“I thought we had a deal,” she said by way of opening.
“A deal?”
“I pour my heart out for you and you release me from these sham therapy sessions. Did I not make myself clear?” She sounded especially squeaky over her static today.
“I understand you don’t want help, Emily, but truly, all I want is to help you,” I said lamely. I could sympathize enough to see how she felt betrayed by my diagnosis.
“You want to help me? Let me see Carlos. I don’t know why I’m the one who’s not allowed to see Carlos when I only want to know how he’s doing and it was Beth who viciously attacked him and probably caused him lifetime disabilities.”
I tried to get her to see the other side. “Beth wasn’t trained in using her powers, and you even wrote that she explained to you her uncontrollably negative feelings toward Carlos because of your attachment to him.”
“Yes, I see. It’s my fault she attacked an innocent man. It’s all my fault, just like everything. I don’t understand how I can be the least special sister and still have all the blame for everything. If the world revolves around Beth, why am I at the top of everyone’s blame list?”
Far be it from me to blame the victim. I tried to understand who exactly that was in this case. “You still blame Beth for Carlos’s injuries, even though you moved in next to him and kept that fact from her?”
“Being surprised about your neighbor doesn’t give you free reign to crucify him—literally.”
Since I can’t see into her mind, it can be difficult for me to remember the depths of Emily’s psychological problems. Her observation was all too sane, so I was stumped as to how to continue.
Emily picked up the thread for me. “Dr. Blundt, more therapy? Really?”
“More therapy? Are you talking about the support group?” In my official report, I had prescribed group therapy as well as continuing with me and her family sessions and taking the right drugs. “That’s not a punishment, Emily, it’s meant to help you. To get you away from your family and to give you perspective.”
“What kind of perspective can crazy people give me? Didn’t my writing show you that there’s nothing wrong with me? That Beth is the violent menace to society? How incompetent are you, exactly?”
That hurt as much as she probably intended it to. With any other client, I could shake it off because I have a clear view into his or her motives for saying something like that. But with Emily, I have only my own interpretations bouncing off her crackly shield.
“That’s just it, Emily. I’m not incompetent, and I can see that you need these sessions, and prescriptions, and a group to make progress.”
“Well, I don’t need this. Maybe I just won’t come anymore.” She jutted her chin out defiantly.
“I have a dozen phone numbers I can call if you don’t show up. Do you want those people to be wondering where you are?”
Her face changed. I wouldn’t have recognized her. A tear burst from her eye, followed by the biggest flood I’ve ever seen in a therapy session, real or on TV. It was such a relief to see emotion cross her stolid face, I cried a little, too.
I sat next to her on the couch and handed her some tissues. She accepted them, but rejected my hand on her back. One breakthrough at a time.
We didn’t say much more. Her mother was at the exit door, and it became a touching scene of maternal compassion when she saw Emily’s tear-streaked face. She looked at me and I got pure static from her, too. No normal thought energy. What is going on with that family? I slogged through it and whispered in the mother’s ear, “Today we’ve had a breakthrough. Therapy is not easy.” I gave her my most encouraging smile and she smiled back and that’s how I felt the rest of the day: all smiles.
13.
And the drama continues. Why won’t you let me slog through the days without all these tests?
Last night, I played dead when you came in, lying on my side, turned away from you. I refused to react when you caressed my buttock and then jiggled the mattress practically off the bed frame taking care of yourself.
This is hardly the first time you’ve done this, and between it and the snoring, I don’t get much sleep anymore. Even though I haven’t been in love, I can imagine, I can create in my mind, someone who exists without annoying the daylights out of me. Someone whose sleep apnea is a sweet slumber song and who doesn’t toss and turn too much. Because even though I try to rise above such silly things, there isn’t any love to help me up.
After that, it took me hours to fall asleep. It’s another obvious sign of my troubled mind. But I’d accomplished the feat for a little while at least, because I woke up at about 4 a.m., not knowing where I was or who I was with. I made out the bedroom in the light from the streetlamp outside and realized with a sigh that I had been awakened by your high-decibel snoring. Maybe you’re sensitive to the suffering and disdain I must let off like stink waves in the comics—? No, you’re just a light sleeper, because you woke at my stirring and said drowsily, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said, too firmly. “Go back to sleep.”
If only you didn’t have to try and show me your human side at these times. This could have been a non-incident, but no, you had to drag out all the emotions I’ve been keeping so studiously bottled up.
Even though I was turned away, I could hear that you were on your back, blinking at the ceiling in the low light. “Are you happy?” you asked.
No. “Sure. Go to sleep.”
I probably should’ve turned around to get a sense of your thought energy before attempting a deflection like that, because you weren’t in the mood to let it go. Jiggling the mattress again, you rolled over to switch on the bedside lamp.
“I sense”—this sounded ridiculous coming from you, the most self-absorbed and least sensitive person I’ve ever met—“something’s wrong. Is it me? Is something I’m doing bothering you?”
“No.” I held firm in my turned-away position.
