Encounter

Perhaps my father regretted the decision that night to take me with him to his office to work after hours.  I think it was sometime around late February or early March; an uncharacteristic thunderstorm rolled through, beginning sometime just as the evening turned from dark to dusk. The first distant rumble drew my attention to the window toward the J-P Bridge spanning the channel.  On the hundred and fourth floor of the Bosch building, my father’s office had quite a spectacular view, and even from this distance I could see the wind churning up the water into frothy gray. 

All I knew was that Papa was working frantically against a deadline on some financial portfolio for a major client.  That meant I would have to wait for him several more hours at least.  Mom was away on business and my Father didn’t trust babysitters, nor did he want to leave a five-year-old alone in the house by himself.  Perhaps his was the wiser decision to bring me along, but one that caused him some consternation as I grew increasingly restless and full of questions, “papa, when are we going to go home?”

“Maurice, run along now and find something to do.  Just don't go far,” he called after me as I slipped out of his office door. 

“Can I go to the top floor?”

“Don’t you have a book to read or something?  There’s nothing up there but storage and I doubt there are any windows so you wouldn’t be able to see much, anyway.”

“Didn’t there used to be an observation deck?”

“I’m sure it’s long gone.  I don’t know what's up there now, but it’s vacated, and I don’t want you getting lost.  Stay close by.” 

I waited by the door until he was fully engrossed in his work, then skulked off down the hall towards the elevators.  I don’t think he paid much attention, or if he even heard the bell ding at all when the lift arrived – or he may have been content just to let me joyride the elevators all night if my doing so would leave him in peace to work. 

The largest number on the huge panel of buttons spread out before me was 111, so naturally, I pushed it.  I prided myself in the fact that I could jump up to touch the highest row, which was otherwise just beyond the reach of my outstretched hand.  After a short ride, the door opened to a vast empty space lit only by the reflections in the waning sky.

“Wow!” was all I could say.  The place was huge, and other than the central pillar with the elevator shafts, and structural columns at each of the four corners, there were no partitions or walls anywhere, offering the best view of the city I had ever seen.  Even better was that the fireworks of the approaching thunderstorm were just getting started.  Distant barbed flashes sparked onto the water, accompanied by a tympani of thunder reverberating a beat or two behind.  This was strange lightning, dancing along the waves, then lingering a moment or two before dissipating across the surface in a colorful glitter.  The storm so captured my attention that I didn’t take into account time passing or the fact the last of the daylight had quietly slipped away.

The suddenness of the purple flash that engulfed the J-P Bridge startled me, stealing my breath away.  It played along the superstructure for several seconds before a curtain of darkness swept across the regular line of lights delineating the bridge’s form, causing them to fade in series.  Almost instantly, another brilliant arc touched the building’s spire and radiated around me in what appeared a momentary waterfall of light.  For that second, everything outside shimmered before dimming to black and I realized the building had been hit – not surprising considering it was the tallest thing in the city.  Nevertheless, fear overcame the obvious conclusion as a supernatural chill shivered through me.  The cityscape began to extinguish itself as a thick black fog rolled over it, over the building and over me.  In the space of a few minutes, I could see nothing but uniform darkness that glowed with a hint of illumination reflected from an unknown source, revealing nothing of the network structure of buildings and city streets below.  I knew the tempest had reached its full fury as streaks of purple intermittently ripped through clouds, each jagged tendril eliciting the sound of a million pieces of glass shattering all at once. 

My young mind did not perceive this as any ordinary storm.  In the darkness, I could barely see, and I started running clumsily back in the direction of the elevators.  I loped my way across the emptiness towards the building’s core during the intermittent spaces between each blinding flash before the residual light ebbed back into darkness.  The distorted shadows in the transient purple-gray haze made navigation all the more difficult.  The chill I felt earlier morphed into absolute terror by the time I reached the elevators where I could just barely make out the outline of the doors, but… the call button… the backlighting of the call button had disappeared.  My hand searched frantically along the wall until I felt the indentation and well-worn round disc.  I started pressing, over and over, hoping to hear the hum of the motor that would bring me one of the lifts.  I waited a long time, but nothing happened, so I began banging harder on the button, though my five-year-old’s sense of reason informed me that the power must have gone out.  Logical as the assumption seemed, it did nothing to quell my dread, nor did it solve my immediate dilemma of getting back to my father’s office.

