BY REASON OF INSANITY by Edward L. Woodyard

By Reason of Insanity Chapter Fifty-One

I don't remember Mara escorting me from the living room the next morning and placing me into the porcelain tub of the master bath off our bedroom. I do remember her ever so gentle touch as she washed my hair and body. I also remember that Willie stood by the door while I was babbling nonsense which I hoped had made sense to anyone who had bothered to listen.

"He's not better than the next man. But he's cleaner than he was."

I relaxed in the water as Mara rinsed my soapy hair with a small sauce pan.

"Money allows madness because it doesn't make you happy."

When I slid under the bathwater, Mara panicked. Willie quickly picked me up out of the tub. I got both of their clothes wet. Sorry about that.

"Time to dry off, Dad," Willie suggested.

I looked at my son, "Willie, you are his hopes and dreams and his need for the future."

"That's nice, Dad.  What are we going to do with all that future?"

"Your life is not about you. It's about everyone whose life you touch."

"That's nice again, Dad."

"From birth, other species have the instinct to be themselves. Humans have to be taught how to be human."

"Enough for now, Dad. Let's dry you off."

Willie held a bath towel out in front of me. I stood naked in front of my son and sang to him. "'My lovely, living boy. My home. My happiness. My love. My life. My joy.'"

Willie finished drying me as Mara exited into our bedroom to change her clothes and to get me  clean underwear.

"Wasn't that nice?" I asked Willie about the song I had just sung to him. "Guillaume DuBartan wrote that in the 1500s."

As I stood naked in the bathroom looking in the full-length mirror while Mara helped me put on a tee-shirt and underpants, I was thinking that there used to be another of me, who might be on the other side of that mirror. Neither Willie nor Mara knew why I was singing "I Am the Walrus" to the mirror; they didn't know that my twin Alan was on the other side: "'He is you. You are he. You and he are one. I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together."

Who was there looking back at me? Was it my avatar? Alan the Avatar?

Whomever he was, I smiled at him and he smiled back. We were getting dressed at the same time. Maya seemed to be helping him too. I kept singing, "'Man, you been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long. I am the eggman, we are the eggmen. I am the walrus."

Alan had a bureau mirror in his boyhood bedroom. He had taped something atop it that he had typed on our mother's typewriter: QUIT WALKING AROUND IN YOUR FANTASIES!  I told Alan, "You can either live your dream or else you will sleepwalk through life."  

I hope that isn't why Alan killed himself.  I don't ever want to know why.  Once I know that, I can't unknow it.

I sang to Alan, who then turned to Willie and Mara, singing to them, "'Goo goo g'joob goo goo g'joob.'"

"Who are you talking to in the mirror, Dad?" Willie asked.

"Your uncle Alan. He appears every now and then. It's always nice to see him," I said. "I am he. And he is me. And we are all together."

Goo goo g'joob.

I gazed at Willie, "I remembered what I wanted to forget – and forgot what I wanted to remember.  Crazy, huh?"