“Yeah, especially with Obama at the wheel. Right? Wasn’t Bush against stem cell research?”
“Uh-huh. But federal funding’s still pretty limited from what I’ve read. I haven’t given up hope, but I’m not holding my breath either.”
“Well, I got to hand it to you, Doc. If it was me, I doubt I’d be as good-natured about it as you are.”
I chuckle. “Yeah, well, you should have seen me the first year or so. Nobody accused me of being good-natured back then. And not just about the paralysis, either. Brain injuries can land you in some pretty dark places. Mine sure as hell did.”
“Huh.” He stops talking after that. It’s something I’ve noticed since the paralysis: you mention depression and it’s a conversation killer. Not like when I was in practice. The college kids I saw were always talking about how depressed they were—wallowing in it, some of them. Well, I’ve done a fair amount of wallowing, too. That first year, especially. I think back to those early tests they did to see if there was any chance that my bladder and bowel function, sexual function, might be coming back. Those pinprick tests to see if I had any feeling in my anus, my penis. Feel anything just then?
No.
How about now?
No, nothing.
God, that first year—the worst year of my life. The headaches, the mood swings. My speech was slurred, my memory was compromised. I’d get frustrated because of the disorientation, so then I’d get depressed. Combative. The medical staff, the rehab folks, even the poor janitors who’d come in to mop the floor: whoever would show up in my room wouldn’t know from one hour to the next if they were going to have to deal with an ogre or a sad sack. Or Rip Van Winkle. I’d go into deep sleeps sometimes that they’d have to wake me up out of. Then I’d get pissed when they did. Tell them to get the hell out of my room. Leave me alone so that I could get back to sleep. Dream that I could still walk, still run even. I haven’t had those kind of dreams for a while now, come to think of it. Guess you’d call that resignation.
But I was lucky, in a way. When they did those initial CT scans up in Boston, they found out that when he clobbered me over the head, my brain had collided with the wall of my skull, but there were no bone fragments floating around in there. If there had been, they would have had to crack open my noggin to get them out. So I caught a break there. . . .
Still, those dark, ugly depressions I kept falling into: that was tough. And not just for me, either. Poor Annie. She was the one who took the brunt of those moods of mine. Just married, and instead of being in New York with Viveca on the weekends, she’d drive up to Boston and stay with me. And not just weekends, either. Sometimes she’d come up on a Wednesday or a Thursday and stay until the following Monday. When the kids visited, I’d try and fake it for their sake. Act positive. But it was taxing, putting on those performances. And after they left, I’d take it out on their mother. Let her have it with both barrels sometimes, as if she was the one who had come at me with that goddamned vacuum cleaner.
I think back to the worst time, the one I’m most ashamed of. It was before Ariane had decided to move back and have the baby here. Before Andrew had made the decision not to re-up. Thanks to Annie, the house had been made handicap-accessible so that I could finally leave that goddamned rehab place I hated and move back home. The ramp outside, the bathroom and kitchen rails, the chair lift so that I could get upstairs, sleep in my room again. Annie’d let her own work go. Had lived back at the house for weeks while she researched equipment, got estimates, hired a contractor and supervised the installations. She was doing my bills, too. Dealing with those arrogant insurance pricks so that I wouldn’t have to. Sometimes she’d be on the phone with them for an hour or more. Cajoling them, demanding that they cover this or that, writing letters when they said they wouldn’t. Those first two years, she was more like my wife again than my ex-wife. She was great to do all that. You’d have thought I’d be grateful. And I was grateful when my head was clear. When those dark clouds of gloom would part for an hour or an afternoon and I’d show her a little appreciation. . . .
The fight started the afternoon she got back from dropping Andrew off at the airport. He had come in from Fort Hood for a long weekend. Had called me earlier that week and said he needed to talk to me. I know you’re dealing with all of your own shit, Dad, but if I don’t talk to someone, my head’s going to explode. But then, once he was here, he kept not telling me and I kept waiting. In fairness, others were around: his mother, my aide, a couple of my old colleagues from the college who had stopped by to see how I was doing. I could tell that something was seriously wrong with Andrew. He’d lost weight. He seemed distracted, edgy. Had trouble making eye contact with both Annie and me. I thought it was odd that he kept going out to the backyard, wandering down the path. . . .
