Breakdown (12 page)

“Why is it so hard?” he asked, his voice low.

She kept her face calm under his stare. “Probably lots of things. I think you’ve come to see her death as the reason for your life going all to hell. You never had a chance to go on with a normal life after she died, to see that life can go on as normal, does go on as normal. Was there a funeral?”

“No.” He looked off into a corner of the room. “They just came and took her away.”

“You don’t even know where she’s buried, do you?”

“No.”

“You feel she was taken from you, and you resent that. You never had a place to leave her.” His head jerked toward her when she said that.

“I didn’t want to leave her,” he said through his teeth.

She thought quickly, chose her words carefully.

“A funeral, a burial, can be an important part of the grieving process. It can help you to accept the permanence of what’s happened. It can give you a place where you know she is, where you can go to be with her, talk to her if you need to, and a place where, eventually, you can learn to leave her and go on without her. You never had that. You never went through the normal grieving process. You started wandering, am I right?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“You were looking for some kind of normalcy, maybe, even though you knew you weren’t going to find it. You decided you had to get back to England, that the only happiness you could ever find was the family that had been here.”

He glanced at her, looked away again, nodded slightly. “So why can’t I make myself go to Bath?”

“You know that’s not an automatic fix, right? Even if they are there, it doesn’t mean everything will be fine, that you’ll suddenly be happy again.”

He blew his breath out. “I don’t expect happiness. That’s gone forever.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Pauline said.

Chris shook his head dismissively. “I just don’t want to go through what I did in London.”

“What did you go through?”

He tensed up and clamped his mouth shut.

“Do you mean when you first found out your brother was dead?”

Chris nodded. “I couldn’t...I just...” He shook his head, put a hand to his face.

“It’s hard, I know. Try.”

“I stopped caring. About anything,” he said in a monotone. “I did things—that I regret, now.”

Pauline watched him. She would have to get him talking, find out what had happened to him, where he had been, what he had done, in the years since his wife’s death. She had the whole winter, apparently. Was that long enough?

“You have to deal with your wife’s death first, put that behind you, before you’ll be able to deal with what you might find in Bath.”

Chris stayed still and silent, then opened his mouth as if to speak, but nothing came out. He tried again and managed this time, his voice barely above a whisper.

“We had a baby. She died, too, of course.”

“I’m so sorry, Chris,” Pauline said, the ache in her stomach deepening.

“That will never go away.”

“No, no, it won’t. You’ll always have an empty place. But that doesn’t mean you can’t find a way to be happy again. You can be happy again, if you let yourself.”

The door opened. Grace, Marie, and George all came in.

Chris shot a quick look at her as he grabbed his cider glass. “I really don’t see how,” he said under his breath, and downed the remaining drink. He stood and gathered up his clothes, the mask back on his face. He left the kitchen, saying good night briefly to everyone as he went.

* * *

George had gone off to help at the next farm over, so Pauline knew she would be able to talk to Chris without interruption while he did the milking. He had been avoiding being alone with her since their talk over the mending the week before, but she was determined to get him talking.

Pauline made sure he heard her as she went into the barn and leaned with her arms on top of the partition.

“I’ve only just started,” Chris said without stopping, his cheek pressed against the cow.

“I know. You had another nightmare last night.”

The rhythm of his milking slowed. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”

“It’s all right, I’ve told you. What was it about?”

He stopped milking altogether, then started up again. “London.”

“Are they always about London?”

He made noise in his throat, shook his head. “God, no. London is new on my playlist. I’ve a whole collection of golden oldies in heavy rotation.”

She thought it a good sign that he could make a joke about it, even if it didn’t exactly sound like a joke.

“Do you interpret dreams?” Chris asked her.

“There’re a lot of theories about dreams. I never made a study of it, but I know a bit about it.”

“Nothing mysterious about my dreams. Completely straight-forward.”

“You talk in your sleep, you know,” Pauline said.

Another pause. “So I’ve been told.”

“I’m glad you don’t use that sort of language when you’re awake.”

“Ah, sorry,” Chris said. “I’ve, um, been among some rough types. It’s easy to slip into.”

