“Of course,” he said, jovially. “But I am on a roll here. I haven’t been sleeping much. But who needs sleep? Everyone says you need this much sleep or that much, but what do they know? I think they sleep out of boredom. I’ve got too much exciting work to do to waste my time sleeping.”
“I know what you mean,” she said. “Dad, what if I am destined to live one of those boring lives like other people? I don’t think I could stand that.”
He stared at her. “I think you need a cup of tea,” he said and he led her into the kitchen.
Amelia was no longer startled by the décor of the house but she didn’t like the ghostly emptiness. Rather than minimalistic, she thought the house felt abandoned.
“How’s the work going?” Amelia asked. “Dad, you really need a new dressing gown.”
“Oh, there is no tea,” Henry said, disappointed, rooting through bare cupboards. “Look, there is nothing here. I am sorry.”
“I know Mom put in an order for your delivery this morning,” Amelia said.
“There is soup,” Henry said. “Would you like some soup?”
“There’s always soup,” Amelia laughed. “Yeah, Dad, I’ll have some soup. Cream of broccoli.”
“Excellent choice,” Henry nodded his approval. “Tell me about you. What is happening in your life?”
“I’m afraid of being boring,” Amelia told him.
“Ah right, you said that. And that led us to tea, which led us to soup. Let us explore this topic. What constitutes boring?”
“Doing things like everyone else,” Amelia said promptly.
“But does one have a choice?” Henry asked. “If I had had a choice, I would have lived a normal life with you and your mother and been happy.”
“Even if it meant giving up your poetry?”
“Yes, even then. My life is very hard work with not a lot of fun. The only time I ever had fun was when I was with your mother.”
“So why didn’t you stay with her?”
“I had no choice. You think my life is more interesting this way, than if I had stayed with her?”
“For sure! Of course.”
“It is eccentric, and unusual, and it is who I am but it is no more or less boring than a fellow who has a family of four and a mortgage and a job at the bank that he hates.”
“You hate your job?”
Henry paused for a moment. “Well, it is very tedious, some days. Trying to find that exact word. There are many words in my head but then sometimes I cannot find the right one and it drives me crazy, I tell you.”
He laughed. He still had a beautiful deep laugh and a rich made-for-radio voice and Amelia loved to listen to him talk, but she loved it more when he laughed.
“Yeah, right, Dad,” she said, smiling. “But your contribution to the world is worth more than some bank manager with a truckload of snotty kids. I mean, your contribution to the world is poetry! That’s worth more than anything.”
“But where would we be, if we didn’t have bank managers? Or grocery stores, for example? I, for one, would be lost. Imagine me trying to farm and harvest my own food! I think, Amelia, that each of us in life has a job to do, and that job has moments of tedium and moments of joy. And that is just the way life is.”
“Adult life isn’t much fun,” Amelia commented.
“That’s a fact. Here’s a spoon. Tell me if the soup is too hot.”
Amelia tested the soup. “It’s perfect.”
Henry carried it over the marble island and they stood together, companionably sharing the soup from the pot.
“How is your thesis coming along?” Henry asked.
“It’s better than it was. I thought I was getting road-blocked but I found a bunch of material to support my idea of Joan as a metaphor for freedom and imagination.”
“Joan of Arc.” Henry tapped his spoon on the pot and three tinny ringing sounds chimed. “Have you considered the possibility that you love her so much because you can relate to her?”
“Her solitary nature? Her ability to see the metaphoric and imagined dimensions of reality? Of course I have, Dad. And I do like her for that. People wanted to cage her and trap her, just like they want to trap me. That’s my whole point. Joan wasn’t afraid of death but she couldn’t stand the idea of being cut off from the voice of her imagination and neither can I. I’d rather be dead too.”
Henry looked at her thoughtfully. “Is there something going on that I am not aware of?”
“You know I’m in therapy?” Amelia asked and Henry was startled.
“No, I did not. You? Why?”
“Because of my so-called ‘issues’. If I want to finish my thesis on Joan and one day be a teacher, which I don’t even know if I do want to do, then I have to complete this course of therapy. If I don’t go, I’ll lose my welfare funding as well as my grant for university.”
“I can give you money,” Henry said. “I have always told you and your mother that.”
“Yeah, well, Mom and Nana don’t want you to, for some reason. I think they are worried that if you die, there’ll be no money and then if I am no longer on the welfare system, I won’t manage to make a living by myself.”
“If I die, you and your Mom and Ethel get everything split three ways,” Henry said. “However, I don’t plan on dying for some time. Despite the tedium of trying to find the perfect word, I do actually like being alive.”
“Why?”
“Why do I like being alive? Because it is fascinating! All of it is incredible! I marvel at life, Amelia, and I find it fascinating. Develop your powers of fascination, my child, and you will see that nothing is boring. Not really.”
“Cream of broccoli soup is fascinating,” Amelia said, teasing him, and he shook his spoon at her.
“It is! The nuances of taste, the saltiness, the very broccoli-ness of it! Magical, I tell you! But what is this therapy you have to go to?”
