Stolen Child

by Laurie Gough

  “Spirit?” I shouted. The music had gotten louder.

  “Spirit.”

  She spoke in a voice that echoed with deep knowledge. I couldn’t help myself, so I asked loudly, “Do you mean a spirit? I think spirit needs an indefinite article.” I grinned, trying to be friendly.

  She held her open hands up to either side of her mouth to direct her voice. “They had a past life together!” She raised her eyebrows and nodded knowingly, then reached into her pocket to give me her card, adding that I could book a session with her. Smiling politely, I turned my attention back to the band. When I glanced at the card the next day, it said something about past life channelling, or energy healing, or some combination of the two, and I crumpled it into the trash. A few days later I happened to see her again while I was riding my bike to the bakery. She bee-lined across the street when she spotted me so that she could tell me something that seemed urgent. “Spirit told me more about your son and your dad. It was a native voice that told me. The voice told me about a native animal. That’s their connection, your dad and son. I’m feeling your son has a strong connection to animals?”

  An orange VW van chugged past as I thought about this. “Actually, no. It’s kind of weird but he’s not interested in animals at all. He got bitten and barked at by some big dogs on our street as a little kid, that could be why.”

  “Oh.” She looked downcast.

  “He likes vehicles.”

  “Vehicles?”

  “Cars mostly. I don’t know why.”

  “Your dad then. He must have had a connection to animals.”

  I squinted out at the river and thought about this also. “Nope. He liked baseball. And he was a traveller. A geographer, too. Oh, he was a bird-watcher.”

  “Well, there you go! That must be what I was picking up. Birds. I gave you my card, right?”

  “Yep,” I said, starting to pedal and make my getaway. As I rode, I thought, native animal? Weren’t all wild animals around here roaming the continent for eons before any humans showed up? I thought Spirit must have been confused.

  Two days later, my university friend Shazea and her family arrived. Even though Shazea had moved to Spain over twenty years earlier, and then to England, where she’d married an Englishman, we’d always stayed friends, although mostly by writing. We didn’t get to see each other often enough. I’d visited her in Spain, and then stayed with her in London when my first book was short-listed for an award, and then again a few years later for a book tour, and she’d visited Canada a few times. Part of the reason she was coming this time was because she’s a gifted poet and a book of hers had just been published. She’d be giving some readings while in Canada. Shazea and I had a lot to catch up on. We were both mothers now with busy lives, although it was a different kind of busy than we’d been at university, when we’d stay up all night to finish a history or English essay, then stay up again the next night to crash a downtown party, always hoping to meet interesting cute guys but usually failing at that. Looking back I realize it was because we were probably too shy, or not looking in the right places, but our excuse was that we always wanted to make it home — hitchhiking or double-riding on my mountain bike — by 1:00 a.m. to watch a Mary Tyler Moore rerun on our tiny TV. She called me Mary and I called her Rhoda. Or maybe it was the other way around.

  In any case, life wasn’t like that any more.

  We took Shazea and her husband, Bill, and the kids to the National Art Gallery in Ottawa where the highlight for the kids was lying back in a darkened room on beanbag chairs and gazing up at abstract art swirling around on the ceiling while throaty-voiced Icelandic music played. Afterward, we ate shawarma and falafel on the front lawn of the Parliament buildings while watching something called “The Sound and Light Show,” which was a lot more entertaining than it sounds.

  The best part would be our upcoming camping trip to Giant Caterpillar Island. Rob, Quinn, and I had been going to this little island for the past three years and had named it ourselves, although I’m sure everyone who goes there has a different name for the place. For three years in a row on the island we’d seen a single enormous caterpillar lumbering along a giant granite rock, a creature the same length and girth as Rob’s middle finger. One year, I’d taken a photo and put it on Facebook to see if anyone knew what it was, and someone had recognized it as the caterpillar of an imperial moth. The moth is apparently the size of an adult’s spread-out hand. One day, I’d love to see that moth emerge.

  To reach the island, all we had to do was strap a canoe to the top of our Toyota Echo, drive half an hour north along the Gatineau River, park the car at a boat launch north of the dam, dump the canoe into the river, and load it with our camping gear. From there, it was a forty-five-minute paddle to the island, which, on weekdays, was always deserted. Since the river is dammed, the water there is more like one of the nearby vast Canadian Shield lakes, blindingly blue and dotted with emerald-green islands jam-packed with conifers, massive white pines emerging from the canopy like lone jade stars, and craggy cliffs perfectly designed for jumping into the water.

