by Tom Corbett
Brunhilda, what Rachel always called Evan’s mother, ruled over the extended family like a potentate. She wanted everyone to play their assigned role. For Rachel, that role was to be the supportive handmaiden to her favored son. Perhaps that is exactly where Evan disappointed Rachel the most. He came across like a confident, successful, ambitious man who was in control of his life and destiny. But around his mother, he dissolved into a sniveling child. If she told him to quack like a duck while waddling down the middle of the street, he would wet himself as he scrambled to the center of the road.
Funny, she thought, how the scripts embedded in us early in life can be so crippling. As Brunhilda determined that Evan, as she surmised early on, had erred in taking Rachel as his wife, she began treating her with increasing disdain and even obvious disrespect. Rachel could just imagine what she told her intimates at the country club. She undoubtedly painted Rachel as a self-centered bitch who caused her precious son no end of grief. Rachel could see the change in how Evan’s siblings and the extended family began to interact with her. At social events, it seemed as if the wider family and social acquaintances distanced themselves from her, would look past her during conversation as if seeking an escape route. Sometimes she wanted to scream at them that she did not have leprosy, that she was a good person. Unfortunately, she’d begun to doubt that very fact herself. It is disturbing how easily we respond to the negativity of others.
What really disturbed Rachel was that her apparent sins were to be visited on her daughter. Evan, after the divorce, waited a suitable period before remarrying. He chose one of the many women he had bedded during their marriage. His choice was everything that Rachel was not, the compliant trophy wife whose hair was always perfect, her adoring gaze always directed at her husband, and her day filled with charity events and social interactions. Brunhilda loved her willingness to conform to family expectations. After wife number two sired two children, a girl and then a boy, Rachel and Cate clearly were little more than a youthful error to be ignored as superfluous baggage. Rachel had geared up for a custody fight that, though threatened early on, never materialized. Evan did find time in his schedule to see Cate periodically up to the point where the new offspring appeared on the scene. Then he seemed to lose interest, going through the motions with his first daughter as if she were an unavoidable and irritating obligation to satisfy. Even that level of interest dissipated. Rachel could see the disappointment in Cate’s eyes. He did not even show up at her college graduation—too busy. But he did send a nice gift. Cate bravely maintained a smile while Rachel’s disdain turned to a bright hard hate.
These memories were beginning to sour her generally good mood. To jettison them, she turned to the folder Josh had left behind. She never would have found this on her own. There must be something here, something that might unlock the key to her brother. But why had he given this to her? Was he reaching out? That seemed unlikely. He really was a private person despite an easy public presence. His easy joking manner was the perfect cover for a world jealously guarded. No one would be permitted in without a struggle. Attempts to bridge the impenetrable wall were rebuffed by a joke or a story or a roguish smile. And it worked. She doubted if Connie or Usha had penetrated his defenses effectively.
Suddenly, her wandering train of thought wandered to Usha. She wondered what her relationship with Josh had been like. It seemed rather clear to her why Josh would enjoy sharing his life with her, to the extent he could. She was smart and kind and interesting. Rachel could never understand how couples thought they could make it on physical attraction alone. You can only screw so much. The other 99.9 percent of life needed a deeper connection. If Usha had not found someone to love, they still would be happily coupled, she was certain of that.
As she thought about Usha, Rachel knew why Josh would find her appealing. She had that dark beauty that he inevitably found seductive, black hair and copper-toned skin with high cheekbones and perfectly proportioned facial features. Yes, Josh must have been physically attracted to her. She wondered how he dealt with a sensual relationship that essentially was one-sided. But maybe that was not such a mystery. He had this steel core about him. She recalled his high school days when girls threw themselves at him. He generally rebuffed them, gently of course. Any girl that tried to be coquettish was toast. Those that flaunted their bodies never got near first base. He wanted something more. Of course, he would grouse endlessly about these girls teasing boys while secretly paying homage to St. Virginius of the of Holy Incorruptible Body, a secret cabal of Catholic girls who would prefer martyrdom over actual sex. While she eventually determined that he had overstated the issue, his attitude was not without merit. It took her a long time to discover that no such saint, nor society of young girls, ever existed.
Rachel could not quite shake the image of Usha out of her mind. She liked her soft voice and still-present British Indian accent. Close to Rachel in age, a bit younger, Usha looked even younger than her years with few age lines marking the passage of time. Then a vague sensation hit her with disturbing force: was she feeling a physical attraction? That is stupid, impossible, out of the question. She had shut down her body years ago. Okay, she pleasured herself to be sure, but that was just a rare necessity, more a pointless diversion than anything else. Since Evan, she had been pursued by several men, dallying with a couple when their pursuit did not cease upon her early rebuffs. But they had left her unmoved, detached. Odd, she now considered that these suitors were perfectly nice; most women would be delighted by their attentions. It was as if she were incapable of response. Now, this feeling in her body would not go away. It was a kind of yearning. This was not good, she thought.
