The Anatomy of Perception

by AJ Rose

The idea that maybe we were beyond mere dating now, that I could call him my boyfriend, crossed my mind. I wasn’t so sure I was up for a negative answer should I ask, but it gave me an idea, one that percolated even as his hands found bare skin as he skimmed my shirt off and tossed it toward the living room. We were mostly done eating anyway, so I didn’t mind his insistence on satisfying a different kind of hunger.

  “That’s quite a jump forward, Dane,” Dr. Rodriguez said from the wide-set chair she always sat in for our sessions, her feet curled up beneath her. I often wondered how her spine had any alignment at all, given how long she sat folded like origami while I talked about my fucked up life. “Are you certain you’re ready to take on something of that magnitude?”

  “I think I can,” I said, not entirely convinced. That’s why I wanted her opinion. She was the pro. “I think I’ve always wanted to do something like this, if for no other reason than to make it clear I control my life, not him.”

  “What do you hope to accomplish by speaking to your father now?”

  I sighed. That was the big question. Did I want closure? Did I want to tell him off and walk away, never to look back? Did I want to say once and for all who I was and not care if his reaction was negative? Was I trying to prove myself a man, finally, after all these years? I certainly knew there would be no acceptance and apology from him, so that wasn’t something I’d even entertain. Hoping for him to give a damn was madness, and I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of having that much power over me.

  “It’s difficult to explain, but I guess I’ve always felt as though I was on this path, and that a confrontation would be inevitable. I ran from it, hid myself away until I could get established on my own, become successful. Part of me wants to shove that in his face, tell him that despite him, I became something worth respecting anyway, and fuck him for being an obstacle instead of a dad. I guess it’s kind of like a high school reunion: you want to prove to all the haters you’re better than them.”

  “So you’re looking for a bit of a grudge match?” she asked, deep-red lips slightly curved up.

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure that’s it, exactly, though it’s appealing to fantasize about telling him to shove his bigotry and drunkenness up his ass.”

  “I think you did that when you refused to help him by getting tested for liver donation.”

  I conceded the point with a head nod. “I think if I could sit in front of him and be honest for once in my life, I’d be able to let go of years of resentment. I don’t need his approval,” I said, seriously considering my motivations. I brought my knee up and wrapped my arms around my shin. “I don’t want his approval. But….” I trailed off.

  “But you want him to know you don’t care if he approves?”

  Was that it? I wanted the bastard to know what he’d done, now that he’d been forced sober and had a chance of seeing the reality without the numbing patina of the drink. A mother and son dead, and his only living relative hating his guts. Would that change him?

  Did I give a shit if it did?

  My gaze shifted from inward, looking to Dr. Rodriguez’s pretty face. “I honestly don’t care what he thinks.”

  “Then why do you want to bother seeing him? It’s not easy, where he is.”

  With the clarity of an epiphany, I spoke almost wondrously. “I need it for me. I need to know that I don’t have to hide anymore, from anyone. Visiting him, telling him about my life, that’s me throwing off the last of my shackles and declaring my life my own. Whether he approves or not, I need to show him I’m free and that his heavy hand and abominable attempt to ‘raise me right’ did the opposite of what he tried, and it didn’t matter anyway. I’m still a good person. I take care of myself. I’m capable of loving someone, and I have a life in spite of my father. He’s truly nothing to me anymore.”

  She leaned forward, a touch of a smile on her lips and her long, sleek ponytail falling down one shoulder. I could tell she was proud of me for what I’d just said, but when her smile faded, so did mine. “Except, Dane, he is something to you.”

  I began to shake my head vehemently. No. I didn’t care what he thought, and he couldn’t hurt me anymore. I needed to prove that to myself, tell him his worst fears were true, and it didn’t matter. But Dr. Rodriguez held up a hand.

  “Listen to me, Dane. Are you listening?”

  “Yes,” I said, a touch weary. I didn’t feel I was explaining myself well at all.

