Ingrams & Assoc 4: Beneath the Surface Ch. 02

That one came out of the blue. I thought I'd successfully buried those feelings years ago. Although, being honest with myself -- something I'd never been with the Child Welfare System therapists I had to endure for years -- most of the feelings were unfocused anger, and more sadness and grief at being denied the relationship with my parents that most children had. I had vague ideas that these feelings were related to my sleep difficulties. The therapists had tried medication, but it didn't really work. My feelings were strong but very vague -- being asked this question drew them into focus.

"No. No one ever told me. I'm aware there is a police report, but I've never seen it. The victim isn't important enough to see it, apparently. I asked a few times, but was told it was 'better for my emotional growth' if I didn't."

My bitterness was very apparent.

"Yeah, I can imagine. Or maybe I can't. I know, though. I've read the report. Do you want to know? I know who the guy is, what happened to him after the accident, everything. Do you want to know?"

"Is? He's still alive?" I wanted to know.

"Yep. He lives in a trailer park on the west coast now. It might interest you to know that you and your parents weren't the only victims in that accident. And it was an accident. He wasn't drunk; he was tired. The trucking company he'd been working for was pushy; they'd lost another driver that week and he'd already done a sixty hour week. He shouldn't have been driving, was tired, took a corner slightly too fast, hit a wet patch, slid into the oncoming path of parents car, and ... well, you know the rest."

She paused, and took another sip of the margarita, and continued, "After the accident, he totally took it personally. While he was never found legally responsible -- to the point of anything big happening to him - he cascaded into the bottle, lost his job, his wife and kid and hasn't really come out of it since. He lives in a trailer, and is a grounds man at a golf course, in a town called Eugene, in Oregon. He's a broken man. While you lost a lot in that accident Thomas, you weren't alone."

I considered what she had to say. How did I feel about this new information? Was it even true? What she believed she knew and what the truth is weren't necessarily the same. I felt anger, and I felt sadness, and I felt lonliness for the parents I lost but couldn't remember. There was definitely some anger towards this man, but also sympathy. We were the same, kind of. Both had our lives robbed by that moment. Something occurred to me.

"Was the company he worked for ever brought up in court over this?" I asked, leaning forward, suddenly very engaged.

"By who, Thomas? You were a kid and in hospital. You had a court appointed legal guardian, and that was it. There were no reasons for the police to get involved. It was an open and shut case. They must have breathed a sigh of relief, though."

"Are they still around?"

She smiled a conspirator's smile, and said, simply, "Yep."

"And you know who they are?"

I got another "Yep", and a second smile.

I was desperately attempting an air of nonchalance, and not fooling anyone.

"You wouldn't happen to know a good lawyer, would you?"

She picked up her margarita, and slurped on the straw, deliberately drawing out the moment, a smile dancing around her mouth as she did so.

And then I got one final, "Yep."

And then she said, "And what's more, his fees are prepaid, and he's already on the case, preparing documents. He's just waiting for your call. There are issues. Statutes of limitation and stuff like that. But they also might really want to avoid dredging this up, so we'll see. Can't hurt to try."

I sat there, not sure what to feel. Something occurred to me.

"The driver? What's his name?"

"His name is Kyle Partridge. Wait a minute Thomas, you aren't thinking of going after him, are you? He's got nothing else to give you?"

"No, I was wondering if he'd ever got anything from that company -- what's it called?"

"Mega Rapid Trucking. Wait...Wait a second. You are actually asking if the man who killed your parents got anything from the company he worked for, after the accident?"

"Yeah... I dunno. If he was pushed too hard... well, we've all been there, right?"

"Again, Thomas, just so I understand it. You are actively looking to help this guy out? I just need to hear you say it? Are you actually...forgiving him?" Megan was looking at me with an expression I couldn't read. Not amazement or empathy. Just...something.

"Look, it's not like I'm looking to send him a Christmas card, Megan. I hate him on one level. How can I not? But, it's not all on him, right? From what you say he was pushed. Well, then we should push back at those that pushed him? If he's as broken as you say. But... Do I forgive him? Fuck no. HE TOOK MY PARENTS FROM ME."

