You Let Me In

by Camilla Bruce

  But the regular readers, too, love my stories. At first it was morbid fascination, I think, that drew them to the shelves and made them pick up my little pink book. I had kept my married name, of course, and it was proudly displayed on the cover in golden letters with curlicues:

  Golden Suns by Cassandra Tipp.

  I was so proud of that book. The first one of many, as it turned out.

  Later, when the memory of the trial and Dr. Martin’s book had faded, I became the sad widow who worked through her grief and family tragedy by writing about love and happy ever afters. They thought it was beautiful then, my readers, beautiful and romantic that I wrote of such things after having lost my one and only.

  Mostly, though, it was habit that made my readers come back. They do that, you know, if you tell a good story. They crave more of that same feeling you gave them, want to immerse themselves in your waters again, swim deep in your lagoons and drink from that same well. I gave them a good swim forty-two times. You can count them all on that shelf in the parlor. Every one of them was fueled by a set of faerie jars; grown from rabbit’s teeth, flower buds, and leaves. I have read them all out loud in the mound, too, with golden eyes peering at me, the heat from the hearth licking my back. I received cakes and wine for my trouble, followed by ever more exquisite jars to quench my literary thirst.

  But Dr. Martin was gone by the time Golden Suns hit the shelves.

  Only four years after he published Away with the Fairies: A Study in Trauma-Induced Psychosis, he died quietly in his bed. “Natural causes,” as they say, though I had my own thoughts about that.

  * * *

  I have often wondered what he’d make of all this, the success that I’ve become. He, who wanted to commit me to a hospital and have me chew pills and get shots forevermore. Not out of some ill intent, but because to him, as much as he loved me, I was still his patient.

  The first time I saw a Japanese translation of Golden Suns, I pretended he was there with me, his hand resting on my shoulder, and he said:

  “Look at that, Cassie. I can see that I was wrong. You really have a purpose to fulfill in this world. It would have been a terrible mistake if you spent your life in a hospital.”

  But that was just wishful thinking, mind you. I know that it wasn’t real.

  * * *

  Mara was never fond of Dr. Martin. To her he would always be the man who tried to take me away.

  I had taught her to read, and she read a lot, and read his book too, shortly before he died.

  I don’t know what she had expected it to be—perhaps another faerie mound fantasy, or the adventures of her mother, rescued by the woods—but of course it was not a happy story, it was gritty and harsh, littered with medical terms and regrets.

  It left me little credit, truth be told.

  “It says in here that you are making me up,” she confronted me one day. I was in the kitchen, making a pie.

  “It is just what Dr. Martin thinks, it doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “You know how it is with faeries and humans. You are the hidden people, after all, and should stay that way, too, for many reasons.” A lesson I myself should have taken to heart a very long time ago.

  “But he is spreading these lies to the world,” she said. “He makes you sound stupid, or insane.”

  “They aren’t really lies when he thinks they are true. For him I suppose I am quite insane.”

  “But how can he be so sure you are making us up—has he ever seen a faerie?”

  “No, my sweet, I think that is the point.” I wiped the flour off my hands on the apron. “People who don’t believe in faeries have usually never met one.”

  “But people believe in a lot of things they have never seen, like black holes or deep water fish.”

  “That is easier to prove, although I don’t think everyone believes in black holes. For many people that’s just a story, too, being so very far off as to be unreal.”

  “I still don’t think it is right, though, him talking about you like this, for money.”

  “The money from that book got us this house.” I bent down to check on the pie. “Dr. Martin and I agree to disagree,” I said while I rose back up. “I leave him to his convictions, he leaves me to mine.”

  “But he doesn’t,” she argued. “He wanted to treat you with pills, it says so here in the book, and it says other things too, about me … and my father.”

  “I think we should leave that alone.” I turned my back on her, unable to meet her eyes. I busied my hands cleaning the kitchen counter, wishing against all odds she would leave the matter be. She was all grown up by then, though. I couldn’t forbid her anything. I couldn’t protect her from going where she shouldn’t.

  “But is it true, Mother?” she asked. “Did you suffer like that when you were a child? Am I a daughter of your pain…? Did you take me to the mound to bury me there?” Her voice rose behind me.

  “Of course not, Mara, of course not.” I spun around and placed my arms on her shoulders, made to pull her into my embrace. She wouldn’t have it, though, and forced my arms away. “I brought you to the mound so that you could live,” I told her, standing before her. “You are a child of Faerie. You have always been a child of Faerie.”

  “But Faerie is the opposite of life, isn’t it?”

  “No—not quite.”

  “But why would you even have me live, then?” Her voice broke, and she looked utterly crushed. My heart ached, bled salt. “If my beginning was like it says in the book? Why didn’t you just let me die? You were so young and so broken. So sad and so alone—”

  “So I wouldn’t be,” I interrupted her. “I wouldn’t be sad and alone if I had you. You were always mine, you see, ever since you were the size of a finger, sleeping on an oak leaf in Harriet’s palm, and before that too, you were mine. I will never regret having you.”

