Dr. McClintock,
I have good reason for not being able to share everything I have at this juncture. Forgive me if that seems coy, but I really have no choice.
Nonetheless, I hope you will be able to help me with the following.
My questions are:
1. Who is the analyst? Do you have prior knowledge of Annie Oakley visiting and corresponding with such a person? I find nothing mentioned in the standard biographies.
2. The source provides little information about precisely where the papers were originally found, except a street: Hassgasse, and evidently from there the papers went to an unspecified museum that “did not have room.” The source, whom I know only via a username, has decided to sell them now only because he is cash-strapped. This story seems suspect even in its generalities. Can you posit a provenance and chain of custody?
3. I am preparing to invest to the whole of my means into this project for personal reasons. Do you believe it’s possible to help me make this investment decision in just a few days? I am not technologically savvy. My prime collecting days preceded the World Wide Web, and while I’ve kept up with a few websites here and there, I have no doubt someone your age knows tricks I don’t.
It was true. If Nieman were technologically savvy, he would’ve found Ruth’s CV online and seen that she wasn’t a “doctor” in any sense; she hadn’t completed her PhD. Yes, he needed help, but at least he’d recognized it and made his questions plain.
Ruth was almost ready to write him back, expressing her first hunch about the analyst’s identity. But as long as he’d mentioned it, she googled Hassgasse. It meant “Hate Alley.” Really? That didn’t seem likely to exist.
When Ruth took a break for email, she saw a new message from her grad-school friend. Thank you, thank you, Mariette.
Easy question, easy answer, Mariette wrote. Breuer didn’t do analysis after Anna O.
It was hard to believe that Breuer could have invented the very foundation for modern psychoanalysis and then immediately abandoned it. He was the one who’d made “Anna O” famous. The one who’d mentored Freud, not the other way around.
Ruth replied, You’re sure there wasn’t a single analysand after Anna O? Is it possible he simply isn’t known for his later cases?
Mariette was still online. She answered quickly.
I’d say it’s common knowledge. My own view is that Breuer regretted his first experience dealing with a psychoanalytic patient.
The case had rattled Breuer, but he would have had time to recover. He met with Anna O.—Bertha Pappenheim—from 1880 to 1882. The first session with Annie or “ZN” had to be later than 1901, and probably no sooner than mid to late 1902, given Annie’s recovery time after the train accident. An exact date would help.
Coffee mug in hand, Ruth decided to comb through the non-Annie parts of the journal again. She had been tired during her first reading. She might have missed small clues while straining to decode Breuer’s handwriting.
Long after she’d stopped checking the clock, fueled by a peanut butter sandwich at midday, some apple slices and cheese at dinner time and a bowl of ice cream hours after that, she came across a barely legible date she’d overlooked in the notes of the medical patient just following Annie.
The twentieth of some month—either a 1 or a 7, meaning either January or July. The patient notes referred to respiratory troubles exacerbated by summer allergies. So it was July, then. And the final numbers in that date—1904—were certain.
Ruth pounded the table with her fist. Then she sat, stunned, realizing she had what she needed: not one kind of negative evidence, but two, and this latter piece was the more concrete.
First of all, Hate Alley in Vienna wasn’t a place.
Second, in 1904, Annie was battling William Randolph Hearst in court, busy traveling from trial to trial. This was the very last item Ruth had researched before setting aside her book altogether—the last finding she’d ever tried to share with Scott. It had seemed like a key puzzle piece then; it was even more important now. Ruth had read everything she had in print and digital form about the Hearst trials. She was certain Annie wouldn’t have left America at such a sensitive time or chosen that year to confide weakness to anyone.
Ruth allowed herself a peek at the clock: 1 a.m. For one amazing, distraction-free day, she had almost begun to believe something incredible, perhaps even disturbing and wonderful. She’d swum far from shore to a place her feet could no longer reach, and luckily, she had turned around just before it was too late.
Ruth went into the bathroom and washed her face, feeling jumpy, nerves jangling. She wasn’t going to fall asleep soon, meaning she wouldn’t wake up early either. Better to write the email now, so that Nieman, several hours ahead of her, could read it first thing, and she could sleep in, without guilt or distraction.
She decided to be blunt.
The email began:
Mr. Nieman,
To answer your last question first, you can save your money.
After which she explained each reason for her doubts.
Ruth went to bed feeling triumphant, like she’d closed a book on two years of professional and personal failure, defeating the loudest of her demons. She could be the old Ruth again: skeptical, unsentimental, not prone to hyperassociation, wishful thinking or any more serious delusions.
Hate Alley? Really.
She was once again the person Scott might have married, had she not screwed that up completely. He had seen her at her worst, fueled by book-deadline anxieties, then made paranoid by her family’s own confusing history, then temporarily insane—also cranky and fat—by her car accident. If only he could see her now, able to come to a quick, logical conclusion, able to set a fruitless project aside, he would know she was back to her earlier, healthier self.
She fell asleep, mind on that confusing, futile desire: to go back to a simpler time, even if it meant she’d never received the hoax journal in the first place.
And then, nine hours later, she woke with a start.
