Shades of Eva (57 page)

“That’s certainly unconventional,” I told
Abby. “Most psychologists don’t get that involved, but then again
most psychologists aren’t duped in the way Ben was.”

In forty minutes, security let Ben pass and
he was walking up the sidewalk toward the administrative complex. I
wondered if when he breeched those solid mahogany doors and stepped
into that foyer if he’d feel the same ominous discomfort, the same
brooding cowardice that I felt when standing in threshold of that
place. But cameras don’t lie. Ben strolled casually through the
foyer right to reception without so much as batting an eye.

I imagined that Ben was visiting the Asylum
with a certain sense of bewilderment, with a certain impending
curiosity at meeting the man who, in a way, had taken his place…if
that’s what he was doing. My father had done something Ben had
failed to do—he gave Mom a snowball’s chance in hell where Ben had
simply let my mother melt away.

I was transfixed by the monitors before me,
broadcasting as clear an image of my counselor moving through the
only course fate seemed to have laid for him. It was eerie and it
was satisfying. Whoever he was looking for—for whatever reasons
he’d come to the Asylum to investigate—that was not the point. He
was there. That was the point, and like me and like Anna and Ully
and like my father, he belonged in this eerie family reunion, and
to that belongingness I had to nod my head.

Ben walked to the receptionist area and
wrapped on the glass to get someone’s attention. He spoke briefly
to someone for ten seconds and then made his way down the center
hallway toward Anna’s office.

I watched the monitor as Ben was now
standing outside of what appeared to be Anna Norris’s doorway. And
it was. I could see her emerging half way into the hall. They shook
hands.

“She’s up late tonight,” Abby said from
across the room.

We had no devices in Anna’s office. It was a
regret I must admit. I often wondered what Anna told Ben in that
meeting, and vice versa. I would never know. He came out with a
different demeanor than he had when he entered, however. He seemed
nervous, agitated, unsure of himself, which wasn’t the Ben Levantle
I was used to seeing. He didn’t walk with the same confidence he
did when entering the place.

I watched him return up the hallway through
which he’d come, and leave out the same front doorway, standing
once again on her doorstep. He then turned toward the halfway house
where Dad was admitted.

I clicked to a menu of locations on the
computer, and selected a tab that allowed me to engage the
audio-video in room eight: Dad’s room.

“He’s going to talk to my father,” I said to
Abby.

She nodded and told me to bring up the
audio.

I clicked GO and a separate window opened on
another computer screen showing Dad’s room. I clicked the audio GO.
The feed came through.

Ben approached Dad’s doorway
with a
pace suggesting reticence, and then knocked.  The audio was
loud and clear. “Mr. Rennix, I’m Ben Levantle. You were told I was
coming?”

Dad took a seat in a chair near the window.
“I know who you are,” Dad replied. “Come in.”

Ben entered and shut the door behind
him.

“Interest you in a beverage, Dr. Ben?”

Ben didn’t seem to answer. Dad stood and
opened a small refrigerator in the room and withdrew two cans of
what appeared to be Budweiser.

“I didn’t know they let mental patients keep
alcohol in their rooms,” I told Abby, who reminded me that Dad was
only half a patient—that he was a voluntary, so I guess it was okay
with the Brass.

Surprisingly, Ben took the beer.

Dad moved to one of the room’s windows and
pulled back the curtains. Room eight was a corner suite with two
windows: one facing east toward the main hospital, the other south
toward the wooded ravine where the sawed-off oak tree was still
laying. This had been Ully’s room the day prior, the one he and I
had conversed in.

I asked Abby if Dad knew we were recording
him, and she said no.

Dad began. “Ben, did Mitchell talk about
me…in therapy? Did he bring me up?”

I raised my eyebrows. Even I knew that it
was against confidentiality to talk about a patient, even to his
father.

Ben answered him, saying only, “I believe
Mitchell is in trouble.”

“The Family is in trouble,” Dad replied,
curtly. “I’m in here. Ully’s here. Hell, Eva’s probably here, too.
And now you’re here.”

Dad continued to stare out the window toward
the woods as he spoke, then started laughing.

“I’m just curious, Brad,” Ben replied. “Has
Mitchell contacted you recently?”

