chapter eighteen
A TORRENT BED OF KINDNESS
HER CHEST ACHES. Oxygen flees her lungs. Butterflies rule her stomach. The discovery seven months earlier hadn’t made her want to heave like this, like she wants to on this late December day. Yet to find answers she must walk forward into that elevator and rise up to the eleventh floor and enter Dr. Scold’s office. She listens to Bif Naked defiantly singing Tango Shoes for courage as she rehashes what Charlie had told her about this man, this professional, this family and marriage therapist he wants her to see with him and the others. He considers groups of friends a family too and has agreed to hold a family meeting with all of them: Charlie, Nance, Belinda, and herself. She’d asked if Grandmother could join, and they’d said yes. They know her well, even if they saw her only on holidays during the many years they’ve known each other. She takes her hat off, shaking her long hair out, before pressing the up button. She’s late.
Dr. Scold had spoken to her before this meeting to ensure that this is what she wanted. It isn’t really, but what choice does she have since they’re barely talking to her, she doesn’t know why, and they won’t say. This is the only way to find out. This meeting will give her answers. She hopes. He went over the ground rules with her, and he had asked her to show up fifteen minutes before the rest arrived to review again how the meeting would run.
Ding. The elevator doors slide open. She steps onto the elevator’s floor, turns, and stands between its piceous glass walls. Alone. She presses the button for the eleventh floor and watches through the closing doors, through the heavy glass front doors, her last view of the grey chilly outside world disappear. The elevator lifts her up, and before she’s ready, she’s standing outside Dr. Scold’s door with its neatly lettered metal nameplate to the side of it. He had said to come on in when she got there. So she does.
The small waiting room is empty; no one is behind the reception desk. It is Sunday after all, the last day of the first half of Advent, which she remembers her parents telling her looks forward to the return of Jesus at the end of time. She’s not sure why she remembers that trivial detail. It means nothing to her. Perhaps it’s some erstwhile memory rising up. Or maybe she saw a sign as the bus trundled past church after church on the long trip here.
She hears muffled steps, and soon a tall, aesthete looking man is standing in front of her, hand outstretched. She gingerly offers her limp hand, trying futilely to protect her still sensitive shoulder. He helps her off with her coat and hangs it up on a coat rack. She stuffs her hat and woven acrylic gloves into the coat pockets before hugging her purse to her chest and following him into a large light-filled room filled with various armchairs and 1960s-style macramé plant holders suspending spider plants in three corners. He points her to a chair while closing the door. He sits on an ergonomic, wheeled one, close to the door while she sinks and disappears into a large charcoal velour armchair.
“As you know I’m a trained psychologist and a registered marriage and family therapist. I’ve run many of these kinds of family meetings where the family is a group of concerned friends. Charlie has given me permission to tell you that he’s been my patient for many years, and over the past few, he’s expressed more and more concern for you and your situation. I agreed to this meeting, primarily to help him, but helping him means helping you as you mean much to him.
“I’ve drawn up an agenda. You will speak first, and then each of the others will speak. We will then open it up for respectful group discussion. Please do not interrupt the others when they’re speaking. I will ensure all of you have a chance to speak, but respect for each other is primary here. Accordingly, I ask that you not call anyone names, and I have asked the same of them.” He holds out a copy of the agenda for her to take, and she heaves herself up and out the chair, takes it, and settles back down to read it. Luckily, it’s only a few lines widely spaced apart.
“Is there anything in particular you wish to discuss?”
She’s thought of nothing else but her question why. Why are they ignoring her? Why have the phone calls become so infrequent, them so hard to reach? They don’t even return her messages. She doesn’t understand.
He nods as she expresses her pained confusion out loud and encourages her to ask these questions.
A faint tonal beep-beep comes through the door.
“Excuse me. I believe the others are here.”
The butterflies rise up and do a tattoo on her ribs, making her stomach heave, filling her throat. Hot, gleeful anticipation oozes down to meet them and presses itself right out through her pores. Fear grips her. She remembers Dr. Jones’s advice and immediately starts to breathe deeply, rhythmically in and out, starting with a count of three and deepening into a count of five. Her muscles release; the butterflies settle; the anticipation sulks back into its den.
“Hey, how are you doc?” she hears Charlie greet Dr. Scold. Charlie walks in to the group room soon after, dressed in black jeans, a new black shirt, Gucci loafers, a Rolex discreetly showing from underneath his cuff, and a new hairstyle reminiscent of a 1950’s good boy. She smiles closed-mouth at him, words refusing to come. He sits down in one of three grey brocade chairs, the one to the immediate left of Dr. Scold’s. Soon after, Belinda bounces in, dressed in a tight black silk-wool suit with a wide princess collar and silky white camisole peeking from underneath. Nance follows more slowly dressed in her usual garb of black acrylic cardigan, black T-shirt, black woollen wide pants, black stockings, and black pumps. She feels depressed just looking at her. Grandmother brings up the rear. Dr. Scold follows them in, closing the door behind him.
