The Long Fall

by Daniel Quentin Steele

  “I’m not blind. I saw Debbie working hard to keep herself hot. And I couldn’t make myself go to a gym to try to sweat off a few pounds. I saw myself getting fatter and flabby. And I’m not stupid either. I saw the look in her eyes which turned into her not liking to look at me and then not wanting me to paw her in bed unless it was a night set aside for sex and her insisting that we shower and I brush my teeth.

  “Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but when you’re 20 you don’t think about shit like that. And the net effect was that any hint of spontaneity, or our just fucking for the hell of it when we felt like it, went away. It became...programmed...is the best way I can describe it.”

  I stared at the Rorschach patterns on the table in front of me and wondered why all I saw were shifting patterns of light and dark.

  “She thought she was hiding her nights out with her friends from me. I...learned...that she had started going out dancing with women and men friends, her current lover among them. I...learned later...she told someone she wasn’t cheating on me, that she just plain didn’t like being around me anymore. She was making a shadow life for herself, one that didn’t include me.”

  I don’t know why, but I couldn’t even tell Teller in the sanctity of a psychiatrists’ office about the emails. God, I wished I had never found them. Even if she had caught me off guard with the divorce, even if it cost me alimony, I wish that I didn’t know what I knew about her and Doug.

  “I didn’t try to discover it. It’s just that she never went to a lot of trouble to hide it. Things were said, people reported things and I knew. I didn’t know she’d given up on us, but I knew she had a social life that didn’t include me. Anybody else, any other husband, would have done something…would have known instinctively that even if it was innocent, it couldn’t be innocent. When your wife just doesn’t want to be around you, that’s a wakeup call.

  “But I let it go. I never had it out with her. I never tried to join that life. I had never liked the social life, dancing and partying the way she had. But more, there would always be late night crises, people needing me, and it was easier just to pretend it wasn’t happening. Because, what if I confronted her and she told me that I either had to join her life, or I had to get out of it altogether? I couldn’t make that choice.”

  I stared into Teller’s dark eyes.

  “Did I destroy my marriage, Doc? Did I create the situation that drove my wife into another man’s arms? It would be bad enough if my wife had fallen out of love with me just because...and I had to live without her. But I don’t know if I can wake up every morning knowing that it wasn’t her...it was me. How can I live with that? Because I loved her...love her.”

  “Talk to me, doc. Dammit. Talk.”

  He puffed on the pipe a couple more times and tamped it down a little the way pipe smokers do. Damned if I ever could figure out why. I think pipe smoking is a ritual more than a habit. But anyway, he finally took another puff, breathed it deeply and let it out. I think he was purposefully torturing me.

  “Mr. Maitland, did you ever hear the old psychiatrist’s joke about the cigar?”

  I shook my head.

  “After Freud became world famous and transformed the practice of psychiatry, many younger practitioners took his word as gospel. I’m sure you’re aware of the view that everything has deeper meanings in the unconscious. One of the most famous examples is the phallic symbol. Anything long, straight and hard can be a subconscious representation of the penis – a sword, a knife, a cigar...you fill in the blank and thus there are sexual connotations to all types of apparently innocent objects.

  “Well, it seems in his old age that a colleague brought a case study to the old man and started going on about the symbolic meanings of objects in his patient’s life. And Freud looked at him and said, ‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

  “The meaning of the joke, of course, is that since Freud popularized the idea of the unconscious, everyone – and particularly laymen – tend to overanalyze everything. There can be, often are, deeper layers of meaning to things around us, to what we do and what we say. On the other hand, sometimes things are simply what they are. Thus, a cigar can be just a cigar.”

  He stopped and rubbed his chin.

  “You realize, Mr. Maitland, that you are not my patient. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “When I see a patient, I generally spend months, sometimes years, working with them to understand and resolve the problems they have come to me seeking help to address. This can involve psychoanalysis, hypnosis, drugs, sometimes behavioral therapy. There are a number of different approaches. The one thing common to all of this is that there are no quick fixes. You don’t discover the depths of your soul and transform who and what you are in a few sessions.

  He focused his gaze on me so firmly that I had to stare back at him.

  “We’ve spent a half hour, tops, talking about your life. We’ve talked about some of the deepest fears and concerns in your life. I think we have probably talked about things that you’ve never unburdened yourself to with another human being. It may be the first time you’ve ever put some of these thoughts and fears into words yourself.

  “I don’t know that God himself could in that short a time see into a man’s soul and answer a question like that, a question that is intertwined with your history, your deepest beliefs and hopes and fears. And I’m not God. That may come as a shock to you, but I’m not.”

  He allowed a faint trace of a smile to flicker on his lips for a second. Then it vanished.

  “That’s the long way around telling that I can’t answer your question. I would need at the very least months to answer that kind of question. And even then, I wouldn’t be able to answer the question. At best I might help you find your way to an answer that you can live with. I can tell you this, however.

