Old

by Stan Charnofsky

  “More than ugly. I couldn’t eat, slept hardly at all, was unavailable for parts offered me, and finally sank into a profound depression. Some doctor gave me medication, but it just made me sleepy. Then—and here’s where it gets eerie—I began to have these weird dreams, or at least I thought they were dreams, though later in the day I could swear I was beginning to live them out, live through in my waking time what seemed exactly like my dream.”

  I had some experience working with dreams, helping patients to navigate through them, and I liked to proceed in a non-Freudian way, meaning the person would be challenged to explain his or her own dream, instead of me interpreting it. I felt, at that moment, as if I didn’t want to delve into Tillie’s dream, since I had a premonition that it would lead to something too monstrous to handle. That was all I needed in my troubled life: a client who spiraled out of control.

  He then began a monologue, which sounded like a nag, and I wondered if he forgot he was with me and believed he was confronting his wife with his desperate arguments. His posture changed as well; he leaned toward me, a snarl on his lips, the part of his face free of hair, chalky and pinched, and I was chilled with the awareness that I had better not defy him.

  “How could you expect me to be lucid under those circumstances? I certainly did not expect it of myself. After all, my whole life had been wrapped up in this woman for several years. But, don’t you see, I also did not expect my entire experiential spectrum to become so distorted, for my reality to become challenged. I’ll tell you my garish tale, and though I want you to, I don’t imagine you will at once believe me.

  “You see, I dreamt I was in my car and was weeping so uncontrollably that I could hardly see the pavement in front. A pedestrian, a woman in a tan raincoat, whose face was hidden, was crossing the street, and—this is monstrous, I know—I sped up and aimed my car directly at her. I felt the impact on my grill and saw her figure elevate grotesquely, and disappear above and behind my vehicle.

  “But, there is more. I drove on, saw another person, dressed similarly, in a crosswalk ahead, and did the same thing, increased my speed and hit her at, perhaps, fifty miles an hour. Then, as if nothing happened, I drove on. I awoke almost at once, sweating, an anxiety in my body that triggered convulsions. All right, here is where it gets macabre: now, as I speak with you, I am no longer convinced it all was a dream. I have pored over newspapers to see if my crimes had been reported, and found nothing. But it is all too real to be a dream, and besides, I find myself tempted to do it again.”

  “When did all this happen? I mean how long ago did you either dream the events or believe you actually did them?”

  “See my white hair? It wasn’t nearly so white three weeks ago. I have been living with this horrific deed for that long. It was like sorcery, like a fever consuming me, sending vile potions through my system, bleaching my hair, eating at my stomach until it began to feel corroded with ulcers. My heart beats at twice its normal speed.”

  I realized that this tragic figure in my office felt absolutely alone in the world. Despite my own pile of troubles, and the distasteful, almost threatening attitude of this one-time school buddy, I found myself feeling compassion for him. He was, after all, a human being in pain, and the aim of my profession was to help just such a person. After the last barrage of words, he pulled away, seemed to be listing like a floundering ship.

  “Tillie,” I said softly, “you are clearly in a miserable place, and whether you only dreamt your trespass and imagined it to be real, or actually did the foul deed, it is flooding you with anguish.” I had a strong belief that illustrating to my client that I clearly understood his feelings offered him an ally, another person who could comprehend his dilemma. That, I was convinced, was the key element missing in his life, human empathy, and what flooded him with loneliness.

  After I made my brief response, he sat up straighter, his face relaxed, and he took on the countenance of a satisfied cat.

  “Yes,” he said, and I could just make out a protruded lower lip that forced his whole mouth into a pout, “you’ve got it. So now, what do I do about it?”

  Ah, the perpetual question of all clients, yet unanswerable by the therapist. We do not prescribe. We cannot take the responsibility away from the person. If I caved in and told Tillie what to do, he could fault me if it didn’t work out—and if it did, he would have garnered no confidence for his next crisis decision. Yet, I did not wish to be seen as evading his query, or worse, seeming to be inept.

