A: I…I’ll try.
Q: Good.
A: Can I say…talk about it?
Q: Sure.
A: Well, I’m trying to feel the hand on my wrist, but…
Q: You just think about it, the way it felt, and I’ll help you remember. Just thinking about it is all that is necessary. Imagine that hand and, if you want to, close your eyes so that you can see it more clearly. Does that help you to see it?
A: Yes.
Q: Good. You see the fingers are moving, jerking, and the hand is moving upward. And as it comes toward your face you go deeper and deeper into the trance.
A: And the fingers separate like this?
Q: Yes. You just go right ahead. You’re doing beautifully. You’re doing just what I want you to do. When the hand begins to move toward your face, say “now.”
(PAUSE)
A: Now.
Q: Good. Now I want you to begin recalling a very, very satisfying experience. A very pleasant experience. An experience where you felt strong and good and when all of those who knew you would have been proud and pleased. Can you recall such an episode?
A: Yes.
Q: All right. Would you like to tell me about it?
A: I felt pretty when I got married.
Q: Yes. That is usually a pleasant, satisfying experience.
A: I was so happy.
Q: Good. Tell me how you feel as you recall that experience.
A: Weepy.
Q: Weepy?
A: I cried all through the ceremony. A judge married us. He thought it was sweet that I cried. He said so. How nice it was to see tears of joy. He lent me his handkerchief to dry my eyes.
Q: Is that what you were doing when you wiped your hands over your face just now?
A: Uh-huh.
Q: Good. You can enjoy reliving that joyful experience vividly and accurately and perhaps even enjoy things you have forgotten. Yes. There is a smile on your face. What are you remembering?
A: John, my husband. He brought me flowers for the wedding. I only had flowers once before from a boy before that. They were awful pretty.
Q: You are doing just fine, Esther. You are able to control your trance so well. I am proud of you. Do you think you are ready to go a little further?
A: I think so.
Q: Good. Now let’s make use of your own ability again. The more you practice, the better you get. Start thinking about that sensation in your wrist. How it felt when I touched you. And when you have reached the stage where your hand is moving toward your face, and you feel it moving, say “now.”
A: Now.
Q: Good. Now, Esther, there are many pleasant things in one’s life. There are weddings and Christmases. What is the nicest birthday gift that you ever received?
A: My…One of my fathers took me to dinner and the show.
Q: Who was that, Esther?
A: My real father. Mr. Freemont. I was eleven or twelve and we dressed up. He wore a suit and tie and Momma looked so nice. I had a new dress. It was yellow and Daddy said it was for me, because I was special.
Q: Can you see that dress now?
A: Yes.
Q: Can you imagine that you are wearing that dress?
A: Yes.
Q: You have it on right now, don’t you? You can touch it. You feel so good and proud in your new dress. That’s right, stroke it. Feel the material in your hand. You’re smiling. Are you pleased with the dress?
A: Yes. It feels so nice. Thank you, Daddy.
Q: Okay, Esther. Relax. Good. That was fun, wasn’t it? Good. Relax. Now, perhaps, we can remember some other things. Do you remember a party in November, 1960? Can you remember that party?
A: A party?
Q: Yes. In November, 1960.
A: There were a lot of parties I went to.
Q: Do you remember two boys named Coolidge?
(PAUSE)
Q: Esther, do you remember two brothers named Bobby and Billy Coolidge?
A: Yes.
Q: Could you tell me if you were ever at a party with Billy and Bobby.
A: Well, I hung around with their crowd, you know. I probably was at a lot of parties where they were.
Q: Do you remember a girl named Alice Fay?
A: Uh-huh.
Q: What do you remember about Alice?
A: She was pretty. She was the Junior Prom Queen.
Q: You went to a party at Alice’s house in November of 1960, didn’t you?
A: In November?
Q: Yes.
(PAUSE)
Q: Esther, can you remember the party at Alice Fay’s house?
A: I…A little.
Q: Good. Now, would you relax and lean back and close your eyes and just review that evening and that party as much as you can remember. When you do this, I want you to feel confident that you may remember, misremember or forget anything and everything that happens here today as your unconscious needs require and when you awaken you will feel refreshed and you will feel relieved in proportion to any anxiety you may feel during the experience. Review that evening now, and when you have completed reviewing as much as you recall, I want you to say “now.”
(PAUSE)
A: Now.
Q: Good. Now, Esther, I want you to close your eyes and imagine that you are seeing each event that happened on the evening of Alice’s party. Are you doing that?
A: Yes.
Q: Esther, I would enjoy reviewing that evening with you. Would you like to tell me what you are seeing?
A: The house.
Q: Whose house?
A: Alice’s house.
Q: Do you like the house?
A: It’s grand.
Q: What do you like best about the house?
A: They have thick carpets in one room. I walked over there. It was like walking in clouds.
Q: It felt good?
A: The furniture was so pretty.
Q: What is happening in the house? Can you see it?
A: There is music and dancing. Everyone is having fun.
Q: Good. You’re doing fine. Now, when you review the events taking place I want you to feel as clearly as you can the way you felt when the events were happening. How do you feel, Esther?