  “Your dad’s opinion may not matter to you, but he’s not nothing. He’s a trigger. You have a heavy-duty case of PTSD. You’ve spent all but four years of your life with that man’s target on your back, watching your every move to keep yourself safe from him. Given your diagnosis, being in the same room with him, seeing his eyes, hearing his voice, even smelling his scent, could send you into a full-blown flashback. Are you prepared for that? If your father were to see you in such a moment, could you recover yourself enough to get out of there, and afterward, would you be able to let it go?”

  I stared at her, horror crawling up my skin with many feet, scratchy and scabrous. There was a certain level of humiliation I felt after a flashback, which was something I was working through. Even though I knew it was a mental reaction to external stimuli, flashbacks still felt like failures to me, something I desperately wanted to control but hadn’t been able to conquer as of yet. Yes, they were few and far between, but could I put myself in a situation where I risked my father seeing me at such a vulnerable moment?

  I didn’t think I could.

  Knowing me well enough to recognize when my hopeful balloon had deflated, Dr. Rodriguez spoke kindly. “It’s a goal, Dane. Something you can focus on to continue your recovery. But in my professional opinion, you’re not there quite yet.”

  “What if someone went with me?” I asked desperately, not ready to put the idea aside. “Holly could go. Hell, I bet she has a few choice words to say to the man herself.”

  “That might help you get through any potential confrontation with him more easily, but I’d like to table this, if only temporarily. Your techniques to avoid flashbacks and hypervigilant states are good but could be stronger.” I started to protest, trying not to glare at her like a petulant teen, but she carried on, cutting me off. “If you go in there not quite ready, you could set back months of progress, Dane. You could end up crouched under the table, shivering and convinced he’s about to hurt you, and he will see that. You have to be in the right place mentally and emotionally to deal with that.”

  I rested my forehead on my knee, trying not to let the sting in my sinuses become a full-fledged set of tears. I hadn’t known how much I needed to get him out of my system until the idea had occurred to me at Craig’s loft while we ate steak and talked about everything under the sun. I’d thought if I could shed the old man from my life once and for all, perhaps I’d be all better, and mending fences with Craig had a real chance of being nearly foolproof.

  “I think you’re almost there, for what it’s worth,” Dr. Rodriguez said kindly. “You don’t want to care, which is close to not caring. The trouble is, what he did to you will always hurt, will always be a sore spot, even if you no longer care who it was who hurt you. That’s because it meant you started your life having to work harder than everyone else for the simplest of things—touch you could trust, relationships you could rely on, friends, and self-respect. No one held your hand in the scary moments, so you learned to tackle them on your own, and you did an admirable job.” I scoffed. “You did,” she pushed. “You’re alive, Dane. I don’t know how many people in your shoes would have made it past puberty in the house where you were raised.”

  I finally looked up. “If I’d have killed myself, he’d have won.”

  She nodded. “Okay. But see, that checklist is still in your head, Dane. You’re successful because you have to prove yourself to your father. You’re not a drunk or an addict because you’re better than him. You’ve got friends and loved ones because you’re defying his hold on you. �
��

  I could see her point, even if I didn’t like it.

  “But you’re starting to do things for you, things that have nothing to do with him,” she countered herself, making sure I could see my progress and translate that into determination to keep working. “You’re fixing things with Craig. That has nothing to do with your dad. You’re learning to live out of the closet, in public. That has nothing to do with your dad. You’re taking pride in work that, while not as ambitious or high-risk as your former profession, still helps people lead better lives. You’re a good person, Dane. You’re doing that all for yourself.”

  I nodded, finally, begrudgingly, conceding. “Okay, fine. I won’t visit him yet. But soon,” I promised her and myself.

  “Soon,” she agreed. “But let’s get you to a place where your first thought when you accomplish more healing is how good it feels to be in charge of your own life, not how fun that accomplishment will be to shove in his face.”

  “I just thought that this would be my best chance, you know?” I asked, resigned. “If I’m going to confront him, now would be when I’m safest.”

  She nodded in understanding. “Safe from him, yes. But not safe from what he did to you. We have a little more work on that before you go charging into the fortress castle and proving yourself a knight to be reckoned with.”