  “The phenomenon that you discuss is real. So real that it has become a popular cliché: the person who creates the fear that haunts them. And I am sure there are cases, like the Navy officer you mentioned, where it does play out exactly like that. But there is no way I could even guess if that scenario occurred in your life. Because, you see, there are other alternate options to consider.

  “You might have concentrated your attention and time and passion on your work as a means of escaping your marriage, as a means of driving your wife away. It is entirely possible.

  “On the other hand, it’s equally possible that as you became more and more involved in your duties, you became more aware of the impact they had on others’ lives and perhaps – for whatever reason, you became less and less able to look at what you did as a 9-5 job.

  “If you were a surgeon and people’s lives directly depended on your time and energy and passion, the wife and family left behind is a cliché. And most people, even if they didn’t agree, would understand that level of obsession. Doctors’ wives know, or should know, what they’re signing up for. It is quite possible that you changed from the man your wife fell in love with, the man she married. And it is quite possible that she did not sign up for the marriage that resulted.

  “In that sense, it might be that you indeed precipitated the changes that resulted in your wife’s growing away from you, in finding another lover.

  “But what you have to ask yourself is whether that was entirely a bad thing. If you had known the ultimate result, would you or should you have done anything differently?’

  I looked at him as if he had lost his mind and for a moment I wondered if I could have heard him correctly. Would I have done things differently if I’d known they would have cost me my wife and marriage?

  He read my expression.

  “I know that may sound strange, but let me explain myself, please.”

  He took another puff, then said, “You probably don’t know this, but I’m Catholic, Mr. Maitland. Or at least I was raised Catholic. I’ve gotten away from the church, but I am still a religious man. There are things I’ve seen, things I’ve done, that have convince
d me there is a higher power. And one thing I firmly believe is that most people, even religious people, have our relationship with God, or a higher power, completely turned around.

  “You see, we ask ourselves why God allows bad things to happen to us, why he doesn’t give us our wishes, why he would let your marriage rot away from inside and leave you alone in middle age?

  “But there are many people who would say it’s not important what God does for us, but what we do for Him. In the scheme of things, none of us matter at all. We are here but a moment and we’re gone. What we should be thinking bout is what we do for Him, for our fellow man, for the greater good of the most people.

  “If we look at it that way, you have spent ten years serving the greater good. You have attempted to secure justice for the victims of terrible crimes and given solace to families of the lost. You have extended mercy to those who deserve it and protected society by putting away the predators who would prey on others.”

  “In the process of doing that, you’ve become estranged from your wife and children, possibly lost your marriage and your family. That’s a personal tragedy. But how many families are intact because you kept dangerous men and women who would have shattered those families incarcerated? How many shattered families have been able to mend because you gave them the closure they needed, the ability to bury their dead and move on.

  “I know you don’t want to hear this now, but there have been many men and many women who sacrificed their chances to have love in their lives, women and children to cherish, because they answered a call to duty. Everyone doesn’t do that, most people can’t, but the ones who can and do are special. I think you’re one of those people, Mr. Maitland.

  “I hope you’re able to re-establish your marriage, your relationship with your wife and children. I know for you personally, that is the best thing. But there are bigger, and more important things, than any one person’s individual happiness.”

  He stopped, took a puff on his shrink pipe and tamped it down the way pipe smokers do. The aroma was nice. I wonder if he ever worried about cancer of the throat or lips.

  “I know that’s not what you expected to hear from me, Mr. Maitland, but since this isn’t an official visit and you’re not an official patient, I can be candid with my thoughts.”

  I hunched forward on the couch and stared at the floor.

  “Do you know anything about my background, doc?”

  He rubbed his chin. That’s something else I think they teach them in shrink school.

  “No, I’m certain we have never discussed that.”

  “I grew up in West Virginia. My dad was a coal miner. Big man. Strong. He went down into the mines every day. Came back black at the end of the day. Worked six days a week. We still did things. On Sundays. Went to church, to a lake where we swam.

  “He had just bought me a rifle. Cheap .22, but he had promised me he was going to teach me how to use it. And then one day we’d go hunting. There were still deer around, wild turkeys. He’d even bring home rabbits sometimes and my mom would cook them after he’d skin and prepare them.

  “And then one day, I’ll never forget it, he’d just come home. It was about 7 p.m. It was winter and cold as hell and dark by that time. He had cleaned off, as much as he could. His skin was always grimy, no matter how much he washed. Some men came to the door. My dad talked to them and then he talked to my mother. She started crying and he hugged her.

  “He put on his heavy coat and started to leave with the men. Then he turned around and came down and sat down beside me on the couch in front of our television. I was eight years old.

  “There’s been an explosion and cave-in at the mine, Billy,” he said. “You’re old enough to understand what that means.”

  “I just nodded my head because I had heard other kids in school talk about disasters, about fathers and uncles and brothers that went down and never came back up.

  “There are 15 men trapped down there. I am going to try to get them out.”

  “Don’t go, daddy. Don’t go.”

  “He grabbed me and hugged me and said, ‘There are little boys and girls, some of them you know, whose daddies are down there. If it was me, you’d want someone to go down and get me out, wouldn’t you’?

