Old

by Stan Charnofsky

  “Yes, that part I know, but the dreams coming true are not part of the deal.”

  “Asshole!” he blurted out savagely. Don’t you get it? I lost my love. Anything is possible when that happens. You probably never lost anyone. You’re so damned smug. How could you ever understand me?”

  How could I ever understand him? Well, he knew nothing about my history, nothing about anyone in my life before Julie. Though I seldom revealed my personal troubles to my clients, I was tempted to face Tillie down: ‘I’m not the asshole, asshole, you are. Of course, I have lost someone. You aren’t the only man whose partner disappeared. I lost my Annie, Julie’s sister, the really true love of my life, in an accident too impossible to describe. Did I delude myself into a fantasy about dreams coming true? Did I agitate myself into an anxiety disorder? Hell no. I sucked it up and got on with my life. Why don’t you do that? Why don’t you tune into yourself and figure out what you want to do for the next forty years?’

  I was aware that tears were flooding my eyes, which thoughts of Annie often triggered. Tillie, I knew, would not comprehend my show of emotions and I tried to hide it from him. Besides, he was in no place to have empathy for anyone else. Or so I thought.

  In the weeks to come, I would see this damaged and hallucinating fellow show remarkable empathy toward my Julie—and she toward him. I guess misery does recognize its kindred brothers and sisters.

  The way I actually responded to his blow-up was to get into my therapist’s role and say, “You may be right. Perhaps I cannot understand your predicament. But I would like to. I would like you to make all your perceptions clear to me. Let’s see if you can convince me about the reality of your vexatious situation.”

  My tone more than my words seemed to mollify him. He took on a remorseful look, and said softly, “I get short-tempered with everyone I meet. It is as if I am irretrievably unsettled inside. My guts hurt. Hell, my heart hurts. I feel as if I am moving about on a desolate battlefield where the other side has won.”

  His verbal pictures brought me up short. In a psychology sense, the enemy he was trying to depict was actually himself, the setting of his dreams a no-man’s-land of his own invention. Yet, to him, the whole portrait was real and agonizing—I reminded myself never to forget that, never again to try to appease or dissuade him. It would be, I decided, more productive to join him in his nightmarish visions, become a fellow traveler and try to scrutinize the dark corners of his creations.

  He came to my house several times over the next few months, pleading that he could not make it to my office during the day. We would speak in private in my den, but it also meant that he would see Julie, and the two of them would commune in their mutual anguish, in a way that I was not able to do with Tillie. I began to believe that he actually had two distinct forms of therapy whenever he appeared at my home: my attempt to bring order to his disordered perceptions, and Julie’s empathic understanding. Looking back, it is hard to say which was more beneficial to him. Perhaps it is a lesson to be learned that restructuring one’s cognitive field can occur a lot easier if there is a simultaneous, deep sense of expressed mutuality.

  One evening, I was working with Tillie in my den when a storm, without rain, sang against the outside walls of our house. Beyond my understanding, this fierce wind seemed to loosen something in my friend, as if a hard blow had dislodged a chunk of choking gristle. His pitch changed, his story became tapered to sensibility.

  “I wake up frantic. The dreams terrify me. It’s a trance, I believe, a trance I go into, that dupes me into re-living my nightmare. It can’t be a real event, or people would know about it. They’d track me down. You know, the police, the authorities. There would be witnesses.”

  “That’s a change,” I said, eager to acknowledge his flirtation with reality. “Your waking mind goes numb and these violent actions seem like actual behavior. It’s as if you are dreaming again while not really asleep.”

  He leaped on this. “That’s it! Dreaming while not asleep.” He stopped, elevated his mood, and said, “Isn’t the brain remarkable!”

  Just that, the instant switching of gears, plagued me with distrust. In some eerie way, I felt as if Tillie were playing me, making me a character in one of his theatrical events, perhaps without full awareness of it. It seemed, at times, that his entire, massive struggle with loss and grief was a nasty little masquerade. But why?

