“Sure.” He followed her into the cool, sterile hall, with its New Mexico tones of brown; brown and turquoise.
“She does know where I’ve been, right? Sometimes it feels like she does, sometimes it doesn’t. Like just now she said I was back from Dick and Sally’s. It seemed like she thought I’d been somewhere else.”
Angelina smiled a smile she’d probably rehearsed for hundreds of patients and family members. It carried the slightest edge of condescension, and Val decided he did not like this woman, no matter how kind her letters had been while he was in jail.
“I upped her morphine,” she said, as though she were speaking to a child. “Your mother has some rather peculiar ideas.”
Val said nothing.
“In her lucid moments, she knows you were incarcerated, and she knows why. As you noticed, sometimes she thinks you were still in Connecticut—”
“Massachusetts.”
“—with your family. But sometimes…she has this notion.” Angelina made a clucking noise. “That she’s been abducted by aliens.” She paused, waiting for a reaction. When she got none, she continued. “And she seems to think you’d been abducted, too.”
“Yeah, I know all about it. The book?”
Angelina smiled like a sphinx. He wished he hadn’t said anything. But he did, so he plowed forward.
“Did you read it?” he asked. “I actually haven’t, but I’ve heard all the stories. I really appreciated that they didn’t use her real name when it was published. Most folks around here know the story.”
“Which book do you mean?” Angelina asked. He couldn’t tell if she was playing dumb, or thought she was being polite.
“Trinity, of course. The book about my mother.”
“I skimmed it. I can only imagine she was in quite a state when she wrote it. Alcoholism is a terrible disease, and even then she probably had some of the early symptoms of the cancer.”
He rubbed a hand across his face. No one in the jail knew about his mother’s book, and he was thankful. He’d told Felix one night, a nocturnal admission of secrets. By the time Felix walked out of there, Val had told him every minute detail about his own life. That was why it was so weird to see him again. Like a walking journal uprooted from its context.
His mother’s fantasies always managed to follow him.
* * *
He remembered a night when he was younger, five or six, maybe. Fueled by Aftershock or some other cinnamon scented liquor, his mother had grabbed him by the meaty part of his upper arm and hauled him from his bed to the driveway. She thrust an unsteady hand at the sky, pointing. The only light came from the trailer’s kitchen window, a comfortable gold rectangle on the gravel driveway, and the stars glowed bright in the sky. He remembered no moon that night.
“Up there.” She jabbed a finger at the sky. “They’re coming for you.”
He remembered trying to run, but her hand was a cool vice on his bicep, digging into his skin. He started to cry and she had called him a baby, cinnamon-stinking breath in his face. If he thought this was scary, she told him, just wait.
“When they come?” She laughed. “You’ll wish it was dear old Mom. No one’s going to hear you scream, not out here.”
They stood in silence, Caroline watching the sky, Val watching Caroline. Five-year-old Val didn’t know how long, somewhere between ten minutes and eternity. When her fingers loosened, he took his arm back, rubbing the red skin where she held him.
He tried calling her name, but she didn’t answer, so he went inside, closed the door behind him, and started watching an old monster movie. The creature’s dead eyes scared him, so he switched to re-runs instead, even though it meant getting up to change the channels.
The next morning he woke up on the couch, the TV still on, to find Caroline slumped in the easy chair. The bottle of Aftershock—it was Aftershock, that was the one with crystals in the bottom of the bottle—lay on its side in the middle of a dark puddle on the carpet.
Not long after, he’d gone east.
“We’ve tried every combination of medications we can think of,” Angelina was saying, “but nothing stops the delusions.”
“How long does she have?”
“I don’t know. No one knows. Six months ago I would have said less than six months. I don’t know how she’s hanging on; the cancer isn’t going into remission. It’s stabilized, like it knows how much it can take and let her stay alive.”
“So she could go at any time.”
The nurse nodded. “All we’ve been doing for months is making her comfortable.” She said some more things Val didn’t understand then waddled down the hall to another patient’s room.
