Wavewalker

by Stella Duffy

  “It’ll be great Anita – now that Jasmine isn’t so demanding of your time, you need to get back into the rhythm of the House. Into the same rhythm as all of us.”

  “Yeah, sure you’re uncertain, but it isn’t really that big a deal, and you’ll feel great afterwards. Everyone always does.”

  “We’ll look after her, it’s about time the rest of us took on more childcare anyway.”

  “Go on Anita – surely you’re not scared?”

  “You’ve been feeling left out for a while now, this is just what you need.”

  “It’ll make things easier for you and Max.”

  “We know we’ve become a little elitist – you need to feel part of things again. Please?”

  “Please?”

  “Please?”

  Since he’d devised the Process in his work with Paul and later with Michael, Max had insisted that anyone wanting to “make the change” as he put it, had to ask for it to happen. The others living in the House had done so and now Anita was worn down both by them and by her own desires – to join in, be part of her own home again, be part of Max again. A week after it was first mentioned, she went to find Max in the back room that was now his study.

  “I’m ready to do it Max.”

  “Do what?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  “Ah – I’m ready to do the Process.”

  “Are you? Sounds like you’ve just been persuaded to do it.”

  “Well … yes … in a way.”

  “Then you’re not ready.”

  “No, I mean I’ve been persuaded that it’s a good idea.”

  “Have you?”

  “I think so.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “For God’s sake Max, what do you want?”

  Max stood up from his desk and looked out at the view beneath him, the city lights gleaming up and down the people-covered hills surrounding them. With his back to her he spoke.

  “I don’t want anything Anita, you’ve come to me.”

  “This is impossible!”

  “Nothing’s impossible remember?”

  “Talk to me Max. I’m your lover, your partner, we are the parents of a child!”

  “Yes Anita, I know that.”

  “You’re making me crazy.”

  Max turned from the window and smiled at her.

  “No. I’m not making you feel anything Anita. You are responsible for your own feelings. Now, what is it that you think you are allowing yourself to get so upset about?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the Process? Why did I have to find out about it from Michael? Why am I the last one?”

  “You did know about it. You live here. How could you not know about it?”

  “Not in any detail. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “No reason. You just never asked before. You weren’t doing the Process, so you didn’t need to know about it.”

  “Well I’m asking now.”

  “Are you asking to be told about the Process or are you asking to do it? Because there’s no way I can tell you about it, it isn’t a lecture to be reported, if you want to know about it, you will have to go through it.”

  “OK.”

  “OK what?”

  “Fuck it!”

  Anita slammed Max’s desk.

  “Fuck you Max. Fuck you and the damn Process!”

  Max came towards her from the window and held her tight, pressing her into his chest. She was trembling with rage and frustration and he kept his voice light and gentle, speaking quietly and calmly,

  “Ask me Anita. You have to ask to do it.”

  “Max – oh God … I can’t, this is stupid, I don’t know … I mean … how?”

  “Ask, Anita.”

  “Max, can I do the Process?”

  Max kissed her forehead.

  “Of course, my darling. We’ll start on Monday.”

  CHAPTER 7

  After sitting alone in the room for an hour, Anita decided she could stand it no longer. Max had left her in the “Process Room” as he now called the large first floor room and told her to just sit and wait – he would be a while. She waited, and she waited, and it was starting to drive her crazy.

  The room had been whitewashed in the summer and instead of putting back the bookcases and desk, Max had moved them into his practice office and left only one armchair in their place. No books, no pictures and, as the room was at the side of the house, just a view of the wall of the next door house, a mere four feet away. That wall had also been painted white. Anita paced the room and, finally deciding that perhaps Max had actually forgotten about her, went to the door. It was locked. She tried calling but there was no response. After a couple of minutes she gave up and went back to her chair. The house was still and quiet, it almost sounded as if everyone had gone out for the day. Anita could do nothing but sit and wait. As she had no watch, she could only tell the passage of time by watching the sun move around the room, lighting up dust-moted beams as a kind of reverse sundial. Max had taken her to the study at nine in the morning, now the sun was just about gone from the room which meant it had to be well past twelve. She figured she’d been there for at least three hours when she realized a strange thing. Four years of living in the States and talking to English-speaking people meant that, unless she was writing to her parents or talking to her sister who now lived with her American husband in Idaho, she almost always thought in English – she even dreamt in English – but here she was, after three hours with only her own company and she was thinking in Dutch. And not merely the Dutch she’d learnt in school, but the very specific dialect of their region. And the now foreign words were bringing with them a whole raft of memories she’d gladly left behind when she left home at sixteen. Her father’s authoritarianism, her mother’s unquestioning religious belief, how she broke her little finger skating when she was twelve, her little brother’s funeral, the fights with her sister Julia, failing her French exam when she was fifteen, fighting with her mother about going to church … her little brother’s funeral.

