David Cronenberg's The Brood Read online

  “You think so?”

  “Haven’t you read Dr. Raglan’s book?”

  Carveth nodded. “But some things are better left unsaid.”

  He pushed his way down the stairs, fighting his way through the crowd. For three months his wife Nola had been under Raglan’s care, and for three months Carveth has not been able to see her. Isolation—that was what Raglan had prescribed. The only person Nola was allowed to see was their daughter. No friends. No other members of her family. Just Candy.

  Of course, that was a part of their separation agreement. Nola had legal access to Candy once a week, on Sundays. Raglan could no doubt have put a stop to that too, but he had in fact welcomed the visits, making use of them as an integral part of Nola’s therapy. ‘They help me delve into her past,’ he had once told Carveth. ‘Help me reach right back into Nola’s childhood, and even beyond.’

  Carveth had wondered, even then, if the treatment Nola was receiving was really doing her any good. When he had last seen Raglan, he had been told that a crisis in Nola’s treatment was fast approaching, that Raglan was getting close to something, something that would unlock the secrets of Nola’s mind and reveal the trauma that had been troubling her for so much of her life. She would soon be cured, Raglan had said. Now, though, Carveth had a suspicion that Raglan had invited him to the demonstration in order to convert him, to get him to agree that the treatment should be continued.

  Not that it made much difference. Nola had signed herself into Raglan’s care, and only she could sign herself out. Well, the sooner the better, Carveth thought. He still had hopes that Nola would be cured and that the two of them, with Candy, could once more resume their lives together.

  Before they had married, Nola had told him that she had frequently been in therapy as a girl and then later as a young woman. But from what he had been able to understand, her treatment over the years had been successful. At least the symptoms that she had complained of—the blackouts and the uncontrolled fits of rage, and the physical swellings too—had gradually subsided.

  For the first three years of their marriage, their lives, as a result, had been smooth and orderly. Carveth at the time had just started his own business, renovating houses in the downtown core of the city. The old part of the city had suddenly come into vogue among the young professional couples who scorned the suburbs and their trappings—the big yards, the twin cars and the neighbourhood plazas. Instead, they opted for the downtown chic of sand-blasted brick and paint-stripped doors. Old houses that could hardly have been given away just a few years earlier were suddenly in great demand, so there was money to be made by anyone who could give them a face-lift and recapture their charm.

  Carveth supposed that in the early stages of getting his business launched, he had spent more time away from Nola than perhaps he should have done; certainly more than he would have liked. But he knew that that was not the cause of Nola’s problems. It had been something else altogether, something outside his control, something within Nola herself.

  For three years, though, their marriage had worked and their lives had been successful. They seemed to have managed to fulfil the promise that was implicit in their wedding photograph: the young couple starting life together, looking confidently forward to their future, well suited, conversely matched. Frank Carveth, in his mid-twenties at the time, tall, lean, dark-haired and smiling; his wife, a few years younger, holding on to his arm, her red hair hanging straight to her shoulders, standing on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.

  The trouble had started five years ago, soon after Candy had been born. At first, Nola had simply been withdrawn and introspective, and Carveth had assumed that she was suffering from post-natal depression. But one day he had come home to find that Nola had systematically broken every plate, cup and saucer of the dinner set her mother had given them as a wedding present, taking them out of the kitchen and dining room cupboards and smashing them on the floor. Candy had been crying in her cot, hungry and neglected. But Nola, unaware that time had passed, had had no idea at all; and indeed had been quite oblivious to the damage she had done.

  A month later, a similar incident occurred when Nola took a pair of gardening scissors and cut her dresses, ripping and tugging at them, reducing them to shreds. When Carveth tried to stop her, she turned on him, snarling like a cornered animal, and stabbing at him with the scissors.

  He had persuaded her then to start her sessions again, to return to her regular routine of visits to her psychiatrist. But this time the therapy had not been effective. Nola’s moods grew more extreme, and the frequency of her blackouts increased. Sometimes she went for days without consciously being aware of her actions, so that large chunks of her life were missing from her memory.

  Carveth was sure that she had more blackouts than she was prepared to admit; and he was sure too that on occasion she had given in to a sudden impulse, but had cleared up the evidence of any damage she had caused before he had returned home. He began to notice that little things around the house—ornaments, plates, ashtrays—were inexplicably missing, and when he asked Nola about them, she immediately went on the defensive, accusing him of harassing her, nagging her, calling her clumsy and forgetful.

  He had tried to help her as best he could, to make her life serene and even again. But soon he found himself worrying about Candy’s safety. At no time had he seen Nola threaten their daughter, or even raise her voice to her in anger. But Nola was becoming so unpredictable and so vehement in her anger that he feared she might one day turn on Candy and in some way hurt her.

  He suggested that Nola’s mother come to stay with them for a while as a companion for Nola and as a guardian for Candy. But Nola immediately flew into another rage. She seemed determined to keep her mother away from the house as much as possible, and often contrived to be out with Candy on the few occasions when her mother did drop by for a visit. Candy never was in any danger, but even so, Carveth had been glad when she had finally started school and was out of the house all day.

