NOTHING COMPARES 2 U

Painful loss, stunning words one finds in their brain. I'm a math guy, not an English major. But there it is. A completely understated context, which is perhaps why they keep asking the same questions again and again. Mostly, I have no idea what they're asking about, or why.

You curse the stasis. Simple words, too easily understood, describe the loss with anger and awful accuracy. That's the problem. It's because it is so straight forward. It's why I don't think they're actually gone. That simply cannot be the simple explanation.

So it was that when eventually my lawyer came in, I only had a couple of questions.

When do I get to go home? No, not to St. Edwards but back to my bedroom? Since going to the Academy, I've only slept in that familiar space a few times - but it was always home-soil. Dad and mom even always accommodated with a signature yelling match. After both of us moved out, it was strange to be there and not hear the sounds from Paige's room. Paige calling our house, 'the looney bin'.

I was too embarrassed to ask the lawyer, 'can I have five minutes alone in my room, to retrieve some stuff? They won't find it, it's under the closet floor.' I was surprised by what he replied. 'Oh, they'll find it.'

More questions. When do they get back? That one, the lawyer did not answer. Because of the nature of this 'espionage problem', as he called it, he did not always have unfettered access to me - which he said he was challenging in court. He kept saying, though, 'look, son, your parents - they're gone. You have bigger issues now.'

Bigger issues than my upbringing? Bigger than my parents?

All the flowers that you planted mama, In the back yard
All died when you went away
I know that living with you mama was sometimes hard
But I'm willing to give it another try

More questions. When do I get to see Paige? Out of all the times Paige saw to me - especially when I was young - man, oh man did I need her now. I hated it. Now? All I can think about is, when will I see her?

The lawyer. Jus soli and Jus sanguinis. He said that all Americans have citizenship based on jus soli, a Latin term I'd never once heard about. That in The United States, I was an American unless it could be demonstrated that I was actually a citizen of another country.

Wow.

Mom and dad, they will walk in that door. Soon.

It's been seven hours and 15 days
Since you took your love away
I go out every night and sleep all day
Since you took your love away

WHAT DO THEY WANT?

I'm not sure what they want from me.

My parents, Elizabeth and Philip - they are no more. Every time there's a shout in here, I think it's her - scolding me for uneaten breakfast or undone homework. Or him, screaming that I'm not going to go to St. Edwards. That in and of itself is a bizarre, I will admit a little disorienting. They're gone. Probably gone to wherever Aunt Helen ended up. Yet, truly, both of them will simply walk back into whatever room I'm now locked into - Paige behind them telling my captors to be nice to me.

Being brought by the house by the prison staff that time, that was a gut punch. I mean that. I think they did it on purpose. The Beeman's house, it was so normal. Ours….. I just stared. I 'get' that one's old house always appears smaller…. but this…. the house was stripped to its boards. I'm not longer a kid, but growing up there - that was the only house I ever knew. It's gone.

Until St. Edwards Academy, that is. My lawyer says that going back to St. Edwards, 'will not be for a while…'

So, what do they want from me? I'm not even in anything 'high security'. The door to the prison-dorm is only locked at night. The front desk is not manned at every hour of the day. When I'd been taken to Falls Church, I was loaded into a van and noted that the sidewalk outside went straight out to the main road - no barriers, no gates or…. well, there're probably cameras all over.

My lawyer visits every second day. Complaining about his access each time.

Truth be told - especially for any of you security personnel reading this (ha!) - I'm in no mood to go anywhere as it is. Staying put right here is all I can handle. It's just fine. God, it just occurred to me that St. Edwards hockey is finished, I have no idea how we did in the regional tournament. I could ask, but it seems now so far away.

I probably could contact people there - Coach Bowman - but I'm too scared to. I want to have a chat with Ms. Chu. I have a whole list for Stan to do for me.

Mr. Beeman has been a rock through all this. He's pulled no punches. I now call him 'Stan' all the time. He's my only link with family, then again how sad is that? No one knows where Paige is - they are fairly sure, so Stan says, that she did not make it to Moscow with mom and dad.

Holy shit. Did I just write that? 'Moscow'!? (I've just spent 30 minutes looking out into the yard, I just caught myself staring vacantly at the words I'm writing. Like I wrote, I'm not an English major. I'm a math guy. None of this adds up.)

RECOVERED MEMORY THERAPY

What do they want from me?

Stan says - anything.

This journaling isn't exactly court mandated - so says Stan - but it gets read by my therapist who uses parts to design what happens when we meet. The therapist wants me to remember things from my childhood - Stan says that anything I can remember is 'useful'. Stan himself is doing what he, himself, hates. He's writing, too. He says he hates writing things down - all the 'infernal FBI reports' he has written in his career, he refers to them as a reason he once almost quit.

Made a quip about putting his reports on the 'mail robot' at The Bureau - that would guarantee they'd get lost. I didn't get the joke.

Stan, he says he's been told to focus on anything/everything from the old neighbourhood in Falls Church, 1981 and onwards. Me, I was 9 - coming up 10 - when the Beemans moved in across the street. Truthfully? I don't remember a time they weren't there. Matthew Beeman, he was older and so cool. Mrs. Beeman - Sandra - well, everyone knows anyway what I thought about her. No one needs to recover memories about that.

