to imagine that maybe I have done something right to deserve such a miracle to have occurred in my life. I hope to continue to be worthy of Allen, and in times past, as now, my desire in that regard saves me from indulging in behavior unbecoming of such a friend.

The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper.

Aristotle

PART I

The Astronomer

An astronomer used to go out at night to observe the stars. One evening as he wandered through the suburbs with his whole attention fixed on the sky, he fell accidentally into a deep well. While he lamented and bewailed his sores and bruises, and cried loudly for help, a neighbor ran to the well, and learning what had happened said: Hark ye, old fellow, why, in striving to pry into what is in heaven, do you not manage to see what is on earth?

Aesop’s Fables

One

Lily–Lily Light–light of my life, lamp unto my feet, of my eyes–my Lily mine.

You remember the day I made you mine. There was a light snow on the ground—the first of the season. It was a Saturday morning, not long after sunup. I had awakened earlier than usual, and something prompted me to get up and do my laundry. I didn’t like the laundry facilities in our apartment complex, and it was my practice to drive to another one not far away. The weird thing was that I never never did my laundry on Saturdays. You know what a creature of habit I am. A change in my routine throws me into turmoil. But this voice inside of me wouldn’t let up. ‘Get up now and go do your laundry!’ it demanded. I threw on some clothes and headed out of the door, my duffel bag of dirty laundry draped over my shoulder.

I tossed the bag in the trunk of my car, started the engine, and scraped the windshield of its layer of snow. The parking lot was nearly empty of its usual full-complement of cars, and only I was braving the cold and snow. It was eerily quiet—only a car or two passed on the typically busy road fronting the complex. Like me, hundreds of students of nearby Ohio State University rented apartments there, especially older students pursuing advanced degrees, many of them married and with young children. Although I was single and without children, I liked the apartment complex. I liked the family atmosphere. It was a Thanksgiving weekend and I figured most of my fellow locals were out of town visiting Grandma and Grandpa.

Just as I approached the door of my car to get in, I heard a crunching of footsteps in the crusted snow. I looked over my shoulder and a woman leading a dog on a leash was walking toward me. Her free arm raised and waving in the air, she called out, ‘Sir, sir, can you help me, please?!’ Since there was no one else about, I realized she was yelling at me.

‘What does this strange person want with me?!’ I said to myself. And strange she definitely was. I could see that she wore a pair of white pajamas with little red balls printed all over them. Later I figured out that they were Christmas balls, the kind you hang on Christmas trees. Her long blue robe was visible beneath a thin trench coat, one of those classic tan trench coats you see everywhere. She wore a red wool scarf around her neck and brown high-top boots, scuffed-up, field boots, I later realized. She was hatless and her black hair, tangled and stringy as if she’d just crawled out of a hard night in bed, hung limply over her shoulders and down her back. She was a sight to behold.

I turned toward her and nodded my head as she approached me. ‘Sir, I wonder if I can use your phone? I’ve lost my key and I can’t get into my apartment. I need to call my sister. She has an extra key and she can come and get me in. You see, I keep an extra key on a short little chain that I hang on the same hook with my dog’s leash…that way I don’t have to carry my big key chain with me with all of my other keys…I have a lot of keys, keys to my sister’s place and my mother’s, my lockbox, my storage unit, my car, and I don’t like to carry them with me when I walk my dog. By the way, this is Chester. Actually, he isn’t really my dog. I’m taking care of him for a friend of mine while he’s on an extended work assignment in Peru. Anyway, I carry a plastic bag with me to pick up Chester’s poop, and I guess this morning, I tossed my key in the dumpster with the poop bag. Did I tell you this is Chester? Don’t worry, he won’t hurt you. I’m Lily,’ she said as she reached out a gloved hand.

I started to tell this Lily person to go to the office of the complex and get a pass key, and then remembered that it was closed for the holiday. I was in a foul mood most of the time in those days. I’d just extricated myself from a toxic relationship and I was anti-female. Hell, I was anti the entire human race, but then that’s another story, one entirely too long for this letter. It flashed in my mind that I’d just read somewhere that handshaking had begun back in the old days as a way of showing a stranger that you weren’t carrying a weapon in your hand. ‘But what of the weapon one carries in one’s head,’ I thought to myself. I shook the thought away and followed with a shake of her hand, and heard the extraordinary sound of my voice actually inviting her to my apartment to use my phone.

I brewed two cups of hot tea while she unpeeled her outer garments. She was quite tall and slight once some of the layers were laid aside. ‘I’m Jacob,’ I told her as I sat down on a chair across from where she sat on my couch. The preliminaries accomplished, we commenced to talk, easy talk, comfortable, interesting. She was a practicing archaeologist, and although she was five months my junior, she had graduated from Ohio State the previous year. The incredible thing was that she was already doing what I wanted so much to do. The idea occurred to me that this was a remarkable coincidence, and I listened intently to her lilting voice as she told me that she was working at a small dig in Chillicothe, the city that had been Ohio’s first capital and was located just a few miles south of where we lived in Columbus. The serendipity continued as I learned that her special interest was also the same as mine; like me, she wanted to uncover the mysteries of the indigenous people of the western hemisphere. An hour later, and to my disappointment, her sister arrived. As Lily exited my door, she said to me, ‘Come up and see me sometime. I’m in apartment 2B.’ And she laughed brightly at her allusion to Mae West.