  “Well hurry it up, wouldja?” I said with a hint of amusement. “I have a sword and suit of armor, all bright and shiny, waiting for me to put it on.”

  “Good, Dane. This enthusiasm is important for you. You’re fully engaged in taking charge of your life, and that, my friend, is the most direct route to living free.”

  Now that thought well and truly made me smile.

  Even though Rodriguez hadn’t quite been ready to green-light my desire to visit my father, I still left her office feeling positive. I had a plan, and things were falling into place. I hadn’t had a flashback in some weeks, and my hypervigilant states were becoming less frequent as well.

  I pulled out my phone to take it off silent and was surprised to see a text.

  Craig: Any chance you’re free to meet me for a drink (coffee?) this afternoon?

  It was sent fifteen minutes before. I didn’t have a shift for another couple days, so I fired back a reply that I was free whenever he was, and to name the place. That he returned the name of the pub we’d gone to the night I gave him the details of my past made me frown. It was barely 3:00 p.m. Was he desperate for a drink?

  Me: Did something happen at work with Jackhole?

  I’d taken to calling Craig’s incompetent team leader by any number of creative nicknames, much to Craig’s deviant pleasure. Jackhole seemed to be sticking.

  Craig: Not directly. Just meet me there in about an hour. Can you?

  Me: Yes. Do I need to be nervous?

  He didn’t respond, which made me trepidatious as I caught the train near Rodriguez’s office to get back to Queens. I told myself the patchy reception of the underground tunnels was responsible for the lack of reply.

  When I got to the pub, I found him at the same table we’d occupied the night I’d spilled my guts, and he had a plate of nachos and wings in front of him.

  “Is this an occasion to say fuck it to being good?” I asked, shrugging off my coat and hanging it on the hook provided on the side of the high-backed booth. When he didn’t smile, I cocked my head to the side, really looking at him. He kept his hands in front of him, still and clasped together. His hair was mussed as though he’d run his fingers through it until any sort of style he’d given it in the morning was gone, and despite having ordered the food I’d joked about the last time we sat in this place, Craig hadn’t sneaked a single nacho or wing before I arrived. When I finally saw into his eyes, I expected sadness or fear or anger. Even though he would only look at me for seconds at a time, rabbit-darting his gaze back to the front door or the wait staff at the end of the bar, hanging Christmas decorations from a giant worn box or the TVs, the glimpses I got were full of nervous energy and a kind of feverish hope.

  I knew this look. It was the one he’d worn when he’d graduated from The Art Institute and had secured his first job. It was the one he’d had when a cartoon ad project he’d led had won a major client for his company. It was the one from the art gallery showing before my issues had slammed him into reality beside a limo I’d been afraid to get into.

  He was excited. He had news.

  My stomach flipped over a few times as I sat down. The waitress came over with a drink for Craig—looked like a Jack and Coke, his choice for liquid courage—and to take my order. Taking a cue, I got a Long Island Iced Tea, for once not caring about drug interactions or if I could prove my resistance to addiction.

  “I’m glad you came,” he said, finally meeting my gaze and holding it.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, the food in front of me as unappealing as could be. The buffalo sauce on the wings was actually irritating.

  “I’m sorry for being cryptic, but I didn’t want to tell you this over a text. So, um, we talked about me job-hunting, right? I mean, you knew that even before our conversation from the other night.”

  It was the stillness of his hands that turned the burble of nerves in my stomach sour. He fidgeted, especially when he was nervous, but even when he was sitting in a subway car, his knee would bounce. When he was at a fancy restaurant, his hands would be fiddling with the utensils or twisting the fabric of his napkin in his lap. Experimentally, I put my leg forward to bump into his, even though the telltale shake of a bouncing knee was missing. Craig was entirely still, focused on me, and that, quite frankly, scared the piss out of me.

  “Right,” I answered slowly.

  The waitress set my drink down, and I took a gulp, ignoring the sickly sweet taste. It was booze, and in that moment, I needed a dump of some kind of depressant in my system before adrenaline could turn anything else to ash in my veins.

