“Is your father still living?”
“No, he and my mother were killed in an accident when I was in college.”
“Do you have brothers or sisters?”
“Two of each. They live in Raleigh. We have very little to do with one another. They’re even more messed up than I am.” This last was said with a small smile.
“In what ways are they ‘messed up’?”
“My brothers are both alcoholics, my sisters have lived with a succession of unsavory men. They have all four had trouble with the law at one time or another. My youngest sister is, I suspect, a drug addict.”
“Have you ever had trouble with any of those things, drugs, drinking, or legal troubles?”
Again Emily smiled a weak smile, “I’ve never been in trouble or taken any drugs, and my one foray into drinking was for about three days last year when I thought I’d solve all the problems in my love life by soaking them, and I spent three days sick as a dog.”
“Tell me about your love life, as long as you brought it up.” The doctor smiled.
Emily composed herself with a deep breath before answering, “I was supposed to get married Saturday, but that’s been put off. I’ve been so cold since the attack. I can’t stand to be touched. It’s incredibly frustrating; it’s like I’m on one side of a glass wall, and he’s on the other. My fiancé has been very patient, very understanding. His name is Brian. He’s a pathologist at the School of Medicine.”
“Brian McClellan?”
“Yes.”
“I know Dr. McClellan from the time I was a resident. He’s a fine doctor, very well thought of. Congratulations.”
“Thank you. I don’t imagine there are too many men that would have been as supportive as he has. He’s the most even-tempered person I’ve ever met. He waits on me, he cooks for me, he never gets impatient, he’s so...Oh dear, I guess I’m sort of running on.”
Dr. Whitfield smiled, “It’s quite all right. I think brides are supposed to gush a little. I take it from your comments that you don’t think he’s part of the problem?”
Emily took a second to consider the wording of that particular question, as if deciding whether or not to take offense. She decided that there was nothing meant to offend in it. “He’s the only thing in my life that I don’t have any reservations about, the best move I ever made was getting involved with him. Brian is an enormously attractive man. It’s not him; it’s me.”
“Are you and Dr. McClellan living together?” It was asked in a neutral tone of voice, but for Emily it was a loaded question.
Emily blushed. “Well, you see, everything was moved out of my apartment over the weekend because we had a contract with the movers when we thought we’d be in Vermont getting married, and when I got out of the hospital, I just went to stay at Brian’s house because there really wasn’t anywhere else to go. So I guess technically we’re living together, but it’s not like what most people mean when they say living together. I mean, I live in the guest room, except I have trouble sleeping in there so mostly I just sleep on the couch.”
“I see.”
After a few seconds of silence in which the psychiatrist appeared to be digesting what she had said, Emily burst forth. “You must have gotten that from Paul. He does that all the time. I say something that is stupid or full of holes or just embarrassing and he says in that real flat voice, ‘I see.’ I just want to throttle him. It’s like an invitation to go ahead and dig yourself into an even deeper verbal hole.”
Dr. Whitfield noted the smile on Emily’s face and chuckled. “Is that what I was doing?”
“I’m probably just sensitive because I’m such a prude. We live in the same house, and that’s the only sense in which Brian and I live together. Much as I love him, the truth is that our physical relationship has always been circumscribed by my conservatism, and lately it has ceased to exist altogether.”
“Did you date much before Dr. McClellan?”
“No, really not at all since college. Men always seemed rather single minded to me. And of course, I didn’t meet many men working in the library.”
“Have you ever dated a man with violent tendencies, someone you came to be afraid of?”
“No, just octopus tendencies. You know—all hands. I guess that’s why they didn’t often ask me out the second time, I wasn’t forthcoming enough to suit them.”
“Did you date much in high school?”
“I really don’t recall. I believe I went out a few times.”
“I noticed on your hospital forms that you were born in Raleigh. Is that where you lived throughout your childhood?”
“Yes.”
“Did you like living in Raleigh? What did you do for fun?”
“Raleigh’s a nice enough place. I don’t really know what I did for fun. I read. I stayed outdoors a lot.”
“Did you play with your brothers and sisters often?”
“I don’t think so. They were older, except Jean, my one younger sibling. She was a five years younger than me. I think I mostly kept to myself. I guess I was sort of hard to get along with.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know, I think I tried tagging along and made myself obnoxious. I think the day I climbed the tree it was because I had tagged along when they were hanging out in the woods and they were teasing me about being too scared to climb it.”
“When you say ‘they’ do you mean your older siblings, your two brothers and your older sister?”
“Just my brothers, I think. My sister was always off somewhere with a boy.”
“What did your brothers do when you fell out of the tree? Did they run for help?”
“No, they ran for cover. I’m sure they figured I’d start caterwauling and bring the whole neighborhood. They weren’t about to get into trouble on my account. It was summertime, and everybody was outdoors, if I had hollered, the neighbors would have come to see what the fuss was about.”
“So you were out of it for a while, and when you came to, you knew you were hurt. What did you do?”