It was time to focus on something else. She turned to the material Josh had given her. Like his life and his office, the folder was haphazard and disorganized. Still, Josh would not have thrust this stuff on her without reason. He wanted her to plumb whatever mysteries were to be found. Herein lies some key into his inner life, she was sure of this. She selected some items from the mess. There were letters and newspaper clippings and computer printouts. She decided to spread out some of the contents in front of her and grabbed a letter that happened to be at the top of the pile. It was lengthy, but one paragraph caught her attention.
January 7…
Dear Leni,
One aspect of my new life here is time, time to think, time to reflect on what I have already done and what I intend to do. There is time for long walks through the streets of Toronto. My life at present is relatively unfettered by the proliferation of distractions considered essential in American life for someone seeking conventional success. As a result, it is rather impossible to prevent oneself from becoming more reflective and perhaps a bit more aware.
If you dwell upon your own behavior and that of others and further the relationship between the two long enough, then it becomes increasingly more difficult to maintain the superficial differences by which we shore up the soft inner self. Of course, the inner self can be described, itself, as little more than a plethora of patterned roles arranged to respond to specific cues. But I yet tend to believe that beyond the potentially numerous responses which one organism is capable of and ordinarily does emit, there is a consistency or uniformity which usually appears when the individual faces stress.
The upshot of all this is that I’ve faced another little bit of truth about myself with what I hope is a degree of honesty…when I reflect upon some of the letters I have sent, many of them seem designed only to evoke pity or sympathy or admiration through the emphasis on the loneliness, deprivation, or accomplishments in my young life. It has all been a rather semi romantic escapade through some of my philosophical stream of conscious meanderings.
Wait, Rachel said to herself, was this Josh or someone pretending to be him? She glanced at the other letters. They were all to Eleni, the mysterious gal that neither Rachel, nor any of her acquaintances, had never met. They were written over a series of months during his early stay in Toronto after
he had fled the States. This was the period he had never talked about to any extent. She had asked, more than once, during the few times she had seen him in the intervening years. But he never opened up to her, and these exchanges were all rather strained. She remained dissatisfied with his silence but struggled to maintain a sibling civility, on the surface at least, by not pushing the issue. For years, they had gone through the motions of a cordial relationship, being polite but distant, leaving so much unexpressed and unstated. Rachel sat back for a moment. They really had been children to each other, simply acting out youthful roles. Both were dressed in the garb of adulthood and professional authority, yet inside, they had remained little more than pouting kids. She knew her problem. She never saw him as an equal. He was the older brother whom she idolized. And he betrayed her. Damn him. That hurt had never expired. She could suppress it, but not eradicate it. The hurt lay deep inside as did most of her human feelings.
January 17,…
Dear Leni,
I know a fellow émigré named Michael. His girl in the States has not written in about two weeks now. Her husband has probably returned from Vietnam, and the situation is tense all the way around. It is another case of the shifting sands of human emotions, the liquidity and vacuity of which never cease to amaze me. The course of human involvement typically seems to run from the improbable to the absurd. The grasping, hoping, seeking become inevitable frustrations and unfulfilled aspirations. Today’s bliss and ecstasy are tomorrow’s despair and emptiness. To maintain your purpose and direction, you have to love and believe in that love. And out of the deepest despair of its reality evolves the highest respect for its necessity and appreciation of its existence.
Partially, one may say that love is an illusion or some form of selective reality, and further, that distance perpetuates these illusions. But the emotional character of love is only the superficial surface. Its real nature lies in the contract made between two people. It is the arrangement between separate individuals to share common excitement and joys and accept each other’s burdens and fears. It is the merger of their identities as well as their bodies, an investment of themselves and their trust in the other. It is perhaps the most incredibly difficult goal to accomplish and yet the easiest thing to convince yourself that you are doing it. It is something that cannot be manufactured but rather must simply exist. Yet it cannot be taken for granted but rather nurtured and cultivated with all the strength that can be mustered.
As you know, this kind of investment has been particularly difficult for me. The exposure to and investment of self in other human beings is a noble aspiration, perhaps ultimately unrealizable yet seemingly the only reality worth pursuing.
In rereading this letter, I’ve realized that it is extremely ambiguous and unintelligible. It is just so incredibly difficult to verbalize emotions in general, never mind probing one’s own thoughts and feelings. Beyond that, such thoughts are alien to my analytical, pessimistic nature. Perhaps there is a kind of metamorphosis, a maturing which is taking place, and I am neither able to analyze it nor describe its direction.
There is something I want to say now, that I must say or forever hesitate. I do want to marry you. This is an incredible confession for me, and I know it will freak you out. Before you retreat into your shell, let me assure you that I don’t believe it will ever happen. Circumstances, time, distance, and certain common weaknesses will, in all probability, prevent it. But let me also assure you that I mean it and that if you ever, at any time, feel strong enough to make that arrangement, that contract of identities, real, then let me know.
Rachel sprang up on the couch. He proposed! He proposed! My god, he proposed! Who was this woman? Where was she? Why wasn’t she here? Why hadn’t he talked about her over the years? This was the woman he loved. Of course, she knew the answer to that question. They hadn’t really shared much since he left. There were times when she was struggling with Evan that she wanted to reach out to her brother. She wasn’t all that sure she wanted his advice on anything. No, what she needed was to lie on a couch with her head on his thigh, his hand gently stroking her hair. That had always calmed her. The world had never been scary when he was there, stroking her hair.
