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he doctor gave no helpful advice for Melissa. He prescribed her a tonic and mentioned rather against his better judgment that there was a local resident who practiced psychoanalysis.
John, a rather direct-minded man, did not think of approaching Augustine with his wife’s symptoms. The doctor had recommended psychoanalysis, and he took this recommendation.
Melissa went to see this specialist out of desperation.
“I don’t know that you can help me,” she said.
Professor Rowe gave Melissa his most professional, medical stare. “I can help you. You must put yourself in my hands, though, and open yourself up to the correct interpretation of these phenomena.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Imagine this room as a bubble, far away from the world and all its social values. Discard all shame and guilt when you are here. You must not bring those things with you into this room. Nothing shocks a psychoanalyst. We must look objectively, without any judgment, on all human things. Believe me, the deepest secrets in your psyche are no different than the deepest secrets of any other person. You may be unwilling to recognize your own wishes and desires and want to shove them into your unconscious, but they do not upset me.”
But there were parts of Melissa that she could not open up. Her inner censor was very strong.
The patient refused absolutely to use hypnosis. Though this annoyed Professor Rowe, he accepted it as a prejudice and determined to move forward with more standard methods.
“Let us start,” he said, “with the very first of these phenomena that you experienced.”
Melissa told him, with starts and stops, about finding the box of clothing in the middle of the kitchen floor. He questioned her closely about the incident.
“Your mother actually saw the clothing in the middle of the floor?”
“Yes.”
“So we know that it was actually moved.”
“Yes, it was,” she said.
“Your husband did not move it?”
“I never asked him. I didn’t think so.”
“Well,” said the professor, rationally, “before we begin studying this instance, I think we had better make sure your husband didn’t move the box for some reason.”
“Oh,” said Melissa, a little surprised at a solution of such simplicity.
Under the psychoanalyst’s orders, she spoke to her husband about the moved box of clothes. He confirmed, wide-eyed, that he had never moved it. Her heart sank.
During her next session, Professor Rowe took up this topic.
“You did not deny moving it at the time?”
“No, I told my mother I’d moved it.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Because I was afraid.”
“Of what were you afraid?”
“I don’t know.” This was always the telling phrase for the psychoanalyst. Anything the patient claimed not to know was a key to their repressions.
“You do know. You must tell me.”
“I just wanted her to think that everything was all right.”
“But it was not all right?”
“No.”
“Because there was a box of clothes on the floor.”
“Yes! It sounds crazy when you say it like that.”
“No, nothing sounds crazy. This is all the perfectly rational messages of your mind. We need to explore what they represent. What does the box of clothes mean to you?”
“It is my baby’s clothes.”
“What does it represent?”
“My baby.”
“That is the obvious meaning. But that is merely your conscious mind putting a logical interpretation on it. What exactly was in that box?”
“Just clothes. Sleeping shirts. Booties. Diapers.”
“What else? Just those things?”
“I don’t know. Just things. Just baby things.”
“I think there was something else. Think about it. Picture the box. Picture yourself packing the box. Folding items. What are you folding?”
“Baby clothes, baby things.”
“What things that are not clothes?”
“I don’t know.”
There was a pause. There was silence. The doctor let it go on.
”A blanket?” Melissa said.
“Ah, there was a blanket in the box?”
“Yes, the things from the crib, a blanket, a pillow.”
“You did not mention them before.”
“They are just baby things.”
“No, these things have significance. What does a blanket mean to you? A blanket and a pillow.”
“Sleeping things.”
“Yes, go on.”
“The things from her bed, from where she died.”
“Ah.”
“What does that mean?”
“So, these things mean death?”
“So many people die in bed.”
“Do they?”
“They do. Sick people die in their beds.”
“But your baby was not sick.”
“No, I guess not.”
“Who are you thinking of, who was sick and died in bed?”
“I guess... I suppose my father.”
“Your father was sick and died?”
“Yes.”
“Ah,” said the psychoanalyst. “Tell me about your father.”
“I never,” said Melissa, “liked my father.”
Melissa approached these sessions with a mixture of relief and trepidation. They discussed her father at great lengths. Professor Rowe seemed to feel that her relationship with her father was the key to many of her symptoms.
“The father is the creator of the daughter,” he said, “and the daughter is the creator of the baby. The link from generation to generation is the ever-moving recorder of the mind of God. Your link has been severed from your parent, and in turn your link was severed from your child. The phenomena in your mind are all imprints of the past, as you are an imprint of your father that carries on into the future, and your daughter is an imprint of you to carry on into the future. There is a message from God through these recurring phenomena. They are not psychoses, but misread telegrams from another plane. It is a terrible shame that my own daughter is ill. She is very gifted, and I believe that she would be a great help in your case.”
