by Deborah Camp
“Was this a punishment for something?”
“Yeah. I-I guess.” He held his hands in front of his face, watching them tremble and unable to control the shudders that seemed to emanate from his very soul. “I think I re-refused to do something. Some kind of task. W-washing shit pots, probably.” He drew in a breath and fisted his hands.
“Are you sure? Think. What were you being punished for, Levi?”
“I can’t . . .” The truth branded his tongue, blistering his skin so painfully that he had to spit it out. “For refusing to say that I was a liar. T-that I didn’t talk to the dead.”
She squeezed his hands. “Okay. Stand up and then you help me up. I have on a pair of new heels today and they’re like vices on my poor feet.”
He did as she instructed, although his limbs felt rubbery and the world around him seemed to be encased in gauze. He wiped the wetness from his eyes. Oh. He was crying. Fuck. He blinked several times to clear his vision. He looked around to see if anyone else had witnessed him come unglued, but they were alone. He laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. “Man oh man, I’m a basket case, aren’t I, doc? Jesus. It’s one step forward and five steps back with me.” He rubbed his forehead, fighting against the hopelessness. “I’m so fucked.”
“Levi, don’t do this to yourself.” She linked her arm in his and guided him gently but firmly to the parking lot. Her new heels clicked smartly on the asphalt. “You’ve made progress. You know you have. This is not a setback. We are moving forward. These memories are buried so deep that it takes an inner earthquake to bring them up to the surface where you can study them and then be done with them.”
They arrived at her dark blue BMW and he opened the driver’s door for her before sliding into the passenger seat beside her. He fumbled with the safety harness, his reflexes responding sluggishly. These sessions in churches left him drained and depressed. Still, Dr. McClain was right. Progress had been made, even though it hurt like a sonofabitch.
“Why didn’t your mother put up a fight and have you brought home, Levi?”
The question fell on him like a battleax and his hand went to his chest to shield his heart. “I d-don’t know.” The tremor running through his voice made him turn his face away from her so that she couldn’t read anything else in his expression. In the glass window, he stared at his reflected red-rimmed eyes, mussed hair, tie pulled askew. God, he was a wreck. The last thing he wanted to think about now was her.
“You told her about what happened with Brother Carlos?”
His lids dropped over his eyes and his throat grew tight again, aching, burning.
“You told her, yes, Levi? You were allowed to phone home, what? Weekly? Monthly? Sometimes your father would let you speak to her and you’d tell her about these things that haunt you in your nightmares, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.” That was all he could force out while the scenes scampered through his mind like greasy rats. The phone calls. The pleading. The crying. Finally, cursing, calling her every vile name he could spit at her. And her silence. Her cold, stony silence before she hung up or his father took the phone away and hung up for her.
“You don’t think she believed you? Why would she think that you were lying? As a ploy to convince her to let you come home?”
“No.”
“No, what?”
“I don’t know.” He ran a hand down his sweaty face. A dull pain bloomed behind his eyes, the seedling of a headache that would probably last for hours. “It doesn’t matter if she believed me or not, does it?”
“Why doesn’t it matter?”
He shook his head, wise to her game of questions to illicit the self-discovery of answers. He knew the answer she sought, but would it do him any good to say it aloud? To say what curdled in his soul? To let the vine around his heart sink its thorns in deeper still?
“It does matter to you, Levi. It has and will always matter. If a mother can listen to her child’s pleas and trauma, if she can learn of despicable things being done to him, and her response is to ignore him, how can her reasons for her behavior not matter?”
The dam inside him cracked and then broke into pieces. “Because she didn’t love me. S-she loved him.” The words gushed out of him in a river of fire. “She had me for him. To make him happy, to give him a son. She . . . she thought a child would bind her closer to him. B-but it backfired on her. He didn’t want me, didn’t give a damn about me, and wished I didn’t exist when he realized what I was. A goddamned psychic. Someone who could do miraculous things. Not just talk about them and pretend to do them, but actually fucking do them! Read minds. Find lost objects. Talk to dead people. Commune with spirits, maybe even with angels.” He ran out of breath and had to gather in a burning lungful before he continued, “I was her black mark. If she could have erased me, she would have.”
He realized that the car had stopped. Dr. McClain had edged it to the curb and it idled there. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel for a few moments before letting go of a sigh.
“Happy now?” Levi asked, trying to smile at her. It was a joke between them any time he yanked a bandage off a particularly nasty inner scab.
“Actually, yes,” she confessed, but she didn’t smile, didn’t look all that pleased. “You aren’t. I can see that. This is something you didn’t want to say. I understand that. It’s not the same as the torture you’ve endured at the hands of so-called ‘educators.’ Those are horrible and painful for you to live through again. But this is crushing.”
Yes. The weight of saying what he didn’t want to believe was like an anvil inside his chest.
“You’ve held on to the barest belief that your mother did harbor love for you or, at least, affection. You hugged the few good memories you have of being with her close to your heart. But it’s time to face the truth, Levi. When a mother withholds her love from her child for any reason, it does insurmountable damage to the human psyche. You will never heal completely from it. And knowing this, as I’m certain you already do, is the cruelest blow of all.”
