Rushing: Missing the timing of the board by anticipating the spring too early, or moving too quickly in a hurdle or back press, usually due to anxiety.
UNCLE PHIL is leaning on the roof of a Passat talking to the driver when I pull up behind the white sedan. It’s hours later than I intended to show up here, a lot has happened, but my purpose is the same. When Uncle Phil sees me his expression flashes from surprised to composed, much faster than my own reaction to learning he had an affair with Mom. He says something to the driver, taps the rim of the open window twice, and she shifts her car into drive. Our eyes meet in the driver’s side mirror before she pulls away and I see the woman who was leaving his house last Saturday.
“Theo.” Uncle Phil’s surprise carries into his voice as he meets me halfway on the sidewalk. “It’s late. I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Should I have called first?”
“Of course not. You know you’re always welcome here. Come in.”
My head spins as I follow Uncle Phil to his enormous kitchen, a room that could easily contain GP’s foyer, kitchen, and half his living room.
“Have you eaten? You look a little peaked.”
“Not yet,” I tell him. “I was busy. Diving, homework, you know how it is.”
“I was concerned the higher dosage of Adderall might suppress your appetite.”
“Nah. I’m a springboard diver. I can always eat. I was just a little preoccupied today.”
I never thought I’d feel the need to manipulate the truth out of Uncle Phil. But right now, as he pushes an aluminum swan across the granite island, I see a different person. Someone who was capable of cheating with my mom behind Dad’s back, the kind of guy who made Iris’s dad so suspicious he told me to stay away from her without explanation.
“Leftovers from Davios,” he says. Assuming my hesitation has anything to do with his dinner scraps and not my conflicted feelings.
I unwrap the foil, exposing a steak dinner with creamed spinach. “Thanks.”
“Is the new dosage helping your focus?”
“Yes and no. Everything seems heightened if that makes sense: sound, smells. But I’m smacking on dives I should have a better handle on by now.”
“Because of the stress you feel about the project.” He tip-nods his head like that’s understandable. But he’s wrong. Dead wrong. “How did it go for you at the county clerk’s office?”
I shrug and he takes an empty pint glass to the stainless steel refrigerator, watching me closely as water bubbles noisily into the vessel, like he senses something’s up. My throat dries up more by the second. Not to mention my brass because he’s got that look in his eye. Shrink-mode.
“You were right about the sealed files,” I tell him. “Total bust. I was just talking to Iris Fiorello about the other sources of information available and whether or not they might be reliable. School records, newspaper clippings, stuff like that.”
There’s an unmistakable pause in his movements before he slides the water glass across the granite island. “The cemetery sexton’s daughter is helping you with this, along with that other diver you mentioned, the one who left you the note?” He snaps his finger three times like he’s trying to remember.
“Les.”
“Les,” he repeats. “Les Carter? Is Iris the girl Chip was referring to you when he said you were stalking someone?”
I nod and try not to gulp the bite of steak I’m grinding between my teeth. I wait. Swallow. Breathe. “Iris is our other project partner. I take it you know her dad.”
“My two best friends died within a few years of each other, leaving my nephew an orphan. You could say he and I have had some dealings.”
“Right. That makes sense. So what’s your take on him? I only talked to the man for a few minutes but it was pretty clear he wasn’t too keen on his daughter spending time with me.”
Uncle Phil gives a tiny grimace. “Bert Fiorello is, in a word, observant. In fact, the only other person I’ve ever known to be more vigilant was Mitch.”
“It was definitely hard to slip anything past my dad.”
“Sometimes to his own detriment.”
True. But he didn’t even flinch. That’s not anywhere close to a confession of guilt.
Uncle Phil removes his tie, unbuttons the top button on his gray shirt, and pours two fingers of scotch from the decanter on the counter behind him. “I can’t speak from personal experience, of course, but I imagine any decent father is protective of his child. Speaking of which, I have a few more photos for you that will help with your project. I’ll get them while you finish eating dinner.”
I scarf the last two bites and get up to put my dish in the sink. “I’m done, actually. I’ll come with you.”
“I hardly think that’s necessary, Theo. Have a seat in the living room. I’ll be right back.” He stops to light the gas fireplace before heading down the hallway toward his bedroom.
I head for the set of leather chairs we always sit in but can’t settle down so I traipse over to the bookshelves lining one of wall. I don’t know what I’m looking for exactly but I scan the titles: Acid Dreams, Hallucinations, Mycology, On the Origin of Species, Manifesting Minds. Not exactly what you’d call light reading. Our shelves at home were filled with sports biographies, mysteries, and thrillers, exciting stories about real lives or families with problems. Uncle Phil’s books are mostly clinical.
I pull the mycology book off the shelf and fan through a few highlighted pages that outline the uses of psilocybin in psychiatry. Specifically how combining magic mushrooms with meditation or hypnosis can awaken the subconscious and free the mind from negative thought patterns.
“You’ll either never eat mushrooms again after reading that book or decide they’re just the thing you need.” He takes the book from me and hands me four photos: my mom, my mom and me, and two more of the three of us. “Do you have any with my dad?”
“Sadly, I don’t. I know it’s not much, but I’ll keep digging for photos and official documents on the Rogans.”
The Rogans. Jeezus. I nearly forgot.
“I didn’t come here tonight because of my project,” I confess.
The real reasons tap away at my consciousness like insects trapped under glass. But acknowledging the affair, asking what he knows about Mom’s suspension from Stanford, even telling him my dream states are becoming maladaptive is harder than I thought.
