by Jeff Bell
“Make yourself comfortable,” he says, as I step into the room.
But I can’t find the couch. There isn’t one anywhere. The doctor sees my confusion and points to a chair.
“You were expecting a sofa?”
“Well, it’s just that I’ve never—”
“They only use those in movies,” Dr. X says with a slight chuckle. I can tell he’s trying to put me at ease. But I’m in no mood for chitchat or wisecracking comments.
“I need to ask you something, Doctor, before we get started.”
“Shoot.”
“Is anyone ever going to know about these conversations?”
“Not unless you tell me you’re about to commit a crime.”
Is that what he thinks? Why would he say that?
“No. No! It’s just that I’m very concerned about word of our meetings ever getting out.”
The doctor moves his pen now without looking down. I wonder if he’s making some note on the legal pad on his lap.
“Counseling is a very confidential process,” he tells me. “I truly don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
Yeah. Easy for him to say. No one’s going to yank his career out from under him when they find out we’ve been talking.
“So how ’bout we start with what brings you my way.”
This is my cue. Now I’m supposed to spill everything. I’ll be damned though if I’m going to let my deepest, darkest secrets wind up on that yellow legal pad. Not a chance.
Confessing to my boat mishandling, on the other hand, is something I’m more than willing—perhaps even eager—to do. So that’s where I start. I tell him the whole story, from the engine dying to my recent conversation with the cabin cruiser guy.
“So you’ve told these other boat owners about your concerns, twice now?” he asks when I’m done.
“Right. But I’m not convinced they understand that I might have damaged their boat.”
“Sounds like they couldn’t care less. From what you’ve described, this old ‘cabin cruiser’ is a real piece of shit.”
The doctor’s choice of words might have caught me off guard, but I’ve already decided that everything about him seems to scream tough guy. His gestures. His expressions. Even the way he cocks his head.
I like this, for some reason. Yet I can’t help wondering if he thinks I’m a sissy. Real men don’t go whining to shrinks.
At 11:50, I figure out what Dr. X has been glancing at just above my right shoulder. It’s a clock, telling him it’s time to wrap up our conversation, which by this point has moved on to a quick overview of my life and my fast-track radio career.
I ask him what’s next.
“Well, are you up for doing this again?”
I’ve already decided that he gets exactly four sessions to fix me. I tell him that, in so many words.
“Fine then,” he says. “I’ll see you next Tuesday.”
My second meeting with Dr. X begins much like the previous one, with a sweeping invitation.
“So what do you feel like talking about today?”
It’s a loaded question, and I find myself thinking less about my answer than the expression on his face. Sincere, but macho. Very tough. Hey, big man, it seems to say, we’re just a couple of guys shooting the shit. You can tell me anything. Go on now.
I’m not going to fall into his trap.
“I dunno.”
“Well, this boat concern of yours. Let’s start there. Tell me how it’s affecting your life.”
Uh-oh. That’s where he’s trying to take me now. No way. I’m not going to talk about all the crazy stuff I’ve been doing around the boat. And I certainly don’t need him writing down something about “tapes” playing and replaying in my head. That’s not the stuff for legal pads.
“It’s very … distracting.” I choose my words with great care.
“How so?”
“Well, the more time I spend worrying about the whole thing, the less time I have to devote to my radio career.”
“Ah. Your career! You’re having trouble accepting your success, aren’t you?”
Huh? Where did that one come from? I tilt my head slightly and lift one eyebrow.
“It’s a very common thing. You’re young. Very successful. Everything’s going your way.”
“Yeah?”
“A lot of guys can’t handle that. They need to find problems to distract themselves. I see it with young doctors, lawyers, all kinds of professionals your age.”
Dr. X is on a roll now. He’s figured everything out and is imparting his wisdom to me. Fear of success, he calls my problem. Says it’s been around forever. Apparently, ancient tribes even had a ritual for dealing with it.
“I bet you were always a big overachiever,” he says.
“No argument there.” I’ll play along. Beats talking about the stuff I should really be sharing.
We spend the rest of my fifty minutes discussing my high school and college honors, my athletic achievements, and my recent broadcasting success.
Lots of fuel for the good doctor’s fire.
A few days later, Samantha and I learn of another success, one that has her beaming and me more concerned than ever about the future. According to the plus-sign on the plastic device she is holding, we are now eight months away from our second child.
I fake my delight as best as I can and, together with Sam, make calls to our closest family and friends. I am uneasy though, and my mind keeps flashing back three years, to the day Sam and I first learned we’d be parents. It was, as I recall so vividly now, both the most exciting and the most horrifying day of my life.
The excitement had come first, in the form of ecstasy and wonder. I remember holding Samantha tight, the two of us contemplating our lives ahead as real-life parents.
But what I remember most is the bizarre question that popped into my head just a few minutes later: What if I already have kids out there, bastard children I don’t know that I’ve fathered? What if one of my old girlfriends got pregnant but never told me?
