Apologize, Apologize! - By Elizabeth Kelly Page 0,107
tell them as far as I’m concerned you’ve suffered from a conversion disorder all your life. It won’t affect our relationship at all.”
The aid worker delivered me personally to Cassowary. He brought me home and dumped me onto the living room floor like so much sand from an upturned shoe. For weeks after there was sand everywhere I looked and wherever I turned, and there were grains of sand in my eyes, in my hair, beneath my fingernails. There was sand in my food and in the sheets of my bed. I went to draw my bath and I turned on the tap and sand flowed like water from the faucet.
This wasn’t sand from Squibnocket Beach—this was drought.
Sometimes you don’t need to hear to know what’s being said.
“My best guess is post-traumatic stress,” the aid worker was saying to Ingrid. “I know a bit about what he’s going through. It’s rough. He deserves a lot of credit. You must be proud of him.”
“Yes, we are very proud of him,” Ingrid said. “Why, I couldn’t be more proud of Collie than if he—”
The Falcon, elusive main attraction, appeared without warning, slicing through the nebulae, stepping up and extending his hand in greeting. The aid worker’s face flushed in sporadic crimson patches, physiological acknowledgment of a certain nectarous kind of star power.
“Oh, hello . . . ,” he stammered, so nonplussed that he introduced himself as Peregrine Lowell.
“It’s all right,” the Falcon reassured him, smiling and gracious, visibly pleased at wielding such a disconcerting effect. “I know who I am. Most of the time, anyway . . . and yes, Brian, yes, Ingrid is quite right. Allow me to finish the thought—we couldn’t be more proud of Collie than if you told us he had drug-resistant gonorrhea.”
“I beg your pardon?” The aid worker was confused. “I’m sorry. I must be missing something. Presumably there are things about which I am unaware.” Resorting to tact, he continued:
“Collie has been through a terrible time. It’s perfectly natural to feel and react the way that he has. I don’t think he needs a psychiatrist. He needs some time and the love and support of his family.”
“And that’s what he shall have—in abundance.”
The Falcon was taking over.
“I appreciate your efforts and your input. You’ve provided marvelous assistance when your help was really needed. And I intend to take your recommendations under serious advisement. I’ll think things over, and I’ll make the best decision for Collie.”
“Well, I think that’s wonderful. I’m sure whatever decision you make will be the right one. Collie is very lucky to have such a devoted grandfather. . . .” Brian was nervously applying obsequies like a poultice.
The Falcon laughed as he ushered the aid worker out of the room. “Our dear Ingrid will see you out. Thanks so much for your expertise. We’ll be in touch. . . .”
“Presumptuous son of a bitch,” the Falcon said, watching as my escort disappeared into the hallway with Ingrid at his arm.
I got quite a jolt the first time I looked into a mirror. My skin was the color and texture of ancient newsprint. My eyes were dark and recessed. My hair was dull and wild, so indiscriminately chopped up and sun-bleached—short, long, dark, light, shaved in spots, plucked in others—I looked like a man with a thousand frantic haircuts.
I was always pacing, trying to walk it off, needed a cane to walk, would always need a cane to walk, according to doctors, couldn’t sit still, the pounding of mortars sneaking up behind me, I was scrambling in and out of devastated buildings, and jumping aside for careening pickup trucks.
My sleep disrupted daily by nightmares, I had picked up some nuisance virus of unknown origin—my guts, soggy and bitter, felt as if they were marinating in bleach.
My hearing came back, returning as mysteriously as it had disappeared. Deafness kind of agreed with me—I actually pretended deafness for a couple of weeks after my hearing was restored. I wasn’t trying to be a jerk—I just needed a little more time, needed to get stronger to face the barrage of words I knew was coming my way.
School was out of the question; the second semester was pretty much a write-off. Pop was bugging me to come home for a visit, so he could take care of me, he said. Finally I agreed. I always liked the Vineyard in winter. In the winter, the beach was deserted, made up of crystal and craters, remote as a moonscape.