“I just stayed there on the ground for a while trying to catch my breath. It hurt every time I breathed. Then I figured I’d better try to get home and into my room before somebody saw I was hurt. I was lucky nobody saw me. After that I just laid low for a few days, stayed out of people’s way.”
“Didn’t your mother wonder why you were out of sight for so long?”
“I don’t know, I reckon she had troubles of her own.”
“What sort of troubles?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t seem like a very happy person.”
The psychiatrist paced his questions very carefully. It was clear that he didn’t want Emily to feel like she was being interrogated, but at the same time, he didn’t want her to have time to ponder what pattern might be emerging from the questions he asked. “Did your parents ever fight?”
“I guess so. I guess quite a lot. You could hardly live in the same house with my father and not get into some sort of trouble.”
“What sorts of things made him angry?”
“Well, he couldn’t stand to be kept waiting, and he didn’t like a lot of noise at the dinner table. He didn’t like anybody touching his tools and things. It was kind of hard to predict what would make him mad.”
“I noticed when you were describing Dr. McClellan to me the first thing you said was that he’s even-tempered. That’s a quality that’s obviously important to you. Doesn’t he ever get mad about anything?”
Emily said quickly, “Oh yes, but Brian doesn’t...” She stopped herself and there was a puzzled look on her face.
“What were you going to say?”
Looking suddenly pale, she answered, “I was going to say Brian doesn’t hit.”
“Tell me about what happened when you broke the coffee cup.”
“I only remembered it recently. I broke Brian’s favorite cup and then I remembered that I had broken my father’s cup and gotten coffee all over me. It bu
rned my leg through my jeans. I tried to pick up the pieces, but my father just got mad. He hit me and sent me to my room. When I broke Brian’s cup I was sitting on the floor picking up the pieces and he came over to help and it scared me. I backed away. I thought he would hit me too.”
“Where did your father hit you? Did he spank your bottom or did he slap your hand or what?”
Emily lifted her hand in silent re-enactment. “He hit me on the side of the head. I was sitting on the floor. He hit my head and then pulled me up by my hair and sent me to my room.”
“How old were you?”
“Five.”
“Why were you holding a cup of hot coffee in the first place?”
“He sent me for it.”
“So a man sends a five year old to get a cup of hot coffee and she breaks it and burns her leg. The man’s reaction is to hit the child, pull her up by her hair, and send her to her room. How does that strike you now in light of your adult sensibilities?”
As a tear fell softly down her cheek, Emily answered, “It was a mean, heartless thing to do. He was a cruel man.”
“How did Dr. McClellan react when you broke his coffee cup?”
“He told me not to worry about it, he was concerned that I hurt my ankle when I slipped. He was very sweet. I guess that’s why I remembered the other time so vividly. I guess it was the contrast of their reactions.”
“Were you often sick as a child? Did you miss much school?”
“I guess I was sick about my fair share.”
“Did you have a family doctor?”
“I don’t remember. I don’t think I went to a doctor very often. I know I’d never been in an emergency room until last year when I was in a car accident.”
“Do you have any old report cards, yearbooks, any souvenirs of your childhood?”
“There’s a box of stuff my sister sent me when she closed up my parent’s house after she moved out of it. I never really went through it, but I seem to recall it had some old stuff in it.”
“Our time for today is about up, but if you feel up to it, go through that box and bring in anything you think might shed some light on your childhood, okay?”
Emily agreed and went out to find Brian waiting patiently for her in the waiting room. “He’s always waiting for me,” she thought, “and always patiently.”
The drive home was an awkward time. Brian thought it best not to ask any questions about Emily’s session with her therapist. He knew that she was going through a rough time, and he wanted very much to be supportive, but he also knew that she wanted to break the cycle of depending on him too much for emotional strength.
What had become patently obvious to Emily was that she had suffered more than just verbal abuse as a child. For her the revelation that she had been beaten had not been a revelation in the truest sense. It was the kind of fact that when confronted, causes an individual to exclaim, “Of course, I knew there had to be something like that! That explains things.” But it compounded the feelings of violation and self-loathing she was already suffering. One of the aspects of the assault that most preyed on her mind was the knowledge that she had been found by s deputy unclothed in a wooded area. The idea of being naked in front of complete strangers was as painful as any injury she had. Her feeling about learning that she had been abused as a child was similar; it was like having the bare bones of your soul hung out to bleach in a desert sun. She didn’t want to talk about it at all.
As they made the drive home in silence, Emily noticed the children that seemed to be everywhere playing in the late afternoon sunshine. In the playground, riding bicycles on the street, playing in the sandbox in the park. People think of children as so resilient, they are always falling down, but they just pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and go about their business. How many times does a child have to fall before they can’t get up by themselves? How many falls does it take before the dust won’t brush off? The bruises and the dust are bad enough, outward signs for the world to see how many times you’ve been clumsy. But what about the hurts that nobody sees? They’re the ones that take the longest to heal.
