Stoneport

Copyright © 2012 by Hill Anderson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Cover illustration by the author’s son, Jesse Anderson

ISBN: 978-1-4759-0624-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-0623-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-0625-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012937128

iUniverse rev. date: 5/7/2012

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

About the Author

For my mother, who set me adrift,

and my father, who showed me how to sail.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks go to my creative consultant, fellow novelist, and wife, Eleanor Choukas Anderson; to my brother, Walt, for his quiet inspiration throughout; to my wise special editor through years of drafts, Dia Ballou; to my other insightful editors who went over every line with me: Mark Johnson and Susan Noel; and to my brilliant readers: Andy Anderson, Jesse Anderson (also the cover illustrator), Schuyler Anderson, Carol Barr, Peter Brough, Melanie Choukas-Bradley, Mike Choukas, Nita Choukas, Winnie Kaley, Linda Kelly Brown, Duncan Nichols, Andrew Nuss, Diane Roston, Joe Saginor, and Jeanne West.

Prologue

February 1975

As spare as haiku, Eli’s footsteps were the only marks in the fresh snowfall. It was barely daybreak. From everywhere in the gray sky, light inched alive. He could hardly see the slopes of the hills, two farmhouses still asleep, fence railings, a caving barn, and a lone raven making his way overhead toward an unknown destination.

He was alone, starting out to walk the three remaining miles to his dormitory. His blue Volkswagen Beetle had quietly slid off the road on a curve banked the wrong way. The snowplow had not yet come to scrape off the five inches of new powder. The storm was mostly over. A few flurries lingered.

It was his second year at Stone University. He appreciated that it was one of New England’s finest, high on a wooded hill only twenty miles from the coast, a cradle of intellectual activity and research, and a sanctuary from the turmoil of his family. His father had left home for a year despite everyone’s pleadings. His mother had preferred his two younger sisters, the daughters she had really wanted, which had left Eli to fend for himself. He struggled with untold and desperate emotions swirling beneath the veneer of his accommodating personality. At times, he’d worried he might be losing his mind. College offered a new start, a chance to be his real self, the promise of authenticity.

Maybe he shouldn’t have tried to drive back from the commune so late, he thought. Two things softened his irritation: the beauty of the world in this snowy early morning and the memory of having been invited inside a woman for the first time.

He met Wendy in the T-group, which was short for training group, which was short for sensitivity training group. Eli had heard that participants would be trained to be more sensitive through hour after hour of sitting in a circle and being increasingly honest about how they felt toward each other. Many of his peers considered it avant-garde to be candid about your feelings, and great benefits were foretold.

When Eli read the registration material, he was comforted to find that the group was presented under the auspices of the Stoneport Institute of Psychiatry, whose main facility was next to the ocean about twelve miles east of the university. Eli had visited the charming harbor village there and thought that it was a fitting location for the Institute, to which people sailed for interaction and supplies before departing again.

A little map showed the location of this weekend’s gathering to be about a mile from the inland university at a remote cabin surrounded by forest near the end of a dirt road. The isolation of the setting made Eli nervous. He worried that there might be disconcerting personal encounters so far from the grounding routine of everyday life. The flyer went on to say that SIP held many programs to serve the public and to further the research of Stone’s medical school faculty, who periodically gathered at the secluded site to present findings, design new initiatives, attend team-building workshops, and have holiday events well away from the stress of the workplace.

When he drove in, just before dark on Friday evening, Eli noticed on the approach a five-acre pond with a few skaters passing around a hockey puck. He expected that townspeople knew that the cabin was private, but who were the participants going to be, anyway? Some of them might be from the town, thought Eli, but an experimental program like this would probably be attractive only to the liberal college community. Of course, there was also a counterculture that had settled into the rural surrounding area—people who were likewise less rigid and who were willing to take a little bit of a risk. The program started on Friday night and went until Sunday afternoon. The members were to go home to sleep.

Eli was full of anxiety before the first session, worried that he’d be seen as shallow or pathetic. He was hoping to seem bright and appealing. In the past he’d been popular enough, but he rarely felt that he deserved it.

