Chapter

40

Our seats for the big top performances were nothing short of perfect. Sara had prepared this day to be special for us and pulling from her pocket a pair of the best seats in the house came as both a surprise and embarrassment, as she wouldn’t let me reimburse her for them. Two hours later, the most exciting display of sheer artistry and fun I had ever seen was over.

As we filed out, a certain sadness swept over me. The circus had ended, leaving me with all kinds of dreams only started.

“Hey,” she said with a poke to my ribs, “Why the long face. It’s not over.” She dragged me out of the tent and led me down, around, in, and out of the maze of parked trucks, cages, motor homes and finally some small tents.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I want to share one of my happiest moments with you.”

I shrugged, totally lost. “I don’t understand.”

With a grin, she said, “This is where it starts to get very special. Kind of like Christmas morning for children of any age.” She looked at her watch. “She said she’d get right down here.”

“Who?”

“Charles, you’re about to meet my 23^rd success story. Miriam Hains is going to be here any second. Took me two years, but...Charles, she’s about to meet the father she’s never known.”

At that moment, a woman in her fifties rushed up to Sara, throwing her arms around her, “I’m sorry, so sorry, but watching the show from back stage got me caught up in...there were so many people. I couldn’t get through the crowd. He’s just a little way back. They won’t let him alone.”

Sara gave a long look at her. “You okay? Ready for...whatever happens?”

“I think so. I’m so nervous though.”

Sara gestured to me, “Miriam, meet a very good friend of mine, Charles Randall.”

I didn’t know exactly how to greet someone who was about to get their big answer. I could only look at her in awe. She was at the end of what must have been a long and painful journey. “Nice to meet you, Miriam. Sara just told me. You must be very excited.”

She took out her tissue, and dabbed her eyes. “Thank you. Yes, I am. We searched so long. Oh, Sara. Is my face all screwed up now?”

“No. But, you might want to take a few deep breaths, cause...I hear him coming.”

In the distance, a crowd of people could be heard coming closer with their cheers and shouts of praise for...

The familiar colored diamond costume beneath the painted face rounded the corner surrounded by security guards keeping the crowd of forty or fifty people from getting too excited. Rotislav, the long time harlequin star of the show was smiling, graciously thanking his fans and signing as many autographs as possible as he tried to hurry the pace of his aging body toward the trailer that gave him peace and quiet. Only tonight, it was different. Tonight, the peace and quiet was about to be...different. Rotislav Katenkya was about to experience the loudest applause of his life...the meeting of his daughter.

Time stood still for me at that moment. Here before me was a man about to meet his past...a past that had either been taken away from him, or lost, or...maybe given up. Which? What was it like to have all the pieces of his life’s puzzle, but one? To remember everything in your life and know that there was just one part that had been removed? He was fortunate, I thought, and didn’t know it.

Had he ever known of his daughter? He was old, very old.  She would have been born in the late forties, early fifties sometime. What had separated them? What had been their nightmares? Their demons?

As security guards ushered the crowd back through the narrow passage between trailers, he stepped up to the entrance to his trailer. Their eyes met.

A smile.

A nod.

An attempted opening of the door.

A pause.

Another glance.

This time their eyes met not as strangers. His smile turned into a curious half-opened question. For an instant, the furrowing brow overhanging the white crescent outline of his eyes searched for an answer as the painted tear drop on his cheek glistened with the sadness only a fellow loner like myself would see.

“Yes?” he uttered with the hesitancy of one not knowing how to confront such an old fan...such a grateful smile...such a welling up of the child like eyes. “What is it?”

Miriam opened her mouth ever so slightly, allowing the delicate utterance of “Daddy?”

His body didn’t move. He stood erect, proud, determined to remain the Great Rotislav, but he couldn’t hope to be anything greater than “Daddy” at that moment.

With a touch of disbelief, fear and relief, he hesitantly raised his arms and took Miriam by the shoulders… their respective eyes beginning to smile as one.

It was several hours later when Sara and I walked along the beach. Hearing the ten o’clock performance in the distance and knowing Miriam and her father had found the fifty-year missing piece to their puzzle gave Sara an overwhelming feel of exhilaration, and me...the realization that the impossible was possible.

The small child inside me was grateful that he had seen on a hot night in July, a Christmas of sorts come for a man and his daughter.

I gripped Sara’s hand, the hand of magic as far as the two people under the big top were concerned. We walked in silence along the ever-changing edge of darkness separating the sand from the sea… future from the past.

“Oh, boy.”

That’s all anyone heard coming from Dr. Pressman’s lips as he shut off the recorder and opened the windows. It was 7 p.m. and everyone was more than just tired. He glanced around at the faces. Some were wearing the mask of professional protection. Others, the younger ones, the Farnsworth types, were anxious and obviously frustrated with not having any clear-cut answers.

“Any need to ask if anyone wants to discuss any of this tonight?” questioned Dr. Pressman.

The room vibrated with the mixture of chairs and bodies being moved. No one was speaking, save one...

“Dr. Pressman,” came the voice of Dr. Snow. “I know that everyone is anxious to call it a day, but at lunch, you said that you were most interested in hearing tapes 10 and 11, but you didn’t say why.”

