AllFreeNovel
Share Us
5
Setting Sail
.
What was most remarkable to me after
Alberta's death was how little our lives changed. If anything, the Doctor became even more involved in his clinic and with his patients. I was his little: amateur psychiatrist by now, and my analysis told me that, despite what he might say to others and how he might seem to be, he was suffering some Guilt,
How Alberta's death could have been caused in even the slightest way by him was a mystery that would take some time to unravel. I saw it in the darkness in his eyes whenever he was home, in the hours and hours he spent alone in his office gazing out the window, in the longer walks he took by himself on our grounds, and in the exhaustion he showed in his face whenever he returned from the clinic.
I wrote to Amou about him and spoke to her on the phone from time to time. All she would say was "take care of him." which was of course what she had told me in the airport the day she had left. I knew in my heart that she held some trust with him, that there were still secrets to unfold and surprises awaiting me in the days and years to come.
About three months after my AM's accident and death. Aunt Agnes's husband Uncle Darwood died. I didn't know him very well. They had visited us so rarely and we never visited them.
The Doctor and I went to the funeral. Afterward, he revealed that Uncle Darwood had been a bad closet alcoholic. He let slip that he thought Aunt Agnes was the reason, and then we talked about her and him for a while. It was a warm and interesting conversation for me because he did not often talk about his youth and his awn parents. He revealed that my AM thought his family was snobby because she came from an old Southern family that had lost most of its wealth. She always accused Aunt Agnes of speaking down to her.
The intensity of the undercurrent of tension and friction that ran under the foundation of our home and family always surprised me. Everyone believed I came from the most stable family possible because my father was a world-renowned psychiatrist who could cure psychological and emotional problems. Some of those problems were so deeply embedded in the roots of our world, however, it was naive to think anyone, even the Doctor, could stop the erosion of happiness and contentment. It was a lesson I was never to forget.
It seemed that there was so little lately to bring any pleasure and satisfaction into our house, but the Doctor was happy that I had been accepted to the University of North Carolina, I had already decided that I wanted to fallow in his footsteps to some extent and major in psychology, and he was not only familiar with their programs, but knew some of the teachers I would have.
One of the few prolonged periods of time that he and I were together was when he accompanied me to college. All during the trip he talked about how someone should work at orienting himself or herself to a new environment. His favorite expression was always "Focus. focus."
I thought he was the one doing most of the focusing on that trip. and I was quite pleasantly surprised at how much emotion he finally showed when we parted and he was leaving me at college. He saw me unpack some of my things and noted that I had brought my doll along, the doll he had given me a long time ago, the one a patient had made in his clinic.
"You brought this." he said, holding it and turning it in his hands as if he wanted to inspect every single stitch.
"Yes."
He smiled at it.
"Whatever happened to the patient who made
that?" I asked. He looked up quickly. "Oh, she improved enough to go home eventually. She's never had to come back," he added.
"Maybe I should send that to her," I suggested. "Oh, no, no." he said. She wanted you to have it very much. She made it from a picture of you I had sent her after she left the clinic, actually."
"Yes." I said. nodding. "Besides, she probably doesn't want to be reminded she had to be in a clinic once."
"No," he said. "I don't imagine she does."
He put the doll down gently and then turned to me. "I guess it's time to go." he said.
"Okay," I said. I hugged him.
His eyes welled up with tears and all he could say was "Well, well, well,"
I kissed him and held tightly to him and assured him I would be fine.
"Of course you will." he said.
When he left. I watched him go off in a taxicab to the airport. I stood there for a moment, wondering why it was that we had lived in a house where emotions had to be kept under tight reins. What was it he feared so? I couldn't imagine the Doctor afraid of anything that much. I wondered to myself if I wasn't going into psychology hoping that I would learn enough to finally understand him.
And then I thought. perhaps I want to go into psychology not so much to learn about him as to learn about myself. So often and in so many ways, Alberta had drummed into my head that I showed signs of inheriting madness. It got so I questioned every action I took, every decision I made, every thought I had. Was it abnormal? Was it the symptom of something developing? Was my childhood pretending really just that-- pretending-- or was it the first sin of schizophrenia? And those fears I had, seeing something ominous in the shapes of shadows, in the silhouette of a tree at night, outlined against the inky sky, was all that the beginning of serious paranoia?
/> Were the voices I heard the voices everyone heard? Were my periods of depression and sadness unusual? What really awaited me as I turned the corner and entered adulthood: a life of fulfillment, marriage, a career. motherhood. or the dark corridors of rooms in my father's clinic?
I never told my father, but deep inside. I believed that if I could see the symptoms before anyone else. I could cure them, or maybe hide them well enough to keep even someone like him from blowing. Looking at my doll now, turning it in my hands as my father had done. I felt like a criminal who had gone into forensic science just so she could cover up any clues she might leave behind. Was the likeness to me just a wonderful accident of fate. or did this doll with its dark eyes, its patchwork of a dress speak to my own patchwork of emotions and my awn dark fears?