And then, the day he was going back—a couple of hours before it was time for him to head to the airport, time was running out. Carla had left for the day, Ariane was at work, and Annie had gone off to pick up some groceries. It was finally just the two of us. He was sitting slumped in front of the TV, staring at a Celtics game. I told him to turn it off and tell me what the hell was going on—to say what he had flown across the country to say. He looked at me for the next several seconds. Then he aimed the remote and turned off the TV. “When Mom was a little girl?” he began. “After she lost her mother and sister in that flood they were in? You know that cousin who saved her?”
“Uh-huh. I can’t remember his name, but—”
“Kent,” he said.
“That’s right. Kent. What about him?” I waited.
“I’m going to . . . I have to tell you about something Mom told me the day of the wedding. And about something no one else knows about. Something I did that day. And I’m . . . Don’t stop me, okay? Because I have to get this all out and I don’t . . . Just don’t stop me until I’m finished. Okay?”
I nodded. Sat there listening in disbelief.
When he was done, the two of us had just sat there, Andrew sobbing with his hand over his mouth, me trying to get my head around everything he’d just confessed and, at the same time, looking at his suffering, wracking my compromised brain to think of something—anything—to say that might take away his pain. . . .
“Dad, it’s like this living nightmare that never lets go of me. I’ll be at the barracks, in the shower or lying in bed, and I’ll start thinking about it: how I killed him and got away with it. Up to this point, anyway. But it could still happen. Someone might put two and two together and . . . It’s just so not who I ever thought I’d be, Dad. A killer, a murderer.”
I want to interrupt him, object to what he’s saying about himself, but how can I refute it? There’s a body hidden down in back inside that well. My son has taken a life.
“I can’t eat, can’t sleep for shit. And sometimes when I finally do fall asleep, I dream about him. Dream he’s alive again, and I’m chasing him, catching up to him—not out in the woods where it happened, but down some street I don’t recognize. Or down the corridors of some strange hospital or school or something. . . . At work? I’ll be busy with a patient and it’ll just come over me. I’ll see him sitting out on the front steps that morning when I went back for the rings. See his head flopped to the side, that rock smeared with his blood. And they’ve started to notice—the docs I work with. I’ve gotten warnings from two different supervisors. Dr. Champy chewed me out when I got mixed up about the schedule and didn’t show up for my shift until after they called. He asked me if I had a drug problem—if that was what was wrong with me. And Dr. Sanders wrote me up after I screwed up some patient’s meds. I’m becoming a liability at that place, Dad. I just don’t think I can hold it together anymore. I’m falling apart. I think I’m going to have to tell someone.”
And that’s when I finally think of something useful to say. “You just did tell someone, Andrew. You told your father. And I want you to promise me that you’re not going to tell anyone else. You hear me? Don’t you tell anoth
er fucking soul.”
He just sits there staring at me, not saying anything.
“When it starts getting to you, you’re going to pick up the phone and call me. Okay? If you can’t sleep, I don’t care what the hell time it is, you call me. If it hits you at work? You tell them you need to take a quick break, get yourself out of everyone else’s earshot, and dial my number. And I’ll answer it, I promise you. From now on, I’ll keep my cell with me at all times, no matter where I am. No matter what I’m doing. And when it rings, I’ll see that it’s you and pick up. Talk you back down from the ledge if you’re panicking. Okay? But you have to promise me, Andrew. Not another fucking soul. Not your supervisors, not some buddy of yours, not your mother or your sisters. And most of all, not the police. I’m the only one you should talk to about this. I need you to promise me that.”
Fifteen seconds go by, thirty. He’s trembling, crying again. And then finally, mercifully, he looks at me and nods. “Yeah, okay, Dad. I promise. . . .”