  As Nola’s moods darkened and her outbursts became even more frequent, it was obvious to Carveth that the three of them could not go on much longer, pretending to outsiders and to themselves that they were still a normal, thriving family. He tried to delay the inevitable as long as he could, not wanting to add to the strain of Nola’s fragile existence, but he knew he was just postponing action, not escaping it. Finally it was Nola’s psychiatrist who tipped the balance.

  “Nola is subject more and more to these uncontrolled fits of anger,” he told Carveth. “We have delved into her past to look for the source of her problem, but quite honestly we have not been wholly successful. There is something there, but Nola is hiding it. From us, and from herself. We dare not penetrate too deeply. There is a danger that if we just poke around, we may trigger a response that is worse even than the symptoms she is exhibiting now. It’s unknown waters we are facing, and I just don’t think it is fair for any of us—for Nola, particularly—to take the risk of just blindly plunging in.”

  It was, Carveth knew, an admission of defeat. “Is there nothing you can do?” he asked.

  “I can only suggest that we change Nola’s environment. Move her out of the surroundings she is in now and put her under full time medical care.”

  “You want to commit her?”

  “No. I think she should commit herself. It’s important that she act to help herself, under her own free will; to accept that she needs help and to accept that a spell in a hospital would do her good. If we were to try and commit her, she would feel threatened, worried that we were trying to get rid of her. She already feels her daughter is being kept from her.”

  “That may be my fault,” Carveth said. “I have tried to keep Candy from being alone too much with her mother.”

  “Maybe not such a bad thing. Nola probably wouldn’t hurt her daughter. But whatever she is trying to hide, it has something to do with her early experiences, her childhood. Candy’s presence should be there—and Nola should feel sec
ure in that—but it should also be limited.”

  “So what do you suggest?”

  “I think you should be prepared to live apart for a while. A year maybe. Perhaps more. Candy would have to stay in your care, of course, but some way of assuring Nola that she will be able to see her daughter is essential. A legal guarantee would be best, rather than just a verbal assurance. It would mean a formal separation, but it shouldn’t be forever. Just until Nola recovers.”

  “But will she recover?”

  “On that point, I’m afraid, we’ll just have to wait and see.”

  For three months Carveth had waited, visiting Nola in the hospital, frequently taking Candy with him, and always making sure she accompanied him on Sundays. But it was a thankless task. As far as he could tell, Nola was showing little sign of improvement. He threw himself into his work, and tried as best he could to be both a mother and a father to Candy, but he was beginning to think the situation might drag on forever.

  At times, Nola seemed to be recovering her former spirits, and Carveth’s hopes would be raised. But then she would fall into her old ways again, and they would be back where they had started. She still had outbursts of inexplicable anger, and sometimes she had to be physically restrained; and she still complained of the continuing lapses of memory that left her feeling disoriented and not in control.

  On Carveth’s last visit to the hospital, he had brought with him a dozen red roses—partly as a salve to his own conscience. He had been working particularly hard at that time, spending his evenings and weekends on the job, and it had been several days since he had last seen her.

  He had climbed the stairs of the hospital to Nola’s third-floor room. Visiting hours had long since passed, but, as a regular and well-known visitor, the staff had begun to let him come and go as he pleased. He knocked on her door and quietly entered.

  There was no sign of Nola, no indication that she had ever been there. The clothes from the closet were gone; so too were the pills and makeup that she normally kept on her bedside table.

  Carveth went out into the corridor and found a nurse.

  “I’ve come to see my wife,” he said. “She was staying in this room, but I guess she’s been moved. Do you know where I can find her?”

  The nurse looked at him strangely. “Your wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “But she’s no longer with us. She left.”

  “What do you mean? Where is she?”

  “She transferred. To Somafree. You mean she didn’t tell you?”

  “No,” Carveth said. “She didn’t.”

  It was the first time he realized how quickly he and Nola were moving apart.

  Carveth had immediately gone to see Nola’s former psychiatrist. He had heard peripherally of Somafree and of its founder, Dr. Hal Raglan. The man’s books were on every stand in the country, and his name was frequently in the news. But Carveth wanted a professional opinion.

  In his own mind, he had always thought of pyschoplasmics as just another fad, the latest in a long line of such fads, each one picked up by an eager public looking for easy answers, then just as eagerly discarded in favour of something new.

  “It’s not like that at all,” the psychiatrist had told him. “Raglan is a long way from being a fraud, another false messiah. He’s a genius psychiatrist and has won a great deal of respect among his peers. He’s been considered brilliant by some, and certainly he has picked up more than his share of awards and honorary degrees.”

  “But?”

  “Well, I’m reluctant to attack a fellow doctor, but his new field, this psychoplasmics, has come in for some bitter criticism. It’s new, that’s part of the problem. And Raglan has been moving too quickly with it. Also, he’s gone over the heads of the medical profession and appealed directly to the public. That hasn’t won him many friends, I can tell you.”

  “But he has had successes, hasn’t he? In treating some of his patients?”

  “Oh, indeed. Quite startling ones, if his books are to be believed.”