“It’s called D.T.O.T., and it works in tandem with cognitive behavioural therapy. The doctor invented it himself, and D.T.O.T. stands for Do The Opposite Thing, and so whatever your phobia is, you have to do the opposite. One guy in our group is there for anger management and he got caught having sex with a woman who has anxiety disorder and Dr. Carroll was very pleased. He said they were both finding ways to practice D.T.O.T., even if they weren’t consciously aware of it.”
Henry frowned. “Sounds over-simplistic to me,” he said.
They finished the soup and Henry took the pot over to the sink and washed it carefully. “I mean,” he added, rinsing the pot and putting it in the dish rack, “I could not do it. I could not just tell myself to stop hearing voices—”
“You hear voices, Dad?” Amelia interrupted him. “I didn’t know that.”
Henry gave her a rueful smile. “Much like your beloved Joan. Although, by the way, some people thought she simply had tinnitus, epilepsy, and schizophrenia.”
“And anorexia and post-traumatic stress disorder and tuberculosis,” Amelia said. “They can’t bear the fact that she lived such a brave life. She heard her ‘angel voices’ on the church bell chimes. How do you hear yours?”
“They shout at me a lot. They are responsible for most of my poetry,” Henry said. “I write down what they say. Which takes a lot of concentration, I will tell you that much. They all talk over each other and they yell at the same time, but thankfully they also repeat themselves a lot, too. So if I miss something the first time, I catch it on the next go round.”
Amelia laughed. “You should hear how they dissect your words in a class, Dad! They can go on forever explaining how you reached certain logical conclusions. Apparently you find ways of expressing logic that no one has ever done before.”
“Is that right?” Henry looked delighted.
“No one would believe they were just voices in your head,” Amelia laughed.
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“They are not just voices, my mocking child. They are the diverse and multiple facets of myself seeking expression. I simply have too many facets of thought for there to be only one channel of expression.”
“That makes perfect sense,” Amelia agreed. “Exactly like Joan. And me too, although I don’t hear any voices, but I can see things other people can’t.”
“Do people at the university know that you are my daughter?”
“No, they don’t, and not because I am ashamed of you, it’s the opposite. I can’t live up to you, and that’s my biggest fear. I’m not like you or Joan. I’m boring and ordinary, with no special gifts of madness, only annoying ones that inconvenience other people and won’t ever let me live a happy life.”
“That sounds like your mother talking,” Henry said. “The annoying and inconvenient bit, I mean.”
“Yes, she does worry. But she’s right, Dad. What hope is there for me? I’ve never had a boyfriend and I doubt I ever will.”
“Ah, so that’s what this is about. I should have known. All of life boils down to two things: love and poetry. Although poetry may come first. Tell me about your love interest.”
“There’s nothing to tell. He’s got a girlfriend.”
“That is not cast in stone, sadly for her,” he said.
“That’s what Nana said.”
“And how is Ethel?”
“I don’t think she’s well. She won’t say but she’s been taking a lot of naps and that’s not like her.”
“No, not like her at all. Has she seen a doctor?” Amelia could tell he was worried.
“She says she doesn’t have to, that it will pass.”
“Tell your mother about this.” Henry was firm. “She might not notice what is going on, knowing her. But if you tell Megan, she’ll do something about it.”
“I will, Dad. Thanks for the soup and the chat. I’d better get going.”
“Anytime.”
He walked her through the empty hallway and Amelia noticed that everything sparkled and shone: the chandeliers, the parquet flooring, even the windows. “Do you get a cleaner in?” she asked.
“I do it myself,” Henry said, proudly. “It is an excellent way to think. When your hands are busy doing menial tasks, your mind is freed up to run around and play. Some of my best ideas come to me when I am cleaning.”
“I should try it,” Amelia said, thinking about her room that looked like a disaster area. “If nothing else, it’d make Mom and Nana happy. Goodbye, Dad.”
She hugged him and walked down the pathway, turning to wave when she got the end.
Henry waved back and then he closed the heavy wooden door. Amelia stared at the silent house, picturing him inside, going back to his papered walls to catch the messages from the voices with the butterfly net of his mind.
10. GROUP THERAPY: SESSION THREE
WHEN AMELIA RETURNED TO THE THIRD WEEK of Opposite Thinking therapy, as she had taken to calling it, she took care to sit down between Persephone and Ainsley and when Mike arrived, he looked disappointed. She avoided making eye contact with him and doodled on her notepad instead, ignoring the conversations going on around her. She did notice that he was particularly handsome in an open-collared steel-blue shirt and she was further saddened by the situation. In an effort to distract herself, she turned to chat to Ainsley and realized the girl was crying solemnly into a wad of tissue. Amelia wondered if she should say something but she couldn’t think where to start and she returned her attention to her notepad.
“Hey, that’s really good,” Persephone said, looking at Amelia’s drawing.
“You think so?” Amelia was surprised. “They’re just weird scratching and caricatures that I do.”
“You should do a graphic novel,” Persephone said. “I love graphic novels. There’s a whole world of them out there, right here in this city. I think you’d be great. What with your, I won’t call it a disorder, your whatever-thingy, I bet you could imagine all sorts of things.”
