To Feel Stuff (18 page)

I asked her what this “window of opportunity” was, and E responded that it was the time during which she felt she had the opportunity to connect with C. It was imperative to her that after the game, they be able to return to the infirmary together as two people “on the mend. People with bright futures and no doom up ahead.”

Then E remarked, “Oh, but I did tell my mom. I wasn't counting her because she's outside of the infirmary.”

“You called her?”

“Yes. She seemed like the best person to ask about this type of thing.”

Asking Sarah for privacy, E had used the phone at the nurse's desk after C had fallen asleep. She called A and asked, “What does it feel like when you see a ghost?”

“How it feels?” A echoed. “Like, you mean excited?”

E claimed she could tell that her mother was excited herself that E was asking this. E had never shown interest in the supernatural, and she knew that A had always been saddened by her indifference.

“No, how it feels bodily,” E clarified. “Are there any symptoms that you experience when you've been near to a ghost? Like a headache? Or an internal buzzing?” E figured that if her mother experienced a distinct sensation when in the presence of an apparition, then E would have reason to doubt her encounter. Then it would have been “all in her head,” if the meeting with the apparition didn't have the correct “accompanying bells and whistles.”

“No, I don't feel anything,” A told her. “Sometimes my heart races and I get a hot feeling because I'm excited, but the ghost doesn't cause it. Directly.”

E had read before that when one is in the presence of an apparition, there is often a sensation of coldness that fills the room. She questioned A about the source of this rumor.

“It's never happened to me,” A answered. “I think that comes from the old wives' tale, that every time you get a shiver, someone's stepping over your grave in the future.”

When E heard that, according to A, there was “no feeling” that accompanied a supernatural encounter, she began to believe that “either we both have tumors, or we both see ghosts.”

E hung up with her mother without revealing the new link between them. She told me that she felt that admitting her situation to her mother would make her transformation inescapable, and she had spent much of her life secretly fearing that this day would come. While she may have given the impression to her family that she was a firm nonbeliever, E admitted to me that she felt she “couldn't have been so scared of turning out to be like this if I didn't think it was going to happen.”

She had been especially scared off by A's reaction to her very first bout of illness. In the middle of freshman orientation, one of E's classmates had noticed that half of E's face was unmoving. The doctor at RIH suspected that the palsy was a serious side effect of herpes simplex 1, a virus commonly passed around on college campuses. He suggested to E that she phone all recent partners with whom she'd had romantic relations; or, in the absence of these partners, anyone whose bodily fluids may have come into contact with hers. The only person that E could think of was J, the summer receptionist at her father's company.

The day before E left for Brown, she had visited the office's supply room to “borrow school supplies.” J, with whom who she had only exchanged casual greetings before, suddenly appeared beside her and kissed her. He accidentally bit her tongue in the process, so E had good reason to believe that he was the one who had passed the virus to her—that is, if she did indeed have the virus.

Once E had a chance to phone J, she suggested that he visit his doctor to get himself tested. He called back the following week to say that he was negative. E's tests came back as well, also negative for simplex 1. The doctor could only determine that her palsy was “very mysterious.”

Because of complications—E's left eye had rolled up and in toward her tear duct and, due to paralysis, she couldn't chew and needed liquids—the doctor recommended a stay in the Brown infirmary. This was her first.

E's parents, who had come to Providence to help her get settled, were staying at the Biltmore Hotel. When they arrived at the ER, E's doctor informed them about the palsy before he took them to see their daughter, as he was worried that her physical appearance would alarm them. E was wearing a patch over one eye and still lacked movement in half her face.

Once the family was alone, A could finally express her overwhelming enthusiasm. “When she saw me lying there in the bed,” E said, “she looked deliriously happy.” While this is obviously not the normal reaction one would expect a mother to have at seeing her child in the hospital, A believed that the palsy was merely a minor symptom of a greater change. She told E, “My mom used to get the same way before a major premonition. Some part of her would freeze up.” A was convinced that the palsy marked the beginning of E's coming into her supernatural abilities.

I asked E if she had ever discussed this legacy with her grandmother, M. Although M had died when E was six, E did have memories of “lots of talking about ghosts” during the last years of her life.

E remembered a particularly upsetting conversation she'd had with M shortly before her death. A was present and, according to E, well aware that her mother was not long for the world.

M had told her granddaughter, “Even after I leave this world, I'll still come and see you.”

Because the topic was frequent in her home, E already understood the mechanics of physical death by this age. M and A had, of course, already been attempting to school her in supernatural matters as well.

“When?” E had asked.

“When? How soon will I show up?”

“No,” E said. “At what times? Just at night?”

M replied, “You know that the dead are around us at all times.” The family had been telling E this story for years, explaining that apparitions do not feel the need to get out of “our” way as we (we being the “still living”) move around. M continued, “You'll be able to see them soon enough, and I'll be there, too.”

E had been distressed by this idea. She remembered asking, “All the time? You'll be in my room and at school all the time?” She expressed to her grandmother that this was not something she wanted.

M had begun joking with E (or perhaps she hadn't been joking—this is unclear) that she would be very quiet while doing her haunting.

Only six, E had to tell her grandmother that she enjoyed being alone, and that she wished that M would restrict her otherworldly visits. Even beyond the issue of her grandmother's presence, the larger notion that one day she would “see a never-ending supply of dead people, that they would fill up my space,” had already become the cause of enormous dread.

