Shades of Eva (48 page)

Amelia was holding up her end of the deal. I
needed to hold up mine, but something new began aching inside of
me. I began grieving a grief I had never anticipated. That tiny box
felt as if it were burning holes in my hands, and I nearly dropped
it.

***

Thick layers of gauze,

Its contents, my heart.

A clinical perspective for friends,

Enough so the blood does not drip.

Only at the solitary presence of his tiny
grave,

Do I sit and unwind all the layers

And view the deep gash.

It will never heal…I will only wrap it
differently with time.

Wednesday: 2:12 a.m.

Late that night, I held in one hand the tiny
fingers of my baby brother. There were ten of them, albeit some
detached from their adjacent bones, but they were all there. I held
Elmer’s tiny skull in my other hand, looking into the hollow orbits
of his eyes, wondering what color those eyes used to be, wondering
what expression they might convey if they could ever set themselves
on me.

I sat there listening to Ully’s
pseudo-confession repeating itself in telepathic silence somewhere
inside of me, listening to the absence of his remorse ringing in my
ear, watching his old, frail body pointing a likewise frail finger
toward the black oak tree, images and sounds that seemed etched
into my soul as if they were but a latent painting awaiting an
artist’s canvas, or a song yet to find its way from the inkwell to
its paper.

Amelia sat in a recliner for several hours
watching me watching the bones, assembling them, disassembling
them, crying over them. The jubilation that had overtaken me upon
finding my brother had been replaced with a melancholy anguish the
likes I could have never expected.

I could not believe that I had actually
found him. But there he was. Here he was! And here, too, was the
grief of a loss I had never allowed myself to grieve, the loss of a
brother laid out before me in miniature, magnificent bony
detail.

I was enraged. I was in despair. And I was
afraid. For what was happening to me, for what had happened to
Elmer, and for what was about to happen to all of us. I was afraid
for what I was bent on doing because of it all.

I felt sick. I felt insane. I felt that
smothering sensation born of a never-ending hug, one you can’t
wriggle out of, and the familiar, all too similar pain of
constriction deep inside my chest, the sort of pain that can take
thousands of heartbeats from a man.

But Amelia moved over to me, held me, and
suffered it with me, and in her embrace I could feel those
components of grief in their entirety, and at once feel my heart
still itself. Amelia must have sensed all of that energy: the
anguish, the simultaneous relief, the rage, and a peaceful, newborn
sympathy emanating from me. Together, we remembered.

I had never considered how painful that loss
could be until Amelia had entered my life. I had never realized how
agonizing that loss could be until I held the bones of my dead
brother in my hands. Amelia was teaching me how to grieve, and she
was demonstrating that gift by wrapping herself around me.

I couldn’t help feel that Amelia was
grieving her own grief with me too, for the losses that had
permeated her own life and her own family. I also couldn’t help
wondering if she had ever been consoled as she was consoling me, as
her aunt most assuredly had consoled my mother forty years ago.
When I’d spent considerable energy on my own pain, I turned to
Amelia and looked deep into her eyes. I was thanking her,
expressing affection for her, expressing affection for loved ones
and lost lives, and offering her a similar gesture of sympathy.

She understood and at once buried her face
in my chest, and I held her.

Somewhere in those tears, sometime in that
embrace, Amelia recited a poem to me that put fresh bandages on my
heart, a poem for mothers and children and lovers that didn’t erase
the past or fan a fire of vengeance because of it, but protected
the past in a sort of respectful cocoon.

Thick layers of gauze,

Its contents, my heart.

A clinical perspective for friends,

Enough so the blood does not drip.

Only at the solitary presence of his tiny
grave,

Do I sit and unwind all the layers

And view the deep gash.

It will never heal…I will only wrap it
differently with time.

At once I understood the source of my
mother’s angina. Her pain was a form of remembering in a society
where every force around her was compelling her to forget. She was
holding on the only way she knew how to—by holding onto the pain
when she could have held on to the memory. If only memories weren’t
so painful!