I could be wrong.
I could be overcorrecting.
Ruth had no logical reason for thinking she’d made a mistake. It was only a feeling.
I missed my chance.
And not just that.
Something bad is going to happen.
13
Caleb
Sunday
Caleb knew where Vorst lived because they’d stopped there once—an old house in town, stuck between an even more decrepit A-frame and some woods, near the school. Vorst ran in—“You sit tight,” with a wink that made Caleb uncomfortable—to grab two six-packs and an electric heater for his weekend place outside town. That cabin, at the end of a long gravel road surrounded by hayfields, was always cold.
Luckily for Caleb and unluckily for the asshole, he had slipped up that one time. Now, the old guy’s house, with its trim lawn and its stupid bird feeders, was a magnet. Caleb rode past on his bike, hat pulled low and hoody cinched tight, peddling fast, hardly able to think past the pounding heat in his head, trying to picture exactly what he would do.
He’d daydreamed an elaborate kidnapping and torture scene, the kind of thing you saw in movies, but that would require getting physically close, which was the last thing Caleb wanted. It would also require help—a vehicle, friends or at least one trustworthy sidekick, none of which he had. Caleb hadn’t told anyone about Vorst, and couldn’t bear to, not even the smallest admissions, like when Reece asked if he’d gotten a ride from the retired coach the other day.
Caleb had lied without thinking. He’d even told Reece that he’d keyed Vorst’s car. That was stupid. What he’d meant in his own fucked-up head was that he was thinking of keying the car. He was always like that, thinking instead of doing, and even his thoughts never made sense.
So much of it was his fault, and now this was, t
oo: having no one to help. No backup, no sidekick, no ideas, only too much time to pedal around, waiting for someone else to solve the fucking problem for him. Well, it wasn’t going to happen. He passed the coach’s house, did a sharp U-turn, put in headphones and rode by again.
Caleb was so lost in thought staring at the tan house as he approached a fourth time that he didn’t notice the pickup truck barreling toward him. The truck swerved to the other side of the road to avoid him; Caleb corrected his course and returned to his own side and went even farther, up and over the curb onto the grass of a neighbor’s yard, almost crashing, foot out to catch himself and then back on the pedal, bike still upright. Still pedaling.
It was all over in an instant, but Caleb was covered in sweat, his heart thumping a million beats per minute. He kept going, mouth open, stupid look on his face. A few minutes later, another car passed. Was that Mr. Webb, his math teacher?
It would not be good to be seen in this neighborhood by anyone, but especially by Mr. Webb, who always had that soft, good-guy look on his face. That could be harder to take than the teachers who never looked at you at all. He always asked too many questions. How are you holding up? Getting into a groove this semester?
Caleb had no plan, only a feeling inside him that kept building every time he saw Vorst at school, every time he remembered last spring, every time he remembered last week in Vorst’s car.
He’d spent all summer pushing the spring semester out of his head. He was good at that, convincing himself that certain things had never happened, that he wasn’t the kind of person who would have done any of that.
As long as no one ever found out, as long as there weren’t reminders or consequences, he could go days without thinking about it at all. Hell, think of all the things guys managed to forget about, from breakups to war. His stepdad sure didn’t seem to remember much about his Afghanistan tours.
Then last week, Caleb had seen Vorst standing next to Mikayla at tumbling practice with his arm around her. From across the gym, Caleb froze. He watched Vorst’s hand, patting her shoulder, pulling her closer. He knew that hand. He knew that sideways hug. He knew the look on Mikayla’s face, too: uncertainty, yielding to toleration, maybe even some kind of awkward gratitude.
It was an out-of-body experience.
She’s next.
Mikayla had gone with Caleb to the spring dance and confessed only at the end, after they’d both spent a pathetic night barely dancing or even talking, that she hadn’t really wanted to go. Not with him or anyone. She’d just been too shy and nervous to say no. The fact that Caleb might have done the same thing in her position didn’t make it any less humiliating.
She’d said, “Don’t hate me.”
He’d said, “Of course I don’t hate you.”
In the school gym, when he first spotted Vorst sidling up to her, he should have done something. He could still do something.
But only in his imagination, evidently. Just last week, when Vorst—with whom he hadn’t talked in months—offered him a ride, Caleb accepted, thinking it would be a chance to say something that would give the old pervert a reason to worry.
Caleb kept waiting for the right moment, trying to untangle the words in his head and prepare his voice so it wouldn’t crack or tremble. He leaned hard against the passenger door until Vorst pulled onto his street. When the car came to a stop at the curb, Vorst reached out and set his hand on Caleb’s thigh. That was all it took. Caleb tensed but couldn’t move, paralyzed.
“You know what people will think if you say anything,” Vorst said, as if the coach could read Caleb’s thoughts.
Caleb reached for the door handle.
“First, they’ll think you’re a liar,” Vorst said. “Second, they’ll think you’re a fag.”
Caleb pushed the door open. Without looking back, he heard Vorst call out, “Have a great weekend.”