Larry’s just said something up front. I don’t know what. “Don’t you think so, Doc?” He’s looking back at me, waiting for a response.
“Yup,” I tell him. “You’ve got that right. . . .”
Later that afternoon, while she’s driving him to the airport, it turns dark outside. Starts raining. It’s only three, four o’clock, but it gets as dark as dusk. And the weather inside my head has shifted, too. Those dark clouds have descended, and the fear I’ve been feeling for my son has curdled into anger. And Annie is who I’m angry with. What he did that day—the way he ran out of there to avenge her, the way he’s been suffering ever since—it all comes back to rest on her. It’s fucking pathological is what it is. The way she kept me in the dark all those years and then dumped it all out on him. Made our son her confessor. And now his life is ruined, and she’s the one who ruined it.
I’m at the front window, staring out at the rain, when I see her drive up. Hear the car door slam. She comes in, takes off her wet coat, shakes it out on the foyer floor. “Oh, hi,” she says. “I didn’t see you sitting there. Boy, it’s miserable out. You okay?”
“Yup.”
“He checked with the airline on our way up. His flight was on time, so I guess he’s off. I’m going to start supper now. Leftovers okay?”
“Yes.” I’m seething. Waiting.
“Orion, can you come in the kitchen with me while I’m getting things ready? I kind of want to talk to you about Andrew.” I tell her I want to talk with her, too. She’s just not going to like what I have to say.
When I wheel myself in there, she’s at the fridge, pulling things out. Her back is turned to me. “Something’s up with him,” she says. “I think he’s withholding something.”
It’s not funny—quite the opposite—but I laugh. “Well, he’s learned how to do that from the best, hasn’t he?”
She glances over her shoulder at me. “I don’t . . . What do you mean?”
“I mean that you’re the friggin’ queen of withholding. All those secrets you were so good at keeping when we were married. The way your sister died that night, what your cousin did to you when you were a kid. Kind of made the whole marriage a sham, don’t you think?”
She stops what she’s doing. Turns around and faces me. “How did you—”
“Because he just told me how you vomited out all your ugly little secrets to him that day. Burdened him with all the dirty little things you never bothered to tell me about.”
She looks stunned. Good. She deserves to be. “Orion, I don’t really want to go into all that with you right now. I wish I hadn’t told Andrew that day, but it is what it is. And Millie’s been helping me sort through—”
“Millie? Oh, right. Your shrink. Tell me something, will you? I’m curious. Have you come clean to her about the abuse yet?” She nods, mumbles something about how what her cousin did to her is at the crux of her therapy. “No, no. Not that abuse. I mean the way you used to abuse our son.”
She stares at me, blank-faced. She keeps blinking.
“Pushing him down the stairs so that he ended up with a broken wrist. Clunking him on the head with a mallet. And Jesus, those were just the things they told me about.”
“They?” she says.
“Our kids, Annie. Ariane, mostly. The other two were pretty closemouthed about it. Still covering for you all these years later. Ari didn’t want to tell me either, but I got it out of her. Jesus, you were all about secrets, lies of omission. Weren’t you?”
“Orion, can you please just stop now? Because I’m starting to feel like I’m being attacked.”
“Speaking of which, you really lucked out that time you clobbered him on the head, huh? No concussion, no TBI. That would have really fucked up your secret-keeping, wouldn’t it have?”
She wipes her hands on her apron. Comes over and sits down at the table. “Orion, what’s going on here? Where is all this anger coming from?”
“From the gut. That’s where. When they came up to see me at Viveca’s place that weekend? Before your big gay wedding? That’s when I found out. Why’d you do it, Annie? Pick him out of the herd? Make him your victim instead of the girls? Or me?”
She’s blinking back tears now. “I didn’t . . . I have a temper, Orion. You know that. And sometimes he would—”
“Right. You’ve got a temper and he’s got a penis. Was that what was at the bottom of it? The fact that, of the three of them, it was your male child you needed to victimize?”
