Blackberry Winter

by Maryanne Fischler

  “I don’t know,”

  “Was it cold, like it was in the snowstorm when you hit the tree?”

  “Honestly, I don’t remember.”

  “What makes you think that it had something to do with your accident?”

  “When I wake up, I always have this feeling of being trapped, of having something important to do and not being able to get out and do it.”

  Paul looked thoughtful. “I doubt if there’s anything to worry about, but if you’d like, I could recommend several good doctors that might be able to help you. I know it must be a drag to have your sleep disturbed all the time.” He then added with a grin, “I personally am a firm believer in the benefits of psychiatry.”

  She held up her hands in a “stop” motion. “Present company excepted, I am not so sure I think much of it. I don’t think I’d be comfortable talking to a stranger about the upholstery in my brain. It really isn’t that big a deal. I’m sure it will pass.”

  The next day, Brian stopped by Paul’s office in the late afternoon to return some books he had borrowed. He wanted to get Paul’s opinion on the subject of Emily’s dreams.

  “I was kind of hoping you might be able to help her sort all that out and see what’s troubling her,” he said.

  Paul shook his head. “It is a definite mistake to take on one of your friends as a patient. That is not only strictly against the rules, it’s also counterproductive. If part of what’s going on in her mind is related to you, do you think she’d tell me? Would you want her to tell me? Would you be comfortable knowing that she had told me and that I couldn’t tell you what she said? I don’t have much doubt that Emily would benefit from talking to someone, and not just about bad dreams either, but she’s not going to do it if you push her. She’s got to decide for herself that she needs to talk to someone about things. The pain of an unhappy childhood doesn’t just evaporate, it’s got to go somewhere. Maybe for Emily, it’s coming out in her sleep. Maybe not. But the decision to do something about it has to be hers. Otherwise, she’s still powerless, still just doing what the people she loves expect of her.”

  “Do you think that whatever is troubling her does have something to do with me?”

  “I honestly couldn’t tell you. I hope she does something about it. If she doesn’t want to talk to a therapist, there are lots of support groups for adult children of dysfunctional families. There are some good books written for lay people on the subject that might help her too. I’ve considered suggesting these things to her, but I tread very softly where she’s concerned. I think she might interpret any such suggestions from me as an insinuation that I think she’s lacking in some way.”

  There was something in Paul’s voice, a warmth, a fervor, that prompted Brian to look at him carefully. “You’re fond of her, aren’t you?” he asked with a smile.

  “Yes, I am. I like her wit, I appreciate her intellect, I respect her for trying to change her life in a positive way. She’s a very compelling person. Of course, you don’t need me to tell you any of this. I am fond of her, and I think you two make a great pair. So don’t screw it up.” This last was said with a smile, but his tone turned serious again, “Do what you’ve been doing. Listen to her, support her, and be encouraging in her growth. Be patient.”

  That advice became harder to follow as the days wore on. Emily lost her appetite, she was late for dates, she seemed distracted all the time. On the long holiday weekend over the fourth of July, Brian didn’t see her at all. She made some excuse about a summer cold, but he suspected that she was going through some sort of personal crisis and wanted to be alone. It was hard for him to know what the right thing to do was. Should he go to her and be more firm in suggesting that she needed to get some help? Or did she really need to be left alone to come to the same conclusion by herself? In the meantime, Paul was away on vacation, so Brian spent three days alone. He hadn’t realized that it had been months since he had spent so much time by himself. He was at something of a loss for how to pass the time. How odd, he thought, to be alone for most of the last twenty years, and now after she had been a part of his life for six short months, to find it so hard to amuse himself without her. Music was not as enjoyable when she wasn’t there to hear it with him. He found it difficult to concentrate on a book because he kept wondering how she was. It was actually a pleasure to go back to work on Tuesday because at least it gave him something to do.

  He tried to call her that evening, but got no answer. The same thing was true the next evening, and he began to go from worry to panic. Thursday he called the library and asked for her only to be told that she was not at work, and was not expected back for the rest of the week. He drove by her apartment several times and saw no sign of her or her car. He couldn’t imagine where she might be. Her parents were both dead, she was not at all close to any of her siblings, he hadn’t heard her mention any friends from out of town that she might have gone to visit. He realized fully for the first time that Emily led an extraordinarily insulated life. She had no family to whom she chose to relate. She mentioned no old schoolmates with whom she had kept track. He couldn’t fathom where a person with so little contact with other people would go. Where could she be?

  He called her apartment every half hour all day on Saturday. He was sure at this point that something terrible must have happened to her. He called every major hospital in a hundred mile radius to see if she had been admitted. He couldn’t believe she would go anywhere for so long and not let him know where she was. She must know how scared he would be. There was no point calling the police, because she had told her co-workers she would be gone. Helplessness is the emotion next door to anger, and Brian began to feel that anger gnawing at the back of his mind. How could she let him worry like this? Where is she?

  There was nothing left for him to do. He was not a big drinker, but he figured he’d rather be blind drunk that blind with fear. That Saturday evening, he bought a bottle of bourbon, drank as much of it as he could hold, and passed out on the couch. That was where Paul found him the next day at noon when he showed up for the Sunday feast. He had only arrived home from his vacation late the night before and had no idea what had been going on.