  “But those who hurt you so, will you ever make them pay?”

  “Whatever good would come of that?”

  “I don’t believe in letting the world deal its blows, I believe in fighting back.”

  “For what, Mara? Fight for what?”

  “For justice and pride … for your dignity.”

  “Nothing good ever comes from any of those things—what is justice, anyway? What is pride or dignity? It doesn’t matter, Mara, none of it does. I survived. That is all.”

  “So it is true, then, what he says?”

  “Well, the ‘trauma’ in the title does come from a place, but everything is very confusing … I don’t really know what happened back then—”

  “Seems from what he wrote that you deserve a lot more in this life than to merely survive.”

  “Why? I have it all: a beautiful daughter, a wonderful home…” Suddenly she’d made me feel so small, like the tiniest of mice living under the floorboards. Made me feel like I should have taken up arms, not kept my head low and pretend it didn’t blow. Your children can do that, make you feel that shame. “I let him write that book,” I defended my lack of courage. “I let him tell the story there.”

  “But it is his story about you, not your own.”

  “Still,” I shrugged. “And remember, Mara, some of it is true, but some of it is not. There are certainly a lot of things that never happened in there, too. It’s all just so horribly mixed up.”

  “But you let your family rage at you and cast you aside. You let them say that it is all lies, let them live in such denial—”

  “I don’t know that they could be blamed—”

  “I understand that you are hurting, Mother, maybe too much to fight and burn, but I will fight this one for you. For your sake and for mine.”

  My blood ran cold in my veins. “No, please, Mara, I wish you wouldn’t.” Why poke at a resting bear?

  She lifted her chin up high, eyes glowing like crushed embers. “If I don’t, who will?”

  “It was all such a long time ago, they are so old now, they will soon die—”

  “And never have to pay?”<
br />
  “Yes, just that. Let there be peace now. That is all I want from life.”

  “You are growing old.” Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Only old people say such things. People with no hope left. People who have given in.”

  “Maybe I have,” I shrugged again. “And maybe it is enough to have survived.”

  XXII

  We keep coming back to it, don’t we? That book that he wrote. Away with the Fairies: A Study in Trauma-Induced Psychosis. Maybe because it played such a crucial role in everything that happened later. It changed the course of fate, I think. Changed us all.

  The book itself is rather dry. It recounts Dr. Martin’s relationship with a young female patient, thinly disguised as “C—,” who later went on to face murder charges. Dr. Martin writes about a troubled young girl who has lost her ability to tell reality from fantasy. His theory is that she had been a victim of sexual and emotional abuse from a very early age, and has constructed a world of her own to escape to. The real problems begin when her fantasy world spills into the real world, confusing the two in her mind. She is living in both worlds at the same time. Her fairy friends are as real to her as her family and schoolmates. Maybe even more real. He used Pepper-Man as an example of how “C—’s” imaginary world evolves: She is attempting to heal herself, by altering her cast: the kindly monster from her childhood (her abuser), who gives her gifts, but also hurts her, is transformed into a prince in her adolescence. He becomes a beautiful savior who has come to take her away from her cruel family. His counterpart in reality then becomes the man who would be her husband. Even though it seems irrational for healthy people, this attempted healing is actually a sign of a highly functioning survival instinct. Her mind is struggling to heal the wounds inflicted on her by rewriting the story and erasing the things that hurt.

  As stories go, his is not a bad one. Dr. Martin had taken it all and managed to wrap it all up in one neat little bundle. Applied his magnifying glass to it and knitted a new narrative from the bits and bobs. About Mara, he said: The abortion was another violation of her body, another situation in which she was completely helpless and at the mercy of her abusers. Her mind gets to work and unravels the incident and lets her write a new one, in which she saves the child by taking it to the fairy mound (where the dead still live). The child is lost in the real world, but lives on in her fantasy land. She copes with her loss by not coping at all because she does not have to. The child is still there, only displaced—allowed to grow up in a way that C— had not been able to do.

  No wonder Mara was upset, poor child.

  He spends quite some time searching for the origins for my “delusions,” examining everything from the fairytale books I had as a child, to the selection of books on folklore and myths available at the S— library at the time. It’s unclear if he was satisfied with his search.

  He doesn’t say right out that “C—” had in fact killed her husband, but notes: If she had murdered her spouse as the result of a lovers’ quarrel or a relationship grown stale, her mind would have quickly been at it again, rewriting the story to heal the wounds. Maybe he had not been human at all, but a man made from twigs and river stones? Maybe the real prince had been hiding inside him, and the body in question, with its flaws and appetites, didn’t truly matter? Maybe, as her mind keeps justifying her deeds, the real husband has been dead all along, and it is her fairy consort, her childhood solace, who has been posing as him for years? No crime, then, to dismember his body and wheelbarrow the pieces into the woods …

  Your mother and grandparents were not pleased by this book, I can tell you that. Dr. Martin’s star crash-landed in a pile of shit in their yard, stinking up the whole neighborhood.