“Stairs!” I shouted, “where are the stairs?”  My plea sounded hysterical even to me as it pierced the ether.  I knew there must be stairs somewhere; all I had to do was find the door to the stairwell and hope it wasn’t locked. 

“Maurice…”

Someone else was up here? 

Who was this person and how did he get here?  How long had he been here?  My head whipped around towards the sound of the voice.  Another purple flash illuminated the observation area long enough for me to see the speaker’s face before it faded again.  His voice sounded surprisingly reassuring.  “The lights are out in all the interior stairwells, so I recommend you take the maintenance access.  It’s exposed to the outside, but fully enclosed.  It will be cold, but safe, and at least you’ll have enough light to see where you’re going.  Just be careful going down because it can get wet.” 

“How did you know my name?”

“That’s what your father called you when you were in his office.”

“Oh…” I pondered it a moment before the obvious question popped into my mouth, bypassing my stream of thought altogether.  “Who are you?  You have a slightly foreign accent.”

“Just call me Girard.”  Girard appeared a few more times in the storm’s fragmented radiance so that I could clearly make out his features.  He was older than my father; he had frost-white hair already, some of it swept off to the side over his forehead.  I wasn’t sure if he was quite as old as grandpa, but he didn’t stoop, and he walked like a younger man.

“What are you doing up here?” My query emphasized the ‘you.’

“I’m sure your father will ask you the same question.”

“You’re not going to tell, are you?”

“No, my main concern is getting you safely back to your father.”  Something cold brushed against my shoulder and I felt a gentle nudge.  Girard led me somewhere I couldn’t quite see until a door opened, breaking the nondescript form of the corner wall in front of us.  The bitter outdoor air stung my lungs, and it had a weird, burned smell to it.  As Girard promised, some light infiltrated the maintenance stairwell through rectangular windows covered by mesh screening at every level.  The clouds had begun to disperse revealing a few lights below.  

“Why is the elevator not working?”  By my reckoning, if the lights were on anywhere in the city, everything should work here too. 

“The power grid is out in most of the city.  The streetlamps continue working because they have a power source that’s solar charged by day.”

“How come we don’t have something like that here?”

“This building actually has six back-up generators, but they were knocked out by the lightning.  I suspect they’ll be back on before too long.” 

“The bridge lights are still out,” I noticed.  “Don’t they have solar chargers, too?”

“They do, but the bridge was also struck by lightning.” 

I raised my head to where I could see Girard’s face.  “Look out there.”  He pointed through the grillwork at some place off at a distance. “What do you see?”

“I don’t know… not much, lights but there’s this big letter H.”

“The landing pad at the hospital.  At least the generators are still working there.” He paused contemplatively for a moment.  “Helicopters… What a concept.”  His gaze drifted to me and for the first time, I could see the blueness of his eyes.  They had a strange, unfocused quality about them.  “You should get going before your father begins to worry about you.  Watch your step.”  I followed his guidance, not paying much attention to how many flights we descended.  His icy grip tightened on my shoulder before he tapped open the metal door that led into a small corridor.  Immediately I heard my father’s voice calling out to me.  “It’s right through here,” Girard said, pulling open one last, large door.  I could see the beam of a flashlight sweeping the hallway, so I squeezed myself the rest of the way through the opening and turned to wave goodbye to Girard just as he disappeared silently back up the stairs.  “Merci,” I called after him, hoping he could still hear me.  Dad’s flashlight beam found me right at that moment.  

“Maurice!  Where have you been?”

“Upstairs.”

