When Rabbit Howls

by Truddi Chase

  “Her face changes, so does her voice, from one emotion to the other, as if she’s fifteen people all at once. Sometimes with all the ‘we, us, our, they,’ I couldn’t follow her. Was that student serious about multiple personality?”

  “I’m checking it out,” Stanley said.

  * * *

  Just about the time Stanley’s lunch with Albert broke up, his client exited a business meeting. She had no idea how she’d gotten through it, or this morning’s session, either. How could sessions and business hours pass so quickly and how could she come away with so little memory?

  The rain had washed the air clean. For a moment its freshness seemed to hang in her face like a balm. But as soon as she took a deep breath, wanting to enjoy it, something in her mind moved, almost as if her brain had given way. And then she saw it on the sidewalk, a clear puddle that reflected what she believed was her own face. Except that the features staring up at her appeared to have been preserved in a block of ice so that they were not three-, but rather one-dimensional. Only the eyes had depth—they were concave, nothing more than eye sockets, really, and a deep, burnt-sienna colour, as if rotted. Seeing the face did not scare her. What made her tremble and gag and run like the wind for her car, heedless of the blaring horns and screeching tires, was the beginning of a hideous memory.

  Stirred in this morning’s session by mentions of a well, and revived now, far back in her mind, by the one who had lived through the experience and “died” from it, the memory took shape. Just as quickly, it was whisked away.

  For you, there isn’t any more. The words were screamed aloud by the Troop member who seemed to run alongside the woman in her own mind; a Troop member not really alive, but only a long-dead vessel, hurling scars from behind her ice façade.

  TWELVE

  THE sun had come out. The memory of the face reflected in the rain puddle this morning had almost receded. The woman stopped with Page at a restaurant for dinner, where the odour of seafood and corn on the cob activated recall. [The woman and Stanley would discover that smells even at the most inopportune times had become a catalyst to recall.] The flicks began, fleeting shreds of memory, a thousand tiny knives of emotional pain. No flick was big enough to peer into and she was grateful but she could not order food. Her stomach had knotted. Page’s meal was served; she broke open fried shrimp to expose fat pink meat. The fragrance wafted into the woman’s brain. Flick.

  Across the table, Page went in and out of focus. Her almond-shaped blue eyes and strawberry-gold hair, her young giggle seemed unreal. The woman tried to steady herself and heard laughter, realising that she had to be making the sound. Page was laughing, too, nearing the tail end of a conversation.

  The woman could not connect to the childhood incidents Page sat there recalling—things that a mother should have remembered. Page kept talking and laughing. The woman could no longer hear even shreds of conversation. Instead, a bittersweet emotion rose up. Eight years ago when she’d left Norman and Page, running had occupied every waking moment. She’d been unable to bear the closeness of another human being. And now? Business appointments were kept short; she lived alone. It seemed to work. She visited her daughter and took her on outings like this one. Over a feeling of suffocation, she was unaware that invading Troop members who were bringing their emotions to her were so numerous and so in evidence that she was being crowded out. She continued to fight back, determined to inspect the fourteen-year-old sitting across the table, drinking Pepsi. The harder she looked at the young features so similar to her own, the less relationship Page had to her.

  Mother. What did the word mean?

  Someone within the Troop Formation screamed a thought. The battle for primary position raged. The emotions of the other Troop members took their signal straight from the Gatekeeper and the walls of the Tunnel rocked. Page’s face, flesh and blood, the image of it and all it should mean to a mother, penetrated.

  Why, the woman cried silently, urged to sadness by unseen minds inside her own, did I ever leave you?

  Pain came from a long way off; so did Norman’s angry and then defeated look. There was a wavery reflection from the black surface of the coffee in the woman’s cup. Rain puddles. This morning’s terror was back. The voices in her head started up, bringing panic and a sense of danger. Two faint glimmers of knowledge hovered out of reach. Curious at first and then only fractionally more interested than frightened, the woman grabbed for one of them: Page was not her child, Page belonged to someone else in the Troop Formation. She grabbed for the other thought: The memory being forced on her today, the strange face gazing up from the sidewalk, had nothing to do with puddles. It had to do with reflections. Puddles were somehow merely allusions, a device being used in an indirect manner, to prepare her for the eventual reality.