I was loud with that last statement, and I looked around after I realized I was getting aggravated. No one was paying attention, but then it also looked like everyone was really not paying attention really hard.

"Look," I said, urgently, but in a lower tone, "It's a long time. I don't know what you expect me to feel now, bringing all this up. A round of applause for finding this out, and having a lawyer on tap for me to sue the trucking company. But, I dunno. Asking me how I'm feeling about the guy who killed my parents, inadvertently or not, what the fuck do you think I feel about it? With respect, Megan, it's a damn stupid question. And you've gone and riled me up now, and for what? To get your therapist kicks? Well, ok. Your patient is pissed. His parents and dead and you've successfully got him agitated about it. Well done. I'm sure Freud would have something to say about it."

Megan's expression -- whatever it was -- softened. Then she sighed, delicately "Thomas, I'm sorry. I know I just dumped this on you. We were talking about ethics, then we got on to this. The thing is, I don't know what you are feeling about this. I've read the reports on you as a child. The people writing those reports were, to put it bluntly, incompetent. They were cheap, and the system likes cheap. They gave you the most basic treatment and frankly, even I can see how wrong they were about so many things. I did need to know. I think, perhaps, I went about it wrong, but you've got to see, I have all this information, and I want you to know it. I don't know how I could have broached this subject without pissing you off. Can you see why I did it in a public place?

"The thing is, with your kind of situation -- your attitude towards society, your face and your reaction to it, what you've gone through, helping April and me... everything is interconnected. One thing feeds into another, all starting with the accident. I'm wondering if by trying to address some of the root of your issues might not...ripple down, so to speak? You're an interesting man Thomas. More than you think, and not just clinically..."

I honestly didn't know what to make of that last statement, so I didn't say anything.

She smiled at me, the brittle smile of someone trying to pave over a mistake.

"Hm. I can see you don't know how to take that."

The smile suddenly became more genuine, and she absently pushed her hair over her ears from where it had tucked itself behind them, taking a drink and daring me to say something.

"You don't like your ears, do you?" I said, randomly.

"What?" she asked, surprised, as she put the drink down.

"Your ears? You don't like them. You keep pushing your hair over them. It's the only thing I can think of as to why you do that?"

"I do?" she said, self-consciously, her hand going to her ear.

"Yeah. You don't like your ears, do you?" I leaned forward, reaching up and, gently, brushing her hair back, over her ear. One of the nice things about being so tall is the length of my arms. I could do this easily, without having to stand up and lean too far forward. Her eyes never left me as I did it, she didn't flinch and never moved a muscle.

"I..." she said, for once at a loss for words. Eventually, she pulled herself together as I sat back and said, "No, I don't. I think I have weird shaped ear lobes. I've never liked them. I guess I hide them...I've never really thought about it."

She looked at me strangely for a moment and then said, quieter, and more as an after thought, "No one has ever noticed that before..."

She took a last sip of her drink and then said, brightly, "Are you done with yours? 'cause this margarita...well, it was ok, but nothing great. We ready for some hardcore shopping now?"

I sighed. Obviously our deep and meaningful conversation was over. For now.

I wearily got up, stretched, and was somewhat alarmed to hear something pop somewhere.

"If I must..."

The next morning, I got up early. The dreams were still there, and I did my best to be quiet and just made some coffee and sat outside, watching the horizon slowly increase in color. Being on the west coast, we didn't get to watch the sun rise. The sun set on the water, and it was awesome, but sunrise was less dramatic. Just a gradual increase in light, until the sun peaked over the top of the house.

I had a sudden thought, and went back into the house and grabbed my violin.

Back outside, I started tuning it. It's amazing how fast string instruments get out of tune -- differences in temperature do different things to the strings, the bow, the wood -- not that this was made of wood, but the point is still valid.

After limbering up a bit, I started to play some music, as softly as I knew how. First, some Nicos Hatzopulos, playing Carol's Theme, seguing into Vivaldi, with a few selections from his Four Seasons. Some of those are tricky, without other instruments to back you up, so I had to be careful with my selections. Then a little Bach, some Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, and finally, a tune I'd come up with myself called the Desert Song.