“You’re lucky you managed to find your way back down here.  The elevators are out, and it’s pitch black!  I thought I told you to stay close.”  The circle defined by his light beam traveled up the wall from where I had just appeared, and I could see that once closed, the maintenance access was hidden in the decorative paneling. 

“How did you find your way back?”

“We came through the maintenance access.” 

“We?”  My father felt along the panel railing looking for a way to open the door he had just seen me come through.

“Yes Sir, Girard brought me back.”

“Girard?”

“The guy I was just talking to.”

“Maurice, there was nobody there.”

“You didn’t see him?” I shrugged, figuring Girard was gone so fast that Papa didn’t catch a glimpse of him.  “I’m glad he was there though, ‘cause I wouldn’t have gotten back without him.”

The sudden flood of lights and the sound of the power coming back on caught both of us by surprise.  “Did you get his last name?”

“No,” I shrugged again.

Father pulled me close to him, seemingly more thankful for being re-united with me than being angry with me for disobeying him.  I remember his being extremely protective of me up until that summer.  Rarely did he let me out of his sight, and that’s probably the reason my parents tutored me at home and didn’t let me go to kindergarten.  “That’s all right.  I’ll check with security in the morning to see who was working the third maintenance shift tonight and be sure to thank him personally.  Do you think you would recognize him if you saw him again?”

“Oh, yes Sir, and his voice too – he has an accent.”

“Well, that should make it easy for us to find him, then.  I’ll tell security I’m looking for ‘Girard with an accent,’ but for now, let’s just get home.”

Dreams

That night is when the dreams started – disturbing visions – a top-down view of a man cycling across an endless bridge.  I was flying along with him, experiencing the sheer exhilaration of speed.  The air had a clarity to it that I’ve never known before and have only once seen since… stars, a full moon, and an infinite line of yellow streetlights that converged on a point on the horizon…  Every kilometer or so, brighter, more distant red lights, perched atop each tower, blinked in and out of view, and below, there was water – nothing but water.  Each time I saw the dream, something different appeared – some new detail that I hadn’t noticed before, but the end was always the same.

The cyclist continued for I don’t know how long.  Invariably, his solitude would be broken by the sound of an engine, at first, far away, approaching ever closer until headlights appeared.  I could see a speeding car slow down to draw even with the bicycle.  Suddenly it swerved and somehow jumped a barricade between them, I wasn’t sure how.  Then, the cyclist was gone.  I couldn’t see exactly what happened, but the car pulled back onto the road and turned around before continuing away, leaving me standing where the cyclist disappeared.  I tried calling to him, but I had no voice.  I tried to go to the edge to see what had happened to him, but before I could get there, a thick black fog covered everything, and I woke up – screaming.

Moments later, Papa would come bursting into my room, hysterically asking what had happened.   A few seconds later, mother came bustling past my father to gather me in her arms and sit with me on the edge of the bed, stroking my hair and trying to coax out of me what was wrong.   It took me a few moments to realize that I was back in my bedroom; I would pant for breath, trying to explain what I had seen, but I couldn’t formulate the words, nor could I relate the fact that only moments before, I had been somewhere on the middle of this bridge. 

“Shhhhh, there, there…” Mother stayed next to me to sooth me as Papa paced back and forth in the hallway, until I finally fell asleep again. 

The Eminent Dr. Thaddeus Lynche

This doctor’s office wasn’t at all like the one I usually went to.  There were no other kids in the waiting area and no carousel in the center or brightly painted cartoon figures on the wall.  The first time I visited this place, my father and I came into a small room in a private house that had blue fabric-covered chairs along the walls and one of those beads-on-rail toys along with some shape puzzles in one corner.  I remember Father’s nervousness as we approached and the worried expression he wore.  He seemed relieved no one else was there on our first visit and talked softly with a lady sitting behind a window. 

