Sympathy Between Humans

by Jodi Compton

  “Aidan,” Marlinchen said softly, pleading. For a brief, golden time, all had been right in her world. Aidan had returned, and her father was ready to come home. Now that facade was crumbling.

  “What do you want from me, Linch?” Aidan asked. “You want me to say it doesn’t still bother me, or pretend it didn’t happen?”

  That was exactly what Marlinchen wanted. She wanted to lay psychological Astroturf over everything ugly.

  “I know you have legitimate grievances,” she said. “But Dad’s had a stroke; he could have died. That changes people, profoundly. It might soften him, in a lot of ways.”

  Could. Might. So much of what Marlinchen said was wishful, divorced from hard evidence.

  “If you can just keep an open mind,” she went on, “I think maybe we’ve got a chance to start over here. All of us.”

  Aidan shook his head. “He won’t change, and I won’t share a home with him.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “Where else could you live?”

  “I’ll live out there,” Aidan said, pointing to the detached garage.

  “No, you won’t,” Colm said, unexpectedly entering the conversation. “That’s my place. I’m not moving my things out to make space for you.”

  “Colm, your workout space is hardly the issue here,” Marlinchen said.

  “Yes, it is,” Colm said, and there was unexpected heat in his voice.

  “Maybe I should be going,” I said, but no one seemed to hear it.

  “If he doesn’t want to help with Dad,” Colm went on, “then he shouldn’t even be here. And if he doesn’t want to live with Dad, then he should-”

  “Will you stop talking about your brother like he’s-”

  “- get his own goddamn apartment or something.”

  “- not sitting right here!” Marlinchen finished.

  “No!” Colm said. There were patches of red in his cheeks, like he’d been running in winter cold. “He talks about Dad like that, like Dad’s not even his father. He calls him ‘Hugh.’ If he doesn’t want to help us-”

  “He is helping!” Marlinchen interrupted. “He’s got a job, and-”

  “Who cares about his fucking job!” Colm’s voice rose yet higher. “We don’t need his money! We were doing fine!”

  “We?” Marlinchen echoed. “What do you do around here? How would you know? It’s not you balancing Dad’s checkbook. You’re not clipping the coupons and buying the groceries!”

  “Linch,” Aidan said, his voice low. “Cool it.”

  “I didn’t ask him to come home! I don’t care if he stays here or not!” Colm leapt up with a noisy backward scraping of his chair, and left. The room was so quiet in his wake that I could hear the ticking of the old Swiss clock, all the way from the living room, and then the start of a commercial from the family-room TV filled the silence.

  “That went pretty well,” Liam said dryly.

  Aidan pushed his chair back from the table and said quietly to Marlinchen, “Yell at me if you have to, but I’m going to have a cigarette.”

  Marlinchen shook her head numbly, meaning no, she wasn’t going to lecture Aidan about smoking. He got up and left the table.

  “I’ll clear the dishes,” Liam said.

  When it was just the two of us, Marlinchen wiped away a tear. “I just don’t get it,” she said. “Aidan taught Colm how to swim. He taught him to catch. Colm used to want to be Aidan.”

  I looked out through the window and saw Aidan, pacing on the back deck. He tipped his head back and exhaled smoke.

  “Why don’t you let me talk to Colm?” I said.

  ***

  A dull thudding, like an irregular heartbeat, came from the other side of the garage wall. I heard it before I even opened the door.

  Inside, the heavy bag that hung from the rafters was jumping steadily under the blows Colm was laying into it. He was still wearing the Adidas sweatpants he’d had on at dinner, but from the waist up had stripped to a narrow wife-beater undershirt, and his hands were protected by black bag gloves.

  I wasn’t a fight fan, but I knew enough to see that Colm was pretty good. He didn’t make the amateur mistake of standing back from the bag, thinking the point was to strike with your arm extended as far as possible. He stood close in while throwing his hooks and uppercuts, getting his body weight into them. He didn’t hyperextend on his jabs, either, so they were quick, like they should be.