  The woman had just fitted together two parts of an enormous puzzle. But like all knowledge she’d gained in her lifetime, it would be fleeting, sporadic, and not truly hers. It came, like all else, from her others. The woman avoided glancing at her coffee cup for the remainder of the meal, avoided, too, the cutlery and crystal. The restaurant lights caused reflections in them—as in almost everything she would encounter for months to come. She sat there, believing that the power to deny what she’d just learned was hers. Stanley had said that she controlled whatever went on. She’d assumed that he meant subconsciously. Was that true? A small voice told her it wasn’t, that Stanley as well as she had a lot to learn—knowledge that wasn’t printed in any book, but which would be gained the hard way.

  The woman discovered a half hour later that she was home and the restaurant incident had blurred. No matter how short the stretches between each visit, Page always spotted something new. Usually it was new to the woman, too. This afternoon, while inspecting the white collage in the foyer as she always did, Page found the worm farm in the glass aquarium. The sight of it gave the woman a roaring headache, followed by a sense of annoyance, then fear.

  They watched a horror show on television with all the drapes drawn, so that eerie shadows flickered in the loft bedroom. Page dragged clothes out of the closet and paraded in them, in front of the mirror. The woman kept her eyes on the television screen, not seeing the movie and afraid to look at the dresses Page flung onto the bed. The colourful, bold fabrics and designs were unfamiliar.

  “Mommie, you can wear anything. I like this dress with the slit, but I hate those blouses with the bows. You know everything, what do I do for stretch marks?”

  Page, like most girls her age, dieted too much, and weight fluctuations caused stretch marks. The woman smiled, hearing from a distance, in a voice that sounded strangely familiar, an odd remedy for stretch marks and an exercise to keep them away “forever.” Page laughed but her elbow hit the mirror. It tilted at an angle and the light reflected . . . the woman screamed. The memory flung like snowflakes into the Tunnel left her with the impression of dampness, rough circular walls, and the sound of other screams. The moment lengthened.

  The Gatekeeper’s signal was heard. The Front Runner, the Outrider, and the Buffer moved as one. With quiet determination, they blocked the tiny glimmer of light that threatened to penetrate the walls of the Tunnel. And the Weaver wove in furious haste, as he had been weaving since the restaurant incident, closing strand by strand the gap through which the woman might have seen too many things.

  There was an objection. The Gatekeeper, satisfied that she was correct, always correct, precisely so, raised placid eyes to the Buffer, and the message was passed from one brain to the other: Don’t question me.

  The Gatekeeper went on with her work.

  Catherine, feeling the Gatekeeper’s mind probing for her own within the Troop Formation, answered. With veiled eyes and a wry smile, she shot forth in the loft bedroom, the shears in her hand. She considered nothing to be perfect in and of itself, without experimentation, change, alteration. Catherine had never loved anyone. She did, however, have a knack for listening, for digging i
nto people’s minds and laying out truths which they might not otherwise have discovered, or believed, about themselves. People either loved her because she showed an interest or hated her for suggesting they might be imperfect. She frightened some because under her hands they tended to look and feel great, and that attracted more attention, which some didn’t want and weren’t ready to handle.

  People believed that Catherine was: wonderful, irreverent, phony, sophisticated, creative, sporadically impossibly dense and incredibly brilliant, hysterically funny, boring, self-centered, and a truly giving person. What they didn’t realise was that while Catherine seldom failed to show up in most social gatherings, she never showed up alone and never stayed very long. She found it dull.

  Page sensed the change in body stance and facial features, the air of fun in the room that emanated from Catherine’s narrower eyes and broader, more relaxed mouth. She dumped the dresses on the bed and clung to Catherine’s hand.