“Who is Beryl?” she asked next.

His rhythm faltered, then evened out. “How long were you listening at my door?”

“Only for a moment. You sounded so distraught. I got up to check on you.”

“It’s just dreams. They come and go. Don’t worry about it, or me.”

Pauline pulled a face at the back of his stubborn head. He was good at deflecting.

“So who is Beryl?” she asked again, trying to steer him back.

The cow shifted, swished her tail, jerked her head.

“Just someone I met in London.”

“What happened to her?”

“Nothing.”

“It didn’t sound like that.” Pauline wondered if she was pushing too hard. Chris stopped milking, his hands still, his whole body tense, his forehead against the flank of the cow. “Was she one of the good people?” she tried.

“What?”

“You said that you could still find good people, even in London. Was she one of those?”

Chris took a deep breath. “Yes.” He began to pull on the teats again.

“What happened?” Pauline waited, with only the sound of the milk hissing into the bucket. “Okay, then tell me about the ‘rough types.’”

Chris finished the cow. He stood up and set the bucket outside the stall door on the floor and picked up the basket with the cleaning rags. He had to walk around Pauline to get to the next stall. He didn’t look at her, settled himself on the stool, and started cleaning the second cow’s udder. Pauline moved a few steps so she had her arms on the wall of the stall he’d gone into.

“Before I got to Britain, I worked for a year on the ship docks in Canada, loading ships. Then I was on a ship for a month or so before we finally docked. Rough types on ships. And in Portsmouth, of course, at the Distribution Center, more rough types.”

“And London—that was before Portsmouth, wasn’t it?” Pauline asked, aware that he had deliberately skipped over it.

Chris finished cleaning the cow, put aside the basket and positioned the bucket. “Yes. I told you already, it’s not a nice place.” He turned and looked up at her. “You can stop asking about London now.”

“Okay. Tell me about one of your other dreams,” she said as he got himself comfortable on the stool and started milking.

He was quiet for so long she almost gave up. She thought he might finish this cow as well without saying anything. Then he spoke.

“I’m on my patio, back home, looking in the glass doors. Sophie is inside. She’s searching for something. She opens all the closet doors, checks behind the furniture and drapes, under the beds. I can follow her from room to room, which makes no sense, but that’s the way it always is. I can follow her, but she can’t hear me. I’m trying to get in, calling out to her, but she never hears. I can’t get the door open. She gets more and more frantic. And so do I. At the end, she’s crying.” He grunted, then continued the milking.

Pauline took a breath, a vivid image in her head. “Yeah, pretty straightforward,” she said.

“That’s the oldest one,” Chris said. “I’ve had that one right from the start. It’s always the same. Never changes. Some of the others, well.” He finished the cow, stripping the last drops of milk from her, and stood up. “So now I’ve told you, I’ll stop having that dream?”

“You know it’s not that easy.” She caught his eye. “But it’s a start.”

“Great,” he said, his face tight. He handed her the bucket, glanced at the other one on the floor, then back at her.

“I’ll come back for the others when you’re done,” she said, picking up the second bucket. She looked back at him from the barn door; he was still standing there, staring at the wall, biting his lip.

Later, he sought her out where she was hanging laundry. He paced, arms crossed.

“What is it?” Pauline asked.

“How is this going to work? Are you going to ambush me like that every day or so?”

“I didn’t mean to ambush you. I’m sorry. I knew you’d be alone, so I took the opportunity. How would you like it to work?”

Chris paced some more, so Pauline went back to hanging the clothes. She watched him. His expression bordered on angry.

“Cooper had this all planned, didn’t he? Did he tell you, in that letter?”

“He mentioned your nightmares, yes. His intentions were good, Chris. Surely you can see that.”

Chris huffed and stopped with his back to her. “I need to know how this is going to work.”

“Okay. Do you want to set a certain time? Like an appointment?”

“That seems silly.”

“Why? That’s the way we would have done it before. My office would be the place for opening up, for exploring things that make you uncomfortable.”

“
This
makes me uncomfortable,” Chris said. “Anyway, you don’t have an office now, do you?”