  “You want me to hold the bag for you?” I asked. His blows were hard enough to make the bag dance.

  “I like to let it move,” Colm said. “It simulates a real opponent, one that could evade you.” He moved back and aimed a roundhouse kick at the bag.

  “It simulates an opponent with no arms who can’t run away,” I pointed out.

  Colm’s eyes narrowed slightly at my words, and the uppercut he followed the kick with grazed the side of the bag instead of digging in. I stepped in to hold the bag, laying my hands on each side, about level with my shoulders. “If the bag is still,” I said, “it’s easier for you to work on your form.”

  I was comfortable in gyms, and comfortable with guys who hung out in gyms. Colm and I probably had a lot in common, under the surface. It could so easily have been pleasant.

  But Colm was scowling. He executed a powerful front kick, pushing hard through his heel. It was supposed to rock me backward, off my feet, and nearly did. It was only because I saw him set his feet, preparing for a powerful strike, that I knew what he was going to do and had leaned my full weight against the bag so he didn’t dislodge me.

  Colm shifted tactics and spun a high roundhouse kick into the bag, hitting my right hand, up where I thought I’d positioned it out of reach. It wasn’t a hard strike. If he’d wanted to, he probably could have broken bones, since I wasn’t wearing gloves. He was just showing me what he could have done, a point he underscored by not meeting my eyes afterward.

  “You’ve got amazing flexibility,” I said. “Have you thought about ballet instead?”

  Irritated, he shifted back, to launch a kick even higher and strike my hand again. This time, I caught his heel and yanked. He lost his balance and fell.

  “What’s your problem?” Colm glared up at me.

  “Do you ever think about what your father did to Aidan, when he was living here?” I asked, without preamble. “The way he used to hurt him?”

  Colm scrambled to his feet. “Maybe Aidan deserved it!” he said. “It didn’t happen to any of us, just to him! Don’t you think that’s kind of weird? Don’t you think he did something to deserve it?”

  “Like what?” I said. “Tell me what he did.”

  A muscle worked near Colm’s jaw; above that, his face was mottled with exertion and anger. “I don’t want to talk about this,” he said. He stalked to the door and out of the garage.

  Another triumph by Sarah Pribek, the great communicator. Well, I’d started this. I couldn’t leave it unfinished.

  I found Colm sitting under the magnolia tree. He’d already taken his boxing gloves off and was starting on the flesh-colored wraps around his knuckles when I reached his side.

  “If there was a Hennessy family crest,” I said, sitting down next to him, “the motto on it would be, ‘I don’t want to talk about this.’ ”

  Against his will, a small, wry smile began to play at the corners of Colm’s mouth. I realized how handsome he was when he smiled, and how rarely I’d witnessed it.

  “Back there, in the garage,” I said, “you were off-balance physically, and I knocked you over pretty easy. You were also off-balance emotionally, and I got you to walk out on me with two questions.”

  Colm let the last of his right-hand wrap fall to the earth.

  “You were off-balance because you were angry,” I said. “Few things make us angrier than our own guilt.”

  The half smile fled Colm’s face, and there was a guarded light in his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

  “When your brother and sister were hiding Aidan
out in the garage, you were the one who turned him in to your father,” I said. “You got him exiled back to Georgia. Before that, you let him take the blame for a window you broke. And when Liam and Marlinchen were expressing reservations about my arresting Aidan, you went and got my handcuffs.”

  “I get it,” Colm said bitterly. “I’m the asshole here.”

  “No,” I said. “But sometimes the hardest thing to forgive other people for is the wrongs we’ve done them. To protect yourself, you have to tell yourself that there must be something wrong with Aidan.”

  Colm pulled up a handful of grass, which made a low thrrip sound as it came up, exposing black, loose soil.

  “Something else, too,” I said. “I think you’re angry at Aidan for letting you down.”

  Colm pulled up another small handful of grass. “Saint Aidan?” he said sourly. “The hero who came home to bring in another income and help Marlinchen take care of everyone? What could he have done?”

