Charisma: A Novel

by Barbara Hall

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “What was it?”

  “Why are you looking at me?” he asks again.

  “Because you have a big black eye.”

  “I was in a car accident.”

  “Oh,” she says. Then, “Oh, now I get it.”

  “Get what?”

  She’s quiet for a moment.

  “The black eye,” she finally says.

  “I don’t think that’s what you meant.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  “All right.”

  He can tell without looking that she has turned her head toward the window and is staring out. How can he tell that? He glances over. He is right. It’s a good question. How do people sense other people’s movements? He has never cared about that question before. He resists caring about it now.

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  “What do you mean?”

  “After the accident. Is that all that happened? The black eye? No concussion or anything?”

  “No. They checked for that.”

  “Was it your fault?”

  “No. Maybe. I might have run a light. I’m not entirely sure what happened. I was preoccupied.”

  “With what?”

  “Work.”

  “Not me.”

  “No, as a matter of fact, not you. Another patient.”

  “I’m jealous.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to be the person who got you into an accident.” She laughs. He realizes he doesn’t hear her laugh much. Maybe he has never heard it. Maybe he has and hasn’t paid attention.

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

  “Maybe next time.”

  Now he laughs.

  “So what if I don’t have a brain tumor? What happens then?” she asks.

  “I don’t know. Let’s just rule out the neurological implications.”

  She looks out the window again. “I’ve forgotten what L.A. looks like. Sometimes out there in Malibu I start to think I’m in Greece or somewhere.”

  “Have you been to Greece?”

  “Yes. I spent some time there with my ex-fiancé.”

  “You were engaged?”

  “Yes.”

  “That wasn’t on the admit form.”

  “I didn’t want to get into it.”

  “Are there other big things we should know?” he asks, trying to sound casual.

  “That’s not a big thing. I was engaged for several years to an Englishman. Then I got un-engaged.”

  “Children?”

  “No. That would be a big thing.”

  “After we rule out the brain tumor, we should go over your history again.”

  “That’s going to be really boring.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  “Listen, David, I mean Dr. Sutton, the past is not what any of this is about.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that, too.”

  She sighs. “How do you do it? How do you give yourself permission to determine how another person’s mind works?”

  He drives, concentrating on the traffic. Finally he says, “People are in pain. They ask for help.”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes you just impose help on them.”

  “Not in your case.”

  “Look, I wanted to be in a controlled environment. But I didn’t want people rummaging around in my mind. I have to submit to it because those are the rules. I am not happy about it.”

  “If you are afraid of what you might do when you are unsupervised, you need help. Your thinking is disorganized. There’s a reason for that. And there’s a solution to it.”

  “Wow. That’s how it works in your world.”

  “Yes.”

  He can feel her thinking about it. He doesn’t want to feel her doing things. It makes him squirm.

  He says, “Let me ask you something. Don’t you have friends? Family? Somewhere else to go?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I had all that once. Little by little it went away.”

  “After the accident?”

  “It started before then. Then it picked up speed.”

  “Because of the accident?”

  “Yes. People don’t like damaged people. Unless they are also damaged. I hung with the competent crowd.”

  “But you say it was starting to happen before the accident. Your drifting from people.”

  “They drifted from me.”

  “Why?”

  “I think I was becoming uninteresting. I was losing interest in myself, anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was uninteresting. We’re approaching a hall of mirrors, here.”

  “Do you think you came to Oceanside to be with damaged people?” he asks.

  He sees her thinking about it. He swears he can feel her thinking about it.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe it’s just a brain tumor.”

  They don’t talk anymore until they’re inside St. John’s. Grant Zwick meets them in the exam room and introduces himself to Sarah and a nurse takes her away and gets her ready for the CAT scan.

  “Wow, she’s something,” Grant says.

  “What do you mean?” David asks.

  “What do I mean? She’s gorgeous. You haven’t noticed that?”

  “She’s pretty. A lot of women are pretty. Actually, she’s not that pretty. She’s just interesting.”

  “Yeah. Interesting in a way that makes me want to leave my wife.”

  “Don’t be an asshole. A couple of drinks make you want to leave your wife.”

  “Does Jen know you’re seeing her?”

  “Jen treats famous actors. We don’t police each other that way. Besides, what am I saying? She’s a patient.”

  “What is it about her?” Grant asks. “Her eyes? There’s something about her.”

  “Never mind. Pay attention to her brain.”

  After Sarah is loaded into the machine, he stands behind Grant and watches as her brain comes up on the screen. Somehow, it embarrasses him. It feels intimate. He is looking at her brain. A part of him expected it to look different somehow, magical even. But it’s just a brain. And even to his relatively untrained eye, he can see that there are no abnormalities.

  “That’s one good-looking brain,” Grant says.

  Chapter 11

  Out by the rose garden, Kit tells me his story.