The illustriousness of Dr. Thaddeus Lynche was unknown to me at the time, as was his research on childhood psychiatric disorders.  All I knew of him then was this tall, thin man with a trim white beard and mustache who spoke in subdued undulating tones.  He usually wore a gray tweed vest with a gold watch chain dangling from one pocket.  He would peer at me curiously through round spectacles for a few moments before we officially began our ‘sessions.’ 

“Hello,” he said kneeling in front of me on my first encounter with him.  “You must be Maurice.”

“Yes, Sir,” I nodded back. 

“I see your parent taught you manners.  Fine, very fine,” he cooed.  “Come on in and have a seat.”

Of course, I went straight for the biggest seat in the room, a grand chair covered in well-worn, but lustrous burgundy leather behind a huge desk. 

Upon surveying the glass-covered desktop, I asked, “what’s schizo-affective ppp-sychosis?” 

Dr. Lynche laughed, “oh, so you can read, already – good, very good,” he elongated the word ‘very’ to the point I wasn’t sure he would ever finish saying it.  He cleared the desk of any papers before I might be able to read something else.   “You know, Maurice, I like that chair too, why don’t you sit over here,” he said motioning to a beanbag chair by the wall. 

“Yes, Sir.”

“Your father tells me that you went off exploring by yourself in the Bosch building when he took you with him to work a few weeks ago.”

“Yes, Sir…”

“And you met up with a… Girard, is that right?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Where did you see Girard?”

“On the top floor.”

“And you said Girard has an accent.”

“Uh huh, I nodded.”

Instead of sitting in his big leather chair that he had just kicked me out of, Dr. Lynche leaned one leg casually on the edge of his desk.  “How old was he?  Can you describe him for me?”

“Older than Papa.”  I told him what I remembered of Girard’s face, and his grayish-white hair swept to one side.

“What was he wearing?”

“Uh… he had on one of those button shirts with the stand-up collar, and dark pants, knee pants… I think,” I nodded as I called up my memories of him, “with long socks.”

“Dress-up pants or work pants.”

“Dressy, and nice shoes too like Dad’s.”

“Did he have a tie on, or a watch?”

“Uh… a watch, maybe.  I’m pretty sure.”

“Pocket watch or wristwatch.”

“Wristwatch… a gold one.”

Dr. Lynche scribbled all of this down on a note pad.  “Anything else?”

“Uhm… oh, yeah, he had this chain on.”

“Describe it to me.”

“Black… well, sorta of.  It changes color in the light - kinda shiny, and flat like that,” I said pointing at his watch chain, “but bigger.  I could see it under his collar.  It was about the same length as Mom’s pearls.”

“Did it have a pendant or a medal, a ribbon, anything like that?…”

“Not that I could see.”

“Hmmm,” he seemed to consider this very carefully.  He pulled his watch from his pocket long enough for a momentary glance at it before replacing it, a habit I would learn that he repeated about every fifteen minutes.  “Can you draw him for me?”  I nodded, so Dr. Lynche handed me a pad of paper and a charcoal pencil.  I probably spent a good ten-fifteen minutes trying to reproduce Girard’s likeness, but I doubt that my rendering did the man justice.  When I handed the image back to the psychiatrist, he appeared visibly shaken by it.  He assessed it several long moments, then, with a deliberate motion, placed it on his desk in front of his chair.  Almost imperceptibly, he shifted around to the leading edge of his desk and leaned forward.  In a soft voice he coaxed… “now… let’s talk about these dreams you’ve been having…”  I retold the same dream I had seen every night since the storm.  Dr. Lynche asked, “Who is the cyclist?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“Do you ever try to warn him?”

“I try, but I can’t.  I don’t know why, but I can’t say anything, I can only watch.”

“All right then, I have some homework for you.”

“Homework?”

“You have described some things in such great detail that I want you to find out, if you can, who this cyclist is, and tell me something about this car.  Write down what you learn.”

“It’s at night, but I’ll try…”

“Very good.  Now… if it’s all right with you, I need for you to go out into the waiting room and sit in one of those chairs like a good boy while I speak with your father for a few minutes.  It won’t take long, I promise.”