  “When I didn’t answer, he rubbed my hair with one big hand and then kissed me on top of my head.

  “I have to go, Billy. I know you don’t understand now, but someday you will. Sometimes you have to do things, hard things, just because they’re the right thing to do’.”

  “He got up from the couch and told me, ‘I love you, Billy. Take care of your momma until I get back’.” He hugged Momma for what seemed like a long time and then he walked out the door with those men. It was the last time I ever saw him.

  “They almost got down to the trapped men and then there was another cave-in. All told, 28 men died in the mine that day. They couldn’t even get the bodies out. There were two subsequent cave-ins and the company finally closed the shaft because it was way too dangerous and expensive to keep it open. We had a service, but there was no body to bury.

  “The next year Momma moved to Palatka and then a year later to Jacksonville. She said it was for a job, but I always thought she just couldn’t stand living around the mines anymore.”

  I looked up at Teller. I was crying, but I didn’t care. It was as if I was back in our living room for just those few moments. And I could still feel my father’s arms around me.

  “So you tell me, doc. Why do some people have to do the right thing, no matter what it costs them? It cost my dad his life. It cost me my marriage, my kids, the only woman I’ve ever loved. It’s cost me my life too, in a way.”

  Teller leaned back and let out a plume of aromatic smoke.

  “Mr. Maitland, I wish I had the answer to questions like that, but as the saying goes, that is above my pay grade.”

  Friday, March 22, 1985 – 6 P.M.

  I was hitting the books for my sociology class, one of the requirements of pre-law, when Mark Cumber tapped on the door of my bedroom. I was sprawled across my bed, trying to read four books at once, take notes, and prepare for a final that I didn’t see any way in hell I could pass. I’d been studying since I got out of classes at 3 p.m. that afternoon and my eyes were beginning to cross.

  I almost welcomed the interruption, although I knew I couldn’t spare the time for Mark’s perennial request that I go out partying on a Friday night with him and the other two guys who share the rent with us for the luxury of an off-campus apartment.

  It really wasn’t a luxury. I’d tried dorm living, and, while it was cheap, it was almost impossible to get any real studying done, what with the booze and pot and hot and cold running females that zipped in and out of the bed of any roommate I happened to land. Not for nothing had Florida been named one of the top partying schools in the land.

  Not that I had anything against hot or cold females passing through. I’d snagged a couple myself, but most of the guys I’d bunked with came from money or had scholarships or didn’t mind taking out loans it would take them 30 years to repay. They could afford to screw around, maybe flunk out as a lot of freshmen did, and someday soon come back with daddy’s blessing and financial support. I couldn’t do that.

  “Whatever it is Mark, I can’t man. I’ve got a month of studying to make up for in a couple of weeks. Just go on without me.”

  Mark was a tall, skinny, white dude trying his best to raise an Afro and look cool. It just made him look stupid but somehow girls pitied him and he wound up scoring pretty regularly. He just looked at me funny.

  “It’s not me, Bill. Somehow, I think you’re going to want to make time for this interruption.”

  I looked up. Standing behind him in the doorway was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life. It was a warm day for March in Gainesville and she wore red shorts, a fairly loose white top that somehow bulged out, and a smile that would raise the dead.

  Debbie Bascomb was a gorgeous wet d
ream of a 19-year-old college sophomore at the University of Florida where I am currently working, hopefully, toward a law degree someday in the not-too-distant future. I’d seen her around campus at times, always escorted by one of the school’s football or basketball stars or guys who could afford $50,000 cars on their daddies’ lines of credit.

  Then one night she’d been the center attraction at a would-be frat house gang bang where I was earning a few extra bucks doing waiting and ‘scut’ work duties. Something, maybe only the distinct impression that she hadn’t got involved voluntarily, led me to poke my nose into her personal business and I wound up in the hospital in a coma for my efforts.

  I felt pretty silly afterwards. I nearly died, saving the dubious virtue of a reputedly very sexually active coed who never bothered to come by and see me a single time in the hospital, call me or even send me a card. I’d told myself I hadn’t done it to make points. I’d have stepped in even if she hadn’t been inhumanly beautiful. I told myself that.

  I found myself staring at her breasts, then somehow raised my eyes to look into those cool eyes, found mine drifting lower and dropped them to a safer region, which were those hips and legs and found myself getting lost again. She was a big girl. It was a long way from those breasts to her feet. I managed to look up at her face again.

  “Hi.”

  “uh – hi.”

  “I’m –“

  “I know who you are, Debbie. I’ve seen you around campus.”

  A little twinge of something that might have been embarrassment flashed across her face for a moment.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember running into you.”

  “You didn’t. We don’t travel in the same circles. I just meant I’d seen you a few times,” and then, although I knew it was stupid, added, “You’re hard to miss.”

  That smile flared on her face again and it was as if the room had gotten 20 degrees warmer.

  “Thank you, Bill.”

  She looked down at the bed which was a patchwork of books and papers and asked, “Could I sit down for a minute?”