The Unforgiven

by Alan E. Rose

  “Carl is thirty-eight. He needs to let it go and move on with his life.”

  *

  After they had finished washing the dishes, they went up to his old bedroom. Peter had not slept in it for over twenty years.

  “I’ve gathered up most of your things,” said his mother. There were six boxes stacked against the wall. “I won’t have space for them in the condominium. You’re the only child who never took your things with you.”

  He looked around his boyhood room. “I really don’t think there’s anything here I want to keep.”

  “Then you’ll have to throw them away yourself, or give them to Goodwill. I can’t do it.”

  “Okay. I’ll sort through the boxes tonight.”

  “I’ll get you some large trash bags.” She left to go downstairs.

  Once she’d gone, Peter took his cell phone from his briefcase and sat on his bed, putting a call through to Megan.

  She was home. She, too, was boxing up her things. He dreaded what the house would look like when he returned tomorrow night, without her clothes, without her books and computer and photos. Without her.

  They chatted easily, as if nothing had happened, other than their marriage was breaking up. She asked about his mother, how she was feeling about leaving the house she had lived in for over forty-five years. She was doing well, he said, looking forward to moving into the city. He hoped she’d have a dishwasher. Then he added, “I went to see your therapist today before driving down here.”

  “She’s not my therapist any longer.”

  “Right. She’s my therapist now.”

  “Will you be going back?”

  “Do you want me to?”

  “It has to be your decision.”

  “I will if you want me to. If it will bring you back.”

  “Yes, I want you to. But there’s no guarantees I’m coming back.”

  “I understand.” There was a pause, and then he said, “I do love you, you know.”

  “No, Peter. I don’t know that.”

  What else to say? If she wouldn’t believe him, what more could be said? He heard her voice, softer this time.

  “I don’t blame you. It’s not your fault. But I don’t think you can love…anyone.”

  He didn’t know what else to say. There was another pause, and he heard her voice again.

  “Just so you know: I’ve not stopped loving you. But it’s not healthy for me or for you to continue like we have. For the first three years of our marriage, I wanted to change myself so you would love me. For the last two years, I wanted you to change, so I could love you. I was wrong on both counts, and I don’t want to end up hating you, Peter. I would rather have it end like this.”

  He was sitting on his bed, feeling despondent, the cell phone still in his hand, when his mother returned. He looked up as she entered the room, carrying a box of trash bags and a cup of herbal tea.

  “Megan says hi,” he said flatly. “Sends her love.” He tossed the cell phone onto the bed.

  She set down the cup and saucer on his nightstand. “She’s sweet. I’ll miss her.”

  “I’ve not given up on us,” he said. “I’m seeing a therapist, like she wanted.”

  “Good. I hope it will help.” She handed him the box of trash bags. “You’re used to getting what you want.”

  He looked up at his mother. “Really? It doesn’t feel that way.”

  “It’s because you never find satisfaction in what you achieve. You’ve always driven yourself so hard and accomplished whatever you put your mind to. You just can’t seem to enjoy it.” She placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. It’s such a maternal cliché, but I only want you to be happy.”

  He nodded. “Me, too.”

  “It’s going to be a big day tomorrow. I think I’ll retire early. Sleep well, dear.” And she leaned over and kissed him on his forehead.

  *

  It was eight thirty, and he was sitting on the floor, drinking the cup of tea as he went through the cardboard boxes, sorting those clothes and items that would go to Goodwill. The rest he tossed into garbage bags. Over the next two hours, as the clock edged toward midnight, he went through all that remained of his childhood and youth: school notebooks, athletic ribbons, photos of him and his family on vacation trips—he and his dad holding up the salmon they’d caught on the Snake River when he was ten, class photos from elementary and junior high school, more vacation pictures, trinkets and souvenirs from trips to Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, and SeaWorld, all went into the garbage bags. He had no use for these. Likewise, he tossed in his graduation announcement, varsity letters, and certificates of achievement. Photos of old girlfriends, his three high school yearbooks, his Future Business Leaders trophy, all went into the trash. His baseball mitt would go to Goodwill. No one had ever accused him of being sentimental.

  No, he thought, they accused him of having no feelings at all.

  When Peter thought back over his life, it seemed to him that he’d never been happy, that he’d never had any close friends, that it had always been difficult for him to sustain a deep personal relationship. But now, sorting through the boxes, he was surprised to find that he had had a happy childhood, and seeing the photos once again, he remembered that he had many friends when he was young. And he, too, wondered: When did I change? And why?

  “Did something happen to you at that camp?”

  It was in the last box that he found a folder containing a collection of larger pictures. Among them was a photo of the camp he attended when he was thirteen. He studied the group picture—about forty boys and counselors on bleachers. And there he was, sitting on the end of the first row, two horns protruding from his head of thick hair—the forefinger and pinky of a slender, small boned boy in the row behind him.

  Billy Clubfoot.