I could hear a car idling outside
the
Sacramento Drive Victorian. Amelia released me and stood up to look
out the window.

“They are here,” she said, smiling a
peaceful smile.

I didn’t ask who she was talking about. I
didn’t care at the time.

I sat and brewed over the bones for another
minute, and then handed them over. “Take them,” I said. “Let’s
finish this.”

She crossed to me and placed her hand on my
shoulder. I placed the bones carefully back into the toolbox, and
Amelia took them out to the idling car.

I stood looking out the front window into
the dark, rainy night air toward two strangers who had gotten out
of the car. One of them took the container from Amelia. The other
seemed to have given the window behind which I was standing a
casual, yet concerning glance. I stepped back, not wanting to be
seen.

I knew Amelia would tell me who they were
when it mattered more to me.

In just twenty-four hours, I’d have all the
answers I needed.

In my first session with Ben
Levantle
, he’d asked me to write about what happened in the
shed in my shadow journal. What I think he was asking was, what did
you do when it happened? While it happened? How did you react when
you were being raped, for you did react somehow?

So how did I react?

I’d lost consciousness. I’d gone silent. I’d
separated myself from the situation. Maybe I detached as children
do under such trauma. Maybe in that moment I’d entered a mental
world like Joanne Greenberg’s character, maybe a rose garden, maybe
a bar, maybe a kingdom where my word was law and my first was
king.

And since I did retreat—since I was gagged
and had failed to scream—a question came to mind, one that I’d
never considered. How did Mom know to come to the shed if I did not
call out to her?

That’s what Ben was asking.

And so I started asking. I started asking
Mom.

I picked up my journal and the pen Ben had
given me and I took Ben’s advice. I gave my mother a voice. I asked
her a question, and in a strange, very eternal, and perhaps a
genetic way, she answered me. Our conversation went something like
this:

Me: I’m so sorry, Mom, for not
listening.

Mom: Mitchell, please don’t apologize. It
wasn’t your fault.

Me: I just want you back so bad.

Mom: I always told you that I’m here in
spirit.

Me: But I killed you. I helped kill you
didn’t I, with the stress I used to put on you.

Mom: No, Mitchell. You were the best thing
that ever happened to me. You put years back on my life. I would
have never lived as long as I did without you.

Me: Why did you come to the shed, Mom? I
don’t remember calling you.

Mom: What do you mean, Mitchell?

Me: Ben wants to know what I did when it
happened. He wants to know what I did, and I want to know why you
came. How did you know I needed you? I didn’t call you. I didn’t
scream.

Mom: You didn’t need me, Mitchell.

Me: But I did! I blacked out.

Mom: You handled it, Son.

Me: But how? What did I do?

I walked to the living room
and sat
down in front of the computer. I was numb. The idea that I’d
handled things was sitting on me like an elephant sitting on my
chest. I was flashing back to the spaghetti supper spilled in that
shed: to blood and noodle-like nerves and smoke, and to Mom
standing there. She had a gun in her hand—but she didn’t have the
key to the storage toolbox—I did.

So how did she get that gun?

I had that key in my pocket. I’d unlocked
the drawer. I’d unlocked the toolbox before I went in. The door was
banging. There was a thump. I heard someone moving in there. Mom
never opened that drawer. She never knew Dad had a gun in
there!

How did she have it if it wasn’t
already….

And then it became clear to me. Someone else
was in that shed. Someone else shot Fred Elms before Mom ever got
there.

And then the phone rang.

“—
Mitchell, it’s me. It’s Amelia. We have
the results.”

Time seemed to stand still
for just a
moment. I looked to my watch. It read 5:12 AM. I moved to the
window carrying the phone with me and stared out into the
night.

“Go ahead, Amelia.”

“—
The baby is your brother, Mitchell. He
was Eva’s baby.”

“Who is the father?” I said.

Two words, no hesitation.
“—Fred
Levantle. They found Ben’s DNA was the DNA of a paternal
uncle.”