“There’s Dad’s study, but it’s so full of stuff we’d have a hard time squeezing in.”

“No,” Chris said, and started pacing again.

“Well, then we’ll just have to find a couple times a week when we can talk, wherever that happens to be.”

“Sure, okay.”

“There have to be some rules.” Pauline took a step closer to him and crossed her own arms. Chris turned to look at her. The anger had gone, but he narrowed his eyes.

“What rules?”

“This will be pointless unless you want to. You have to want to. Do you?”

He blinked a few times. “Yes.”

“Good. You have to trust me.”

Chris glanced away, then back. “Okay.”

“Everything we discuss will be totally confidential.”

He nodded. “I know.”

“It won’t be easy sometimes. I’ll push you if I have to.”

Chris swallowed, shifted his feet. “Okay.”

“My fees are outrageous,” she said, and when Chris jerked his head up in surprise, she grinned at him.

“I’ve got a fat bank account back in the States,” Chris said, his mouth twitching. “It’s all yours.”

Pauline stuck out her hand. “Shake on it.”

He raised his hand up, gripped hers, held on for longer than she would have expected. “Thank you,” he whispered.

* * *

A few days later, they met in the garage, just after lunch, wearing coats against the autumn chill.

Pauline patted a silver Polo hemmed in by assorted junk and coated with a layer of dust.

“My one big purchase in life,” she said, with a sigh. “Odd, isn’t it? And here it sits. I wonder if it will ever run again.”

“Petrol rations go up a bit every year, don’t they?”

“Enough to run the tractor. Not enough for a car. George’s is up on blocks out behind with a tarp over it. Amazing what we took for granted.” She wiped her dusty hand on her thigh.

Chris grunted. He perched on the edge of an old wooden crate, hunched up tight, fidgeting. “Okay, here we are. Have at it.”

Pauline sat on the stool by the workbench. “What do you mean?”

“Ask me questions or something. I don’t know what you want.”

“I don’t want anything. What do you want?”

“I don’t know. To be...normal.”

“There is no ‘normal.’ Everyone is different.”

“That’s a standard feel-good line, isn’t it?”

“Where do you want to start?”

“I don’t know.”

“At the beginning?”

“You mean when—? Um, no. Not that.”

“Okay, we’ll work up to that.”

“Fine.”

“You’ve never had any therapy at all, for anything?”

“No. Well, maybe. Yeah, some, maybe.”

“Maybe? Tell me about that.”

“Brother Luke tried. But I didn’t.”

“Who’s Brother Luke?”

“He was a monk, at the Monastery of Saint Crispin in Wheeling, New York. It was more of a commune, actually, by the time I got there. But I fit right in.” He ran a hand through his hair.

“When did you get there?”

“Um, I don’t know. It was summer. 2000? No, 2001.”

“So you’d been wandering around for some time.”

Chris nodded.

“And you chose to join a monastery?”

“Commune, and I didn’t choose to join, I just ended up there.”

“How?”

Chris hesitated, fidgeted on the crate.

“I got jumped on the road,” he said, eyebrows drawn together.

“You’ll have to explain a bit more.”

“Yeah, okay. I was heading north, toward Canada. I thought I might be able to get a ship there, since I had a British passport. I was traveling with another bloke, Stew. We’d met up by accident. He was a good sort, so we decided to go on together. We were on a road, not paying attention, and a group jumped us.” Chris stopped and put his head down into his hands.

“Go on,” Pauline said.

“Stew had a gun, a pistol—he’d been in the military—and I thought they would shoot us, but they decided not to waste the bullets. So they beat us. They started with Stew. Beat him with a baseball bat.” Chris’s voice had gone monotone. “They broke his legs. They laughed while they did it.” He took a ragged breath. “I told myself I didn’t care if they killed me. I was tired of walking, starving, with no end in sight. Once they beat him senseless, and he wasn’t moving anymore, they started on me.”

Pauline didn’t trust her voice to speak. She hid her hand in her lap as she dug her fingernails into her palm and concentrated on keeping a calm face.