“ . . . While the majority of psychiatrists are satisfied to diagnose mental illness in terms of abnormal brain function, chemical imbalances, and personality disorders, there are those who admit that a tiny percentage of cases defy medical science. These cases do not allow for an easy explanation because they exhibit symptoms traditionally associated with demonic influence. . . .”
“Rose,” I said, even though it meant risking my tongue. “Let’s go.”
This time, she turned from the TV. “You know what? You’re right. Let’s go.”
With that, she stepped out the door and headed down the hall. Where she should have hung a left into the peachy greenroom, however, Rose kept going. Through a set of doors. Up a flight of stairs. I followed until she slipped through one last door into the back of the auditorium where my parents were speaking. For a long while, I waited outside, wondering what she was up to and what, if anything, I could do about it. The entire time my father’s voice drifted into the hallway. He described how so often people came to them as a last resort, after all attempts at treatment had failed, and I thought of the people who showed up unannounced on our front steps, a look of desperation in their eyes. Then I heard my father say, “No doubt you came here expecting a ghost story. You’ll get plenty, I promise. But first, I’d like to start with a love story. I guess you could say it’s a Christmas story and a love story, because it takes place in December and it’s how I met my beautiful wife.”
I didn’t know how my parents met, and my curiosity led me to tug open the door the tiniest bit. I spotted Rose crouched in the rear of the auditorium. When I slipped inside and joined her, crouching and pressing my back to the wall as well, she did not acknowledge my presence. My father continued, and as we listened, I looked around at the empty seats. The crowd of three hundred he’d been anticipating had dwindled to no more than seventy. I wondered if that’s why he seemed so distracted and uncomfortable up there. Talking in that stiff voice. Fidgeting with a stack of index cards, fanning and flipping them this way and that. Beside him, my mother stood, calm as could be, hands joined together, listening intently, as though she’d never heard the story before.
Which details am I recalling from that night and which have I filled in from things my parents told me when I asked questions later? And which, if I’m truthful, did I color in myself, lending their meeting a fairy-tale quality in my mind? Rather than attempt to separate those versions, I’ll tell the story I carry with me.
When my father finished his coursework at the dental school in Baltimore, he spent a year working at the university clinic, clocking in the hours required to graduate. Although his career as a dentist had yet to officially begin, he had grown bored. The field lacked a sense of mystery, he said, and silly as it sounded, he despised the one-sided conversations with the people in his chair. (“How much can you learn when you’re the only one talking?” I heard him once say.) So while his days were spent drilling and filling cavities, he found a more satisfying activity to occupy his evenings: he began studying the paranormal to make sense of the unexplained things he had seen since childhood.
As for my mother’s life, the events of her childhood led her to spend an inordinate amount of time in prayer. On her way home from school each afternoon, she stopped at her small brick church, slipped into a back pew, and spoke to the Lord. On Sundays, she arrived early and distributed prayer books to worshippers entering the service. Afterward, she taught in the Bible school, where the pastor overheard her singing to herself and found her voice so melodic he convinced her to join the choir. When she was nearing the end of high school, that same pastor helped her get accepted into a small Christian college in Georgia on a voice scholarship.