“It’s good that he could be there for you. Sudden death is such a shock that the details of daily life can be overwhelming.”
“That’s for sure.” Sharon paused, took a deep breath, and continued. “I got this horrifying phone call about Adam’s accident and I had to fly to Las Vegas because that’s the closest airport to the Grand Canyon. I was in complete shock. My dad happened to be in Vegas at the time at a professional conference. So he met me at the airport and drove me the five hours to the Grand Canyon. He was amazing with all the gruesome details of picking out a coffin and a burial site, and arranging the funeral.” Sharon swirled the tea around in her glass, staring at it as if she could see those miserable memories floating by.
I sat quietly, giving her time to experience her feelings and collect her thoughts. After a few minutes, she looked up and said, “Lately, though, I’ve been getting fed up with Dad’s bossiness. It takes me back to when I was a teenager. Sometimes I’m not sure whether I’m making my own choices, or following his single-minded plans for my life.
Sharon didn’t exactly seem like the passive type. And I had seen her stand up to her father at least for a short time. I wondered if sometimes he managed to gradually wear her down. “Do you often go along with his plans?” I asked.
“No, I don’t. In fact sometimes I think I react against his plans just to show him he can’t tell me what to do.”
I sure could relate to that kind of reactance, but I merely nodded to encourage her to go on. “He likes to call me stubborn and selfish,” she said, “but I see it as determination and backbone. I think of myself as a ‘can-do’ person. When I set my mind in a certain direction, I sort of mow over the objections and keep going until I get there. I think that’s why I became a social worker, and it’s a good fit. The people I work with need someone on their side who doesn’t give up easily.”
“But it doesn’t work as well with your father?”
“Well, you know he’s a big deal psychologist,” Sharon said, taking a big drink of her tea.
Probably not as big a deal as he thinks he is, I thought as I nodded to show I followed Sharon’s story.
“He studies behavior, which he sees as pretty much determined by what gets reinforced and what doesn’t.”
“Yes. I knew that.”
“So, when my brother and I were growing up, we lived in what the behaviorists call a token economy. My father set up charts of everything we were supposed to do—all broken down into small steps—and then added a point system for each step we got done. We could turn in the points for spending money, TV time, use of the car, stuff like that.” Sharon set down her glass to tick off on her fingers the prizes available for points.
“Hmm…could make you feel more like a pet than a daughter.”
“I’m not saying it ruined my life, but even now I find myself thinking I should get points for washing my car or cleaning my house,” Sharon said. “Which I expect is why those parts of my life are so disorganized. Why do that stuff if you don’t get any points for it?”
“How did your mother feel about that?”
“My mother died when I was only four,” Sharon said, staring off at one of my grandmother’s paintings on the far wall. “Dad never talked about her. Most of his energy went into his work. Not that he neglected us—everything was organized at home. We had our charts of jobs and our point system.”
“And you didn’t get any points for talking to him about your feelings.”
“Actually, I don’t even remember wanting to. As soon as I was old enough, I put my energy into sports. I’ve always been athletic. I played tennis, soccer, and basketball. And I skied and hiked whenever I could. I still do.” Sharon perked up as she mentioned the sports.
“So you got out of the house and into a different point system.”
“Yes. And after that I couldn’t wait to get out of there and go away to college.”
I could easily relate to her desire to escape an overbearing father. But as a therapist my job was to listen, not to share my personal experiences. So I nodded, and asked, “So you did go to an out-of-state school?”
“Absolutely. Dad’s a sucker for education, so as long as my grades were first-rate, he was willing to spend the money to send me to an expensive school. I went to Stanford, and I loved Palo Alto and the school. But I missed Colorado, so after I graduated, I came back and got my Masters degree in social work at the University of Denver,” Sharon said, clinking the ice cubes around in her empty glass.
“Is that where you met Adam?” I took a few notes on a yellow pad, beginning a social history on Sharon.
“No, I met Adam three years ago here in Boulder. We were only married two years. He’s not Nathan’s father. They were really close, though, and Nathan started calling Adam ‘Dad’ after we got married. And last fall Adam adopted Nathan. That was Nathan’s choice. You can imagine how Adam’s death has hit him.”
“What about Nathan’s father?”
“His name is Joel,” Sharon sighed. “He left when I was pregnant with Nathan. I was 26 and we’d been together for two years. We weren’t married because Joel always said it would be unfair to both of us if he made a long-term commitment before he really knew himself.”
“So he left when he found out you were pregnant?”
“No, at first Joel got into the idea of being a dad. We planned to get married. But one day I came home from work to find him gone, his things cleared out. He left a long letter explaining that he had been having nightmares where he found himself trapped in a small space, desperately trying to escape. He wrote that as much as he wanted to stay with me, he knew these dreams were a sign that he wasn’t ready.”
I hoped Joel had been at least an absentee father to his son. “Has he kept in touch with Nathan?”
“No, we never heard from him at all—until last February when he called out of the blue and said he wanted to come and visit and meet Nathan. Right!! After eight years, he’s finally ready! I told him to forget it. He never cared before, and now Nathan had finally found a dad in Adam. We didn’t need Joel showing up and complicating our lives.”