  “My old friend,” I said, “I can’t come up with instant solutions, but together, you and I will be a team that will confront your torment.”

  I realized as soon as I had spoken, that I had committed myself to taking Tillie De Main on as one of my patients. Instantly I felt some remorse, but equally quickly dispelled it, saying to myself that, in some convoluted way, working with him on his bizarre scenario, I might be helping myself to tackle my own life conundrums. It might be hard to understand, but in an eerie way, I felt a sense of relief.

  As a younger man, I dove into all kinds of iffy situations that appeared, at the time, as heady challenges. Today, with the perspective of age and life experience, I probably would have apologized to Tillie, told him his weird saga was obsessing him, I knew, but that he was the only one who could face it off, that his imagination needed to be curbed, his mourning for his lost wife put into a reality perspective.

  He smiled at me, at best a wan smile that I could hardly make out in all that hair, yet I could see that his face was weathered, and the meager smile looked as if it were a stranger there, unaccustomed to a place on that unsettled and hostile visage.

  I realized something else as well. I could not actually take him on as a paying client, since he was someone I knew—we are only supposed to treat strangers. I could, however, help him as a friend. Ah yes, but that meant inserting him into my life. I was not at all sure I was ready for that, did not know what impact it would have, felt a sudden surge of fear at my foolhardiness.

  The challenge overrode my trepidation. I leaned over, touched his shoulder, and nodded with a message of camaraderie. He nodded back, and though his mood seemed slightly elevated, the eyes, those gray, aqueous orbs, remained dull and lifeless.

  Tillie De Main entered my life. With hindsight, I can say I lived to regret my generosity.

  EIGHTEEN

  That same day, I invited Tillie to dinner, calling Julie first to alert her. I could tell at once that she was not pleased, since I knew that she resisted outsiders entering our unsettled home.

  When you are old, there are all sorts of things you might have done differently as you take inventory of your life. When you are old you are supposed to be a conduit of wisdom. There, see, I am doing what I used to tell my clients not to do, which is to use the impersonal “you” when referring to yourself. It is a distancing maneuver. It is the antithesis of responsibility for feelings. Of course, I mean “I” when describing how my myriad choices are made.

  Anyway, I brought good old, grieving Tillie home, where he met good old, grieving Julie.

  Our son entertained gloriously, without even trying, the natural marquee of babies, with their spontaneity and as yet undamaged agendas. Julie, as had been true for months—ever since Megan disappeared—was low-key, to my eyes morose, but to Tillie very likely being her usual self.

  He ate very little, but seemed to watch Julie with a piercing look, as if trying to read deeply into her make-up, beyond her outer demeanor. He must have experienced a kinship with her, some element of suffering that he knew too well and was struggling desperately to understand. I, the therapist, showed him I wanted to understand him, but she, Julie, was his mirror, a second human with buried pain, with whom he might form a bond.

  I don’t believe Julie realized any of this at first, wrapped up as she was in her own extended grief; our guest, to her, was simply an old friend of mine, a bit strange, somewhat depressed in affect, taciturn in manner.

  “So, Mr. De Main,�
�� she said trying diligently to be the interested host, “you and Teddy are old friends.”

  “We are indeed friends, though I, clearly, seem the old one.” He hesitated as if deciding how much he wanted to reveal. Finally, he said, “Disappointment does that. Ages one rather spectacularly.”

  Julie seemed to leap onto the insight: “Yes It does! And I would add ‘tragedy’ which can cancel one’s youth.”

  That wan smile appeared again and Tillie said, “Tragedy creates disappointment.”

  “This woeful discourse is dragging me down,” I put in. “Seen any good movies lately?”

  “Oh, Teddy,” Julie said.

  “No, I understand,” Tillie replied. “Constant heaviness is corrupting. Life needs balance—the good with the bad.”

  “Well said, Tillie. Nice to see you are aware of that.”

  Julie looked at me curiously; I had told her nothing about Tillie’s presenting issues in my office. I’m sure she must have thought me overly condescending and, in fact, inappropriate.