  Even though Shazea had grown up in Canada she had never really camped before, and Bill, an actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company who’d lived in London most of his life, definitely hadn’t. He could hardly wait to see Canada’s wild side after what they’d seen of the urban sprawl of southern Ontario, before visiting us.

  Because of the heat on the day we left, the river seemed draped in an impressionist haze, but once we’d paddled a bit and got out in the breeze, the air became a reverie of wistful summer memories, pungent with cedar. Not only were Shazea and her family with us but so was my friend Tina and her son, Halla. Halla and Quinn had been buddies for years and ever since Halla and his mother had moved to Montreal from Wakefield, the boys had missed each other. Now they’d get to spend a week on the island together. Since there were so many of us we’d borrowed extra canoes and kayaks from our neighbours and everyone seemed to be getting the hang of paddling through the choppy water. As we made our way to the island, I felt an uprush of happiness.

  I looked over at Quinn, who was paddling a kid’s kayak. He seemed completely himself, giggling with Halla, not doing anything OCDish. Gradually, I thought, the rock of grief in his heart was being chipped away. Maybe this camping trip would finally set him completely free of it. I looked up at the Wizard of Oz sky of endless blue, felt the afternoon light pouring down on us all, and watched Giant Caterpillar Island come into view around a bend.

  I had no way of knowing how ephemeral the moment was, that the coming days on the island would be the last pulse of an uncomplicated serenity that we wouldn’t know again for a long time to come.

  We never did see the giant caterpillar on that trip. However, by the end of four days, all of us were regularly taking running leaps off the highest ledge of rock into the water. On one of the lower ledges, I’d even done a back dive, something I hadn’t tried since my teens. Everyone had to leave on the fourth day, except for me, Quinn, and Halla, who’d get to stay another three days. This turned out to be my favourite time.

  We were in the middle of a heat wave — it had been a whole summer of heat waves — but on the island we hardly noticed because we’d spend the day in our bathing suits and throw ourselves off the jumping rock whenever we felt hot, the water enveloping our bodies like cool silk. At night the echo of loons pierced the air with an ancient laughter. During the long afternoons, while I read in a hammock, Quinn and Halla carved sticks into daggers, did cannonballs off the jumping rock to see who could make the biggest splash, laughed at the way I jumped because it reminded them of a cave woman, played an endless card game of War, paddled the canoe around the island, read comics, and poked at the campfire. Shazea had left us a pack of coloured origami paper and shown us how to make paper frogs. I didn’t think the boys would be interested in this but it turned out that a week on an island is just the thing for making
origami frogs. The boys must have made fifty of them each. They even gave the frogs names and invented some kind of world for them. I noticed a lot of those frogs met their demise in the campfire.

  “Laurie,” Halla said to me hesitantly one morning when Quinn was still in the tent, “does Quinn actually eat sticks and pebbles or does he just carry them around in his mouth?”

  I gaped at him. What the hell?

  “Oh, never mind,” he added after seeing my face. “He must just be carrying them around in his mouth for fun. Maybe I’ll try it, too.”

  It was such a sweet and loyal response that I felt a surge of love for Halla, wondering if he really did think it was just a game. I didn’t mention anything to Quinn about his latest habit of popping sticks and stones in his mouth, but I kept my eye on him.

  On the evening we left and paddled back toward civilization, we were surrounded by a dazzle of light on the water. The sun had set and the colours were soft and muted, spreading gauze-like around us as the night’s darkness seemed gradually to lift out of the river. In the last ambient light that remained, I thought I saw something moving in the water just off the edge of our canoe. At first it looked like two jumbles of sticks but I soon realized it was antlers. “Look,” I whispered to the boys, “a deer!” Aloof to the human world, this magnificent creature was completely silent as it glided along through the dark water. We barely dipped our paddles in, not wanting to alarm it. My heart stirred as I felt like a kid who’d come across a secret presence from another time. I’d seen plenty of deer in my life — they regularly visited our yard in the winter — but had never seen one swimming right beside me through the dark.