  It’s a tawdry tale of a rich man who hired him to run the sales department of his guitar company and then he found out he was actually reporting to the man’s nephew who was only twenty-six, inexperienced, and deeply threatened by Kit. Kit and the nephew got along on the surface but clashed on a deeper level, and it culminated in the two of them both falling for the receptionist who was in her early twenties with a nose ring (he added this detail to make it clear that she seemed much older), and Kit won this competition and he and the receptionist went out for a while. Then the nephew talked her into accusing Kit of sexual harassment and she agreed and it was reported upstairs to the rich guy uncle and he told Kit that he could still have his job if he’d apologize and seek treatment for his sexual addiction. So here he is. When he’s done with his tale he extends his arms, palms to the heavens, and waits for me to be—something—exasperated?

  “Is he paying for this?” I ask. “The rich boss?”

  “Yes. Well, my insurance is but it’s his insurance.”

  “So he must believe in you.”

  “You’re missing the point.”

  “The point is that the nephew tricked everybody and won?”

  “Sort of. There’s more.”

  Oh, God, there’s more. I don’t say this.

  The rich boss, he says, is so cheap that he cooks the books so he can avoid giving the salespeople the commissions they deserve. The nephew does this, too. In fact, a week or so before he was accused of sexual harassment, Kit had taken it up with his baby boss that his paycheck was a litt
le light, and there was an argument and the next thing he knew, he was here.

  “Did you like her?” I ask.

  “Who?”

  “The receptionist. Ms. Nose Ring.”

  “Sure.”

  “You were still seeing her when she charged you with sexual harassment?”

  “No, it was over by then.”

  “How long did it go on?”

  He shrugs. “Three weeks.”

  “You both decided it was over?”

  “I don’t know. I stopped calling. She didn’t seem to mind. There wasn’t much future in it. Especially when I realized how old she was.”

  “How old was she?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “So, that might have had something to do with it. Rejecting her, that is.”

  “I don’t know. All I know is I went out with a girl a few times and suddenly I’m accused of being an addict and crazy. Meanwhile, the people who set it all up, and who cook the books and cheat people right and left, they get to stay out in the world and be sane.”

  “That sounds about right,” I say.

  “How is that right?”

  “I didn’t say it was right. Just sounds like the world to me.”

  “The good guys lose?”

  “No. I don’t see things that way. Pairs of opposites. Good and bad, right and wrong. Linear dualism. But that’s how everybody else does it. And in that world it does seem like the cheaters win a lot.”

  “Everybody else?” he asks. “What do you mean?”

  “I have a different worldview, Kit. I’m crazy. Remember?”

  “You don’t seem crazy to me.”

  “Yet you’re looking at me like I’m crazy.”

  “No. I’m looking at you like you’re wrong.”

  “Okay.”

  We are quiet for a minute. I think about lighting another cigarette but I’m afraid it will look like an invitation for him to stay. I don’t mind his company, which is to say I don’t mind his energy, but his talk is fraught with negativity and dishonest.

  “So I take it you didn’t like my story,” he says.

  “No, I think it’s a good story. It’s got everything. Absent king, evil prince, evil princess, exiled warrior, everything but a dragon. Is there a dragon?”

  “Not yet,” he says. “Being crazy might be the dragon.”

  “But you’re not crazy.”

  “Not yet.”

  I smile.

  “Hey,” he says. “Is that your doctor?”

  I look up and see Dr. Sutton entering the courtyard. He is annoyed. It is not in his face because his face is always a poker face. It’s in his shoulders, which are creeping up toward his ears, and in the death grip he has on his briefcase.

  “Oh,” I say, standing, “I lost track of time.”

  The doctor approaches me with severe intention.

  “We had an agreement, I believe?” he says.

  “Well, we have a custom. Which is less binding than an agreement, I believe. But I lost track of time.”

  He doesn’t say anything to that.

  “This is Kit,” I say, indicating. “He’s an addict and possibly crazy.”

  Dr. Sutton nods at him, then makes a gesture for me to follow him. I turn and give Kit a little shudder and he laughs.

  Dr. Sutton doesn’t talk to me as we walk to his office. Once inside, he takes a moment to get situated before he even looks at me.

  “How are you?” I ask.

  “Fine. Thank you.”

  “Me, too.”

  He gets out a notebook and a pen.

  “Do I have a brain tumor?”

  He looks up. “You do not. Dr. Zwick showed you the results.”

  “But you’re acting like I might have a brain tumor.”

  “I’m trying to consider how we can proceed in a more organized fashion.”

  “All right.”

  “Because now that we’ve ruled out any medical condition, I’m going to take a full history from you and that can be challenging unless we establish strong boundaries.”

  “You keep talking about boundaries. Are you worried about crossing them?”

  “Ms. Lange, we are going to discuss intimate details of your life.”

  “We are?”

  “If we are going to get to the bottom of what’s troubling you.”

  “Nothing is troubling me other than the suicide thing.”