A: I felt nervous.
Q: Nervous?
A: We shouldn’t be here.
Q: Why shouldn’t you be here?
(PAUSE)
Q: Why shouldn’t you be at Alice’s house?
A: There was something bad…I…Oh, I can’t say. I’m just nervous.
Q: Did Billy and Bobby make you nervous?
A: Umm.
Q: I couldn’t hear you, Esther. You have to talk up.
A: I guess.
Q: What did they do to make you nervous?
A: Pardon?
Q: What did Billy and Bobby do to make you nervous?
A: I…I don’t know. Is it hot in here?
Q: I don’t think so, Esther.
Esther, did Billy and Bobby make you nervous when they fought? Is that why you are nervous.
A: I don’t feel well.
Q: What’s wrong?
A: Nothing.
Q: Okay, then. Just relax. Feel how good it is to be so in control. To feel confident that you can be the woman that you really want to be. Do you feel that confidence?
A: Yes.
Q: Are you relaxed and in control?
A: Yes.
Q: All right, Esther, I want you to think about the party. To review that night, as I know you have the power to do. Can you see the thick carpet and the beautiful furniture?
A: Yes.
Q: Take off your shoes and walk around in the thick carpeting. It feels good, doesn’t it?
A: I didn’t do that.
Q: But you wanted to, didn’t you?
A: Yes.
Q: Can you see the people dancing?
A: Yes.
Q: You see Bobby and Billy, don’t you?
A: By the punch bowl.
Q: Is that where the fight wa
s?
A: The fight?
Q: Do you remember the fight? Billy and Bobby were fighting. Is that what made you nervous?
A: I don’t remember.
Q: You don’t remember the fight?
A: Billy was always fighting.
Q: Did Billy fight in the park?
A: Pardon?
Q: Did Billy fight in the park?
A: The…I didn’t go to the park.
Q: You didn’t lose your glasses in the park?
A: No. Uh-uh.
Q: When did you lose your glasses?
A: A little before.
Q: Before when, Esther?
A: The…you know, the time when Richie was…died.
Q: How did you get along all that time without your glasses?
A: I just needed them to read. I didn’t need them real bad.
Q: Tell us about the fight.
A: The fight?
Q: You said there was a fight.
A: I did?
Q: Where was the fight?
A: My head hurts.
Q: Your head hurts?
A: It’s throbbing and I can’t think.
Q: When, Esther? Back in 1960 or now?
A: My ears hurt, too.
Q: Esther, I want you to relax…
A: I can’t think.
Q: You just can’t think?
A: Uh-uh.
Q: Okay. I want to thank you, Esther, for the help and effort that you have made and I know that you will have a full reward for those efforts. You are learning to be the strong, assured, self-confident person that you want to be and your learning today is in proportion to your cooperation. The more you work with me, the sooner you will become the kind of person you want to be.
In a few moments, I am going to ask you to awaken feeling confident that whenever you wish to develop the hypnotic trance in the privacy of your own home, in the privacy of your bed, or out in the activity of the world, that you can do so easily, rapidly and confidently as I have taught you. Should you wish to enlarge your concentration you can do so by counting from one to three, as I have taught you. By counting to yourself, becoming fully awake, fully alert and more confident, feeling like the kind of person you really want to be. Now, when I say “now,” begin to count, one, two, three. Now.
Shindler waited until the door closed. He had moved as little as possible during the preceding hour, trying to avoid distracting Hollander’s subject, blending into the cool colors of the decor. Now he stretched, not saying anything until the doctor had completed his notes.
“This was fascinating for me,” Hollander said, looking up from a stenographer’s pad he kept on his desk. “Did you notice the headache and earache toward the end?”
“Yes.”
“She doesn’t want to talk about it, so the body creates pain that makes it impossible for her to think.”
“Then you think she knows something.”
“I am not positive. It was too soon to tell. But my instinct tells me that there is something there. When can you bring her in again?”
“Tomorrow.”
“No. Let’s make it next week. I want her to take some time to think.”
“Would it help if I drove her to the Fay home and the park?”
“It might.”
Shindler held out his hand.
“Thanks, Art. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the time you’re putting into this.”
Hollander laughed.
“I’m the one who should do the thanking. This is the most exciting experience I’ve had in all my years of practice. You can’t believe how pleasant and exhilarating a change this is from listening to the complaints of undersexed housewives.”
Shindler shook the doctor’s hand and closed the office door behind him. Esther Pegalosi was sitting in the waiting room. She looked up nervously as he approached.
5
The night lights of Portsmouth twinkled like grounded stars, then faded in brilliance as the red halo of the sunrise peeked above the horizon. Bobby Coolidge watched all this with dull, tired eyes from the couch in the darkened living room in Sarah Rhodes’s apartment. The red tip of a cigarette glowed at the end of loose fingers. His body slouched in the sofa and his legs rested on a glass-topped coffee table.
The process of turning night into day had taken some time, but Bobby’s conscious mind had missed most of it as it tried, with painstaking slowness, to piece together the remnants of a dream.