The group gathered in a large meeting area decorated informally like a living room with a fireplace at one end. Four windows with sixteen-over-sixteen panes gave a sweeping view of the pond, scraped clean for skating, where only three weeks ago a young man had ignored the signs warning of thin ice and drowned, according to a conversation Eli overheard between two women a few feet away from him. Two worn leather-like vinyl couches faced each other eight feet apart, with several Scandinavian and molded plastic chairs at each end forming an oval. A lamp sitting on a side table had a ceramic base with mushrooms painted on it. Two others were wrought-iron and stood on the slate floor. The low lighting was incandescent and warm, and it cast shadows beyond whatever it touched.

Before the first session officially began, while Eli stood around chatting with some of the other participants, out of the corner of his eye he reconnoitered where to sit. He could place himself to look out over the pond, or he might have a view of the parking spaces that lined the other side of the building. One spot appeared cozy. Another seemed exposed. He took care looking for his place, giving sidelong attention to the movement of everyone else and hoping to sit next to someone safe or attractive seemingly by accident. Who would be on his right and on his left? Who would wind up across from him? Would the seat he chose tonight be the same for the whole three days? A shag rug at his feet covered the center of the cold floor.

Barry was a soft-spoken and soft-bellied trainer from out of town. He wore a baggy tie-dyed shirt with a peace sign pendant around his neck. Jeans and black socks in sandals completed his outfit. Angular Leila was his high-heeled cotrainer. Eli chose the Danish oak chair next to Leila, with the fireplace at his back. Wendy was sitting forty-five degrees to his left, in the middle of the couch that faced the pond. The others finally took their seats, three of them lighting cigarettes. Barry flicked open his Zippo and lit a Marlboro in one movement.

Leila slowly scanned the group, taking in each person, pivoting her lean body as she turned. Her hands were manicured, her dark hair styled, her blouse and skirt tailored. She was from the city about an hour to the south. Eventually, she gathered herself and asked everyone to introduce him or herself. They went around: Eli the college student, Brianna the secretary, Adrian the professor, Wendy the hippie, George the graduate student, Barry who was Leila’s coleader, Maryann the waitress, Henry the other undergraduate, Sue the store owner, James the psychologist, Ginger the architect, Peter the carpenter, and back to Leila. Each politely took a turn. Leila thanked them with a wide smile and looked back to Barry.

He put down his cigarette and invited everyone to join him in standing up. Furniture creaked and chair legs scraped as the group rose. He proposed that for five minutes everyone mill around nonverbally, communicating without words, paying attention to feelings. He put his finger to his lips signaling silence and took two slow steps toward the center of the room. Eli hesitated and then began tentatively to shuffle forth. He felt on the spot. What should he do with his eyes—look up, look down, make eye contact, break eye contact, check out a couple of people across the room, look out the window, or examine a mole on his wrist? And what was he to do with his hands—stuff them in his pockets, clasp them in front or behind, play with his fingers, wring them together, touch someone’s shoulder, hide them in folded arms, meet palm to palm with someone else, point, give a thumbs up, or gesture in some other way? And how should he move his feet—approach, retreat, circulate, or be still and wait? For him, it was an ordeal of stiff smiles, fleeting glances, and endeavoring not to offend. He noticed that some members seemed to be at home with fluid facial expressions and meaningful touches. He hated his unease. He wanted to be cool. He longed to learn how to be genuine rather than to dance according to the superficial choreography of social convention.

Eli regretted that he had been raised on evasive politesse and proper behavior. At home he was to finish everything on his plate with good manners. To speak of uncertified emotions was to open the door to unpleasantness and Lord knows, as did his mother, there was too much of that in the world already. She considered it a victory over discomfort to remain unperturbed. That was the attitude his mother demanded and modeled during the worst of her suffering. She’d never participate in something like this group, he thought. Here was one more way in which she’d never know him.

For several minutes the participants kept milling around, like billiard balls in slow motion, making momentary contact and bouncing on. The only sounds were of footfalls, bumped furniture, an occasional giggle, and the hiss and crackle of the fire. The temperature outside had been dropping through the teens ever since darkness had swallowed the weak red sunset.

