It’s coming—in the last few days, I can feel it coming. But not knowing what it is, I don’t know how I feel about it. Sometimes, I want it to come and, at those times, I can feel it in my stomach, and it’s like a balloon getting bigger that rises up into my throat, and it always seems to have something to do with her—Vera, my wife. I wonder where she is and if she knows what happened to me and where I am. I haven’t asked about it because I don’t think they’d tell me.
I go to see Aragon three times a week now and I don’t go to the groups anymore with the rest of the residents. Maybe they figured that I wasn’t making as much progress in the groups as I’m making with Aragon. The routine with Aragon is the same but the sessions last longer and he asks me a lot more questions—mostly about her, Vera. I go on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday right after lunch, and I’m usually there until right before dinner. I sit down in the chair and turn on the vibrating machine, and then I take the lid off the metronome and set it at a medium slow beat—tick… tock… tick… tock. Aragon showed me how to set up the apparatus—that’s my latest word discovery, apparatus. Last Wednesday Aragon asked me to set up while he went to the bathroom, and when he got back, I already had my finger up in the air—my sign that I’m ready to go into a deep trance. I didn’t know it at the time, but he told me about it afterward and said it was a good sign because it shows that I’m willing to break through the block.
We still go through the relax and concentrate business, but after a couple of times, I can’t hear the words clearly anymore—they’re just a dull sound that’s like a machine spinning slowly in the distance, and it starts to get real black, and I feel like I’m floating until Aragon calls my name and tells me to begin climbing those stairs, and it’s always the same staircase with the wooden walls and the creaking third step, and when I get to the top and open the door, sometimes, it’ll be the blue sky with white clouds, but lately, it’s been the black space more and more, the night sky with a hundred stars and no bottom. And the worries go on a star that falls away and vanishes with that silver shower that shows where it was and the direction that it’s heading, and after that, I’m ready for the questions. My name, my age, what I did, where I’m from.
“Are you married?”
“Yes, I’m married to Vera.”
“What does she do?”
“She makes movies.”
“How old is she?”
“She’s forty-five too.”
“Where did you meet her?”
“In Refugio.”
“When was that?”
“Eighteen years ago, I think.”
“When were you married?”
“Fifteen years ago.”
“Do you have any children?”
“No.”
“Where is Vera now?”
“I don’t know.”
And then Aragon will tell me to relax and concentrate on Vera—where is she? And I try, but it won’t come—I can’t remember that part. And then we’ll leave that part alone and maybe he’ll ask me if I have any family and I’ll tell him yes—I have two brothers—and when he asks me their names, I know them, and then he’ll ask me questions about them, and if I can answer them, I do. They’re both older and my mother used to live in Sagrada where I grew up. And then we’ll go back to Vera, and Aragon asks if I loved her, and I’ll tell him that yes, I loved her, but I hated her almost as much, and when he asks me why, I tell him that I don’t know—it was the way things were between us. And then he might ask me if I was happy with her and I’ll tell him no, but I loved her. And as I write this, that word love means nothing to me—a feeling that I can’t place—another word that walks around in my head without a meaning.
The last time I went, Aragon asked me when was the last good time I had with Vera before we moved to Paris, and I told him on her birthday when she turned thirty-seven, some years ago in June. And he asked me to describe what we did, and I told him that we had a big party at our house in Refugio, and there were lots of people there playing music and dancing, and there was a table with a giant cake and hundreds of bottles of champagne that we were drinking. And he asked me if we had a good time, and I answered that we did have for a while, but then things got out of hand when Vera got too drunk. Aragon asked what that was like, and I told him that it was ugly and that something happened that made everybody leave. He asked what that was, and I guess I must not have answered for a while because he told me to just relax—nothing is going to happen to you—but I still remember. But then when he was taking me out of the trance and I was coming down the stairs, I realized that I was coming down the stairs in that house where the party was going on, and then the picture of that moment came back to me. I was coming down the stairs, and when I got to the bottom, I could see Vera dancing with some man, and Aragon asked me to describe that and I told him that they were dancing, but there wasn’t any music going and Vera was rubbing up against this man, and Aragon asked me how that made me feel, and I said angry, and then he asked what happened next, and I told him that I grabbed her and knocked her down. He asked what happened after that, and I told him that I went over to the table and turned it upside down and screamed at everybody, “—Get out, get out, get the fuck out of my house,”—and that’s when everybody left, and when Aragon asked me what happened after that, I tried to think, but I couldn’t remember. I had that picture in my mind of Vera lying on the floor with blood coming out of her mouth and everybody hurrying up to get out of there. I was still focusing on that picture and I could see her looking up at me, and at first, she looked like she was scared and shocked, but then she started laughing.
