David Cronenberg's The Brood

by Richard Starks

  Candy looked up at him. “I think so.” She turned to her teacher. “Haven’t I, Miss Mayer?”

  Ruth smiled at her. “I wish they all learned as quickly as you do, Candy.”

  Carveth took his daughter’s hand. He was relieved to see that she seemed her normal self again, no longer withdrawn, and apparently not suffering from her experience at Somafree.

  “Suppose I drop you off at Grandma’s house,” he said. “Let you play there for a while. I have to go out to see someone. For an hour or so, that’s all.”

  Candy frowned slightly. “All right.”

  Carveth led her into the corridor. Ruth Mayer fell into step beside them, walking with long easy strides.

  “I’d like to talk to you, Mr. Carveth,” she said. “When you have some time.”

  Carveth pushed open the door that led into the yard. “About anything special?”

  “School activities. About Candy.”

  Carveth looked at her. “Is anything wrong?”

  “We should talk.” She glanced down at Candy, and Carveth read her message: not now, not in front of your daughter.

  “Okay,” he said, “tomorrow.”

  As he walked with Candy to the car, he watched her skipping along beside him, as if everything in her world was just as it should be.

  Raglan straightened his tie in the mirror and brushed his hands over his hair. He was ready. As he left his office for his session with Nola, it was already starting to get dark outside, though there was still sufficient light to see him around the lake.

  When Nola had first come to Somafree, he had assigned her to a room in the east wing of the institute along with the other patients, but a month ago he’d had her transferred to a self-contained unit that had been constructed in the boathouse on the other side of the lake. There she would be properly isolated, and her environment could be more easily controlled.

  The wind was stronger now, blowing from the north across the lake towards him. He walked quickly to keep warm. As he neared the boathouse, a light flicked on inside, at the rear of the building. He ducked under a low-hanging branch, into the gloom of the trees, and made his way along the side veranda to the door.

  He pushed it open. A white-coated man was sitting in a room the other side of the stairs, which had been converted into an office. He stood up as Raglan entered.

  “Hi, Chris,” Raglan said. “How is she?”

  “Okay. She’s resting.”

  Like most of the staff, Chris Makem served a dual role at Somafree: part nurse and party orderly. He had been hired a year ago when he had failed to win a place in medical school. For three months he had been on probation, until Raglan had come to trust him and to value his judgement and initiative. For the past six weeks he had been responsible for ensuring Nola’s isolation and for keeping a careful watch on her to see that she came to no harm.

  “There was some trouble yesterday, apparently,” Raglan said. “You know anything about that?”

  “Trouble?”

  “Between Nola and her daughter. It seems Nola got angry with Candy. Hit her several times.”

  Chris shook his head. “Must have happened over in day-care.”

  Raglan grunted. “Perhaps. She take her medicine?”

  Chris nodded. “Right on time. She was pacing around a lot before that. Restless. But she soon settled down.”

  “Okay. Put on the intercom.”

  Chris flicked a switch, then reached into a drawer for a new cassette which he slotted into a portable tape recorder on his desk. A microphone in Nola’s suite would pick up the sound of her voice—and of Raglan’s too—capturing the session on tape. Later, the tape would be transcribed to make a permanent record.

  Raglan went back into the hall and opened the door to Nola’s suite.

  The living room was elegantly, though sparsely, furnished—old heavy furniture, some of it antique—with thick patterned drapes that half covered the windows.

  Nola was lying on a raised bed. She was wearing a blue flannel dressing gown, her feet tucked up under it as if it were a blanket. Raglan crossed the room and stood looking down at her. In repose, her face was peaceful, serene. A strand of red hair curled over her cheek, which was pale and delicate like porcelain.

  She opened her eyes and turned towards him, but her expression didn’t change. Raglan watched her for a moment.

  Then he spoke. “Mommy?” he said.

  Nola slowly sat up. “Yes, sweetheart. What is it?”

  Raglan sat beside her. “You hurt me, Mommy,” he said. He spoke plaintively, but made no effort to disguise the pitch or the tone of his voice. “You hurt me, Mommy,” he repeated. “You hit me.”