  It was when he broadened his discourse to draw Julie in—a passing remark when he was leaving, or worse, a rhetorical question he would float on the air—that I would grit my teeth and vow to dismiss him. Who needed a hairy, role-playing, seductive, borderline psychotic prowling around my house?

  After a few months had passed, during which time I endured some recurring dreams myself, dreams of my wife and son disappearing as Megan had, my client/friend announced to me: “I saw her.”

  I knew whom he meant, but I reacted naively, hoping to illicit a fuller recounting. “Saw who?”

  “Lanny, of course. My unfaithful wife, who else?”

  “In your dreams or for real?”

  “She was in a Starbucks. I went in for coffee and there she was with two people, a man and a woman, gabbing away, laughing as if the world was a carnival, as if she hadn’t recently destroyed another person’s life.”

  That narcissistic pattern again—I could see that the entire universe revolved around Tillie’s pain. There was no way he could enter into the perceptual world of his wife, to have empathy for her view of what happened. But then, how could he have such empathy for Julie? The brutal truth stung me as if a wasp had done its dirty work directly into my heart: this loser, this hurt specimen of a human, was looking to replace his loss. It may not have started out with that goal, but as soon as he met Julie, he began to meld with her, seduce her affections through their mutual suffering.

  “So, when you saw her, she seemed to have no remorse over the dramatic changes she stirred up. Was enjoying herself as if nothing cataclysmic had happened.”

  “Cataclysmic for me, not for her. She didn’t miss a beat, got right into a whole new life script.” He paused, then asked, “How can someone do that? Act as if everything is normal? She’d have to grow calluses on her heart. We had an abiding love. Where did her half of it go?”

  “I’m beginning to catch a second emotion here. Along with your hurt is a lot of resentment. Perhaps that might lead you toward less pain, as your resentment gathers momentum and you start to realize some of her frailties.”

  He seemed to ponder that for a moment, and said, “Frailties. Sure, she has them. So do I. But, when you’re crazy in love, you overlook them. When the gaudy tower of adoration comes crashing down, the blemishes emerge to stare you in the face.”

  I was aware that he was doing what I don’t like, using that generalized “you” to apply to himself, but I was not about to call him on it in the middle of this seeming new insight.

  “Beginning to see her blemishes,” I said slowly, emphasizing each word. My wish was that he would begin to see his own as well. For a moment he did not respond, and I filled the silence with a whispered question, “Did you speak with her?”

  I caught a smile through his vertical spears of hair, and he said with whimsy, “What do you think?’

  “Don’t know,” I answered. I wanted his information, not my projections.

  “I started to walk out, but went up to Lanny and stood for a moment. Her companions stared up at me quizzically, and she looked almost frightened. Not quite, but almost. I felt powerful for a bare instant, then the look on her face changed and she said, ‘So what do you want?’ I must tell you that her whole aspect devastated me. Not sure what I expected, but I guess I would have liked some kind of recognition, some acknowledgement of our years together. Instead, I got a kind of frigid indifference. All I could say was, ‘Just to say hello.’ She nodded and replied, ‘Hello,’ and turned back to her friends.”

  “That was it?” I asked.

  “I glowered at her head fo
r a moment, pondering whether I wanted to smash her with my fist, kiss her hair, or…or let the whole thing go.”

  “And?”

  “I spit out, ‘Have a good life,’ and spun away, leaving her friends bewildered, I’m certain, and Lanny—well, I’m not sure how it left her.”

  “And how did it leave you?”

  “Insulted. Though after about an hour, I flipped.”

  “Flipped?”

  “I began to get pissed at her.”

  “Ah, the resentment I noted.”

  “Well damn it, she’s the one who copped out of a good thing. What did I do wrong? Love her too hard?”

  “No argument from me. As the indignation grows, the loss mellows.”

  “I wonder if that means I won’t have to knock her off any more in my dreams?”