For the past two days, there’s been only that sound, the sound of my voice saying those words in Aragon’s office when we finally broke the lock on my memory. I don’t know what to feel other than some shock and confusion. I can’t begin to connect it with any feeling and now, with the lock opened and my memory spinning out, I’m beginning to wonder if I’m able to feel anything anymore. Those words that I finally was able to bring up when the bubble in my throat exploded and those words that recalled the whole scene in that house. When I think of it now, they—the words, the scene, the act—just seem to float there in space like a leaf in a shifting breeze. There’s just the sound of my voice saying those words, making that admission, a numb feeling, and nothing more.
I’ve been out of circulation for the past couple of days and haven’t had a chance to write about it since it happened. I’ve spent that time in the isolation room on a bed with restraints—for my own protection, according to Katz and Bardens. In that time, I’ve played the last session with Aragon over and over in my head so many times that I’m sure that I know it by heart. Here’s what I remember—Nurse Haig came up to get me Friday after lunch and I was in the dayroom at my usual spot looking down at the park. There aren’t too many people who go there these days because it’s winter now and, as I remember, this town can get pretty cold. Here’s something funny—this place, this facility, or whatever you want to call it—is located in the town where I grew up. I’ve been in Sagrada for the past year and a half and never knew it until two days ago. When I was a kid, we used to pass this place and make jokes and point at the patients looking out the same window where I’ve been spending so much time. But that’s another story. There are a million stories that are ready to roll out of me now that my memory’s been unlocked, but I’ll get back to the one about the last session first. Where was I? Oh yeah, Nurse Haig came for me like she usually does and escorted me down to Aragon’s office where he was waiting for me, sitting behind his desk, chewing on an unlit pipe. We began the usual routine. The vibrating chair, the metronome, relax and concentrate, relax and concentrate, blackness, the stairs leading to the door with the creaking third step, stars, the door opening up into a black night filled with a million stars, the worry star that vanishes in a vapor trail, the black becoming the deepest blue imaginable and the questions coming from Aragon that sound like he’s speaking from the top of a
hole that I’ve fallen into.
“What is your name?”
“Ram Le Doir.”
“How old are you?”
“Forty-five.”
“Where are you from?”
“Refugio.”
“What did you do there?”
“I was a writer.”
“Were you married?”
“Yes.”
“What was your wife’s name?”
“Vera.”
“What did she do?”
“She made movies.”
After those questions, Aragon told me to relax more and concentrate harder, and he asked me if I remembered where we left off the last time we met, and when I answered yes, he asked me if I could remember what happened after I left Los Angeles, and I sat there quiet for a minute, and Aragon asked me to concentrate harder, and then the scene began to roll. Aragon asked me some questions about what I was thinking about, but I told him that I couldn’t remember.
“Alright,” said Aragon, “just relax and concentrate… relax and concentrate.” And I began to feel more peaceful and the blueness of that sky washed over me and he told me to tell him what happened after I left Los Angeles.
“Were you alone?”
“I think so.”
“Okay, Ram, now I want you to tell me what happened next.”
“I got into the car and drove.”
“Where did you drive to?”
“I was going to Refugio.”
“Did you?” I guess a couple of moments passed because he asked me the same question again, “Did you drive to Refugio, Ram?”
“Yes.”
“What happened there?”
“I parked the car in front of the house and walked up to it.”
“Did you go in?”
“Not at first, I was just listening.”
“What did you hear?”
“I heard her, Vera.”
“Was she alone?”
“No, she was with a man.”
“Who was this man, Ram, can you remember his name?”
“I think it was Jimmy, Jimmy Shivers.”
“What did you do then, Ram?”
“I went around to the side of the house and climbed a tree.”
“What did you do that for?”
“So I could climb in through the window.”
“Could you describe the window for me?”
“There was a window on the side of the house at the landing on the stairs.”
“Are you inside the house now, Ram?”
“Yes.”
“Alright, can you tell me what happened after you got inside the house?”
“I went down the stairs.”
“What did you see?”
“I saw them.”
“Describe what you saw, Ram.”
“They were on the floor, and he was on top of Vera. They were fucking.”
“Did you say anything to them?”
“Not then.”
“What did you do, Ram?”
“I went back upstairs and got my gun.”
“What happened next?”
“I went back down to where they were downstairs.”
“Alright, you’ve got your gun and you’ve gone downstairs, what did you do when you got there?”
“I said something to them.”
“What did you say to them, Ram?”
“I told them not to move or I’d shoot them.”
“Did they say anything when you told them that?”
“They laughed.”
“What were they laughing at?”
“Me. They thought I was joking.”
“What happened after that?”
“I got some tape and tennis balls.”
“What did you do with that?”
“I put the balls in their mouths, and then I put tape over them.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I don’t know, to stop them from laughing, I think.”
“Alright, Ram, now just relax, relax and concentrate. Can you tell me what Vera and Jimmy are doing now?”
“They’re still on the floor, like they were before. They tried to get up, but I wouldn’t let them.”
“Okay, what happened after that?”