My father and I changed places, and the door shut behind him.  Neither Dr. Lynche nor my father seemed to be aware of how thin the office door was.  They spoke in hushed tones that I strained to hear.

Dr. Lynche’s voice began, “Monsieur Reynard, is that portrait still in the lobby?”

“They took that down years ago, before I even started working there.”

“I’d be willing to guess it’s now somewhere on the top floor.  If you can, find out.  Your son’s description and his drawing are too accurate to be coincidence; he must have seen a photo or a portrait, somewhere.”

“What about the accent, how would he know about that?”

“Maybe he saw an old news clip?  All kinds of programs pop up on the televiewer these days.”

“But how could he have known about the six generators or how to find the maintenance access?”

“He probably did run into someone on one of the upper floors who knew these things, then simply mixed up the portrait with the real person.”

“But there’s nobody on staff by that name and as you say, the description’s too close… do you think he’s heard the stories and is just making this up for attention?”

“I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion just yet…”

“And what about this dream?  He’s never been on the J-P Bridge, let alone know anything about the lanes or the signage.”

“That, I have no idea.  As I say, all kinds of programs come up on the televiewer these days and he could have seen a documentary.  Children’s minds are very good at extracting this kind of minute detail that they may not consciously even be aware of.  I tell you what I’ll do…”  Dr. Lynche lowered his voice even more, “on his next visit, I would like to try and hypnotize him.”

Secrets

That late spring marked another event in my life; I think it happened a few days after my visit with the psychiatrist.  I remember it being the time of year when we would keep the windows open; the scent of chèvrefeuille began to permeate the air, and the crickets chirped all night.  That evening before the sun went down, I could hear the rumble of Roman’s tractor in the field next to our house for the first time all season.  He must have pulled it out of the barn for the spring planting.  Roman owned a fairly large tract of land next to our house and would sometimes come do odd jobs for Papa to earn some extra money.  I loved to watch his big cerulean and red AgroTaur work the fields nearby or rake our gravel driveway into smooth perfection.  That tractor was his pride and joy, and he rarely missed the opportunity to show it off when the chance presented itself.  The previous fall I asked to ride on it with him, which he happily obliged, and even let me take the wheel.  Sadly, that trip lasted all of about five minutes until Papa saw me up there driving this giant machine, flagged us down, ordered me to get off, then took me inside to deliver a long lecture about how tractors were too dangerous for little boys. 

It was this time of year, after my parents went to bed, when I would slide over to the window and watch the lightning bugs, imagining how I might sneak out to catch them without my parents finding out, until I eventually climbed back into the bed and fell asleep. 

That night, however, my remembrances kept me awake; I had an odd sense of apprehension though I didn’t know exactly why.  I associated all those sights, sounds, and smells with the time Mama’s mother came to visit us the previous summer.  I’d never seen her before because she still lived across the channel, and as far as I could recall, she only came to visit us on that one occasion.  What I remember most about her was her beautiful white hair that still carried a faint red tinge to it, and that for whatever reason, she took an instant dislike to me from the moment she saw me.  During her, not-quite-week-long stay, she seemed inconsolably sad and constantly reminded us how she had lived through the war.  Coming here, she said, brought back too many bitter memories that she would rather forget. 

As I drifted in and out of restless slumber, sounds of hushed angry voices woke me, and I distinctly heard my mother crying – not just crying, but sobbing.  My father had never raised his voice at either of us before – at least not in my hearing, but even trying to keep a calm tone, it resonated through the walls and my bedroom door with a distinctly irate timbre.  I opened the door slowly and sneaked down the stairs as quietly as I could.  A faint light outlined the frame of my parents’ bedroom door, indicating that they had left on one of their side table lamps. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?”  I could hear my father demanding.

“Is it really that important?”

“Well… yes, it is.”