  “Where is this coming from?” Mother asked me on the phone. Screamed at me, really. “Why these allegations now? Is it because we weren’t there at the trial?”

  “It’s just a book,” I tried to tell her.

  “But it’s presented as the truth, Cassie. Everyone will read it. We won’t ever recover from this, don’t you have any compassion for your mother and father?”

  “Not really, no. I haven’t seen any of you for a while. Sometimes I forget you’re even there.”

  “Well, don’t you think that we at least deserve a little respect? Raising you was hard. You were not an easy child—”

  “I know, I was bad, wasn’t I?”

  “Yes, you were. You just never could seem to do anything right—and yes, maybe I was harsh at times, but that doesn’t mean I’m accountable for whatever became of you in life. What poor choices you made…”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle at her outburst. Which only enraged her further:

  “Stop laughing at me, Cassie! What is this? Your revenge? I will have you know that you are responsible too, for everything that happened. Had you only not been so ba—”

  I hung up the phone.

  I didn’t hear her voice again until the funeral.

  * * *

  I can imagine it was hard on them. The book caused a lot of stir, and the press was back on my case, following me around and snapping pictures, and taking pictures of my family, too, whenever they dared leave the house. I saw a picture of Mother once, on the front page of a newspaper, her head wrapped in a scarf, large Hollywood sunglasses. Olivia, too, wore hats, broad brimmed and heavy with ornamental flowers and bows.

  I always refused interviews. I couldn’t stomach talking about it and wanted to keep my mock anonymity intact. Dr. Martin did a few TV shows, though, where he discussed “C—” at length with other doctors and survivors of abuse. In the end I think that book created a little more compassion for people who have been through a lot, and that’s worth something, isn’t it?

  But then there was Mara.

  * * *

  I hadn’t expected her to react to the book in the way that she did. Hadn’t thought it would affect her much at all. She was fiery, of course, had always been that, but I hadn’t realized it would cause her such pain.

  I even called Dr. Martin to warn him about the strength of her feelings:

  “She is quite upset,” I told him, “now that she has read it. She is particularly upset about the story you told of her origins.”

  “In what way would you say she is upset, Cassie?” Dr. Martin sounded wary on the other end.

  “She is blaming me for not taking my revenge. She says that she will do it for me.”

  “Cassie, I want you to take a deep breath and prod a bit inside yourself … Do you share Mara’s feelings?”

  “No,” I said at once. “I don’t think it happened that way at all.”

  “But you do, don’t you? You know what I wrote is true.”

  “Truth-shmuth…”

  “Cassie…”

  “I’m sorry—I’m just trying to do what you say and prod my insides, but these are all just Mara’s feelings, not something that we share. I even feel a bit guilty—I admit—for not sharing them.”

  “How come?”

  “Well, it’s like she wants something from me, wants me to blaze like she does, and that I should be ashamed—she thinks me weak for not acting. For not ‘raising arms,’ if you see what I mean?”

  “But you did that, Cassie. You did fight back, only you did it in your own way, and Mara is proof of that.”

  “Because I made her up?”

  “Just that. You fought back with the tools you had at your disposal.”

  “Somehow I don’t think that will do as an explanation to her.”

  “What do you think she will do, then, with these angry feelings?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m worried.”

  “Maybe you should consider hospital one more time? Or take me up on my offer and accept a prescription—”

  “No, Dr. Martin. No. I will lose them all, then, and I don’t want that.”

  “I understand that it’s hard to let go, but you wouldn’t want Mara to hurt anyone, right?”

  “Of course not, that is why I’m calling you
—for advice.”

  “I am really obligated to tell someone if I think you pose a threat to yourself or someone else, or if I think that Mara does.”

  “Do you, though?”

  “You certainly have me worried…”

  I gave a small laugh, insecure and shivering. “Why do you think she is so mad?” I whispered into the phone.

  “Well, I think Mara may be changing just as Pepper-Man did, because you need her to be something else now. Maybe she really is your daughter, in a sense, a part of you that belongs to you but that grows independently, becoming a force to be reckoned with and surprising even you.”

  “I am sure she will disagree, but please, go on…”

  “Maybe Mara is your anger that you never allowed yourself to feel, because you couldn’t afford it. You are stronger now, though, the book is out there and thousands of people have read your story. You can allow yourself to be angry now, people on TV even encourage you to be angry. No harm will come to you for it. Maybe Mara has become the embodiment of that anger.”

  “My child of pain?”

  “Just that…”

  “Or just a very angry daughter who has just learned something bad once happened to her mother.”

  “That too.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “You have to find out where her rage is going, if she’s a threat to anyone.”

  “And if she is?”

  “Then you must commit yourself, Cassie, there really is no way around it.”

  “How will that help with Mara?”

  “Trust me, Cassie. It will.”

  * * *

  I never did commit myself to the hospital, though, even after I realized what Mara could—would—do. I knew it wouldn’t help one bit. Rather it would make things worse, with me not being there to calm her.

  She once said she went to see Dr. Martin before he died, but I don’t know if it’s true or not.