We keep coming back to it, don’t we? That book that he wrote. Away with the Fairies: A Study in Trauma-Induced Psychosis. Maybe because it played such a crucial role in everything that happened later. It changed the course of fate, I think. Changed us all.
The book itself is rather dry. It recounts Dr. Martin’s relationship with a young female patient, thinly disguised as “C—,” who later went on to face murder charges. Dr. Martin writes about a troubled young girl who has lost her ability to tell reality from fantasy. His theory is that she had been a victim of sexual and emotional abuse from a very early age, and has constructed a world of her own to escape to. The real problems begin when her fantasy world spills into the real world, confusing the two in her mind. She is living in both worlds at the same time. Her fairy friends are as real to her as her family and schoolmates. Maybe even more real. He used Pepper-Man as an example of how “C—’s” imaginary world evolves: She is attempting to heal herself, by altering her cast: the kindly monster from her childhood (her abuser), who gives her gifts, but also hurts her, is transformed into a prince in her adolescence. He becomes a beautiful savior who has come to take her away from her cruel family. His counterpart in reality then becomes the man who would be her husband. Even though it seems irrational for healthy people, this attempted healing is actually a sign of a highly functioning survival instinct. Her mind is struggling to heal the wounds inflicted on her by rewriting the story and erasing the things that hurt.
As stories go, his is not a bad one. Dr. Martin had taken it all and managed to wrap it all up in one neat little bundle. Applied his magnifying glass to it and knitted a new narrative from the bits and bobs. About Mara, he said: The abortion was another violation of her body, another situation in which she was completely helpless and at the mercy of her abusers. Her mind gets to work and unravels the incident and lets her write a new one, in which she saves the child by taking it to the fairy mound (where the dead still live). The child is lost in the real world, but lives on in her fantasy land. She copes with her loss by not coping at all because she does not have to. The child is still there, only displaced—allowed to grow up in a way that C— had not been able to do.
No wonder Mara was upset, poor child.
He spends quite some time searching for the origins for my “delusions,” examining everything from the fairytale books I had as a child, to the selection of books on folklore and myths available at the S— library at the time. It’s unclear if he was satisfied with his search.
He doesn’t say right out that “C—” had in fact killed her husband, but notes: If she had murdered her spouse as the result of a lovers’ quarrel or a relationship grown stale, her mind would have quickly been at it again, rewriting the story to heal the wounds. Maybe he had not been human at all, but a man made from twigs and river stones? Maybe the real prince had been hiding inside him, and the body in question, with its flaws and appetites, didn’t truly matter? Maybe, as her mind keeps justifying her deeds, the real husband has been dead all along, and it is her fairy consort, her childhood solace, who has been posing as him for years? No crime, then, to dismember his body and wheelbarrow the pieces into the woods …
Your mother and grandparents were not pleased by this book, I can tell you that. Dr. Martin’s star crash-landed in a pile of shit in their yard, stinking up the whole neighborhood.
“Where is this coming from?” Mother asked me on the phone. Screamed at me, really. “Why these allegations now? Is it because we weren’t there at the trial?”
“It’s just a book,” I tried to tell her.
“But it’s presented as the truth, Cassie. Everyone will read it. We won’t ever recover from this, don’t you have any compassion for your mother and father?”
“Not really, no. I haven’t seen any of you for a while. Sometimes I forget you’re even there.”
“Well, don’t you think that we at least deserve a little respect? Raising you was hard. You were not an easy child—”
“I know, I was bad, wasn’t I?”
“Yes, you were. You just never could seem to do anything right—and yes, maybe I was harsh at times, but that doesn’t mean I’m accountable for whatever became of you in life. What poor choices you made…”
I couldn’t help but chuckle at her outburst. Which only enraged her further:
“Stop laughing at me, Cassie! What is this? Your revenge? I will have you know that you are responsible too, for everything that happened. Had you only not been so ba—”
I hung up the phone.
I didn’t hear her voice again until the funeral.
I can imagine it was hard on them. The book caused a lot of stir, and the press was back on my case, following me around and snapping pictures, and taking pictures of my family, too, whenever they dared leave the house. I saw a picture of Mother once, on the front page of a newspaper, her head wrapped in a scarf, large Hollywood sunglasses. Olivia, too, wore hats, broad brimmed and heavy with ornamental flowers and bows.
I always refused interviews. I couldn’t stomach talking about it and wanted to keep my mock anonymity intact. Dr. Martin did a few TV shows, though, where he discussed “C—” at length with other doctors and survivors of abuse. In the end I think that book created a little more compassion for people who have been through a lot, and that’s worth something, isn’t it?
