Annihilation: A Novel (The Southern Reach Trilogy Book 1) by Jeff VanderMeer

Author:Jeff VanderMeer [VanderMeer, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2014-02-03T16:00:00+00:00

04: IMMERSION

Everything I knew about the psychologist came from my observations during training. She had served both as a kind of distant overseer and in a more personal role as our confessor. Except, I had nothing to confess. Perhaps I confessed more under hypnosis, but during our regular sessions, which I had agreed to as a condition of being accepted for the expedition, I volunteered little.

“Tell me about your parents. What are they like?” she would ask, a classic opening gambit.

“Normal,” I replied, trying to smile while thinking distant, impractical, irrelevant, moody, useless.

“Your mother is an alcoholic, correct? And your father is a kind of … con man?”

I almost exhibited a lack of control at what seemed like an insult, not an insight. I almost protested, defiantly, “My mother is an artist and my father is an entrepreneur.”

“What are your earliest memories?”

“Breakfast.” A stuffed puppy toy I still have today. Putting a magnifying glass up to an ant lion’s sinkhole. Kissing a boy and making him strip for me because I didn’t know any better. Falling into a fountain and banging my head; the result, five stitches in the emergency room and an abiding fear of drowning. In the emergency room again when Mom drank too much, followed by the relief of almost a year of sobriety.

Of all of my answers, “Breakfast” annoyed her the most. I could see it in the corners of her mouth fighting a downward turn, her rigid stance, the coldness in her eyes. But she kept her control.

“Did you have a happy childhood?”

“Normal,” I replied. My mom once so out of it that she poured orange juice into my cereal instead of milk. My dad’s incessant, nervous chatter, which made him seem perpetually guilty of something. Cheap motels for vacations by the beach where Mom would cry at the end because we had to go back to the normal strapped-for-cash life, even though we’d never really left it. That sense of impending doom occupying the car.

“How close were you to your extended family?”

“Close enough.” Birthday cards suitable for a five-year-old even when I was twenty. Visits once every couple of years. A kindly grandfather with long yellow fingernails and the voice of a bear. A grandmother who lectured on the value of religion and saving your pennies. What were their names?

“How do you feel about being part of a team?”

“Just fine. I’ve often been part of teams.” And by “part of,” I mean off to the side.

“You were let go from a number of your field jobs. Do you want to tell me why?”

She knew why, so, again, I shrugged and said nothing.

“Are you only agreeing to join this expedition because of your husband?”

“How close were you and your husband?”

“How often did you fight? Why did you fight?”

“Why didn’t you call the authorities the moment he returned to your house?”

These sessions clearly frustrated the psychologist on a professional level, on the level of her ingrained training, which was predicated on drawing personal information out of patients in order to establish trust and then delve into deeper issues.

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