One Hit Wonders

by Patrick Warner

  “Possible artistic delusions,” the psychologist marked in his notebook, underlining the phrase three times.

  The psychologist is not put off by Freddy’s unusual mode of participation. His client’s approach actually intrigues him, and—if he is perfectly honest—stokes his own creative fires. On good days, the psychologist thinks he may be developing a whole new form of therapy and that he may one day write papers on the subject that will get him published in high-ranked journals.

  Progress is being made. Freddy has recently begun to submit pieces of writing about his deceased wife, Lila, in the form of diary entries, all of them set on the morning of her death.

  Session 16:

  Fictional diary entry 1: 6:59 AM.

  The clock radio came on at exactly 7:02. I always set it at low volume. Low enough so that it doesn’t make me jump out of my skin. Low enough that I have to actively listen to hear what the announcer is saying. This morning she was reporting a moose and her calf on the Outer Ring Road.

  I like the feeling of waking up slowly. I don’t quite know how to describe it, but I have this picture in my mind of pulling a crab pot up from the sea floor. I see its shape shimmering and slowly becoming more distinct, the aluminium hoop at the top, the wider hoop at the bottom, the orange nylon mesh, and trapped inside is a ruckus of tanned and blond crabs. That’s what waking up feels like, only you are both the fisherman and the crab trap.

  “This is a very fine description, Freddy, a poetic description.” The psychologist says. He pauses and counts to ten in his mind. “Though I can’t help but notice that there is a discrepancy between the time you record in the title and the time you record in the first line.”

  Freddy scratches his right forearm hard enough to leave white tracks. The psychologist notes this, watches as the marks slowly turned bright red. Boiled lobster colour, he thinks. He makes the following notes:

  F’s POV switches to second person in the last line.

  The metaphor of the crab pot could be interpreted to mean that F sees consciousness as a trap. It follows that he sees thought both as an armoured entity and as a bottom feeder, a scavenger.

  A “ruckus of crab” could indicate turmoil. “Tan and blond” suggests a woman.

  The subject still refuses to communicate verbally.

  “I’d like to move on to the next page, if that’s OK?”

  Freddy shrugs.

  Session 16:

  Fictional diary entry 2: 7:05 AM

  I like to watch Lila sleeping. Her face glows and she looks peaceful in a way that she rarely does when she is awake. I remember on that morning I reached out my hand to trace the curve of her hip. It was hot and smooth, like a beach rock. It was also bonier than it used to be. I was enjoying the shape and feel of it but she flipped my hand away.

  I don’t know what I did then. Sometimes in the morning I’ll lie half-awake and let my mind run where it will. At that time of the day, words and thoughts have a way of free associating that can be very entertaining. Sometimes I think about how much I love Lila, how she is my shore, how she came into my life when I was all at sea. How she let me race my speedboat up and down her fjord. I sometimes wake up very horny. I was horny that morning, but Lila made it clear when she pushed my hand away that she didn’t want it. That was OK.

  I hadn’t slept well. My sleep had been disturbed by a series of vivid dreams; one of them was about the Holocaust. I could only remember certain images: striped pyjamas, stacks of emaciated corpses the colour of tallow, except for the orifices which were lamp-black.

  Then I remembered more fully a second dream in which Lila and I were considering renting a furnished apartment, one that had a view from the kitchen of sheds and weathered clapboarded shacks. The bedroom view was nicer: it looked out on a public park. It was high summer. People in what appeared to be Victorian costume were walking up and down the main street. We were trying to decide if we liked the apartment. I was leaning towards making an offer on it until I looked up at the ceiling and saw it was a mass of hairline cracks and crudely repaired in numerous places. I had the sense that something enormous had come crashing through it. I was convinced the room had once been an elevator shaft.

  Lila stirred next to me then, stretching out her arms and legs like a starfish and shuddering, while at the same time making a small squeak in the back of her throat.

  I started to laugh because suddenly I remembered where the Holocaust dream came from; the day before I had watched a video of Elmo and Ricky Gervais that a friend had posted on Facebook. It was a pre-interview mock-interview in which Ricky Gervais was telling Elmo which subjects were off limits for conversation.

  “Well, of course it’s a mock interview, silly,” Gervais said.