  Paul had to bang on the door a while before Brian heard him and let him in. The psychiatrist took a good long look at him and commented, “I’ll bet you’ve worked on stiffs that looked better than you do right now. What in the world is the matter with you?”

  “Nothing. I always look like this the morning after I drink myself into unconsciousness.” Brian turned and went into his bedroom to get cleaned up. Paul followed him.

  “I see. And why did you drink yourself into unconsciousness?”

  “It’s Emily. She’s gone. She stayed away last weekend and said she had a cold. She didn’t go to work all week. She hasn’t answered her phone. I don’t think she’s been at her apartment. I’ve looked everywhere I can think to look and I have no idea where she is. I don’t know if she’s alive or dead. I don’t know whether to be furious or terrified. Yes I do, I’m terrified. She couldn’t possibly have just gone off for this long and not told me. She couldn’t possibly be that insensitive.”

  “She didn’t say anything about going on a trip? She didn’t write a letter? You’re sure? This doesn’t sound like Emily.”

  For a while they went through the possibilities. Paul would suggest something and Brian would say he’d checked that. Finally there was nothing else to say and they just sat and looked at one another. Normally they aimed their Sunday meal at 2:00, but food was the last thing Brian wanted. The first thing he wanted was the answer. Where is she? It still lacked five minutes till 2:00 when the doorbell rang.

  Brian limped to the door expecting something terrible, and there she was, big as life. For a while he stood there and just looked at her. Without a word he stood aside and she came in.

  Brian didn’t trust himself to speak. He stood by the window. He didn’t even trust himself to look at her. It fell to Paul to ask the obvious questi
on.

  “Hello, Emily. Have you been away?”

  “Didn’t Brian tell you?” The silence in the room was so heavy it hurt her ears. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  Paul saw that Brian wasn’t go to pick up the ball of conversation so he said slowly and carefully, “Brian didn’t tell me because he doesn’t know. Where have you been?”

  She looked at Brian and asked sharply, “Didn’t you read my note?”

  He swallowed hard as if he was choking something down and said in a very low voice, “What note?”

  “I left a note for you Tuesday morning on my way out of town. I didn’t want you to worry. I taped it to your door. Didn’t you see it?”

  “There wasn’t any note on my door.”

  “I left it right on....Oh, Brian if you didn’t get my note, then you must have been worried.” The tears welled up in her eyes and she said through them, “Oh sweetheart, I’m so sorry. I would never have left you to worry if I had known. Oh, Brian...”

  “If you’re going to cry, do it quietly. My head is killing me,” he said as he lowered himself gingerly onto a chair. “Would you mind telling me where you have been?”

  “Are you sick?” Emily asked.

  He just looked at her coldly, so Paul supplied an answer, “Brian is not sick. Brian decided to drown his sorrows last night and has a hangover. Look, you’re both obviously very upset. Why don’t you just sit down, relax, and find out what is going on?” Paul said. “I’m going to make myself scarce. Call me later if you need me.” With a final look at both of them, he shrugged and closed the door behind him.

  Emily took a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry. I couldn’t go on the way I was any more. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, and I was so depressed, I didn’t know what to do. I decided to just get away for a few days. I couldn’t deal with my present life, and I knew that it was my past that was the heart of the problem, so that’s where I went. I went back home to Raleigh. Of course, I don’t know anybody there anymore, at least not anybody that I’d want to see, so I checked into a little motel. I wrote in my journal a lot. I prayed a lot. I read some of those books Paul loaned me, and I just did a lot of thinking. I went and looked at the schools I went to as a child. I drove around and looked at the old familiar places that I remembered. That’s where I’ve been. I told you in my note that you didn’t get that I would be back in time for the feast today. I’m so sorry I worried you.”

  Finally, Brian spoke, trying hard to sound calm. “Did it do any good? Do you feel any better?”

  “Do you really want to know?” she asked. She had never seen him angry at all, and he had been way beyond angry when she arrived. It was a scary sort of anger for a person who in childhood had seen dishes, other household objects, and the occasional sibling hurled across the room. Brian’s anger was dark and ominously quiet.

  He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly with his words. “Yes, I do.”

  “I think it did me a lot of good. I felt a little foolish doing some of the things I did, but I felt better afterwards. This morning I went and chewed out my father really good.”

  “I thought your father was dead.”

  “He is. I had to go out to the cemetery to do it. I felt stupid, but he really had it coming, even if it was a little late. I also finally remembered that awful nightmare, and I know what it was about.”

  “What was it about?” Brian asked, his voice no longer sounding as if he was struggling to control it.

  “It was about you. You remember I said that I always woke up feeling trapped. I remember the whole thing now. There’s a loud crash, and then an accident. I’m stuck in my car and the door won’t open. There’s someone outside the car calling me, and I can’t get the door open. He’s hurt and he’s calling me, and there’s nothing I can do. I can’t help him and he can’t help me. It was you calling me, Brian, and there was nothing I could do.”

