Charisma: A Novel

by Barbara Hall

  “The life coach lady.”

  “Dr. McCrady.”

  “Is she okay? They said she’s okay. Minor injuries.”

  “She will be fine.”

  She has curly hair but she straightens it.

  “What?” he asks.

  Apparently I have said this out loud.

  I am backed in now so I repeat it.

  “I don’t see how that’s relevant,” he says.

  “She’s your girlfriend.”

  “I believe we’ve been over this.”

  “No. You accused me of asking around but I didn’t so I didn’t really know if my information was accurate. I mean, it usually is, but I didn’t put it all together until just now.”

  “Dr. McCrady is my girlfriend.”

  I see he hates the word girlfriend but he hates the alternatives more. Partner. Significant Other. Lover. Special Friend. Colleague. Fellow Outlaw.

  “I’m very sorry,” I say. “About what happened. Not that she’s your girlfriend.”

  “I am as well. But she is strong. She will come back.”

  “She’s not checking in here, is she?”

  “What? Of course not.”

  “Because she’s been traumatized.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “But she doesn’t get PTSD because she’s strong? Unlike the rest of us here.”

  “I did not mean that at all.”

  “But it’s what you said. You said she’s strong. Of course she’s not checking in here.”

  He clears his throat. “This is why I do not like to stray from the deliberate path of our work.”

  “But it happened here. So we have to talk about it. Your girlfriend is stronger than the rest of us. Let’s talk about that, Dr. Sutton.”

  “Let’s go to my office.”

  “In a minute. Just solve this riddle for me.”

  He takes a deep breath and his face goes pink. “It is not that she’s stronger than the rest of you. It’s that she has never been traumatized before. And because she has the tools to cope with it, because she knows what those tools are, she can process it in an appropriate way.”

  “I see.”

  “Most of the people here, including yourself, were traumatized in childhood and retraumatized throughout your life and you had no appropriate coping skills. What we do here is try to teach you, to give you…”

  “Tools?”

  “Tools, yes. For coping.”

  “What’s your favorite tool?”

  “We are not going to talk about me today, Ms. Lange.”

  “But we kinda are.”

  “Not anymore. Would you like to retire to my office?”

  “I’m not even sure I want this session. What is it, a special charity session? Because I might be triggered?”

  The use of the word trigger changes his expression.

  “Why do you say that?” he asks.

  “Because that’s what they keep telling us here. We might be triggered.”

  His face relaxes. “I see.”

  “But it makes me feel like a horse, you know?”

  He laughs. His shoulders move away from his ears.

  “Of course, you’re not required to have this session.”

  “What the hell. You came all the way out here.”

  We retire, as he says, to his soulless office and I sit on the industrial gray couch and he sits in an industrial metal and black leather chair. He doesn’t take out charts and writing materials. This means he’s only checking on my immediate state of mind.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks.

  “Fine.”

  “No anxiety? No nightmares?”

  “Nightmares?”

  “Replaying the event in your mind?”

  “I didn’t witness it.”

  “But you can imagine it.”

  “I try not to imagine things.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because my reality is overwhelming as it is. I don’t need to add.”

  “Can you control that?”

  “Mostly.”

  Red clay hut in Mexico.

  “You know, imagination is not a bad thing. It’s in fact a vital component of creativity,” he says.

  “I try not to create either.”

  “But you’re a writer. And an artist.”

  “Was.”

  He ignores the past tense. “And you employed your imagination then.”

  “I attempted to commit art and poetry when I was a kid. That is such a small fraction of my life. What I’ve done as an adult is something else. Employment. It doesn’t involve the imagination.”

  “Not at all?”

  “No. And neither does artistic expression, come to think of it.”

  “No?”

  “I told you, that isn’t how art works.”

  “Did you tell me?”

  “I thought so.”

  “Tell me again.”

  I sigh. “The poem, the drawing, the painting…it already exists. You just pull it out of the ether. You transcribe it. A little something is always lost in the translation. That’s why we get depressed.”

  “Because in your imagination it was perfect.”

  “No. No. Because where it lives it is perfect.”

  “Where does it live?”

  “On the other side.”

  “You’re saying that you channel these concepts.”

  “They exist. If you are quiet you can experience them. If you are willing, you can render them. Then other people can experience them.”

  He frowns while thinking about this.

  “You want to write something down?” I ask.

  “No. I’m just processing.”

  “With your tools?”

  A tight smile. He doesn’t answer.

  The processing goes on for another moment. I shift in my seat.

  “Do you want a cigarette?” he asks.

  “No. I just want to go back to where I was.”

  “Home?”

  “No, the common room.”

  “So you don’t want this session after all?”

  “I don’t want any more of it.”

  “Very well. Just reassure me that your thoughts have not become morose.”

  “My thoughts are rarely morose.”

  “Let me rephrase that. That you aren’t feeling the pull. Any stronger. Than usual.”

