“I said I’m done. I’m leaving.”
“I heard you. The door’s not locked.”
I just looked at her for a moment. Surprisingly, she didn’t seem affected at all by my outburst. “What do you want from me?”
“I want to help you. You came to me because you’re troubled. I think we just found one of the things troubling you. If you wish to explore it, we can. Or you can ignore it. But that would be a waste of both of our time, since I think we both know that there’s something about that relationship that’s bothering you.”
“It’s not a waste of your time,” I said.
She sat up a little in her chair. “Why do you say that?”
“You get your hundred bucks an hour whether you help me or not.”
She took a short breath. “What if I told you that I was more concerned about your well-being than your money?”
“I wouldn’t believe you.”
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t even know me.”
“I know that you’re in pain. That’s all I need to know.”
“What are you, a saint?”
“I’m human.”
I leaned forward. “Look, I don’t buy this humanitarian crap. I take people’s money. A lot of money. Sometimes money they don’t even have. I’m a freaking genius at talking them out of their money. Yesterday a man came into my office whose son committed suicide after I took his money.” I shuddered as the words rang out into the still room.
“Would you like to talk about that?” she asked in a soft voice.
I hovered for a moment by the door, then returned to the couch and sat back down.
“That must have been very painful for you,” she said.
“Who cares about me? I’m still alive.”
“I care about you,” she said. “And yes, you’re alive. But it’s not much of a life, is it?”
I thought I could poke through the veneer of this woman’s pretended concern but I couldn’t. This woman actually seemed to care.
“There’s a reason I came to see you. I had something bizarre happen to me last night.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I was on stage, presenting in Milwaukee. When I looked down into the audience I thought I saw the man who had been in my office. The one whose son committed suicide.”
“You thought he followed you?”
I took a deep breath. “He was with his son. He still had the noose around his neck. I looked away, and when I looked back at them, they were gone.”
She jotted something down in her notes.
“Am I going crazy?”
She looked up at me thoughtfully. “I think you’re dealing with some pretty heavy trauma,” she said. “A man blamed you for his son’s death. Did you think you could just shrug that off?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe Charles James the successful businessman did, but your psyche didn’t.” She looked at me sympathetically. “That must have been terrifying.”
I looked down for a moment, trying to control my emotion. “It was.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Let’s talk about it.”
Over the next half hour we talked about the young man who had killed himself. Dr. Fordham was very comforting and wise, and just talking about it brought relief and perspective. I was disappointed when the alarm went off on her phone. She casually reached over and turned it off. “I’m afraid that’s our time for today. How do you feel?”
“Raw,” I said.
She nodded. “I would expect that. I want you to do something. You shared some intensely difficult things today. That took a lot of courage. For the rest of the day I don’t want you to think about what we talked about. Are you going straight home?”
“Yes.”
“Good. When you get home, I’d like you to take a hot bath with the lights off and put a warm washcloth over your face and just relax. It will help. After what you’ve been through, you need to let yourself heal. Will you do that?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
She stood and I followed her out the door. She put out her hand. “It was nice meeting you, Charles.”
I took her hand. “Likewise. I’m glad I didn’t leave.”
“Me too.”
“Now what do we do?”
“That’s up to you. We opened a wound. We have more work to do.”
“What do you think, a couple more sessions?”
“How many sessions is up to you and how you respond. A couple of sessions would probably be optimistic.”
The vagueness of her answer bothered me. “How many will it take? Give me a ballpark.”
“That’s not really possible.”
I continued to push. “What’s the average?”
“I have clients who have been coming to me for several years.”
“Years? They must be really crazy.”
She frowned. “I don’t use that term to describe my clients. Some people have been through a lot in their lives.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, then added, “I’ve been through a lot.”
“I believe you. I look forward to learning more about you.”
“When can I see you again?”
“I can make time the day after tomorrow.”
“Good. I’d like to see you as many times as I can before I leave on tour.”
“Tour?”
“I’ll be leaving for a series of presentations around the country. Twenty-one in all.”
“Let’s check my schedule.” She led me to the reception desk. Two new people were seated in the room waiting for their appointments.
“June, would you please schedule Mr. James for this Thursday?”
The woman smiled at me. “Let’s see what we can do.”
Dr. Fordham turned back to me. “I’ll see you soon.”
I scheduled my next appointment for Thursday afternoon. As I walked out of the clinic, I felt both relief and vulnerability. The relief, I believed, came from confession. Maybe the vulnerability did too. We had definitely stirred something up. I just hoped that it would be for the better.
I drove home without even turning on my phone. I went upstairs into my bathroom and ran the bath. Then I undressed, turned out the lights, and slid into the hot water. Then, as the doctor had instructed, I lay back with a washcloth over my face.