“Well, doctor, it’s still premature to draw conclusions, but for the record, Charles has been using a mixed handwriting on the tape inscriptions. He printed the identifications up through 10 and used cursive from 11 on. I’m willing to accept it as coincidence, but we’ve all seen his personality take a rather radical shift since 10 ended, and that was just before his encounter with the police at the beach. You should all be aware that I took the liberty to have other samples of his handwriting sent here from San Francisco...they’re all available for your perusal, of course. Some of the examples were written before and some after tape 10. Upon inspection, there doesn’t seem to be any reverting back to the printing style after 10. Of particular interest, no conclusions mind you, is that the writing is improving. What I mean is, here at the hospital, his handwriting is getting clearer each day...and it’s all cursive.”

“Charlie or Charles?” asked Farnsworth.

Pressman knew he had to answer carefully. Farnsworth was itching for a chance to redeem himself. “You mean, do I believe one personality is dominating over the other since that time...that printing is the expression of one personality and cursive the other?”

“A relevant question, no?” came Farnsworth’s reply.

“Relevant, yes. But I can only give a very qualified answer now. From my observation of him over the past several weeks and what has been heard on the tapes so far, I don’t think I can conclude that we’re dealing with two personalities. More likely, we’ll find two layers of the same personality...a possible Dissociation disorder.  However, the tug-of-war is still going on, and I believe there’s much more than just a dichotomy of personality for Charles, Dr. Farnsworth. A possible fugue might be perceived as part of the problem, but I’m less prone to that today than yesterday.”

“Dissociation hysteria?” asked Dr. Snow.

“There are most likely others sitting in this room better qualified than I to answer that.” Pressman waited, but no one was willing to state his or her position yet. With no takers, he continued. “Well, as you can see, none of us feel sure of anything yet. Of concern to me is the possibility that the answer may not be on the tapes...it may not ever surface.”

“Then again, it may have already been revealed and we’re all missing it,” said Dr. Farnsworth.

“I know that is always possible, Doctor… certainly. Your studies have shown that all of us in this room could be overlooking... “

Dr. Farnsworth countered, “Not ‘overlooking,’ Dr. Pressman; we could all be the object of a conspiracy. Let’s not forget, these two men are charged with murder. They’d both rather take their chances with a review board in a state institution than the parole board at a maximum-security prison.”

Dr. Carrey had been sitting quietly up until this point. Tapping Dr. Farnsworth on the leg and using her soft-spoken, grandmotherly voice, she made all the heads turn. “You’re absolutely right. They would much rather serve some time in an institution...assuming they understand the difference. If, however, both of these men are truly suffering from a severe mental disorder, they very well might not be capable of understanding such a choice...especially if they’re both deemed somewhere north of sanity.”

“You can understand my suspicions, I’m sure,” continued Dr. Farnsworth. “Last year’s all-consuming work not only shocked me, but the doctors who were duped by the patients in the study are still reeling from the discovery. We’ve got the potential here of a perfect set up. Dr. Mathews may or may not be suffering from acute paranoia—after all, the cockroach Dr. Mathews obsesses over was Charles’ experience.  Yet, one thing that we can all appreciate, he’s a trained professional. A professional that may or may not have succumbed to the battle fatigue threat we all face every day. A professional, that I for one, believe wanted very much to either regain the license taken away from him or possibly walk away from his efforts with a lot of money? He experienced the vanishing of both opportunities. Such an experience might leave the best of us a little disturbed, a little crazy, or a little smarter.”

“We best be very attentive to the balance of tapes then, right Doctor?” Dr. Pressman said. “Your assessment of Mathews notwithstanding, I believe the desire for Charlie/Charles to be the calm person he is now, here in the hospital, is very strong and it started, or at least seems to have been give freedom between  his recording of 10 and 11. With no organic cause for Charles’ memory disruption, the answer in all likelihood is a traumatic experience that has him in denial, possibly, very acute denial. Maybe tomorrow we’ll learn the cause...maybe tomorrow. Ladies...gentlemen. 9am.”

It was not an easy night for any of them. Some went to their favorite restaurant, some their favorite bar, some managed to get home before the anxiety of their responsibility set in. By morning...all had prepared themselves for the final day of listening, analyzing, and arriving at conclusions most would rather not have to face.

Dr. Pressman had seen it many times over the course of his career. Committees for patient visitation grants; committees for evaluating the performance of new staff members; committees for establishing the budgetary requirements of Milton, et al., but the advisory committees for establishing the ability of an accused to stand trial as a human or vegetable had always been the “next to impossible ones.”

Dr. Pressman was a fair man, an experienced man, a compassionate man, but like most of his colleagues, he was also a man paid very big dollars to make the right decision. “A person’s mind, heart, and soul is a difficult child to hold in one’s arms,” he said that morning before the last tapes were to be played. “I trust we will succeed today in parenting a healthy decision.”

The tape deck’s LED lights flashed their confirmation that sound was flowing through the system. Hopefully, answers would flow through the system of 23 doctors charged with the fate of the men whose story had perhaps passed the halfway point.