by Barbara Hall
“See, I need the blood,” he says.
I watch as he takes the yarn and creates a stream of blood from the shark’s mouth all the way to the end of the landscape, a single strand, like a signature.
“Wow,” I say.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think my wife will like it?”
I laugh. “I don’t know. Does your wife have a sense of the absurd?”
“Absolutely.”
We stare at it for another minute.
“Hey, thanks again for the blood,” he says.
“Happy to help.”
He pans across the room. “Hey, do you feel like having a cigarette?” he asks.
“Yes. But we have ten more minutes of sewing.”
“Oh, it’s okay. Janice always lets me leave.”
I look at our sewing supervisor, an intense, wiry woman who knits like her life and those of several others depend upon it. Her needles fly and clatter and she rarely lifts her eyes.
“Hey, Janice,” Willie says in his soft, low tone. She looks up as if she is tuned only to the frequency of his voice.
He makes a smoking gesture.
She looks at the clock, then shrugs and nods.
He points to me, indicating that he’s taking me with him.
This makes her sigh and shrug. But she doesn’t object.
Outside in the courtyard while we are smoking my cigarettes—he has run out and is forced to pilfer until his wife comes to visit—he talks a little about how much he hates it here and how he is looking forward to getting out. The first thing he’s going to do is go surfing.
“Oh, you surf?”
His face changes and his eyes roam the ground as if he’s dropped something.
“Wait,” he says. “Oh, shit. I can’t surf anymore. I think.”
“Why not?”
“I broke my elbow snowboarding. I have pins in it. They say I can’t surf for a year. But maybe it’s been a year. I don’t know.”
I don’t say anything. I just wait.
“I have trouble remembering things,” he says.
I nod.
“I had a treatment yesterday. Or two days ago.”
“What kind of treatment?”
“ECT.”
“Shock treatment?”
He nods.
“They do that here?”
He shakes his head. “I have to go somewhere. It’s a hospital near here. Or maybe it’s far. My wife takes me.”
“I see. Does it hurt?”
“No, they put you out.”
“That’s good.”
“But later it hurts a little. Your teeth hurt. Because you clench them. I broke a couple. And you have a headache. And you can’t remember anything.”
“When does your memory come back?”
“Long-term memory, I usually have some access to that. It’s strange. It’s like a tapestry with holes in it. Some things are very clear. Some things are just gone. I don’t have any short-term memory for about a week after it happens.”
“Is that the point?”
“Is what the point?”
“Forgetting.”
“No. I don’t think so. I think the point is rewiring. No, what do they call it? Resetting. It’s like a reset button.”
“Is it?”
“Not exactly.”
We smoke in silence. It takes a long time for him to come back from wherever he’s gone.
“Hey, what are you in here for?” he asks. As if we’re in prison.
“Suicidal ideation.”
“Really? Me, too. But you don’t seem depressed.”
“I’m not.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Take a number.”
He laughs. “What does your doctor say?”
“He doesn’t say much. He listens. Sometimes he scolds me.”
“For what?”
“Deflection. He doesn’t like it when I want to talk about him. Does that make sense? We bare our souls and they get to remain strangers?”
He thinks for a long time.
“So you just kind of want to kill yourself?” he asks.
“No, I don’t want to kill myself. That’s why I’m here. I’m just pulled to do it.”
“Why?”
I can’t tell him.
Maybe I can tell him a little.
“I feel like there’s something better.”
He digests this, flicking his cigarette compulsively.
“Where?” he asks.
“Somewhere else.”
“Like Heaven?”
“No. Not the Heaven you’re thinking of.”
“Like people sitting on clouds.”
“Not like that.”
He finishes his cigarette and steps on it and stares at it like he misses it.
“I don’t want to go anywhere else,” he says. “I just like the idea of it being over.”
I don’t tell him that it’s never over. That would destroy his dream.
“Why don’t you do it?” I ask.
“Because of my wife, Emily. I don’t want to do that to her.”
“That’s a good reason.”
“Otherwise I would have thrown myself off a bridge a long time ago.”
“Have you always felt that way?”
“A long time. They say I’m Bipolar Type II. I’m on Lithium.”
“Wow, that’s powerful. They make batteries out of that.”
“It makes me feel sluggish.”
“But does it make you feel like living?”
He shakes his head. “It just takes away my motivation.”
“I thought that was what pot was for.”
He laughs. Every time he laughs it seems to surprise him, like running into an old friend.
I give him another cigarette and he tells me his story.
“I broke my arm snowboarding and then I had to stop surfing which was the only thing that ever kept me sane. I didn’t connect the dots but I was getting more and more depressed. And then one night I was standing outside Jumbo’s Clown Room, having a cigarette in the parking lot and talking to some dancer, and all of a sudden I felt really strange in my head. I thought it was going to explode. I thought I was going to get into my truck and drive it into a wall. So I called my wife and told her to come get me and that night she took me straight to the hospital and they kept me there and after a few days they recommended ECT so we decided to do it and then I didn’t feel safe to go home so they sent me here.”