When Barry finally spoke, the noise came as a surprise, freezing people in place. He said that the exercise would end soon, and that they shouldn’t hurry but take a few more minutes to wind down. Eli tried to comply, endeavoring to appear contemplative while homing in on the same seat that he had earlier invested so much in acquiring. Eventually they were all parked and looking at Barry, who paused to let the significance of what they had accomplished sink in.

Now we can talk about what that was like, he said.

He asked them to process the experience. Process was a new word. It meant to go back over the last few minutes and analyze what happened, what the feelings were, and what was observed. To debrief was another word for that kind of rehashing. Returning to the safety of words was a relief.

Most said they were anxious at first, dealt with it somehow, and were glad that it was over. Some said they learned about themselves: that they were too word-bound, that eye contact was more powerful than they thought, or that they were unsure about touching. Such comments were either the truth or an attempt to sound good. Eli couldn’t always tell which.

After everyone had spoken, Barry looked over at Leila. She took the cue, stood up, smoothed her skirt, and stepped next to an easel with a pad of newsprint on it. She flipped over the first page to introduce another new concept: Feedback. She explained that feedback was information from others about how we come across. It was a way to better understand ourselves. Going down a list written in Magic Marker, she described the main points. The person giving feedback was the sender, whose transmission should be congruent among many levels of communication: content, tone of voice, timing, nonverbal cues, intent, humor, and emotion. We should take ownership of all of our experience; for example, we should use I-messages. Feedback should describe specific behavior the receiver can do something about, without attributing motives to her or him.

And it is most effective for a person when it is solicited, Leila concluded, so think about what you would like to ask for feedback. We’ll be trying it. Any questions?

Peter, a vagabond carpenter and wildlife expert, said, You referred to ‘her or him.’ Do we always have to include the feminine pronoun alongside the masculine?

Leila reddened slightly.

Why not? she said.

The masculine pronoun by convention includes both, said Peter, and it’s less awkward to use just one. In your opinion, do we also have to alternate which gender is mentioned first?

Let’s not get into that right now, said Leila. Maybe later. Are there any questions about how feedback works?

There were none.

The prospect of sending and receiving feedback was worrisome to Eli, and he did not dare open his mouth. Could there be too much honesty? Couldn’t things spin out of control if primitive impulses were exposed? Feelings could be hurt, aggression unleashed, or humiliation engendered. Would civilized discourse be lost? Could the group descend into the law of the jungle and invite the chaos of the Lord of the Flies?

So, George, why don’t you begin? said Barry.

George, a thin graduate student in mathematics, looked stricken.

Well, okay, I, uh, what do you all think of me?

The members looked puzzled. Maryann, a popular waitress at a nearby pub, said, I like you, George. You’re cute.

Leila frowned and leaned forward. Let me stop you for a moment. George, it’s more useful when you can ask the group for specific feedback about something in particular, rather than being so general.

He tried again. Sometimes I’ve thought I put people off when I first meet them. Is there any feedback that—

You should have more confidence, eye contact, firm handshake, interjected Peter. Then people will think—

Leila interrupted again. "Could you make that an ‘I-statement,’ Peter, saying what you see rather than what he should do or what people might think?"

Peter bristled. He looked her in the eye, then down at her breasts pushing at the pockets of her red blouse, then at her eyes again before turning to George.

I thought you looked scared at first, he said to George, so I didn’t want to approach you.

I think I am shy, said George.

Group members said they, too, felt anxious and shy, and many complimented George on his courage to take a risk.

Eli observed others making stabs at giving and receiving feedback. Mostly people were better liked than they thought they would be, or so they were told.

Wendy was a natural, perceptively direct and kind at the same time. She said she lived at Highfields Farm, about five miles deeper into the countryside than the cabin, It was a commune organized two years before in a huge eighteenth-century farmhouse. It was formed around the ideals of living close to the land, having freedom from the hypocrisies of society, and practicing liberated love. Her husband didn’t believe in encounter groups and had stayed home. Fearlessly, she began to nudge the gathering in the cabin toward more dangerous territory.