  “What are you laughing at?” Lila asked. I noticed that she was holding her breath as she spoke. She sometimes has bad morning breath.

  “Were you angry with your wife that morning?” the psychologist asks.

  Freddy does not respond, though he blinks once.

  “Did she often refuse you sex?”

  Freddy blinks once and then twice in rapid succession.

  The psychologist makes the following notes:

  Slight suspicion forming that the subject may be unusually manipulative.

  Note that the subject’s depiction of his wife changes from her being desirable to being undesirable—he describes her as a starfish (another bottom-feeder, scavenger) and then comments on her unpleasant breath.

  In his dream their living situation is transient.

  The dream image of the shattered ceiling is telling; the space has been forcibly entered and subsequently patched up; a boundary has been violated.

  Session 17:

  Fictional diary entry: 7:48 AM

  I dropped three Weetabix briquettes into my favourite bowl and poured in whole milk. I remember looking at the remains of Lila’s breakfast—a side plate sprinkled with eight or nine crumbs and an empty glass beside it that smelled of absolutely nothing. I was tempted to open the cupboard and count the number of slices left in the loaf of bread—there had been nine the night before—but I restrained myself.

  I listened for sounds of the shower running. I always shower first because Lila uses up all the hot water. I listened for the tell-tale thunk of the pipes when the switch is flipped directing the water from bath tap to shower head, but I couldn’t hear above the sound of the kettle coming to a boil. My Weetabix were approaching the state I think of as maximum sog, the point where the briquettes lose all semblance of shape and blend together into a thick paste. The clock was ticking. I knew there was a critical window of a couple of minutes when they would remain at the peak of perfection. I quickly made a cup of tea and returned to my bowl of cereal, happy in the knowledge that the time it would take me to eat my Weetabix would be exactly the amount of time it would take for my tea to steep.

  I had almost finished when I heard Lila’s voice behind me. “You’re like a baby with your dish of mush-mush.” I was surprised. I hadn’t noticed the shower stopping. I wasn’t expecting her. I am usually finished my breakfast before she comes down. She seemed to be in a hurry. She was already dressed—wearing a tracksuit no less. She seemed to be bursting with energy. I was going to ask her if she had quit smoking again—morning jogging was always a sign that she was making yet another attempt—but I was feeling too self-conscious. In fact, I was blushing.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” she said. “I was just teasing.” She came over then and stood beside me. When she leaned in to hug me her breasts pressed against my face.

  The psychologist finishes reading and instead of making notes, as is his normal practice, he observes his client closely. Freddy’s tiny hands are folded in his lap and his feet are tucked under his chair. Occasionally, he raises a hand to smooth his kinky red hair, which is worn gelled and parted on the left. Freddy’s skin is white and covered in freckles, some of which are so large they seem segmented, like clover. The contrast between light and dark skin
gives his face a permanently shocked look.

  At a glance, everything about Freddy gives the impression of passivity and gentleness, even vulnerability. If Freddy were a wild animal, he would be a small furry creature, a vole or a hamster, easy prey. He looks comical. He reminds the psychologist of the dot-eyed puppets in Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas. His odd physical appearance combined with his eccentricities make the real Freddy all but invisible. Few will see beyond the persona he has adopted. Later, the psychologist will re-think this observation; consider perhaps that it was a bit grandiose, that maybe Freddy is simply a shy man.

  The psychologist sees two obvious strains at play in Freddy’s narrative of that day, the first one laughably Freudian: Lila as castrating bitch, infantilizing Freddy by using the words “mush-mush” and then, in the guise of comforting him, reinforcing his humiliation and dependency by offering him her breasts to suckle. In this version, Lila is the dominant partner.

  The second strain is less obvious and casts Freddy in the role of concerned parent, worried about the child, Lila. Specifically, Freddy had worried that she had not eaten enough—there are strong hints that Lila has an eating disorder of some kind. This possibility is borne out by her showering for long periods of time, evidence of obsessive compulsiveness—such behaviours tend to cluster. In such a scenario, Lila’s aggressive behaviour towards Freddy can be seen as an attempt to destabilize the father figure, to weaken his control.