As I calmed my thoughts, I found myself reliving the appointment. I could understand why Amanda was so taken with Dr. Fordham. The woman was good at her craft. Frankly, I couldn’t believe what I’d just shared with a complete stranger. The illusionist had been tricked.
Chapter Ten
One man’s holiday is another man’s root canal.
—CHARLES JAMES’S DIARY
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27
I slept well for a change. No nightmares, or at least nothing that woke me. My phone rang within two minutes of my turning it back on. Amanda’s voice was frantic. “Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick.”
“It’s not a big deal,” I said. “I just turned off my phone.”
“Just? You never turn off your phone. Ever. I thought someone had killed you or something.”
“That’s a little disconcerting,” I said. “Or revealing.”
“What was I supposed to think?”
“Murder wouldn’t have been my first guess. Besides, indirectly, it’s your fault I disappeared. After my appointment, your shrink told me to go home and unplug. I was just following doctor’s orders.”
Amanda calmed. “So what did you think of ‘my shrink’?”
“I was impressed. She could make a living from the stage.”
“I told you she was good,” Amanda said.
“Yes, but you also told me that tofu hot dogs were good, and I still throw up in my mouth whenever I think about that time I tried one.”
“You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”
“No. It indelibly scarred me. So, what’s up?”
“Are you coming in?”
>
“No. I’m just going to work from home today.”
“All right. But I need to meet with you soon. Glenn needs you to approve the new video presentation.”
“Just have him e-mail it to me.”
“You know how he loves to do this in person.”
“You want me to drive all the way downtown just so I can reassure his insecurity?”
“Sorry. How about tomorrow morning?”
“Fine,” I said. “Wait, I’ve got something.”
“Not according to your schedule.”
“I made another appointment with Dr. Fordham.”
“So you really didn’t hate it.”
“I never said I hated it. I’m going to see where it takes me.”
“I think it will do you good,” she said. “Just in time for the new tour. Can you believe it’s almost here?”
“Yes.”
“It’s like Christmas. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” She hung up.
“Christmas,” I said to myself. “I hate Christmas.”
Chapter Eleven
It requires peculiar acrobatics of the mind to hate God for not existing.
—CHARLES JAMES’S DIARY
THURSDAY, APRIL 28
I spent the morning looking over sales reports then drove downtown to Dr. Fordham’s office. This time her office door was open when I arrived and she walked out to greet me. “Come in, Charles.”
“Thank you.” I followed her inside.
“Have a seat.” She waited until I had sat down, then sat down herself. “How are you?”
“Still here.”
“Was that ever in question?”
“No.”
“Good. So, have you had any thoughts or epiphanies since our last meeting that you’d like to share?”
“I didn’t tell you everything about the dream.”
“You can tell me about it now.”
“I told you that I’m walking west along Route 66 toward California. What I left out was that all around me there’s destruction and desolation.”
“What kind of destruction?”
“Fire, walls of fire.”
She wrote on her pad. “You said that you were alone.”
“On the road, I am. But there are other people. I don’t see them, but I can hear their crying and wailing.”
“This desolation is all around you?”
“It’s on both sides of the road and in front of me, like I’m going toward it.” I took a deep breath. “I think that maybe it’s symbolic of my death. Or maybe it’s hell.”
What I said clearly affected her. She sat back in her chair. “Do you think you’re going to hell when you die?”
“If there was such a place.”
“Why would you think you’re going to hell?”
“Dozens of reasons,” I said.
“Pick one.”
“Just one? How about because I hate God. At least, I would if I believed in one.”
She looked at me quizzically. “I noticed that you wear a WWJD wristband,” she said, glancing at my wrist. “I assumed that you were Christian.”
I held up my arm, revealing the bright-orange band. “No. It’s WWJJD: What Would Jesse James Do? It’s a gimmick. We sell them at the seminars.”
“Jesse James? The outlaw?”
“He was my great-great-great-grandfather,” I said.
She made a note on her pad. “So back to what you were saying. You said that you were afraid you were going to hell, but you don’t believe in God. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Would it be fair to say that if there’s no God, then there’s no hell either?”
Her observation made me smile. “Now there’s something they don’t teach in Sunday school. God, the reason for hell. Kind of undermines the whole ‘God is love’ campaign.” I shook my head. “I’ve never understood why people flock to a God who clearly delights in their suffering.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you believe in God?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“So you probably think I’m sinful.”
“No. I reserve judgment to God. And frankly, I believe that most people’s condemnation comes from themselves, not God. But what I believe is irrelevant to your state of mind. What matters isn’t even what’s true but what you believe to be true. And from what you just said, you sound more to me like you hate God than disbelieve in God.”