“Is anything wrong?” Sarah asked from the bedroom door.
“I couldn’t sleep. It’s nothing.”
Sarah watched his silhouette in the half light. They had been living together for the last month and she was still getting used to Bobby and his moods.
Bobby heard her bare feet pad across the hardwood floor and felt the cushions give way beside him.
“Is something bothering you, Bobby?” she asked softly. “This is the third night in a row that you haven’t slept.”
He turned to look at her. The weather was mild and she was sleeping in bikini panties and one of his tee shirts. The way she was leaning made the cotton fabric outline her nipples.
“It’s just the pressure of exams, that’s all,” he said, telling a half truth. He hoped she would accept his explanation and stop there, because he knew that he could not explain to her that the dreams had started again, creeping insidiously into his unconscious mind at night, when he had no defenses.
He thought that he had left them in Vietnam, but the pressure of finals had begun to build. Everything, his new life, his relationship with this girl, seemed to center on his staying in school. If he did not pass…If he failed…It was something he thought about all the time.
“Are you sure there’s nothing else?” she asked. He appreciated the sincerity of her concern. He had never had anyone care about him before. He felt her fingers run lightly through his hair and he leaned back and closed his eyes.
“It’s the tests. I think about them all the time. It’s just getting me down.”
“There’s nothing to worry about, Bobby. I know you. You’ll do fine.”
She stroked his hair and he shifted his head to her shoulder. He was tired. It was the same cycle again. Not enough sleep at night and too tired to work during the day. And behind it all were the dreams.
He felt Sarah’s lips brush his cheek and he opened his eyes. She was staring at him. He brushed her hair aside and stroked her cheek. They held each other.
The sun was up now, bathing the sleepy valley in morning light. He watched the mist floating across the rooftops like steam in a bowl. She felt so soft and yielding.
“I know how to help you sleep,” she said, her voice a husky whisper.
He smiled. She did, too. She got slowly to her feet and stripped away her clothing. He followed her slim, naked figure into the bedroom.
But the lovemaking did not help. Even while he was inside her, even when he came, he could not experience the full pleasure of the act. One part of him was watching, unbelieving. What was Bobby Coolidge doing in bed with this make-believe girl? What was he doing in college? He didn’t belong here. He could not believe that it was real and that it would not end.
Sarah could see that her efforts to relax him had failed. She could feel the tension in his body and she could see the sadness when he was through. Bobby was a strange boy. Not at all like the boys she had dated in high school. That was part of his attraction. His age, the maturity of his friends. Most of them were veterans or at least older than the boys most of the other freshman girls were dating. It made her feel older and more sophisticated to think that a boy who had been to war-a boy who had killed-found her attractive.
She rubbed her hand across his chest and kissed his cheek. How complicated he was. That was another facet of the attraction. The boys she had dated before were simple. Carbon copies. The idle rich. Sports cars. The same past, present and future. But Bobby could not be read. Not entirely. He had dark corners, secrets. Like the war, which he would
not discuss, or his past, to which he alluded in only the vaguest of terms. He seemed so vulnerable at times like tonight. A combination of strength and weakness that she found fascinating.
“Bobby, there is something wrong and I want you to tell me.”
Bobby said nothing, staring into the silence and breathing deeply, like a laborer carrying a heavy load.
“Bobby?” she repeated.
“I get scared that I’ll fail and all this…You mean so much to me. I think about what I’ll do if I don’t make it and about my brother.”
“Poor baby,” she said, stroking his cheek and shifting her weight across his right side. Her smooth skin felt good beneath his hand. “Underneath that tough exterior you’re a rabbit. But I know you, rabbit, and I know that you are strong and smart and good. And I know that you will make a success of whatever you do.”
He smiled sadly and held her tight.
“You’re steel, Sarah. You are the best part of the good things that have been happening to me. But you don’t really know me. You know this Bobby Coolidge, but you don’t know who I was before the war.”
“People don’t change that much, Bobby. Deep down you are always the same person.”
“No, Sarah. I did things before that I could never do now. Bad things.”
“Oh, Bobby, you like to dramatize so. I know you couldn’t do ‘bad things.’ Not really bad.”
“But I did. There’s blood on my hands, Sarah, and I can’t shut it out of my dreams. Whenever the pressure builds up in me, like now, the dreams start again and I see what I’ve done.”
“What, Bobby?” she asked, concerned now at the sudden change in him.
“I’m sorry I said…that I talked like this. Please, do me a favor. There are things about me…my past…that I don’t want you to know about. I can’t risk losing you and I know I would, if I told you. I shouldn’t have brought it up. I did and, now, I am asking you to forget that I did.”
“But, Bobby…”
“Please. I…You are the most important, most decent thing that has ever happened to me. I don’t want to lose you. Respect my wishes, this once.”
The look she gave him was peculiar and puzzled.
“Okay, Bobby. I won’t ask. I just wanted to help.”
“You do help. Just by being here. You are my fairy princess and I love you.”
He kissed her softly at first, then harder and his love swelled in him, out of control. This time there were no distractions.
Heartstone Page 15