Curiosity got the better of me and I pulled the doorknob, ever so slightly.  In the crack that I had opened up, I observed my mother shaking by the vanity and my father sitting on the edge of the bed with his face buried in one hand.  When he raised his head, I could see a red glow radiating off the surface of his skin.

“What has it got to do with him?  I will always love you, no matter what.  Nothing will ever change that.”

“Why would you hide this from me?”

“Would you have still married me if you had known?”

I could feel my heart stop.  It seemed like an eternity passed before he answered her.  “I don’t know.” 

At that moment he looked up.  I realized that I had pulled the door part-way open to see what was going on, and he was now staring straight at me.  We ended up glaring at each other for several long moments before my mother glanced up to see me standing there.  I could only imagine how big my eyes must have been as I stood unmoving.  Never had I had seen such a hard edge in my father’s expression or such hopelessness in my mother’s.  His glare penetrated me as he stared wordlessly for several seconds and for the first time in my life, I was afraid of him.

I turned and bolted away, half expecting him to chase after me.  Instead, he commented loudly in a disgusted tone – I didn’t know if he meant for me to hear it or not.  “He even looks like him.”

Opera Night

“Monsieur Reynard!”  My father turned to meet another tuxedoed gentleman, “Congratulations on landing the Concentro account!  That’s huge!”  Every time the family attended a public event, it seemed my father always ran into someone who wanted to talk shop.  Since we lived in the outskirts of the city, it wasn’t often that I got to venture into downtown with my parents.  I always associated the opera house with my first encounter with the big city, as my family started bringing me here practically since I was old enough to remember.  The lobby was full of buzz and excitement as people in fancy clothing meandered about, talking to one another about things I didn’t understand.  The stairs made a double spiral to the mezzanine where we would eventually go before entering the great concert hall.  The stairs were one of the best parts of the visit but from the looks of it, it would be a while before we got there. 

My thoughts immediately turned to how I might break away long enough to grab another one of those little pastries or chocolate covered strawberries – I could see them out on the refreshments table along with some wine and sparkling soda – but some part of me wanted to stay and listen to find out exactly what father did and why it was so important.  Tonight, he kept a particularly tight grasp on my hand, preventing me from wandering off somewhere, so I decided to pay close attention to their conversation.  All I knew was that my father handled money, and lots of it.

In spite of the hubbub, opera night meant intense marathons of sitting still.  My parents always insisted that I sit between them so that I not disturb others in the audience.  Tonight, however, their relationship seemed strained; they had barely spoken to one another in almost a week, and it seemed my father was trying to hide something.  I got the feeling he was using me as a partition between them.  I looked forward to getting to our seats.

What I liked most about the opera was the overture, as it was usually the most exciting and dramatic part.  The best thing about it is that nobody is singing.  After that, I struggled not to squirm while these people in lavish costumes too far away actually to be seen wailed on about some tragedy for several hours.  My mother watched them through little binoculars that matched her pearls.  She always wore her pearls to the opera.  Never once do I remember her not wearing her pearls at such occasions – in fact – all the women either wore pearls, or gold necklaces with rubies, diamonds, or some other rare gem, as though some unwritten rule dictated it.  The men too, turned out in tuxedos – some with ribbons and medals of various civil orders or war decorations – many of the older gentlemen with fancy walking sticks with bulbed silver handles, all seemed to follow some grand plan, and to deviate from it would have constituted heresy.

Other than the overture, the only good parts of the opera were the interludes; they usually lulled me to sleep, a sleep that lasted until the next aria, with its obligatory screeching high notes, jolted me awake again.  It was then that I would watch, not the opera, but the audience.  Taken as a whole, its members comprised a sea of uniformity.  Though I could never formulate this unspoken decorum about what was appropriate and what was not, I had already implicitly learned it.  During the performance, most exchanged surreptitious sidelong glances, and I noticed how the little binoculars the women used sometimes gravitated away from the stage to their not-so-nearest neighbors on the other side of the concert hall.  It made me wonder how many people actually came to watch the opera at all. 

