Charisma: A Novel

by Barbara Hall

  David clears his throat. “But of course, I don’t mean that exactly,” he says. “She’s cranky. She has less patience with everything than when she was more…the other way.”

  “Flaky.”

  “I guess. And yet I have no patience with New Age crap. Magical thinking. You know that.”

  “I know that.”

  “On the other hand, what is life coaching about? Why should people have to be coached on how to live? It’s not as if we have a lot of options. Shouldn’t we just innately understand how to live?”

  “Depends on what you mean by live.”

  “Oh, don’t do that. I mean live. Engage in life. Why is it so problematic? And if you break it down, that’s what my profession is about. Telling people how to live. How to get the business of living done.”

  “How to make the most of their lives.”

  “That’s just semantics.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Of course it is. Make the most of your life. Live your best life. There’s no evidence, scientific or otherwise, that that’s somehow the point.”

  “Now you’re getting into philosophy and, ah, thank God, here comes my wine. Sure you won’t join me?”

  “No. And I’m not talking about philosophy per se,” David continues at the same speed, ignoring the waiter. “Well, not in the textbook sense. I’m talking about a career crisis. Why am I running around giving people disorders and prescribing medication? It’s like I’m putting spells on them. What if we just left people alone?”

  “They’d hurt themselves or others?”

  “I am not talking about those people. As I said, we see success in extreme cases. I’m talking about the rest.”

  “The troubled well.”

  “Yes. Let’s take you for example. Do you think your son needs medication?”

  “Hell, no. I think he needs dodgeball.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But that’s not PC right now.”

  “Exactly.”

  “There’s no way my kid is going to be medicated.”

  “Good. But if you brought him to me and I didn’t know you, I’d probably medicate him. Not now but in a few years. Unless you held your ground. Nobody ever holds their ground, by the way. The wife wins on this one. The wife under the spell of the teachers. The wives want their kids to fit in. Very big deal to them, fitting in. Sometimes the husband wants that, too. Fitting in. Where will the artists come from?”

  Grant is staring at him. He sips his wine and gazes off.

  “I’m not giving in,” he says to the wall.

  Mercifully, the food arrives. David feels embarrassed. He has no idea where all of this has come from. He had no idea it was in him. No, that’s a lie. It’s been festering somewhere, but he had no idea it was so close to the surface.

  Grant asks him about his extended family and about what he’s driving and about how his stocks are doing. A robust discussion of the economy finishes out the main course.

  But as the waiter is pouring coffee, David says, “I haven’t lost all faith in my profession. I’m just starting to have a lot of questions about it. And I’m afraid the failure to ask questions might lead to a greater failure.”

  Grant blows into his cup, avoiding David’s eyes. He says, into the coffee, “See, at the end of the day, all shrinks are poets at heart.”

  It’s the way he felt watching the surfers—paralyzed, stranded between inspiration and fear. Less than anything on earth does he want to be a poet at heart.

  Chapter 5

  Dr. David Sutton looks tired and drained and that pink shirt isn’t helping him. It brings out the red under his eyes. He hasn’t been drinking or crying but it looks as if he’s been drinking or crying. I am watching him cross the common room where I am engaged in an afternoon game of solitaire with real cards. I don’t have an iPad anymore. They take all electronics away from you here. It’s possible to earn them back over time, for private use in your room, but most people find they don’t miss the constant call of their robots.

  “Ms. Lange,” he says. “Did you forget about our appointment?”

  “No, Dr. Sutton. I assumed you would come and find me.”

  “It’s customary to meet in my office.”

  “I don’t like sitting in there. It feels like I’m in trouble for something.”

  “Well, if you’d prefer to wait for me out here, let’s make that the custom.”

  “There you go. We have a custom.”

  “After you,” he says, gesturing.

  We go into his office, which is devoid of details, anything personal, and that is because it is a temporary office. Anyone could see that, not just an intuitive. And I know that he’s not here every day. In fact, he only seems to come out here for me.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” he says.

  “That’s a tall order.”

  I sit on the stiff leather couch and he sits across from me in the stiff leather armchair.

  “How are you today?” he asks.

  “Peachy.”

  “I took the liberty of going to see Heather Hensen this morning.”

  My heart jolts. My worlds are mixing. He’s into my secrets. Then I realize I gave him permission and I do not have anything to hide because my worlds finally collided and now I am in here, living one life, instead of out there, living several.

  I believe the accepted definition of sanity is a shared consensus of reality. My reality was always on the fringes and because I wanted to play with the cool kids, I hid the fact that my head was basically a radio, going in and out of stations that other people couldn’t pick up at all.

  But here, I’ve admitted the truth about my head. I don’t have a secret to defend. I only have the fact of it to deal with.

  A picture of Heather flashes across my mind. She is laughing. Heather and I spent a great deal of time laughing even though what we were discussing was so serious. We both have gallows humor. I wonder if she and David Sutton spent any time laughing but I doubt it. She coaxed him with it in the beginning—flirted, really, because Heather is a big flirt—but he didn’t go for it, he of the serious mien and the high regard for boundaries.