“I taped them together.”
“Describe that for me.”
“I just taped them together like they were, him on top of her. I had this silver tape and kept wrapping it around them until I ran out of tape.”
“So they were all covered in this silver tape?”
“Yes, all but their eyes.”
“What did you do after that?”
“I went out to the chapel.”
“Why did you go to the chapel?”
“I had to get something.”
“What happened next?”
“I came back into the house.”
“Tell me what happened when you got back into the house.”
“I asked them a question.”
“What was it you asked them?”
“I asked them if they were aware that they were going to be dead in five minutes.”
“Now, Ram, I want you to concentrate and tell me what happened after you asked them this question.”
“They started to squirm and tried to struggle against the tape, but they couldn’t do anything because I had wrapped it tight. They were looking at me, and I could see the fear in their faces. They were trying to talk, but they couldn’t say anything because of the balls in their mouths.”
“What did you do after that?”
“I laughed and said some things to them.”
“What did you say?”
“I don’t remember, crazy things.”
“Try to remember what you said.”
“I can’t remember all of it, crazy things, I think I said that they had received the final notice and it was now my duty to collect payment, other things, I don’t remember.”
“Alright, Ram, now tell me what happened after that.”
“I walked over to the bar and poured myself a drink.”
“Go on,” said Aragon.
“I proposed a toast to their memory.”
“What was the toast?”
I said, “Here’s to us, may we meet again in hell.”
“What did you do after the toast, Ram?”
“I drank the drink and threw the glass in the fireplace.”
“What happened after that?”
“I poured the gas over them.”
“Describe that for me, Ram.”
“I was looking right at them when I poured the gas on them, and they were struggling, and I could tell they were trying to scream but nothing would come out because of the balls and tape.”
“Alright, Ram, what happened after that?”
A minute must have passed before I said those words, and in that minute, I was living through that moment again, the smell of the gas, them looking at me with expressions of horror, the taste of the whiskey, the entire scene clear and frozen like the trees in the park get when the lightning flashes. And those words that I said, those eight words that have been going off in my head since that moment that unlocked the memory of that scene. The words they broke loose, came up my throat, and pushed the stuck bubble out of my mouth. I said, “I struck a match and watched them burn.”
Chapter Two
I was blowing breath on the dayroom window to make another world that made more sense to me, leaning my head against the fogged over glass and tracing the rivers around the islands my hair clumps made with my finger, and I felt it before I saw it. It was an old white station wagon and its wheels were shredding the damp leaves. Smoke was huffing from its exhaust pipes and mixing with the outside tulé, winding toward me along the levee, slithering almost—a huffmonster coming to take me away. And maybe I should have known it beforehand or at least suspected it because I’d been so low-dosed for the past couple of weeks that I could feel old sports injuries and the ache of unhealed organs. But then agai
n, you think it’s a movie even though Barry had been telling me that they only start scaling you down so you can feel it only when it’s sure that they mean to move you.
The speaker coughed twice, calling me to Katz and Bardens’ office where the people in the dirty white wagon were waiting with a uniformed officer. “This is David and Judy,” said Stella Durang, Katz’s chief nurse. Katz was there standing behind his desk, smiling that silly smile of his that’s like he’s your baseball umpire uncle who had to call you out at home plate. And Katz said, “Well, congratulations, Ram, you’re leaving here. You’ve graduated to the next stop on your way back.” Bardens, the younger less bushy half of the team looked up from his clipboard to note my reaction which I tried to make blank. “These people,” said Katz, (big official gesture to David and Judy) “will be taking you to their facility.” Katz was smiling a bit wider now and folding his arms across his chest paternal as Carl Betz in the old Donna Reed show, me not having a clue as to how that thought came into my head. And maybe it was the confused look I had that came with that connection that made Katz suddenly lean forward like gotcha and ask me, “How do you feel about that?”
“Sounds fine to me,” was what I think I said. It took me an hour or so to get what little possessions I had and to sign all the millions of forms they pushed at me. And they all had to be read out loud first and I was asked did I understand everything, and did I give my full consent and all. And I was willing, being a cooperative partner in my rehabilitation and all that. Then all of us—me, Katz, Bardens, David, Judy, and the cop who was anywhere but here—signed where we were told to by Stella Durang who Barry said was the true top dog of Six East. I listened to the first couple of readings—court sentence modification, radical vocational retraining—but it was just too much to take in all in one shot ’cause they’d given me a heavy spansule that morning that I was just starting to feel and I was too blue-zoned to follow. And what was I going to do anyway, negotiate terms? In for a penny, in for a pound I always say.
It was taking forever to get done and the meds cocktail was making time run slow as an old dog trying to chase his master’s car. Then finally it was over and I was told to stop by Aragon’s on the way out and then all of us rose as one. Handshake, handshake, good luck, good luck, thin smiles all the way around.
Windwhistle Bone Page 3