Reunion at Red Paint Bay

by George Harrar

  Paul finds himself nodding, agreeing to everything she says. So eminently sensible. “What grief have you felt?”

  Her head rises from her papers. “We’re here to talk about you, Mr. Chambers, and your wife.”

  “Have you felt any grief at all?”

  “Everyone has reason to grieve at times. Given the grief your wife couldn’t escape, could she have felt death would be a release for her?”

  “You mean that she’d be better off dead?” he asks, to be perfectly clear.

  “Some people are comforted by the idea of moving on to a place where they don’t suffer.”

  “Heaven,” he says.

  “That’s one possibility.”

  “I’ve always wondered what a body would do forever in heaven. Hell is quite vivid in the Bible—chained head and foot in the lake of flames, the weeping and wailing. But heaven, nobody ever says what it would be like to exist there for a single day let alone forever. Tertullian tried, but I don’t find his answer very satisfactory.”

  “Tertullian?”

  “He was an early Christian philosopher. He said that one of the most intense pleasures in heaven would be to look down at the miseries people were suffering in hell. Personally, if that’s all he can come up with, I’ll take hell. At least there you’re experiencing the real thing, not watching it.”

  She seems lost in the conversation, where to go from here. Perhaps he is getting carried away. He has that tendency. She says, “Was there a funeral?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did you go?”

  “Yes. It was very unsatisfying. Preachers don’t know anything more about death than the rest of us. I walked out before the service was finished. Do you think that was disrespectful?”

  “I’m sure the minister understood.”

  “I meant to Jean.”

  She rubs her eyes, taking a moment to think. “I’d say what’s important is whether you feel you disrespected her.”

  “They left her bed unmade.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “When I left the service,” he says, “I went to her apartment to dispose of her things. The people from the funeral home, they didn’t straighten up when they took Jean away.” He can see the bed now in his mind, the white cotton blanket bunched up at the bottom, the sheets hanging off the side, her pillow on the floor. The mattress sagging in the middle, the imprint of a solitary sleeper. He remembers running his hands over the sheet as if tracing the shape of her—the curve of her legs, the bulk of her hips, her bony spine. His wife reduced to an impression in the bed, the memory of a mattress.

  “That particularly troubled you?” Amy says.

  He nods that indeed, the unmade bed troubled him.

  She leans back, signifying a sudden change in topic. “Perhaps you could tell me about the assault that your wife—”

  “Jean.”

  “—that your wife, Jean, suffered.”

  He shakes his head. “Another day.”

  When Simon picked up the phone and heard, “I’m Dora Reed, Kenny’s mom,” two possibilities immediately occurred to him: she was calling to invite Davey to some special occasion, such as a birthday party, or there was trouble. Given recent history, more likely the latter. And so when the boy ran down the hallway Simon snared him by his shirt collar and motioned for him to stand there and wait.

  “Sorry, could you repeat that, Mrs. Reed?” Davey inched toward the stairs. “Yes, I did know he took the knife to your house … Not beforehand, no, I learned about it when he came home. He said he forgot it was in his pocket.” Davey placed one foot on the first step. “Of course we don’t let him play with knives, but it’s really a letter opener, with a pretty dull blade, in fact. It’s not like a carving knife.”

  Davey waved at his father. “Tell her it couldn’t cut …”

  “They were what?” Simon stared at his son, the wild look of him, his cheek scratched, his hair sticking out, yet another rip at the neck of his T-shirt.

  “No I didn’t,” the boy said firmly.

  Simon covered the receiver. “Didn’t what?”

  “Whatever she says.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Simon said to Kenny’s mom. “I was under the impression the knife fell out and Davey put it away immediately … Yes, that is a different situation.”

  When Simon hung up the phone, Davey was gone.

  “You won’t believe my new client,” Amy said over her shoulder, reaching into the cabinet above the stove. Little tins and bottles were spread over the counter, along with toothpicks, muffin molds, birthday candles, matchbooks, and all manner of other small items that he rarely thought about.

  Simon leaned against the sink, eating dark purple grapes one after another. He could consume the whole bunch easily. With some foods there was no limit to what one could eat. Restraint had to kick in. “Looking for something?”

  “I’m rationalizing the spice cabinet.”

  “Rationalizing it?”

  “That’s what the British call organizing a space, according to a client of mine. It’s the idea that a cabinet or closet has an inherent sense of reason to it that needs to be restored every so often. I like the idea.”

  Simon picked up a tin of cumin, opened it, and inhaled. The smell surprised him, a kind of lemony scent, or perhaps saffron, with a hint of curry. It struck him how many things there were in the world to smell, and he had sampled so few of them. He held a grape in front of her mouth, and she sucked it in. “I grounded Davey again,” he said.

  She nodded her agreement. “I trust you picked a good reason.”

  He had been prepared to explain the phone call from Mrs. Reed, Davey’s lie about not taking out the knife, and his worry about their son’s honesty as well as safety. But Amy was leaving it all up to him for a change. “So,” he said, “what won’t I believe about her?”

  “Who?”

  “Your new client.”

