Trauma by Patrick McGrath Read Free Book Online

a knock on the door, by one of us coming into the room or Cassie starting to cry. He immediately grew tense, his back stiff, hands gripping the arms of the chair. His eyes darted about the room, calculating where he could find cover, where his back would be protected.
    “It’s okay, Dan, just a delivery.”
    It upset him that this happened. Feeling he’d abused our hospitality, he would leave soon afterward. It was no use trying to stop him. He would suddenly head for the door, and though we offered him the sofa he never took it, he needed to be in the bars for hours yet before sleep would come. At times Agnes went into the bedroom after he’d gone and closed the door behind her, and I could hear her crying in there. It reminded me of my mother, of course, and as with her I would go to Agnes and give what comfort I could. So for the first months of Cassie’s life her uncle Danny was a frequent, moody presence in the apartment, but not for a single moment did either of us resent his presence.
    This in part was because of his courtesy toward us, and also the dignity that never failed him, at least not in my presence, and which I think derived from a personal code that enabled him to hold on to what few small scraps of self-respect had survived the war. At times I glimpsed what I thought of as the real Danny, like a ghost within the shattered personality. Then he was visible, if only faintly so, and this was what lent such pathos to the man, that you could see what he would’ve been had the war not traumatized him.
    “I’m fucked, Charlie. Don’t worry about it.”
    But he would never tell me his story, not of what had happened to him those last four months. He was too ashamed, I think, too ashamed of what he’d done. I saw how the men in the group formed a defensive circle around him, emotionally as well as spatially. Danny liked to sit at the back, on the outer edge of the loose, open circle of chairs, close to both the wall and the door. Even when he showed up late nobody took his chair, although for several of those men a seat close to the door was preferable to any other in the room. He paid close attention to what was said, and at times, when some part of another man’s experience conformed to his own, he would nod emphatically. This was always remarked on. “Right, Dan?” the guy would say, and he would lift his head and give consent to what was being said.
    Agnes liked it when I talked about Danny, though I rarely had anything to tell her other than that he had showed up. When the meeting ended it was usually late, for we often ran over our two hours into three or even four if we were getting real work done, and it’s a mark of how strong their need was that we could talk for so long, and at such a harrowing emotional pitch. Danny always lingered a few minutes at the end, long enough for me to get across the room to him. “Good meeting,” he’d say, then ask if it was okay for him to stop by on Saturday, and of course I said yes. But he liked to be sure he was expected.
    I’d begun to guess what happened those last months in Vietnam, that he’d gone through a worse ordeal than the others and that they knew it too. Later I spent many hours thinking about this, and trying to see what I’d obviously failed to see then. It took me a long time to discover what the missing element was; this is in no way an excuse, but I remember how busy my life was then, those long hours in the psych unit. Agnes did try to persuade me to cut back.
She was doing her academic work in the apartment and looking after Cassie at the same time, and it was lonely for her if I didn’t get home till eight or nine or later.
    By then I was exhausted. I took for granted that she understood all this. My memory is of coming home in the evening and the pair of us then talking at the kitchen table for an hour or so before going to bed. I don’t remember any sustained friction, or her voicing any serious objection to being left alone with