“No, Mitchell hasn’t contacted me in a long
time. Let me ask you a question: what do you know about Eva’s first
baby? Did you ever follow up on what happened to him?”

“Follow up?” Ben responded.

“I think you understand what I mean,” Dad
said, his expression a little perturbed. “Eva’s firstborn son? Eva
called him Elmer. You are aware of Elmer, aren’t you?”

Ben nodded.

“Perhaps that’s why you came,” Dad said.
“You aren’t so much interested in Mitchell as you are in atoning
for what you did to Eva, is that right?”

“I’m here because Anna asked me to come
here,” Ben said, with as about as much affection as a trap door
spider has for a passing beetle. “And I’m concerned about your son.
Those are the only reasons I’m here.”

“Yes, my son,” Dad said, with about the same
level of affection. “My only son.”

“If I were you,” Ben said, “I’d be terrified
right now. Is that why you checked in here?”

“What did Anna tell you? She did call you,
didn’t she?”

“She did.”

 Dad was nodding his head. “Yeah,
she’ll be here in a moment and maybe we can wrap this up.”

Abby and I were looking at each other with
mystified expressions. “Anna called Ben?” I asked Abby.

Abby just shrugged her shoulders.

“Eva loved you, you know,” Dad continued,
taking a rather long swig of his beer. Ben didn’t respond. “She was
seeing you when she was committed in ‘50 if I recall, but I don’t
recall you pulling your head out of the sand to see how she was
doing.”

“You’re right,” Ben replied, taking a sip of
his own. “I was distant when better men might have given her more
attention. Men like you.”

Dad laughed as I knew he would. “Yes, men
like me. Seventeen years together. 1953 to 1970.”

“You claimed a child who wasn’t yours!” Ben
said. “In a way, that’s admirable. But do you really think you were
doing Eva any favors by lying about Elmer’s paternity? In essence
you called her a liar.”

Dad seemed angry. “I was there! Where the
hell were you Doctor High and Mighty? Enjoying that good Notre Dame
education, no doubt!”

“No I wasn’t always there for her, but I
hear you weren’t always, either! You can spend seventeen years in
the same room with someone and never be together! I wouldn’t accept
any awards for husband-of-the century just yet, not by what
Mitchell had to say about you! When—and if—you see him again, you
might consider begging his forgiveness.”

I thought I could see a little fire in Dad’s
eyes, and some too in Ben’s. There were stars in Abby’s, as if she
were enjoying all of this on behalf of my mother.

Dad: “I want to know if you are protecting
your brother with this habit of avoiding things you seem to have!”
Dad crossed the room to get a little closer to Ben. “And I want the
damn truth!”

“No! I’m not protecting anyone,” Ben
replied. “Avoidance was an old habit of mine—not a current one—and
I’m not the one hiding in a mental hospital right now!”

Dad had stopped midway across the room. He
started laughing. “Oh, you think that’s what I’m doing here?
Hiding?”

Ben was nodding. “Why else would you be
here? You’re afraid.”

Dad took another sip of beer and shook his
head. “No, I’m not afraid, and I’m not looking for protection. I’m
looking for redemption. I’m helping. I’m just doing it my way. I
know I wasn’t there for Eva. I know I wasn’t a good father. I know
I could have done a lot of things differently. I don’t need some
Ivy League doctor or some quack in a nuthouse to tell me that. I
know I fucked up. But let’s get something straight: no one here
gets a pass. We’re equal opportunity victims because we’ve
committed equal crimes in some people’s eyes, so if I were you, I
wouldn’t get too comfortable in that chair. Ask Ully—he’s here;
he’ll tell you the same thing!”

I could see the discomfort in Ben’s posture.
In fact, he stood up and began pacing. He looked at his watch as if
Anna had set a time for their upcoming three-way.

He turned to Dad and said, “I am sorry,
Brad, whether you believe that or not. I know I walked out on her
when she was a girl. I was the first man to walk out on her—but I
wasn’t the last.”

Dad nodded, and he shut up for a minute.

“So you have some regrets, I take it,” Dad
said.

Ben moved to the open window and looked
outside. “Of course I do. I let a friend down in many different
ways. And that friend isn’t here to apologize to. I have a lot of
regrets, Brad.”