I thought of the million things I might have said if we’d been, for example, in a marriage counseling session, or if I’d been alone on the receiving end of a therapy, where I could better contain my growing fear and be honest. But none of those million things really matter. I’m beyond marriage counseling. This whole thing was a terrible idea from the moment I logged on to the dating site, and had been prolonged mainly by my obsession with real estate.
You kept badgering me to answer and it turned into a game in your mind—could you get me to say something and start a fight? You flipped me onto my back and crouched over me and kept asking. That need for conflict gave your eyes a bizarre beatitude.
So I gave you what you wanted in the hope that it would be over faster that way. “You’re really negative,” I said. “It makes me feel sad.”
Your ego flared up, like monster made of fire. “You don’t have to absorb my negativity like a sponge.”
“That’s just it, I didn’t have anything to absorb or not absorb when we first met. You used to be much cheerier in general and you’ve changed.”
Everything I said was true, and you didn’t even try to deny it. You leaned over me, your eyes so close I feared your energy would pick up my thoughts and carry them back to you.
“I had to keep you. I had to act nice so you would stay around.”
I’m still furious at you for basically tricking me into marrying you. I couldn’t believe you actually said it out loud. You thought your little confession was bringing us closer than ever. I had to blink and struggle under the force of your energy, and you thought I was trying to get away, so you pinned my arms and pressed down into the mattress until I heard the springs squeal in protest.
I could hardly breathe, and my heart felt like a wild animal squirming in my throat, but I closed my eyes and said, more weakly than I would’ve liked, “Is this the only way you can keep me?”
You were horrified, and rightly so. You let me up all at once so that I bounced and my legs kicked you a little. Your thoughts were m
ore muddled than I’d ever seen them. You stood up and took out your frustration on my bedside lamp, which shattered against the floor. Bunglingly, you reached for the biggest piece and set your bare foot right in the middle of the light bulb shards. Red blood sprang out like a fungus onto the expensively restored hardwood.
You looked at me, fully expecting that I would get up, sterilize your wound, apply bandages, and then clean up your outrageous mess. This was all based on a conceit that you hold so dear it comes through as a core nugget of all your thought cycles: you think I’m a substitute for your mother.
I sat up. I was too mad to control my words, although I did stop myself from picking up more broken pieces and grinding them into your miserable flesh. “I am not your mother and I will not tolerate your tantrums. If you ever lay a finger on me, that’s the last you’ll see of me.” It was like fireworks going off in my head, asserting myself like that. It felt scarier and better than anything I’d ever done since I’d left California.
Your mouth made an O, and you said, “Are you serious?” at the same time you thought it.
I stared back at you. You’re many things, but not that stupid. You limped over to the bathroom, where I could see you sitting on the toilet, trying to get all the glass out of your foot with brute force. I got out of the bed on your side and, within your clear view, I took your pillow and a blanket and put them on the dresser near the bedroom door. Then I turned out your bedside lamp and crawled under the covers, feeling a little guilty about not trying to save the floor from the bloodstains. You obediently took your pillow and blanket to the spare bedroom. I don’t know whether you’ll ever get to join me in the bed again. If only you had left well enough alone.
14.
It’s been several months since I added to this sad little collection of thoughts and recriminations. Anyone reading might think my life would be totally different by now, divorced or separated, with session after session of success with Emily.
No. It was only a few days before you, dear husband, insinuated yourself back into the marriage bed, and nearly every day I come up here to the office early to cry. Yes, I’m indulging in feeling sorry for myself, something I warn my clients away from. I can’t seem to walk out because this house is everything to me. It’s just a house, I tell myself, but then I look around me and every fiber of every board holds a piece of my heart. Even the bloody part of the floor, which the maids valiantly scrubbed at for three consecutive sessions, and which I eventually covered with an oriental carpet I purchased at Ocean State Job Lot for the express purpose.
At least you haven’t broken any other furniture, though I still get those little fingerprint bruises on my arms on occasion. They fuel my self-pity.
As for my most difficult client, my jubilation over a breakthrough may have been wishful thinking. Maybe it’s the drugs, but we’ve settled into a stasis and I don’t know how we’ll ever get out of it. She isn’t doing anything suspicious anymore, as far as I can tell, but I have no real evidence that she’s getting better, either.
In a typical session (which they all are now), I call her into the session room. She carries herself in a neutral manner. There is none of the open hostility we began our sessions with, when she used to slump into the room, flop onto the couch, and sit with her arms and legs crossed toward me. She stands tall now with arms naturally open, nods and smiles pleasantly, and lowers her body onto the couch with aplomb. The only thing that remains the same is that shield of noisy static.
“How are you today, Emily?” I usually begin.
“I’m fine. And yourself?”
I can’t tell if she’s that polite, and I laugh.
“That’s not the point,” I often reply.
At the beginning of our sessions, she might have snapped, “What is the point? I’m not the one who’s crazy. That’s Beth.”
Now she smiles and waits patiently for me to begin the session, looking straight ahead.