  “Mommie, are you going to alter my states?”

  It had long been a joke between the two of them, and Page giggled as the shears moved across the red-gold hair. Being called “mommie” was no joke to Catherine. She hated it. Motherhood? Far above her, Black Katherine spit into the wind and cursed all mothers and the horses they rode in on. It was her favourite curse.

  The shears went click, click. Red-gold hair dropped onto the white carpet. Page squealed and swung her head. The angular cut showed off newly exposed cheekbones.

  “You’re beautiful,” Catherine said and took the small face between cool fingers.

  “You always tell me that. Am I, really?”

  “Truly,” said Catherine, bending to the pull of a mind far back in the darkest corner of the Tunnel. “For all time and beyond.” And her thin, cool fingers flew into the pots and powder dishes and whipped softly back and forth over Irish pink skin. They brushed mysterious shadows above the cornflower blue eyes and turned the brows into graceful, soaring feathers.

  “You’re beautiful, too, mommie. Do I take after you?”

  “Of course.” Catherine pretended she did not hear the “mommie” and spent the next half-hour instructing Page on table manners: “Never butter a whole slice of bread, only a bite at a time; place the knife ‘like so’ on the edge of the plate, no noise as you eat because it’s gross.” Catherine made it all a game, and Elvira supplied the teenage expressions, “gross, awesome, totally,” since Valley Girl was big at the moment.

  Page had school the following day and the woman had her usual Monday business appointments. Late that night, they packed Page’s things and carried the bags to the car. In the darkness and the silence surrounding the house, Page shivered. The woman loved the solitude here at the end of the dusty lane, and the absence of other house lights.

  There were things Page did not understand but which she accepted as “mother’s way.” Aside from the secluded house, one of them was Nails’ guarded habits. Nails always drove Page home.

  “Why are we on this road?” Page hung out of the car window with the radio on full blast and hoping for a 7-Eleven Slurpy. If they continued on this road, they would not pass 7-Eleven.

  “Never take the same route twice, Cupcake. That way, nobody can keep track of you.”

  “Like in a spy story, mommie?”

  “You got it, Cupcake.”

  “Mommie, why are you smoking that funny black thing?”

  Nails did not reply. They weren’t too far from their destination. She was already dousing the headlights and, to Page’s displeasure, turning off the radio. Moonlight tipped the trees with blue silver and gave Page’s face a mature look. The child was growing up, Nails thought. The car glided down the street with only the moonlight in front of it, a lonely courier carrying precious cargo. One block from Page and Norman’s house, Nails stopped the car. She made sure there were no vehicles on the street, no one she did not want to meet. Satisfied that all was safe, Nails continued on to the driveway, parking in deep shadow away from the street lights.

  The woman watched Page enter Norman’s front door, and she waited in the car until the lights went out. Who had washed Page’s hair and made her chocolate cake all these years?

  Not you, you unmothering bitch.

  The woman cringed as if the remark had been addressed to her. She was still unaware that before some Troop members evidenced fully to each other, they exchanged gossip, solace and warlike barbs, each one believing that all thoughts belonged to him- or herself. With Page safely back in her father’s domain, she drove home by the dark of the moon, knowing that she’d discovered an infinitesimal scrap of emotion all her very own. It was sadness. And someone laughed and said that was too bad.

  Because for you, there isn’t any more.

  Each time she heard it now, there was simply a flicker of pain and a tiny, quickly disappearing edge to the meaning that never lasted long enough to sink in. Or was she avoiding it? Stanley said she was avoiding many things. Stanley was a wise man for whom trust had begun to develop. She sensed truth behind the words “For you, there isn’t any more,” even if she could no longer pin down what she’d learned in the restaurant with Page. Because of that truth, she knew Stanley had missed or was avoiding something, too. Did her situation scare him as much as it did her? She didn’t know. But she stopped the car by the side of the road and laid her face on the cold steering wheel. Did she want a whole lifetime this way, frightened of herself and everyone else?