  Anita’s brother had died when he was six and she was eight. It was Christmas Eve when his perfectly normal bout of childhood flu had suddenly developed complications, the flu became pneumonia and Francis died. She had been the oldest child. There was herself, then Francis and then Julia the baby, barely four years old. Anita not only lost her brother, she also lost her best friend and playmate. But worse than that, she lost her mother. Anita’s mother had adored little Francis, a classic case of two sweet daughters but only one perfect son, and no matter what she did in future years, Anita could never live up to her mother’s memories of Francis, the perfect boy. Her mother turned to the church in her grief, Anita’s father took care of little Julia and at eight, Anita was left to grieve alone. Which she did – in a way. She dealt with her grief by pretending that Francis had never existed, at least in her own mind. Much as her mother talked about him, praised him, made an angel of her son, Anita discarded her memories of their shared childhood until she was just left with the single image of her little brother’s funeral. An image she’d never admitted for more than five minutes if she could help herself, even more so now since her own child had been born. An image she’d been too scared ever to look at for long. Too scared because she was aware enough to know that she might not be able to cope with the pain it would bring. But here she was, locked into Max’s study, with nothing to do but think to herself and all she could see in her head was the double image of Francis lying in the hospital bed and Francis lying in his coffin. All she could see was the hot, fevered Francis and the cold, grey Francis. All she could see was her baby brother, dead.

  When Max came into the room an hour later he found Anita curled up and sobbing in the corner. When he picked her up and held her to him she cried even more and, about half an hour later, when his comforting had quietened her and he tried to get her to tell him why she was so upset, Anita could hardly spe
ak – at least not in English. Her words came out in a tumble of standard Dutch, regional dialect and heavily accented English. Max let her talk even though he barely understood even half of it, nodding encouragingly, making appropriate soothing noises and stroking her forehead.

  When she woke up Anita was lying in their bed and Max was sitting beside her.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi.”

  “Can you talk about it now?”

  “I … just had no idea … I hadn’t thought about him for so long…”

  “You hadn’t grieved, Anita.”

  “But it was years and years ago.”

  “It still made you cry.”

  “Does it happen to everyone?”

  “Yes. Sometimes it’s easier, sometimes it’s much worse. Often it takes a lot longer. You were only there for three hours until it all came out. Michael took about ten. And that was on his second Process. It depends how deeply it’s buried.”

  “I didn’t think I had buried it. I told you all about Francis.”

  “Yes. You talked about him. I know what he looked like, what he enjoyed doing, what your mother thought about him, how your sister missed him. You told me about him like you must have told a hundred other people, the day you told me you gave me a rehearsed speech. You must have been telling people about when your brother died for years, you’re good at talking about it, but what about the feelings there? I had no idea at all what losing him did to you.”

  “No, I guess I didn’t either. Is that it?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “What? You lock me in a room, I cry and it’s all over?”

  “That’s the very basic facts. I leave you with no external stimulus. You have only yourself to talk to. After some time you actually start to listen to yourself as well. And you tell yourself those things you’ve been ignoring for years. You actually listen to yourself.”

  “And then?”

  “Well, now we can talk about it if you want. Or not. It’s up to you. What matters is that you’ve acknowledged your truth. The thing you were hiding from. You may not feel it now, but in a couple of days you’ll start to feel a change. A lightness.”

  “So what’s your role?”

  “Anita, most people aren’t as together as you. I expect now that you have listened to yourself, you’ll be able to deal with it. Other people need to talk about it to someone else.”

  “You?”

  “Sometimes. Or anyone could do the trick if they can listen. Or maybe it isn’t just about telling the story, maybe they need to address any issues it brings up – you know, behavioural changes, that sort of thing. And there may be other things they haven’t looked at yet. They might need to do the Process again in a few months’ time to get more out.”

  “Will I?”

  “That’s up to you. You’ll know if you need more.”

  “How?”

  “You’ll know. Trust me.”

  “Have the others?”

  “Paul has. Michael’s done it several times. I worry that he wants to do it too much. Perhaps he’s becoming dependent on it.”

  “How many times?”

  “Ten.”

  Anita shivered and pulled the bedclothes tighter around her.

  “Ten? He’s been through this pain ten times?”

  “He wanted to.”

  “But Max, you’re not a psychiatrist.”

  “No. And I’m glad I’m not. Do you know how long traditional medicine would take to get these results – to uncover these sorts of truths? Years and years. Most people haven’t got that sort of time. Or money. And it’s not just time, sometimes they use medication to get at the truth – this is only people, Anita. People listening to themselves. People telling themselves what’s wrong with them. People changing themselves.”

  “But what if they get it wrong?”

  “They don’t. You didn’t.”

  “Well, no. But I’ve only done it once. What else might I come up with? What if someone comes up with something you can’t cope with?”

