Chapter 50 And I think it’s time you knew the truth
The night air was thick with anticipation, the kind that makes your skin tingle and your thoughts race. Jenny sat on the edge of her bed, clutching a small, worn photograph of herself and Ronnie—memories captured in a moment of innocence and hope. Her mind replayed the words she had overheard that day, the strange truths that were beginning to unravel around her.
Suddenly, a gentle knock rattled her door. She hesitated, then opened it to find her mother standing there, her face shadowed in the dim hallway light.
“Can I come in?” her mother asked softly.
Jenny nodded, her heart pounding. She moved aside to let her mother enter, sensing that whatever was coming next was important.
Her mother took a deep breath, then settled beside her on the bed. She looked at Jenny with a mixture of love and concern.
“Jenny,” her mother began, voice trembling slightly, “there’s something I’ve never told you—something about yourself, about your family. And I think it’s time you knew the truth.”
Jenny’s eyes widened. “What do you mean? What’s going on?”
Her mother reached out, gently taking Jenny’s hand in hers. “Your father and I—well, we come from a line of people who are different. Not just different, but special. You, Jenny, you carry a gift—and a burden.
I laugh at my old fear of analysis. The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.
I have no fear of clarity.
Henry is lost in a labyrinth of ideas, like an ostrich who has buried its head in a mountain of papers.
He said, “I crumbled at the end of my six-year war with June, like a man unaccustomed to peace.”
Ronnie said: there is only one time when a moon choose a mate, and It can be a woman mate. It wouldn´t have sense. Would it?
I let Jenny and Ronnie take care of my tough-minded self. Jung said:
We must include both the tender-minded and the tough-minded within ourselves because we cannot permanently allow one part of our personality to be cared for symbolically by another . . .
And it is Jenny, too, who observes that it is usual for a patient to endow the physician with uncanny powers, somewhat like a magician, or a demoniacal criminal, or as the corresponding personification of goodness, a savior.
Jenny also said:
Since we cannot develop backwards to animal consciousness, there remains nothing for us to do but advance into the more difficult pathway to higher consciousness.
Pauvre de nous!
Roonnie writes me:
Had a frightful night. Went to bed exhausted about midnight. At one o’clock woke up and lay in a half-dream state till 5 A.M., then fell into a stupor until one today. Dreamed the most horrible dreams, among them that I saw my own grave with a tombstone and a light shining on it. Am trembling. Don’t know what ails me. Tried phoning you just now, but you were out. Feel terrible. Another night of this and I’d go completely mad. Jesus! I feel like Richard Osborn before he went mad. I never imagined when I gave Henry the money to escape to London, that Jenny would come the night before he left, take it all away from him. He writes me a weak letter:
I’m angry, furious at myself, I’m leaving for London tonight. Fred came to the rescue. I’m leaving so it won’t happen again. I hate June. After a bitter, nauseating conversation, I feel humiliated, deeply ashamed. It was agony, what I endured. And why I stood it, I don’t know, unless it is that I have a feeling of guilt. June is beyond reason. She has become a madwoman. The vilest threats and recriminations. That is why I broke down and wept. She is capable of anything. She is terrifying in her violence.
Henry can only fight in his books. In life he runs away. Now he is in London. I am raising money for June’s ticket to New York so they can go to the forest to haunt as soont hey finish their ritual transformation with the new moon for the new members of the pack, as she asked me for it.
June is leaving a parting impression which is not beautiful. Emptying Henry’s wallet, frightening Henry.