  “He scared you,” I said.

  Colm gave me a quizzical look.

  “Years ago, you idolized him; he was everything you wanted to be. Then you saw him powerless before your father’s rages. That was frightening. You couldn’t blame your father; Hugh was the only parent you had. So you switched sides. You agreed with your father on everything and aligned yourself with him, and you told yourself that there must be something wrong with Aidan, that your father treated him that way. Because if what was happening to Aidan wasn’t his fault, then it could happen to anyone. Maybe to you.”

  I saw the muscles of Colm’s throat work. I wasn’t expecting tears, but that uncomfortable stiffness in the throat, that was promising.

  “Then you made yourself into a caricature of toughness,” I said. “You wanted to be stronger than you’d ever thought Aidan was. But that wasn’t the point. Aidan couldn’t have solved the problem by being taller or stronger or faster or tougher. You know that.”

  I tore up my own handful of grass, uncomfortable in the role of armchair psychologist. Between the two of us, Colm Hennessy and I would defoliate the whole patch of ground under his mother’s beloved tree.

  “I like fighting,” Colm said. “Wrestling and boxing and weightlifting, I like those things for themselves, as sports.”

  “I believe you,” I said. “But they have their limits. If you want to feel better about Aidan being here, I think you need to go talk to him, instead of retreating into your gym with your heavy bag.”

  “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Yeah, okay.”

  I felt relieved. I’d done what I’d come out here to do. Now I wanted out, before I said the wrong thing and undid it all. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go up.”

  30

  Dr. Leventhal, the department psychologist, was an approximately ninety-nine pound woman with lovely iron-gray curls and a very faint British accent long eroded by life in America. I’d never had the chance- or rather, the requirement- to work with her. So I was mildly surprised that she knew my name when I stuck my head in her door.

  “Detective Pribek,” she said. “You can come all the way in; I’m not busy.” She was impeccable in a pale-rose suit and a small gold Star of David around her neck, and even though I was in clothes and boots suitable for the job, I suddenly felt as rumpled as a bloodhound.

  “I only wanted to ask you a quick question,” I said. “I don’t really need anything.”

  “Please go ahead,” she said. “I’ll help if I can.”

  “Let me run a hypothetical situation by you,” I said. “If someone was told repeatedly, from the age of three or four, that he’d been badly bitten by a dog at that age- even if it never happened- could he develop a vivid memory of the incident? One that’s almost visual?”

  Since she was a psychologist, I was expecting a wordy and inconclusive answer. I was wrong.

  “Yes,” Dr. Leventhal said. “It helps that the child in question is so young. Age three to four is generally accorded to be the threshold of recall. But even adults have been known to fabricate memories when psychologists encourage them to.”

  “Why would a psychologist encourage that?” I asked.

  “For a study,” she said. “Sometimes a subject’s brother or sister is called upon to prompt the subject to remember a ‘childhood event’ that never happened. Under those circumstances, the individuals being studied tend to agree the event took place, and some even add details that they ‘remember.’ ” She paused. “A subject’s likelihood of doing this depends somewhat on how imaginative or credulous they are. Significant also is who’s trying to convince them: an older sibling’s word is more likely to have the ring of authority than a younger sibling’s. Who’s doing the persuading in your case?”

  “A parent,” I said.

  “That would definitely qualify,” she said. “Memory can be the servant of emotional needs. If a child had a strong desire to believe what he or she had been told, then certainly, he or she could construct a memory and develop a related fear.” Dr. Leventhal uncrossed and recrossed her legs. “I should have asked you, did the child in question have any sort of help from a hypnotherapist in sorting out his memories?”

  I shook my head. “Is that a bad thing?”

  “Well, improperly practiced hypnotherapy has been implicated in the construction of false memories. Most often, we see that from therapists who specialize in sexual abuse. When the patient wants to ‘please’ the practitioner, often she’ll agree to leading questions under hypnosis: for example, ‘Is there someone else in the room with you?’ ”

  “Not this time,” I said. “This boy didn’t have any therapy at all.”