He stops abruptly. I wait but he seems to be finished.
“Why were you at Jumbo’s Clown Room?” I ask.
“What?”
“It’s a strip club.”
“No, it’s a burlesque. They don’t get actually naked.”
“Okay.”
“I like it there. I was with friends. Boys’ night out.”
“Your wife is okay with it?”
“Yeah. I don’t fuck them or anything.”
“Why do you think it happened there?”
“What happened?”
“Sudden breakdown.”
“I don’t know.”
Shouldn’t you know? I want to say. Isn’t it worth asking? But I can see that would be taking it too far and after all, I’m not his therapist.
So I ask, “What was the dancer’s name?”
He thinks. “Charmaine. But that was her stripper name. Her real name was Scarlet.”
“Seriously?”
He nods and we start laughing and can’t stop. The addicts are staring at us. Two crazies off the rails.
“Amazing that you remember that,” I say.
He nods. “I usually remember the funny stuff.”
Chapter 14
David’s therapist is a Jesuit priest. This is more than a coincidence. He and Father Joe Pasquale grew up together. They both attended Loyola High School. David’s parents had no real use for the church other than an occasional superstitious pull around certain holidays. B
ut they believed in Catholic education. He was exposed to most of his religious experience there at school. Some of his friends were lukewarm believers, some were completely indifferent, and in the margins were the devout—for and against. David counted himself among the devout against, and had no qualms describing himself as an atheist, skipping right over any agnostic phase. (He had no respect for agnostics; being willing not to know was a condition he had never understood.) But there he was, being best friends with Joe Pasquale who had no qualms about telling his peer group that he was considering the priesthood.
Joe was impervious to their ridicule, and accusations of homosexuality were too ridiculous to entertain. He was the quarterback of the football team and, as one friend said, had seen more ass than a rental car seat. Joe had no conflict with the idea that he was not exactly walking the path of the pious. His confirmation name was Ignatius. This saint was his role model, a man who spent the first half of his life not, as it were, being a saint.
“But he didn’t know,” David found himself arguing. “He had no idea about Christianity. He was converted. He had a religious experience and swore off his old life.”
“Yes,” Joe said. “He decided to use his sword for Jesus.”
“You are not using your sword for Jesus.”
“I’m getting it out of my system. And anyway, I haven’t made up my mind. What if I don’t have a vocation? I will have wasted all that opportunity.”
All of this was discussed while sneaking beer and cigarettes in the parking lot after class when Joe was supposed to be training and David was supposed to be working on the school paper.
So Joe had become a Jesuit priest and had also gotten a PhD in psychology and had gone on to be an analyst and counselor. When he was considering therapy for himself, David found Joe’s name in the phone book. He felt it was fate even though he didn’t believe in fate. And he suspected that Joe was the only person inside his profession with whom he’d ever consider making himself completely vulnerable.
They don’t meet regularly. It is on an as-needed basis. And they don’t socialize outside of these meetings. It is too confusing. In this, Joe is in agreement, and anyway, he works around-the-clock between his practice and his duties to the church.
Joe always wears street clothes for their sessions. Today he greets David in full top-to-bottom Calvin Klein casuals. He has a taste for good clothes and fine food. It all seems to conflict with his vow of poverty but, as usual, Joe does not seem disturbed by any such contradiction.
They exchange small talk and catch up on minor life events and politics. David is looking for a way to ease in but Joe, being good at his job, reads his expression and says, “What’s on your mind, Dave?”
David smiles and stares at his feet. But when he looks up he’s not smiling anymore. “Angels.”
“Angels brought you here?”
“No. Questions about angels brought me here.”
“Shoot.”
“How do they work?”
“In what way?”
“Well, first, what are they?”
“They are inhuman spirits endowed with the responsibility to serve man.”
“So they aren’t like dead people who come back to help.”
“People do not become angels when they die. Angels were never human. We are talking Catholic theology here. And for you, mythology. Metaphor.”
“So that brings me to the tough question. Are they real?”
Joe laughs. “Do you think they’re real?”
“Of course not.”
“Then they’re not real for you. Why are you suddenly curious?”
“I have a patient who is hearing from them.”
“Really?”
“Well, she doesn’t call them that. She calls them guides.”
Joe nods, pressing his fingers to his lips. “I see,” he finally says.
“Of course, where I’m coming from it’s a delusion.”
“It certainly could be,” Joe says.
