The Uses of Enchantment Read online

  Mary returned the yearbook to the bookshelf. Instinctively, she began the methodical search for the book she’d searched for countless failed times, the book that, according to Maxie, had ruined her mother’s life. Appropriately, her signed copy of Miriam: The Disappearance of a New England Girl, by Dr. E. Karl Hammer (for “Miriam” it said), had become, somewhere between college and her first three post-college apartments, unfindable. Still she’d managed to convince herself each time she slept in her bedroom that she’d simply overlooked it last Christmas, last summer. She felt the familiar disappointment rising as she ticked off each book spine with her eyes, head cocked to the left, the possibilities dwindling with each tick until she’d reached the end of the shelf.

  The book, as usual, was gone.

  Of course it was. Though she had no proof to support this conviction, she knew her mother had taken the book, an act of theft that Mary had clung to over the years as a sign of her mother’s continuing if ambivalent affection for her. In truth, she realized, she’d looked for the book each time she visited home, not to find it, but to make certain it was still missing. And yet today its absence registered not as promising, but as devastating and permanent. On previous days her mother had been alive and angry and so it remained possible that, being both alive and angry, she could still forgive Mary—never directly, this was not the Veal family way, but through the simple reappearance of a long-vanished book.

  Mary retrieved her overturned mug from the carpet, resting it on her lap. The mug pressed against her robe; she heard the crinkle of paper in the pocket. Despite herself she thought: It’s from her. Her mother had left her a note in her robe before she died—of course she had—knowing that Mary would find it when she returned home for the funeral. Mary withdrew the note, heart thumping.

  We are so sorry for you!!

  Mary regarded the note wryly, pulse winding down to normal then past normal and dipping toward leathery fatigue, the dull beat of a girl whose dead mother has no intention of communicating with her from the beyond. She smoothed the flowered stationery, folded it in two, pressed it between the end pages of her yearbook alongside the headlines. It seemed the perfect, self-mocking addition.

  Notes

  FEBRUARY 18, 1986

  My first session with Mary Veal took place on an overcast Tuesday afternoon. Mary had been referred to me by my suite mate Rosemary Biedelman, who had received the case from our mutual colleague Dr. Antoine Hicks-Flevill, chief psychiatrist at Mass General. I considered the fact that I’d inherited such a high-profile case an extremely lucky turn, not to mention a vote of professional confidence. Given my troubled record with teenage female patients, Roz was, as she didn’t need to state as she handed me the file, giving me a second chance. No one in the city of Boston, in other words, less deserved this patient than I did, and yet Roz believed that my familiarity with her personality type, even if this familiarity was defined by failure, made me a natural, if counterintuitive, choice. Which is not to say that Roz was doing me a selfless good turn. Roz worked part-time as a mental health adviser at the prep school attended by the patient; she had complained to me more than once that she had had quite enough of overprivileged non-traumas. So we were doing each other a favor, Roz and I, with the debt weighing a bit more heavily on my side. It was an ongoing inequity to which I was accustomed.

  In addition to basic biographical data and the summary notes made by H-F, Mary Veal’s file included twenty pages of Xeroxed newspaper articles from the previous fall that factually recounted what had become, in and around Boston, the stuff of local legend. Before she became a local legend, however, Mary was a sixteen-year-old junior at Semmering Academy, a private girls school with an enrollment of two hundred students located in a wealthy Boston suburb. Described by peers and teachers as an emotionally reserved girl, Mary was frequently overshadowed by her two sisters, Regina and Gabrielle. Regina, a fledgling poet, possessed a dramatic and demanding temperament, could count few schoolmates among her friends, but nurtured intimate relationships with her female teachers. Gabrielle, Semmering’s prized athlete in three sports, was a remotely charismatic girl and nearly expelled three times: twice for cheating, once for smoking marijuana on school property. Mary, by contrast, achieved average marks in all her classes; she had never posed a disciplinary problem; she had shown, according to her headmistress, “neither prowess nor passion.” Until she disappeared, few of the teachers and students at her school even knew who she was.

  The day Mary disappeared—November 7, 1985—was a perfect day to go missing. Her sister Gabrielle was checked into a hospital room at Mass General, recovering from a scheduled wisdom tooth extraction. Her sister Regina was in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, attending the annual meeting of the New England Prep School Scholastic Press Association. Her parents, Clyde and Paula, spent the afternoon at Mass General visiting Gabrielle before driving to a birthday party for Paula’s sister in nearby Hulls Cove. They returned from the party after midnight; according to Clyde, the kitchen was a mess of dishes and crumbs, leading him and his wife to comfortably assume that both Regina and Mary had returned safely home. They went to bed without checking on either daughter.

  The following morning, Clyde left the house at 6 a.m. for his Friday squash match at the public recreation center before driving two towns west to his job as a guidance counselor at St. Hugh’s Academy. Paula laid out a cold breakfast for the girls and returned to bed with a headache. Regina awoke at her usual time (6:15), showered, dressed, and ate her breakfast alone, assuming that Mary had overslept. The girls were scheduled to be picked up that morning and driven to school by a neighboring girl’s mother at 7:15.