  Nola turned as if in a trance. “No I didn’t, honey,” she said. “You must have been dreaming.”

  “But my back’s all sore. From where you hit me.”

  Nola slowly shook her head. “You know I wouldn’t do that. Mommies never hit their children. They wouldn’t be mommies if they did. Not real ones, would they?”

  Raglan watched her closely, trying to gauge her responses. “Mommies don’t hit their children?”

  Nola didn’t answer.

  “They don’t?” Raglan asked.

  Nola’s face clouded slightly. She looked away, but made no reply.

  Raglan persisted. “They never hurt their children? You mean, never? Never at all?”

  When Nola spoke again, her voice seemed to come from far away, as if from another room. “Sometimes, perhaps . . . sometimes . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Then suddenly her face twisted, her lips pulled back from her teeth. “But only if they’re bad,” she said. “Only fucked-up mommies hurt their children.”

  Raglan, although prepared for it, was shocked at the change. He waited a moment until the edge of her anger had cooled.

  “Like whose?” he asked. “Like whose mommy?”

  Nola remained silent.

  “Like my mommy?”

  Nola’s fists were clenched. “No,” she snarled. “Like mine. Like my mommy was. Fucked-up and bad.”

  Raglan stood up, leaning over her, then spoke with authority. “How dare you say that to me,” he demanded. “How dare you accuse your own mother. You know it’s not true. It’s just a wicked, malicious lie.”

  “You did too,” Nola shouted. “You did hurt me.” She grabbed a lamp from the table beside her and hurled it at him. In mid-air, it caught on its flex and fell to the floor. “You beat me and scratched me and threw me down the stairs.”

  She stopped suddenly, retreating in fear, then spoke in a whisper. “I’m sorry, Mommy. I’m really sorry. Please. Please don’t hurt me. I . . . I didn’t mean anything. I won’t tell Daddy, honest, I won’t . . .”

  Raglan took a step towards her. His voice became threatening. “Am I going to have to punish you again, Nola? Lock you in your closet? Am I? Don’t you remember how much you struggled the last time? Don’t you remember the hook? How you couldn’t reach the floor and had to hang there until I took you down? Don’t you remember that, Nola?”

  Nola shrank away from him. “No, Mommy, please. I’ll be good. I promise.”

  “But you won’t, Nola. You hate me too much. You’ve always hated me, haven’t you?”

  Nola shook her head quickly from side to side. “No. No, it’s not true.”

  Raglan put his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t lie to your own mother, Nola. You hate me. I know you do. So show me. Show me how much you really hate me inside.”

  She tried to squirm away, twisting and turning. Raglan’s hands were just resting on her, but she was fighting, kicking, struggling as if he were holding her down.

  “Show me,” he told her. “Show me your anger. Don’t fight it. Go all the way through it. Show it to me now.”

  Nola suddenly went rigid, staring straight ahead of her. And slowly she underwent a hideous transformation. She was speaking to him. With her body. Showing him the shape of her rage.

  C H A P T E R

&n
bsp; F O U R

  Carveth parked his Volvo in the driveway of his mother-in-law’s house and pulled on the handbrake with a jerk. The house was a split-level, with the front lot sloping steeply away to one of the many wooded ravines that run throughout the northern part of the city.

  He unlatched Candy’s safety belt and opened the passenger door for her. She scuttled out, and once more he was astonished at the ease with which she seemed to have recovered from her punishment the previous day. Even so, his resolve to prevent a recurrence had not diminished.

  He followed her into the house. Candy had already knocked and been let inside, and as Carveth went through the open door, he could hear her playing in one of the rooms upstairs.

  He turned left into the living room, and found his mother-in-law standing in front of the fireplace, a drink on the mantle by her hand. She was in her mid-fifties, but still strikingly handsome, with the strong, distinct features he could already see developing in Candy.

  She was wearing black leotards under her flowing skirt, and a loose blouse open at the neck. The large, jangling ear-rings, and the wooden beads around her neck gave her an almost bohemian style that was in marked contrast to her upper-middle-class home. At a casual glance she seemed worldly and deliberately modern, but to Carveth her outward appearance was a mask. He couldn’t help noticing that her carelessly applied makeup and unpinned hair showed signs of personal neglect.

