LIFE IN THE TRENCHES
KAPPA-HEAD
“Let’s begin by talking about your brother.”
Dr. Cyprus’s voice is calm but firm. Randy feels his mind settle around the psychologist’s statement, like solute molecules upon the surface of a seed crystal. He feels his body settle into the yielding cushions of the couch. His eyes train on a corner of the ceiling, and follow the edges of its square motif gradually across the room.
“My brother,” Randy begins, but pauses at the croak of his voice, and the hollow silence it leaves. He clears the dry phlegm in his throat, and tries again. “My brother, well, where can I start? He’s always just been there. There’s- there’s no beginning to him, as far as I’m concerned.”
Dr. Cyprus is nodding, or at least that’s what Randy imagines from his vantage point on the couch. In past face-to-face consultations, Dr. Cyprus would always give a slight shake of his head whenever Randy spoke, perhaps as an acknowledgement that he was listening to, and responding to, what he was saying. It was always a slight shake, with no real change in the angle of the neck. It reminded him of the vibrations of a car antennae, disturbed into slight oscillation by the wind.
“Tell me the first memory that pops into your mind when you think about your brother,” he says, after a moment of silence.
At first Randy frowns and sighs at the seeming impossibility of the request. Wasn’t he clear that there were too many tangled memories to even begin? But without warning, images do begin to surface, and then out of those, one image floats to the top. And before he even realizes it, he is recounting a memory that has imposed itself upon his consciousness.
“I am at the beach,” he says, closing his eyes. “I must be two or three years old. There’s a wind blowing, and I can feel the sand sting my skin and sometimes go into my eyes. I look up, higher up on the shore, and I can see my parents and my brother sitting there. They are looking at me, with this- this happy, expectant look on their face- like they are waiting for the punchline to a joke. I think I am smiling too, in response to them- I’ve always been so stupid- so naive. Anyway, a wave suddenly comes crashing down on me, and for what seems like forever, I am tumbling over and over in a roaring darkness, with salt water in my eyes, my ears, my nose, my throat.”
Randy pauses. The memory of the ocean is real for him in that moment, and he feels disoriented, queasy even. He has to flutter his eyes open to train upon the ceiling in order to restore his equilibrium, and his sense of the present. After a few deep breaths, he closes his eyes and continues.
“When I come to- the world outside seems too bright and too loud. Beyond the sound of the air, the wind- I can see my parents, my brother, and they are laughing, laughing. I am on my hands and knees, and everything beneath me is soupy and white. And then, I see a couple of things at the same time, and it’s almost as though they are all in sync- my parents, my brother, with that same expectant look- and the soup beneath me starting to suck me backwards, like the sea is inhaling me in. I feel scared, I know what’s coming- and I reach a hand out towards my family, my brother on the shore.”
Randy again pauses. He can feel his heart racing. He almost expects a wall of water to crash down upon him, lying vulnerable upon the couch.
“So what happened next?” Dr. Cyprus’s voice maintains that strange equilibrium between disinterest and concern.
“Well, of course, I got pounded again. The wave fell, I felt myself tumbling over and over in the water. And I swallowed the sea.” Randy is about to stop talking, but there is a fragment of the memory that he did not expect. He finds himself stuttering out the next words, like someone tripping over things in the dark. “I was still in the water. Still in the darkness. And I called out- for help. For anyone to help. For anything to help. And- and that’s when-”
When Randy doesn’t proceed after a few seconds, Dr. Cyprus prompts him. “And that’s when what?”
Randy shakes his head, his hands out in front of him, fingers splayed like a fence. “No, that can’t be true,” he whispers, half to himself. “It can’t be.”
“What can’t be?”
“I-” Randy shakes his head again, this time with greater ferocity. “No.”
Dr. Cyprus inhales a long inhale. It sounds like the hiss before a gas explosion. Randy doesn’t hear the psychologist exhale. Instead, Dr. Cypress begins to speak, in that same measured voice. “You’re in a safe space,” he says. “You can tell me what happened.”
It’s clear that