  Carveth had come away unconvinced. He had no way of judging the merits of psychoplasmics, and no way of telling whether the opposition Raglan had encountered was based on a genuine mistrust of his theories, or on mere resentment that old accepted notions were being overturned with iconoclastic glee. But certainly there did seem to be something offensive about the way Raglan had been marketing his theories as if they were merely the latest diet or a cure for the common cold.

  For three months, though, Carveth had kept his doubts to himself. He had sensed that Nola viewed her treatment with Raglan as her one last chance. If so, he hoped it would be successful.

  But now, as he left the demonstration, he couldn’t help thinking that his early suspicions had been correct. Maybe the relief that Trellan was supposedly feeling, after his evident suffering, was more than enough reward. But Carveth couldn’t really believe it. He hoped Nola was not going through the same degree of pain: she just wouldn’t be able to stand it. Not if the source of her trauma was buried as deeply as it seemed, and not if she was deliberately trying to keep that source from being uncovered.

  Carveth kept his distance from the crowd streaming out of the lecture hall as he followed it round the edge of the lake which formed the heart of the Somafree grounds. Looking around him, he had to admit that, no matter what he might think of Raglan’s theories, the man had certainly had considerable success in raising financial support and backing.

  Somafree had been built in the folds of a rolling valley about ten miles north of the city, and it was evident that considerable care had been taken to ensure that its relaxed, rural atmosphere had been retained. The grounds had been landscaped, but the deciduous woods now changing to amber and gold had been left intact whenever possible.

  The focus of the grounds, of course, was the lake itself, a broad expanse of crystal water that washed against a natural-looking shoreline. But as Carveth skirted it, he could see that the lake, like the waterfall which fed it, had been artificially constructed. The overall impression was calculated, but nonetheless effective: here there was calm and serenity—a haven. And Carveth, with his renovator’s eye, couldn’t help also admiring the reconstructed boathouse across the lake: its old timbers and stone foundation added just the right amount of authenticity.

  At the main building—a two-story structure also of stone and wood—the crowd from the demonstration veered to the right, up the hill to the parking lot. Carveth headed left, to the main building itself. He glanced at the eastern wing where he knew that most of the patients were boarded, and he wondered if Nola was in there, able to see him. When he brought Candy to Somafree on her Sunday visits, he always tooks her to the northern wing, to one of the day-care rooms that had been set aside for visiting families, and he had never been allowed into the other section of the building. It was a restriction he had not fought against, although he had rebelled at the authoritative way in which he had sometimes been shuffled from one room to another to ensure that he and Nola never came into contact. She was, after all, still his wife.

  He was frowning as he entered the lobby and made his way to the northern wing, but his expression brightened when he saw the nurse on duty there. In the past three months he had grown to like and to trust her. She seemed more friendly than the other staff members he’d met, although he had learned a long time ago that it was futile to enquire, even from her, into the state of Nola’s health: all Somafree employees were under strict instructions not to discuss the patients, and all of them seemed to adhere to the rules.

  The nurse looked up as he approached. “Hi, there, Mr. Carveth. You come for Candy?”

  “Right. Has she been behaving herself?”

  “As good as ever, you know that. She’s been with her mother all day.”

  Carveth nodded noncommitally. “The usual room?”

  “G-5, down the hall.” The nurse smiled. “And if you don’t take her home soon, I’m sure one of the staff will. Candy may be only five, but
already she’s got half the people here eating out of her hand. She’s going to be quite something when she grows up.”

  Carveth grinned. “She will be, won’t she. Though I confess, I may be a little biased.”

  It was true though, he thought, as he walked down the corridor to Candy’s room: his daughter was something special. She had a knack for making people warm to her. Partly it was her looks: the sandy-coloured hair and the well-shaped face that already was almost adult in its subtle lines and planes. But also, Carveth knew, it was Candy’s own personality.

  He reached room G-5. There was a sign taped to the door, written in a child’s hand: ‘Candice Carveth. Private.’

  Carveth smiled to himself and knocked on the door, then looked inside when no one answered.

  “Is it okay if I come in?” he asked.

  Candy was on the floor, her back toward him, drawing strong crayon lines across the page of a colouring book. She didn’t look around.

  “It’s private,” she said.

  “Even for me?”

  “Okay.” She turned then, and Carveth was shocked to see tear stains on her cheeks.

  “Hey, what’s the matter? What have you been crying for?”

  Candy got up and ran quickly towards him. She held on to his leg. He reached down and scooped her into his arms, hugging her tightly.

  “Are you all right, Candy?”

  She nodded quickly, her face pressed into his neck.

  “You sure now?”

  “Daddy?”

  “Yes? Come on, you can tell me.”

  “Nothing. Can we go home now?”

  “Sure.” Carveth tried to lift her free, but she wouldn’t let go of him. He carried her outside, and it was only when he put her into the car that she agreed to release him.

  He had noticed in recent weeks that Candy was sometimes subdued and introspective after her Sunday visits to Somafree. But now she seemed unusually withdrawn. In the car, though, she sat close to him, leaning over in the front seat so that she could touch him or hold on to his sleeve.