  If she told him he was mistaken about the fragmentation, he’d hate her. But something more was wrong here, dreadfully wrong. It wasn’t just fragmentation. Page’s hair ribbon lay forgotten on the front seat beside her, a length of silver in the moonlight. The woman’s face began to change and the one who held the excess of Troop emotions started to cry.

  * * *

  Stanley turned up the air conditioning in his town house and picked up the latest manuscript pages. He could not sleep; the energy after this morning’s session propelled him onward. The words of an old instructor came back to him: “Don’t push the river . . . the mind is a river with its own undertow and very deep currents. It’s nature’s miracle; a strong, protective, protected entity. Push it too far and too fast ahead of itself and you’re asking for trouble.”

  But he’d better find answers for the woman, soon, or her fears would topple her. Could those fears be lifted long enough to complete the repair job he’d begun as a therapist? Some of his colleagues to whom he’d recently mentioned this case expressed grave doubts that the woman could ever be fully mended. Certainly not, they said, enough to lead a “normal” life.

  Stanley wondered, each time anyone stressed “normal,” just what the word meant when applied to this client. Aside from a desire for less stress and fear, her mind (and theirs) would spit on the word “normal.” It was too narrow, too limiting an expression for the wants, needs, desires, and capabilities that surged forth in the sessions. His job would be pushing her not to strive for normalcy, but to dare to reach beyond it.

  * * *

  “What have you been up to?” Morgan’s voice was muffled against his shirt front as he fastened thin gold links into the cuffs.

  “We’ll tell you,” Catherine tied the belt to her green robe tighter around her waist.

  Downstairs, with two snifters of brandy on a tray in front of them, Catherine leaned back against the arm of the sofa. She let her mind stray over his impeccable tailoring, his masculine good looks, and his air of power unfettered by self-doubt or weakness of purpose.

  The woman didn’t know there was a war on: Catherine sat hoping Morgan wouldn’t muss her hair or smudge the expert makeup with one of his slow-moving and, to her, annoyingly damp kisses; Sixteen yearned to be touched, caressed, warm; Twelve perceived in him a father figure and wanted to listen as he talked and smoked, reminding her of the child’s father years ago. The woman stood outside it all, wishing the off-balance feeling would go away, and wondering
why there was a sudden compulsion to tell him all, and risk rejection.

  Because, the Outrider said, we expect rejection, we’ll work hard to get it, that’s the pattern. Morgan is too close these days, his eyes are warmer, his touch softer. That’s scary. Go ahead, tell him how broken and strange a force we are. Paint him a picture of what his life will be like if he gets any nearer. His business is bigger than Norman ever dreamed of for himself—Norman couldn’t take exposure, how can this man?

  Not just one thought thrashed in the woman’s mind, there were the thoughts of over twenty Troop members present just then. The thoughts came and they multiplied, because for each Troop member Morgan didn’t call up a few fears, he called up many. The woman looked back at the spinning fragments of her life. A future based on continued silence meant that nothing would change, she’d never be safe. The room didn’t seem to stand still and her head was crammed with voices and a roaring sound. Again she felt an awful determination to get Morgan away from her before he wanted something it was not possible to give.

  The words she heard herself saying weren’t clear, only the essence of them. She saw Morgan’s almost unwilling tenderness and then his controlled withdrawal. It wasn’t any different, actually, than when she’d tried to tell her classmate years ago.

  She handed him his coat because it was the thing to do. Good hostesses, Twelve whispered in her mind, did that when they sensed a guest was ready to leave.

  His leaving would be a final act; Catherine knew it and found it amusing. Catherine’s sense of humour put her above scenes. Morgan was a gentleman. At the door, he did not take her in his arms. He laid a tender kiss on the end of her nose. His eyes were warm as always, but conveyed little beyond finality. “Stay the way you are,” he said.

  The woman went back up the staircase to the loft, got into bed, and stuffed her head under the pillows. She should be feeling something. There was nothing except the ache in her ears and the faint sound of voices, unidentified by names. She listened.