The Great Imitator

By Colyer Reuthe

Meet the Majors: a beloved mother missing for nearly a decade; a son once banished to the mountains of Arkansas, now self-exiled to the wilds of New York; a daughter constrained for goodness' sake; and a father, out of touch, hiding, lying, and holding a desperate secret. A single question haunts them all: what happened to Marjorie Major?

When Marjorie inexplicably vanished, neighbors, friends, and family assumed that the monster that stole her away did not lurk outside her home, but lived within it.

Eight years later, her daughter Sally is awoken by an early morning phone call that thrusts the remaining Major family into turmoil, forcing them to relive the trauma and again confront the mystery. When they go to identify Marjorie’s remains, they find no reprieve from their grief, only more questions.

The family is cast into a chaotic sequence of events that exposes a deeper tenacity and courage than they had previously thought possible. With determination and a surprising commitment to hope, the family embarks on a bittersweet and cathartic journey that teaches them to love through the illusions.

Challenging their most tightly held beliefs, they find that sometimes fathers are not heroes or ogres, but just human beings; that you can’t take back choices that take root in the lives of others; and that in the war between religious freedom and human rights there is a sizable grey area full of lies, deceit, and hypocrisy.

In the end they are left with one final question: Who would you become if you just risked telling the truth?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Colyer Reuthe
• Release date: Jun 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311958389

Colyer Reuthe

Colyer Reuthe is an indie author, nomad, and idealist, currently traveling around the United States, promoting this first novel, The Great Imitator. Colyer is working on the second and third books in this series exploring sociological issues regarding sexuality, cultural norms, and theories of social and cultural control.

Book preview

The morning broke with the ringing of the phone. I mean broke as in shattered, splintered, disintegrated. After a grumbled greeting that came from my mouth without conscious will, a voice said, I’m calling about Marjorie Major. There was no greeting, no introduction, no pleasantries, just that name which held too much meaning and neglected hope for me to hear first thing in the morning. Any morning.

But I sat straight up, realizing that the call could mean only one thing.

Yes? I barely breathed the word. My throat and chest and stomach muscles clenched tightly with the emotion that had been buried, the pressure of it threatening to choke the oxygen from every cell in my body. The voice spoke again, cold and detached. I hated this person and the way he could state something as monumental as this without emotion. Surely the caller, though still anonymous, knew what this would mean to me. Yet there was no emotion, no kindness. Nevertheless, I was kind and polite, the right things to be.

We think we’ve found Ms. Major. We need you to come identify her.

The tears began to streak down my face, my voice unable to answer when asked if I had a pencil and paper. Even without a response, the caller began to dictate the information I would need to at last begin to unravel the mystery. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I didn’t think to ask questions or demand answers. I simply took down the information as it was given, shaking with the realization that the search was over. My body didn’t know if it should feel relief or anguish or rage. A kaleidoscope of emotions swam through me, like the fish in the aquarium Mom and Dad used to take us to when we were kids. Up and down and back and forth the feelings came, through my gut, into my heart, out my eyes, swirling and sailing, the residual spasms like the fish that take the widest berth then fall back into line at the last moment to travel on.

It took a few minutes, after hanging up, for a sympathetic numbness to embrace me. I wrapped my arms around my knees and hugged them to my chest. I began to rock the way I had when tragedy had struck years ago and we’d each become entombed in our own cocoon of grief. We’d been abruptly left alone and traumatized, our hearts frozen to incapability when Mom had disappeared. Not one of the remaining Majors had the strength to take the reins and so the carriage derailed in a ditch and paralyzed my family, as individuals and as a whole. The truth was here at last. Not that I hadn’t always known. Somehow though, the frostbite of cold reality stung afresh and I felt incapable again.

I’d prayed for this so many times and simultaneously trusted that it would never come. I hoped against all odds that the answer would end up being hopeful and restorative. Now here it was and I was as hollow as I’d ever been. I picked up the phone to call my brother.

BRIAN: GOING HOME

I immediately knew that something was wrong when I heard Sally’s voice. All she’d said was, Brian, you need to come home. It was monotone, void of emotion or passion, which was so unusual. Like, crazy unusual. Normally her tone and pace were elated, like a vortex of energy whirled within, sucking everything within audible range in and spitting it back out more joyful, more perfected. I’d only heard this voice once before. Well, once before, years ago. I almost dropped the phone. The silence that followed sounded as though it had depth, like it stretched out for miles and was consuming everything in my world. No, no, NO, my mind screamed into the quiet, which remained empty. I refused to speak and Sal’s silence was unrelenting.

