set. All real, but all make-believe.
Of course, I was only eleven months old when the police discovered Harry’s homicidal hobby and rushed our house. Harry was found dead in the bathtub, wrists slit, while my mother was taken away to a mental hospital. She died, alone and still restrained for her own safety, while my sister and I became official wards of the state.
Some days, when not staring at Harry’s grinning face, I would study my mother instead. Not many photos of her existed. High school dropout, I learned. Ran away from her own family, who lived somewhere in the Midwest. She made her way to Boston, where she worked as a waitress in a diner. Then she hooked up with Harry, and her fate was sealed.
The only pictures I could find were police photos of her standing in the background while detectives ripped up the floorboards of her home. A gaunt-looking woman with washed-out features, unkempt long brown hair and an already broken posture.
I didn’t see my eyes or my sister’s nose when I looked at her, either. I saw merely a ghost, a woman who was lost way before outside help arrived.
Eventually, my nightmares faded. I worried less about the family that had gifted me with faulty DNA and worked harder to gain my adoptive father’s praise. And in turn, my father began excusing the weekend staff, helping me himself with school projects and, in time, even sitting up with me the nights I couldn’t sleep, offering the quiet reassurance of his solid, contemplative company.
He loved me. Despite his academic’s heart, despite my flawed wiring, we became a family.
Then he died, and my nightmares returned with a vengeance.
First night, all alone after my father’s funeral. Having consumed too much port. Finally closing my eyes . . .
And seeing the closet door suddenly swing open. Recalling the thin glow cast by a bare bulb across the tiny, cluttered bedroom. Seeing my toddler sister in the center of the room, clutching a threadbare brown teddy, as my father’s gaze cast from her to me to her.
Hearing my mother say, “Please, Harry, not the baby,” before I was plunged once more into the gloom.
Pain is not what you see and not what you feel. Pain is what you can only hear, alone in the dark.
• • •
I WOKE FOR THE FIRST TIME shortly after eleven. I’d been asleep for approximately ten minutes, and yet my heart was pounding uncontrollably, my face covered in sweat. I stared at the tray ceiling of my bedroom. Practiced the deep-breathing exercises I’d been taught so many years ago.
The noise machine in the corner of my bedroom. I’d forgotten to turn it on. Of course.
I got out of bed, hit the large button of the Brookstone unit and was rewarded with the soothing sound of crashing ocean waves and crying seagulls. Back to bed. I assumed the position, on my back, lying coffin straight, arms by my sides. I closed my eyes, focused on the sound of some exotic, salty shore.
Eight minutes, to judge by the glowing red numbers of my bedside clock. Then I bolted upright, fisting the sheets while swallowing the scream and staring intently into the shadows of my expansive bedroom. Three night-lights. Oval LED plug-ins that offered pools of soft, green glow. I counted the lights five times, waiting for my heart to decelerate, my breathing to slow. Then I gave up and snapped on my bedside light.
I have a beautiful master bedroom. Expensive. Carpeted in the softest wool. Designed using only the richest silks, including custom bedding and hand-stitched window dressings, all fashioned in shades of soft blue, rich cream and sage green.
A soothing oasis of look and feel. A reminder of my adoptive father’s generosity and my own continued success.
But tonight, it wouldn’t work for me. And I knew by eleven thirty what I would do next.
Because even though I was the product of some of the finest intellectual upbringing, both a person and a case study, a doctor and a patient, I was still a member of the human
Of course, I was only eleven months old when the police discovered Harry’s homicidal hobby and rushed our house. Harry was found dead in the bathtub, wrists slit, while my mother was taken away to a mental hospital. She died, alone and still restrained for her own safety, while my sister and I became official wards of the state.
Some days, when not staring at Harry’s grinning face, I would study my mother instead. Not many photos of her existed. High school dropout, I learned. Ran away from her own family, who lived somewhere in the Midwest. She made her way to Boston, where she worked as a waitress in a diner. Then she hooked up with Harry, and her fate was sealed.
The only pictures I could find were police photos of her standing in the background while detectives ripped up the floorboards of her home. A gaunt-looking woman with washed-out features, unkempt long brown hair and an already broken posture.
I didn’t see my eyes or my sister’s nose when I looked at her, either. I saw merely a ghost, a woman who was lost way before outside help arrived.
Eventually, my nightmares faded. I worried less about the family that had gifted me with faulty DNA and worked harder to gain my adoptive father’s praise. And in turn, my father began excusing the weekend staff, helping me himself with school projects and, in time, even sitting up with me the nights I couldn’t sleep, offering the quiet reassurance of his solid, contemplative company.
He loved me. Despite his academic’s heart, despite my flawed wiring, we became a family.
Then he died, and my nightmares returned with a vengeance.
First night, all alone after my father’s funeral. Having consumed too much port. Finally closing my eyes . . .
And seeing the closet door suddenly swing open. Recalling the thin glow cast by a bare bulb across the tiny, cluttered bedroom. Seeing my toddler sister in the center of the room, clutching a threadbare brown teddy, as my father’s gaze cast from her to me to her.
Hearing my mother say, “Please, Harry, not the baby,” before I was plunged once more into the gloom.
Pain is not what you see and not what you feel. Pain is what you can only hear, alone in the dark.
• • •
I WOKE FOR THE FIRST TIME shortly after eleven. I’d been asleep for approximately ten minutes, and yet my heart was pounding uncontrollably, my face covered in sweat. I stared at the tray ceiling of my bedroom. Practiced the deep-breathing exercises I’d been taught so many years ago.
The noise machine in the corner of my bedroom. I’d forgotten to turn it on. Of course.
I got out of bed, hit the large button of the Brookstone unit and was rewarded with the soothing sound of crashing ocean waves and crying seagulls. Back to bed. I assumed the position, on my back, lying coffin straight, arms by my sides. I closed my eyes, focused on the sound of some exotic, salty shore.
Eight minutes, to judge by the glowing red numbers of my bedside clock. Then I bolted upright, fisting the sheets while swallowing the scream and staring intently into the shadows of my expansive bedroom. Three night-lights. Oval LED plug-ins that offered pools of soft, green glow. I counted the lights five times, waiting for my heart to decelerate, my breathing to slow. Then I gave up and snapped on my bedside light.
I have a beautiful master bedroom. Expensive. Carpeted in the softest wool. Designed using only the richest silks, including custom bedding and hand-stitched window dressings, all fashioned in shades of soft blue, rich cream and sage green.
A soothing oasis of look and feel. A reminder of my adoptive father’s generosity and my own continued success.
But tonight, it wouldn’t work for me. And I knew by eleven thirty what I would do next.
Because even though I was the product of some of the finest intellectual upbringing, both a person and a case study, a doctor and a patient, I was still a member of the human
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