He went in to say goodbye to Caroline, but found her asleep. He picked up his hat and headed out to his truck, careful not to disturb her.
Excerpt #2
from Trinity by Judd Grenouille ©1988
At first I thought Adrienne was crazy when she told me that she’d figured it all out.
“The ones that look like people call themselves the Tylwyth Teg.”
“Adrienne,” I said. “The Tylwyth Teg are fairies. It’s an old Welsh name for them.”
She ignored me, though. “They want our children. They’ve always wanted our children. That’s why they took my first.” She was quiet a moment. “They let me see her.”
This is common; the visitors often let mothers see their taken children. (See Intruders, 1987, Budd Hopkins.) Kathie Davis, the subject of Hopkins’ book, reported seeing her daughter several times.
“I don’t remember, though. I remember that I saw her, and everything in my heart was so wonderful. I don’t know what she looked like, or where we were, or anything. Will you hypnotize me again?”
It has been eight months since I have last seen Adrienne. She is wearing a white dress; her hair is down, cascading over her shoulders. She looks innocent, like a girl herself. I don’t smell alcohol on her this time. She claims she is making an effort to turn her life around.
“Tell me your theories first,” I coax.
“They aren’t theories. I’m tellin’ you what they told me.” Now she looks wary instead of innocent. “The gray ones are the Sangaumans. The Tylwyth Teg want their mind powers, but they can’t find a way to breed with ‘em. So they’ve traveled the galaxy for years and years—millions of years—looking for a third species to do the mix with. And they found us.”
“Why do the Sangaumans take you to their ship?”
Adrienne sighs, like I’m slow. “Because the Tylwyth Teg are trying to make a human/Sanguaman baby in me. And they have. They made two of ‘em, but the second one must nota worked ‘cause they let me keep him.”
“What will you tell your son when he asks where he came from?”
“The truth.”
“Good,” I tell her. I wish more of the abductees that I work with could reach Adrienne’s level of openness.
“The Sanguamans like to make regular check-ups. It’s the Tylwyth Teg that really do things to me. My Earth doctor told me I can’t have more babies. I think they did something to be sure I don’t have any accidents, human or alien. Please hypnotize me, let me find out about my baby girl?”
I pull out my pocket watch, and set it spinning. Adrienne stares at it hungrily, drinking in the way the light from the open window plays on the gold of its surface. It spins, and as she slips under, her shoulders slump.
The following is an actual transcript of our conversation:
JG: Tell me about seeing your daughter.
AG: No. (She shakes her head violently.)
JG: What day did you see her?
AG: Two months ago.
JG: Tell me about that day.
AG: No.
JG: About the afternoon. Tell me everything that happened.
(AG relaxed as she talked about going swimming at a reservoir, going home, smoking some dope, and going to bed.)
AG: When I woke up my bed was surrounded in white light. I thought, gosh, the neighbors
must be real mad about all this light, I’m going to wake them all up.
JG: You are or the light is?
AG: The light is here for me. I’m rising out of my bed. I’m floating. I don’t mind when the gray ones take me, but when the Tylwyth Teg come…I know it’s not going to be good.
JG: Relax. You’re safe. Where are you now?
AG: The ship. I’m with them, I’m in a big dark room, but it isn’t an examination table, it’s a room. I’m not strapped down or anything. (She sounds surprised.)
JG: Are you alone?
AG: Um…no. They are there with me, dark, humanoid shapes. They have something little with them, little and white. What is it? (Her voice is guarded, cautious, almost disgusted.) It’s white and fat and crawling…oh my God. Oh my God! It’s her! It’s her! It’s her!
JG: Tell me what she looks like?