  He smiled at her. “Hi, Juliana.”

  She leaned forward and he dutifully planted a kiss on her cheek.

  “Do you mind if I leave Candy here for an hour or so? She won’t be any trouble.”

  Juliana lit a cigarette and slipped it into a long thin holder. “You know I don’t see enough of my grand-daughter. Nola won’t let me near her, and you’ve been keeping her pretty much to yourself these past few months.” She nodded. “Of course you can leave her.” She spoke with a smile on her face, but Carveth could tell that her hurt was genuine.

  “I know,” he said. “Candy should see you more often. It’s just that I’ve been worried about her. She seems so . . . I don’t know . . . so changeable. Happy one minute, then suddenly she’s despondent and withdrawn.”

  Juliana took a sip of her drink and waved her glass at him. “You got time for one of these?”

  Carveth shook his head. “When I get back.”

  “It’s my first of the day,” she told him.

  “No one’s counting,” he said.

  “No? Well, perhaps they should be.” She chinked the ice in her glass. “How is Nola by the way? Is she showing any improvement?”

  Carveth shrugged. “They still won’t let me near her. I tried to see her today, but . . . well . . . something happened yesterday,” he said. “I’m not sure what. Don’t mention anything to Candy; she seems to be getting over it okay. But I think Nola tried to hurt her.”

  Juliana turned quickly away, playing with the ashtray on top of the mantle. “I hope not, Frank. I hope not.” She puffed nervously on her cigarette. “You know, I had a phone call from your Dr. Raglan the other day. Apparently, Nola has been ‘doing me’ in her therapy, whatever that means, acting things out, going back into her past and reliving her childhood. She’s been telling Raglan that I did some pretty terrible things to her when she was a child. I don’t like it, Frank. It really upset me.”

  Carveth nodded. “I don’t like what’s been happening either.”

  His mother-in-law moved to the sideboard and refilled her glass. “I was a good mother,” she said softly. “I tried to do my best for Nola, to do whatever was right. It’s funny, these days you can take courses and evening classes in just about any subject you like, but the one thing no one ever teaches you is how to be a good parent, perhaps the most important role you ever have in your life.”

  “I’m sure you did very well,” Carveth murmured.

  Juliana stared out the window, down the slope of the ravine. “I wonder if Nola will get around to ‘doing’ her father,” she said. “You know, Barton wasn’t so bad, but he never paid much attention to Nola. I think she resented him for that, for the neglect. It’s nearly eight years since Barton and I were divorced, and although he used to drive me crazy at times, I still find myself wondering how he is making out, wondering if his achievements ever caught up with his ambition. He could be so headstrong, you know. If he got an idea in his head, there was no way you could shake it out of him. He just had to pursue it right to the end.”

  There was a tumbling sound from the stairs, and Candy appeared in the doorway dragging a large cardboard box behind her. “Look what I found,” she said. “Old pictures of Mommy when she was little like me.”

  Juliana turned back into the room. “I’m afraid,” she told Carveth, “that that phone call from your Dr. Raglan touched off some unpleasant memories. It seems the older you get the more you look back at the past, and I dug out those photographs to remind myself that there really were a few things worth remembering.”

  Carveth felt uncomfortable, reluctant to be drawn. “He’s not my Dr. Raglan,” he said finally. “I don’t want anything to do with him.”

  He looked at his watch.

  Juliana nodded. “Okay, I know. It’s time to go.”

  Candy pulled the box into the centre of the room. “Can we look at the pictures, Grandma?” she asked. “Can we?”

  Juliana patted her on the head. “Let me just say goodbye to your father. You spread them out on the carpet and I’ll be back in a minute.”

  She followed Carveth to the door, and as he opened it, caught hold of his arm. “Do you really think Nola tried to hurt Candy?”

  Carveth looked down at her. “I’m afraid so. Yes.”

  “She used to get so angry sometimes, when she was a girl. I had to punish her for it, try to help her control it.” Her eyes glazed for a moment as she relived the past. “I hope she’s not exaggerating things to Raglan.”