“What about child support?”
“I never tried to get anything from Joel after he left. In fact, since he left so early in my pregnancy, I didn’t even put his name on Nathan’s birth certificate. I figured I could raise Nathan on my own, and if Joel didn’t want to be involved, that was his choice. But that also meant he couldn’t just drop back into our lives at his convenience.”
“It sounds like you’ve had a lot of loss earlier in your life—and now Adam. I know you said you really want to talk to him again. Is that mostly because you miss him so much? Or is there something specific?”
Sharon leaned forward and looked me in the eye. “I just can’t believe that Adam would fall accidentally like that. In the first place, the canyon rim isn’t even a hike. Adam saw it more as a walking meditation. But he was so fanatical about hiking safety—reviewing maps, preparing for weather fluctuations, carrying food and water—that I can’t imagine him falling accidentally. When he was a teenager he went off a trail, slipped on some wet rock next to a mountain waterfall and fell into the rapids. He was lucky he didn’t drown. Instead, he got tossed onto a rock that was right in the middle of the waterfall. But he had to be rescued, and he had a fractured skull and concussion. So he’s been extra careful ever since.”
“I can see how that would bring on an attitude shift,” I said. “So what do you think happened at the Grand Canyon?”
“The rangers said he went off the trail, stood too close to the edge, slipped on some icy rocks, lost his balance and fell off. They told me Adam fit the profile of the person at the highest risk of a fatal canyon fall—a young male hiking alone. But Adam was the opposite of a reckless tourist. You can see why I don’t think it sounds like him.”
Did Sharon think someone had pushed Adam over the edge or he had jumped? I didn’t want to be the first one to say it. So I asked, “Do you have an
y reason to think Adam was in some kind of trouble?”
“Lately he had been working long hours,” Sharon said. “His office was in the remodeled garage next to the house, and he was out there all the time. When he did come back into the house, he was so tired he hardly talked to me or Nathan. Since he died, I’ve found out that his web-design business had financial problems. I’m sure he didn’t want to tell me about it. My dad always thought Adam was a goof-off, and Adam desperately wanted to prove him wrong.”
“Your father and Adam didn’t get along?”
“Well, Nathan’s father, Joel, was one of my father’s graduate students in behavioral psychology before he dropped out and left. Dad was furious at Joel for leaving, but still kept hoping he would come back. Even though we never heard from him and had no idea where he was. When Adam adopted Nathan, Dad took it hard. We had to run notices of intent in the paper and try to find Joel before the adoption, so he had a chance to respond. Dad thought for sure Joel would show up and stop it. But he never did, and the court let Adam adopt Nathan.”
“So your dad saw Adam as taking the place where Joel should be?”
“Yes. But Dad was wrong about Adam. He thought that because Adam was a high-school dropout who got a GED and went to community college, he would never amount to anything. As you can see, Dad doesn’t exactly give anyone a break. But Adam was smart and worked hard, and his business had been doing well. In fact, I still don’t understand how he could have been in debt.”
“You say you think the financial problems were part of what was preoccupying him. Do you think there was something more bothering Adam lately?”
“I do. He looked worried. And he sort of seemed to be somewhere else a lot of the time. I’d be talking to him, and he’d be staring off into space over my head. I don’t know what was going on with him. He said he had a lot of things to think about. He’d go out and hike up Mt. Sanitas to clear his mind, but when he got home he wasn’t any calmer. That wasn’t like him. Usually getting out into the mountains by himself was all he needed.”
“Is that why he went to the Grand Canyon?”
“Yes. Somehow he got it into his head that if he could go there and hike around the rim, he’d feel much better. I didn’t really want him to go—it’s so far and it was April when you can run into some major snow storms in the mountains. But he was dead set on it. He started telling everyone he knew that he was going on a ‘midlife crisis trip.’ Which was really dumb because he was only 37.
“So are you thinking that if you contact Adam you can find out what really happened?”
“It’s the only thing I can think of to do now. Nobody believes me that it wasn’t just some stupid accident. The rangers didn’t exactly say it but I could tell they thought it might be suicide. But I don’t think Adam would decide to leave me and Nathan without even saying goodbye. Now no one will do any more investigating. I can’t afford a private detective. But I have to find out.”
“I think the Contact Project sounds like a good possibility for you. But I have to tell you that you may not reach him. Or you may reach someone else.”
“In a way I feel like I already made contact,” Sharon said, leaning forward in my direction. “I had this really vivid dream about Adam just before I woke up this morning. He seemed so real and he was trying to tell me something—but then he faded away and I woke up. But it felt like he was still in the room somehow.”
“What happened in the dream?”
“I was lost in a maze of long halls,” Sharon said, “and I was feeling really scared because I had no idea how to get out or to get where I wanted to be. I ran around trying different paths. Some of the halls were dead ends, others led further into the maze. There were people around—sort of gliding by–but they ignored me. Every time I thought I was almost at the end of a hall, I came to a bend where it stretched out farther in front of me. Then I saw Adam at the end of a hall. He was on a sort of spinning platform with two other people.
I ran toward him as fast as I could, but the air felt thick and it took me a long time to get close.”