  “I suppose you’ve got it all figured out what that means.” There was a renewed harshness, almost hostility in his voice.

  “I think it means that we can’t help each other, we each have to help ourselves.”

  “So you don’t need me anymore?” His words sounded clipped.

  “I didn’t say that,” she said as she walked toward the door.

  “Where are you going now?” he yelled at her.

  “I know you have a right to be angry, but I can’t deal with it. That’s one of the things I have to work on, dealing with other people’s anger. I don’t think you can really listen to me now anyway. When you calm down, call me and I’ll come back.” There was fear bordering on terror in the way she moved away from him, the way her voice shook as she spoke.

  He suddenly realized how he must have sounded to her, and was desperate that she not go at this particular moment. “Sweetheart, don’t go. I’m only angry because I’ve been so worried. I am really listening.”

  She turned and walked to a chair. For a few minutes, she fought an obvious battle to regain enough composure to speak. Finally the words came out in something of a flood. “For the first half of my life I lived in a kind of prison. When you’re in prison, you develop techniques for survival. You learn the things you have to do to make it. Don’t stand out. Conform. Do what’s expected of you. Tell people what they want to hear. Stick to your routines. That’s the way you learn to live. But when the jailers finally let you go, you’re still not really free. You still live with a survival mentality. You still have these defense mechanisms, but they don’t defend you anymore, they become the bars of your new prison. You can’t relate to people, you never know what to say. And always, always there’s fear. I thought when I came to faith, God would change me into a happy, healthy person, but I haven’t let Him. I thought when I met you, that you would change me, but I haven’t let you either. I have had more joy in you than in any other person in all my life, but I’m still not really free. Nobody will ever be able to set me free from the memories. I have to do it for myself. That’s where I’ve been this week. That’s what I’ve been trying to do.”

  Brian had listened with great concentration. When he spoke, he was obviously choosing his words carefully. “That’s all very good. That all makes perfect sense to me. I can see it’s been time well spent for you. Where do you think this leaves our relationship?”

  “Brian, I never meant to imply that I don’t need you. I know perfectly well that I would never have found the motivation to do this if not for you. I think it leaves our relationship with a much better chance of survival. I feel that I can be more honest now. I feel able to give more freely of myself, without worrying about whether I’m worthy of you.” After a pause, she asked timidly, “How do you feel about our relationship now?”

  “I don’t know. I know I love you. If you feel better about yourself, that can only be a good thing for both of us. It’s been a really awful week, and right now, I don’t want to think about anything. I just want to be here with you and rest.”

  “That’s what Sundays are supposed to be for.”

  “Do you have any more troubles with bad dreams, sweetheart?”

  A blessedly quiet work week had passed. Brian and Emily had spent several placid evenings together, not saying anything of consequence, and in fact content to say very little at all. There was an unspoken agreement between them that they had passed through a trying period and that they needed some easy times for a while.

  “No, I have been sleeping like a baby since I got back,” she responded.

  “Would you mind if I ask you something about that dream?”

  “No, go ahead.”

  “You said that we were both trapped in the dream, you couldn’t get out of the car, and there was no one to help me. Do you think I need help, do you think I’m trapped in some way?”

  “If I were Paul, I’d probably say, ‘What do you think?’ I don’t claim to have any great insight into the way your mind works. You know a lot better than I do whether you feel trapped or whether you feel helple
ss. But I have observed something in you that I think led to that part of the dream. You’re the most even-tempered man I’ve ever met. You not only don’t yell, scream, and throw things, you don’t even raise your voice. And yet, for all of that, I think you’re a very angry person.”

  “I see. And who am I angry at?”

  She folded her arms and pondered the possibilities. “I’m not sure. Maybe you’re angry with a country that sent thousands of young men, including you, half way around the world to suffer and be hurt, without giving them the chance to finish the job. Maybe you’re angry about something more personal than that. You’ve never told me.”

  “Do you think a man can stay angry for twenty years?”

  “I don’t see why not, especially if his wounds are still there after twenty years.”

  Brian knew that everything she said was true; in fact, it was truer than Emily could possibly realize. He knew that for most of the course of their relationship, the focus had been on Emily’s pain, but that he had hidden, apparently unsuccessfully, the pain that he had felt every day for twenty years.

  An image from his childhood came to mind. One of his favorite things to do as a boy was to go fishing with his father and his Uncle Ted. He loved everything about it from the sound of the oars slipping in and out of the water to the smell of the dank weeds near the shoreline of the lake. At school he felt it impossible to sit still for more than five consecutive minutes in Miss Hobgood’s arithmetic class, but he could sit motionless for an hour waiting for the bobber on the end of his pole to dip, the signal that he had a nibble on his line. Somehow, his father seemed to get more thoughtful in a boat. The mysteries of life and death, the intricacies of female psychology, the love of country, all of these were subjects that could be discussed out on a lake where there was no telephone to bring the voice of a complaining patient which would take his father away. Even mundane things took on a symbolic quality to his father out in that boat, and Brian saw glimpses of the romantic in his father’s soul at such moments.