  Suddenly she squeezed Carveth’s arm. “Thank you, Frank.”

  He looked surprised. “For what?”

  “For bringing Candy to me. Nola wouldn’t have done it.”

  Carveth kissed her on the cheek. “Candy needs someone in her life other than me. And she’s always glad to see you.” He smiled at her.

  From inside the house, he heard Candy call out, “I’m ready, Grandma. They’re all spread out.”

  Juliana turned. “Be right with you, darling. I’ll just get a refill. Then we can look at all those old photos.”

  Carveth caught Resnikoff in his office, just as the lawyer was preparing to leave for the day.

  “It’s important, Al,” he said. “Can I delay you for just a few more minutes?”

  Resnikoff looked at him for a moment, then laboriously took off his coat and hung it behind the door again. “Okay, Frank, you got ten minutes. After that my wife will start phoning and I’ll need to go see a lawyer myself.”

  He settled behind his desk and offered Carveth a chair. A short fleshy man, Resnikoff always seemed as if he were just barely awake. Slow talking most of the time, his conversation was nonetheless brightened by occasional flashes of wit, as if he were trying to remind himself that he was still alive and breathing. He resented any form of unnecessary movement, and made a point of boasting that his most strenuous exercise was riding the elevator up to his tenth-floor office.

  “It’s about Nola,” Carveth said. “I don’t want her to see Candy any more.”

  Resnikoff slowly spread his hands. “You got an agreement, Frank. Legally signed by all parties concerned.”

  “I know. I want to change it.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that. I think Nola’s been beating my daughter. I don’t want that to happen again.”

  Resnikoff picked up a pencil from his desk, and thought for a moment. “You need a court order to change your separation agreement. Candy’s not just your daughter. She’s Nola’s too.”

  Carveth sat forward. “Al, I don’t think you heard. Nola’s be
en beating Candy, beating my daughter.”

  Resnikoff looked pained. “Frank, don’t fight me, okay? I’m your lawyer. On your side. All I said was you need a court order. But first you got to prove what you say.”

  “Well, I can. Candy was with her mother all of yesterday. She was fine when I left her, but when I picked her up in the afternoon her back was sore as hell. Someone had beaten her, and it could only have been Nola.”

  “You take her to a doctor?”

  “Yes. This morning.”

  “And?”

  Carveth sat back. “Well, I told the doctor what happened, but he maintained the bruises on Candy’s back didn’t look as if they’d been made by an adult. Not big enough, he said. More likely they were the result of an attack by another kid. But it can’t have been that. There wasn’t the opportunity.”

  Resnikoff tentatively nodded his head. “What about Candy? Does she also accuse her mother?”

  “She wouldn’t talk about it last night. And since she seems to have forgotten about it today, I didn’t want to remind her.”

  Resnikoff looked at him. “You think I can get a court order with a story like that? I’d have to bribe everyone from the doorman right up to the judge.”

  “It’s true, Al. For God’s sake, do you think I’d make it up?”

  Resnikoff shrugged. “Frank, you want me to spend your money, I’ll make application. But I can tell you now that all you’ll get out of it is a bill from me.”

  “So what do I do? I can’t let Candy go back to Somafree.”

  “You got to, Frank. You got no choice.”

  “But the place is dangerous. Okay, I didn’t mind Candy going to see Nola before. But it’s different now. I haven’t seen Nola for three months; I don’t know what kind of treatment she’s getting. But I’ve seen a demonstration of the kind of treatment that other patients are getting. And if Nola’s is anything like that, it’ll just make her worse. You know, I think it could make her really crazy. She has to be crazy after what she did to Candy.”

  With an effort, Resnikoff leaned forward in his chair. “You think she’s crazy?” he said. “And just who are you? A self-employed contractor. Are you suddenly qualified to say if people are crazy or not? Spare me, Frank. Suppose we put you in court and let you make a fool of yourself, telling your story. And then someone from Somafree, this Dr. Raglan I keep hearing about, suppose he gets up on his hind legs and says your wife is fine, she’s cured, not even neurotic. Who do you think the court’s going to believe?”