So, Peter, she said, I noticed your irritation when Leila tried to redirect you.

I’m not used to being told what to do, said Peter.

Do you have feelings about me being a woman, asked Leila, in a leadership role?

It’s okay with me that you’re a woman, said Peter, but I don’t like all your rules. They’re artificial, phony.

You mean they feel that way to you, said Leila.

See, there you go again, said Peter, correcting me. You like to be in control, don’t you?

I’m trying to teach communication skills. Leila seemed to be getting exasperated.

And I can’t communicate? Peter raised his voice. You feminists are so superior. We men cause all the problems, right? Well, I’m not with you on that. He looked around at the other men in the group, none of whom would return his eye contact.

You see, said Leila, you’re making up a story about me. All you can know for sure is how it makes you feel when I behave in a certain way. That’s what the ‘rule’ tells us.

Peter, interjected Wendy, underneath, I think you feel inferior to Leila.

No way. Peter’s neck was beginning to turn red.

I know where you’re coming from, said George. Women are better at talking about things than we are, but that doesn’t mean that men are deficient. Go ahead. Let your real feelings out. We men don’t have to be confident all the time.

You can gang up on me, said Peter, but I’m not going to change who I am. You talk about being real. I’ll show you real—

Peter, I’m sorry if I’ve upset you, said Leila. She seemed to be trying to soften his mounting anger, revealing her experience in dealing with those tricky situations in which men’s emotions become unregulated. What you’re saying is important to me, but I wonder whether we could postpone this discussion for now in order to hear about what other group members might have on their minds.

In the group’s next experiment with feedback, Adrian the English professor and Sue the bookstore owner both thought James the psychologist was intelligent but arrogant.

I like James’s combination of confidence and intellectual curiosity, said Ginger the commercial architect.

I agree, said Eli.

Brianna said she thought everyone was getting too theoretical. She and Wendy wondered what had happened to the feelings here, agreeing with each other that emotions were the most important part of being human. Eli and Henry, the two undergraduates, wordlessly looked each other over. By the time the Friday evening session ended, most of the members had been involved in giving and receiving first impressions of each other.

Eli was exhausted and pleased that the opening night was over. So far, so good. He got back to his dorm room just before midnight and fell asleep in his clothes.

He’d always had vivid dreams, and as a child he had worried his parents with his frequent sleepwalking. The boundary between being awake and dreaming was porous for him, and sometimes he could even get lost in a daydream.

About an hour after collapsing on his dormitory bed, he had a nightmare. He was treading water in a choppy seaway offshore, and he was afraid that he might drown. A distant ferry was heading away from him, and his father was waving good-bye from the stern. A few yards in front of him, his mother had the oars in a rowboat that also held his two sisters.

Help me! he called to them.

His mother inclined her head. His sisters were busy talking between themselves and didn’t hear him. He took some desperate strokes toward the boat, but his mother floated just beyond his reach.

I have some things to take care of, she said.

I want to trust you, shouted Eli.

His mother just stared into the distance. A cold wave from behind broke over him, driving him under. When he struggled back to the surface, no boat could be seen.

Swim, he heard an inner voice command. Swim!

He increased his effort, but he kept swallowing water and could not stay afloat. He started to go down again.

Help, said Eli out loud as he suddenly awoke and sat up straight in his bed. It took him a moment to realize that he was safe and that it was just a dream, though he thought he could still taste the salt water on his lips. As he thought of his mother, there was a pain in his pounding heart. He recognized the voice that had urged him to swim, and it wasn’t hers. Long ago, he had named that voice the commander. It was a persona inside his own mind who spoke to him through his waking thoughts, who was his caretaker, and who was a master strategist.

When the session on Saturday morning began, Barry and Leila were silent, leaving the group to struggle with how to begin.

Ginger wanted to hear about Wendy’s commune, but Peter accused them of gossiping, and on went the group dynamics. By Saturday afternoon, Eli thought the tone was heavier and lighter at the same time, deeper but with more humor. He noticed that by being more transparent, members weathered their conflicts and became more attached. People who disliked each other at first were now allies after having shared the stage. Some wept, told tragic stories, or expressed affection.