  “How did that go?” I ask.

  “It went well,” he says generically.

  He has taken out a notebook but he is not consulting it. His laptop sits to the side, beckoning. He ignores that, too. I know he is avoiding his routine because he worries about alienating me. Honestly. People think intuitives are so special but most of the time we are just paying attention. Paying attention to how you behave. Your behavior tells us everything.

  He shifts in his seat and adjusts his glasses and says, “I’d like to talk to you about something quite difficult.”

  “The rape?” I ask.

  He seems thrown, as if his whole game plan is derailed.

  “Yes. You referred to it as an accident during the admission process. And again while discussing it with me.”

  “Right.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Because that’s what it was. I accidentally left my window unlocked. I accidentally found myself in a violent situation.”

  “But you understand that on the part of the violator, it wasn’t an accident.”

  “I suppose on his part, it was an act of will. Though I have to think he accidentally picked my apartment.”

  David crosses his legs and leans back in his chair. I know he thinks this sitting-back posture is supposed to put me at ease. I am not at ease. I just know that we will have to discuss this sooner or later, so why not now?

  I sigh and tell the story the way I tell it, as a copy writer or technical writer, explaining circumstances in an atmosphere devoid of subjectivity. It is what I am trained to do.

  “Two years ago, a man climbed into an open window of my first-floor apartment and raped me and choked me and I nearly died.”

  “Yes,” he says, as if I need him to agree.

  “What do you want to know about it?”
r />   He clears his throat and shifts. “Well, many things.”

  “Go.”

  “Well, I suppose, I wonder if you sought medical treatment.”

  “Yes.”

  “How soon after?”

  “You can write if you want,” I tell him.

  “No, that’s all right. I’m just listening right now,” he says.

  Like a guy who wants a drink resisting the drink.

  “Tell me about your medical diagnosis,” he says.

  “Well, I don’t remember a lot of it. The cops and the paramedics found me. Apparently I was technically dead and they revived me. More than once. Then I went to the hospital and a bunch of people treated me—not for psychological damage, just the physical thing. They kept me there for three days, making sure my heart was going to keep beating and that I didn’t have any brain damage. Then the tests started. Did I have an STD, was I exposed to AIDS. Everything came back negative. I got CAT scans. I got some shots. It was a long three days. Eventually, a social worker came in to talk to me. He wore a short-sleeved dress shirt. He was about eighty. His opening gambit was, ‘So I guess you’re feeling pretty bad, huh?’”

  David writes.

  “They let me go. From the hospital. They referred me to the Rape Treatment Center. I went to counseling there. They gave me some advice on how to sleep.”

  “But who diagnosed you?” he demands.

  “With what?”

  “PTSD.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Somewhere in there a counselor said I had PTSD. Some kind of doctor showed up and gave me antianxiety medication. But I didn’t want to take it.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t like to be drugged.”

  He writes.

  “So almost two years go by,” he says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Almost two years where you work and function and live your life. I mean, looking at your record, you kept working.”

  “I find solace in work.”

  “I understand that. I do. But you realize that most people who endured the experience that you did might take some time off? Maybe even go away to a treatment center?”

  “Like the one I’m in now?”

  “Yes,” he says. “But more immediately.”

  “Like all roads lead here so why didn’t I get here sooner?”

  “Something like that.”

  I don’t know how to tell him about that. Shortly after the event, I started hearing from the guides. And I wanted to spend some time with them. I didn’t want them to get drugged or shocked out of my brain. But he’s not ready to hear that.

  So I say, “I just wanted to get back to life. That was my strongest instinct. I spent a lot of time wandering around looking for who I was. I mean, I wasn’t exactly normal before but I had a system worked out. I knew how to be in the game. It took me a while to realize I’d lost that skill.”

  He writes some more. He looks up. “Is there anything you want to talk about regarding the rape?”

  “No. Not anymore. I kind of talked it to death. Like I said, I barely remember it. I left my body even before.”

  “Before what?”

  “I died.”

  “Were you aware of dying during the attack? Or was it just something you were told?”

  “Dr. Sutton, why do you do this?”

  “Do what?”

  “Dance around stuff. It’s dishonest. Why don’t you just ask me things?”

  “That isn’t the process. The process is to let you tell me information as you’re comfortable.”

  “So it’s okay for you to lie about what you know.”

  “I don’t really know anything.”

  “What did Heather say?”

  “She was reluctant to tell me anything. Although she did say that you were clinically dead, in and out, for forty minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  “And about a year later, you came to see her.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was there some reason you chose her specifically?”

  “My yoga teacher Leslie recommended her.”

  “Recommended her for what?”

  “Counseling.”

  “For your PTSD?”

  “No. For a guy. I couldn’t get over this guy. It didn’t last long but it was very painful. I wanted to figure out how to move on.”

  “And she specializes in relationship issues?”

