Evoked Potentials: A Novel

By Pat Dannenberg

Sadie Ackerman doesnt have to leave home to find adventure. She is on a trip of descent to the shadow world of her own unconscious, a trip of ascent to the mystery of expanded awareness, and a trip in the mid-world of everyday reality where falling in love with a sexy detective rocks the current organization of her psyche.

A convergence of mystery, murder, maternity, marriage and the Mossad swirls around Sadie as she searches for a new direction in the quiet woods and waters of southern New Jersey and the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491711736

Pat Dannenberg

The author and her husband enjoy winecations, road trips and water. They spend their time in New Jersey and Virginia.

Book preview

EVOKED POTENTIALS

A NOVEL

Copyright © 2013 Pat Dannenberg.

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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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-1172-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-1173-6 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 04/27/2015

Contents

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Post Script

Acknowledgements

Dedicated in Memoriam

Audrey Gille

An extraordinary teacher with a fine

mind and the kindest heart.

1

W HEN THE PHONE rang at three-thirty in the morning, it wasn’t another disaster. It was my brother Aaron calling from some other time zone expecting me to pick him up at the Philadelphia Airport in just a few hours. That meant he was still alive and that was good news. This trip, his flight from LAX was due to arrive at nine-twenty, terminal D. On a weekend, this would pose no particular problem, a mere one hour twenty minute trip from my home in Millville, New Jersey. But today was Thursday, a work day for most people who, unlike me, had to work summers. For sure, I was going to hit morning traffic heading to Philly and points west and north of here. Rush hour: what a misnomer.

As I considered my impending morning journey, I gazed at the moonlight blinking a Morse code on the river below and was soothed by the susurrations of the river’s tidal flow which seemed to move in tandem with my respiration. A ceiling fan stirred the air above me, carrying on it a scent of pine and must from the bluffs up river from the screened porch where I sat. All good quiet, as Aaron would say from his days on a submarine. Even the insects and tree frogs were silent.

Aaron was all the family I had in the world, and he was a mystery to me, my big brother, my twin actually, three minutes older, three inches taller and a couple of standard deviations to the right of my own quite acceptable point on the bell curve. I thought he was a genius, of course, but Aaron denied it and claimed that he was just a regular guy scientist. Aaron did not indulge in false modesty, but his reference group differed from mine. He had gone to grad school with some scary-bright theoretical physicists and claimed with some authority that applied types such as he were simply not as bright. I would have to take his word for it. Aaron believed that success in physics meant winning a Nobel Prize. I tended to think that having a few commercially successful patents was a worthy achievement and Aaron had a few of those.

I shifted in the chaise longue and savored the night while focusing on the air entering my nostrils and the pulsations that began in my head and traveled the length of my body, swirling eddies of energy which seemed to vibrate with the ancient rhythms of the universe and which felt like the embrace of some throbbing spirit lover. There were times when I longed to surrender my individual identity and merge with that energy. I wondered if before matter there was only consciousness, the primal energy. I returned my attention to my breathing. In the distance a train whistle sounded, a truck rumbled past and a creaking station wagon delivered the morning Press to my mailbox.

Since it was still dark, I padded out to the mailbox in my flip-flops and night shirt and collected my newspaper when what to my wondering eyes should appear but a local police cruiser and no tiny reindeer, just a couple of two-legged critters. The passenger side window scrolled down gently and my neighbor’s rich baritone greeted me.

Good morning, Sadie. Don’t you look lovely at this hour. Do you require a police escort down that long dark driveway to your front door?

That won’t be necessary Detective, I replied, I am carrying my trusty thirty-eights with me so I am sure I’ll be fine. I smiled in the darkness as I turned and headed down the driveway toward the house. The speaker coughed and apparently motioned to the driver to move along.

Dan Fogarty and I had a bantering non-relationship. He and his wife had divorced two years ago after the dish ran away with the spoon—and the spoon was platinum. She’d married money and had left Fogarty bruised, bitter and unhappy if one could believe the rumors.

I had no desire to become involved with a wounded man who would probably take out his frustrations on me as he worked his way post-divorce through several transitional women. Nor did I have any desire to provide him with counseling or psychotherapy despite the fact that I was a psychologist by training and experience. Sarah Ackerman, PhD, it said on my business card. It didn’t say I was all heart.

Therefore, I sparred with Dan and kept him at a distance of at least five acres, roughly the space between his house and mine. If I were to be completely honest with myself, I did feel something for him. In his presence I experienced brief power surges in the area of my frontal lobes and elsewhere on my anatomy. My surge suppressors worked effectively however, and I didn’t devote much energy to thinking about him in his absence. His presence registered though.