  Dr. Leventhal nodded. “I don’t mean to denigrate hypnosis altogether, but there’s still so much we don’t understand about it. Or about memory, for that matter. It’s a truly amazing field. Do you know what a screen memory is?”

  I shook my head.

  “Psychologists don’t always quite agree on the definition, or on how common it is,” she said. “But at its core, a screen memory is a defense mechanism. Some patients who have been through traumas can’t remember them at first. They remember simpler, more acceptable events.”

  “Like what?” I said, interested despite myself.

  “For example, a patient might say, ‘I looked out the window and saw a pair of crows in my neighbor’s yard,’ when in fact she saw a man beating a woman. The mind replaces an unacceptable image with an acceptable one. A screen.”

  I must have looked amazed, because she smiled. “The mind is very powerful in its own defense,” she said.

  “That’s fascinating,” I said.

  “I can tell you’re interested,” she agreed, “because when we started talking, you were hanging back in my doorway, and now you’re halfway to my desk.”

  I realized it was true.

  “You seem quite skittish in here, Detective Pribek,” she said. “I assure you, I don’t strap people into one of my chairs and force them to discuss their childhoods.”

  “Well, that’s good,” I said. “You’d be bored with recollections of my personal life. I had a pretty dull childhood.”

  “It’s a common misconception that psychologists are only interested in the abnormal,” she said. “Healthy minds are often as fascinating as troubled ones.” Then she tilted her head slightly. “I wonder, though, if you’re being entirely honest with me when you call your growing-up years boring.”

  “Well,” I said lightly, “I don’t remember seeing any crows, if that’s what you mean.”

  ***

  A co-worker’s unexpectedly bad summer cold forced me into the slot of on-call detective two nights in a row, and I didn’t visit the Hennessy place either of those evenings. On the third day I glanced at the calendar, wondering why the date seemed to stick in my memory. After a moment it came to me: today was Marlinchen and Aidan’s eighteenth birthday.

  The summer solstice was less than a week away, and the day was still bright as midafternoon when I drove out after work, parke
d, and went up to the French doors. Normally, Marlinchen was making dinner at this hour, but the kitchen was empty. Some pots and utensils were out on the counters, but no one was to be seen. I went around to the front door and knocked.

  When Marlinchen opened the door, she looked years older than her age, wearing a silky cinnamon-colored shirt and a straight black skirt. Before I could comment on that, though, or she could speak, I noticed something else.

  The Hennessys had never, in the time I’d known them, used the formal dining room. Generally, the kids ate at the kitchen table, where I’d first looked for them tonight. But now the family was grouped around the long table in the dining room. A pair of candles glowed between serving dishes, and faces turned to look at me.

  The long and lanky form of Aidan, though, was not among them. Instead, at the head of the table, light gleamed off the metal of a cane that leaned against the chair. I lifted my gaze and met the pale-blue eyes of Hugh Hennessy.

  “Sarah,” Marlinchen said, her voice light and surprised.

  “Hey,” I said awkwardly. “I didn’t realize you’d be eating this early.”

  “An earlier dinnertime is better for Dad,” Marlinchen said. “He’s tired from the move home, this afternoon.”

  From his place about eighteen feet away, Hugh was still watching his daughter and me. He probably couldn’t hear us, but even so, I felt uncomfortable, and moved away from the open door. Marlinchen, being polite, followed me outside.

  “I didn’t expect to see your father home quite this soon,” I said.

  “We did the conservatorship paperwork this afternoon,” Marlinchen said, “and I signed him out. That’s why we’re celebrating tonight. The birthdays and Dad being home.”

  “I’m in awe,” I said. “When do you run for the state legislature?”

  Marlinchen laughed, pleased. “All of this is thanks to you,” she said. “Do you want to come in and join us? We’ve got plenty of food to share.”

  “No,” I said. “No, that’s all right.”