A Vision of Fire

by Gillian Anderson

  The dog seemed about to jump back onto the bed when Mrs. Pawar raised her voice and Jack London froze. In rapid Hindi directed at her husband, she seemed to be arguing vehemently. Mr. Pawar started to argue back but checked himself and spoke in a low, calm voice.

  Caitlin turned away to give them a semblance of privacy. She patted the bedspread near Maanik’s left hand. Jack London eyed her warily but soon jumped back to the place where he’d been sleeping earlier. He huddled against Maanik’s side and nudged his nose under the girl’s palm.

  Caitlin heard a sigh from Mr. Pawar.

  “I’m sorry,” Caitlin said.

  “Do not be,” he told her. “How did you know he would respond like that?”

  “I noticed him acting skittish last time, and in Haiti I saw animals reacting strangely around the other girl,” she said. She considered mentioning the rats in Washington Square but decided they had enough horrors to face, and there was hardly a shred of connection to the incident anyway.

  The ambassador sighed sadly. “My wife wants to have him put down.”

  “I would strongly argue against that,” Caitlin said quickly. “We don’t know what the connection is but it should not be broken.” She gestured at the restored tableau of mistress and pup. “My point in trying this little experiment is to show that there’s a little light here, a little bit of understanding. The dog is ahead of us, reacting to something that we don’t comprehend yet. But there’s hope that we can learn.”

  The ambassador’s eyes were a bit brighter than they had been before. “I’m not sure what you mean but it is good to know that you think so. Now I must return to the United Nations. When will you come again?”

  “This evening, if I can arrange it.”

  “We will see you then,” he told her.

  The ambassador grasped his wife’s hand and lingered just a moment as she squeezed back. Then he left the room.

  “Excuse me,” said Mrs. Pawar. “I must give my husband something before he leaves.”

  The woman started to stand, handing Maanik’s weight over to Caitlin. As the door closed behind her Caitlin carefully maneuvered the girl into a horizontal position, with Jack London adjusting to the new arrangement to stay close to her left hand. Placing Maanik’s head gently on her pillow, Caitlin glanced down—and jumped back.

  Maanik’s eyes were open and regarding her. They were clear, alert, steady. Incredibly steady, like little machines that had suddenly locked onto her.

  “Hello,” Maanik said softly. “I surprised you.”

  “A little,” Caitlin admitted.

  “You surprised me too.” A faint smile tugged at the girl’s mouth. “But I’m too tired to scream.”

  Caitlin laughed nervously. “I guess that’s a good thing. Do you know where you are?”

  Maanik nodded.

  “Where?” Caitlin asked.

  The girl looked around. “It is not the Taj Mahal, so it must be . . . my bedroom.”

  Her parents had said she had a sense of humor. Caitlin was glad to see that it had returned intact. “Right. And do you know who I am?”

  “I think so. Dr. O’Hara?”

  “Caitlin,” she said, nodding. “And I’m happy to properly meet you.”

  “Me too,” Maanik said.

  “I’m unused to speaking like this with you,” Caitlin admitted. “I’ve only met you during emergencies.” Honesty, she’d always found, worked best with teenagers.

  “I can try scaring you, if you like.”

  “How would you do that?”

  Maanik hitched up one side of her face and stuck out her tongue. “Howsh thish?”

  Caitlin laughed. This was the easygoing girl she’d seen in the ­theater video. “How do you know about me? What do you know about me?”

  “My parents said you are a doctor. A psychiatrist. Will I be cured soon?”

  “Workin’ on it,” Caitlin said. “Can I get you anything? Food? Water?”

  “I’m good,” the young woman said. Her left hand sought Jack London and began rubbing him behind the ears. He seemed normal, unperturbed. “How are my parents? Are they here?”

  “Your mother’s in the living room. They’re doing very well under the circumstances.”

  That seemed to bring Maanik down and Caitlin didn’t want that. She also didn’t know how much time they might have, whether this period of lucidity would last for an instant or endure. “Hey, are you up for a few questions? I have so many.”

  “I’ll try to answer them,” Maanik said. “I’m a little confused.”

  “Totally understandable. Me too.” Caitlin pulled the desk chair to the side of the bed and sat. “Let’s try this for starters. Do you remember what happens during your episodes?”

  Maanik sat up, preparing to speak. “I remember nothing. I know about the screaming and scratching because my parents tell me. Oh, and”—she held up her right arm—“because I’m wrapped like the Mummy.”

  Caitlin laughed. “So you don’t remember doing that.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Or speaking?”

  “Speaking?”

  “Not the way we’re talking now,” Caitlin said. “More like—­acting.”

  “No.”

  Caitlin didn’t see the benefit of complicating Maanik’s grasp of the situation by mentioning other languages.

  “You’re usually awake when the episodes begin,” she said. “What does it feel like when you—”

  “Start to lose my shit?” Maanik cut in, eyeballing the door to make sure her mother couldn’t hear.

  “You’re not wrong about that,” said Caitlin, enjoying the girl’s spunk.

  Maanik looked away and continued patting the dog, whose eyes were shut. “It’s weird. I just, kind of . . . go away.”