She shook her head. Does Cate know about this Eleni? Cate knows Josh so much better than she does. She had talked with him over the years. Perhaps they had talked about this mysterious woman who touched her brother as no other. Rachel desperately wanted to meet this woman. Obviously, she had once reached her brother in some deep and special way. How did she do it? Why did he let her get away? But of course, this was so long ago. Perhaps it was merely a youthful flame that time and maturity would extinguish. That was improbable, however, and she knew it. He would not have shared this stuff with her. She picked up yet another note from the pile, her eyes fixed on the following passage.
January 25…
Dear Leni,
Both the genius and stupidity of man are beyond comprehension, both his humanness and depravity inexplicable. In the past, the relative powerlessness and isolation of man guaranteed that a delicate balance could be maintained between the extremes and that somehow the human species could perpetuate itself. But now we seem to have reached a point of incipient desperation, of incredible gaps between the species’ technological prowess and its limited wisdom. Between its science and its conscience, we have allowed ourselves to become enmeshed in a morass of fear and frustration, increasingly thrashing about with incomprehensible violence, struggling over inappropriate decayed symbols.
In Vietnam, we sap our strength, prostitute our sensibilities, and potentially precipitate a holocaust. It seems to me that the sensible thing to do would be to establish our commitments along a pragmatically defensible perimeter, e.g., Australia, India, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Japan. This would not only rationalize our military posture but liberate the dynamic energies of both the Western and Eastern worlds to confront some of the critical questions of our generation: food production, population control, socioeconomic inequality, and the quality of the human condition.
It will do absolutely no good if we destroy every single communist in Asia while the rest of the world is devoured by famine, disease, and pollution; while society disintegrates under the tensions of social inequality; and while civilization is crushed under the mass of its own weight. At home, our response to the Black revolution is to modernize our riot responses with the latest, most sophisticated equipment and techniques. Mace, automatic weapons, armored vehicles, and improved gas attacks do not appear to be an appropriate reaction. But then again, there is no reason to break with tradition and adopt a thoughtful humanitarian approach.
Rachel could feel her eyes moisten. For her, Josh was this rock. She had never seen him sad or weak or confused. Yes, she had seen him angry, but only with his dad and she could understand that volatility. They both were stubborn Irishmen. That was a toxic mix. It had been okay when Josh followed his ordained path, but all amity dissolved when he struck out on his own. No football, no Notre Dame. That was the height of insanity and insufferable insolence in Jim’s eyes. The screaming had driven Rachel into her room, where she buried herself under the pillows. But she could still hear. A couple of times she heard items crash and feared that violence inevitably had broken out. Other times she heard Ora’s pleading voice beseeching for calm. Usually, the row went on until the door slammed shut. And then she would cry herself to sleep.
In these notes, she now saw a bit of what drove him during those days. She could see his passion and commitment. These were not his reflections on what he thought four decades ago. These were his feelings committed to paper. They were in real time and thus had a special authenticity.
January 28…
Dear Leni,
I heard the music from Zorba the Greek the other day. As usual, it sparked a flood of memories. I am reminded of Zorba’s recommendation that we all must possess a little bit of madness. Madness that has brought me to this situation, madness that may never permit us to
see each other again, but most importantly, the madness by which we dare to hope. But the ultimate madness of them all is the one by which we desperately learn to survive and, in the face of all this increasing insanity, seek the kind of futile happiness that our elusive dreams pretend.
Yet maybe, just maybe, we can make it.
I want to say something now, not out of fear or lack of trust in you, but simply to clear up any ambiguity. While I love you, and do hope the relationship will endure my absence, the reality of the situation is that we are in separate countries. For how long is indeterminate. I also realize that my irascible moodiness, chronic immaturity, and impractical leftist politics, hardly make me an ideal catch. If you have any doubt about how you feel about me, or change your mind, please feel completely free to communicate this to me. Perhaps, given my Irish pessimism, I anticipate it anyway. And of course, if you are insane enough to like me, you are also allowed to tell me that as well.
Rachel had never considered that her brother would pour his heart out to anyone. Of all his considerable gifts, they did not include any sense of sentimentality or romanticism. He had been the ultimate self-contained man. Rachel thought he had things figured out and had pursued his dream with confidence and passion. Who was this man in the letters? This was a man who felt deeply and passionately. It was a person seemingly from a different universe she had never visited. It was a person she had not been permitted to witness nor know.
March 14…
Dear Leni,
Your “Dear Josh” letter must have been an unpleasant experience, one which finally having been done would be difficult to repeat. Writing again was a brave thing for you to do. I’m not sure it was a wise thing, but it did please me, immeasurably. Thank you.
You mentioned that sometimes you break into tears without reason. I must admit there are times I become misty-eyed. It is not so much for what might have been but rather for what was. My times at college and with you were extremely pleasant. The time we spent together were the most pleasant of all. There was a warmth and comfortableness there, and a sharing and excitement which now strike me as unique and which never again can be duplicated. In truth, they were unsurpassed in meaning and passion.