His inner child tried to grab the last shreds of hope, of doubt, and not let them go. Maybe she did love him at the end, the child in him wailed. She had admitted she was wrong. She had asked for his forgiveness.
“When she was dying, she was glad I was there,” he whispered, holding onto that final, gossamer thread.
“I’m sure she was and she probably felt guilty because she had not been there for you all those years and, yet, you were there for her when she needed you the most. The deathbed is often a place where we face our naked selves in shame and regret.”
He held up his right hand. “She gave me this ring. It belonged to her brother. I’ve told you about this before, haven’t I?”
“Yes.” She studied the silver ring with the black onyx set in it. “His name was David and that’s your middle name. You told me that he came to you as a spirit and asked you to forgive his dying sister.”
“He said she knew she was wrong not to protect me from my father.”
“David acted as her emissary. Her go-between. Why do you think he was needed?”
The battleax was back, cleaving into his chest, aiming for that tenuous thread. He gritted his teeth to keep from sobbing as bitter tears sprang to his eyes. He was shaking his head in denial before he could even stop himself. Dr. McClain’s compassionate gaze steadied him, giving him enough strength to confront the ugly truth. He slowly released his grip on that last threadbare scrap of fantasy he had desperately being holding onto.
“Why, Levi?” she asked, wielding that damned ax, making him let go completely.
“David apologized for her, made amends and excuses for her.” He yanked his handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and dabbed at his nose and eyes. He winced at the next words that crowded onto his tongue. “When it came right down to it, she was appreciative of my being there so that she wasn’t alone, but it didn’t change anything. Her unforgivable sin, her biggest regret was me. Even at the end of h
er life. It was me.” There. All the lying to himself about her was gone. He felt exposed, defenseless, a trembling lump of humanity.
“And yet here you are.”
He looked at Dr. McClain, momentarily confused. Glancing around, he saw traffic, some people in business suits walking past the car, a stray cat streaking from curb to curb.
“Here you are facing your demons, vanquishing them, one by one. Here you are, a successful, self-made businessman who holds several college degrees. You’re a married man who is deeply in love with his wife. You are respected by your employees and held in esteem by members of your community. Despite being treated most of your young life like a despised animal, you are an exemplary person. The lack of parental love could have destroyed your innate goodness, as it has done to so many people, but you wouldn’t allow it. You believed in you and in your incredible powers of perception.”
A smirk poked at one corner of his mouth. “I have always possessed a colossal ego.”
“Bravo!” She clapped, her eyes dancing. “Thank God for it! That big, old ego saved you.”
“That and Gregory.”
“Oh, yes. Your spirit guide, showing up when you were being tested to your limits and letting you know that you are special and could endure.”
“And Trudy.” Just saying her name gave him solace and began patching together the pieces of his heart.
She smiled, giving him a slow nod. “And Trudy. She convinced you that you could be loved, even adored, simply for who you are.”
He slumped in the seat, emotionally spent, and tucked the handkerchief back into his inner pocket. Tipping his head back, he released a sound that was half sigh and half groan.
“Will you discuss this with Trudy?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Well, because in the past, you’ve been closed off from everyone. It’s good that you trust her with these feelings and what happened to you during your childhood.”
“There’s no keeping anything from Trudy. If she thinks I’m trying to hide something from her, she goes at me with a pick and shovel.”
“You know, women have allowed you to clam up and not let them to get too close to you for most of your adult life. Once they caught your eye and were in bed with you, they didn’t want to give you a reason to cast them aside. Not that they needed a reason.” She dimpled at him. “We won’t go over that territory again, so relax. My point is that it’s fortuitous that Trudy forces you to come clean, to let her see who you are, what you fear, what you crave. Everyone needs someone who knows them, inside and out.”
“I never thought I’d say this, but I agree.” He closed his eyes against the brightness of the sun which was feeding his headache. He’d left his sunglasses at the office, damn it. “However, having Trudy in my life isn’t fortuitous,” he corrected the psychiatrist. “It’s miraculous.”
“Quintara, it does sound interesting, but the timing sucks. I really don’t want to leave Levi right now. He’s been through a rough patch lately.” Trudy switched the phone from one ear to the other as she consulted the appointment calendar on her desk, counting back to when they’d returned from Eureka Springs. It had been three weeks ago. Where had the time gone? It was already the middle of May and Quintara was trying to entice her to agree to be on a panel about working with the police departments at a psychic conference in Oklahoma City next Saturday. “I don’t do this kind of thing, anyway. They should want Levi for it.”
“It’s a panel of women psychics, dear. Levi is many things, but he isn’t female. He would want you to do it. I know for a fact that he’s urged you to branch out, to be more public about what you do. Besides, he told me the other day that he’s busy promoting his next book.”
“Well, yes, but mainly he’s busy with WEI. He doesn’t get home until six or seven and he’s gone to the office by seven-thirty every week day. He even worked most of last Saturday.”