At this point in her narrative, E looked at me with eyes that appeared on the verge of tears. This is the closest that I had ever seen her come to crying. She began to confess. “I think I spent a lot of time back then worrying that if I began to see and hear ghosts like they said I would, I would just be made up of all these other people. All these people talking in my ear. I'd spend my whole life listening to them, trying to figure out what they wanted. And then I'd be this big hole in the middle of it all. I'd have nothing to offer. I'd just be this empty ear for all the dead people.”

I was hoping E would continue, as I was only now beginning to realize that my study was going to be far different from what I'd anticipated. Watching it take on a life of its own was more than thrilling. E's story was developing in unpredictable directions, and I was a hostage of her expectations of me. She was telling me all of this because she felt that I could help her, essentially, draw the line between where conventional, explainable territory ended and Promethean, unexplainable territory began. I felt honored to be endowed with that challenge. I resolved to take her perceptions seriously enough to test them.

E requested a fifteen-minute break, during which she left the room. When she returned, her patience appeared to have waned. She was no longer expounding on the questions that I lobbed at her. Soon I understood that I should move on from the topic of her familial legacy.

“I don't want to pry, but I do feel that we need to discuss the . . . latest development that we haven't finished with,” I said.

“The ghost?”

“The sexual intercourse.”

I was mostly concerned with her bodily reactions during intercourse. I wanted to know what levels of pain she had experienced, and if she had felt lightheaded or particularly “blurry” during coitus. Her lungs were still recovering from the tuberculosis, and this was the most vigorous exercise she had attempted recendy.

E admitted to minor dizziness, but she believed that this was a result of her feelings about the interaction and not an effect of illness. Her fibromyalgia had produced the usual painful sensations throughout her back and thighs, but E found that the intercourse distracted her from it.

“Again, I need to ask—did you use protection?” This piece of information was extremely relevant should E develop any new health problems in the coming weeks.

“Yes. We used a glove.”

“Is that slang for a condom?” I asked.

It turned out that E and C had used an actual glove. E realized that the hide-and-seek game had been proposed so that C could search the infirmary for a condom. When he located her under the chair, she did not let him know that she was aware of the deception.

C had stretched the latex comprising one of the glove's fingers as far as the material would allow. To be precise, it was the thumb, and the interior of the glove was pre-powdered. Using this digit as a makeshift condom, he and E proceeded, using his saliva as lubrication.

“And the glove did not break?” I asked.

“No. We checked it”

“And how did you feel afterward?”

“I felt healthy. In my mind, I mean.” She placed two fingers to each temple, as if she was receiving messages through the air. “Here's what else I've been scared of lately. I've been scared of grasping onto the wrong person. It's scared me that my lack of a normal life might leave me without choices. I've worried that I'd fall in love only because I wanted to fall in love. I'd do it because I had to pretend that my life had forward motion.” E looked down at her knees. When she looked back up, the shine in her eyes had returned. “I thought I'd fall in love with what I was projecting onto the other person, not the actual person.”

She stopped.

“But with C?” I prompted.

“He's more right than I'll ever be. So I'm relieved. I'm relieved that it's him.” Clearly finished with the day's proceedings, E began playing with a canister of cotton balls on the counter. She removed them and lined them up horizontally. She would not make eye contact with me.

“I'm happy that you're happy” was all I could think to say.

“How do we figure out what's going on with me?” E asked, addressing the cotton balls. “How do we prove it to ourselves?”

“I'd like to resume our session in a week. I'll organize a series of tests.”

“Medical tests?” E asked.

“No.”

She understood the implication. “What do you know about those kinds of tests?”

I told her that I would learn, and she turned and gave me the smallest smile. This, I knew, was her method of granting approval. We'd come far.

 

The next day I delved into the field of parapsychology for the first time. Before then, I had not been willing to extend my study to this domain. Once my research had a home, so to speak, I experienced a renewed optimism about the project. I knew that I was taking an academic risk by giving credence to the possibility of supernatural interference. However, I could not help but feel hopeful about taking the study in this new direction. I reminded myself that the human race would be lost today, perhaps even obsolete, had we not continued to explore unknown forces in our world. Progress, I believe, has always demanded significant risk of danger.

Spending the week at the library, I consulted as many scientific texts on supernatural occurrences as were available. When I mentioned the words “scientific” and “supernatural” in the same sentence while talking with Wainscott, he laughed and told me that the two were antithetical. By definition, he said, the supernatural exceeded the natural, and the natural was the basis for all established laws of science. “The field is not scientific,” he insisted, “because there is no science to it. It hovers above and beyond. All of that is up there floating around with God, except God has a better chance of making the books.”

I was not discouraged. He had not heard E's reports, did not know the mysterious intricacies of her history. Still, I was well aware that anecdotal evidence could not carry this study, so I began organizing experiments as controlled and well designed as possible.

I decided to conduct the experiments in my home. While this might seem unprofessional, I wished to remove E from the infirmary environment. All of her previous encounters with the apparition had occurred within the walls of Health Services, and I was interested to see if she experienced supernatural manifestations outside of the building. Furthermore, I felt that E's concentration might be improved outside of her normal surroundings. She carried a weighty emotional attachment to the infirmary, as it was a constant reminder of her ceaseless illnesses. I also believed that E's recent and growing attachment to C would be an additional distraction. I suspected that she had not told him the extent of our involvement, and I was concerned that her fears about confidentiality would be an additional complication.

In essence, I was hoping that moving the proceedings to my home would help E to forget who she was. If we conducted the experiments in the comfortable environs of a residence, I thought that she might find it easier to clear her mind.