Okay. The therapist says I have a problem focusing. No shit.

So I'm going to focus. We'd just moved to Falls Church. I think I was 5. Paige was already in school. I was eating breakfast, and mom was yelling at me, because I wasn't quick enough or something like that. She needed to 'go to work', whatever that was. Me, I was good at tuning out parents, even that young. Mom yelled way too much. Dad scolded. That's what I remember.

I hated the phone. Mostly I hated it because it meant mom and/or dad would then be absent. For forever, or so it seemed when you were 5. That meant that Paige became the boss-of-me. She always thought she knew what to do - how to be a mom. She didn't. She would try, but would always leave something out. Like the time she made our lunches, and did not cut up apple. She'd cut her hand trying, then tried to hide the cut from teachers at school. But that one was later.

THE PHONE

But back to when I was 5. Dad was somewhere. Mom was yelling for me to finish, she needed to go. I was tuning her out. Then the phone rang. Then mom tuned out, the phone always stopped her yelling. She listened then hung up, went down to the laundry room - leaving me by myself. At least the yelling stopped. I remember being confused, because all my laundry was done. Mom had done it - far better than Paige ever did.

She then came back into the kitchen, started putting stuff away.

She then got me ready to go out. I remember her pulling me off my chair, grabbing my arm so roughly it hurt. It must have been late fall, she got my heavy coat on to me, the one I hated. And my shoes. I could never manage the laces, Paige would do them for me, I hated her for that. She'd call me a baby. Mom did my laces, saying that she had to hurry.

Then I remember perhaps the first thing that I remember mom actually saying, it's because she swore. "Oh fuck," mom had used the 'f' word, "Philip will be back soon - I'll leave the brat."

Unlike Paige, mom literally did not know what to do next. Unlike dad. Dad should have been our mom. Paige should have been. Mom looked at me and said, "don't go anywhere. Go play or something."

Back then I did not know who 'the brat' was. All I knew was that she left me right there, right in the entry-way. Instead of going out the front door, mom went to the garage and drove away.

Me, I just stood there. Mom never let me go upstairs to my room with my shoes on. But I went up anyway. I was that mad.

I don't know when it was, but I went outside. I remember going next door, no one was home - but their dog was barking, so I didn't stay. I liked that dog, but neither mom nor dad made friends with our neighbours.

(As an aside - I think that's why we became so close to the Beemans, mom and dad had mysteriously wanted to socialize with them, Stan and Sandra. I remember Paige - 13 at the time the Beemans moved in - telling me that, 'finally, we may actually have some friends on this street'.)

But back to when I was 5. The therapist says not to worry about wandering in the writing. She will figure it out.

Paige had once taken me to a confectionery, a corner store way down the sidewalk near the entrance to our street from the main road. Paige had got in trouble for that - once again, Paige had done that when mom and dad were on one of their extended work trips. At that time I thought my parents must have been movie stars or something, because mom had yelled at us… 'we cannot attract attention!'

Well that day when I was alone, I remember the police car. Like I say, I was five. I thought I was being arrested - for not obeying my mom. For wearing my shoes up in my room back home. For not waiting for dad to come home, for not listening to Paige. I remember crying like crazy. I hated crying. I wet myself. I hated wetting myself. Right there in the police car.

I was so, so ashamed.

DAD

Okay, this is important. What I've written is not the actual 'recovered memory'. As the therapist says, if I can write it, it does not need recovering. She uses it as a 'starting point'. For Stan's purposes the real work is to come.

Okay, back to when I was five.

I had wet myself, right there in the police car. That was horrible.

Then the police car-door opened, outside was dad, standing there looking at me - with that stern look of his. The policeman looked in, saw the mess I'd made, then asked, "son, do you know this gentleman?"

Of course I did, I told him, 'he's my dad.'

Dad had towels in his trunk, he got them and I sat on them - he drove me back home, saved the lecture for inside. He said lots of stuff very sternly, said something about, 'I kept saying that kids would get in the way, but oh no….' '…we can't be attracting the police….'

Dad got dinner for me and Paige that evening. I was not hungry. I remember still being scared. I thought dad would get into trouble for me wetting myself. Get in trouble from mom. They argued all the time.

When mom got home - two days later - I remember she was deaf. Couldn't hear. I mean, you remember something like that. Dad would say something to her, she couldn't hear. All she would say was, 'it went off right beside my ear.' At least that's what Paige said she'd heard mom say. Mom hated it when dad yelled, but this time was yelling at him to 'speak up!'

Okay, that's it for one of my earliest memories - one that is not 'recovered', as they say. I still to this day remember the shame of peeing myself. That's a story I've never even told Stan, I mean Stan was a cop - sort of.

RECOVERING MEMORIES IS THEIR JOB, NOT MINE

Stan says that anything I can write will move this therapy along. He asked if I'd consent to them using drugs. Absolutely fucking not. My lawyer guides me though that. Although he is right up front - a lot of what I'm facing is not covered in ordinary 'rights' Americans have.

I now have some idea what he meant - 'it's not even clear your national status.' Jus soli. Run that by me again!? I think I'm catching on, but what the fuck does that even mean?

I just walked in to find you here with that sad look upon your face
I should have changed that stupid lock, I should have made you leave your key
If I'd known for just one second you'd be back to bother me

I want them back.

(.… to be continued.)