  “That’s a pretty big thing.”

  “So everybody says.”

  He writes.

  “The first thing I’d like is a consistent history. For example, I had no idea you had been engaged.”

  “I was engaged for five years. His name was Benjamen Gold. He was English. He’s still English. He’s also Jewish, though not devout. Unless he’s changed. He went back to England after we broke up. We don’t talk.”

  “When did this breakup occur in relation to the accident?” he asks.

  “We don’t have to call it an accident anymore. I know you’re doing that to make me feel more comfortable.”

  “All right. When did this happen in relation to the attack?”

  “A couple of years before.”

  “Around the time you started to feel uninteresting?”

  “I guess.”

  “What did he do for a living?”

  “He was an investment banker.”

  “An odd choice for an artist.”

  “I wasn’t an artist when I met him. I was a technical writer then, I think. I wrote a training manual for his bank. That’s how we met.”

  “And why did you break up?”

  “I don’t know. We ran out of juice. We both cheated. It just died.”

  “Would you say you were depressed after that?”

  I think about it. I’m not sure what people are talking about when they use that word.

  “I have always felt mildly disconnected,” I say. “If that’s what you mean.”

  “Did that feeling escalate after he left?”

  “I guess. In a gradual way. I let my work slide a bit. I was living hand to mouth. That was unusual for me.”

  “So you lost your ambition.”

  I laugh. “It’s a little ambitious to call what I had ambition. I had a work ethic, maybe. I guess the best word to describe myself around that time was lazy. I didn’t do more than I had to.”

  “You stopped caring about yourself?”

  I look at him. For some reason, that sentence sounds incredibly odd. And a little alarming. As if it might mean something. I’m sure other people have said something like this to me before but this is the first time it sounds like something other than phraseology.

  “I stopped caring about myself,” I repeat. “So I accidentally left my window open.”

  David flushes. “No. I’m not saying that.”

  “I’m saying that.”

  “Don’t say that. You weren’t attacked because you left your window open.”

  “I wasn’t?”

  “You were attacked because you had the misfortune to be in the path of a violent person.”

  “So it was random.”

  “Yes.”

  “Even though Freud says there are no accidents.”

  “That’s an oversimplification of what Freud said.”

  “I believe it’s exactly what Freud said.”

  “I’m more influenced by Jung.”

  “Serendipity then. Whatever way you turn, patterns, mandalas, meaning. How do you make random work? You use it to fill in the blanks?”

  He flushes. “I believe we are getting off course.”

  “I want to know how things work in your world,” I say.

  “What is my world?”

  “Mechanistic.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Cause and effect. Linear time.”

  “And that is not your world?”

  “Sometimes it is. It comes and goes.”

  “What comes and goes?”

  “I can’t explain
it. The way I move back and forth. Some days I can’t glimpse it at all. I just remember it.”

  “Remember what?”

  I sigh. “The quantum side. The way things really are.”

  He doesn’t write. He just stares at me with his penetrating green eyes. They are the same color as mine but I think mine are dreamier, less intense.

  He doesn’t write. He says, “So to go back to the event, you see no correlation. Between your breakup and losing interest in yourself.”

  Suddenly I can see something, like a landscape, or a mandala, or a tapestry, or a helix, or whatever the perfect word is to describe patterns falling into place. I know I am being allowed to see this. I just don’t understand it entirely.

  I take a moment to figure out my wording.

  “I was getting lost,” I say.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I was losing myself.”

  “When? After the breakup?”

  “All my life. And then…”

  He waits. “Then what?”

  I look at him. “Then I left the window open.”

  He stares at me and I can see a coldness creeping into him. He is hardening before my eyes, like watching something freeze.

  “So God sent you a tragic event to get your attention?” he asks. The sarcasm isn’t remotely disguised. It’s uncomfortable, as if I’ve watched him dribble on his shirt or drop his pants.

  “Wow, Dr. Sutton,” I laugh. “That is one giant leap for mankind right there. Not very professional, all that dripping disdain.”

  “I apologize. Let me rephrase it. Do you think this event occurred as a kind of message or warning?”

  “No,” I say.

  He doesn’t believe me. He waits.

  “I think it’s a problem if you’re blaming yourself,” he says.

  “I didn’t say that I blamed myself.”

  “You don’t bear any responsibility.”

  “Okay.”

  He writes and then looks at me and I can feel that we’ve hit a stalemate. I feel more than that. I feel some strange kind of anger directed toward me. The energy inside his chest looks like an electrical storm. I don’t understand it. He doesn’t, either. He takes a few deep breaths and the energy calms down.

  “Can we talk about an earlier time?” he asks.

  “God, tell me you don’t need to go back to my gothic Southern childhood.”

  “It might be helpful.”

  “Well, it was gothic. Histrionic women, men with their secret lives, lots of yelling but also lots of laughing and really good food. Can we leave it at that?”