“That would be like hating the Easter Bunny,” I said. “I usually save my disdain for things that actually exist.”
“Yet you do carry disdain for God. You just told me that God, who doesn’t exist, delights in suffering. You didn’t say the Easter Bunny delights in human suffering.”
“I’ll put it this way. I’d hate God if there were one.”
“So, hypothetically speaking, let’s say there is a God. Explain to me why you would hate him.”
“Because he hated me first.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because only an enemy would betray me the way he did. When I was a kid, I trusted in him. I read my Bible. I prayed every day for his help and protection, but he never once helped or protected me. This leaves me to believe one of three things: either he doesn’t exist, he doesn’t care, or he’s sadistic. By not believing in him I’m actually giving him the benefit of the doubt.”
The doctor made a few more notes on her pad and said, “Tell me about your childhood.”
“That would take a year of sessions.”
“Give me a synopsis.”
“We only have forty minutes left.”
“My appointment after you canceled, so we can go longer if you like.”
Sadly, my first thought was that she was only asking so she could fill the time slot and get her hundred-dollar hourly rate. It was almost as if she read my thoughts.
“I won’t even charge you for it.”
“I can afford it,” I said.
“I know you can. I just think it’s important for you to know that I don’t do my job for the money.”
“How did you know I was thinking that? What are you, a mind reader?”
She smiled. “In a way we therapists are. We help our clients navigate their minds. My father was also a therapist. He told me that some of his colleagues made side incomes acting as fortune tellers.”
“Your father was a therapist too?”
“Yes.”
“That must have been nice. Having a father who understood you.”
“It was nice. We’re very close.”
“My father was the opposite. He was violent and abusive. I was beaten almost every week of my childhood. Sometimes more than once.”
“Would you like to take the next session and tell me about it?”
“You have a lot of cancellations,” I said.
“Actually, it’s fairly common in my profession. What we do here can be painful, so sometimes it’s like the mind conspires against itself to avoid pain. Clients suddenly have appointments they forgot about, sudden emergencies, even migraines. It happens a lot.”
“It must make it hard to make a living that way.”
“It can be a challenge sometimes,” she said. “No one gets into this line of work for the money. So is that a yes?”
“Yes. And I will pay for the extra session.”
“Thank you,” she said. She scooted herself back up in her seat. “You were saying that your father beat you almost every week.”
I took a deep breath. “Yes.”
“For any particular reason?”
“Because he could. I think he was always looking for reasons. Once he caught me with a Playboy magazine and he beat me unconscious.” I looked down, feeling the pain of remembrance. “He almost killed me.”
“I’m very sorry. That’s horrific. Where is your father now?”
“He died three years ago.”
“How do you feel about that?”
I looked at her. “How do I feel about him dying?
Same way I’d feel about a cure for cancer.” I expected a reaction but she just looked at me sympathetically. “You probably think that makes me a bad person.”
“No, with a parent that violent, those feelings would make you normal. Most people would feel that way. I know I would. And this helps me understand your feelings about God. It would be hard to believe that God loved you yet let those closest to you hurt you.”
Hearing her say this hit me hard. For the first time in my life I felt understood.
“Tell me about your mother.”
“Her biggest mistake was marrying my father.”
“Did she beat you?”
“Not like my father. But now and then she’d take a wooden spoon to us.”
“Us?”
“My brother and me.”
“How many siblings do you have?”
“Just a brother.”
“Is he younger or older?”
“Younger.”
She wrote on her pad. “Did your father beat your mother?”
“Sometimes.”
“Did she ever try to stop him from beating you?”
“A few times.”
“But not always?”
“No. A few times I told her not to.”
“Do you feel like she betrayed you?”
“No. She was a lot smaller than him. She couldn’t have stopped him.”
“Did she tell him to stop?”
“It wouldn’t have made a difference.”
“She could have left him.”
“It wasn’t her fault,” I shouted.
She seemed less surprised by my outburst than I was. “Have you always protected your mother?”
I regained my composure. “Yes.”
“Tell me more about the Playboy magazine incident.”
“Like I said, he almost killed me.”
“Did you feel guilty about it?”
“Did I feel guilty for what?”
“Looking at the magazine.”
“I suppose. I went to church a lot, so I had a lot of guilt about things. Like most boys, I had the usual sexual secrets.”
“It’s natural for a boy to be curious and excited about seeing a nude woman. I’m not saying boys should be given pornography, but they certainly don’t deserve physical harm. And most certainly not as serious as you experienced.”
“Is there a reason you’re focusing on this?” I asked.