When I was done, I sweating -- it's amazing how much effort standing and pushing a bow back and forth can induce - and I just watched the skyline brighten further, breathing a bit, put down the violin, and turned to go in. I found Megan, leaning against the doorway. She was only wearing a shirt, and her legs were bare, a cup of the coffee I'd made gently steaming in her hands and she honestly looked like a nymphet -- or what I imagined a nymphet might look like. Her hair was loose, she was makeup-less -- basically as naked as the day she was born, with the exception of the shirt. I was taken aback -- normally I play alone, in my little space, or in the tunnels. Surprisingly, there are a couple of places where the echoes create awesome acoustics down there, and with the right music, it was as if you had an ensemble.

I was a little tense. When someone has heard you play, its as if they have a piece of you. Particularly when you didn't know they were listening.

I didn't move, as she pushed herself off the frame and stood, in the raising daylight, and just said, simply, "That was beautiful Thomas. What a wonderful way to start the day."

She turned to go inside, then paused and looked back and said, softly, "I think the people capable of creating something as beautiful as that usually have quite a lot of beauty inside them. It's just something I've observed."

Then she went inside.

The day itself was relatively sunny -- we just grabbed some towels and went to the beach, where I got to slather myself in SPF 50 -- when you've been down in tunnels for as long as me, you get to be as white as white can be, and the sun in San Diego will burn you like a matchstick, and I was smart enough to know that. And Megan had a very amusing time, slathering my back, and then asking me to do the same to her. She thought my reluctance to lay hands on her body was an absolute hoot, and kept asking me to "do her boobs again. Go on. Yes, BOOBS!" and so on. In the end I smacked her ass to get her to stop, which was also a mistake because it cued up endless comments regarding "promises, promises" and "I'll be a good girl, daddy, I promise" and so on. It was ribbing I wasn't used to and I ended up regularly turning red without any help from the sun.

She taught me to body surf with a boogie board, which was comical, me being so tall and not even remotely fitting on it.

That night we had dinner and I could tell she was slightly unsettled -- she was all bubbles and light talk and nothing substantial was discussed. It was all very superficial, and I had no idea how to react, so I just smiled and nodded a lot. I spent some of the evening talking about how water is purified for drinking, and the kinds of stuff that gets added to it by over-zealous government water agencies. I could tell she was genuinely interested.

The next day, we went shopping at the local Safeway. I grabbed a bunch of stuff separately from her, and got it all bagged before she checked her stuff out, using my own money. I had an idea and wanted to surprise her with it.

We spent the day doing very little, and just before dinner time, I went to find the paper bags -- this is California after all -- with the stuff I'd bought, and dragged them into the kitchen. Megan was playing with the coffee maker. I don't know why.

"Right, pizza for dinner tonight. I got you a basic cheese one, and got some tomatoes, since I saw you liked those."

She turned and raised an eyebrow quizzically at me. "I do?"

"I think so. You always seem to eat them with every meal. That or ketchup."

"Well, are you just Mr. Observant?" she replied, a little pouty smile on her face. "What else do you have there, Wolfgang Puck?" She gestured to my bags.

"Aha. I see you've seen through my..." I couldn't figure out the word, so I settled for just pulling the bottles out.

"Tada. We are making Margaritas? You want to find the best one? We'll MAKE IT!"

I pulled out a bottle of Patron, some lime juice, Triple Sec, salt, lots of frsh strawberries ('cause Megan likes the strawberry kind) and anything else I could think of that we might use to make a good margarita. Ok, so I didn't really know what was in a Margarita, but I had asked. And was told its fine to experiment. I just wanted to have a fun evening, and I thought an evening of do-it-yourself bartending and drinking would be just that. And thoughts of her spilling any more information than she already never even were considered. Yeah, right.