It was the strangest, most illogical notion, especially considering that I had never slept with any of the women I dated before Sam. But logic aside, the question was more disturbing than any before it, and worse yet, it begged an even more tortuous one: How could I ever feel good about myself as a parent if I might have sired illegitimate kids I’ve unknowingly abandoned? That whole prospect haunted me for weeks, maybe months. And now, three years later, I know it’s coming back for me once more, like a playground bully who’s been waiting at the fence.
By nightfall, I am locked in my den, mentally reviewing every date I can remember with every girl I ever went out with.
Play. Rewind. Play. Rewind.
Is it possible I could have got any of them pregnant? Maybe while sharing a hot tub, or simply locked in a passionate embrace? Reason is no longer a part of even my best thought-processing.
I think back on all the weird hang-ups I’d always had about intimacy. Unlike most every college guy in America who was trying to get a woman into bed, I was doing all I could to ensure my dates never wound up there. I’d always spun it as a matter of morals. But, truth is, I couldn’t imagine having sex with a woman who might get pregnant and might disappear from my life and might be carrying a child I’d never know about then. Talk about having to live with the ultimate uncertainty!
None of this ever struck me as odd until just now, as I sit here thinking about what great care my college-self had taken to protect me from the very hell I now find myself in.
On June first, three weeks to the day after first slithering into Dr. X’s office building, I am about to slither out for the very last time.
He doesn’t know this yet.
Our third session had passed quickly, and now this one is too. We’ve continued to talk about success, and why young professionals, in particular, have so much trouble dealing with it. I like the whole theory. As psychiatric hang-ups go, this seems like a noble one.
> But I’ve been holding back, and I know it. Never once have I mentioned the tapes, or my bastard children concerns, or even my increasing troubles walking away from a car without going back to check its parking brake at least two or three times.
Now Dr. X is again peering over my shoulder, giving me the old let’s-wrap-it-up-for-the-day smile. He’s not saying anything, though, as he usually does at the end of our sessions.
“I guess this is it,” I finally say.
“Is it?”
“Well, this was our fourth appointment, and I am doing much better.”
“Are you?”
“Yeah. Wouldn’t you say we’re done with our work?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
Enough with the damn questions, already. Is this what all shrinks do, throw everything back at you?
“Why don’t you think about coming back for a while,” he says after a second or two of silence.
“I’ll give it some thought,” I promise, knowing damn well that I’ve already made up my mind.
Thirty minutes later, I am back at Oyster Point Marina, making up for weeks worth of lost checking, and assessing the damage to my permanent record.
six
fast-forward 4 months
Samantha and I are on a Boeing 747, thirty seconds out of San Francisco International and headed for Honolulu. The plane is banking to the west, offering us and half the other passengers a perfect view of the shrinking peninsula below.
I can’t look. I already made that mistake several months ago on a flight to Los Angeles. As I discovered the hard way that day, Oyster Point Marina sits just below the SFO flight path, and if you happen to be peering out a port-side window at takeoff, you can’t help but see the goddamn cabin cruiser and its unmistakable blue tarp just as clear as can be.
I won’t fall into that trap today.
I close my eyes and count to ten, then allow myself a quick peek. All the boats on the bay below are now just little toy figures. A few seconds later they are indistinguishable dots. If only I could do the same thing with the hellish vessels that drop anchor in my head—somehow make them disappear with nothing more than some time and distance.
Samantha’s nose is buried in a book, so I close my eyes again and try to think about beaches and palm trees. Instead I see the very aerial image of the marina I was trying to avoid. It is still archived from my LA trip and redevelops like a Polaroid snapshot. Never mind all my efforts today; within minutes, I am again right back to thinking about that day, nearly a full year ago now, when my whole world began spiraling out of control. Right back to reviewing all of Doubt’s what-if? questions about the fate of the surely doomed cabin cruiser. The scenarios make me shiver still, and with the conditioned response of Pavlov’s dog, I replay my tape of the boat mishap for the billionth time, tears welling up in my eyes as I grasp for the illusory pause button. I know the best way, the only way, to stop one tape is to put on another. So I cue up the tape of my pathetic conversation with the guy from the cabin cruiser. Then I switch to the one of Nicole and me on the dock in the rain. Next up, a looped review of the time I inflated a small life raft and rowed it right by the cabin cruiser for a closer look at its bow. There are so many tapes in my growing collection.
Samantha leans over and tugs on my sleeve. “We’re gonna have such a great time,” she whispers with the excitement of a kid at Christmas. Sam is six months pregnant now and years overdue for the Hawaii vacation I’ve always promised her. She’s all but giddy, flipping through the pages of an island guide, scribbling her planning notes in the margins.
You know that old pearl of parental wisdom, Life isn’t fair? Like many parents, Samantha and I often find ourselves reminding our daughters of this. It’s the perfect response, really, when one of them demands an explanation for why she has to, or isn’t allowed to, do something or another.
Sometimes, though, when I watch Sam issue the admonishment with feigned seriousness—hands on hips, eyes narrowed to a squint—I can’t help but wonder if the words sting with truth for her. Life hasn’t been fair for my wife, at least not when it comes to getting what she bargained for with me.