So we sat in distant cities, just listening to the nothingness that said everything we’d needed and never wanted to hear. I gradually became aware of the ticking of the clock, the only mechanical clock left in my life. The silent, digitalized timekeepers that were everywhere now had replaced the others in the years since the tragedy. Click, click, click, it breathed for me. The waiting game went on for quite some time with neither of us wanting to give up hope or surrender to fate. I finally became aware of the struggling breath on the other end of the connection. It must have been there all along, blocked by that deafening clock or by my own surrender from reality to this new, more solid and less anticipative one where tangible facts would finally end all of the guessing. The breathing compelled me to speak, but I wasn’t ready yet. Not ready to accept whatever that toneless, dispassionate voice meant to say but couldn’t find the words.

It was understood though. We both knew what we knew and the words didn’t need to be spoken. Despite our distance and the pain that had driven me so far from home, Sal and I were still connected as if by secret walkie-talkies that told all of our secrets and knew all of our pain. So I just said, I’ll be on the next plane home. Okay, her voice croaked. We both hung up. I called Devyn and said, I have to go home. The love of my life didn’t ask why, knowing that only one thing could make me go back there.

BENJAMIN: THE WELL

It’d been six years since I’d last laid eyes on my son. He seemed to have grown broader and more handsome than I’d remembered. People once said that he looked like me. Now I saw that he took after his mother, not just in appearance but also in stride and clarity. She’d moved like a dancer and her eyes had always looked like they kept a secret, a wisdom that needed to be kept safe from a world that wouldn’t understand. There he was, his eyes as bright and movements as graceful. When he faced me, the words didn’t come easily. Although I felt that some sort of significant contact would have been normal between a father and his kid, I reached out my hand knowing he didn’t want to hug me. Yet when his hand touched mine I gripped it and selfishly pulled him into an unwanted embrace, one that I needed so badly. I’d missed my son, his contact, smell, and love.

For now, the contact and smell would be enough.

I held him tightly. Then Sally appeared and he pushed away from me to go to her. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous of them. Our relationships had withered considerably after Marjorie disappeared. When Brian got the hell out of Memphis, his love for his sister was renewed and strengthened. He’d come to grips with his own reality, chose to chase his dreams and somehow make a life for himself without me. Somewhere through that journey they’d reconnected. Sally came to hug me too. It felt good but weak. Whatever had broken in me when Marjorie had disappeared had broken my relationship with my kids. Well, no, that isn’t exactly true. It had started even before that. I’m trying to be honest these days, to seek out something deeper and let go of everything that’s had me trapped this whole fucking life.

I’m sorry to curse. I’m trying to be better about it. There are just times when the rage is too much and I can’t control myself anymore. It was so easy once, to stuff it down inside, like there was room for every shame, every fear and loss, to believe that all of my pain could disappear into a deep well. When I was younger, the well was so deep that I never heard anything hit bottom. For a long time I could pretend that I was whole. Well, not whole but still intact. There came a time when it was as if I could hear a package, wrapped tightly in brown paper like the pornography magazines we once hid from our wives, hit bottom. Then there was another and another. The well was filling up. As it did, my anger grew. Then came a day that it seemed like the well had become clogged. The feelings, the fears, they didn’t fall so far anymore. The loss of my wife found the well overflowing and I could barely keep from strangling a perfect stranger in the street. I’d been closing myself down for years, even to myself. Then I had to say goodbye to everyone else too.

Much like my sense of self, they were still there, just ignored.

I knew it was wrong to not support my children when they’d lost their mother, when so much confusion surrounded her disappearance. But I couldn’t take any more. I had nothing left to give and no room left in the well to throw away any more pain.

Then, that day, the three of us stood in the hospital lobby. Although separated by years and loss, we were still a family. We were to finally put our fear to rest and say goodbye to the woman who’d been everything to us. Sally walked up to the receptionist and asked how to find the morgue.

Inside the elevator, travelling down below the ground, into the coldness that held my wife’s corpse, it was like there were two islands. They had each other on their island, huddled in one corner, Brian’s arm wrapped protectively around his sister. I was in the other, alone and cold, a hurricane swirling right off the coast.