The opera was supposed to tell a story, but what did people learn from it anyway?  I often complained to my parents that it was impossible to figure out what was going on, and half the time the performers were singing in some other language that I didn’t know. “That’s what the program notes are for,” my parents would chide me.  “If you bothered to read the notes, then you would understand what’s going on and maybe it would make more sense to you.” 

I wonder now, who was crazy enough to take a five-year-old to an opera, wearing a full tuxedo, no less.  Thinking about it now still makes me laugh because I doubt I’ve been that formally dressed since.  For my father, going to the opera fulfilled a status symbol of sorts – he desperately felt the need to keep up with the in-crowd.  I assumed he brought mother and me with them to show he was a successful family man – that and the fact that he utterly distrusted babysitters.  Was it that he was afraid something might happen to me, or that these adolescent intruders might steal something?  I never did figure it out, but my father had a healthy distrust for just about everything, especially things he couldn’t control. 

Once the dreams started, he seemed at first even more anxious not to let me out of his sight, but then his attitude towards me abruptly changed after the argument with my mother.  I worried that I was somehow responsible.  What had I done, and how might I be able to smooth over their relationship?  Were the dreams what caused it?  The more I tried to figure it out, the more I understood I had no idea what the problem was.  I wondered what father would do when I started school at the end of summer?

We finally climbed the stairs to the mezzanine and pushed our way politely through the crowds.  As per the usual procedure, Papa insisted that I made sure any physical needs were taken care of before we sat down so I wouldn’t have to jump up in the middle of the program.  He usually made a fuss over my appearance, combing my hair, fixing my tie – whatever he had to do to make sure I was acceptably turned out.  This time he skipped that part of the protocol and just shuffled me back out into the hallway.

“Maurice, let me fix your hair,” my mother called softly before we went into the concert hall. 

“Can I even be in here?”  I asked as she dragged me into the powder room where she pulled a faux pearl comb from her purse and raked it through my hair, tussling with the patchwork of white-orange thistle that never would lie down. 

“As long as you’re with me.”  Her usual vibrance had disappeared.  Her hands touched me gently on the shoulders as she knelt in front to me to straighten my tie.  Tonight, she barely managed a smile; her voice wavered, and I could tell by how her eyes glistened that she was trying not to cry.

“Mama, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing, love.”

“Why is Papa mad at us?”

“He’s not mad at us.  He’s just… He’ll be all right.  He just needs some time, that’s all.”

“Was it something I did?’

This time she couldn’t hold back the tears streaming down her cheeks.  “No Maurice, you have done absolutely nothing wrong.  Now you stay right here.”  She left me in the lounge as she disappeared into the restroom.  Being the only boy in a room full of women made me self-conscious, but it was also the first time neither of my parents had direct control over me.  Without my mother there, I found myself suddenly overwhelmed by a wall of long formal gowns, stoles and dainty, sparkling jewelry that formed around me.  Aristocratic ladies peered down at me like… priests at a ritual sacrifice.  “What a cute little boy,” I heard one of them say. 

They went around their circle in turns.  “How handsome he is.”

“Isn’t he adorable in that tuxedo?”

“…just charming,” another echoed.  They seemed to encroach on me in an ever-tightening loop.

At that moment, my mother reappeared, bursting through their ring, fresh faced, and glowing, with a new coat of lipstick. 

“Is he yours?” one of the other ladies asked.

“Yes,” she acknowledged as she snatched me out of their enclosure.

“He’s such a darling.”

“Thank you…” she hardly looked back as she ferreted me off to the concert hall.  She never seemed to like to mingle with other women, and I would later learn that she was self-conscious of the fact that she was quite a bit older than most women with children my age.  At that moment, I was just glad to be out of the powder room, and I looked forward to sitting down. 