When Eli communicated, he often used his hands and arms as props. Behind a swirl of movements, he described his chronic self-consciousness and asked for feedback.

Ginger and Maryann thought he was cute. Adrian saw in him a born leader. James wanted to be his friend. Everyone at least liked him. By Saturday evening Eli was intoxicated with deliverance. It was turning out better than he could have imagined. He felt at the top of his game. Wendy had caught his eye, and he wanted to encounter her. He looked over at her across the group.

Wendy, you seem very nice to me, he said, but I worry that because you’re married you’d cut me off at a certain point.

I don’t see why, she said. Wendy was eight years older than Eli with long blonde hair and an Indian print dress whose pattern did not mask the line of breast and nipple.

But being married, you couldn’t have a relationship with me beyond something superficial. Eli didn’t want another mother.

I don’t know why that has to be true, she said.

Barry jumped in. Wendy, he said, Eli has made two sexual overtures to you, and you haven’t answered him yet.

Eli was stunned. He thought he was just being honest about the distance married women project. He wasn’t trying to proposition her. Nevertheless, he was interested in what her answer might be.

Oh, she said, pausing, inscrutable. Well, I’m flattered. I’m attracted to Eli too. There is nothing in my marriage automatically corralling me. I make my own decisions.

Wendy and Eli held their eye contact. He was thrilled. Not only was he a handsome leader, but he’d had an overture he didn’t know he was making accepted from the prettiest woman in the group. There was magic here. He loved sensitivity training.

Eli and Wendy found each other when the group broke up Saturday night. It was different being alone with her outside of the gathering. Both less and more was possible. There was neither the safety of the group nor its push for openness. It was just the two of them now. He accepted her invitation to go see Highfields Farm and followed her in his car as she wrestled the commune’s jalopy over a long and uneven dirt road. For the final mile it was so narrow that Eli couldn’t see how two cars could pass each other, but luckily nothing was coming the other way.

When they arrived, many of the inhabitants had already gone to bed. The house smelled of sweat and cat litter and marijuana. In the background, Bob Dylan was singing about being released. Big John, a towering former logger, staggered down creaky stairs into the living room with eyes widely dilated. He pronounced that all was well and disappeared.

I think he’s tripping, said Wendy.

Hello, said another man approaching them.

Gene, said Wendy, this is Eli, my friend from the group. Eli, this is my husband, Gene.

How do you do, said Eli, glancing back at the door.

Welcome to Highfields, said Gene. Wendy has told me she likes you. Has there been a group hug yet?’

Eli was surprised that he had been worth mentioning to her husband.

Let me show you around, said Wendy.

You do that, said Gene. I’m going to bed. See you two in the morning, maybe.

That was easy enough, thought Eli.

Wendy took Eli through the living room to the kitchen, where a woman named Heidi was seasoning a pot of soup. A purple headband decorated with a sun and moon and stars held her shoulder-length black hair.

You must be a Scorpio, Heidi said, looking into Eli’s eyes. She lit a joint and handed it to him.

He took a long drag and passed it on to Wendy, who also had some. All three exhaled in one cloud.

Is the woodstove in the studio stoked? asked Wendy.

I think so, said Heidi.

Let’s go up there, Wendy said to Eli.

The studio was a freestanding building at the end of a hundred-yard path. The snow was beginning in earnest as they made their way out through the wintry night. Eli felt the marijuana begin to take effect. Reality became unlocked and shifted a few degrees away from itself. His consciousness was altering. They pulled their coats close and hid their faces against the wind. The conditions were bracing and romantic.

The studio was hot when they stumbled inside. The woodstove had begun to run away with itself. Wendy hurried over and closed down the damper.

It’ll be fine, she said.

They stamped the snow off their feet and hung their coats up on pegs near the door. Wendy brushed off a few snowflakes clinging to the front of her dress and slipped off her boots. Eli warmed himself by the stove and looked around. Along the wall there were shelves loaded with paint and thinner bottles, brushes, sketchbooks, crystals, knotty joints of wood, a bird’s nest, a yarn god’s eye, the seeds and detritus of a score of projects. A mattress covered by a gray and brown batik bedspread lay on the floor. Two clean orange pillows perched at one end.