  “Oh, no. In fact, I’m feeling it less.”

  “Good.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes, Ms. Lange. We want you here.”

  “At Oceanside?”

  “In the world.”

  “Yes. There is much to do here. I am starting to see that.”

  “Good,” he says. “I’m very glad to hear it.”

  He stands up, is very still for a moment, staring at the middle distance, and then he sits back down. This action of his makes me feel exhausted. I don’t know how to get rid of him. He opens his briefcase and pulls out a tattered paperback book. I can’t see the title.

  He says, “I’d like to read you something I came across the other day. Are you familiar with Joseph Campbell?”

  He flashes the front of the tattered book in front of me. It has a mandala on the cover but otherwise means nothing much to me.

  “Not really,” I say.

  It’s a lie. I know who Joseph Campbell is. Back when I was whoever I was before, I watched his interviews with Bill Moyers and read his collected works and was astounded by his insight as everyone with a college degree and a modicum of interest in mythology or literature was. The truth is, I loved Joseph Campbell back when I was—what? Participating in the real world? Back then it sounded like something I already knew. I was drawn to it. Now I want to hear what Dr. David Sutton has to say about him.

  He says, “He is…was…a mythologist. Which is to say he was a person who devoted his life to translating mythology. He was more than that, though. He elevated those myths into an understanding of psychology. He was a student of Jung. He t
illed a lot of ground in helping us forge the worlds of myth and psychology, using the tools of symbolism and archetypes.”

  I nod, listening, suppressing a yawn. I pity the poor student who ever hopes to learn about Joseph Campbell from Dr. Sutton. He is making it about as interesting as paint thinner.

  He doesn’t read my expression because he doesn’t really seem to read expressions. Instead, he opens the book and flips to a dog-eared passage.

  Before he reads he says, “This is something I came across and it made me think of you.”

  “Okay.”

  I hope to God it’s not some kind of love or kindred spirit passage.

  He starts to read, robotically:

  “‘The artist is the true seer and prophet of his century, the justifier of life and as such, of course, a revolutionary far more fundamental in his penetration of the social mask of his day than any fanatic idealist spilling blood over the pavement in the name simply of another unnatural mask.’”

  He closes the book and looks at me.

  “Do you have any thoughts about this?” he finally asks.

  “Not really. Do you?”

  He stares at the book as if it is guiding him.

  “I was thinking of you as an artist,” he says.

  “But I’m not.”

  “But you were.”

  “Well.” I shrug.

  “Do you think that’s something you can just abandon?”

  “No. I think of it as something that can abandon me.”

  “You feel abandoned by your calling?”

  My skin starts to itch. I scratch my neck. He watches me.

  “What do you want to know?” I finally ask.

  “I was thinking of why you came back. From your near-death experience.”

  I actually laugh out loud. The laugh seems to wound him. He recoils and begins to blush. I know he can feel the blood rushing to his face and I know he feels ashamed of this. But he stares straight at me. He has taught himself this stare. He believes this stare is some kind of shield that makes him invincible. Even though on some level he must know it exposes him altogether.

  I say, “You think I came back from the dead to paint some landscapes?”

  He doesn’t respond. I realize that he has had a moment prior to this, the way a lover has a moment in the middle of the night when he realizes the exact thing he needs to say and is willing to run across flooded fields in the rain and shirtsleeves and bare feet to say the thing he forgot to say to the person in question and then it will all be okay. And now I am saying it is not all okay.

  I am sorry for his disappointment but I cannot help him with it.

  “I don’t know,” he says, sitting up straight, becoming the dry scientist in the fifties suit. “I just found it interesting and I thought you would, too.”

  “I don’t find it uninteresting,” I say. Which is the equivalent to saying I love you but I’m not in love with you.

  Metaphorically, Dr. Sutton is standing before me in drenched clothes, his epiphany rejected and denounced by a callous would-be lover.

  In reality he stands in dry clothes, collects his things and says, “I’m sorry for coming over. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  “You didn’t intrude. It’s good to see you.”

  “I’ll be back for our regular appointment.”

  I watch him until he reaches the door and hits the buzzer and is released from his duty by a short guy dressed all in white, keys dangling.

  I make my way back to the common room.

  When I return to the window, Willie and Emily are no longer in the garden. I watch the spot where they were sitting for a long time until it begins to rain and then I can’t see the picture anymore. Something else is taking its place. I am starting to see a different picture.

  Chapter 18

  David is in session with his favorite bulimic when the call comes.

  His favorite bulimic is a fifteen-year-old boy named Sebastian. Bulimic and anorexic males are rare. The symptoms most often present in gay males and Sebastian is no exception. He is the only son of a wealthy real estate tycoon. His four sisters are all high achievers, athletes, and he, the youngest, has dragged his father’s dreams of legacy into a quagmire. Sebastian is not so much concerned with how his father sees him as how the world sees him.