  Tillie, in almost a whisper, said, “I’m out of sorts but I still know what is needed for emotional balance. We all want happiness; it’s just that we don’t all agree on how to achieve it.”

  “How do you try to achieve it?” Julie asked, genuinely absorbed by his obvious struggle.

  He looked at her sadly and began to recite, “I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.”

  There was an awkward silence, and he added, “Hamlet.”

  Julie looked morose and whispered, “I have dreadful dreams.”

  Again, there was a silence, and Tillie said, with a tremor in his voice, “But mine come true.”

  I felt reluctant to contradict him, fragile as he was, but I said, “You think they come true. You aren’t sure.”

  “Not knowing,” he replied, “is even worse. I am tortured by my uncertainty.”

  I saw Julie’s interest rev up even more, and she stared at Tillie with the most animation I had seen in months. At last she said, “And I am tortured by my uncertainty. I have lost a daughter, and my life is in limbo.”

  “Lost?” Tillie began.

  “Gone,” Julie interrupted, “she’s gone. Nobody knows where.”

  Tillie was buried in his own search for a moment, then said in a flat, morose tone, “You lost a daughter and I lost a wife. We are both losers.”

  “Not sure I would put it that way,” I said. “That implies fault, and there is no evidence of fault with either of you; or me for that matter. Your wife made a choice that excluded you. Our daughter made a choice that pushed us away.”

  “Yes, Teddy, but why?” Julie said with desperation, “tell me why? Why would she want to push us away? We both loved her.”

  “Impossible to gauge someone else’s motivation. It is internal. It is a build-up of distorted thinking.”

  Tillie seemed to grab onto that notion. “If only I could believe that. My wife: an aberration, a crazy turn. Ignoring all we had. Dismissing our love. If I knew that to be true, I might tolerate the loss somewhat better. Perhaps chase the bitterness, dispel the anger.”

  “You would like to believe that she was not thinking clearly, that her reason failed her. That would make you feel better,” I said.

  All at once I realized that we were in a kind of three-way therapy session. My wife and my friend were plagued by self-doubt, guilt and recrimination. I was trying to ameliorate their distress. It did not feel as if it was working.

  “If she were temporarily insane—or at least engaging in distorted reasoning—yes, it would lessen my personal angst.”

  “If I knew,” Julie said, “that Megan was okay somewhere, that in her crazy frame of mind, she was blurring the truth, sure, I could at least feel less prone to blame myself.”

  “So,” I said, “both of you recognize that the other person made a decision that could be a product of fuzzy thinking. Maybe it won’t keep the result from hurting, but it could keep you from beating yourselves up over their actions.”

  My two unhappy buddies seemed to stare hard at each other, which made me feel strangely uncomfortable. In some peculiar way, I believed I was present at the incubation of another calamity, this one focused on me.

  “I think I’d better go,” Tillie said. He stood, retrieved his jacket, turned back, shook my hand, faced Julie and said, “I have learned that we both are pilgrims plodding along a serpentine path, and I hope yours straightens out and offers you solace. I hope mine comes to an end so that I can find peace.” He turned back to me and said, “Ted, I would like to call you in a couple of days so that we can talk more.”

  “Yes,” I said, a bit too tentatively. I knew I would see him, work with him, and I also knew I was moving into territory that could not only be troubling for me, but disruptive. “Do call me soon. Your dreams must be worked through and settled.”

  “Thank you,” he said with a grand touch of humility. I did perceive that the dismal tone of his time spent with me earlier was by then gone. He was not upbeat, but I caught a definite air of optimism in his voice and posture. As he was leaving I realized that, different from many bearded men, Tillie never once stroked his beard or even touched it. It simply hung down like a thousand thin white needles, pointing menacingly at his chest.

  I was also aware that my son was babbling incessantly, and with Tillie’s lips being camouflaged, I wasn’t sure if I caught the final thing he said—which sounded like, “I’ve found a home.”