As the doors opened into the glaring light of a hallway, I knew that this separation, this solitude I found myself in, was my own damn fault. I had to accept that. I understood what they could not, because there were so many things they didn’t know. Mostly, I understood that I would have done the same in their situation.

They exited first and I followed like the child, not the father. We walked up to the desk where a completely unattractive looking man sat, bent over some paperwork, seeking something on the pages scattered below him. Excuse me, Sally said. We’re here to identify… she paused, her shoulders slumping, her breathing labored. Then she straightened herself and finished, my mother.

SALLY: SUFFERING

There was some initial confusion. The man said that remains wouldn’t be sent to the hospital. But I got a phone call and they told me to come here, I said, baffled. Why would they have told me to come here?

Who called you?

I don’t know, I said, suddenly feeling stupid.

For the second time that day I felt a whirlwind of emotion swirl through my body and then felt faint. I looked helplessly to Brian and then repentantly at my father. You have to go to the city morgue for remains… of that nature, the man said, almost apologetically.

I began to cry as the three of us turned and walked slowly back to the elevator, all making the same assumption. It had happened again, this sick joke that tormented us for months when Mom had initially disappeared, posters plastered around the city and numerous tips disclosed in the attempt to get the reward money Dad had offered. It’d been years since the last prank phone call had happened, some random troll claiming to know what had happened to my mother. Why? Why now? The elevator ride back to the surface was seemingly much slower, its light much colder. My sadness turned to an uncharacteristic anger. Who would do this? I demanded of no one.

It’s okay Sal, Brian said, hugging me tightly. What the hell is wrong with people? I wondered if he meant me for making him fly all the way to Memphis from New York.

But I didn’t even think! I was ashamed that I, the supposedly rational one in the family, the practical, thought-out, good ole Sally everyone could depend on had surrendered her thinking and let the heart win out in fear and anguish.

I still wanted to know so badly.

It’d been eight years since Mom vanished, almost to the day, when the phone call had shattered the morning, pulling me from a dream about her. Like most trauma, her disappearance remained buried in my psyche and body much of the time, but manifested in anxiety and seemingly irrational mood swings each year around the time that she’d disappeared. Every year I clearly recalled, unwillingly, the period when the police had been a near constant presence in our house, when the neighborhood kids started the rumor that my father had killed his wife. Losing a mother would be hard enough for any sixteen-year-old girl, but what happened after made it exponentially more difficult.

There’d been a wave of news stories reporting murders around that time, all across the country: men killing their wives, women killing their children, sons killing their fathers. Without warning there was no longer a monster lurking outside the house wanting to get inside. The monster was assumed to live inside. The rumors weren’t loud enough for me to hear at first, but then, one by one, friends began to tell me that their parents suspected my father. Something, they said, had always been odd about him. Their parents had said it and they’d noticed it too. They just hadn’t said anything before because, well, they’d been my friends and didn’t want to hurt my feelings.

Before Mom had disappeared, we’d been a happy family, content, not without problems, but nearly ideal. Dad wasn’t some weirdo, psychotic killer. But the estrangement that came from our neighbors and the people we thought of as friends further isolated us from any sort of solace or support. We were alone, but also alone in our aloneness. And we suffered.

BRIAN: INTUITION

Part of me was angry with Sally, but I never would have told her. I knew too well that this time of year brought the rawness back, like someone had shaved off the top layers of our skin and sent a hot breeze to torment our nerves. Our dreams revived the spirit of the woman who’d given us so much love, only to steal her away with consciousness, breaking us again. Some jackass, probably someone who’d harassed us back then, had remembered and thought they’d have a good laugh at our expense. I wasn’t just angry at Sal but for her, for me, for Dad. Yes, even Dad. Although I couldn’t stand the man, he was still my father and I knew he’d suffered greatly too, both from losing his wife but also the rumors. He’d actually been suspect number one for quite a while. When police were unable to locate Mom and no remains had been found, the case slowly cooled and was then forgotten, our missing mother no longer important enough for the authorities to pursue.

No matter how much faith you have in your parents, when one disappears there’s some suspicion. I couldn’t help but wonder how many unsolved deaths in the past had been committed at the hands of those the victims loved most. But that was impossible in our case. Dad, despite any weirdness people perceived, was not the violent type. He was soft. Softer than I am, and that is saying something considering how he’d so often belittled me for my less than macho behavior.

When the elevator doors opened, we silently began to make our way to the front of the hospital and I began to plan my flight back to New York, my haven and my home. But then something, some spark of intuition, told me to stop. Sal, what did the person on the phone say exactly?

