This Thing Between Us

The entity possessing the Itza, Brimley, and Dr. Jacobson continues to function in part as a symbol of The Indescribable Intensity of Grief. This is evident in the way Thiago interacts with it. Thiago’s “dream” of the banquet on the beach echoes both the intensity of what he’s experiencing and the fact that he doesn’t try to escape it. Rather, he leans into it. He notes the “debilitating waves of grief and surrender” (230), noting that, as he approaches the wall, he has “only the kernel, the marrow of [his] unbearable sorrow” left (231). The episode suggests Thiago’s ambivalence toward healing; as painful as his grief is, it feels like the most real and significant aspect of his existence, so he is reluctant to let it go.

A similar ambivalence underpins Thiago’s efforts to make sense of his grief. On the one hand, he continuously reaches for metaphors and allusions that will help him understand his feelings. At the same time, the novel suggests not merely that things don’t make sense without Vera but that he doesn’t want them to, as explanation would be another way of containing the experience—rendering it less all-encompassing than he feels it should be. This idea finds symbolic expression in the hole that Diane shoots in Jacobson’s head. The wound acts like a vacuum because this is how Thiago’s grief interacts with his world. It destroys the social support he might have relied on. It destroys his sense of himself, his home, and his peace, but this destruction is in some sense preferable to the alternative.

Underscoring this idea, Part 3 hints that Thiago may not like what he discovers if he attempts to find meaning in Vera’s death. The suggestion that he caused his wife’s death by turning off Itza’s alarm horrifies him, but the accusation that he killed her to “remove distractions” resonates with Thiago’s broader characterization, as the novel has consistently emphasized his impatience with other people and his tendency to push them away. Whether literally true or not, it thus speaks to a psychological truth that Thiago would rather ignore. Thiago’s drinking calls his certainty that he did not cancel the Itza’s alarm further into question. He says that drinking “put[s] blinders on [his] attention” (133), causing him to make poor decisions, so it is possible that he did cancel the alarm and simply can’t remember it. This ambiguity reflects Thiago’s divided mental state—his simultaneous desire to connect with and distance himself from others, Vera included—and thus speaks to the theme of The Limits of Rational Control, as Thiago may lack understanding even of himself.

The development of the symbolism of the wall/door further develops this theme. The real estate agent who sold Thiago and Vera the condo says that Fidelia drew a large shape in blood that “[l]ooked like a giant door” (45). The same phrase appears nearly verbatim when Thiago finds the wall in Colorado; he says, “It looked more like a giant door” than a wall (119). The link between the wall and the door becomes clearer when Diane proposes that the “canal” Fidelia spoke of is really a channel, a “passageway, or an opening” (184). This leads Thiago to conclude that it could be a portal, something that need not obey the apparent laws of time and space. The wall/door itself thus defies logic. 

Nevertheless, the novel hints that there are “rules” governing the portal’s operation, and these rules once again draw attention to Thiago’s grief. Diane suggests that “[Fidelia] called this [entity] into the world […], but the only way for it to enter is for someone to pull it out. For some reason it wants [Thiago] to do it” (184). Her conclusion recalls the diner cook telling Thiago that “[p]ossession makes a mess of everything. The person gets all fucking torn to shreds. But a body freely given?” (95). Jacobson’s gruesome death bears out the idea that possession of an unwilling body destroys the body, lending credence to the idea that a body that has been willingly surrendered might remain in better shape. The implication this “evil genius or spirit” came through Fidelia’s portal and believes it can get Thiago to willingly hand over his body (95). Accordingly, when Thiago is on the beach with the cook, the man calls the wall an interface, saying, “You’ve got so many boundaries around you […]. So many barriers, defenses. For us to get to know each other, there needs to be a threshold” (162). Here, he characterizes the wall as a way of gaining entry into Thiago’s life. The irony, then, is that Thiago’s isolation—his standoffishness, particularly in the wake of Vera’s death—makes him vulnerable to this most invasive form of interpersonal contact. 

The idea that he might willingly allow such possession evokes his broader self-destructive tendencies, including his thoughts of suicide. In a further irony, Thiago’s suicidal ideation arises partly in response to the fear of possession. In this, it alludes to the way the priest in The Exorcist rids Regan of the demon. In the movie, Father Karras provokes the demon to leave the girl’s body and enter his own. When Karras realizes that he cannot resist the demon’s influence for long, he throws himself from a window, dying by suicide and taking the demon with him. In the hotel, Thiago thinks to himself, “How convenient it’d be now to have a rope and pull it around my neck […]. It couldn’t keep chasing me if I was already dead” (181). His thought process is similar to the priest’s: that if he takes his own life, the entity that longs to possess him will be deprived of a vessel. However, the implication that it is Thiago’s very self-destructive impulses that render him susceptible to possession foreshadows that such an effort would be futile.