Time's Hostage: The dangers of love, loss, and lus (Time Series Book 1)

by Brenda Kuchinsky

  Sophia descended into her office located on the side of the house. Having a home office was not a good idea for a psychologist, but Sophia had compromised in order to accommodate her epilepsy.

  She had taken every precaution to separate it as much as possible from the living quarters. The side entrance was private, and the garden was fenced off with a locked door. Of course, all her patients knew her address, and if someone wanted to get crazy, they could.

  At her desk, Sophia flipped her calendar open to review the names of the people coming to her today. She then checked her phone for messages. There were several. There was often the dance of cancellation and rescheduling. Her last three people had cancelled. Unusual to have that many in one day and to have them be the last three.

  Once calls had been made, excuses given, and appointments rescheduled, Sophia prepared for her first patient. She used her prodigious memory to return to the last session. She did not take notes after the first session, the intake, when she diagnosed after taking a history.

  Clarence, prompt as usual, stood hunched in the doorway, looking like he carried the weight of the world on his frail nineteen-year-old shoulders. Scuffed desert boots, frayed sleeves, and long tousled auburn locks added to his forlorn image. He lumbered into the room like a much heavier man despite his gaunt six-foot frame.

  “So glad to see you, Dr. W.,” he said in an incongruously deep, booming voice also reminiscent of a much larger man. He settled himself on the couch. “I’m having a hard time with my bisexuality. I finally told Terence that I’m bisexual, not gay, and he did not take it well.” Clarence fixed her with his intense ice-blue eyes. “He was shocked and pissed off. He said it was just an excuse, and that I was probably straight and just fooling around with guys. He said he couldn’t trust me, and he needed to take some time to think about us. It reminded me of my mother. When I finally told her, she said, ‘If you can choose, why can’t you just be straight? Gay is one thing because they say it’s not a choice. But now you’re wishy-washy, as usual.’”

  “She used it to push through her usual agenda. She had more ammunition to prove that I’m a spineless creature like an amoeba, a lower life-form. She just added it to her laundry list of my shortcomings. I can’t decide on a major, I can’t decide what I want to be, I can’t decide where I want to be, and now I can’t even decide what my sexual orientation is.

  “Her smothering me and always breathing down my neck does not help either,” he continued, combing his thin fingers through his hair. “Smothering, not mothering.”

  “Of course my dad, Mr. Absent, had his negative take on me. He said I was just trying to get attention and why didn’t I just date girls. He said bisexual was just a word for confusion and even though he did not believe I was bisexual, whatever that was, he believed I was confused. Then he left for a two-week business trip.”

  “Boy, senior year in high school was hell. Coming out to my parents was a mistake I still regret. I wonder what it would have been like if I had kept my mouth shut. Whenever I do get decisive, I live to regret it.”

  Sophia was listening intently. Clarence was in therapy with her long enough to know to draw on patterns from his past in relating to his present. However, he had not developed an “observing ego” yet. Once he could distance himself from himself, he will have begun to incorporate the observing therapist into himself and be able to lay the foundation for doing his own work. Some people were better at this than others. Clarence was still mired in self-pity and feelings of helplessness. This narcissistic blow from his boyfriend would only intensify his feelings of abandonment and worthlessness.

  “Maybe a little space from Terence would help. After all, you did surprise him. You’re feeling rejected and unworthy, and your parents’ attitudes are intensifying it,” she suggested. “Remember, when the feelings are so intense, it’s not just the present problem bringing you down. It’s the extra load, the problems of the past that are weighing you down,” she continued.

  “You’re right. I’m letting all the negative feelings crash down on me like an avalanche. I’m not thinking of Terence’s side. I’m using it to add to the burden of being bisexual, which it is, but I have to deal with it. If I’m going to tell people something difficult and unusual about myself, I can’t cringe and whimper if they don’t accept me with open arms. It’s natural to be confused,” Clarence concluded as he straightened up, looking less burdened and having lost that cold self-loathing that had been reflected in the ice blue of his eyes.

