“After years without a clue as to Sid’s whereabouts, Internet technology had put at my fingertips the means to realize my dream of finding the parent who had deserted my mother and me when I was ten years old. Resentment at having been drooped so flatly had plagued me since that time. In junior high school, I had attempted to register my unhappiness: I’d failed at every subject save for art and English literature and composition, and had embarked on a path of delinquency that included smoking at home and on the school grounds, skipping school, not doing homework- to name the most begin of my transgressions.”
Psychoanalytically, Jonathan sustains psychological wounds after Sid’s departure. The childhood experience with Sid persists to his years at junior high school. He Displaces his exasperation with Sid on his studies, particularly the subjects which he flops. The deliberate transgressions are a mechanism which he exploits with the anticipation of mitigating the deep-seethed hurt stemming from Sid’s abandonment. Jonathan unconscious yearning is to experience Sid's affection and acceptance; when he does not attain it, he displaces his aggravation.
“After I left, I discovered that it was not only Jonathan I missed. India used to rub herself, after she’d showered, with rose oil. Its scent would waft into our bedroom. Even after I had returned to Trinidad I would be taken hostage by this scent rising up out of nowhere. Sometimes, I imagined I saw, in my peripheral vision, piles of folded laundry waiting to be put away: Jonathan’s little shirts and trousers, his underwear and T-shirts, India’s V-neck Ts, her black skirts, her black underwear, her black jersey dresses, my blue jeans and black T-shirts, and the detergent scent of mountain air would fill my nostrils.”
Relocating to Trinidad does not erase Sydney's unconscious memories of India and Jonathan. Although he is not near them, he is emotionally in contact with them. Psychoanalytically, the memories are tantamount to regressive episodes, which depict Sydney’ yearning for his family. He cannot obliterate their past images, for he still adores them.