“Please take a seat and thank you all for coming.” Belinda sits next to Charlie, Nance next to Belinda, and Grandmother between herself and Nance. The wall is on her other side.
“You all know the rules, here’s the agenda,” he hands a sheaf of papers to Charlie, explaining briefly how the meeting will go, that she will begin, while Charlie takes the top one and passes the sheaf on. They each take their own copy, and Dr. Scold gestures to her.
She takes a deep breath, pulls out a sheet of paper on which she’d written what to say, opens her mouth, and reads, forcing the words out: “I’m here because I don’t understand, I don’t understand what’s happened between us. I’ve had a difficult f-f-few years, but we always knew we’d be there for each other in tough times. Blood may be thicker than water, we used to say, but so is friendship. I knew that when you came and sat with me after my diagnosis. You supported me in those early months, and I was so grateful for that, especially as Jim had started travelling so much. But for the last year, you’ve grown more and more distant. You don’t take my calls …”
“May I interrupt here,” Dr. Scold says. “We don’t want to use “you” statements here. Let’s use “I” statements so we don’t sound accusing,” Dr. Scold sits back and nods at her to continue.
“I” statements? Okay. “Well, um …,” she looks around at the blank faces, and her mind follows suit. She forgets about the paper in her hands.
“You were saying,” Dr. Scold prompts.
Her eyes return to his face. “I was saying, I was saying that I feel,” he nods at her encouragingly, “hurt. About how, about how our relationships have changed, that you’ve. No. That I feel a distance between us. I’m confused and hurt about why we rarely s-s-speak on the phone or even email each other. You don’t return …,” he shakes his head. She pauses, “Um, uh, you … well, we! We rarely speak. I miss that.” She falls silent. She has no idea how to say, without saying you, “you ignore me, you treat me like I’m a burden, you punish me for having AS as if I can magically change the injuries he’s caused, as if I have a broken leg but should be able to walk normally without a limp. You criticize me for needing you and try to get me to conform to your idea of who I should be while talking about how compassionate you are and understanding of my situation. You’re self-absorbed and complain that I am. You complain I talk endlessly about myself and always about my troubles, but my tro
ubles rule my life. If I’m to talk about myself, that’s all there is to talk about right now. What am I supposed to do? Talk about the weather, never about myself, while you talk about your work, your clients, your bad cold, how tired you are, your bad day. You have a bad day; I’m having a bad year, no, bad years. Plural.” She says none of this. Instead she says flatly, without pause: “I just want to understand why our friendships have changed.”
“Alright. Thank you. Charlie, why don’t you go first.”
“Thank you Dr. Scold,” Charlie says in a serious tone. He clears his throat, “I want to say we’re here because we love you.” The other two nod in sync. “We want the best for you, and we’re concerned about you. We’ve called this intervention …” Her heart skips. Intervention? They think she’s on drugs? She looks over at Dr. Scold. He’d said a family-type of meeting. He’s watching Charlie encouragingly. She doesn’t understand. When did this become an intervention, and why is Dr. Scold okay with that? “… because we’re concerned ‘bout how obsessed you’ve become with this Akaesman thing. That obsession worries me, you gotta know. The agitation within me urges me to speak to you. Frankly, we don’t believe you. We know you don’t have this Akaesman thing, being, whatever, in you. You’re depressed, and you need to acknowledge that instead of using Akaesman as an excuse for your behaviour.”
Her behaviour? And why does he get to say “you”? Therapist’s pet?
Charlie pauses as he looks eagerly into her eyes.
She speaks ploddingly, “I accept what you’ve said.” Well, she does accept it. It’s what he believes, the stupid fuck. Be narrow-minded and judgemental, why don’t you. Her face sinks into stone.
“I’m glad to hear that, you know,” he nods at her portentously, “that you’ve accepted that you’re depressed.”
“No,” she pauses. “I didn’t say that. I am not depressed. But I accept that you believe that.”
Charlie frowns, “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. We’re really worried ‘bout you, and, you know, this increases my, our, worry more.” He looks over at them, and they nod silently. He leans forward, hands on thighs, “You know, you need to change. You can’t go on this way. You’re harming yourself, and you’re harming us. I’ll let Belinda speak to that. Belinda.” He sits back up.