This perspective seemed slightly skewed, slightly not right, or perhaps simply beyond understanding, but Melissa enjoyed the attention of this intimate one-on-one relationship centered only on her own thoughts and feelings. She naturally played to Professor Rowe’s hints and leading questions, at the same time purging herself of her own feelings and emotions.
This did not make the baby’s crying stop, and Melissa grew paler and thinner as she accumulated sleepless nights.
The first time Charlotte woke to coherence, she spoke only in French. She did not seem to know that she was speaking French. Her parents would speak to her in English, and she would reply in French as if there were no difference at all. When they asked her why she was speaking French, she replied, “Que? Français?”
Otherwise, she seemed perfectly normal and began developing a healthy appetite. English words began appearing sporadically in her French, and the balance of languages eventually began to turn, until she was speaking pure English and always recognized that French was French.
“We should not send her back to Augustine,” said her father. “I don’t want anything like this happening again.”
“I agree with you,” said her mother. “I don’t know what that woman was doing, but this episode cannot be repeated.”
The parents, in agreement, did not mention the matter to their daughter. They merely stopped communication with Augustine, having already severed their financial arrangement due to their daughter’s illness. For her part, Augustine had grown wary of this girl who randomly lapsed unconscious during an important sitting, nearly scaring the mark out of his wits. She was willing to let her pupil fade into the background of her life.
Once Charlotte was more herself, Professor Rowe broached the topic of bringing her in to consult with a patient of his.
Melissa was sitting on the couch in Professor Rowe’s office when Charlotte walked into the room. Charlotte immediately fell to her knees and began to speak in a monotone voice:
“Tick-tick-tick. Time is ticking by. Time is passing away. Time to die, the time is coming, it must not be allowed to pass. The time winds around in a circle, the circle is continuous motion, the motion is eminent, the motion of the hand, the motion of the food. Spoon to mouth, life to death. Death is coming, death comes again, death comes. Tick-tick-tick, time is passing. Passing away, he must pass away, tonight, tonight, don’t let it pass away again, don’t let the opportunity pass away again...”
Melissa responded hysterically. She jumped up from the couch and began screeching.
“Liar! Liar!” She jumped toward Charlotte and was only held off from her by the quick action of Professor Rowe, who caught and held her. Charlotte collapsed on the floor, and Professor Rowe called for Miriam. From the floor, Charlotte continued to speak: “I release you, I release you, I release you.” She was still muttering it when her mother came to take her to bed.
The presence that was there in the room, the thing without body, Charlotte took into herself. It had been fighting to get in, but she only had touched the part of it that was John Peacock. Now, the part of it that was Melissa came to her. It rushed into her, a full force, with a feeling of self-knowledge. Cousin, child, sister, self. I crave you, and I cringe at your presence.
”I blame myself,” said Professor Rowe. “She was not strong enough.”
Melissa calmed herself. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“It is interesting,” said Professor Rowe. “Your reaction was a very strong one. It shows that Charlotte was channeling the message from God that has been so torturing you.”
“If it is a message from God,” said Melissa slowly, “then why do I fight against it?”
“It is the nature of humanity,” the Professor recited happily. “It is the nature of the human mind to repress that which it does not understand, to twist and misinterpret. The spiritual intruding on the physical is anathema to the human condition. The spiritual is the nemesis of the physical, and therefore the body interprets the intrusion of the spiritual as an intrusion of death. This is the basis of Freud’s writings regarding the death wish, and this is why your neurotic episodes are fixated on death and the dead. When do we go to God? At death. This is essential.”
Melissa blinked at him. “I feel different,” she said, and realized that it was true. “Something is different.”
“The release of psychic energy through my daughter,” he said. “I wish I had notes of what she said. Do you recall exactly what she said?”
“No,” Melissa said. “I don’t.”
“Time. She was speaking of time. Time and death, passing time, passing away. You see, the recurring theme. Death is a theme to us all.”
“I see, Professor.”
That night Melissa slept uninterrupted through the night.
Charlotte was not supposed to remember anything that happened in hypnotic states. These times were supposedly hidden from her conscious mind. They were intended to live in the darkness at the back of the mind, where all memories fled to once they were forgotten. Hypnosis, though, was a tricky thing. There certainly were times and ways in which Charlotte’s consciousness changed. There certainly were times and things that she didn’t remember.
There were also times that she exercised the skills that Augustine had taught her, skills of pliably giving to an audience what that audience wanted. Her father was a rich audience. His wants were so broad, so conditional, so ill-defined.
Then, there were other times.
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