  The session continued with Clarence doing a lot of the work while Sophia helped him along the path he had chosen to follow. She ended the session by summarizing and suggesting future exploration of both his mom’s and dad’s attitudes toward him and how they continued to affect him.

  Sophia worked through the next two sessions, an older anxious woman married to her anxiety and a high-school girl who had come out as a lesbian with no parental drama but was now wondering if she were transgender and should start dressing as a boy and give herself a boy’s name.

  These younger people were much more fluid when it came to gender identity, Sophia thought. Gay and lesbian people won’t cause an eyebrow to lift soon. It’s straightforward in comparison.

  The whole day stretched before her. She would grab some lunch and her book and head out to the gazebo to while away the hours. She was reading yet another Holocaust novel. She used to ignore the Holocaust as much as possible, taking the lead from her parents. “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.”

  Over the last few years, she had gone the other way. She was catching up on movies like Schindler’s List and Shoah and countless other more obscure films on the Holocaust. She was also reading about it—fact and fiction.

  She was reading a novel about a surviving Polish grandma who suddenly spills all to her granddaughter about her suffering and losses, culminating in internment in Auschwitz. After a lifetime of silence, she tells all. Sophia found herself resenting this and envying the granddaughter in the novel who was hearing these unspeakable truths. This had never happened with her parents, and maybe she was hungering for the truth. She would never get their stories, no matter how much she viewed and read. Their silence was sealed. It had gone with them to their graves.

  Her father, his hazel eyes darkened and deadened with despair, unreceptive to the present world, looking inward as if the horrors were imprinted on his irises to be replayed in an endless loop, often said, “I haven’t been able to sleep since 1939.”

  Her mother, in a permanent state of near hysteria, always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the trauma to come to life, lived in a state of fear. It had been imprinted on her brain as the permanent state of affairs.

  Once, they were visiting a friend, who had trouble lighting a fire in the fireplace but instead produced a fair amount of smoke, and her mother became hysterical. “Put it out, put it out,” she moaned. At the time, Sophia was annoyed at her mother’s uncontrollable overreaction. It wasn’t until weeks later that it dawned on her that her mother was having a flashback and reliving the smoking crematoria belching out endless insubstantial, foul smoke, the airy cinder remains of countless Jews. But not a word. Hush!

  Enough morbid reminiscences, Sophia thought, locking up her office after checking for messages. She headed into the house to get lunch. The gazebo beckoned.

  I’m just going to enjoy myself and take advantage of this time off. She smiled to herself. Who am I kidding? I’m going to be reading The Storyteller and be deep into the grandmother’s recollections of humiliation and degradation in Auschwitz. And I’m going to be green with envy because my parents didn’t tell me their war stories! Is this my idea of a good time? she asked herself, heading for the kitchen.

  CHAPTER 9

  Sophia trudged through the tropical garden with its red, fuchsia, and salmon bougainvillea, a torrent of color spilling down the white wooden fence that separated the garden from the adjoining property. The birdfeeders and birdbath attrac
ted cardinals, elusive flaming red daubs of color flitting through the air, which was redolent with the scents of jasmine and gardenia.

  As she approached the gazebo, she began to feel uneasy. With her heart racing and feet tingling, Sophia hesitated, thinking of turning back. But that was silly. What was there to be afraid of? She was drawn to the gazebo as if an invisible hand were pushing her forward into the abyss.

  Sophia sniffed the air. It smelled odd—milky and acrid. She heard strange sounds—gurgles, yelps, and moans—coming from the gazebo. Was someone being hurt? Was an animal being abused? She licked her lips and tasted metal.

  Fear stalked her, but curiosity impelled her forward. She could not turn away. She began to pick up speed, and then betrayal, like a panicky horse rearing up and lashing out with his two front legs, smacked her square in the chest, knocking her breath away.

  Barth, his head flung back in the throes of ecstasy, was digging both hands into Keith’s mop of golden curls, ensuring that the boy would keep working his magic on his penis. Keith, pausing from expertly working his way up and down Barth’s shaft, raised his head, beseeching Barth to give him his honey. “Shoot it into my mouth. I want to drink every drop,” he panted.