  Amy emptied a few flakes of spice from a bottle into the sink and washed it down the drain. “It’s a he, actually, my first male client in two years. He’s going to come twice a week. When I try to take a history he shoots off on these odd digressions. I let him go because it’s the only way to learn anything. Today I asked him what he did for a living, and he said he does pretty much whatever he wants but he used to be a chamberlain.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The man who takes care of the chambers of his master, pays the bills, hires staff. Apparently it was a common position in England centuries ago, which is when he says he was a chamberlain. In 1822 to be exact.”

  “And he knows this how?”

  “He had a reading done by a mystic of some sort who revealed his past to him.”

  “So he’s delusional?”

  Amy picked up a handful of votive candles and pushed them to the back of the cabinet. “I don’t know. He’s dealing with a recent loss, but there’s a lot more behind it going back years. I’m not sure he’s ready to seriously deal with things. I think he’s playing with me.”

  “It’s his eighty dollars, he can do what he wants for the hour, can’t he?”

  “The idea is that a client gathers some insight into his problems from his hour with me.” Amy started putting back the spice tins, in alphabetic order. This was an odd new behavior for her—organization. He presumed it wouldn’t last. “It’s common for people to erect a shell around themselves to avoid talking about their problems,” she said. “But this guy is doing a particularly good job of it. I think he has tremendous pain inside that he’s masking with an outward hyperrationality.”

  “What are you going to do, wait him out?”

  “I’ll probably do the distracted routine, fiddle with my pen, look over his shoulder as if I’m bored with him. He’s enjoying being the fascinating, mysterious stranger who baffles the therapist, so the more I seem not intrigued the more likely he is to keep coming out with things to interest me.”

  “Sounds like you have a game plan.”

 
“It’s not a game,” Amy said, “it’s a tactic. Some people need a few pokes to open them up.”

  Later, at the mailbox, he found another postcard, this one with a Chamber of Commerce picture of Portland Harbor on the front. The unnamed correspondent was obviously not done with his game. Simon’s body tensed as he thought about what might be on the other side of the card—a new invitation? A threat? It occurred to him to just rip up the card and drop the pieces down the sewer. Nothing could compel him to pay attention except his own curiosity. He was in control.

  “Hello, stranger!”

  Simon looked up to see his neighbor limping toward him on the sidewalk, with large garden shears in his hands. “Hey, Bob, been a while,” Simon said as he slipped the card in with the rest of the mail. “Staying ahead of the pruning, I see.”

  “Keeping up with it at least. That’s the best I can hope for at my age.” Simon backed up a step, toward his house. His neighbor took another step forward. “You found that boy of yours, I guess.”

  “Turns out he was in the backyard all the time,” Simon said, “in the tree house.”

  “I figured you found him or we’d be reading about it in that paper of yours.”

  “Sorry, I should have called over to put your mind at ease.”

  Bob waved away the thought. “It’s Helen who gets these ideas in her head. Thinks she hears people outside all the time. I tell her, this is Red Paint, stop worrying, but it doesn’t help. Women are happiest when they have something to worry about.”

  Bob looked over for agreement. Simon backed up another step. “Maybe they worry too much, and we don’t worry enough.”

  His neighbor opened and closed the shears a couple of times, as if priming them. “Doesn’t matter anyway. Men are on the way out.” He ran his finger along the blade of his shears.

  “They are?”

  “Haven’t you read about it—the shrinking Y chromosome? A few thousand years, it’ll be gone. Then we just get women.”

  A world of women brought on by the ever-diminishing Y chromosome. A peaceful world, of course, no violence allowed. “I guess we males have a few years left in us, don’t we?” Simon glanced at his watch.

  “I won’t keep you,” Bob said. “Say hello to that lovely wife of yours for me.”

  “I’ll do that. Give my best to Helen, too.”

  As he walked toward his front door, Simon pulled out the postcard and turned it over. There was only one word. He stared at it for a while, as if more words would suddenly appear, magic ink activated by the light, perhaps. No more, just the one word, which he had seen before.

  He can’t help staring at the bare arm lying on the desk, the smooth curve of the bicep, and the single blue artery on the underside of the elbow leading to a surprisingly delicate wrist. It’s as if the limb has life of its own, not attached to anyone. He would like to run his fingers back and forth against the soft skin. What would be the harm?

  “How are you today, Mr. Chambers?”

  It is the therapist’s typical opening gambit—general, imprecise, determinedly nonthreatening, a question to make it seem as if they are just two acquaintances meeting here for a friendly little chat, not a scouring of his soul. “I feel the same as always, I suppose.”

  “Fine,” she says. But what if by the same he means a terrible state of existence? She should certainly explore that. “I’d like to get some background information from you before we continue. How old are you?”

  “Is age meaningful?”

  “It’s part of an overall picture.”

  “Forty-two.”

  She writes his age down. “Are you from this area?”

  “I’m not from anywhere in particular. I’ve moved all my life.”

  “Where do you live now?”

  “Wherever I am. I’ve found that’s the best way.”

  “It’s not a philosophical question. I’m just asking for your permanent address for my records.”