Disjunct melodies, orchestral tuning, and the drone of conversation intermingled into chaotic patterns of sound that greeted us at the door.  I liked the fact that the place was full of movement and energy, so I tried to lose myself in the atmosphere to forget about whatever was upsetting Papa so much.  Typically, we found our seats in the balcony – we always sat near the center – which made it uncomfortable for me because I couldn’t just get up if I needed to.   We would settle in, and my parents would take a few moments to educate me on what we were about to see.  My father had always seemed to view well-behaved children to be as much a status symbol as mother’s pearls.  I tried to affect the same seriousness as the adults, so I started thumbing through the program. 

“Who’s Teluricus?”  I asked Mom, who seemed a little embarrassed that I should know that already, especially since that was the opera’s title role.  I flipped through the notes that featured an illustration from an ancient vase depicting some dude on his knees, desperately pleading while holding up a span of chain wrapped around him.  Someone stood over him holding a hammer, like he was ready to bash his head in.

“You remember Teluricus,” mother replied.  Yep, somehow, I knew I was supposed to know that.  She continued, “the ancient Thermolean hero who met a tragic end.”

“Don’t they all?” I stuck my tongue out disgustedly at the preposterousness of these ancient myths, before remembering that we don’t stick our tongues out at the opera.  All the characters were either gods with superpowers or mere mortals who ascended to hero status only to meet an untimely end, usually at the hand of one of these superpowered gods.  All of this seemed ridiculous to my nearly-six-year-old mind.  “All these myths end up the same way… and you think Tiger Man is dumb…” I shook my head.  

“The story of Teluricus is legend, not a myth,” my father corrected dispassionately.  It was the first time he spoke to me all evening. 

Mother elucidated, “historically, he was a real person, but I’m sure the story became exaggerated as it was passed down through the ages.”

“What happened to him?”  I made the mistake of asking.

My father shoved the program into my lap and pointed at the synopsis. 

My mother gently picked it up and leaned over my shoulder so that we could read it together.  “Well read here; it says that he was a young warrior who won many contests from his early youth, then as he grew older, he was purported single-handedly to defeat entire regiments in battle.  He had ambitions to command all the armies of Thermae in order to unite the entire peninsula, but as he attained more power, he became convinced that he was invincible.  In his final battle against the Altothesians, he found his forces gravely outnumbered, but despite warnings from his soldiers and his generals, he pressed forward against impossible odds.  As the enemy surged upon him, his detachment retreated, leaving Teluricus to face the advancing hordes alone.  The enemy singled him out, encircling him, and though he fought valiantly, the enemy eventually defeated and captured him.  With Teluricus no longer there to lead, the tide of the battle turned in favor of the Altothesians, and the Thermoleans quickly retreated.  The Altothesians celebrated their great victory by leading Teluricus through the city streets bound in chains.  When the procession arrived at the central forum, the Altothesians made Teluricus swear an oath that he would never again wage warfare against them, then placed a single chain around Teluricus’s neck, forging the last link in place so that he could never take it off…”

“Wait a second…” in my mind, forging something meant smashing glowing hot metal against a heavy anvil.  “How could they do that without knocking his head off, or burning through his neck?”

My mother smiled slightly, trying to hold in her laughter. 

“They were careful, I guess, now don’t interrupt,” Papa interjected.

Mama continued, “…forging the last link in place so that he would have to bear it for the rest of his life – a constant reminder of his promise that he would never attack the Altothesians again.  Much to everyone’s surprise, the city elders decided to release Teluricus, allowing him to go wherever he pleased, so long as he did not break his oath.  Though free, he could not face returning to his homeland after the ignominy of defeat and the unending reminder of his shame, so he wandered aimlessly for several years in the desert before despair overtook him and he cast himself from a steep precipice into the ocean below.”

“That’s dumb…” I commented.

“It’s a moral about hubris,” my father stated flatly.

“What’s hubris?”  I think I was supposed to know that too, but before he could answer, the lights dimmed, and the orchestra’s tuning coalesced into the crashing minor opening chords of the overture.