“Why did you come?” Uncle Phil slides his hands into his pockets and waits.
I don’t know where to start. I wrestle with my most recent freak-outs and pick the easiest one first. “Do you think … This is gonna sound crazy … But is it possible Mom was outside of the house at one point during the fire?”
“An interesting concept. What makes you ask?”
“I went back to the site of our old house and thought I saw her standing near the tree line, just for a second.”
“The mind has a way of protecting us from certain truths. The jarring realism of the flashbacks you’ve experienced can make it difficult to accept what’s come to pass. Have you experienced other flashbacks that make you think your mother was safe from harm at one point that evening?”
“No. Not flashbacks, exactly. But there have been more dream states. I saw Mom underneath the water when I went cliff jumping on Monarch Night. She was sitting in one of the rooms in the flooded town beneath the surface. She said, ‘You found me’ and told me I was running out of time.”
“Has anyone else ever spoken to you during one of your dream states?”
“Never. But I thought I saw Rocco Bennett floating facedown on the water the same night. And before that, at the carnival, the wings of some butterflies fluttering near me had me seeing sharks circling a body, red blood seeping into water.”
“Sharks represent deeply buried emotions about situations in which you feel threatened. You have a swim meet coming up against the Andover Sharks and you said you felt threatened by Les Carter’s diving performance. It could be that the dream-ego is trying to prepare you for that situation in your subconscious mind.”
“How did you know we had a meet coming up against Andover?”
“The team schedule is hardly a secret, Theo.”
“Right.”
I’m being weird.
He straightens the books on the shelf next to my head. “I’m wondering if you’d be opposed to spending a few days at Green Hill with me? An overnight or weekend, perhaps. Just to give you the opportunity to relax in a supported environment, undisturbed. If I could observe and record your dream states via EEG to look for disturbances in your REM and non-REM sleep cycles—”
“I don’t think GP would go for that. Plus, you said this was all PTSD.”
“It may very well be, but I’m concerned that the additional stress from diving is inhibiting your recovery, for better or worse. Believe me. I’ve put people under observation for far less. You’d be in capable hands.”
“I’ll come to Green Hill tomorrow so you can check my blood or whatever, but there’s no way I’m asking GP if I can stay at that place. It gives me the creeps.”
“Would you prefer to stay here, with me?”
“I don’t think GP would go for that either.”
“Yes. I doubt he would.”
It’s the first time I’ve ever been thankful to have GP as an excuse. There was a time I would have said yes to Uncle Phil’s offer without hesitation, but now I’m torn. I still need his help with Adderall for diving and understanding the dream states, which puts me in a tough spot. But that doesn’t mean I’m looking for a temporary pass to Green Hill.
I reach for the book on his shelf titled Manifesting Minds. Uncle Phil makes a quick jerky move like he might stop me, but runs his hand down the front of his shirt instead.
“Theo, why don’t you put that down and have a seat so you can tell me more about the room you saw underwater.”
I’m too fidgety to sit now. Too interested in why he lurched forward. I pull the book off the shelf, flip it open, and a photo drops to the floor.
I swoop to catch it and stand slowly, staring in disbelief at the missing photo from Coach Porter’s trophy case.
“How did you get this?”
“I suppose your mother gave it to me.”
“When?”
“I can’t be sure,” he says. “You seem bothered that it’s in my possession.”
I see through the question-statement, know he’s leading the conversation like a shrink.
“Not bothered. Just curious. I don’t have any of Mom’s diving photos.”
I flip it over, knowing she used to label the backs. The initials SR are written in the lower right corner, but the tail on the R is so small it could be a P for Steve Porter. There’s only one way to know for sure if Uncle Phil is lying.
“Can I have it?” I ask.
“Of course. What’s mine is yours.”
I check my phone for the time so I can make my escape. “This is great, Uncle Phil. Really helpful. But I should probably get going before GP sends out a search party. See you at Green Hill tomorrow?”
“Indeed you will. Try to arrive on schedule. I have a staff member staying late to help me with your blood work.”
“Six o’clock. I’ll be there. I’d say with bells on, but you know I have an irrational fear of needles.”
* * *
I DRIVE to the end of the block and pull over. My adrenaline is making my hands numb. I don’t know why Uncle Phil would lie to me but something doesn’t feel right. Not the photo, or the way Iris’s dad treated me, or the newspaper articles.
I reach into my front pocket for my phone to call Iris and the post of the earring I found last Saturday jabs me under my middle fingernail, drawing blood, which is fitting.
“Miss me already?” she answers.
“My uncle had Coach Porter’s photo at his house,” I blurt.
“Wait. What? How? Why?”
“You forgot when, but I have no freaking idea. He said he got it from my mom. I’m gonna run it by Coach Porter after practice. Are you doing anything tomorrow around six P.M.?”
“Homework. Searching the archives for you. You want to meet me after practice and help me search?”
“I was actually hoping you’d come Green Hill with me?”
“The park or the psychiatric hospital?”
“The hospital. I have an appointment with my Uncle Phil. Not as a shrink. I can explain on the way there, but I’d rather not go alone.”
“You want me to lie to my dad so I can spend time with you and the man he thinks is partially responsible for my mom’s death?”
“When you put it like that it sounds—”
“Like a terrible idea. I know. Count me in. I’ve always had a morbid curiosity about that place.”