  “Good question. If you knock her off in your waking mind, maybe your sleeping mind won’t still want revenge.”

  He sat with that thought for a time, then began to laugh, so raucously that I wondered if he had completely lost it—but he stopped himself after a moment, nodded his head, stood and walked toward the door.

  “See, I didn’t need therapy. Only a new perspective on things.”

  His disclaimer was not a novel reaction; many times, clients reach an insight and have no interest in crediting the therapeutic work they did. That never unsettled me, because, after all, believing they solved their own dilemma gave them power.

  I stood as well and said. “Are you finished with me?”

  He looked surprised and answered, “No way. You and your wife are tonics for me. I need you for my support system. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

  I felt like saying, ‘No, it’s not okay. You straightened out your twisted perceptions, so go the hell back into your hairy life.’ Instead, typical of my helper posture, I replied, “Oh, of course. Let’s stay in touch.”

  To me, that meant every now and then. To Tillie, it clearly meant something different. He called the next day and asked if he could bring over some fried chicken and join us for dinner. Julie answered and said,

  “Absolutely.”

  TWENTY

  So, Tillie’s macabre dream-to-real-life hallucination flitted away. I held no presumption that my insights cured him, since my acceptance of him had, all along, been conditional, which a client picks up and resents. Did he resent me? Looking back, I guess maybe so, but he held it in, most likely to get continuing access to Julie.

  Now, from my elder years’ perspective, I have come to understand that if someone I worked with went to the top of a mountain to wait for an alien spaceship behind a comet, he would be considered paranoid; if someone joined him they would be the beginning of a cult; if they had money, they would be on their way to becoming a recognized religion. Cynical? Well, I never said I wasn’t.

  Here I am, seventy and alone. I would say that such a circumstance ought to allow for a little cynicism.

  I have a few moles on my body, products, most likely, of my baseball years when I was always in the sun and knew nothing about skin protection. No cancers or anything, but, in my vanity, I don’t like the way they look. I also have had removed three lipomas, which are non-malignant fatty tumors. The surgeons did good jobs, cutting out the agate-like growths without leaving scars—mainly because the incisions were made along wrinkles already there.

  I mention these—I guess you can call them flaws—because I am aware that I am far from perfect and, at my advanced age, my body reflects the vicissitudes of all my years. I’m sure that is true of everyone, and with many folks it shows most clearly in their faces: lips that turn downward in people who have spent excessive time frowning, brows that are furrowed in those who have experienced many worrisome years.

  Sometimes I beat myself up with criticism: what woman would be attracted to a man with cluttered skin, muscles that no longer bulge, and, alas, a tummy that does? Zandor told me a few months before my seventieth birthday, when I was being particularly self-effacing, that women aren’t obsessive about bodies the way men are, that they look for heart and integrity, self-confidence and strength of conviction. Well, I’m okay on those things, but I do let the physical get me down.

  About two weeks after my counseling with Tillie ended, Julie said to me, as we were about to go to bed, “Tillie was hurt badly when his wife walked out on him.”

  I looked at her curiously for a moment, then answered, “I know. It’s no walk in the park to be dumped by your partner.” Briefly I stopped, then decided to tack on, “But, you know, not everyone creates a monstrous fantasy about getting even, the way he did.”

  “He’s a very sensitive man,” she pleaded, her voice too protective of Tillie to be simply an objective observation.

  “Yes, he probably is. He also—and I say this from spending many hours hearing his pathetic complaint—is a brilliant manipulator.” Julie started to protest, but I bullied her into silence with, “His aim is to get someone into his ‘poor me’ web, then zap him with how none of it is true. In the psychology field, we call it bad faith. You come to therapy because something is wrong and try to cajole the therapist into supporting how wonderful you are.”

  “Oh, that’s not fair, Ted. I see him as genuinely wounded.”