  At 7:10, Regina knocked on Mary’s door.

  It was later estimated that Mary was missing from approximately 3:35 p.m. on November 7, 1985, until 4:07 p.m. on December 31, 1985, when she was discovered by a student sitting in one of the rain shelters that line the Semmering sports fields. During that time, the only trace of Mary was to be found in the local newspapers, which ran her photo almost daily, or on the fliers that featured this same image—a foggily enlarged corner of her sophomore yearbook history club photograph—stapled around telephone poles. Under the photograph and the contact information, a single haunting word: GONE.

  The girl who eventually materialized in my waiting room no longer resembled this grainy sophomore history club photo. Her face was thinner, her manner even more detached than her blurry history club photograph suggested. Mary was neither pretty nor not pretty; she was the sort of girl who had, as her file suggested, disappeared many times without her needing to go anywhere.

  I invited Mary to enter my office. Aside from her hospital room sessions with H-F, Mary had never seen a psychiatrist or any other kind of mental health professional. Subsequently, she did not know where to sit. After a brief hesitation, she sat in my office chair. Not wanting to correct her, I sat on the couch.

  According to the notes provided by H-F, Mary claimed to have been abducted by a strange man outside of her school. Because her case so closely resembled the famous case involving former Semmering Academy student Bettina Spencer, H-F was asked by the police to determine whether or not Mary, too, had faked her abduction. H-F was confident, after speaking with Mary (“not up to the mental challenge of such deviousness”) in conjunction with the results of her medical exam, that she had not. While the medical exam did not, conclusively, prove that Mary had been raped by her abductor, it did conclusively prove that she was not a virgin. It remained possible, however, that she had been raped seven weeks earlier, at the initial point of her abduction, and that conclusive evidence of the crime had subsequently healed. The question of force, should it ever be settled, would have to be settled by the patient herself.

  We began with a benign series of questions: How old are you. How many siblings do you have. What are their names. Where do you live.

  Mary answered my questions neutrally. Her name was Mary. She had two siblings, Regina and Gabrielle.

&
nbsp; Where, I asked, were you from November 7 until December 31.

  I don’t know, she said.

  Do you remember whom you were with, I said.

  She shook her head.

  Pretend your skull is a dark closet, I said. Open the door. What do you see.

  I see flashes of light? she said.

  Flashes of light, I said. As from a fire.

  No, she said. The flashes feel cold.

  Her hand, formerly resting on her kneecap, clasped her neck, just below the chin.

  Did these flashes cause you pain.

  The flashes were hard, she said. There was a blunt side and a sharp side.

  It sounds like you’re describing a knife, I said.

  She shook her head.

  But it was hard and sharp, I said.

  She didn’t respond.

  A saw, I said.

  No response.

  An ax, I said.

  Her eyes skittered toward the window.

  What is the ax called that Indians use to scalp people?

  A tomahawk, I said, thinking that this was a peculiarly local variant on the usual subconscious symbols employed to represent male genitalia—sticks, umbrellas, poles, trees. Guns, pistols, revolvers, lances. Zeppelins. Hats.

  But it was made of gold, she said. It was waving around and around. Through the air over my head.

  Mary stood from my desk chair and whirled her arms back and forth. Her movements were languid rather than choppy, graceful rather than violent.

  Like that, she said, sitting down again.

  I might have been scared if I were you.

  It was pretty, she said.

  But he threatened to “cut” you, I said.

  Who is he? she asked.

  The man with the “tomahawk.”

  Nobody held it, she said. It moved on its own.

  Mary attempted to clear her throat, failed, lapsed into a coughing fit. I waited for her to ask for a glass of water. She did not ask.

  She blotted her mouth with her sweater cuff.

  Help me understand something, I said. You cannot remember what happened to you because of the tomahawk. Would you agree that that is an accurate statement.

  Yes, she croaked.

  And yet, I said, there is something missing from this statement. What is missing?

  The blood? Mary said.

  Was there blood, I said, writing on my notepad probable virgin prior to her abduction.

  No, she said.

  Can you explain to me a possible connection between the tomahawk and your loss of memory?

  Drugs? said Mary.

  You were forced to take drugs, I said.

  No, she said.

  I wrote on my notepad possible drug abuse.

  I don’t know what the connection is, she said. Do you know what the connection is?

  I don’t “know” any more than you know, I said.

  So why are you being paid? she said.

  I’m being paid to locate possibilities, I said. The possible connection between the tomahawk and your loss of memory is that you knew you’d be “hurt” if you told anyone what happened to you. This warning has mutated into a form of amnesia. You can no longer “remember” because to remember could cause you pain.

  Mary was overcome by a second coughing fit. I fetched her a paper cup of water from the waiting-room bubbler. She drank it furtively, taking tiny sips.

  They told me if I stayed quiet there was nothing to be scared about.

  Who is they? I asked.