All through the day, I couldn’t get her off of my mind. Once she’d peeled away the trench coat and scarf and gloves, and rearranged her messy hair with her fingers to a sparkling cascade of fathomless ebony, I saw the wonderment of her for the first time. Then her boots and socks came off in a jumbled heap on my floor, and I saw her dancing toes and the way they conducted her words. Despite the flannel Christmas pajamas, she was so elegant, so self-possessed, brainy, and funny in a kooky way. It was then that I knew I wanted this woman to be mine. I knew that if I played my cards right, she would be the best thing that would ever happen to me.

I was unable to do another thing the entire day but lie on my couch and fantasize about this woman. I never lie on my couch. I never waste a moment lying on anything, unless I’m sleeping in my bed. By seven o’clock in the evening, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I showered and shaved and cleaned up, scrubbing every little nook and cranny. A gargle and a splash of cologne, a deep breath, and I headed to her apartment.

You came to the door in one of those tiny spaghetti strap dresses, pale blue and shiny. It barely covered your backside. You were barefoot, and your toes–well, they still had that life of their own–your twinkling toes. I wanted to take them in my mouth and have them for dinner. But they would only have been an appetizer because there was so much more of you I wanted to devour. And within that same hour, you dropped a spaghetti strap, and then the other, and my real Lily came out to play—the Lily who belongs only to me! To me! To me! Within a week we were hooked, both of us, inextricably hooked–hook, line, and sinker.

Sometimes I think about that day, the way the universal forces turned fate our way—the way it made me get up out of bed and be in that parking lot, and the way it made you lose your key. Just think, it was a key, just a tiny key on a short length of chain that was the link to bringing us together. Now that I know you, I recognize that keeping the extra key on that little length of chain was just like you—you, that neat and organized Lily—that Lily who so diligently catalogues all of our finds, who researches so thoroughly the geologies, the histories of our archaeological locations—that exemplary, ultimate professional who has taught me so much about our work—that Lily who for days on end makes sure that my Lily ceases to exist when as night falls we’re both so dirty and sweaty and spent from our grueling field work that all we can do is to fall on our bunks, usually with our clothes on, and sleep the sleep of the dead until the break of dawn, and then we’re back at it again, your feet running as they hit the ground—I love that Lily, too—but that Lily isn’t my Lily—you know the Lily I’m talking about. My Lily is the one who as soon as we get back home and clean away all of the sweat and grime—my Lily is the one who with just a drop of a spaghetti strap comes back out to play with me. Oh Lily, how I love you. Your loving husband, Jacob

***

This story begins with a love letter written nearly twenty years earlier by Jacob Light to his wife Lily. The names are fictitious, as are all of the names in this writing, including my own. The anonymity is essential because I am a psychotherapist and this is my rendition of the case history of a former patient of mine, the aforementioned Lily Light. Her therapy spanned a period of roughly three years beginning in the summer of 2011, ostensibly because she was suffering from extreme anxiety linked to her fear that her husband was engaged in an extramarital affair.

At the time of our initial appointment, Jacob and Lily had grown so far apart that it appeared nothing short of a miracle could reunite them—and that is exactly what did happen—a miracle occurred, in my opinion. I just can’t think of any other way of accounting for it. I understand that the concept of a miracle is unacceptable in clinical terms, and although it has happened rarely, in my thirty years of practice, I have witnessed turnarounds in patients that in my mind can only be explained as miraculous. These were turnarounds in highly disturbed patients beset by horrendous circumstances and tremendous barriers in their own minds, patients like Lily Light, patients for whom I held almost no hope of healing.

In psychological terms these turnarounds are labeled as the attainment of wholeness defined as a point in psychic development in which the union of the unconscious with the conscious is achieved. Maybe that is what did happen, but in these cases, and especially in Lily’s, something more was at work—I’m convinced of it!

Before I proceed, let me fill in a little background information on Lily and on myself. Lily called my office, and before agreeing to make an appointment with me, asked that I call her personally. This sometimes happens, and understandably so, for more than any other doctor/patient relationship this one is the most psychically personal, and is therefore fraught with possible consequences difficult to overcome if the relationship is toxic, or turns sour, or is, for that matter, bland rather than energizing. She asked me about my education, my experience, and other pertinent information related to the way I work. It is my professional opinion that unconsciously she wanted to gauge the tenor of my words, to weigh me in the balance of our compatibility. I use the word compatibility very specifically here for in this match-up of two minds, if harmony does not exist, nothing approaching wholeness can be achieved on the part of the patient.