“I . . . Stop psychoanalyzing me. And stop making it sound like it was premeditated, because . . . because it wasn’t like that. He’d get my goat, press my buttons and I’d just go off. Get a little crazy. And then, afterward, I’d come to my senses and . . . I felt ashamed about those things I did, Orion. Ashamed and guilty.”
“But not guilty enough to let me know, apparently. And boy, the kids were in your corner, too, huh? You’d victimize him and then the three of them would feel sorry for you. Close ranks around you, like you were the one who needed to be protected. Wasn’t that how it went down, Annie? Poor Mama. She can’t help it. She didn’t know what she was doing.”
“I didn’t know! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m not justifying it but—”
“We better not tell Daddy, though. We have to protect her from him. Because he might actually do something. Get her some treatment. Protect us from her rampages.”
She shakes her head. “They didn’t need to be protected from me. I had my moments, yes, but I was a good mother. I love my kids, Andrew just as much as the girls.”
“You think they got off scot-free after all those deceptions you involved them in, Annie? You think they didn’t grow up scarred because of all those fucking secrets of yours? Hey, and speaking of secrets, how about the fact that you’re a lesbian. That was another thing you kept from me, huh? Boy, that one was a doozy.”
“Okay, stop it. Just—”
“And me, I was so fucking clueless. Jesus, you’d think a shrink would have been smart enough to catch on after a while, but nope. Not me. I mean, sometimes while I was making love to you, inside of you, I’d open my eyes and look at you. And you’d have that far-off expression like you were someplace else. Like you couldn’t wait for me to finish.”
She shakes her head. “You’re wrong. It wasn’t like that for me.”
“No? Really? Then how come, nine times out of ten, the only way I could bring you to an orgasm was when I went down on you? Who were you imagining was down there, Annie? What woman were you fantasizing about as you came?”
She unties her apron and throws it onto the table. Starts to leave the room, then turns around and tries to wound me back. “I don’t care how badly hurt you were up there on the Cape, or how bitter you’ve become because of it,” she says. “I am not going to stand here and have you accuse me unfairly. . . . I come here to help you, Orion. Not so that you can hurl all of these accusations at me. Put me on trial for things that—”
“That day yo
u told him about what your cousin did to you? When it was just you and Andrew up there in that room? That was a form of abuse, too. Wasn’t it, Annie?”
“Stop it! He guessed what Kent did. That’s why I told him.”
“And then he storms out of there, does what he does, and now—”
“What do you mean? He stormed out and did what?”
“Nothing. He just . . . Just get out of here, will you? Get in your car and go back to your wife, because it’s making me sick to even look at you.”
I’m not sparing her to be kind. I’d love to hit her with it right about now. She caused it, didn’t she? He killed him because of her. She deserves to suffer. It’s my son I’m sparing, not her. “Not another living soul,” I told him. And that goes for me, too. If I tell her, she could tell Viveca. Tell his sisters. The more people who know, the more danger he’d be in. The more likely . . . “I mean it, Annie. I don’t need you to come here every weekend and play nursemaid. In fact, I’d prefer you don’t anymore. Just leave. Pack your bag and get the fuck back to New York. Just go.”
She leaves the room—to do as I’ve just said, I figure. But I’m wrong. A minute later, she’s back in the doorway. “I am not leaving until tomorrow morning when your aide shows up for her shift,” she says. “That’s the plan, and that’s what I’m going to do. But I’m going upstairs now because I don’t want to look at you either. I just want to go up and be by myself and try not to think of the things you’ve just said to me.”
“Why not? Because the truth hurts?”
She doesn’t take the bait. An annoying calm has come over her. “I will leave my door open. Call up the stairs when you want to go to bed. I’ll help you get ready, and then I’ll stay the night like I planned. You can ring your bell if you need me for anything during the night, the same as always. Because no matter what you’ve said, what you’ve accused me of, I am not going to leave you by yourself. No matter how hurtful you’ve been, I am staying because you need someone to stay.”