  “Well, of course I’m trying to disappear,” Sebastian says. “The world wants me to disappear. And I’m a rule follower.”

  “I don’t think it’s fair to say the world wants you to disappear,” David says.

  “Okay, then just my father and 90 percent of the country.”

  “As far is the country is concerned, I’m sure the statistics are skewed. And even if that were accurate, there are places in the world…”

  “So Morocco likes me. And Athens. I live here, Dr. Sutton.”

  “Sebastian, we all have things about us that the world at large rejects. Artists, for example. The world rejects them.”

  “Yeah,” Sebastian says. “I’m also an artist.”

  “All right, that’s a bad example. Psychiatrists. Much of the medical world rejects us.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. We’re considered a weak discipline. Witch doctors.”

  “I think you’re reaching.”

  “I’m not. I experience feelings of rejection all the time. For example, it might surprise you to know that my own father does not approve of my profession.”

  “Well, he’s just being a bitch. I mean, you’re straight. You are, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you have a medical degree.”

  “Yes.”

  “So your father is just being a bitch.”

  “And what is your father being? Reasonable?”

  Sebastian thinks about it, staring out the window. “He has a legitimate complaint.”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “You don’t know my sisters. They are assholes.”

  “I believe we are getting off point.”

  Sebastian examines his nails for a moment, then looks up. “You’re married, right?”

  “No,” David says. “I am not married.”

  “But you have a girlfriend.”

  “I do.”

  “And you’re probably going to marry her, right?”

  David looks away. As usual, he is surprised that his therapy session has wandered off down the path of his personal life. As a therapist, he has to wonder if he allows such a thing to happen, if he somehow uses his sessions for his own purposes, to shed light on his own psyche. He hopes not but he cannot swear to it lately.

  Is he going to marry Jen? He knows, now more than ever, that he is not. Her behavior following the attack has turned erratic and strange. She has nightmares. She has a heightened startle reflex. She has trouble swallowing. She doesn’t want to leave her apartment. She misses work. She has developed an habitual coffee ritual and is experiencing panic attacks.

  She asked him to prescribe her medication. He refused.

  “Why not?” she railed. “Don’t you know what I am going through?”

  “You should see a doctor,” he told her.

  “But you’re my doctor.”

  “I can’t be.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because. I cannot sleep with my patients.”

  “Then I don’t see the problem,” she said.

  He swallowed the insult and powered on. “You need to see a doctor. I can’t be your doctor. You of all people should know that.”

  But she waved a hand at him, pacing, crazy. “All this separation we insist upon. As if we’re trying to keep the sane away from the crazy. No one is sane. We’re all crazy. What is this nonsensical team sport, like we’re all in the seventh grade wearing different colored pinnies? Red for sane, blue for crazy. We’re all in the same soup. Why can’t you help me?”

  “Because I’m not qualified.”

  “You’re a goddamned doctor. You’re not qualified?”

  “I’m
not qualified as your partner.”

  “When have you ever been my partner?”

  He forgives her hurtful outbursts. He knows she is still in shock.

  He did give her the names of several therapists but she didn’t go. Her life-coaching beliefs have been hardened against that profession. Talk talk talk, she used to say. It was an endless cycle of self-pity and reinforcement of the ego, she once said.

  “But cognitive behavioral therapy is not like talk therapy,” he argued. “It’s proactive. You’ll have homework. Goal setting. More like what you do.”

  “I don’t need homework, David, I need some drugs to calm down what’s misfiring in my brain. It’s a chemical issue. It’s neurotransmitters.”

  So he gave her the names of some psychiatrists.

  “No,” she declared, actually tearing up the piece of paper. “I do not want to sit in some guy’s office and talk about my parents for a half a dozen sessions before they decide what I really need is a drug.”

  “What is it, Jen? Is life about a lack of direction and goal setting, or is it about chemicals in the brain? You can’t have it both ways. Are you a unique creation in the history of time, as I’ve heard you say, or are you a bag of chemicals, a machine that has thrown a piston?”

  “Leave it to you to use my work against me,” she said.

  “I’m not doing that.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “How can I use your work against you when I don’t entirely understand it?”

  “Exactly. You don’t understand it.”

  “I’m admitting that!”

  “I was hurt, David! As a human being. I was hurt and nearly killed.”

  “I know that. And I’ve tried to reach you on that level but…”

  “I don’t have a level. What the fuck are you talking about with levels? I’m not a goddamned elevator.”

  “I know that.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “All right. I don’t know that. Tell me how to reach you.”

  “I shouldn’t have to tell you!”

  “That’s not fair,” David found himself saying.

  And she stood with a straight back and said, “Aren’t you the one who is always telling me life is not fair but it is just?”

  David took a moment to contemplate that.

  “No, I’m not the one who is always saying that. But it’s pretty true.”

  “It’s pretty true? How can something be pretty true? Either it’s true or it’s not.”