Tempus fugit…time flies. It was now five-thirty on my trusty glow-in-the-dark Timex wristwatch, time to focus and prioritize. I performed my daily ablutions, applied some sun screen, tied a scrunchy in my curly bronze mop and popped some meds and vitamins.

The weather man had promised a warm, low-humidity summer day for the greater Philadelphia area. Given that, I decided to drive Aaron’s Mustang convertible to the airport. It was a creamy white color with tan leather seats and matching rag top and it was fun to drive. Though it was registered in my name, it was Aaron’s car. I kept it in one of my garage bays along with his kayak, canoe, road bike, off-road bike, downhill skis, cross country skis and related sports equipment. His rifles, shotguns, handguns and ammo, along with expensive optical equipment whose purpose I had not yet divined, were kept locked up in my basement.

The Mustang needed fuel. Fortunately for me, this was Jersey and Jersey girls did not pump gas. The attendant took my credit card, filled the tank and blew me a kiss. I snagged a parking space in front of the convenience store and got some coffee and fruit for myself as well as a breakfast bagel for Aaron. Then, with the top retracted and the sweater and newspaper tucked under the front seat, I nosed the car on to Route 55 north and rolled toward Deptford and the Walt Whitman Bridge. It was seven-thirty by the time I accessed the airport road and incoming flight lanes, and I missed the Terminal D short term parking entrance the first time around. I was early, so it was no big deal, and I hit it the second time finding a convenient space on the ground floor across from the revolving doors. I considered leaving the top retracted, reconsidered and raised it. Reality check: purse, car keys, cell, paper, sweater, breakfast, coffee. Good to go.

According to the monitors, Aaron’s flight from LAX was on time, gate 12. I bided my time outside the security doors, drinking my coffee, munching grapes and reading the Press. Aaron was one of the last passengers on his flight to come through security. He spotted me quickly, gave me a non-brotherly kiss on the lips, classic Aaron, and a sly smile. My brother was a handsome man and we’ve been told that we make a good looking pair. On occasion, he has introduced me as his wife when he felt the need to escape some nerdy colleague at a conference or rescue me from same.

Aaron stood six foot one, one hundred eighty pounds and was well built, a fact not lost on fellow travelers as he was wearing only cargo shorts, Docksiders and a light polo shirt. I should mention that he’d worn a similar outfit when I’d picked him up in March. Aaron had forgotten that spring was cold here on the East Coast. He didn’t fuss with his hair, would not wear contact lenses and didn’t bother with expensive clothes, cars or jewelry. His dark hair was cut short, military style, he wore aviator prescription sun glasses and he had a deep California tan. My brother always traveled light; hence, there was no need to stop at the baggage claim carousel as we made for the car.

Aaron was happy to see the Mustang but didn’t want the top down and didn’t want to drive, so I drove while he munched on his bagel. When we neared the Deptford Mall, he asked to stop at a book store where he fired up his laptop and I looked at periodicals while we sipped our lattes. His true addiction, I knew, was Starbucks. He’d hit the one in town later on. Aaron was generally uncommunicative and didn’t feel the need to make small talk. In fact, I was not sure that he knew how or realized that it was sometimes expected or considered polite. He got testy if I asked too many questions.

I didn’t pry, but I was interested in his life, both interior and exterior. On those rare occasions when he did open up, I remained quiet, not wishing to interrupt those atypical outpourings which offered some insight into his being. Aaron was seldom interested in my life and I didn’t bother to bore him with the details. They even bored me. Our relationship was not exactly symmetrical, but it was okay.

After leaving the bookstore, Aaron wanted to drive. He had a heavy foot and while he might have been considered a good driver, he made me nervous. I remained unconvinced that Aaron could think his complex multivariate thoughts and attend to his driving. He was traveling well above the speed limit on the road to my house when he almost missed the driveway and hit the brakes, nearly clipping a guy on a motorcycle. He plowed into the driveway spewing sand and gravel all over the rhododendrons, bolted from the car and entered the house, probably needing a pit stop after all that coffee.

I exited the Mustang in a more leisurely fashion and was almost at the front door when a Harley growled into my yard, once again spewing sand and gravel on the shrubbery. My driveway was taking a beating. It was Fogarty and he was well beyond unhappy.

For Chrissake, Sadie, he bellowed at me. You damn near killed me…

Oops. I stood there hoping that I looked suitably contrite, head bowed, cursing my former womb-mate while Fogarty continued his rant. Aaron must have heard the commotion because at some point he joined us, easing his way into a position slightly behind me but within my left visual field, arms relaxed at his sides and bearing an unfathomable expression while he assessed the situation.