  “It hasn’t happened Anita.”

  “But it might.”

  “It won’t. How can anyone, now living and thriving, or even just living and barely getting through … how can anyone who is at least coping, come up with anything that they couldn’t deal with? The brain does it of its own accord. Trust Anita. Trust yourself. This is such an amazing thing, this Process. You must become your own God. Everything else is irrelevant. You give yourself what you need. You tell yourself what you need to know. You just need to be quiet and listen. That’s all. It’s so simple and so easy and so good. This will do for people what Freud hoped to and never achieved. This will set people free.”

  “How can you be so sure Max?”

  “Knowledge is its own guarantee. Don’t argue any more. You’re tired, you’ve had a very long day. Go to sleep for a couple of hours and I’ll wake you when it’s time to put Jasmine to bed, she’ll be glad to see you and it will be good for you to be with her for a while.”

  Max leant over to kiss Anita.

  “Goodnight my darling. I’m glad you’ve come to us.”

  “I’ve come to you Max – for you, for you and me. To try to make us work.”

  “Well, I’m glad anyway, now sleep.”

  Two weeks later Michael killed himself.

  I have a friend who knew him once.

  I was told about the past. Told that which cannot be told.

  Which, even in the telling, is a hurting.

  And now I know.

  It is fate and karma and right that I know.

  That I do what I will do.

  Sometimes, beside a sandcastle, you also build a channel to take the water away, to save that castle from the sea.

  But there is no channel deep enough to hold the sea back always.

  The seventh wave is coming.

  The wave which holds the flood and he doesn’t even care.

  Because he doesn’t know.

  Yet.

  CHAPTER 8

  Saz’s next move was to check up on Maxwell North’s practice. This was easily arranged. Dr North was so well-known that at least half the pop stars in London had at one time attended his clinics, he himself had appeared either alone or with his latest “clean” celebrity success on most of the daytime talk shows and Saz, rapidly brought up to date by Molly, was now, like most of the British Sunday Newspaper Reading Public, well aware that he held monthly open meetings – not at his Harley Street offices of course, he had to make the rich and famous feel they were paying for something – but at a public hall in Bloomsbury. Saz went to one the following week.

  It was advertised as starting at 8 a.m. and finishing “when the Process is complete” – Saz figured she could always extricate herself from the “Process” early if she didn’t feel up to getting completely completed. At the entrance to the hall she handed over her £100 for the day long course and in return was given a name tag and a registration card, all the usual name, address and date of birth questions and then a section which Saz recognized as the “California Quotient”.

  Have you ever been in therapy? (if so, what sort?)

  Are you addicted to alcohol? tobacco? drugs? sex?

  approval? exercise?

  Do you come from a dysfunctional family?

  Are you now, or have you ever been, in an abusive

  relationship?

  and finally

  Are you prepared to CHANGE???

  There was a coda reminding the attendees that in agreeing to do the course they had promised “Not to divulge any Process techniques to those Outside!” Saz figured North had to make his vast amounts of money somehow. She answered all the questions honestly except the one that asked for her name and address, giving her name as Molly Steele and her address as that of the mother of her ex-girlfriend, Caroline.

  She put “Probably” in response to the Change question.

  The morning began with a lecture from one of Dr North’s assistants – ab
out his work, about his “philosophy” – “Be open to the whole and the whole will come to you” and in general about how he had changed her life, her husband’s life, her mother’s life, not to mention the hundreds of pop stars, media celebrities and the top secret wives of government ministers he had “saved”, and now, if they were all prepared to really take up the challenge, he would change their lives too. It was a good speech. Saz wondered if she was the only person there thinking it was too good not to be a con. She looked around at the two hundred or so other “changees”. The group was much as she had expected – thirties to mid-forties, middle class and looking hungry, metaphorically and literally, they’d been told breakfast would be provided, but already it was quarter to nine and Saz couldn’t exactly smell the welcoming scent of warm croissants and a rich Columbian brew. Then another of North’s assistants came on stage, introducing himself as Malcolm, one of the facilitators on the Process and told them the rules for the day.

  “OK. This is the hard part. There is to be no smoking – not even outside the hall. No talking while in session other than that directed by Dr North or the facilitators. There will be breaks every three hours when you may go to the toilet. If you decide to leave at any time other than those set down you will not be allowed back in. Maxwell North is a medical doctor and can assure you that you do not need to go to the loo more than once every three hours, it will not hurt your bladder to hold on! If you do feel the urge it is bound to be a physiological reaction to the lecture or discussion. Stay with it, your body is only trying to give you an excuse not to confront your reality, it’s what you’ve been doing all those years wasting life and money on smoking and drinking and overeating and taking drugs. Fight it, the results are well worthwhile. Also, there will be herbal teas and water provided but no food!”