We shoot the breeze, but the only theme of substance we touch upon is Carlos. Because of the deeply obsessive behavior evidenced in the official report and in her own writing, I suspect that Carlos is little more than a two-dimensional figure to her. I’ve tried to put this possibility to her, delicately, on many occasions. Each time, she protested that I didn’t understand love. Her “love” is so general. She’s never told me anything specific that makes Carlos lovable. Something in their first meeting must have set off an obsessive tendency that was already waiting, and Carlos’s insistent averageness is convenient because Emily is looking to get away from the specialness of her sister and be with someone who makes her look more special, not more average. Who better to compare herself to than a run-of-the-mill, overworked university TA? But these are my suppositions only, unsupported by her writing or her unreadable thought energy.
She paradoxically accepts and ignores the fact that Carlos has a wife and children. There might also be a factor of desiring someone she can’t have because she’s not ready to engage in any real relationship. Only in today’s culture would someone so un-self-actualized come so far in the world.
Sometimes the static lets up a little, and I fancy I can peek at the world from her perspective. Dear Emily, your surrender to your circumstances covers you like a shroud. But something else in you hasn’t given up. Something else claws its way out of the mire that is surrender. Each day, I can intuit the moment coming closer, though I’m not sure it’s a conscious process for you. You can’t control your deepest instincts any more than you can control your sister. Everything is working against your peaceful integration into society.
15.
It’s funny—in the days before the Talents were discovered, the folklore surrounding the people called psychics was that they could predict the future. I remember the last musings I wrote in that letter-turned-journal a few months ago, something about Emily not really having surrendered as completely as it seemed. During these last few months, even without being able to read her mind, she’s given me the impression of pressure building up under a gasket, of something about to explode. But rather than think of myself as one of those old-timey psychics with spot-on prescience, I consider myself an idiot for not understanding the signs much earlier. I mean, I had all or most of the facts laid out before me, and yet it is not through my skill as a therapist or Emily’s generosity of spirit (neither of those things really exists) that now I know exactly what’s been going on.
This week, I opened the door to Emily at the appointed hour as usual, but that was the only thing that was usual. For the first time, Emily had an aura about her. I watched it morph from a deep red line to a green haze shot through with purple lightning bolts while she stepped inside the therapy room. I gasped, but my surprise was premature, because then, she looked right at me.
At some point I collapsed, but when I came to, I processed the experience of being able to read Emily’s mind for the first time as somewhat like meeting any new person, but a hundred times less expected and a thousand times more intense. I received her life story, in a rush of color and sound, in probably less than a minute’s time.
Most pertinent, and most embarrassing for me, I saw the victory in Emily’s thoughts when her parents were granted responsibility for making sure she would never be unsupervised. She knew she could manipulate them, and I witnessed the way Emily wheedled concessions out of them. She had brought one of her friends to sign affidavits of responsibility and promises to make sure Emily would come to her therapy sessions with me. The depth of the manipulation became clear to me when, no matter where I looked in her thoughts, I couldn’t even find a name for this poor friend. She was a means to an end and I wonder if the friend ever knew how little she mattered to Emily.
The arrangement was for one of Emily’s parents to pick her up afterward, but for the friend to escort her from the house on Hope Street here to the yellow Victorian on Cushing. Emily convinced the friend to bring some little piece of aluminum each time. The friend appeared not to suspect anything—at first Emil
y tried to hide her real purpose by asking the friend to bring full cans of soda, but she soon tired of having to suck down the sugar-laced chemicals in the waiting room so she could crush the can and hide it deep within that awkward backpack of hers. Soon enough, it devolved into the friend bringing wadded bits of aluminum foil and odd pieces out of furniture assembly kits.
Beth’s kryptonite is aluminum, so Emily was gathering up as much of it as she could and ferreting it into the corners of the tiny room they made Emily sleep in so that Beth would be less powerful or maybe even become ill, in that room if nowhere else. And here’s where my embarrassment comes in: Emily carried these pieces of aluminum in her backpack and they were in the room when we had our sessions. They created the static shield that prevented me from detecting her thought energy. Aluminum is my kryptonite, too.
I didn’t even realize a psychic could have a kryptonite.
I see them all now, all those therapy sessions, from Emily’s point of view. There was plenty of that atomic element in her backpack to keep me from reading her mother that time, and if anyone else had been around, I would’ve wondered why I couldn’t read them, either. On days when she had several crushed cans of RC Cola zipped into the inner pocket, the static was worst for me, while on the days when her nameless friend could only manage to palm off a small wad of foil, to Emily’s rebuffs and chastisement, I got some little relief from the dizzying crackle and fancied I was gaining insight into my most difficult client.
And then, Beth moved away, carried away from Providence by her Talent, and Emily didn’t need the aluminum anymore. This week the friend brought a can, but Emily batted it away as if she had never drunk soda in her life, and I saw her thoughts clearly for the first time.
It might have been my idealistic hope that therapy could work, but I never imagined Emily still disdained me quite this much. She’s been putting me on, hoping she can lull me into a sense of security. She managed it. If she had continued to show such good progress and avoided mentioning that she and Carlos are meant to be together forever, even in death, for a little longer (a month, maybe), then I would have declared her cured. I might even have let her go back to classes.
Awash in Talent Page 20