People were coming and going, in and out, in and out of the door. The wind whipped Sally’s hair up and around her head like an aura that glowed brilliantly. But her eyes were dull and her mouth screwed up tight, like it always did when she was thinking hard. I don’t remember exactly. They said… Dad just stared at her passively, not an actor or participant in this, but as though he were watching an infomercial about car polish. His eyes were tired and shallow, his skin drooping considerably more than the last time I’d seen him. Finally, Sally continued, They said that they’d found Marjorie Major. I didn’t really say anything. I couldn’t. Then they told me to come to the hospital. I couldn’t come alone, without you both.

It was a dangerous thought that entered my mind then, a hope too precarious to speak out loud. I looked from Sal to Dad and back again. Neither of them registered any sign of what I was thinking and I knew that I had to be very careful. The last thing any of us needed was more pain or drama. I said, Okay. Why don’t you two go on? I need to use the restroom.

We can wait, Dad said.

No, go on. I’ll be right there. Which lot did you parked in Sally?

In the green lot, row F.

I’ll be right there. Once they’d both exited the building, I walked up to the receptionist desk.

BENJAMIN: FOUND

Sally, as usual, knew exactly where she was parked. I, on the other hand, as usual, couldn’t remember driving to the hospital. Don’t worry Dad. I’ll drive you around to find the car. Then, all of a sudden, there was Brian. He was breathing heavily, his face pale and his whole body trembling.

Brian, what’s wrong? Sally asked.

We need to go inside, he said, his voice shaking as much as his body.

What’s wrong? What’s happening?

Just come inside.

So we went back through the front door, past the receptionist again, and to the elevators.

Confused, I looked at Sally as if to ask, What’s going on? But she wouldn’t meet my eyes. She wouldn’t look at Brian either. She had this panicked look on her face as though she’d just discovered a terrible secret. But it was a secret they wouldn’t let me in on. When the elevator doors opened on the fifth floor, both of them rushed out into the hallway, looked right and then turned left, disappearing before I’d even stepped out of the elevator. Shit.

Something happened then. I don’t know how else to explain it, but it was as though God was speaking to me. Thoughts like a voice and yet not a voice, came into my head and began to direct me through the maze of hallways. Step by step, the fogginess of my day-to-day life began to evaporate little by little. Suddenly I realized what was happening. Another left, and there, on the right, room 534. Open the door, the thought-voice whispered.

Dad? Dad! It was Sally, Brian right behind her. The spell was broken. I stood, confused at how I’d gotten there. The kids both looked at me like they’d seen a ghost, like they couldn’t understand why I’d come to that door. Or how I’d known to go to that door. I couldn’t understand either. But as my hand instinctively reached out and pushed the door open, the question was answered and a hundred more provoked.

SALLY: CHANGED

It’s almost indescribable, how those feelings washed over me for the third time that day. It was as though time and space coalesced and spiraled into and then out of my being. The last eight years had not happened, yet they must have for there she sat, recognizable but not herself. Momma, I breathed. She looked up but didn’t seem to recognize me. Mom, Brian exhaled, barely a whisper. Marjorie? Dad chimed in, his voice incredulous.

The three of us stood in the doorway, unable to accept that what were seeing was not be a mirage, an illusion, or another of the dreams that haunted all three of us. She sat on the hospital bed. Her long hair, darker than before, was bedraggled, tied up on top of her head like it’d once been each Friday when she’d cleaned the house. Her eyes stared at us as though we were a curious trio of clowns there to amuse her, not a hint of recognition. Her face was hollowed. Wherever she’d been had left her changed. She looked much older, sick, pale, sunken and shrunk. But it was her.

What do you want? she spat angrily. I don’t want to be bothered! I don’t know why the fuck they brought me into another wretched psychiatric hospital! I told them ‘No, I’m going back there, no!’ My head began to spin and my stomach constricted. Her personality, cursing and screeching, was as different as her appearance.

You’re not in the psychiatric hospital Mom, Brian tried to pacify her.

Ha! Mom! Mom? Yeah that’s sweet. Fuck off. I’m not falling for your tricks! She pointed a bony finger toward us and began to push herself back into the chair as if that would somehow get her away from us.

