More about the socks - Gloria, part 12

Mr. Apotienne had thought, on specific, unsettled occasions, that someone who was not him might write a book called Get Over It:  It's ALL PTSD.  As he packed for his holiday, gathering to himself all his dark woolen socks, he found his hands shaking as he confronted the open suitcase - how did it grow to be so cavernous?  -  his breath turned to rasping gulps and his eyes tearing.  One of the things about post traumatic stress disorder is the way it piggybacks into the room, like a brown recluse spider that lurks in the packing material of a long-awaited parcel.  The tick hidden behind the ear of the golden retriever you stop to pet in the courtyard.  No wonder we've been subjected to exorcisms and the casting out of demons, he concluded, once the ground stopped heaving.  How to understand that we continue to haunt ourselves with our own horror stories, not by intention but by the fact that they happened and will not unhappen and each new occurrence could not possibly have been foreseen, the mind making its own connections and we, always the last to know.

A piece of his generalized haunting might have come from an experience of his mother's, she and her brother having been sent to spend the night with a neighbor while their parents were out of town.  Mr. Apotienne recalled the description of the babysitter, accurate or not, as an elderly single woman who found it easier to mimic sanity in the daylight than in her own night-darkened chambers.  With the two children in her care and locked inside her two-story stucco house, she had thought it amusing to drape herself with a sheet and creep into the room where they slept, flapping and shrieking and terrifying them so.   It was fortunate neither had a weak heart.  These are the crossroads, he thought, where we begin to lose our trust.

For The Reading Man, there had been a near-drowning in paralyzingly cold water and, once safe, feet that never seemed to feel warm or dry.  Planning for times in the days ahead when he could be certain his feet would be both wet and appear nearly bloodless with the chill, he stocked his arsenal, saw there was ammunition in every pocket and loop of his bandolier, yet stood mystified as he began to unravel while he stockpiled his socks.  Once he permitted himself the necessary island of seated weeping, he recognized the devil for what it was and wondered just how many turns he would be forced to take around the dance floor with this death grip on his shoulder before he not longer had to endure it.  He could only imagine how much worse it would be without years of therapy.  So, he said. Socks.