AG: They let her crawl to me and her face is beautiful. Her eyes are like theirs, though, big and black, taking up too much of her face, but her hair is the finest, silkiest blonde. She doesn’t have any nose, slits like they got, but her mouth is perfect. She’s shy, she sits down aways away from me. She must be cold up there, naked and crawling on the floor. I tell her I’m her mama, I tell her I love her, and I want to go to her, but I can’t. I don’t know what they’d do. So I talk quiet to her, and look at her, plump little baby body, she looks healthy, but pale, you can see right through her skin, all blue veins. I reach out my hand but she don’t move. We stay like that. Mighta been a few minutes. Mighta been all night. (AG swallows, tears welling up in her eyes.) Then I’m back in my bed. And I cried, and cried and cried.
10
Kate stood in the street outside Woodstone’s Saloon, breathing in the scent of air wiped clean by the rain. She didn’t want to go in, go drink, and slip into all the old patterns. Like most American downtowns, Lott had seen better days. The historical society did their best to spruce it up. They had succeeded in bringing a few businesses in, a new restaurant, a coffee shop which seemed to be doing well, and a sports bar. But there were still empty storefronts, a few of them boarded up with plywood where kids had thrown rocks through the glass.
She couldn’t ask Val what he intended to do about his dying mother. That seemed crass and tacky. She couldn’t stay here, but she couldn’t leave him, not alone, not after waiting for so long. Santa Fe was big and sprawling and anonymous. Even now Kate dropped her head in hopes of avoiding being seen. “Papa” Guerrerez, her brother’s old dealer, sauntered by with a girl who looked like she wasn’t legal.
If Papa noticed her, he didn’t give any indication. She looked up and watched them stroll into Woodstone’s.
She stood and went to the new restaurant. The old restaurant, Rosie’s, was where she’d worked all through high school. Rosie’s daughter owned it now, Kate had heard. She didn’t want to see any of those people.
No one in the new restaurant—Loco Cabana! according to the menu, exclamation point and all—knew who she was. A new crop of bored, zit-faced high-schoolers worked the tables, and Kate saw herself in the dejected looking blonde who asked her if she wanted anything to drink.
Kate ordered an iced tea.
From where she sat she could see the street through the big windows, tinted to keep the sun out. A young man wandered in, gazing around as if this wasn’t quite what he expected, and set himself in a booth across from hers. She kept her eyes out the window; the sun was out now, baking the rain off the street. In her peripheral vision she couldn’t help but notice how straight the man sat, the prim way he held his menu. Something familiar about him? Perhaps they were two people alone in an empty restaurant. Kindred spirits?
That wasn’t it.
He didn’t look like the type of fellow to sit alone in a restaurant. His sweatshirt, UNM, was preppy but grubby, he looked like a frat boy, and those, she knew, never went anywhere without a pack in tow.
He ordered water, lots of it, and she listened in to his peculiar speech patterns when she saw Rich, wife in tow, strolling down the street. He still wore his uniform, must have just gotten off work.
She regretted the seat by the window. They were tinted, so maybe he wouldn’t—Rich saw her. She looked away, but he changed his trajectory. He let the tinted glass door swing shut behind him so Maria, his wife, had to catch it and let herself in.
He filled the table across from her, and Maria dropped to the chair on her left. She was trapped.
“Where you been?” he asked.
She shrugged.
“You seen TJ?”
Act appalled. “TJ?” She curled her lip up, raised her eyebrows, as if the thought of her seeing TJ was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard of.
“Uh huh.”
“Why would I see TJ?”
“Where’s the child molester?” Steamrolling over questions was Rich’s specialty, and Kate wondered how he functioned as a State Trooper, where much of his job included asking questions and listening to the answers.
“With his mother.” There was no point in lying.
“One drunk loony deserves another.”
“Rich, lower your voice.” Maria spoke softly, with a voice that didn’t get much use. Raised in Mexico, she spoke with a lovely, lilting accent. She was also deadly, Kate knew. Back when Rich rolled with a third-rate gang, she’d been one tough bitch. He domesticated her, though, and it was funny to see her in clothes that looked grown-up instead of belly shirts and headbands. They’d been friends, kind of, but Maria’s alliance lay with Rich.
Rich glared at her. The old Maria never would have put up with that shit.