  The next few months would be the most challenging in my life, and possibly the most distressing.

  NINETEEN

  My lifelong friend, Zandor Kirsch, is still around. The difference between him and me is that he has been married for over forty years to the same woman, has a son and a daughter and two grandchildren. All along, he has been the person I would tell my woeful tales to, and, as I mentioned earlier, he was not a patient listener but I knew he cared about me and that his affection was unconditional. When he would get critical it would be from distress over some predicament I had gotten into, and his impatience to see me leap in and do something to solve it. That is what he would do. Leap in and solve it.

  During that span of months when I tried to work with Tillie De Main, and when Julie was struggling with her loss, Zandor kept warning me that the time I was spending on Tillie was detracting from time I ought to be spending on my shaky relationship.

  “The old-new friend,” he told me, “is a pain in the ass. His issues ought not to become yours. He’s not a paying client, he doesn’t restrict his visits to your office, he invites himself to your home—all of which invades your privacy. Your wife needs your full focus. She is fragile, and if you don’t attend to her, you are going to lose her.”

  Even though I knew, on some level, that he was correct, I could not keep myself from wanting to see Tillie through his eerie crisis. The very fact that he believed his dreams were real was intriguing to me, titillated my professional interest and stirred my juices to “fix” him.

  My therapy sessions with him were unusual and sometimes creepy. I had never had a patient with such a masterful command of language and such an awful sense of dread about what he thought he had done.

  Sometimes when I was with him, his story would expand into a lengthy monologue, during which I would have no opportunity to respond. It was like one of those speeded-up disclaimers at the end of a radio commercial, triple-time, hard to follow.

  “I tell you, Ted, it is relentless. I’ve had the same dream four times now. Same woman, darkly dressed, her face never revealed, picked off by my car, and not by accident. Then, the day following, I swear to you that I actually carry out the tableau from my dream. I am not hallucinating. I know, I know, that I am living my dream. It scares the hell out of me. I’m not stupid; I am aware that I have resentment toward Lanny that could very well spill over into my subconscious mind. But, the rest of it, the part that happens later, is palpable, not fantasy, not t
he product of a wild and vengeful cuckold. I get into my car and start to drive and a few minutes from my home, a woman figure appears ahead, and calmly, without bitterness, I speed up so I can run her down. It happens the same way, and I am terrified and vacate the scene of the crime. That night, no report on the news, and, next day, nothing in the papers. I am tortured by the contradiction: the clarity of the experience, and the total ignoring of it by those who investigate such things.”

  He paused for a breath, and I was aware for the first time—though this was the fourth time he had come to speak with me (damning evidence that as a psychologist I was lacking in awareness)––that his eyebrows turned upward at the temples, wild and unkempt, like the way one might expect Lucifer’s eyebrows to flare. Indeed, it made him appear devilish, and I berated myself for not seeing it before; though with all that hair….

  After a time, his constant insistence on the real-life transposition of his dreadful dreams began to annoy me. My stance as a therapist had always been one of total acceptance of my client, respect for his or her struggle and the distorted perceptions it engendered. With Tillie, I found myself losing that respect, having, instead, a sense that he was building an artificial cage around himself and was finding some kind of perverse enjoyment in the process.

  At one point I said, “I do catch the awful feeling that you are suffering from the belief that your dreams are being enacted in your waking life. It must be overwhelming, a sense of being out of control.” I stopped, aware that with most clients that is where my response would end. But with Tillie, I merely paused, then added, “Of course, we both know that your belief is a distortion. You are not actually experiencing those horrible events in your daily life.”

  “But…” he began to protest, and I saw his dark brows dance, their pointed ends jiggling up and down like a pair of pecking crows. His eyes were windows through which I could catch a glimpse of the strange landscape he had been describing. It was a stark place, frigid and bleak, and I saw for the first time how barren his prospects must have seemed. His objection turned instantly into fury, and he picked up, “What in hell do you mean, a distortion? Haven’t you been listening? I lost someone I loved more than my life itself.”