  He smiled. His best buddy that summer. He looked once again on this long ago friend with his mischievous eyes and that impish grin, like he had just thought up another bit of mischief to get them into. He never seemed bothered by his clubfoot, Peter recalled (What was Billy’s last name?) He had a mop of thick black hair that was longish and always unkempt, giving him a slightly feral look; like Mowgli, Peter had thought when he had first seen Billy at camp.

  He gazed back at his younger self. Aside from the horns sticking out of his head, he was a handsome youth. Different from most of the other boys, with their big noses and big ears and general adolescent gawkiness, he was already well proportioned and athletic in build. In most of the photos in this box, he appeared as a kid, a child, and in the photos after—his high school years—he looked like a younger version of the man he was now. But here, in this picture, he could see the boy becoming the man. And his mother was right: he did look happy, a big grin arcing across his face. They all looked happy, enjoying good times together, all happy campers.

  “It seemed like you grew up overnight.”

  Standing next to him was Father Scott, the camp’s director and assistant priest in his parish. The priest’s hand was resting on his shoulder. Peter felt a sudden surge of unease and quickly tossed the photo into the garbage bag.

  In the same folder was a letter he had written from camp, the obligatory missive home to the folks—he remembered they were required if one wanted dessert—telling them what a wonderful time their son was having. He started reading the letter, noting that his penmanship hadn’t improved that much. He sounded happy and enthusiastic, seemed to be enjoying himself. They had gone rock climbing one day, canoeing the next. Food was okay. The evening campfires, with the singing and the stories, were the “funnest.” Peter was again surprised. He couldn’t recall ever being so perky and bubbly. It was as if he were reading a letter from someone else, or from another life.

  My best friend is Billy Dawson (Right. Dawson. That was his name. Billy Dawson.) He has a club foot and walks funny but hes really nice.

  Funny how certain memories suddenly pop up after all the years. He could remember the clomp-a-clomp-a-clomp-a o
f Billy’s bum foot on the floorboards in their cabin. Although his own family was not wealthy, Peter knew they were well off; his father had been an engineer for Boeing. Somehow, he remembered that Billy’s family was not well off. His father was a logger, he recalled, but had been disabled due to an accident. Billy came to camp through a scholarship provided by the local parish in his small town on the coast. As with his clubfoot, he didn’t seem ashamed about this.

  It rained the first two days, but its been good the rest of the week. We go swimming every day. The lake is cold but the bolders are warm from the sun and nice to lay on.

  He remembered those times swimming and lying out on the flat, sun-warmed boulders that protruded into the lake, and wondered what he had against apostrophes as a kid.

  There are lots of trails in the forest and we go hiking wherever we want. But dont worry. You cant get lost because the trails have signs everywhere pointing back to camp. The only place we cant go is the old cabin because its suposed to be haunted.

  The cabin. He had forgotten about the cabin.

  It sat on the edge of the forest, far away from the rest of the buildings, dilapidated and in disrepair, and was used only for storage. It was said to be haunted by the ghost of a boy who had died in it years ago. Peter could still feel the chills when he had walked past it. Over the years, lights had been seen inside at night. And on some nights, if the wind was blowing in a certain direction, you could actually hear screams coming from within it. Something had happened to the boy, something terrible. Too terrible to talk about—so of course everyone did, summer after summer for generations. Although no one knew for sure how he died, every camper felt free to elaborate on it. On one thing they were all agreed: it had been a horrible, horrible death. It seemed a requirement of camp folklore that the boy had died horribly.

  Peter remembered accompanying Father Scott in the cabin to get the volleyball equipment. It smelled musty, dusty, and dank, of mildew and mold. He had been excited to look inside this forbidden chamber, quickly shooting glances around as if in hopes of seeing the ghost of the boy who had been murdered there. But it had all been very disappointing. Against one of the walls stood a row of old mattresses with pee-stained blotches, like yellow-orange Rorschach tests; boxes of baseball bats and balls and badminton sets; a box of horseshoes, ropes and floats for the swimming boom; canoe paddles. What had he expected? Blood on the floor? A rotting corpse?

  He folded up the letter and dropped it into the garbage bag as well, then checked the clock. It was late and he needed to get to bed. He quickly pawed through the rest of the box’s contents, withdrawing the silver crucifix he had worn as a boy. He held it up to the light of the desk lamp (The crucifix dangled from his chest, glinting in the flashlight’s harsh beam) and suddenly shivered, quickly tossing it into the garbage bag. He dumped the remaining contents of the box into the bag as well and tied it closed. His stroll down memory lane complete, he brushed his teeth and went to bed.

  *

  The next morning Peter and his mother were sitting at the kitchen table, eating breakfast and awaiting the arrival of his siblings and their broods. He felt exhausted as he read the newspaper and drank his coffee. He hadn’t slept well.

  “I didn’t know you still had nightmares,” said his mother.

  He looked up. “I don’t.”

  “I heard you crying out during the night. Just like when you were a boy.”

  “Really?”

  “You don’t recall what you were dreaming?”

  “No.”

  “I almost came in to wake you, but each time it was brief and quickly over.”

  “Each time?”

  “Two or three times, I think.”