  “Well, I mentioned going for the dream job, right? A few months ago, I sent reels of my work off to Pixar and Dreamworks, mostly out of anger, because if I was going to get passed over by a punk kid, no matter how talented, when I know I’m talented as well, then I was going to pass them all over by landing a job at the Holy Grail of Animation. I was going to go into the vice president’s office and throw my offer letter on his desk and tell him to kiss my California-bound ass, because I was going to make the next Toy Story or Shrek. I never expected to get an interview, let alone….”

  My skin went clammy and cold, which warred with a major bloom of warmth in my chest. I smiled even as my eyes stung. I could see it coming a mile off.

  “You got the job,” I said wondrously, sheer joy practically bursting from my pores when he smiled, his dimples catching in the late afternoon light coming in from the windows.

  “Yeah,” he confirmed. “I got a job offer from Pixar.”

  I whooped loud, not giving a damn that every eye in the sparsely crowded bar turned our way. Standing up, I yanked him out of his side of the booth and engulfed him in a hug so fierce, so goddamned proud, I could barely speak. I kissed his temple and felt a tear track down my cheek, because holy fucking shit.

  “You have arrived!” I crowed, swaying him back and forth in a short dance of giddy joy. He laughed, his arms around my waist just as tight. I patted his head and pulled back to cradle his face in my palms, planting one hell of a kiss on his lips. It wasn’t meant to be raunchy, but we got wolf-whistled anyway. I ignored the onlookers and pulled back, smiling with my forehead rested on his. “I always knew you’d be somebody. I always knew it was a matter of time before you put the rest of us in your orbit, because you were made for the stars.”

  “Dane,” he said shakily, his eyes filled with tears and his laughter both relieved and terrified. “I got the fucking job!” I could barely hear him, such was his quiet reverence, as though he had only just begun to believe it now that he’d told someone.

  “You so did, baby.” I kissed him again, then released him s
o we could sit back down. “I am so proud of you, you don’t even know.” I couldn’t stop smiling at him, so if I was this happy, I didn’t understand how he wasn’t completely over the moon. His face fell, and his smile slipped from his lips like so much paint doused with turpentine. “Hey,” I nudged his fist. He took a drink, the ice clinking against his teeth as he opened his mouth wide to drain the rest of his glass. Signaling the waitress, I ordered him another one. “What’s with that face?”

  He looked at me sadly. “I’ve got until the end of the year to decide.”

  “What?” I squawked. “Why the hell haven’t you already said yes?”

  “They need to put the relocation expense in their new budget if they’re moving me, so they have to know if I’m taking the job by the end of the year. That’s only a couple weeks away. To decide about the job in California, Dane.”

  It sank in.

  I averted my eyes, sort of embarrassed by how long it took for me to see the obvious. Duh. I cleared my throat and schooled my face, just like I would have in front of a patient whose tests or scans showed bad news and I couldn’t say anything until I knew the extent of the danger. Back when I’d been a surgeon. Back when Craig and I had been together for years, and there wouldn’t have been a doubt in either of our minds if we’d stay together. Back when I’d have known I was welcome to go with him to California.

  Back before I’d ruined us.

  When I looked up again, it was with resolve. “You’re going.” It wasn’t a question or a suggestion, it was an order.

  He sat, statue still, while we regarded each other. I let the surgeon mask slide so he could see that yes, I was happy for him. Yes, I thought he should go. Yes, I would miss the holy fucking hell out of him. And yes, I understood he wasn’t ready to ask me to go with him.

  “Yeah,” he said softly, sadly. “I’m going.”

  September 2012

  “What are you doing here, Dr. Perry?” Chief Noble asked as he passed me in the hallway by the surgical screens that held the operating room schedules. They’d always looked like the arrival/departure boards at an airport, though they detailed attending and resident surgeons, what operation was being performed, and projected duration of use of the OR. I’d never flown anywhere, but I’d picked Holly and Braden up from LaGuardia when they’d go away for extended weekends, and those boards amid the chaos of the crowds had been sort of soothing, like a piece of the job I loved there to greet me when I walked in the doors.