We Are the Light(23)

Isaiah had a hard time meeting Eli’s eyes, but he eventually did, which was when the boy said, “Mr. Goodgame and I have a lot of prep work to do, so you won’t mind if I steal him away, will you?”

Eli caught my eye and then nodded his head in the direction of the back door. It took me a second, but then I caught his drift and followed him out to the tent, where we hid—listening to “chill-out” music on Eli’s phone—until it was time for the meeting.

It’s funny, I didn’t ask him directly whether he had heard the screaming I was doing or if he knew what prompted my freak-out, but I could tell he had heard and he definitely one hundred percent knew. And lying there in the tent, Eli didn’t tell me that my yelling at Isaiah and Jill was okay and that he had my back and we were in this together, but I also absolutely knew that one hundred percent too.

“Mom once held Jacob’s head underwater in the bathtub for a long time because he had quote gotten too dirty unquote while we were playing outside,” Eli said in a way that let me know his mother had, of course, done something similar to him, and probably worse. I tried to think of a comforting response, but ended up staying silent, which I think Eli appreciated.

Maybe an hour or so into our tent chill-out session—still lying with my hands clasped behind my head, just looking at the afternoon sun trapped in the orange fabric above—I said, “We’re going to make a monster movie to end all monster movies,” mostly because that was what Eli wanted to accomplish.

“Don’t forget about healing people too,” Eli said, because that was what I had been emphasizing for the past few weeks, trying to elevate the boy’s ambitions while modeling healthy masculinity.

When he held his fist up in the air, I pounded it, and the success of our project felt absolutely inevitable there in the suburban quiet of an average June afternoon in Majestic, PA.

Your most loyal analysand,

Lucas





8.


Dear Karl,

Before I tell you about the pitch meeting at the Majestic Public Library, I want to let you know that I have been keeping my mother at bay—religiously sticking to the rules you set up for me—refusing to allow Mom’s parasitic thoughts to enter through my ears and infect my “personal life software.” And I do believe that this has been beneficial not only for me but for everyone else in my life too, especially Eli and Jill.

I’ve even recently reread the Grimm fairy tale “Iron John” in an effort to remember all that we discussed when I first started my analysis with you. Stealing the key from under Mother’s pillow and then running away with the hairy rusty-skinned man into the woods. The hero disobeying and having his finger and long hair turned to gold as an unable-to-be-hidden consequence. And then being sent away to experience poverty and struggle, but with the promise that Iron John would come to help if the hero says the strange god-monster man’s name three times.

Karl, Karl, Karl.

Six times a day, I say your name thrice, and yet you never arrive to gift me a horse and armor and warrior brothers.

But then again, I have been thinking a lot about how Eli just sort of appeared and I wonder if you had anything to do with that.

Is the boy the metaphorical equivalent of a horse and armor?

And are the other Majestic Theater Survivors my sibling warriors?

Don’t worry.

I haven’t gone completely insane.

I realize that you didn’t literally make all that has happened happen, but I am starting to see that maybe you prepared me for everything that is currently transpiring, giving me a lens to see and a cipher to translate the chaos into meaning and maybe even purpose.

My mother has been calling my cell phone obsessively, leaving voice messages that are demanding and anxiety-provoking and crazy-making. She routinely fills my in-box so that it is impossible for Isaiah or Jill to record words—and so my friends are constantly reminding me to delete Mother’s long rambles.

It certainly helps that she’s far away in Florida. And I have paid attention to her phrasing, just like you taught me to do, noting whenever she says things like, “I’m your mother so I have a right to know what’s going on,” and “Your refusal to speak with me is ruining my retirement,” and “I’m losing sleep because you won’t call me back,” which isn’t true, because I call her back every Sunday at seven p.m. and give her thirty minutes, which she mostly uses to download all of her anxiety into me, speaking a million words a minute in a desperate effort to get it all out. She doesn’t ever ask me questions about how I feel, which is strange because in all of her voicemails, she claims that she desperately wants to know “what’s going on in her son’s brain.”

“Is Jill living with you now? Has she moved in?” Mom will ask instead, and—before I can get a word out in response—then add, “You have to be careful with beautiful women, Lucas. I’d never trust anyone who moved in so quickly—literally just hours after Darcy was killed. The sheets of your bed hadn’t even cooled!”

I try to tell Mom that Jill stays in the guest room and that we are not romantically involved, but the words get stuck in my throat on account of what happened in the Maryland hotel by the lighthouse, and a deep sense of shame washes over me. It feels like I’m being slowly dipped in a vat of boiling water.

When Mom starts telling me the many things her current boyfriend, Harvey, is doing wrong regarding their relationship, suddenly I’m a little boy again and I’m in bed with Mother and she’s telling me about her work problems or how my dad is an inferior man or how her own father—my Pop Pop—never loved her as much as he loved my since-deceased aunt Regina. I know that Mom wants something very specific from me, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t figure out what that is. And a pressure begins to build in what you call the root chakra—at the base of my spine—until a tingling explodes and makes my skin buzz in a way that feels like ten million insects are crawling all over me. This only intensifies whenever I think back to my childhood. Back then Mother was always asking me to lay my little head on her chest. She would stroke my hair as she sang Joni Mitchell’s “River,” even though it was hardly ever Christmas season when she sang that song, because—back when I was a boy—she sang it almost every night year-round. And maybe that’s why—to this day—I don’t let anyone touch my hair, not even Darcy. And hearing Joni Mitchell songs gives me anxiety attacks.