The more she thought about it, the more depressed Emily felt about her life. “It was bad enough,” she thought, “when I was dealing with the fact that a perfect stranger raped me and beat me up. How do I live with the idea that my own father beat me? And why did the one bring back into conscious memory the other? And where was my mother through all of this? And where was God?”
By the time they arrived at Brian’s house, Emily had a pounding headache and wanted nothing more than to sleep. Brian went busily about the business of preparing a meal she didn’t have any desire to eat. Emily went to the guest room to lie down for a few minutes. When he went to check on her half an hour later, he could tell from the redness of her eyes that she had been crying.
He crossed the room and sat next to her on the bed. For a while they just looked at one another. When he spoke, it was in careful, measured tones.
“I know you don’t want to talk about it,” at that he paused to give her time to dispute the statement, which she didn’t, “and you certainly don’t owe me the answer to this question, but I have to ask. Is it me? Is it us?”
Emily seemed a little taken aback, as if she had assumed that his question would be something completely different, something she couldn’t answer. She quickly said, “Oh, Brian, no. It’s not you at all. You’re the only thing it’s definitely not. It’s something else, something I’m not ready to talk about.”
He closed his eyes for an instant and breathed an easier breath. “Darling, you don’t have to say another word. As long as I know I’m not doing anything that hurts you, I can wait. We’ll talk about it when you’re ready.”
She smiled a weak, watered down with tears sort of smile. “You’re so patient.” For a reason unknown to Brian, that started her crying again. She eventually cried herself to sleep.
“Brian, I need to go through all my stuff and find one particular box. That’s going to be difficult, isn’t it?”
Emily had slept through the evening and night for a total of about twelve straight hours and was having breakfast, a real, hot, nutritious breakfast. Brian was delighted to see her actually eating.
“I don’t know how much of a jumble the storage area will be. The movers were supposed to put things in some sort of order, weren’t they?” he answered.
“I had things labeled as to what room of the apartment they had been in and what was in the box. The box I want would have been with the miscellaneous, which means it’s probably going to take a lot of sifting to find it.”
“We could do that after we see Dr. Vogler, if you’re up to it.”
Emily’s check up at the hospital went well, her progress was duly noted and she was encouraged to keep right on taking it easy for a while. Afterwards, Brian drove to the maze where Emily’s things were stored. Finally finding her assigned space, he opened the door, and they were both surprised to see how neatly and efficiently everything had been stacked. In just a few minutes, they had found the pile in which all the boxes were labeled ‘miscellaneous.’
“It would probably help if I knew what was in the box you’re looking for,” he commented.
“It was a box that had been mailed to me, and it was from my sister. Her name is in the space for return address, it’s Jean Stone.”
Brian’s curiosity was peaked by that description, and he renewed his search with some vigor. In remarkably short time, the box was found and stored in the back seat of the car. When they got back to the house, Brian carried it without comment to Emily’s room.
After a light lunch, Brian said, “You’ve had a busy morning, and you probably ought to at least lie down, if not take a nap. Would you be all right for a while if I went to run some errands?”
Emily wondered if this was something he had manufactured to take himself out of the house so that she could go through her box privately. “I’ll be fine. Take as long as you need. I only get
hysterically paranoid when it’s dark, anyway.” This last was accompanied by a self-deprecating grin.
Emily actually did rest on her bed for a short while, contemplating the box. “There’s no smoking gun in there,” she told herself, “no x-rays of broken bones, no catalog of dates and times when I was seen with a black eye, no police report of an arrest for child abuse. So, why am I afraid to look in there? Why didn’t I look through it when Jean sent it years ago?”
Finally, of course, her curiosity was running neck and neck with her reluctance, and she cut through the sticky brown tape that was supposed to be holding her childhood confined in the ugly brown carton. The first thing she found was the obituary that had run in the Raleigh newspaper when her parents had died. It struck her with a jolt that her father had been forty-six when he died, younger than Brian. Her mother had been forty-four. They had been married very young and had started cranking out children right away. When their parents had died, Bob had been twenty-five, Melvin twenty-three, Barbara was twenty-two, Emily was twenty, and Jean was fifteen.
The next item in the box was a faded pink ribbon from a corsage. Attached was a tag identifying it as the corsage she had worn to the junior prom in 1993. Emily vaguely remembered a pink dress that looked ridiculous on her bony frame and a guy from the second string football squad who was nervous and clumsy and stepped on her toes when they danced. It had seemed like a terribly sophisticated evening at the time, except for her sore feet.
There was an envelope of hair, a tiny tooth, and a hospital bracelet with “Stone, Emily Frances” clearly legibly through the plastic cover. This disputed the theory that Brian had early in their relationship when Emily had refused to talk about herself. He had accused her of being hatched at the age of thirty from an alien space egg. Emily marveled that her mother had kept such things. She didn’t seem like the sentimental type. “But I suppose she might have started out sentimental and gotten hard from living with my father,” Emily thought.
There was a bundle of report cards in a rubber band which Emily set aside. She had no desire to visit the academic mediocrity which she knew they represented, but she recalled that Dr. Whitfield specifically mentioned them.
Blackberry Winter Page 29