  “Go away how? Do you mean like falling asleep?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Do you feel dizziness or do you sense anything different, visually or with any of your senses?”

  “Well . . .” Maanik frowned in concentration. “It’s like I disappear. No, that’s not right. It’s like first I am in pieces, small pieces, and then I disappear.”

  “I’m not sure I follow. Small pieces?”

  “My ears are listening, my fingers are feeling, my nose is smelling, my eyes are looking, but they are not connected. It’s sort of like every part of me is candles stuck in a cake.”

  “I like that description.” Caitlin smiled. “Go on.”

  The girl suddenly grew solemn.

  “Maanik?”

  She was looking at Jack London. “Candles.”

  “What about them?”

  “Flickering.” She rolled the dog over with her left hand and rubbed his belly. He snorted in his sleep.

  “What is it?” Caitlin pressed her. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” Maanik said. “I just felt this sadness.”

  Caitlin reached out and held the girl’s hand. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Maanik didn’t answer. The silence that settled on the room reminded Caitlin of the quiet in the hallway, unfriendly and oppressive.

  “Maanik—can you hear me?”

  The girl was staring at the dog.

  “Are you worried about Jack London?”

  She didn’t answer. Tears were now dropping onto the bedsheet. They were tears of sadness, great mourning. She turned away.

  “Maanik?”

  “My arm,” she said in a low monotone.

  Caitlin leaned in a little closer. She was trying to look into Maanik’s face, to get the girl to see her. “What about your arm?”

  “My left arm,” Maanik said. “It’s gone.”

  “That’s not true. You’re petting Jack London with it. Your arm is fine.”

  “No.”
>
  Caitlin let her pause, sensing that something else was coming.

  “My arm is bloody and ripped off and a terrible mess.” She began to squirm a little. “The animal . . . is dead.”

  “Maanik, listen. What you’re seeing is not real.”

  Maanik didn’t seem to hear. “I am disappearing, like pieces of paper in a fire.”

  “That’s a dream,” Caitlin insisted quietly. She shifted onto the bed and put her arms around the girl. “You’re right here, in your apartment, in your room, with me.”

  “No. It’s happening right now. Help me!”

  “What’s happening?”

  Maanik’s mind seemed to be searching for the right word. “The end,” she sobbed. “It is the end.”

  CHAPTER 20

  From the corner of her eye Caitlin saw Mrs. Pawar appear in the doorway. Caitlin put up a hand to stop her from coming in.

  Maanik’s arms started to rise and words spilled from the girl’s lips—not English, not Hindi. But Caitlin thought she could still see some of Maanik left in her eyes. They were pleading with her. Jack London leaped from the bed and began spinning and barking.

  The girl was no longer capable of answering questions and Caitlin did not want to lose her again. Reaching out, she touched Maanik’s left ear and said, “Blackberries.”

  Like strings had been cut, Maanik went limp. Her eyes closed and she relaxed into sleep. Freed from whatever thrall he had been in, Jack London sat on his haunches and howled.

  Caitlin heard Mrs. Pawar breathing heavily in the doorway.

  “What just happened?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Caitlin replied. “Maanik woke, seemed all right, and then relapsed. Please, you’ve got to promise you won’t do anything to the dog.”

  “Why? What has he got to do with this?”

  “I don’t know,” Caitlin said, “but I am becoming certain that he’s important. Please?”

  Mrs. Pawar nodded tightly.

  Caitlin crossed the room unsteadily. There was a wave of guilt: had she done something to send Maanik drifting away? Had she crowded her? Had her proximity triggered a panic attack?

  It was the mention of candles that got to her. That seemed to transfix her.

  Was fire a metaphor for “gunfire,” the transformation of something foreign and terrifying into a concept she could understand?

  This was not the first fire reference Caitlin had heard since she’d been introduced to Maanik. There was Ben’s interpretation of the language: fire, arms, pain. There were the flames Caitlin had seen flashing in the vision with Gaelle. And there was Atash, the boy who had set himself on fire in Iran.

  Or is this a dead end? she wondered. Fire was not exactly uncommon.

  “Doctor?”

  Caitlin snapped from her reflection. “Yes?”

  “May I ask what you are thinking? I feel so helpless.”

  Caitlin turned to her. “Of course. I’m sorry.” She looked into the woman’s tired eyes. “Mrs. Pawar, how does your husband cope with stress? I mean the mechanism.”

  “He prays.”

  “In the apartment?”

  “Sometimes. He must be seen in public, to show himself as a humble man, and he goes to a temple here or among Indian-Americans on Third Avenue. However, he prefers to pray in the living room.”

  “In ‘the peace of many choices,’ ” Caitlin said.

  Mrs. Pawar brightened. “Yes.”

  “Then you’ll understand, perhaps, what I’m about to say. When we pray, we close our eyes. We relax our bodies. We access a spiritual side that is driven by faith, not logic. I believe your daughter has done something like that, only much deeper. She spoke to me briefly about how she thinks she ‘disappears.’ Maanik may have created what she thought was a safe place for herself inside, except her fears got in there with her. They have become real things made of fire, loss, physical pain.”