I said nothing. I felt…disappointed. It was
not the last name I wanted to give my brother. The name I wanted to
give him was…was my father’s name.

“—
We are closer,”
Amelia said.
“—Your mother was right. It wasn’t Brad’s child. She was right,
Mitchell. It’s vindication for her. Are you still seeing Ben this
morning?”

“Yes.”

“—
Good. Because I don’t think we have
much time. If we can’t find Fred, we’ll let the police find him for
us. I’m heading back to the river house to clean up our trail. We
need to talk about the gallery. You have the blueprints to the
tunnels, right?”

“Yes. I found them last night.”

“—
Okay. You work at noon today,
right?”

“Yes. After my session.”

“—
You can go. We’ve been listening to the
scanner and to Ben’s line. They haven’t called him yet. But keep
your phone on, okay?”

“I will.”

“—
And you have Van Husan’s article, so
you have photographs of what you’re looking for. Find the gallery.
Call me. We get Emily’s things today and we’re gone.”

“Mom didn’t shoot my rapist!”

There was a long, awkward pause.
“—What?”

“I shot him, Amelia! That sort of puts us on
a leveler playing field. I’ve killed a man, too.”

“—
How do you know that?”

I hesitated to answer her. How did I answer
that and not sound like a freak? But I had to tell her the truth,
so I threw caution to the wind.

“Mom told me so,” I said. “I think it was a
genetic memory. She told me, and I wrote it down.”

***

“
Writing…is a deeper sleep than
death…Just as one wouldn’t pull a corpse from its grave, I can’t be
dragged from my desk at night.” ~Franz Kafka

Wednesday, April 24, 1995 9:00 a.m.

Ben Levantle

The Dissociative Experiences Scale has three
subscales: Imaginative Involvement; Amnesia; and Depersonalization.
At any given time, one percent of the general population can score
above twenty on any subscale. Any score above thirty on any factor
suggests a strong likelihood of one of two major psychiatric
disorders: schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder.

Mitchell’s scores were alarming: 40, 47, and
49, respectively.

Several of Mitchell’s answers were telling.
He claimed to often miss parts of conversations; he was often
unsure of having done something or having only imagined doing it.
He was able to ignore a tremendous amount of pain. He stated that
sometimes when he remembered certain experiences it was as if he
seemed to be reliving them. He found evidence that he had done
things he could not remember doing. He admitted to talking to
himself when alone. He scored low on remembering key events in his
life. Mitchell indicated that he saw himself as if he were looking
at another person, and sometimes didn’t recognize his own
reflection in a mirror. And lastly, Mitchell attested to viewing
the world as if he were looking through a fog.

Perhaps I should have waited on the shadow
journaling. I regret to say that I underestimated his trauma, and
his addiction, and more importantly, I’d overestimated his
resilience.

The best thing to do would be to refer him
to a specialist and encourage him to check in to a clinic that
could give him the assistance he required, which was, in my
estimation, far beyond what I could offer. I had a colleague’s
business card on the desk and ready when Mitchell entered my
office. Problem was I’m not sure who entered my office that day.
The man looked like Mitchell, but he had the eyes of someone else.
He was tired. As close as he was to me, he was as distant a man as
I had ever seen.

Before I could raise the subject
of
his test score, Mitchell withdrew his shadow journaling notebook,
tossed it on my desk, told me to open it to a certain page, and
then told me to read.

I offered a brief objection. He sat, but
Mitchell only shook his head at the objection and closed his eyes
as if he were too tired to argue. He said he needed to lie down,
and he did. Within minutes he fell asleep.

Normally I wouldn’t think of reading
anyone’s journal, and that goes for a shadow journal, as well. Even
when asked. These things are confidential, personal, and if they
are discussed in therapy they should be discussed openly, freely.
Journals are notorious for harboring the deepest of secrets, but a
shadow journal is one tick higher on the darkness meter. It
involves a certain level of dark imagination. Clients almost always
want to discuss what they’ve written, but Mitchell was the first to
turn the exercise over to me with a blanket permission to read
away.