  “Cool!” whispered Quinn and Halla. “Does it know we’re here?”

  I had no idea but gave a whispered thanks to the animal for unintentionally bestowing us with this gift. In the weeks to come, I’d think back to that deer and ache to be in its tranquil, hushed world again.

  CHAPTER 6

  Once we returned to Wakefield, Quinn looked at the calendar and realized how few days he had left before school began. Most kids mildly dread the end of summer vacation, but Quinn seemed overly troubled by the thought of returning to school. I found it puzzling. He’d never minded much before.

  One night as we sat down to dinner, I caught him taking what looked like a leaf out of his mouth before starting to eat.

  “Now you’re eating leaves, too?” I asked. “This is entertaining. I can’t wait to see what weird thing you’ll do next.” Quinn gave me a quizzical look and burst out laughing. Next, he dropped to the floor and started licking the carpet, giggling the whole time.

  “Okay, that’s pretty weird. It’s even more bizarre than storing rocks in your mouth.” I spooned rice onto his plate and looked down at my son, who had his face in the carpet. “Maybe don’t try that one at school,” I added. He fell into further fits of hilarity, rolling on the floor, then stood up to lick the window pane. “Hey, that’s new. Good one!”

  Quinn kept laughing. At least he finds his OCD amusing, I thought. “Quinn, this is reminding me of a story I read about a kid who licked light switches at school.”

  After dinner, I found the story I was looking for, “A Plague of Tics” by essayist David Sedaris, and read it to Quinn. It’s a true story about the obsessive compulsive behaviour that plagued Sedaris’s life from elementary school all the way to college. He’d lick every light switch he encountered and count all 637 steps walking home from school, pausing every few feet to “tongue a mailbox,” and stopping to lick a neighbour’s concrete mushroom lawn ornament on the way, hoping its guardian wouldn’t rush out from her house shouting at him to get his face out of her toadstool. He described how he was compelled to do these things because nothing was worse than the anguish of not doing them. He wrote that he hated his mind, that there must be an off-switch somewhere but he was damned if he could find it.

  Quinn didn’t seem to like the story as much as I did. “I kind of get what he was doing but I’m not like that,” he said, kicking his soccer ball against a wooden step in the living room.

  Kicking the soccer ball was fine, but I noticed he’d been kicking imaginary monsters behind every door whenever he entered a room.

  “No, you’re not,” I agreed. But secretly I wasn’t so sure.

  Email, late August 2013

  Hi Tina,

  I’m worried about Quinn again. Now he can’t fall asleep unless one of us is in his room. The other day he was licking the carpet and for a while now I’ve noticed he has been eating dirt and twigs. Every day he seems to do a new wacky thing. He mutters to himself every night and lately has to touch the wall when he’s doing it. I don’t know what to do. I think he needs therapy but I wouldn’t have a clue what kind. He’s traumatized by my dad’s death. He just can’t get over it. Yesterday I walked into the office and in the middle of the floor was my iPad and on the iPad was a photo of my dad that he’d found online. He’d just left it there for me to see. I’m so worried about him that I’m having trouble sleeping.

  Laurie

  Oh, Laurie,

  It sounds like Quinn definitely needs to talk to someone. Will you go to a pediatrician for a referral or something? Now I understand what Halla was talking about when he said that Quinn was eating rocks on the island. I said, “What? Surely he wasn’t actually eating them, though.” And he said, “Well, he was carrying them around in his mouth.” Do you think he might be performing rituals with the subconscious hope that it might somehow magic his grandpa back? Sort of like a dare? Like if he does something outrageous, maybe things will be different somehow? I don’t mean that he’s doing it in a conscious way, of course. Or maybe he’s just trying to keep himself busy so that he doesn’t think about the pain of losing him, something novel to distract him from his grief. I don’t know. But I really feel for him. Sweet little guy. God knows we all have our own weird shit.

  Tina

  The night before school started, Quinn was lying next to me but not paying attention as I read him a Percy Jackson book. He seemed lost in his own world, mumbling unintelligible words to himself, or perhaps, to the watch, and repeatedly touching the watch and then touching his heart.

  “Quinn, what’s the matter, sweetie?”

  He sighed. “I just don’t want to go to school. I want summer to keep going.”