Caught up in the telling of the dream, Sharon got up from her chair and walked around my office.
“I reached out to try to get his attention,” she continued, extending her arm, as if reliving the dream. “The floor where he stood was spinning very fast. He stopped and got off. He was very real and alive to me, and I felt like it had all been some sort of mistake, that he wasn’t really dead.”
Sharon stopped pacing right in front of me, but looked past me into the distance. “So I said ‘Adam—they told me you were dead. Where have you been for the last three months?’ And then he started to get blurry and fade away, like the Cheshire cat. I yelled out at him, ‘Adam! Don’t go!’
She sobbed as she resumed her walking and continued relating the dream. “And then he looked straight at me and said, ‘There’s danger for you and Nathan. Don’t trust….’ And then his voice faded away with the rest of him. I ran toward the spot where he had been and jumped and reached out to grab him, but I felt myself falling forward into a foggy hall in front of me. And then my alarm rang and woke me up.”
She blew her nose and went on. “I’m so ready to try to reach Adam. Especially because of that dream. Adam seemed so real talking to me and then he faded away before he told me who not to trust. I know it was a dream, but it feels like more than that. I feel like I need to find out what he was saying.” She came back over and sat in her chair.
I sat silently, not wanting to interrupt her mood. She shook her head, as if to banish the dream, then looked at me. “His presence was so strong in my mind all day that I kept looking over my shoulder for him and listening for his voice. Now I feel like I’d try just about anything to be able to talk to him again. You said I might be able to do it at no charge? I don’t have much money right now.”
“Yes, I have funding available, and you‘re a good candidate.” I thought about Tyler and his message for Sharon, but decided it was too soon to bring that up. Maybe after she contacted Adam. I wondered how easy that would be for her. Some people have more success with the process than others do. It seemed like a good time to find out.
“The contact process takes a good part of a day,” I said. “I keep Fridays free for that and the person I had scheduled for next Friday cancelled yesterday. Could you get the day off?”
“I have some comp time I need to use this month. Friday will work,” Sharon said.
“OK. We’ll need to start at your house so we can look at photos of Adam, and mementos, like a favorite shirt or jacket of his, tools, stuff in his office, whatever you have that is closely associated with him. Can you arrange for Nathan to be somewhere else?”
“He’s leaving at 1:00 for a friend’s birthday party and won’t be back until about 8:00. Will that work?”
“That’s perfect. After we get done at your house, we’ll come over here and walk outside a little to relax—somewhere along the creek path. Then you’ll be ready to try to contact Adam. And after that, we’ll talk about how it went, and where you want to go from there.”
“OK, you know where I live,” Sharon said. “So I’ll see you Friday at 1:00?”
“Sounds good. And try to avoid caffeine or heavy food that day.”
Chapter 7
I went home, made myself a turkey-avocado wrap with lettuce and leftover curry rice, and headed out to my studio to paint while there was still some daylight left. I love the studio. It’s built from rose-colored natural stone like the main house, and lit by north and south facing windows and a skylight, enhanced by daylight fluorescent tubes. The floor is ceramic tile for easy clean-up. I have plenty of room for oils, watercolors, pastels and gouache, and I have blank stretched canvases stacked along one wall. It’s a luxury to spend quiet time there after hours of seeing clients.
My latest project was an abstract series of Tyler, depicting him in both this world and the afterworld, but progress had been slow. Gramma taught me a long time ago tha
t when these lethargic times come, I need to keep working and push through the fog. Because she shared the ups and downs of that process with me so openly, I know how important it is to persevere even when I feel like I am slogging through mud in heavy boots that are sapping my energy.
She was a marvelous example herself—focused, creative and productive. She would typically complete about fifty paintings each year. And they were first-rate. Her work was selected for nationally and regionally juried exhibitions, where she won loads of awards. Her paintings were bought by private collectors nationally and internationally, and by several Fortune 500 companies. In 1960, she was elected to the National Association of Women Artists. It was a lot to live up to.
Painting is what I do to balance my life, and to stay connected to my creative inner core. I take my art seriously, but it’s not how I want to make my living. I don’t share Gramma’s discipline and love of the artist’s solitary life, but thanks to her, painting for me is usually an adventure with lots of excitement. Except when it isn’t.
Like on that Monday evening. I couldn’t stop thinking about Sharon long enough to focus on painting. As the sun went down I was at my easel, gazing off at a dark window at the end of the room, when I saw Tyler walking toward me. Seeing him blew me away as usual. After all, he is dead!
“Yo, Cleo.”
I grabbed my brush to take advantage of having the actual—if not in the flesh—model for my painting. But my questions took priority over painting.
“Tyler! I need some help! What’s going on with Sharon? Is she right? Did someone push Adam or make him fall? Do you know who it was?” I waved my brush in the air like a frantic orchestra conductor.
“Chill, Cleo. Sharon has some issues. I’m not the one with the answers. I told you, it’s you. You play Nancy Drew.”
“But I’m a therapist, not a detective,” I protested—even though I knew from experience that Tyler is always in charge of the dialogue between us, and never gives me specific answers to questions like the ones I’d asked.
Too Near the Edge Page 5