There was an easel next to the window that looked down on the lights of the farmhouse. Resting on it was a half-finished portrait of a beautiful woman in her midthirties next to an oak tree with two ravens in it. There was an ocean behind her. She was not smiling. She looked at him with eyes that were sad and wise. He stared back.

After a few moments he shook his head as if to break a spell. I’m too stoned, he thought.

Do you like it? said Wendy. It isn’t completed.

What ocean is that? he asked.

The ocean that calls to us.

I feel drawn to her, said Eli. Who is she?

You could call her my sister.

Wendy lit a sand candle and an oil lamp before she turned out the electric lights. Out the window they saw the well-lit commune farmhouse suddenly go black. Eli sat down on a low stool next to the easel.

Power outage, said Wendy. A limb somewhere must have broken under the snow and taken out the lines.

She came over to Eli and took his hand.

Wait, this is my first time, said Eli.

Far out. Wendy looked him in the eye. She knelt down and pulled off his boots, then his socks. Standing up slowly she ran her hands along the outsides of his thighs and hips. When she kissed him, her tongue flicked. Her left index finger played in his ear and her right hand gently squeezed the swelling she found behind his zipper. Then she stepped away and sat down on the mattress.

Come over here, my friend … She slipped her panties down over her feet.

Hours later, he had walked almost back to his dorm while a reddish dawn swept through the untouched snowy landscape. He was proud of his initiation. No one could see the secret place in his experience where he was forever changed. The last thing Wendy did was to pull his head close to hers and whisper in his ear, Thank you, Eli. Though his feet were tired from the hike, his steps were lively. The Sunday morning session of the group would begin in a few hours. There’d be just enough time to have his car towed and get some breakfast.

Saturday had been an absorbing day of group work. Last evening, softened by fatigue, Eli felt that the glow of the firelight had tugged at primordial memories deep in his chest and had set Wendy and him afloat on a fathomless sea.

On Sunday morning, however, the sun was sending a more austere light. Barry began the day by reminding them that the program was to end at noon and that these were the final three hours.

It has been an honest group, he said, nodding.

I love all of you, said Maryann. Who would have thought that we’d have come so far, from so much uncertainty to such closeness?

There were murmurs of approval and amen.

Eli thought he and Wendy glowed like royalty. He was the king and she his queen. Their afterglow was all he needed. If anyone were to ask, he was just fine.

Peter and Leila put the finishing touches on their reconciliation. They agreed they were two strong people who liked their genders. Adrian had some poetic words about all he’d discovered about himself. Ginger had to be reassured that George wasn’t hurt by her feedback to him yesterday. Adrian and Henry both said that this was an experience unprecedented in their entire lives. James and Sue inspired many supporting nods when they concurred that they felt vibrant, understood, and connected. Wendy proposed that it was high time to give up their hiding places, to stop having to guess what others thought, to go forth and form a new age of openness, to create a more genuine social counterculture.

Soaring, Eli was unprotected against what happened next.

You know, Eli, said Barry, if there’s any unfinished business, it’s with you. You’ve been aloof. You don’t seem to have really become a member. I’m sorry if I seem too direct, but that’s why we’re here.

What? What’s he saying? thought Eli. He was unsure how to respond.

You were with us at first, Barry continued, when you were asking for people’s first impressions of you, but since yesterday you’ve seemed uninvolved.

Peter and Ginger nodded.

You had an encounter with Wendy, said Barry, "but beyond that we don’t know much about who you are. Is there anything you’d like to express now?"

I … I’m sorry, stammered Eli. He sent a guilty glance Wendy’s way. She was smiling, encouraging him to join in.

No one spoke. They were waiting.

I’m shy too, said George, but I’m so grateful for the risks the group helped me take. How about you, Eli? It’s not too late.