  Mary couldn’t say. She did, however, recall that these voices weren’t speaking English, in fact they didn’t employ language at all, only sounds. Moaning. As if the people who belonged to the voices were in pain.

  I paused to take more notes, and to give Mary a chance to recompose herself. During this series of questions, she’d become exaggeratedly animated even while her eyes remained glassy and remote.

  I decided to return to the mundane. Where was her mother born. Where was her father born. What did her father do for a living.

  Don’t you want to hear more about the voices? Mary asked.

  Do you have more you want to tell me about the voices, I said.

  She withdrew from her coat pocket a makeup compact; she opened it to check her face. Not in a vain way. This action felt cursory, a matter of hygiene, a tick that appeared inherited, possibly from her mother. She dropped the hand holding the open compact into her lap. She stuck an index finger into the compact, swirling the tip over the mirror surface in an obsessive if distracted manner.

  They sounded like…it’s embarrassing, she said. She swirled her finger more furiously inside the compact.

  Give me three words that describe the voices, I said.

  Pained, she said. Happy, she said. Regretful, she said.

  The voices sounded like two people having sex, I said.

  Sort of, she said. Except louder.

  The voices sounded like many people having sex, I said.

  She stared at the carpet.

  Yes, she said. It made me feel…sleepy.

  Not ashamed, I said. Not scared.

  They promised if I watched the tomahawk, I wouldn’t feel scared. They said I would start to feel tired. That I would forget everything and become another person.

  Did you become another person, I said.

  I had another name, she said. My name was Ida.

  Ida, I said. I wrote this name in large letters in my notebook. I rearranged the letters into DIA, ADI, IAD, AID.

  Who gave you this name, I said.

  I don’t remember. I was told that Mary wasn’t my real name. My real name was Ida.

  I thought these people didn’t speak English.

  They didn’t, Mary said. But after I fell asleep and woke up again, I could understand them.

  I paused. Ever since the topic of sex had arisen, she’d continued to prod the interior of her compact with her finger. Should I point this out? Should I point out that “talking” to these people, speaking their language and understanding them, was tantamount to admitting she’d participated in an orgiastic manner with them? Or should I continue to permit her to inhabit her parallel universe and see what other suggestive similes emerged? “Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth,” said Archimedes. Even if that place is an illusion, and that world a brilliant hoax the mind has flung upon itself.

  If we are to accept your story on a literal level, I said, which I’m not necessarily suggesting we do, there is one obvious interpretation.

  I was put under a spell? she said.

  In a manner of speaking, I said. You were hypnotized.

  Mary stared again at the carpet.

  Have you ever been hypnotized before, I said.

  Mary had not.

  Hypnosis is something I regularly do with my patients, I said, when they believe they lack a memory that is simply hidden in a forgotten place. However, some people use hypnosis for less therapeutic reasons. They use it to brainwash people into forgetting the bad things that happened to them.

  That could be a good thing, Mary said.

  It could be, I said. But a shortcut to happiness is never synonymous with happiness.

  Don’t worry, she said. I’m not happy.

  That’s why you’re here, I said. We’re going to try to help you remember what happened to you.

  She shook her head.

  That won’t be possible, she said.

  Maybe not, I said. But it won’t hurt for us try.

  But I’m telling you we won’t succeed. It’s impossible.

  Why is it impossible? I said.

  Because of the spell.

  You mean the hypnosis.

  I mean the spell.

  How did you know it was a spell? I asked. I recalled a biographical detail from Mary’s file: her mother, a member of her local historical society, discovered that her family was distantly related to an accused witch who’d been hung and never pardoned by the state of Massachusetts. This relati
ve had become an obsession for the mother; it had even been suggested by H-F’s notes that the shame the mother felt toward this relative was ignited by the subconscious cultural perception that accused witches were, in fact, women of wild sexual proclivities.

  I wrote on my pad sexual shame is equated with witchcraft.

  What are you writing? Mary asked.

  Notes, I said.

  Notes about me, she said.

  It will be my habit to make notes during our sessions, I explained. Later, with the help of the audiotape, I will draft these notes into a more fleshed-out composition. This activity will help me gain a multipoint perspective on your case.

  Are you writing a novel about us? she said.

  If I’m writing a novel about us, that would imply that you’re a fictional character, I said.

  It would also imply that you’re a fictional character, she said.

  Let’s return to this “spell,” I said.

  She picked at her sweater cuff.

  You seem irritated with me, I said.

  Only because you’re too busy writing to listen, she said, before succumbing to yet another coughing fit.

  I thought I was listening, I said. What have you told me that I didn’t hear?

  Instead of listening to what really happened to me, you’re trying to explain it away, she said. Her voice was hoarse.

  It’s like you don’t believe me, she said.

  Do you believe you? I asked.

  That’s a stupid question, she said.

  Why is it a stupid question?

  That’s also a stupid question.

  OK, I said. What’s an example of a non-stupid question?

  Mary didn’t respond.

  Let me put it this way, I said. What question would you most like to be asked?

  She stared blankly at the carpet.