It is also imperative that the patient trusts the analyst. This synthesis of the unconscious and the conscious occurs through a process called transference, a progression in psychoanalytic therapy whereby feelings toward others are displaced onto the analyst, and if they are repressed feelings, all the better. Absent compatibility and trust, transference will not occur. Therefore, finding some common ground with my patients greatly facilitates our compatibility, which opens the gateway to trust, and finally, to transference. In the case of Lily, her profession formed our mutuality.

Lily told me that she was an archaeologist, at the time preparing the site for a future excavation at the Great Serpent Mound in Southern Ohio. As fate would have it, I also have an abiding interest in archaeology. In my early college years, it was the academic course I pursued, and to this day, I keep a toe in through subscriptions to publications and periodic donations to various archaeological enterprises. In fact, my course work in the discipline, which focused on behavior of early humankind, sparked my interest in psychology.

I told Lily these things about myself on the telephone, and I am fairly certain my doing so helped her to appear at my office a few days later prepared to do the hard work of tackling her difficult circumstances. At the time, I still entertained doubts as to whether or not my choice of psychotherapy over archaeology as a profession had been the right one. As it turned out, our association resulted in growth on both our parts: for me, the recognition that I am, and always have been, on the right path; for Lily, as will be related in the following pages:

Two

My husband, his name is Jacob, and I have lived in the same apartment in Northwest Columbus, Ohio for nearly twenty years. It’s an airy and bright, three-bedroom townhouse on a high knoll overlooking Griggs Dam on the Scioto River. Our patio opens onto the river side of our building and a scenic view hard to come by in landlocked Columbus. It’s a view also full of sweet sounds, sounds soft to the ear, of birdsong, of whispering water, of gay laughter of river passengers on boats, and of people on footpaths along the shores, of the silent mystery of our night sky. This is the way Lily talked, lyrically, almost as if she were talking a song. There were backdrops to her ruminations, stories fully developed in her mind, as the following continuation of our initial meeting illustrates:

While all of these features are valuable to us, the primary reason we’ve chosen apartment living over homeownership is that both Jacob and I are dedicated and involved archaeologists, lacking the free time or the desire for home maintenance. This arrangement works best for us as well because we are often away from home for months at a time. For these reasons, we have chosen to remain childless, and neither he nor I have regretted the decision, despite the note of disapproval we sometimes sense among some members of our family and friends concerning the matter. Recently, though, Jacob asked me if I regret our not having children. I was bowled over because never, not even once, in all of the many years since we agreed that we weren’t cut out for parenthood has he mentioned it. It got me to wondering if something untoward is going on with him, if maybe, at this late date, he’s secretly pining for a child of his own. It’s an issue he’d never openly admit to me since I’m in my mid-forties and beyond childbearing years. Even though we’re within months of being the same age, he can father children for decades to come, if he were of a mind to do so.

Mrs. Light…

Please call me Lily. Mrs. Light is my mother-in-law.

Do you get on well with your mother-in-law?

"My goodness, yes. All of us wish our own mothers were like her."

"Is your mother like her, Lily?"

Not in the least, but that’s a story for another time, Doctor Neeson.

You say that the decision to not have children was completely mutual between you and your husband?

Well, since I would have been the one whose career would have been interrupted by it…

So, you were more in favor of remaining childless than your husband was?

But he went along with it!

I see. Does your husband normally ‘go along’ with things?

Jacob is uncomfortable with anything that smacks of serious. He likes to keep things lighthearted. He’s playful. And his liveliness makes him a fun and popular guy.

And you…are you a fun and popular girl, Lily? Are the two of you compatible in that way?

Let’s just say I’m a good audience for him. Or, I used to be.

How has that changed, Lily?

I think he’s found someone to take my place.

I make a habit of greeting my patients in my waiting room. I do so because inevitably, most of them are extremely anxious, and it is especially the case if it is our first meeting. I extend my hand to them, or touch them on their shoulder or back—physical contact is a requirement between doctor and patient, and is otherwise difficult to initiate in the psychotherapeutic setting. After all, I do not examine their bodies—I analyze their minds. In large part, the portal to the mind is the body, and a therapeutic session absent some physical contact between doctor and patient courts nondisclosure on the part of the patient, and misinterpretation on the part of the doctor. Lily had accepted my hand upon my greeting of her. It was a hand of energy, dynamic energy, honed for movement—I sensed a vein of extreme impatience in her—mainly with herself, I decided. Her continued discourse verified my assessment.

He works with young and beautiful and, of course, desirable females every day, women as yet to be subjected to that other injustice that nature has thrown in the face of my female kind—the matter of the unevenness in the way males and females age, she added with an exasperated flourish of hand. "While my husband grows handsomer with his trim and tight stomach, his full shock of golden-white hair and the planes of his face sharper, cleaner, leaner—chiseled, it’s called, my lot is to stare disbelievingly at yet another Rorschach blot of discoloration each morning, a