He froze. What did they want him to do? There was no time. In the silence he could see every fiber in the rug at his feet. Barry’s Zippo pinged as he lit another cigarette. Outside a skater shouted to another, and a hockey stick slapped the ice.

Not everyone gets the same things out of these experiences, said Leila. And whatever you don’t get this time, you’ll be ready for next time.

He could tell she was patronizing him. They were letting him down easy. He was sinking, paralyzed.

The group ended with a big hug, proclamations of affection, and hopes for a reunion. Everyone was polite to Eli, assuring him it was okay, complimenting him, and wishing him well. Wendy was in the middle of the group when at last he quietly escaped out the door unnoticed.

What had happened? How had he come to be so deluded about himself? Did winning Wendy blind him? They did find each other through this group. Was what happened in the Highfields studio a private encounter or an element of the group dynamics? They had all liked him so much. Then he became smug and hoarding.

Or had he been self-centered from the beginning?

Oh my God, he thought. He was just another player. He had properly been expelled from the love of the group.

Shame prickled his face. The weekend was over now, and he was not even considered a member. He was the only outcast. It was too late to do anything about it. His thoughts were circling the familiar drain of his self-hatred.

Would he always end up guilty of an inadvertent crime, tainted, a deportee from human warmth? Would he ever rise out of the chilly brine where his mother had so often left him? That night he squirmed, lonely in despair, wounded again. He remembered Wendy’s unfinished painting and the eyes. A variation on his usual dream came back to him. He was floating all by himself far from shore in cold water, sentenced for an unknown offense, while overhead flew the rasping ravens of exile.

I need to find a boat, he said in his dream.

The next morning, he promised himself to make a study of human relationships, and the commander swore that he would never, ever let this happen again.

That was twenty years ago.

Chapter 1

October 1995

When researchers finally broke the code that linked mood, cognition, and behavior, psychiatric hospitalization became rare.

—The Fundamentals of Mind,

V.23, p.87, Institute Press, 2075.

The coincidence of movement and stillness is a law of nature. No matter how ferocious the sea is in hurling tons of water at Stoneport’s rocky shoreline, the granite breakwater sits unresponsive, protecting the harbor as the waves explode around it. The tide has a more seductive approach, but the steep glacial sides of every inlet remain unmoved. To fishermen, the stars seem riveted in place compared to the perpetual rise and fall of their boats on the swells. Farmers know the earth remains constant underneath extraordinary seasonal transformations. While the past can never be altered, the present is never fixed.

Stoneport had been a fishing and a farming town at the beginning of the 1700s. The meadows came down alongside the Thunder River to close contact with the ocean, a transition unmoderated by the marshy lowlands that characterized coastlines farther south. The busy harbor hosted vessels from many countries that fished the banks offshore, brought their catches to the drying racks on the edge of town, and then transported delicacies all over the world. The fertile land provided crops for food as well as feed for some of the largest dairy herds in the region. Modern economies had shrunk those original industries, but many new enterprises had grown up near the river and the harbor, including the Gods Anchor Quarry, the Portside Men’s Shop, and the Stoneport Institute of Psychiatry. The historical society took seriously its responsibility to preserve the old textile mill next to Arrowhead Falls, maintaining strict regulations as it leased space to the computer giant Thunderbolt Electronics.

From above, the harbor looked like a C with a lighthouse at the upper end and the Institute on a promontory at the bottom. If you were to try to carve that C with a smooth sweep of your eyes, the blade of your attention would catch at once on the jagged rocks below the lighthouse, then the uneven contours of Pirates Cove, then the finger of jetty made up of slabs of granite piled like fallen dominoes protecting the clubhouse and docks of the Stoneport Yacht Club—the center of gravity for two dozen sloops, ketches, and catboats bobbing on their moorings. Next was the town beach well downslope from the Misty Hill mansions, where the wealthy lived, and Foggy Knoll, where the spire and cemetery of Our Lady of the Seas Chapel held the highest ground.