  “Wounded, yes, but how he chose to react to it is another story. The man rode the victim train for several months. ‘Look what she did to me! How could any woman be so cruel? My life is ruined. My heart is broken.’ And then he stuck in: ‘She’s not going to get away with this. I’ll destroy her, I’ll have my revenge.’ First, he managed to dream ways to polish her off, but that wasn’t enough, so he manufactured a waking scenario to compliment his dreams. Now if that isn’t sick, I don’t know what is.”

  “I’ve never heard you judge someone like this. What’s going on?”

  She was right. As a therapist, my whole energy was devoted to acceptance, to allowing the client freedom to express all ranges of emotion and behavior. With Tillie, I was stung by what I read as his ‘other’ agenda, which was to replace his loss with my Julie. I couldn’t say this. I couldn’t tell Julie that I was fraught with jealousy, that in the strained ambience of our relationship, this scheming man represented a true threat.

  Instead, I said, “Okay, so I’m judging him. But, I hope you trust me when I say that I have good reason. If I told you details, it would compromise the therapist/patient relationship.”

  “That is too mysterious for me. I saw none of what you imply. With me he has been ultra sensitive. With my own loss, I feel wonderfully understood by him. A mutuality––like the old saying, misery loves company.”

  “Please, Julie, this guy is not simpatico with you. His mutuality is staged. He is a performer. I can’t believe you don’t see that.”

  She seemed to get a new perspective, and said with an acid tone that wounded me, “Teddy, you are being harsh and even nasty. I tell you that he and I have had a nice connection and that seems to set you boiling.”

  Boiling. If only she knew. Of course, I boil; I writhe, I wriggle, I fume. How could I make it clear that I did not trust that conniving prick?

  “If you spend time with him,” I said, “do it with your feelers out. My old school-days buddy has become a real sicko. Now, I say that, knowing you don’t agree. But, keep your guard up. I’m pleading with you not to trust him.”

  She spun away from me in disgust. I felt a stab of remorse. And far worse, I sensed that Julie was slipping away from me.

  It was at such times that my thoughts lingered on Megan. Julie’s life was shattered when Megan vanished, yes, but what about my life? I had learned to care about Megan deeply, a young woman with talent and heart, who, for reasons of her own, could no longer stay in our little family. I missed her. I wished she had felt close enough to me to share her malaise. Her absence contaminated my peaceful moments, and the grisly possibility that harm had come to her was a constant companion. Why else was there no communication at all?

  TWENTY-ONE

  The stor
y gets ugly. Not for anything I did, but in the awful reality of what happened in the next month.

  Our son was nearly two years old. Megan had been gone for over a year, and the Tillie business, well, my therapeutic attempts to help him had finished some time ago. He was in our lives at least once, sometimes twice a week, inserting himself into a self-invited dinner, without shame presuming to accompany us on an outing to the park, or obtaining Julie’s affirmation if we were having friends over, to join in the evening’s activities.

  My silent protests were certainly available to Julie, but she chose to ignore them. I could see her light up whenever he appeared. It was mind-boggling, but then I had long before learned that not everyone read people the way I did. I was prone to think of it not as a psychological skill of any kind, but rather a human sensitivity to another person’s energy. I was also disposed to believe that Julie’s unwavering grief over Megan compromised her ability to see what was truly there.

  On the up-slope side of the mountain burgeoning between us was my conviction that Julie was a principled person, loyal to her commitments. She might wean herself from me, certainly, but I would not expect her to betray me with another man.

  She didn’t, but how I wish my insights had been less acute, my perceptions about Tillford De Main faulty.

  When I was in my thirties and forties, and likely the same with most men, I held to the foolish presumption that when there was friction in a relationship, a romping good time in bed would cure it. I know better now. But then, I desperately approached Julie with the hope that sex would fix what ailed us.

  She didn’t do the ‘headache’ thing, but she did scold me with, “Ted, you know my mood is scattered. You know I am suffering. Why can’t you be more sensitive to my feelings?”