Silence blooms. David doesn’t know where to look. He shifts in his seat. He can feel Joe waiting and he is envious of his patience. He remembers confession—not with Joe but in a dark booth with priests whose faces he couldn’t see, even though he always knew who they were, given that there were only two priests in his parish. One smelled like spearmint and one smelled like nothing in particular. Spearmint priest always gave the easiest absolutions. Father Dennis. He was kind and quiet and seemed to think everything was going to be fine in the end. Father Smells-Like-Nothing (Monsignor Terrence) was harsher and talked more about Hell. David always chose to believe Father Dennis but who wouldn’t?
He can’t remember why he ever went to confession. It was some kind of morbid curiosity. It wasn’t required of him by his parents or of his teachers. He has a vague sense of wanting to go there to see if he could shock the priests and because he never did, he eventually lost interest. But even as he’s thinking about it, he misses it. Maybe it’s why he went into this profession. He liked the idea of being the confessor. The anonymous yet familiar face on the other side of the screen. The desire to prove that he, like the priests, could not be shocked.
“What are you asking me exactly?” Joe says.
“I don’t know. What do you think about these guides?”
Joe shrugs. “Could be anything. Could be brain chemistry. Could be delusions as you suggest.”
“But could it be something else?”
“Sure.”
“Joe. You’re going to make me ask?”
“Yes.”
David takes a breath and says, “Do you think these could be angels?”
Joe actually laughs.
“You’re asking me hypothetical questions about a person I’ve never met.”
“No, I’m asking what the church thinks about things like this. Visions and apparitions and modern-day saints. Does it happen? Is it frowned upon? What?”
Joe laughs. “I used to work with a Monsignor who said, ‘The church hates miracles. All that paperwork.’”
“Be straight with me. Are angels real to you?”
“Why would it matter if they were real to me?”
“Because I trust you. I know you’re smart and we’re in the same profession.”
“That wouldn’t stop me from being crazy.”
“Joe, help me out here.”
“I can’t, Dave. I can’t give you faith. In either professional capacity. It’s not transferrable. You have no idea how much I wish it were. It’s my own struggle.”
“Okay, then let’s take it out of the personal. Tell me where the church stands on this.”
Joe says irritably, “If you want to know what the church thinks, try going to church.”
David just stares at his friend. He’s relieved to see something of the bad Loyola boy remains, if only in the form of a mild temper.
Joe takes a breath and asks, “Does your patient present as stable otherwise?”
“Yes. Other than suicidal ideation, which is secondary to her communication with the guides. They give her feelings of bliss and she is, to use her word, homesick.”
Joe nods. But there is more than comprehension in the nod. There is familiarity.
“Dave, is this part of a personal struggle?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you infatuated with her?”
“Probably.”
“And it’s clouding your judgment.”
“I hope not.”
“But you’re concerned.”
“I’m concerned.”
Joe stares at him for a moment, obviously gathering his words more than his thoughts. “Have you ever had this problem with a patient before?”
“Not since medical school. Maybe a couple years after. And even then, it wasn’t like this. That was just sexual attraction. A little bit of the god complex.”
“And this is not that?”
“No. I don’t think about her sexually. I’m just drawn to her. There’s something going on wi
th her. I can’t explain it.”
“You’re doing pretty well.”
“It’s not even so much how I feel around her. It’s how I feel about the rest of my life when I’m away from her.”
“And how is that?”
David thinks.
“My life feels shabby,” he says.
Joe nods and presses his fingertips together. “Is this a new feeling for you?”
“Yes. I mean, like anyone, I question my choices. I wonder if I could be happier. But you get busy and the questions go away.”
“And now they won’t go away.”
“Something like that.”
Joe leans back in his chair and swivels it slightly so that he’s staring out the window, and David isn’t sure what to do.
“This is a dilemma,” Joe finally says.
“I know.”
“You’re crossing into a place where I’m not sure how to help you.”
David feels alarmed. He’s never imagined himself beyond the help of a psychologist, let alone a priest.
“What place?” he asks.
“David, I’ll just put it out there. You are having a spiritual crisis.”
“How can I when I don’t believe I have a spirit?”
“Belief is overrated,” Joe says. “Belief is an intellectual construct. Who cares? Believing is an exhausting enterprise. Experience is everything. Belief is what you have in the absence of experience.”
“Belief doesn’t matter?”
“Well, it’s a notch up from opinion.”
“What are you talking about?”
Joe leans over his desk. “Jung said, ‘I don’t believe in God. I have come to know him.’”
David knows that quote. He says, “Good for Jung.”
“He also said, ‘Religion is a defense against a religious experience.’”
“I know what Jung said. But you’re a man of belief!”
“I am not a man of belief. I am a man of faith.”
David realizes there is an important difference but he’s too tired to care. He slumps in his seat. Joe moves toward the slump.
Joe says, “Belief is about collecting ideas and investing in them. Faith is about having your ideas obliterated and having nothing to hang onto and trusting that it’s going to be all right anyway.”