“As do I, Ben. And you’re right. I wasn’t
faithful to her. I blew a $250,000 inheritance because of that
unfaithfulness. Did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“And guess who inherited that money in my
stead.”

“I don’t know.”

Dad smiled. “Ully did. That money would have
bought a lot of booze.”

The two men shared an uncomfortable
laugh.

“I have something to ask of you,” Dad said,
and he stood up and moved to a closet on the inside wall.

“What’s he doing?” I said to Abby.

“I’m not sure,” she replied.

Dad opened the door. He reached in and
withdrew four boxes stacked one on top of the other and sat them in
the center of the floor.

Dad pulled out what looked like a bust of
someone, about ten-inches tall and equally as wide. It had weight
to it, for it made a thud when he set it on an end table.

Abby hit a couple keys and zoomed in on the
object.

It looked familiar. It was one of the
sculptures Van Husan had photographed in his Depressed Sculptress
article on Abby’s aunt Emily. It was a bust of a woman I didn’t
recognize.

That’s when Abigail uttered, almost
inaudibly, Aunt Emily.

“What’s this?” Ben said, referring to the
sculpture.

“There’s more where that came from,” Dad
said, dragging another box out of the closet and opening it.

I looked to Abby who was smiling ever so
slightly. Ben pulled up a chair by the end table and moved closer
to the bust the way Abby and I had just pulled our chairs closer to
the monitor.

“Her name is Emily—she’s the bust of a young
woman who was Eva’s best friend in here.”

Ben was studying the sculpture. “It’s nice,”
he said. “But why are you showing me this?”

Dad gestured to another box, as if offering
it to Ben for explanation.

Ben opened it and began looking through it,
then opened another. He began pulling objects from them and setting
them in lines on the floor. He pulled out at least small
sculptures, one of which I was familiar with—the horse eating its
own torso. Ben had also withdrawn numerous framed artifacts and was
studying them as if they should be somehow familiar to him.

I turned to Abby. I noticed a tear was
falling down her cheek. She said, still staring at the monitor,
“He’s found them. Those are my aunt’s things. But why is he showing
them to Ben?”

She’d reached out a hand to touch the
monitor’s screen as if she could somehow touch the objects pictured
therein. Abby had worked out a plan with my father to retrieve
those objects, but the plan didn’t involve Ben.

“What are these?” Ben asked again.

At that point, we could see the room’s door
open and someone walk in.

Abby gasped. It was Dr. Norris.

Immediately, Dr. Norris answered Ben’s
question. “This is a collection of art we’ve kept by one of our
daughters.”

Abby’s jaw about dropped. She leaned back
and seemed to be holding her breath.

Ben looked up to Anna and then stood.

“Her name was Emily White,” Anna continued.
She then crossed the room and reached down for one of the
artifacts, a framed piece, a picture or something. We couldn’t
quite tell on the monitor.

“Your father’s set me up!” Abby
exclaimed.

“Please, gentlemen, have a seat,” Anna said,
gesturing them both to sit, and they did.

“What in the hell is he doing?” Abby
hollered. She was seething now. I knew Abby didn’t like surprises,
and I knew this wasn’t part of her plan. There was no reason why
Dad would show these objects to Ben in front of Anna unless he had
some ulterior motive.

“Brad was supposed to give those to us, not
to Ben!” Abby said. “And Anna wasn’t supposed to know! What the
fuck are they doing?”

Anna took up another location in the room by
the window. “Emily wanted your brother located, Ben,” Anna said.
“And I want this to end tonight!”

Ben and my father were staring at Anna the
way that Abby and I were staring at the screen, helpless,
wondering, waiting like school children waiting for an answer to a
question they might not understand.

With that, Anna pulled something from the
handbag she’d carried in. It appeared to be a manila envelope. She
handed it to Ben who was studying its label. She said, “This is
from Eva’s file.”

“What the hell is going on?” I said.

“I don’t know!” Abby replied. “Something’s
not right!”

“I need you to look through this,” Anna told
Ben, “and I need you to look through it very carefully.” Anna
handed it over, and then turned to stare southward out the window
toward the ravine, toward the fallen oak.