  Name, age, address—does she think this all adds up to an overall picture of him? “I am where I am,” Paul says. He leans up to see her note sheet, the pen poised above the empty space, waiting for him to make sense, to answer the damn question. “Does that cause you a problem, my not having a permanent address, because if it does, you can put in Truth or Consequences.”

  “Truth or consequences—that’s a provocative response.”

  “New Mexico.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Truth or Consequences is a town in New Mexico. I thought everybody had heard of it.” He watches as she writes in the name. When she finishes he says, “I’ve always wanted to live there.”

  Her head jerks up. “You don’t live there?”

  He shakes his head. “But I’ve always thought what a reminder that would be every day of your life, living in Truth or Consequences.” She strikes out the name, two parallel lines. If she is an obsessive sort that black cross-out will haunt her, a blot on an otherwise clean page. Perhaps in the evening she’ll redo the sheet, writing in Unknown for permanent address, or Patient Refuses to Say.

  “You’re not being very forthcoming with information, Mr. Chambers. I need to get to know you to help you.”

  “Can anyone really know another human being?” He can’t believe how sappy that sounded, like the refrain to some folk lyric pretending to be meaningful.

  “To a certain degree, yes, one person can know another. In fact, you could say that’s the whole premise of therapy.”

  “Such a fragile foundation for one’s profession,” Paul says, “don’t you think?” Philosophers spend whole careers parsing such a claim and come up empty. “But I am telling you all you need to know about me. You just have to listen.”

  She taps her free left hand on the desk, staring at him. He stares back, holding his mouth straight, restraining the involuntary smile he knows is waiting on his lips.

  “How did you choose me as a therapist to contact?”

  “You’re in the online yellow pages. Maybe that’s a mistake, advertising. Anyone can call you up. Even problem patients.”

  “Do you consider yourself a problem patient?”

  “I’m a patient with a problem, does that make me a problem patient?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  Paul sits up straighter. “Do you believe in consequences?” It’s the type of open-ended question he prefers, leading who knows where?

  “Does what I believe matter to you?”

  “I wouldn’t have asked the question if it didn’t.”

  “I think we need to do more work together, and right now that means—”

  “It’s a basic law of physics. For every action there’s a reaction—a consequence. You may believe you can act and avoid the reaction, but it will come eventually. If it doesn’t, the whole universe would be disturbed.”

  “What exactly are we talking about here, Mr. Chambers?”

  “That’s funny, I’m not sure either.” He shoves back his chair a little so that he can cross his legs, as a man does, his left ankle resting on his right knee, holding it there with his hand. “She was raped.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You asked me last time to tell you about Jean’s assault. She was raped.”

  “I see,” she says.

  There it is again. Does she see the way Jean lay in their bed, curled toward him, but with one knee stuck out, a sentry? Her watchfulness at his every move, the approach of his hands, even the scent of him coming up behind her? Did he smell like a rapist to her, or just like any man?

  “I’m struck by how you blurt out information that is obviously so important in your life. It seems you want to shock me. Am I interpreting correctly?”

  “You must have seen hundreds of rape victims in your practice. I imagine it would be hard to shock you.”

  “I’ve seen dozens of rape victims over the years.”

  “They’re all different, I bet. And all the same.” He considers this an interesting observation.

  “You told
me before that your wife moved out from your apartment.”

  “Many times.”

  “Many times?”

  “She moved out and then back, out and back, out and back.”

  Amy the Licensed Social Worker considers this information, every muscle in her face tightening just a little, the reflection of thought. “This pattern would seem to indicate that she was conflicted about staying in your marriage.”

  “She wasn’t conflicted at all. She didn’t want to live with me.”

  “But she kept returning.”

  Paul smiles in what he thinks must be an engaging way. “My magnetic personality, I suppose. I always drew her back. Until the last time, a year ago, when she moved out of state.”

  “Did she cut off communication with you?”

  “No.”

  “Did you remain on friendly terms with her?”

  “We were husband and wife, not friends.”

  “I’m asking if you remained close.”

  Close? They slept in separate beds, sometimes separate rooms, then separate apartments in separate states—a thousand miles between them at the end. How did Jean explain it to her friends? Was their separation something she freely admitted to everyone she met? Yes, I do have a husband, but we’re not close. What story did she tell to make it all seem so reasonable? Was he an abuser, an alcoholic, an adulterer? She would have to say something. Probably abuser.

  “Did you talk on the phone, for instance?”

  Should he admit that he still speaks to her several times a day? It’s a one-way conversation, of course, but he can interpret the silences, fill in the blanks. He talks to his dog and his dead wife. That would seem very odd to anyone reading her notes later on. He would appear delusional, which he assumes he is not, by any meaningful psychiatric definition. Of course, a delusional person can hardly be trusted judging the state of his own sanity. It’s a fool’s undertaking for anyone, trying to understand himself with his own prejudiced mind.

  “We spoke every Sunday night,” he says. Every Sunday night, nine o’clock, lying back on his bed with the phone cradled to his ear, he unzipped his pants and listened to her soft voice, turning his mouth away from the receiver. Once the phone slipped down his chest and he scrambled to pick it up with his slippery hand. She said, “Are you okay?” He coughed and said, “I’m fine.”