  “My poor girl—”

  “Mrs. Pawar, if this is a self-induced trance, I must get ‘in there’ and bring her out.”

  The woman nodded as Caitlin spoke. There was a hint of hope in her eyes.

  “I’m coming back tonight, with Ben,” Caitlin said. “In the meantime, I want you to do something for Maanik.”

  “Anything.”

  “Look after yourself. Feed yourself well, take a nap if you can, take a walk, even if it’s just to take Jack London around the block.”

  “But the way I look,” the woman said. “If I meet someone I know—”

  “Chances are pretty good that anyone you run into around here has been impacted by the situation in Kashmir. They will understand and respect your privacy.”

  Mrs. Pawar agreed and Caitlin checked her watch. She had a twelve-thirty session and could just make it. Excusing herself, she hurried from the apartment into the corridor. While she waited for the elevator, she registered that the atmosphere seemed different than before. The sense of omen seemed closer.

  Exponentially closer.

  Rushing to her appointment, Caitlin left a message for Ben telling him to clear his schedule for the evening, then grabbed a cab. Her mind scanned what she recalled about the Iranian boy. His brother was executed, he set himself on fire, he was hospitalized. She looked him up again in the newsletter. Logorrhea; no suggestion of a language or gestures, but then this was Iran. Even medical information didn’t exactly get out intact.

  Had Atash been trying to mimic some kind of pain he was feeling, expressing it as fire, or was it another cause, something deeper and not voluntary? Or was he simply rebelling against the murder of his brother? Caitlin tried to do a search online to see if he was still alive but the cab ride was too short. She was then thrown into several straight hours of sessions with clients. Taking advantage of a short break in the late afternoon, she looked up the rat infestation at NYU. It seemed to be centered around an old mansion on Fifth Avenue, an exclusive club for world travelers. There were no teenagers on the premises, as far as her quick check could determine before her next client.

  As her appointments rolled through the afternoon, Caitlin’s regulars appeared to be doing surprisingly well. Most of them had been relying more heavily on group therapy in her absence, groups she had set up months ago. After her final client, she read a text from Ben saying he would meet her at the Pawars’ apartment.

  Before she left the office, Caitlin called on her colleague Dr. Anita Carter, who filled in for her when there were emergencies. African-American and originally from Atlanta, she had a classic New York approach to problems: acknowledge them, solve them, file them, and go to dinner. Caitlin seriously envied her uncanny ability to compartmentalize.

  “Just a heads-up,” Anita said. “You’ve got a couple of bean counters who’ve expressed displeasure about your recent period of unavailability.”

  “Let me guess,” Caitlin said, “Lauren from hospital admin and Phil from CUNY.”

  “The lady’s not just a healer, she’s a psychic!” Anita said.

  “I’ll bet they used those very words, too,” Caitlin said. “ ‘Period of unavailability.’ ”

  “Why say ‘absence’ when you can use something big and formidable? Just throw a little oil on those troubled waters, will you?”

  “Yeah. I’ll e-mail them, explain that these clients are exhibiting a desperate level of trauma.”

  “Suicidal?”

  “I don’t think so,” Caitlin replied, “but they are highly unpredictable.”

  “Well, remind Lauren and Phil about our liability unless we commit our assets—namely you—to the problem, and they’ll back off,” Anita said. She fixed Caitlin with a knowing look. “Want to talk about any of it?”

  “Maybe later,” Caitlin said, unable to reveal who she was treating. “I’m beat, I’ll tell you that much. How’s everybody else doing?”

 
“We’re in a pretty quiet phase right now,” Anita replied. “There’s still a couple weeks before the stress of December exams hits.”

  “So you haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary?”

  Anita shook her head. “Anything specific on your mind?”

  “No, I was just wondering.”

  “Lady, you never just wonder. What is it?”

  Caitlin made a You got me face. “The tension between India and Pakistan. It seems to be knocking people off balance.”

  “A couple of the kids mentioned that, but there’s so much hyperbole on the Web it’s tough to know what’s a real or a passing fear. A celebrity dies in a car crash, kids are afraid of cars for a day or two or three. Speaking of which, when you have the time, I want to talk about setting up focus groups on shared Internet and social media paranoia.”

  “I like the idea,” Caitlin said. “Shared angst.”

  “It’s like terrier frenzy,” Anita said. “One dog gets upset, so another dog gets upset because that dog is upset, making the first dog even more upset.”

  “Right, you have two Jack Russells,” Caitlin said. “Do they do that a lot?”

  “Every time the doorbell rings,” she said. “Funny thing is, for all its problems I bless the Internet every day, no exaggeration. The more cases I read, the more analysis that’s offered, the more I feel we can help people.”

  Caitlin thanked her again for her help and began walking home. She was glad to hear that Anita’s dogs weren’t behaving out of the ordinary. She had enough trouble worrying about people without adding more animals into the mix. She kept wondering, though, about what Anita had said in relation to mass anxiety.

  What’s that word for when a group turns this way and then that at the same time?

  “Flocking,” that was it. Coming together in a group, banding for mutual protection from a danger, from fears that linger like a low, slow hum.