“That would be very true,” Amelia said. “I did have an art teacher once and he said I showed a unique potential but I thought he was being kind because I was being home-schooled and couldn’t even go to a normal school.”
“Normal schools are very no great shakes—” Persephone started to say but just then Dr. Carroll flapped into the room, breathless and shaking.
“Late, I’m sorry, I am a bit late!” He sat down with a heavy thump and took out his notes and looked around. “I suppose Alexei and Whitney are at it again? Can someone go and get them?”
“I will,” Joanne said, getting up.
“In the meantime,” Dr. Carroll said. “Let’s have a quick, and I do mean quick, no rambling streams of consciousness, thank you very much, a quick check-in as to how your week was and specifically if you made any progress with D.T.O.T. Ainsley, I see you are back. You can start.”
“I broke up with my fiancé like you said and I’m not happier. I’m very, very sad,” she wailed. “I can’t stop crying. I feel horrible.”
“Firstly, I did not tell you to break up with your fiancé. I never tell you to do a thing or not to do a thing.”
“That’s not true,” Shannon interjected. “You told me to take that elevator and I nearly died of fright.”
“Don’t interrupt please, Shannon. You’ll get your turn. And secondly, Ainsley, you are simply working through a plethora of emotions right now, which, although it may not feel like it, is great. Carry on! You are resolving issues and making progress.”
The door opened and Alexei and Whitney staggered in, followed by Joanne.
“Welcome, sex fiends!” Dr. Carroll said cheerfully. “Take a seat. Next we’ll have Angelina. Any progress on making an actual medical appointment?”
Angelina shook her head mournfully and Dr. Carroll sighed audibly.
Amelia was reminded of her father’s words to tell her mother about Ethel. She scratched a reminder on her notepad and missed the advice that Dr. Carroll doled out to Angelina.
“David?”
“Spoke to more clients. I even took one out for dinner.”
“Excellent. Whitney, are you feeling less anxious?”
“I’m loving life! Things are much better at home too and my daughter is much more cheerful.” Whitney cast a big smile at Alexei.
“And I have my anger issues under control,” Alexei said, folding his hands across his belly, his long legs stretched out in front of him.
“Great! Shannon?”
“I’ve got nothing to say. I didn’t take any elevators or go in any revolving doors and if anything, my fear is worse. I had trouble even taking the subway to come here.”
“That’s good,” Dr. Carroll said encouragingly. “Before improvement, there is regression. Have faith. Persephone?”
She looked downcast. “Nothing. A nothing-much week really.”
“Did you leave the house?”
“Ah, yeah, well…”
“Did you leave the house? Yes or no.”
“No.”
“Well then, moving on. Amelia?”
“I took a few buses that I was supposed to,” Amelia admitted, and in so doing, she felt as if she had betrayed herself.
“And how did you feel?”
“Like a lemming, a suburban lemming, headed for a tedious, deathly-dull life.”
“Humph,” Dr. Carroll snorted. “A lemming, eh? You are overly attached to your idea of your uniqueness. You can still be singularly unique, and yet do the things that the rest of the world does. Think about that, please. Mike?”
Mike shrugged. “I was supposed to talk to a lot of people about a lot of things but I didn’t.”
“Classic avoidance. I would say that list of people was too long. I suggest you pick one person per week. You need to break it down to manageable parts. Joanne? Any to
ilet weeping?”
She shook her head, her twisted mouth grim, her cheeks sucked inward. “I haven’t cried in the washroom, but now I sit in there for hours. I can’t go back to my desk. I just sit there, on the toilet, trying to propel myself to get back to work. And I can’t move and I get so behind, and then I have to work all night to get things finished, to do the things I was supposed to have done during the day.”
“You hate your job,” Dr. Carroll said, simply. “And you have no after-hours life, do you?”
Joanne shook her head.
“Work on finding something you like to do at night. For example, find a club of Scrabble players or something. I’ve got no idea what your interests are, but there will be something. You need to find a community and become part of it.”
“Groups of people annoy me,” Joanne said. “Everybody talks at the same time.”
“Groups of people are merely gatherings of interesting individuals,” Dr. Carroll retorted. “You need to approach life from the opposite direction. I can’t make you do it, but it would help if you tried. Opposite, people, think opposite! You’re being a little slow to catch on here. D.T.O.T., remember?” He consulted his notepad. “We’re missing Gino today. Kwon chose to leave and pay the price. Goodbye, Kwon.”
Just then Gino burst in and he looked frantic and sweaty.
“Gino, have a seat,” Dr. Carroll waved at him. “How was your week?”
“Not good.” Gino was breathing heavily and he hugged his jacket tightly to him.
“It happens,” Dr. Carroll said. “You missed check-in, your bad. We’ll hear from you later. People, this week we are going to concentrate on problem solving. I want each of you to write down a problem you have. Not your usual big phobia but a little problem, like say for instance, you don’t visit a relative that you feel you should, or your neighbour drives you nuts by playing music at all hours, or some girl sits next to you and chews her lunch too loudly. Come on, all of you, write down one thing.”
Amelia chewed on her pen. She didn’t think she had any problems apart from her main one. She thought hard and wrote: I can’t make myself tidy up my room.
The Nearly Girl Page 17