“Hey babe, I gotta agree with Charlie. We love you and all, but when you went off at me on Thanksgiving — you remember Thanksgiving last year, that little shindig you put on for your Grandmother and Nance, and what you did? That really frightened me. Nance remembers.”
“Yes, I do. I had to calm Belinda down afterwards. So what if she didn’t know she was coming until she came? I told her you’d be happy to have her there. But you blew up at her for no good reason,” Nance relates enthusiastically.
“I’m your friend, you know,” Belinda whines. “I came to celebrate with you, and you got angry. At me. You yelled at me. It was frightening, babe. You invited me, and suddenly you didn’t want me? What’s that all about?”
She stares at Belinda silently, thinking but not saying, “Yeah, but I also said to give me an answer the Wednesday before ‘cause I needed the time to prepare, and you said no. So suddenly it’s okay to change your mind when you all know I need notice? I told you my social worker had convinced me to do something social and how to set the parameters so I could succeed. And you stupid fucks fucked it up for me, and then blamed me for your fucking attitude problem. Fuck.”
“I told you …,” she begins out loud.
Dr. Scold holds up his hand, “Please, as I asked you, don’t interrupt. One speaker at a time.”
She shuts her mouth, her chest burns furiously, her eyes bore into him, as he turns back to Belinda and smiles at her, “Please continue.” While Belinda yaks on, she mutters imprecations against them, recalling how she told them that she needed time to prepare, time to buy the stuff, time to figure out how much to buy. It was only a simple pre-Thanksgiving time together of coffee and croissants, but it was a huge deal for her to prepare and to manage her fatigue and to be able to effing enjoy it. And where did all that planning get her? Fucking nowhere. Where was she supposed to suddenly find an extra croissant? She couldn’t do a large, noisy Thanksgiving feast like before. This was her way to celebrate quietly with her friends, and they screwed it up and then said she should apologize? She did ‘cause she’s nothing if not fucking obedient. She’d phoned Belinda half an hour later. Belinda had taken her apology as her due and offered none in return even though Belinda had responded to her hyperventilating panic with self-righteous yelling. What’s wrong with their memories?
She interrupts Belinda, “You said you didn’t want to come.”
Belinda pauses with mouth open, “Hey, I wanted to surprise you. What’s wrong with surprising you. You gotta be flexible, is what you need to learn.”
“Flexible? Flexible!” She pulls air in, mind blanking at the sheer stupendous selfishness she’s facing, unable to defend herself, hearing no defence of her, only seeing the gang together watching her, judging her. Strength descends upon her, invisible arms hug her, surround her, and infuse her with cool peace. The burning in her chest subsides. For the moment. She shifts in her chair so that she’s sitting with her feet flat on the floor and looks directly into Belinda’s eyes: “You know I do better with routine. I’ve explained over and over how routine helps me manage my fatigue better, how I get more done and feel better without surprises. I don’t get overwhelmed. When I get overwhelmed, I don’t cope well. You knew that. You know that.”
“Hey, that’s not good enough,” Belinda pushes back. “You’re using this Akaesman as an excuse babe, and we just don’t believe you.”
She squints at Belinda then the other two as they nod in sync, wondering what magical form of thinking got them to the point where they think she’s capable of fooling numerous experts with years and years of experience?
“You’ve got to learn spontaneity. You can’t be that rigid babe. That’s why we’re here, you know. We’re here for you, to help you, eh? You need to change and become more flexible.”
“And to be honest,” Nance adds, “that story you told me about seeing that being and eating that magical bun, what did you call it …?”
“Srukar,” she responds flatly. She’d told Nance that in confidence, wanting to share that whole strange experience with someone she trusts: Nance. She had sounded so understanding when she’d told her, so supportive.
“Right. Well, that worried us.” The others nod. “We had serious concerns about your sanity, about how safe you are to yourself and frankly to us too.”
Dr. Scold speaks up, “What I’m hearing is that they’re worried about you, a bit afraid of your aggressiveness and rightly so, and want you to receive care for your depression.”
“I am not depressed.”
“I’ve heard the others say they love you and want the best for you, but you haven’t said anything to them about loving them. I don’t see the love being returned. They’ve had to put up with a lot during these past few years, and your anger truly frightened Belinda. None of them feels safe around you. They don’t know when you’ll go off.”