“He is listening to you,” she said, almost too low to hear. Maria would enable Rich until he died. Or she died, which was more likely to happen first.
Rich’s head snapped up, and he looked around, his head swiveling on his bull neck. The frat boy still held his menu, but seemed to stare through it.
“We got a extra room you can stay in,” Rich said, looking back at Kate, changing tracks so fast it made her head spin.
“I have a room in Santa Fe,” she said, which at the moment was bullshit, but she could get one. “And Val’s let me know as long as I’m here, his place is my place.”
“You disgrace me, you know that?”
“How do I disgrace a drug-dealing dirty cop?”
He smiled a faux sympathetic smile.
She guessed she could scream. He wouldn’t hurt her here, not in his uniform. She snuck a glance at Maria, but her attention was on the man sitting by himself.
Maria couldn’t save her. And even if she could, Kate knew she wouldn’t.
James Spencer came in then, wearing his own uniform, one of the deputies of the Otero County Sheriff’s Department. He graduated the same year Val did, the year Rich should have. He had a working knowledge of the history between them all (he didn’t know the whole truth—almost no one did. Maria certainly didn’t) and so he took his hat off and pulled up a chair at the head of the table. Kate could have kissed him, bless his good timing.
“Afternoon,” he said. With his round boyish face and thinning sandy hair, he didn’t look like much to be afraid of. When Spence and Rich talked about wanting to go into law enforcement, Val had been with them for some time, thinking about being a cop, moving somewhere larger than Lott to do it. He’d thought about going east or west, LA or New York, and the idea scared her. Then he got the law school idea in his head. Poor Val.
And it was all Rich’s fault.
“Get out of here, Spencer.”
“Haven’t seen you in a while, Kate. How are you?” Spence asked, ignoring Rich.
“Great,” she said.
“Your brother bothering you?”
Kate opened her mouth to say yes, but Rich spoke over her again, as he liked to do. “I ain’t seen her for a while myself. We’re catching up on old times.”
“I think we’re about caught up,” Kate said.
“How’s Val?” Spence asked. “I hear his mom’s real bad.”<
br />
“He’s all right. He’s with her now. It’s the first he’s seen her.”
“Spencer, you got TJ Drinkwater down in your drunk tank?” Rich asked. Kate sucked in her breath, tried to mask it with a drink of water. Maria watched her for a moment, her brown eyes calculating, then turned her attention back to the frat boy.
“Nope. Haven’t seen him in a while. Maybe Monday night at Woodstones?”
“He was supposed to come by this afternoon and didn’t.”
Spence laughed. “He’s probably hung over somewhere, maybe up in Allenstown with his baby mama?”
“Don’t think so.”
Maybe he got sick of your bullshit and finally took off. It was what she should have said, but she was worried Maria would see through her, and know the truth.
“Give us a call tomorrow afternoon and we’ll see what we can do.” Spence didn’t sound concerned. Excellent. Thank goodness Rich wasn’t a classier guy with more upstanding friends.
“I can take care of it myself. I was curious.”
“Sure thing. I think Kate wants to order some food, maybe you and the Missus should get moving along.”
“I want to order something, too.”
“Is he bothering you, Kate?” Spence asked.
“Yes,” she said. Speaking out to her brother caused this knot in her gut. Pathetic. “Get him out of my face.” It made her mouth go dry to speak it out loud.
“I’m on duty, Rich. I gotta do as she asks. You don’t want to cause trouble.”
“Not while you’re around.”
Spence frowned. “You don’t want to cause trouble.”
Rich mock saluted with an easy smile that drove Kate crazy. “Anything for you, Deputy.” He used the word like a racial slur. Spence nodded goodnight as Rich and Maria stood. Rich followed Maria’s gaze to the man’s table. He sat with an untouched cup of coffee.
“You like what you hear, hombre?”
He looked up at him.
“I know not what you speak of.”
“You know not what—where’re you from? You some sort of...European retard?”
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