  I reached out to tousle his newly cut hair. “But you’ll get to see your friends. You’ll play soccer every day at recess. And you might get that nice teacher Mr. DeFranco.”

  “I know, but what if I don’t?”

  “Try not to worry about it. Since when did you become such a worrier?”

  “I just miss Grandpa.” There was a choke in his voice as tears sprang to his eyes, making them instantly rimmed with red.

  As I tried to comfort him I felt my heart floundering around my chest. OCD wasn’t so funny any more. And this crying was like time curving back to those dark days of grief.

  Quinn did get the nice teacher, Mr. DeFranco, and I thought things would pick up once he got into the regular routine of school. They didn’t, though. Every night at bedtime I was accompanied by a child I barely recognized. Instead of listening with rapt attention to my reading, as he’d done all his life, he’d be on the extreme edge of the bed, tense and fidgety, mumbling what sounded like incantations. Finally, I asked him what he was saying.

  In a small, faraway voice he started to explain: “When I was at camp I cried about Grandpa a lot, so the camp counsellors told me I should talk to him. That’s when I started doing it, talking to Grandpa.”

  I swallowed, trying to keep my voice calm. “You’re talking to Grandpa?”

  He nodded.

  “What do you say to him?”

  “I ask him to come back.”

  A cold finger was laid on my insides. I thought about Tina’s email. Quinn was staring at one of his car posters on the wall, not looking a
t me. After a moment, I said, “You what?”

  “If I say “come back” ten times while I touch my watch I think he’ll really come.”

  “And all the other stuff you do? That’s all to bring Grandpa back, too?”

  He turned to me, eyes wide, and gave me a single solemn nod.“Oh sweetie, that’s just … magical thinking. People don’t come back from the dead, no matter how many times you touch your watch. You can talk to Grandpa and tell him you miss him and tell him about your day, but Grandpa isn’t coming back.”

  The tears that had been swelling up behind his eyes suddenly erupted. He turned away from me to cry against the wall.

  Good God, I thought, what was I dealing with?

  “Quinn, listen to me,” I said, rubbing his back. “We’re going to figure this out together. I’ll look at those OCD books again. They can help us. They have exercises we can do. To change the patterns in your brain. This isn’t you. It’s a hiccup in your brain, like a computer glitch we can fix. You won’t be stuck with this OCD bully in your head forever. I promise.”

  Quinn turned to face me, taking in my words, hanging on to them like a life raft it seemed. He took a deep breath. I thought he was rallying a little.

  It felt like we were in for a long battle.

  CHAPTER 7

  Obsessive compulsive disorder is a neurobiological condition affecting three in every one hundred people. It’s more prevalent than diabetes but talked about much less. Until recently, the prognosis was dire, the condition misunderstood as a kind of neuroses. With OCD, the part of the brain that filters information isn’t functioning properly, causing certain thoughts — thoughts that should be forgotten — to get stuck. It’s as if the person is trapped by an unrelenting heckler or bully who throws out jabs of worry, fear, and uncertainty. In Quinn’s case, it seemed his bully was saying, “If you touch your watch and ask Grandpa to come back ten times, he will. If you don’t do it, he won’t come back. If you keep all these rocks, he’ll come back. If you let the rocks go, you’ll never see him again.” Children have no idea what’s going on when they start to experience intrusive thoughts and compulsions. The obsessions and compulsions can take over their waking hours. The obsessions themselves are persistent, unwanted thoughts or images that intrude into a child’s thinking and cause anxiety. Compulsions are covert mental acts or behaviours performed repetitively to relieve or prevent the worry or anxiety generated by the obsession, and they’re often intended to magically prevent some dreaded event. Quinn’s case seemed a bit different, in that his obsession was his grandpa coming back to life, and his compulsions were to make that happen. In the reading I’d done, the compulsions were almost always to prevent something bad from happening. For instance, a child washing her hands over and over thinks the hand washing will prevent her from getting a dreaded disease. Quinn’s compulsions were to bring about something good. However, when I looked at it another way, by not doing the compulsions, his worst fear would be realized: his grandpa would never come back. From everything I’d read, the more you give in to the compulsions the more the bully tells you to keep obeying them and the more entrenched the neural pathways become. The more you feed it, the more it wants, demanding ever-increasingly unreasonable demands. OCD never gets enough.