For as long as I’ve known her, Samantha has displayed a rare mastery of the art of fun. No one else I’ve ever met can come close to squeezing as much sheer enjoyment from life. The quintessential kid at heart, she can spend hours playing board games, touring amusement parks, sledding in the snow, or roller skating. Dollar Scoop Tuesdays at Baskin-Robbins, those elusive packages of fresh gummy bears, hard-fought victories in her tanning showdowns with her mother: these are the things that make Sam crinkle her nose in delight. And then there’s her favorite motto, the one shouting from the back of her most tattered T-shirt: “Life’s uncertain. Eat dessert first.”
Fans of TV’s Gilmore Girls would recognize a whole lot of Lorelai in Samantha, especially the genuine playfulness and self-assuredness they share. I often think of that connection when remembering a fancy birthday dinner I’d taken Sam out for one year. “We can go anywhere you want when we’re done,” I’d told her over dessert. “Dancing. A movie. Jazz club. You name it.”
It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds before Sam’s eyes lit up. “You know that super-slide at the fairgrounds?”
We were there ten minutes later.
Our courting days back in the mid-1980s played out well within my “normal years,” and the guy Sam fell in love with was not only normal, but almost every bit as carefree and fun-loving as she was. After countless picnics and camping trips and moonlit strolls on the beach, who could blame Sam for thinking she’d found the perfect match for the rest of her fun-filled life?
Who could blame her for struggling to understand, years later on a plane to Hawaii, that fun was going to be a solo pursuit for the long stretch ahead?
And who could blame her if she began to find this marriage unfair?
Not me.
“So what do you think?”
Samantha is staring at me, waiting for a response, I’m guessing, to some question I’ve missed. This seems to happen a lot these days.
“What’s that?” I say.
“Are you ignoring me again?”
“No, I was just—”
“Yeah, I know what you were doing,” Sam says, tapping her finger on my head. “What I said was, ‘This is your birthday trip—the big three-oh—remember? And you, my dear, have a lot to celebrate. Right?’”
She is right. So much has happened in the few short months since my wasted time and money with Dr. X. The good doctor may have failed to fix me, but all his talk about success must have, in some strange cosmic way, prompted that much more of it to come my direction. Just weeks after our final session, and years after first trying to get even a toe in the door at KCBS Radio, I got a call from the station’s program director, Ed Cavagnaro, asking if I was still interested in working for him. A few weeks later I found myself broadcasting from the palatial Embarcadero Center studios of the CBS Network’s West Coast flagship. And then within days, Cavagnaro called again to offer me double the work. Now I’m a regular weekend anchor and relief reporter at San Francisco’s legendary all-news station, and KSFO seems like small potatoes.
Samantha’s right. I do have a lot to celebrate. But then again, maybe old Dr. X was right as well—maybe I am afraid of my own success. All I know sitting here on this plane headed for Hawaii is that I’d trade my KCBS break and anything else in a heartbeat, just to ascertain once and for all what happened with the boats.
Settling into paradise proves to be no easy task. It’s been years since Samantha and I have gotten away together, just the two of us. No parenting duties. No phone calls. No household chores. There is so much extra space to fill, so much extra time to play all my tapes.
Sam decides I need to keep busy, so we catch a bus to Hanama Bay and rent snorkeling equipment. The water is perfect. The fish are beautiful. But my snorkel is old and battered, and ten minutes into our grand adventure, I realize
that the mouthpiece is loose. Did I do that? Break it somehow? Soon my head is filled with visions of the next renter of this equipment choking on a mouthful of water. What if that happens? Doubt reminds me that you’ll never know for sure and that you’ll spend the rest of your life worrying. There’s a virtual snorkeling tape in the making here, and I’m certain I’ll be stuck watching it forever.
I tell Sam it’s time to head back to the shore.
The next morning, we make plans to tour the other side of the island. A rental car offers the only efficient way to do this in one day. But I don’t want to drive, and I find myself hemming and hawing. Samantha understands, even without my explaining. She knows I’ve lost all confidence in myself behind the wheel and she knows I’m scared to death that I might somehow screw up the car. What if somebody else gets killed because I unknowingly broke something?
Sam disappears into the rental car office.
“We’re all set,” she tells me a few minutes later. “But it turns out I’m the only one authorized to drive. That okay with you?” My wife is getting good at covering for me.
I tell her I guess so, dropping my head a bit in embarrassment. Why is it so humiliating for a guy to let his wife do the driving?
The day goes fine until we return our Ford Tempo in the late afternoon. While lifting our bags out of the trunk, I notice the left-rear wheel is missing its hubcap.
“Sam,” I say, pointing toward the wheel.
“Yeah?”
“It’s missing.”
“What’s missing?” My wife is confused.
“The hubcap! Was it there when we started out this morning?”
“I assume not,” she says, without a hint of a care.
“Well, what if it fell off on our watch?”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t you think we’d have heard something?”