“I thought he was cutting back on being so hands-on there.”
“He is, but the past couple of weeks have been exceptional. He has three building projects finishing up at the same time, plus he has been trying to fit in time for us.” Having an ambitious husband had its drawbacks, she thought. Cutting back to Levi was coming home at five-thirty instead of seven-thirty. He was passionate about his psychic work, but he also loved buying old, decrepit office buildings and giving them new life or taking on the architectural preservation of historic structures. In a way, it was an extension of himself – taking something damaged and making it like new again or even better than before.
“Two days, Trudy. He can be without you for two days and one night. You’ll arrive on Friday night, participate on the panel Saturday morning, and be back at Atlanta Saturday evening. You might even be able to squeeze in a visit with your folks. The panel is scheduled for ten in the morning, so you could rent a car and drive to Tulsa to see your parents before boarding an evening flight to Atlanta. Levi would probably even arrange for a private plane.”
“That would be a pricy trip for me to be on a panel discussion,” she observed, dryly, although Quintara was right. Levi would book a private plane for her. All she had to do was ask, which she wasn’t going to do.
“Can I tell them you’ll be there?” Quintara pressed. “Or must you get permission from Levi first?”
Permission? Her blood heated, but she bit back the barbed retort that pricked her tongue. Looking at the calendar again, the date seemed to call to her. Maybe it would be a good way to ease into more public functions. Little by little, she was finding it less of a chore to attend cocktail and dinner parties, galas and charity functions with Levi. The next logical step would be to be confident enough to discuss her psychic work in front of an audience.
“Okay. I’ll do it.”
“Wonderful!”
She jumped at Quintara’s burst of enthusiasm through the telephone, already experiencing qualms over agreeing. “You have to help me prepare, though. I’ve never done this before.”
“Of course, dear. There’s nothing to it. The organizer of this conference is a friend of mine and she’s going to be over the moon when I tell her that you’ve consented. This is quite a coup!”
“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it that.”
“Your first public appearance at a conference? I would say so! I’ll be back in touch, dear. You should make your own travel plans, but the conference will reimburse you up to a reasonable amount.”
“No, that’s okay. I won’t need a reimbursement. If they’re offering a speaker’s fee, tell them to keep it for their operational expenses.”
“Dear, people value what they perceive as expensive. Take the speaker’s fee and donate it to charity, if you wish. But take it.”
Trudy rolled her eyes, but caved. “Okay. Fine. Everything’s going all right with you?”
“Naturally, my darling girl. Give Levi a big hug and kiss for me. Ta-ta!”
“Uh . . . ta . . . right. Will do—.” She shrugged, realizing that Quintara was no longer on the line. She picked up a pen and wrote across the correct calendar squares – OKC conference. God, what had she gotten herself into? What in the world would she say without sounding like a nut job? Oh, wait. It was a conference about ESP, so people would expect her to sound loony. Well, yeah, she could definitely handle that part of it.
A bump and thump announced Wes Statler’s descent down the stairs from the upper level of the penthouse. He carried a bucket, a mop, and other cleaning supplies.
“I don’t mean to bother you, Trudy. Would it be all right if I clean the workout room?”
“Sure. Go ahead.” She glanced toward the smaller room off the larger office area she shared with Levi. “He’s been using it a lot the past couple of weeks, huh?”
Wes nodded, gravity pulling down the corners of his mouth and shading his light blue eyes. “He told me that he’s even been hammering the bag in the middle of the night w
hen he can’t sleep. He hasn’t done that in a long time.”
This didn’t come as a surprise to her. She’d awakened a couple of times after midnight to discover that she was alone in bed. She had crept through the apartment looking for him and had heard him pummeling the heavy punching bag in the workout room. It was his way of releasing tumultuous emotions and fighting off nightmares. He’d told her about his traumatic session with Dr. McClain at the church, so she knew he was still sorting through it, hurting from it. Admitting that his mother couldn’t have actually loved him had gutted him, and Trudy’s heart ached right along with his.
She had witnessed the soft vulnerability in his eyes when he had spoken about his mother before and how she had served him milk and cookies after school and had read to him at night before he fell asleep. Things good mothers do for their children. He had clung to those sweet moments like a security blanket. What would he cling to now? Nothing where his parents were concerned. Hopefully, he would cling to her and the sweet memories they were making for each other.
Trudy left her desk and went to the entrance of the workroom. Wes looked up from mopping the tiled floor where two exercise bikes and a pummel horse took up space. The other half of the floor was covered by a thick rubber mat to make working with weights and doing yoga more comfortable. The punching bag hung in the middle of the room.
Wes was one of her favorite people. Since they hung out at the penthouse together, they’d become close friends. Yes, he was the chef/housecleaner/chauffeur/and anything else they needed, but Trudy actually thought of him as a pal and confidant.
“You and your family should come by sometime for dinner,” she said, voicing something she’d been thinking about lately. “Or maybe we could all take in a baseball game.”
He looked at her, clearly startled.