  And then he stopped. While begging for Barth’s love juice, he had finally noticed that they were not alone in the gazebo. He blinked at Sophia. Luckily, no milky-white substance was besmirching his rosebud lips, Sophia thought. She would have fainted if she saw that. She was hypnotized into paralysis.

  Barth, realizing Keith was no longer massaging his cock with his ruby lips and deft tongue, opened his eyes. He focused, refocused, and stared at Sophia dumbfounded, his mouth open.

  A heavy silence weighed down on them. In slow motion, Sophia dropped her food, drink, and book. Awaking from her trance, she took off as best she could, running through the grass, flinging “You never moan like that when I suck you off” over her shoulder as she picked up speed.

  Sophia found herself in her bed with the covers up to her chin. She did not recollect how she had gotten there. She must have unlocked the door, climbed the stairs to the bedroom, undressed, and changed into her nightgown, but she did not remember any of it.

  She felt empty and unloved. Barth, whom she had never doubted, and Keith! She couldn’t wait to tell Amanda perfect little Keith was a cocksucker. Wait. Would she tell her? She wanted someone else to be hurting, but maybe not. She didn’t want her to know whose cock her son was sucking.

  Did she want a divorce? Was Barth gay? Bisexual? How often had he cheated on her? With men? With women? With both?

  The silence was killing her, causing the troublesome thoughts to crowd in on her. She climbed out of bed and put on some Ravi Shankar tabla and sitar music. There. She couldn’t stand listening to Western lyrics that would make her broken heart bleed, but abstract Indian instrumentals might soothe her. She would just listen to Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan and never get out of bed.

  She was too anesthetized from the shock to cry. Just this morning, they were cooing over each other, and later in the day he was getting an expert blow job from Amanda’s son.

  She didn’t think she wanted to lose Barth, but did she know Barth at all? He never told her about his sexuality. And cheating was off limits—homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual. The whole Morton marriage reared its ugly head. She had stuck that out like an idiot. Till death do us part. Till murder do us part. She should have murdered Morton. Instead, she helped solve that bizaare case. She shuddered at the thought of the murderer’s identity and motive. She tried to block it all out and usually succeeded.

  This blow was bringing her back to the Morton era. Finally, the tears started streaming as Sophia indulged in an orgy of self-pity. How could Barth betray her like this? She felt hopeless. Helpless. She had fallen into a black hole. She needed some wine to go with that Indian music. She needed something. She had to work tomorrow, but now she needed escape. Her world was crashing in on her. She was standing in a crumbling, decrepit abandoned house, and it was a toss-up between the walls tumbling down or the floor giving way.

  Just as she closed the door and jumped back into bed with the remains of a bottle of red and a glass she had fetched from the kitchen, Barth entered the room with a hangdog expression on his face.

  “Well, at least you managed to zip up your fly,” Sophia spat out, pouring herself a generous glass of wine. “What is going on? Are you gay or bi? Do you make it a habit of cheating with young men?” Her voice was steadily rising despite the fact that she had promised herself she would not become hysterical.

  Her father’s favorite admonishment, covering all emotionally charged situations from minor catastrophes to death of a loved one, was simple: “Just don’t get hysterical.” As if on cue, Sophia’s mother would promptly get hysterical. It was his mantra. And it had been effectual with Sophia, if not with her mother. But not now.

  She was screaming at him. Full volume. And she hadn’t even been drinking.

  “I’m not gay or bi. I don’t cheat. He was just so seductive and convincing. A moment of misplaced passion. An overindulgence. Call it what you will. It was a freakish incident,” Barth was pleading.

  “You’re not gay. You don’t cheat. But I just witnessed gay cheating,” she lashed out as she gulped down a big slug of wine. This wine is way too good for this abuse, she thought. “Unless it was a hallucination. Tell me I imagined the whole thing. But I couldn’t have imagined this because this, whatever this was, never crossed my mind. Not in the darkest recesses. And not with a boy. I trusted you,” she ended lamely, tears escalating her into her father’s worst nightmare, the dreaded hysterical woman.