She blinks at him. All she did was yell, like they never have. She remembers a huge yelling match all four of them had when they were in university together. She doesn’t remember why. Somehow an argument between her and Belinda had escalated to all of them yelling at each other, but by the end of the evening, they were drinking together at the Brunswick, shoes sticking to the floor, yelling puns at each other over the din. But now somehow, somehow yelling when she does it is different. She didn’t hit Belinda. She was standing yelling at Belinda from the dining room, while Belinda stood in her open front door, yelling back, and Nance was in between trying to get both to calm down. As soon as Belinda had left, she had calmed down. When she’d called soon after to apologize, at Nance’s and Grandmother’s insistence and her own guilt, she’d sounded distant. Obviously, Belinda never did calm down. And how come she doesn’t
have to apologize for her part in that incident? At least her own anger has an instant off switch, not under her control admittedly, and that would be nice, but her anger does switch off and fast.
Belinda’s high voice recalls her to the group room. “I thought you were going to hit me. You had that look on your face, babe. It was really bad. Until you change and get that anger under control, I can’t see you anymore. I don’t feel safe around you, you know.”
The embers of fury flare up, steaming her weariness away. “But I apologized! I don’t get it, you seem to be holding a grudge against me. You say you all love me, but this doesn’t feel like love. Miserable comforters you all are.”
“Hey! You know, Belinda’s not holding a grudge,” Charlie raises his voice, making her head swivel in response. “She’s been genuinely hurt, okay? And your perceptions are skewed if you think otherwise. You always talk like you’re the one being persecuted instead of acknowledging that we love you. This is an ongoing issue with you, you know. You’ve had emotional problems for a long time. Your problems have nothing to do with the syndrome or whatever you call it,” he pauses here, looks over at Belinda, and then back at her. “We haven’t told many about this, but we had something similar happen to us like with you. It’s not Akaesman, because there is no Akaesman. But we got blown around a bit. Jim did too, you know on his last camping trip, but he didn’t tell you because he didn’t want to worry you, okay? It took us a month to get over it. Sure, we were tired, and our muscles were sore, and it was, you know, difficult to think sometimes. But we didn’t make a big deal of it, like you. We found when we didn’t fight the fatigue and confusion, there was no anger. It was easier. And we got better. And yeah, some people think we’ve changed a bit, and yeah, we don’t do our jobs the same way, but so what? We don’t talk about it endlessly. Age happens.”
Nance knits her brows, “I didn’t hear about this Charlie. Am I the only one this has not happened to?”
“Yeah, sorry Nance, we didn’t tell you either. But, you know, we didn’t make a big deal of it like her. We didn’t need to see a doctor. We got better. We got on with our lives.” Charlie looks right at her, “Jim got better too. It’s really no surprise he left you. We all see things differently now, clearer actually, including you. That’s why we know you don’t have it. We really wish you’d get help for your emotional problems.
“We’ve proved our love by being here for you, you know. We asked for this meeting and made time in our busy schedules to be here for you. We’ve given up other pursuits and our time to be here with you. Don’t you get that?”
Nance jumps in, “I’m concerned too because you’ve isolated yourself. We used to meet for coffee every week over at Starbucks. You’d go out with Charlie to see a play, and you and Belinda hung out,” she gestures toward them, and they nod in reply. “Now we don’t see you. You have these strange eating behaviours, like not eating meat and insisting on eating only organic. That makes it really hard for us, and it’s not healthy. No wonder you have no energy when you have no protein in your diet.
“You used to hold a Thanksgiving dinner for the whole crowd, with a Butterball turkey and everything. Remember how we laughed every October over how you would try to stuff the turkey into your oven and then butcher it into parts? And every year you’d vow to get the right-sized bird and to defrost it in time, but you never did,” she laughs. Then her mouth shrinks back to a straight line. “But it’s been years since those good times. Now it’s all about you, and you haven’t done anything for over three years. And last October you only did that little afternoon get-together with a couple of us. That’s three years you’ve isolated yourself. This is not healthy,” Nance admonishes. “And trying to say it’s because you can’t handle groups, that’s just an excuse to avoid admitting you’re depressed. We all know that’s a sign of depression. You must get help for that,” Nance stresses, leaning forward, shaking her hands at her. “But we can’t talk to you because of how you’ll react, like with Belinda. If one tries to say a word, you’re offended. It’s your responsibility to change that, then we can talk to you again. Look at you, you’re not listening to us.”
Not listening? She’s listening. She’s listening to the knives, that one by one fly across the room from their mouths into her heart, her stomach, her back. She’s listening to the reminders of past competences, past joys, past times that are no longer part of her life. She’s listening to their total focus on her making themselves feel better. Her body slumps into itself. Her emotions shrivel up and sink into a pit of oblivion. Her face surrenders to her fatigue, her cheeks dragging down, her forehead cooling into the familiar concentration headache, her jaw tense from trying not to be distracted by Dr. Scold’s ticking clock, a gull screaming past the window, the clouds shifting by outside, visible through the large windows. She’s been working on her concentration, but they don’t want to hear about that kind of work with TARC or Haoma. Every time this past year that she’s tried to talk about the successes she’s had with her therapists and psychologist, they change the subject.