  He shrugged, folded the paper, and left to shower and shave. Now that his mother mentioned it, he remembered that he did have a nightmare, or nightmares, but what they were about, he couldn’t say. In the shower, he tried to dredge up some memories of the dreams. It was all very vague, no sense impressions or clear images—though he thought it involved the old cabin. And blood. It seemed there was blood in the dream. But that was all he could recall. He turned off the shower and began drying himself. Why did his mother have to mention the camp? It must have acted as a suggestion to his subconscious.

  It was an intuition, a hunch, which he couldn’t have explained, but as Peter dressed, he dug back into the last garbage bag and retrieved the camp photo. He wasn’t sure why, but he decided to keep it. He looked at it once again. This time his eyes went directly to the priest, and he felt the same unease he’d felt the night before. Something about the cabin and the priest.

  *

  For the next week, the dream and vague memories of the camp stayed with him, surfacing at odd moments—between telephone calls, or while driving home from work, or before falling asleep. Something kept mentally pricking him, like a mild irritation, like a pebble in one’s shoe. He was also intrigued to realize that he had been much different as a child, that he hadn’t always been like this, that he’d had close friends when younger. Maybe it held out hope that, if he had changed once, he could change again?

  In his second session with the therapist, they were talking about him and Megan, about how different they were, how different their personalities and their styles of communication, how Megan’s communication style was direct, open, and verbal, and how his style—apparently by a unanimous vote of the Former Wives Club—was non-existent.

  Then Peter abruptly switched topics.

  “This past weekend I was helping my mother move. She was telling me about when I was a boy, and I was surprised when she said I was a happy child and that I had lots of friends. That I was open and affectionate. It’s certainly not how I remembered my childhood.”

  Lucia March sat watching him, making no comment, asking no questions, letting him unravel what he needed to say at his own pace.

  “But the strange thing is, my mother’s right. Once she said it, I could remember that I had a happy childhood and lots of friends.”

  “What changed?”

  “Growing up, I suppose. She thinks my personality altered the summer I turned thirteen.”

  “Did she have any ideas why?”

  “She says it was around the time I went to summer camp, that I came back different. Like I grew up overnight, were her words. More like I am now.”

  “And how are you now?”

  His voice fell as if at confession. “Guarded. Emotionally distant from people. No close friends…Unhappy.”

  “That’s quite a policy change for you,” she said. “And encouraging. I thought we’d need to spend the first ten sessions before you could admit that to yourself.”

  “This past week I’ve been remembering that camp, and my best friend there, how close we were, how much fun we had together. And I realized that he was my last best friend, that I never again felt that closeness, that sense of intimacy or trust with anyone. Not even my wives.”

  He suddenly felt sad, as if he had truly lost his best friend.

  “Good, Peter. You have rediscovered a time in your life—perhaps the last time—when you felt close to another person. For whatever reason, you lost that capacity for intimacy and friendship. But at least you now know that you were once capable of them.”

  He nodded slowly. “I wanted to tell you because maybe there’s a way I can change again—more like when I was younger. But I don’t know where to start.”

  “Well, we could start by exploring that time and help you rediscover your younger self—what he was like, what you remember about him.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll have you lie down on the couch and take you back to that time in your life.”

  He looked over at the couch as if it were a bed of nails and turned back to her. “You’re going to hypnotize me?”

  “I’m going to relax you and give you a suggestion to remember that summer camp.”

  “You’re going to hypnotize me,” he said flatly.

  She smiled. “You will
remain fully conscious, and I promise not to make you run around clucking like a chicken. You won’t do anything you don’t want to do.”

  Peter didn’t like the idea, but he agreed.

  She pulled the drapes. The room was darkened, and he was lying on the couch. It was remarkably comfortable and seemed to be molded to the contour of his body.

  She sat back down. “I’m going to have you relax and we’ll see what comes up. I want you to freely associate; say whatever comes into your mind. It’s important that you don’t block anything, no matter how trivial or even embarrassing. I promise not to blush.”

  “Okay,” he said grimly. “I’ll try.”

  She had him close his eyes, and she began to talk him through a progressive relaxation exercise. In spite of his resistance, Peter found himself surrendering his tension, his body melting into the couch. Once he was fully relaxed, she asked, “You liked camp?”

  “Yeah. Sure. It was a lot of fun.”

  “Tell me about it. Whatever you can remember.”

  He sighed with his eyes closed, thinking. “It ran for two weeks each summer, about forty boys, mostly aged eleven to fifteen. It was the third summer I had gone.”

  “What do you remember about the camp?”

  “Not much. I can remember things about the camp.”

  “Fine. Start there. What things?”

  “It was on the shores of Big Bear Lake in the North Cascades. Originally, it had been built back in the thirties by the Church as a work camp for orphans and abandoned children. It was rustic and remote, the closest town was twenty miles away. I liked that—the isolation, the sense of being out in the wilderness.”

  “When you think of the camp, who comes to mind?”

  “Billy.”

  “A friend?”

  “Yes. We called him Billy Clubfoot, because he had a clubfoot.”