Brian, Dad, and I stared at each other in turn, mouths agape. This wasn’t the joyous reunion I’d dreamt of a thousand nights. Nor was it the oh-so-possible horror we’d also anticipated each and every day since she’d gone missing. It was nothing we could have foreseen. Here she was, but it wasn’t her. Not anymore.

Momma? I whispered, hoping against hope that this was some terrible mistake.

She twisted her neck in an odd way that seemed almost inhuman and gazed at me. Her eyes softened, the corners of her opened mouth slanting downward as though remembering, not me, but the idea of me, as lost to her as she’d been to us. It seemed as though she was reaching deep into her memories, seeking a sound byte that matched the one she’d just heard. There was recognition in her face, but she shook her head and the scowl came back. Your Momma ain’t here pretty girl, she said as she rose to a hunched position and began stepping toward us, one foot somewhat dragging behind her as she came closer.

The closeness brought not only a more disturbing awareness of just how much she’d changed but also a smell. It was nothing like I’d ever smelled before. It was the filth of despair and abandonment. Yet I couldn’t quite determine what had been abandoned. Her sanity? Her family? Her soul?

Closer was not better and I guiltily wished that I could go back in time and never have answered the phone. The pain of the loss was agonizing. But this, this was a nightmare that I knew we would not wake up from. Something horrible had happened to our mother, though I had no idea what. Surely the call would have come again and again, I reasoned. I told myself that somehow I would will myself to ignore it.

No, I realized, that was impossible and this was reality. And my role was already cemented in every cell of my being. I knew I had to be the good daughter.

BRIAN: BROKEN

Her brown eyes were bloodshot and dull. White orbs floated in the irises. The corners of her mouth were caked with dried blood and crumbs. She had wrinkles and scars that looked as if they’d been ripped into her skin by paperclips. Her gums were discolored and her teeth, the ones that were there, were brown and riddled with cavities. I felt a sob rising in my throat, threatening to either choke me or to dissolve my sanity. I was screaming inside my head, go back, go back! But she just stood there staring at us. Her hunched form looked forty years older than the mother I remembered. Her shuffled walk was that of a woman who’d suffered a massive trauma.

I was ashamed of the loathing I had for this poor creature that looked so much like my mother. Yet she couldn’t possibly be that woman. I could see that now as she came closer. Whatever had been familiar was washed away. The smell made me vomitus and her gaze was like a thousand needles piercing my skin and poisoning my soul. Simultaneously, I wanted to kill whatever had done this to this woman. Someone or something had to have done it to her. She couldn’t have done this to herself. Could she?

What do you want with me? she asked, her voice a cracked whisper as frigid as New York in January. None of us spoke. We each waited for another to find the right words, to make sense of this tragedy, doubled, in front of us. We just stared. We were terrified of her and of what this meant. She, however, seemed intrigued by the three perceived strangers who just stared at her with mouths ajar and eyes full of tears.

I’m not gonna hug y’all if ya’ll gonna start crying now. Like a channel had been changed, her voice had become reluctantly consoling. I don’t know why you came to me for comfort. I want to comfort you, but I’m not much of a comforter. I think we all felt relief, until she took two more steps and looked up into my face. You sure are handsome… and sad. Why are you sad boy? My cheeks were unexpectedly slick and I found that I was weeping, unable to contain it any more. The figure in front of me who was not my mother reached out her arms then, moving so swiftly that I was caught before I knew what was happening. There, there, she patted my back. I wanted to scream and push the smell away from me. However, I was immobilized by the disgust aroused by her touch. There’s no reason to cry Snugglebug, I stiffened, granite in her arms. Snugglebug. That was what Mom had called me when I was a child. Sally positioned herself so that I could see her now, tears streaming down her face, her head shaking left to right as if to deny this possibility.

You remind me of my little boy, Brian. He was such a sweet boy, the woman said. I loved him so… her voice trailed away as she squeezed me tightly before letting go. My sobs wracked my body and made it impossible for her to keep her hold on me. I was relieved that the smell of rot and sewage had faded. Yet I felt broken like I’d lost my mother once again. I wanted to grab her and hold her too, to tell her I loved her and how much I missed her, but couldn’t reconcile the two mothers in my mind.

Where is he? she questioned no one in particular, the melancholy dripping from her lips as she shuffled away, back into the shadows of the room. Where did my babies go?

That was it. I was done.

I bolted from the room, cursing Sally in my head for answering that phone. Why couldn’t she have just turned off the volume and gone back to sleep? Why did she have to call me,