  “First of all, Keith is not a boy. He is twenty-five years old. A little immature, stunted, maybe. A mama’s boy but not a boy. He is a man,” Barth said, looking askance at the sobbing Sophia.

  “My point exactly,” she said blowing her nose. “He’s a man, and I witnessed the two of you having sex.”

  “Oral sex,” Barth corrected. “I told you that my first marriage was an abysmal failure, and after a while, I looked elsewhere for sex. I had one other experience with a man. It was a one-time thing and a similar situation. The guy was always after me, and I finally gave in. Similar scenario. Except no one saw us. Did I enjoy it? Yes. Does it make me gay? No. Did I ever expect it to happen again? No.” Barth ran out of things to say. He stood near the bed, afraid to approach Sophia.

  “Don’t come any closer. I couldn’t bear it if you touched me now. I’m pretty much repulsed. Don’t think of sleeping in here tonight. I need to think, but first I need to drink this wine and listen to Ravi and wallow. That’s right. I admit it. I need to wallow in self-pity. I’m not ashamed to say it.”

  Barth slunk out of the room looking every bit like the proverbial dog with his tail between his legs.

  Once Barth was out of sight, Sophia calmed down. She had no one to shout at. The wine and music had helped. Sophia lay back on the piled-up pillows, spent, sighing deeply as she closed her eyes. She opened her eyes just as quickly as she had closed them because the scene between Barth and Keith had come back to her. She relived every detail. She needed another drink and poured more wine, emptying the bottle. As she sipped slowly now, she kept her eyes wide open, attempting to erase what she had seen or at least bury it.

  And now she realized she was smelling the haunting aroma of garlicky charred toast, and the atmosphere thickened, becoming gray. Dust motes danced in a band of sunlight. She fell away into another time and space.

  Sophia was seeing the Hanslbauer Hotel at Bad Wiesee on the shores of the Tegernsee. She was across the lake, viewing the pretty rustic four-story hotel encircled by firs in its idyllic setting, several pairs of graceful swans gliding by on the calm surface of the lake in the predawn hours. Surrounded by the Bavarian Alps, the resort offered breathtaking mountain views. Certain birds were beginning to rustle, chirping here and there, preparing for their predawn chorus.

  The serenity was short live
d. It was June 30, 1934, and all hell was about to break loose, supervised by Hitler in the flesh. He entered a room where Ernst Röhm, his erstwhile pal, was being treated like the enemy. Real or imagined enemy, it was impossible to say.

  Sophia saw Adolf’s distinctive toothbrush mustache. Some Germans called it a rotzbremse, a snot brake, or a Chaplinbart.

  She saw him in Röhm’s room, saw Adolf approach him, sneering, snarling, spittle escaping his lips. He gave orders to take Röhm to Stadelheim Prison in Munich—a radical departure from their early days of camaraderie. There were even rumors that Adolf and Ernst had been lovers.

  Rohm, pink facial scars shiny with sweat and Hitler’s spit, shirtless, belly protruding, stood firm and defiant, contempt in his eyes.

  She heard the Bavarian peace shattered by continual gunshots. Eight men shot through the heart every twenty minutes. The air filled with the acrid pungent stink of gunfire. The sounds became unbearable in their endless persistence. A death machine.

  Sophia saw men, young men, very young men, all in various states of disarray, being dragged out to be summarily shot. Some were dressed in flimsy negligees, or women’s underwear, lilac, red, black, or white. It was a bloodbath.

  Sophia was witnessing the Night of the Long Knives, an excuse to massacre the enemy. The Brownshirts needed to be broken. Being gay was a convenient crime.

  The scene changed to Stadelheim Prison. Sophia saw Röhm with his shirt off, ready to die, defiant to the end. She heard him tell the two SS officers that if he had to die, Adolf himself should do the job. And then she watched them both, eyes dead, expressions blank, impeccable in black uniforms with swastika armbands precisely in place, without replying or saying a word, shoot him point-blank at close range in Room 70 of Stadelheim prison and, unperturbed, walk out.

  Now the words “Reich Central Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortion” flashed before her eyes.