On the other side of the brackish mouth of the Thunder River were the Crabmeat Café and the fuel dock at the entrance to the village, where a high school student lounged waiting to tie up the next boat. He got up and walked down to the end of the landing to coil a loose line. Then turned the fuel pump on and off to test its readiness. Soon a line of fishing boats would be filling up for the day’s work. The young man looked toward the sea, where neither the tightly fitted jumble of the harbor nor the clutter of his mind were able to crowd him as his awareness spread out over the vast expanse of salt water. The flat line of the horizon was where the earth curved away from the sky, yielding to the endless space that hosted the dance of his uncontained imaginings and at the same time was its own simple emptiness. There were no choices necessary, no need to prioritize or configure. Out there was room for everything, no matter how cramped he might have felt at the elbows.

Five commercial fishing piers crammed with gently swaying and bumping trawlers were next along the harbor shore, and then the cargo wharf where, at four in the afternoon six days a week, fishermen emptied their holds and gave the best bargains. The adjacent shipyard had dozens of watercraft perched on wooden stands near the end of the metal tracks coming up out of the water to the hauling winch. Boats were in dry-dock to have their bottoms painted and for winter storage. A chain-link fence protected those expensive marine assets from the disorderly poor who lived in the neighboring Harborside tenements. Beyond those were, at last, the natural rocky lines of the headland that held the Institute. By the time it traced the harbor’s curve, this blade of aerial scrutiny would be chipped and dull. From an even higher altitude, the harbor looked like a chalice holding a small sip of the great ocean wilderness.

The Institute on Long Point was a landmark for yachtsmen. Formerly a convent, the huge Victorian mansion could be seen from a mile away out on the ocean. Wealthy men in their sailboats admired the groomed waterside grounds and the finesse of the architecture. Many shook their heads at the irony that such a sensual place had been wasted first on nuns and now on the mentally ill. Sailing by on a quiet reach, mariners told tales of what might have happened within the walls of that cloister.

The inpatient ward was on the third and top floor of the main building—right next to heaven, it was said. The windows were subtly reinforced so that, while no one could open them to jump out, it was concealed that the inmates were behind bars. Below that on the second floor were Founders Library, the Nathan Broadbent Auditorium (Broadway), and the ministry of medical records. On the ground floor were the outpatient department headquarters with a waiting room and eight private offices.

Faculty, residents in psychiatry, and medical students came from Stone University Medical School. The Department of Psychiatry administered the Institute as a training site and a source of revenue, though for the last few years it had been losing money.

Eli Fox returned to the Stoneport area with his wife, Ashley, after graduate school to take a position as a family therapist. He once said that he was proud of his earthy profession of social work because he traveled through less pretentious terrain than either the skybound gods of medicine or the inhabitants of the abstract land of testing and personality schemes. The most institutionalized of the staff looked askance at his reputation for encouraging honest interpersonal feedback. He was good enough at age thirty-nine that some of the doctors in residency training came to him for supervision and respected enough that he was asked to give seminars.

On a Monday nine days before Halloween, Eli and ten others were waiting in the inpatient conference room for the daily morning meeting to begin. Up front was a huge green blackboard with recent admissions, current announcements, and policy messages for the staff. The chairman was supposed to be coming that day. It was after eight o’clock, so the charge nurse had begun her review. Then the door popped open.

Any gathering became more civilized upon the arrival of Dr. Nigel Charles. He was a proper Brit: articulate, charming, and brilliant. He always dressed formally, and an endless collection of bow ties was his hallmark. Horizontal creases across his high forehead added to the air of intelligence that emanated from his steady hazel eyes behind gold wire-rimmed glasses. On the other hand, there was a suggestion of madness in his longish snow-white hair with its unruly cowlick. The door clicked shut behind him. He was late, and everyone noticed. Doctors typically came ten minutes late to every meeting, supposedly due to compelling clinical pressures. Actually, it was more a statement of rank. Nurses were busier, and they were always on time.

Dr. Charles had recently been appointed acting chairman of the Department of Psychiatry. After the last chairman married a former patient, the Institute’s Board of Trustees decided they would pull the plug on the accelerating ethics debate and accept his resignation. Nigel Charles was the next most senior faculty member. He was also a well-published theorist and editor of The Fundamentals of Mind—a