“I’m listening,” she says without affect, suddenly deflated. “My friends are as treacherous as a sinkhole hiding beneath the asphalt.”
Nance shakes her head, “I don’t think so. We’re here to help you. And you’re arguing with us. You’re like an alcoholic.” Nance pauses and then repeats it, “You’re like a practicing alcoholic, and you only have one topic of conversation. We’ve tried to adjust, but how much adjusting do we have to do? It’s time you got on with your life. Stop talking about Akaesman. Get help with your depression. And to be honest, you need to regain our trust if you want to be part of our family. You’ve lost our trust. We can’t trust you anymore, do you get that?”
“She has Akaesman syndrome. She’s had the scans; she’s seen the experts. She isn’t well,” Grandmother booms at Nance.
“That’s what we’re saying. She isn’t well, and she isn’t willing to change. We can’t keep adjusting to her problems. Every time we talk to her, she only talks about herself and never listens to us.”
Then how does she know about Belinda’s latest contretemps at the shop? Always, Belinda is having some issue with her co-worker, to the point where she’s bored to tears with variations on the same story. And how does she know about Charlie’s latest client in Forest Hill? Or how does she know that Nance has resolved her getting-to-work late issues with her boss? She speaks no words though.
“It’s been hard to adjust to her problems. We’ve all had to adjust to her. But she has Akaesman syndrome. She’s not depressed. I looked into it. And I have had plenty of depressed patients, and she doesn’t act like they did,” Grandmother asserts.
Charlie counters, “With all due respect, she’s your granddaughter, you know. It’s natural you’d want to defend her. But we’re her friends. We see the truth. She needs to see a shrink for her depression and for this fantasy she’s made up and sucked you into. She’s resisting change, okay? She wants to stay the same, and she can’t. She needs to change.”
He clears his voice and then turns to face her, “You used to be so much fun. You used to have a great sense of humour and always fun to talk to. You listened to us.”
The others nod. Nance clenches her hands; Belinda wipes her eyes.
Charlie leans forward more earnestly, his hands clasped, nodding between his legs, “We want to be a part of your life, but we don’t feel you want us in your life,” he says ponderously. “You’re so me-focused, so self-absorbed, and you don’t care about us. You don’t even acknowledge when you’ve hurt us. You just don’t listen, and you don’t seem to think our stresses and crises are all that important. Then you blow up at us. You’ve become unstable. We’re concerned about your behaviour.” He pauses for effect. “It needs to change. You need to change. We want you in our life, you know. But until you change,” he pauses, looks at the floor, then back up at her, blinking, “you can’t be.”
Dr. Scold nods. “I hear you Charlie.” He
speaks to her, “They’re saying they want to feel valued by you, they want you to face the truth, and I’m not seeing that here from you. They believe you have anger management issues also. Have you taken an anger management course?”
“No —”
Dr. Scold shakes his head as he interrupts, “This is precisely the problem they’re having. I want to know do you hear them?”
“Yes,” she says, defeated. She hears them. They, who are at ease, have contempt for misfortune. She’s not acceptable for who she is, right now. She’s not acceptable for speaking about Akaesman and saying that she has AS. She’s not acceptable for working hard on compensating strategies and managing this situation that she had not asked for. She’s not acceptable for being unable to stop the eruptions that show as anger, even though she’s discussed it at length with Dr. Jones who had told her that until she knows when those eruptions will hit, she can do nothing to stop them without a friend or family member cuing her as to what is happening. They may be able to see what she cannot sense. But not one of them wants to be that person for her. They have lives, as they’ve never hesitated to tell her. She’s not acceptable for needing their patience, needing their help. She’s not trustworthy for speaking the truth because they prefer lies. Her thoughts halt. She’s not trustworthy, she repeats silently to herself. Her heart contracts, her throat constricts, her head caves in, her mouth sucks in her tongue. She’s not trustworthy. She’s not acceptable for living the way she is, putting boundaries around her the way TARC and Dr. Jones at Haoma had taught her so that she could be as functional as possible, so that she can recover as quickly as possible. She’s not acceptable because she isn’t who she was. They want that person back. And she ain’t coming back.
She ain’t coming back.
She ain’t coming back.
And this person she is, is obviously not worthy, not valuable, not wanted.
Why is she alive?
~~~*~~~
She Page 18