But then there was Mara.
I hadn’t expected her to react to the book in the way that she did. Hadn’t thought it would affect her much at all. She was fiery, of course, had always been that, but I hadn’t realized it would cause her such pain.
I even called Dr. Martin to warn him about the strength of her feelings:
“She is quite upset,” I told him, “now that she has read it. She is particularly upset about the story you told of her origins.”
“In what way would you say she is upset, Cassie?” Dr. Martin sounded wary on the other end.
“She is blaming me for not taking my revenge. She says that she will do it for me.”
“Cassie, I want you to take a deep breath and prod a bit inside yourself … Do you share Mara’s feelings?”
“No,” I said at once. “I don’t think it happened that way at all.”
“But you do, don’t you? You know what I wrote is true.”
“Truth-shmuth…”
“Cassie…”
“I’m sorry—I’m just trying to do what you say and prod my insides, but these are all just Mara’s feelings, not something that we share. I even feel a bit guilty—I admit—for not sharing them.”
“How come?”
“Well, it’s like she wants something from me, wants me to blaze like she does, and that I should be ashamed—she thinks me weak for not acting. For not ‘raising arms,’ if you see what I mean?”
“But you did that, Cassie. You did fight back, only you did it in your own way, and Mara is proof of that.”
“Because I made her up?”
“Just that. You fought back with the tools you had at your disposal.”
“Somehow I don’t think that will do as an explanation to her.”
“What do you think she will do, then, with these angry feelings?”
“I don’t know, but I’m worried.”
“Maybe you should consider hospital one more time? Or take me up on my offer and accept a prescription—”
“No, Dr. Martin. No. I will lose them all, then, and I don’t want that.”
“I understand that it’s hard to let go, but you wouldn’t want Mara to hurt anyone, right?”
“Of course not, that is why I’m calling you—for advice.”
“I am really obligated to tell someone if I think you pose a threat to yourself or someone else, or if I think that Mara does.”
“Do you, though?”
“You certainly have me worried…”
I gave a small laugh, insecure and shivering. “Why do you think she is so mad?” I whispered into the phone.
“Well, I think Mara may be changing just as Pepper-Man did, because you need her to be something else now. Maybe she really is your daughter, in a sense, a part of you that belongs to you but that grows independently, becoming a force to be reckoned with and surprising even you.”
“I am sure she will disagree, but please, go on…”
“Maybe Mara is your anger that you never allowed yourself to feel, because you couldn’t afford it. You are stronger now, though, the book is out there and thousands of people have read your story. You can allow yourself to be angry now, people on TV even encourage you to be angry. No harm will come to you for it. Maybe Mara has become the embodiment of that anger.”
“My child of pain?”
“Just that…”
“Or just a very angry daughter who has just learned something bad once happened to her mother.”
“That too.”
“So what do I do?”
“You have to find out where her rage is going, if she’s a threat to anyone.”
“And if she is?”
“Then you must commit yourself, Cassie, there really is no way around it.”
“How will that help with Mara?”
“Trust me, Cassie. It will.”
I never did commit myself to the hospital, though, even after I realized what Mara could—would—do. I knew it wouldn’t help one bit. Rather it would make things worse, with me not being there to calm her.
She once said she went to see Dr. Martin before he died, but I don’t know if it’s true or not.
“What did you say to him?” I asked her. We were sitting on my porch, watching the sunset, sharing a jar of faerie tea between us. The very same jar that became the beginning of Golden Suns.
“At first I didn’t say much at all. He was in his office, typing, and I just stood there in the corner where the light didn’t reach and watched him.”
“That was not very kind of you. You know how people hate being watched from the shadows.”
“Well, I wanted to see him.”
“And then what? What happened?”
“He coughed a bit, sipped his cocoa…”
“And?”
“I went over to him and stood before him, looked him in the eyes when he raised his head. He made a sound, the kind they make, like an outburst—or a scream…”
“He was surprised, then?”
“Of course. Then I said, real slow, so that I knew that he heard every word: ‘Now you have seen a faerie.’”
“You didn’t.”
“Of course I did.”
“And did he really see you?”
“Of course he did.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. I left. I think I scared him. I hope I did.”
“You shouldn’t have scared poor Dr. Martin.”
“Well, nothing to do for it now.” She sipped her tea. “With him being dead and all.”
“Yes,” I said, “such a shame.”
We finished our tea in silence.