Fogarty assessed my brother as well and his rant decreased several decibels. The air in my woodsy bower was heavy with the scent of testosterone and I was feeling tense, partly because I could never predict what Aaron might do. As Fogarty calmed down, I apologized profusely and promised to be more attentive when I was behind the wheel. Although Fogarty had not exactly concluded his summation of some people’s driving, Aaron placed his hand on my shoulder and guided me toward the house. He did not resist the temptation to drop his hand from my shoulder to pat my derriere, a gesture not lost on Fogarty who wheeled out of my driveway, raising sand and gravel for the third time that day. I wondered if, perhaps, I should have the driveway paved.

Aaron stood in the kitchen, slugging orange juice from the carton. That guy a friend of yours, Sadie? he asked.

Not right this minute, I replied, but he is my next door neighbor and a detective on the local police force. He would be an inconvenient enemy.

Does he know who I am?

Well, if he does, he didn’t hear it from me, I answered.

Aaron smiled with his eyes and took another hit of orange juice. Hey, he said, abruptly changing the subject, I have some things to do downtown. Don’t wait up, I’ll let myself in, then he added, and you’re off the hook for dinner. He left the carton of orange juice on the counter and I returned it to the fridge as the front door banged behind him.

I watched him as he slid into the car and drove off. Every time Aaron left, I felt a void in my solar plexus and maybe in my heart as well. However, as Freud noted, sometimes a cigar was just a cigar and sometimes, I thought, a void in the solar plexus was just a need for lunch. I fixed myself a salad, nuked some leftover quiche and popped the cork on a bottle of steel-aged chardonnay. I didn’t like oak-aged chardonnay in the summer. The built-in wine refrigerator in the kitchen was a gift from my brother, evidence of his random acts of kindness and carpentry skills. He did have his good points.

I took my lunch to the sun porch and gazed at the water while I ate. The river had strong tides and currents and upstream from my house, there was a municipal facility that discharged treated sewage into the water. For those reasons, and because I lacked upper body strength, I didn’t put in there with my kayak or choose to swim there. Instead, I made use of the two small lakes in town.

Aaron, by contrast, was strong and had no fear of the currents; he occasionally paddled the river and used the nearby lakes and ponds as well. Sometimes he rented an ocean kayak and paddled the back bays near Ocean City. In California he surfed. There were definitely some advantages to being male and one of them was physical strength. Aaron also had an abundance of energy which required a regular physical outlet. I was a slug by comparison and invested my meager allotment of energy carefully. I poured myself another half glass of wine and decided to take a nap. Maybe I would exercise later in the cool of the evening.

I had once read that individuals who claimed to have had near-death-experiences were treated to a life review which included all of their sins and crimes in addition to a review of how those errant actions had affected the lives of others. By that definition, most of my nights and all of my naps were near-death-experiences. While awake, I tended to think of myself as a pretty good person who at least tried to do the right thing; asleep, bereft of my usual defenses, I was treated to other less flattering portraits of myself, often entire galleries of them. I searched for patterns in what I was being shown and concluded that it was not that I was evil, it was that I was somehow inept and unaware of the larger contexts of my life in which these interactions had unfolded and of how my behavior had affected others. This was generally a recipe for disaster, especially interpersonally.

Perhaps in retrospect, from a kinder and more comprehensive world view, all previous understandings might seem flawed and incomplete. Perhaps that was the human condition: to act with incomplete information and take one’s lumps, including the inevitable hits to one’s self-esteem and one’s heart. If I were to have any peace in life, I knew I would have to deal with a mountain of unfinished business. Whatever was stirring these memories to consciousness was relentless. Denial was not an option.

Things in the basement of my psyche, which I had stuffed there in order to get on with my life, wanted up and out and were becoming persistent. They were really pushing old Humpty-Dumpty who was about to take a great fall and old H-D didn’t like that at all. I started humming Cry Me a River, one of the one hundred most heartbreaking songs of all time, in anticipation of the overdue grief work.

It was early evening as I changed into shorts and running shoes. I took my sunglasses and water bottle and made my way to the pleasant and safe streets of the new development across the way from mine. I didn’t run; I walked figuring that anything that I could do to move my body for at least 45 minutes was a good thing.

Fogarty drove by in his truck and I retreated into the shadows where he would not see me, pausing a few moments to let him pass before resuming my walk. I saw the stars come out and the moon rise. The evening symphony of tree frogs and insects began its first movement, accompanied by the muffled tympany of distant thunder. I was at peace.