  “I don’t know if she specializes in anything. But the conversation went something like this. I was complaining to Leslie about this guy I was dating and I revealed to her that I had this kind of psychic connection to him, that when his stomach hurt mine hurt, even if we were miles apart, and that even though I was in love with him I was aware that he wasn’t good for me but I couldn’t put him down, like a drug. And she said, ‘Oh, you should go see Heather.’”

  He writes. Finally he looks up.

  “So how long were you seeing this guy?”

  “Not long. Weeks, months.”

  “So you started dating him not long after the rape?”

  “About eight months. Math isn’t my strong suit.”

  “You felt ready to pursue a relationship? Less than a year after an incident like that?”

  “I don’t know if I felt ready. I just met this guy and things happened.”

  David puts his pen and notebook down and looks at me. “I don’t believe you,” he says.

  I stare at him for as long as I can. I want to applaud. Or stand up and walk away. Anything. I’m so nervous now that I have gone down the path of talking about this. But I am intrigued that someone cares about me enough to call me on my bullshit.

  His eyes are melting me. I know I have to tell more truth.

  “I really have no idea how long ago anything was. I’ve tried to explain that linear time doesn’t work for me anymore.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” he says. “I don’t believe you about the guy. That there was one or that what happened with him is important. I think it was an excuse to get back into therapy. That’s fine but you don’t have to keep up the ruse.”

  “I didn’t make up the guy. But you’re right, it wasn’t really about him. I mean, it was and it wasn’t. We met about a year after the incident, I think. I really liked him. He was handsome and smart and he made me laugh. I was struggling to be a normal person. I always wanted to be one but I really, really wanted to be one after I met him. I worked constantly and I had stopped having time for a relationship. Mainly because I hadn’t met anyone who made me care enough to make it a priority. And maybe because having a man touch me was the last thing on my mind after what happened. But then I met him. And I was ready to be happy. So one night, I was sleeping over at his house. I woke up in the middle of the night with a night terror. You know what those are? They’re different from nightmares. They have physical symptoms, like a heart attack. You think you’re dying. It’s fallout from a violent attack. That’s what I learned later. Anyway, somehow I managed to have this night terror but I didn’t wake him up. I went outside to his terrace. He had this great house in the Hollywood Hills. I was sitting on his terrace, smoking a cigarette, and he came out to see about me. He asked if I was okay and for some reason, I just looked at him and said, ‘I’ve finally met someone I want to be with but I’m too damaged. It’s too late.’ He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me and went back in the house.”

  David stares at me and waits. He knows the ending but I tell him the ending anyway.

  “Well, he was a guy so you can guess the rest. He never called again.”

  David doesn’t write though I can see he wants to.

  Finally he says, “Why were you too damaged?”

  I shrug. “Damage is not the right word. I don’t know the right word. I was beyond him.”

  “Because of the rape?”

  “Because of everything. The rape just made it all come tumbling out. I was like this closet packed full of crap and then the door gives.”

&nbs
p; “And he made the door give?”

  “And that’s why I went to see Heather.” I look at him and sigh. I am worn out from it all. “Look, I know how all this sounds to someone like you.”

  “What’s someone like me?”

  “A medical doctor. A scientist. An intellectual.”

  “How do you think it sounds to me?”

  “Crazy.”

  “I don’t use that word.”

  “Okay. Delusional. Closer?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think of what’s going on with you, Ms. Lange. What matters is treating your condition. And one of the ways that I go about doing that is by taking a history and trying to see if there’s any connection between your suicidal ideation and past traumas. Since you don’t seem to have any more recent traumas. Have you?”

  “Not unless you consider suddenly hearing voices and having visions that you can’t turn off a trauma.”

  “But it’s not sudden, is it?” he asks. “After all, you say these visions and voices have haunted you since childhood.”

  “As a child I could turn them off.”

  “But since the event, you haven’t been able to?”

  I look at him. I do want him to understand. But I don’t want to audition anymore. I don’t want to convince anyone. The whole dilemma of this is trying to get someone, anyone, to believe that your world as you experience it is real. And then you run out of juice. You give up trying.

  “Can we be done for today?” I ask. “Just check the insane box.”

  “Ms. Lange, I don’t think you’re insane. I think you might be experiencing a delusional disorder as a result of your trauma.”

  “Great. What about a brain tumor while we’re at it?”

  He puts his pad away and leans back in his chair.

  “Well, I was going to have that discussion with you,” he says.

  “Okay.”

  “I know a very good neurologist at St. John’s. I’d like to schedule you for a CAT scan so that we can rule out any kind of problem like that. It’s a noninvasive procedure and your insurance does cover it.”

  “Sounds good. Like a kind of field trip.”

  “So you’d allow me to set that up?”

  “Sure. But just so I’m not wasting your time, I don’t have a brain tumor. The guides told me that. It was one of the first things they told me. Apparently, people are always mistaking them for brain tumors and they’re a little tired of it.”