Caleb kept riding, down another road past a trailer park and beyond, to the farthest edge of the woods, where only homeless campers and the most desperate weekend partyers hung out. He dropped his bike and sat next to the remains of an old campfire littered with beer bottles. He pulled off his backpack and extracted the stuff he’d been holding on to since May.
Months earlier, he’d burned most of the photos he’d lifted from Vorst’s cabin during his final visit. He’d thought they’d be useful as evidence or blackmail. But then he’d taken them out in the privacy of his bedroom and looked at them, feeling sick, and realized his plans wouldn’t work. Vorst wasn’t in the photos. There was no proof of where they’d come from. The first time Caleb felt any measure of relief was when the corner of that first photo had turned black and orange, curling as it flamed. One by one he’d burned them, releasing the shame and the evil, leaving nothing but black-gray wisps.
Caleb wasn’t a natural blackmailer or even a quality witness. He wanted the past eliminated. He wanted no one to see the kids in those poses. He wanted to help those spirits be free.
But there was one photo he couldn’t burn: the one of the skinny girl sitting on the brown couch in jean shorts and a halter top. Her eyes looked like the barely dressed and fully naked kids’ glassy eyes, and she was pretending to smile. All the other kid photos were all mixed up, but there was an entire separate shoebox of stuff that had belonged to this teenage girl.
Vorst had mentioned a daughter who had died the same year he’d retired. Drug overdose. Don’t ever mess with that stuff, Caleb. That was a joke, considering Vorst’s love of pills and liquor.
Vorst talked about her enough to make Caleb feel uncomfortable, because he kept going on about how they were the same. Sometimes it was positive. She loved soccer, too. And 10Ks, working her way to a not-bad half marathon. That girl could run. Later it would turn negative. She wouldn’t listen, either. Wasted every opportunity I gave her. But there was one thing he said about her and never about Caleb: She was getting fat, though. Can’t do cross country if you’re fat.
The girl in the photo was definitely not fat. She had the twiggy legs that all serious school runners had, and a chest that was nearly flat, two small bumps that barely wrinkled the striped cloth of her halter top. With the pictures of young girls who were nude, Caleb did his best to look away, but since she was dressed, he let himself look.
This girl had a different last name according to the papers in the box, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be the coach’s daughter. Did the girl know what her father did for fun? Caleb hoped not. That would be truly fucked up. Maybe it was better she’d died.
He looked at the photo one more time.
He opened the skinny notebook of hers that he’d taken, so full of her messy cursive and doodles that he didn’t even know where to start. Folded inside were five or six printouts. One was a list of scholarships to apply for. Another was a short college application essay, barely a page, on “the person I most admire.” Man, the cheesy shit they made you do. But he read her essay in full because he’d sat on the same couch with the same dead smile pasted on his face, and he felt he knew her.
14
Annie
1904, 1899
Write everything down, Herr Breuer said at the end, bidding farewell after their short meeting in Vienna. Your dreams, your memories, any apparition or fancy. That’s how they would continue the “cure” they had started, according to the doctor.
He hadn’t been easy to find based on Giselle’s description: respected older Jewish physician. Even Giselle’s report of a newspaper photograph she’d seen—dark, curling beard; high, balding pate; dark, kind eyes—failed to bring the target any closer. Half the men in Vienna’s coffeehouses matched that description! But then Annie remembered something else Giselle had said. The sympathetic doctor was also an ear, nose and throat expert. She inquired at a local health clinic and by early afternoon held the correct private address in her hands.
Just two hours later, Annie walk
ed out of the good doctor’s office and down the streets of Leopoldstadt, toward the Danube, feeling exposed, jittery, tired—and free. She hadn’t told him everything, but he had given her permission.
It’s only by reliving the past that we are relieved of it. She must not forget.
Now, weeks later, she is in America. Life is tranquil at first, but only until she returns to the trial schedule, spending too much time in courthouses, train cars and hotels.
One night, alone in the Midwest, she resolves to obey her doctor’s instructions and strike up their correspondence. On a piece of hotel stationery, she describes a frustrating experience on a New York subway car. She sets the letter aside.
She begins again, describing the recurring dream, in which the Wolf comes after her: through the Darke County Infirmary, into town, and from there into the woods.
This is probably the sort of letter Herr Breuer wants, and because he wants it, and because she knows it is a trifle—not the important thing, not the real thing—she doesn’t send it right away. The letters, undated, have begun to accumulate. Is she even writing for him, or only for herself? Both, she decides.
The good doctor has said that she doesn’t need to stop what she’s doing. He must know about the mind’s mysteries. When she is brave enough to be candid, he will know even more.
But first, she must understand herself: What are the boundaries of the possible? There is only one way to tell, the way she has done everything that ever mattered—by practicing. By working toward ever farther targets. Alone.
She slows her heart. She knows that picturing the white light and falling feathers returned her to the toppling train, but she hasn’t yet connected the right colors, images or sensations to other places she feels she must visit. One night that resembles all the others—yet another dinner of beef and tepid mashed potatoes served to her under a silver dome in another hotel room on a main street within walking distance to another courthouse—Annie closes her eyes and stops trying so hard to understand. Instead, she simply goes where she is taken.
Annie and the Wolves Page 10