The house was dark when I got there and I let myself in, fumbling with the keys in the lock. I ate a piece of fruit without turning on the lights, then showered and went to bed. It had been a long day. I did not hear Aaron come in, if he came in, and I slept well for the first time in many days, the silt of my unconscious settling for now, until the Ghost of Christmas Past or some other strange angel arrived to trouble it again.

2

I AWAKENED FRIDAY MORNING to the sounds of the FM classical music station from Philly and Aaron banging around the kitchen. His computer was up and running on the high counter that separated the kitchen from the dining area. He’d evidently located the local Starbucks, as there was a half-filled coffee cup from that establishment on the counter near the sink. He was routing through the cupboards and finally demanded irritably, Where in hell do you keep the coffee around here? I kept it in the freezer, so I got up and handed it to him.

Do you want me to make it? I asked.

Would you, please?

No problem. What are you working on?

I’m lead scientist on this grant, have four direct reports. I design the procedures, they run them and I do the analysis of results and report to the customer, in this case the Department of Defense. The guy in Virginia is having a problem with one of the processes. I can’t resolve it on line. I’m going to have to go down there.

When?

I’m leaving Sunday morning, driving down. Want to come? We can stay a couple of days, drive back Wednesday. We can meet for dinner and you’ll have the car all day, company’s dime.

I jumped on it. Unbeknownst to Aaron, I was familiar with the area and had friends there from grad school with whom I had stayed in touch. I would also welcome the opportunity to spend time with Aaron on the trips down and back. Ever since he was a kid, he would eventually open up if he were in the car long enough. He could be very entertaining. The real truth, however, was that he fascinated me. I wanted to know how his head worked. I was a psychologist confronted by the mystery of a quirky genius, a rare specimen in my business.

The coffee was done and I sampled what remained in the Starbucks cup to determine how Aaron was drinking his coffee these days—light and sweet. I fixed two mugs and slid one over to him. He grunted his thanks, made a few more strokes on the keyboard and shut down his computer.

Aaron decided to load his kayak on to my Outback wagon and head to the lake. Before he left, I made certain that he returned the Mustang keys to the key rack so that I could have a car to use in his absence; he’d be unlikely to have considered that on his own. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that I catered to my brother and that I had been soothing ruffled feathers and making nice to both him and Fogarty for the past day or so.

Aaron was quiet, but testy and absorbed by his inner processes. He had learned over the years to go quiet when others emoted as I had seen in the episode with Fogarty. That worked to his advantage as an adult in the world of work. But as a kid, he had provoked arguments and was a master manipulator. For a while, stirring the pot was his favorite game. One time, as family legend had it, two of his friends had even tied him to some railroad tracks and he was barely rescued from an approaching train by a third. He could be that annoying.

I didn’t like to argue and it wasn’t often that he could hook me, but there were times. My brother could also intimidate with his anger and when that did not work, he’d laugh and go to plan B. I had never seen Aaron get physical but he could be frightening, possibly pure theater, when pushed. I tried not to push him, because with fibromyalgia, I didn’t have the energy to argue with him.

I spent the remainder of Friday cleaning house, packing for the trip and taking care of details like filling the gas tank on the Mustang, putting air in the tires and getting my nails done. I then flopped on the sofa and read a book by an Indian mystic who detailed decades of his mysterious ailments which he believed were caused by subtle Kundalini energy rising from the base of his spine to his head. He opined that Kundalini altered his physiology for the purpose of strengthening his nervous system. This would enable him to receive higher order energetic vibrations which would lead him to enlightenment. His symptoms sounded a lot like my fibro symptoms, though somehow I didn’t think I was on my way to becoming Sadie Krishna. I was not that evolved.

I must have been asleep, book in hand, when I was startled to consciousness as Aaron bounded into the house, slammed the door and set off seismic waves of about 6.2 on the Richter scale. Did men not have door closing etiquette in their curriculum? The only male ever known to have closed a door quietly was the Robert Kincaid character from The Bridges of Madison County.

Big brother was hungry. Big brother wanted pizza at home, but big brother did not want to go pick it up. I proposed a deal whereby I would call it in, pay for it and make a salad if he would go get it. After protracted deliberation, he reluctantly agreed and slammed the door again on the way out. By then I was vibrating quite nicely, without Kundalini, as I set the table and made a salad.

After dinner, Aaron put away the kayak and I schlepped the trash and recyclables to a position near the mailbox for Saturday pickup. There wasn’t much to clean up from dinner. I took my book upstairs and read a bit more before showering and hitting the sack. I used to check my email before bed, but it seemed to scramble my brain waves and interfere with sleep so I quit doing that. Aaron went out, probably to