The thing is, I'm not stupid. Oh a shut in and social backwards, sure. A man disabled by his own self-view, certainly. Someone damaged by the lack of deep personal relationships, no question. But I'm not stupid. While I don't have that much real person-to-person experience, I can still tell when someone is putting up a wall, and Megan was. There was like three Megans. One was the "Fun Megan" -- and this one seemed genuine although I had no base line to compare to. When we weren't talking about her work, she was bubbly, talked a lot, said a lot of funny, but accurate things. It was off hand and thoughtless, but...there was something so appealing about it. And then there was "Professional Megan" -- that appeared when she was talking about work, or others that she worked with, or experiences that had happened as a result of her job. She became less flippant, and way more disciplined. Her personal flavor -- if you can call it that -- still showed, but her comments were much more restrained and carefully considered. Questions I put to her were deflected in various ways -- nothing was revealed that she didn't want me to know. I had to be with her for several days to start seeing the difference, but it was there.

And then there was "Doctor Megan" -- the therapist. When she was in this mode, it was like a mixture of the other two modes. Very controlled flippancy. Everything said was considered, had a point, and even if it wasn't obvious to me, it was to her. It was all going somewhere.

But what's more, she could jump from one mode to another seamlessly, and it took a lot of paying attention to see when the shift occurred. If you hadn't spent a lot of time with her, consecutively, you might never notice it. But it was there, and I was just starting to get a handle on it. At the time, I never even considered that this, too, was an act, put on to see how smart I was. So I thought that, perhaps, getting her a little drunk might puncture some of that professional wall she erected. Plus, I wanted to mess around with booze, in a way I'd never done before.

I produced the supplies and said, "Surprise!"

She laughed out loud, her voice making a tinkle. Megan's voice, when she laughed, went up an octave.

"Well, alrighttttttty then," she said, doing that Jim Carey voice from Ace Ventura. Yes, I watch movies. I'm a social recluse, not dead.

So that's what we did. And to my chagrin, even as she got progressively drunker - as did I - I couldn't think of how to ask a question that wouldn't instantly get Megan's Radar pinging. So I didn't. We made drinks, tried them, remixed and tried again.

At one point, she giggled as she spilled yet another concoction, asking, "So, Thomas, are you tryin' to get me drink...dunk...drunk, so you can try and take advantage of me, sir? Cos, as I fink we demonstratededed pevios...previosly, I can take. Care. Of. Myself." She punctuated each of the last four words by prodding me in the chest, weaving only a little.

I was drunk too. I had never really had this kind of drink before, or at least not so much of it. I was surprised that it felt kinda good. I was buzzed, and able to say and do things I never could before. I figured it was partly the company, partly the booze, but whatever. It was allllll good.

"Never, my lady," I said, trying to prostrate myself and just banging my head on the table instead. "Ow."

She grabbed my head and rubbed it better, kissing the crown of my head.

"Does my ickle baby feel better now??" she burbled.

"Thomas?" she said, using an inquiring voice.

"Yes?" I said, muffled, since I was still bent over and she had my head in her hands. I noticed she had really red nail polish on her toes, through the flip-flops she was wearing.

"The hookers in Vegas? Did they..um...kiss you at all?"

Wow, where did that come from? I didn't answer as I tried to think about the answer I should give. Which was hard because all the blood wasn't in my head, and the world was starting to spin a bit.

She pulled me upright, and looked at me intently, going from eye to eye with her stare.

"Did they? I really want to know?"

I weaved on the spot, and just went for broke. I mean, the truth will set you free, right?

"No. I mean, come on Megan. Look at me. Who'd want to make out with me? I'm not exactly Chris Pine here."

We both stood there, gently weaving, and suddenly she pushed me and said, contemptuously, "You're an idiot, you know that? Thomas? You know? An idiot."

She walked away with purpose, muttering to herself. I just grabbed the counter behind me, to help myself stand still. This was all too serious for me.

She walked out into the garage, then back again, carrying something. I saw it was a footstool. She dropped it in front of me, setting it up, and I heard words like "moron" and "clueless" and "gormless" being muttered and then she had it set up.

"Right," she said, not weaving as much. "I'll show you who'll kiss you, idiot."

And gingerly, she climbed up on the steps, balancing very carefully on them, she reached out, face to face with me, wrapped her arms around me neck, and laid a smacker on me, the likes of which I've never had before. Or since, honestly.

Tongues, lips, heads at an angle, passion, you name it, it was there.