  The psychologist considers a third strain in the narrative that is barely visible. Freddy’s imposition of clockwork precision on his breakfast routine shows obsessive-compulsive tendencies. This could mean that Freddy reads his own disordered tendencies into his wife’s behaviour as a way of objectifying them or it could mean that he has assumed some of his wife’s maladaptive behaviours as a way of normalizing the household.

  The psychologist tries to recall which biblical figure had taken on the demons of the sick man. Then he reconsiders, thinking maybe he is mixing up the biblical story with Father Demi in the Exorcist.

  19

  I KNOW THERE are people out there who hate me, who think I imprisoned Lila and treated her like an exotic animal, slowly depriving her of something essential in order to accentuate one aspect of her beauty. Perhaps they are right. Perhaps these truly superior beings have walked a mile in my shoes and at the end of that journey have formed the only conclusion that can be formed: I am an animal, a monster. But ask yourself this: how could a monster understand—let alone employ—empathy?

  Perhaps I can’t. Perhaps I have been fooling myself all along. Perhaps empathy is schadenfreude in sheep’s clothing, an intellectual parasite hell-bent on colonization, a way to undermine subjectivity.

  I picture the psychologist in his office. It is near the end of his workday. He is filing reports in colour-coded folders. He is putting on his coat and scarf. He picks up his hat, a leather fedora. Before dropping it on his head, he squeezes the top until the canoe-shaped depression deepens. His movements are precise. In the elevator he picks his nose, tries to flick it but can’t. Looks for someplace to wipe it, chooses the low ceiling. Next thing he’s driving through the streets in a black Jaguar. He whistles a tune from The Great American Songbook, “You Can’t Take that Away from Me.” Later, he tries a Louis Armstrong impression, interrupted when he pulls into the driveway of a dilapidated Victorian mansion. He enters the house, looks around, as though finding it conspicuously empty. He hangs up his coat, places his hat and scarf on a wooden coat rack. He stops for a moment to look into a cardboard box of toys in the front porch. He goes into the kitchen where he pops a beer and heats up a leftover curry in the microwave. He climbs the stairs, enters the study where he flops into his armchair, turns on the TV. He watches the news, finishes his curry and beer, and turns the TV off. He picks up his laptop and logs on. The screen opens on a document he had not bothered to close at the end of his last session. The running header says The Grief Counsellor. It’s his much-worked novel, his thriller about the relationship between a psychologist and his recently bereaved patient. The patient’s name is Frank. He is also a novelist.

  The psychologist clears his throat and begins to read aloud:

  “Only the most practiced observer would have read into Frank’s movements the near hysteria he was feeling as he left his house at 10:15 am that blustery Tuesday. He was dressed for the office, in grey flannel suit, black linen shirt, lime-green tie. His shoes were polished and tied tightly with double bows. Making his way down the front steps, he stopped, twisting his body to the left as though he was about go back inside. If that was his plan, he didn’t act on it. Instead, after a few seconds hesitation, he skipped the remaining two steps and loped across the litter-strewn sidewalk to the driver’s side door of his car. There, he paused again, clicking repeatedly on the remote control attached to his key chain, while staring intently at his house.

  Such behaviour, taken together with his blanched face, his slightly wild-eyed look, and the impatient way he tapped his foot as he waited for the car’s security system to disarm, could have seemed suspicious. And yet, any reasonable passer-by would probably have concluded that this slightly balding, slightly paunchy, middle-aged man had slept poorly, then slept late, and was now racing to get to work on time. He had simply paused to run through a mental checklist before moving on. Not even the palm reading herbalist at the top of the street (who was prone to conspiracy theory) would have suspected Frank. There was really nothing about him to indicate that he had just left Lola, his wife of twenty years, lying in the corner of their living room, bruised, unconscious, and possibly dead.

  He hadn’t lingered. His instincts told him to get out. It was the right decision. No sooner had he slammed the door and turned the deadbolt than he felt an equivalent door in his mind swing shut. It was the beginning of a process that would eventually allow him to block out entirely what had happened.

  A wave of adrenaline flooded through his body as he turned the ignition, the rush filling him with exhilaration, the corresponding ebb leaving him horrified. After so many years of just putting up with it, he had—in a few short minutes—stepped into a whole new life. This was the end of one Frank and the beginning of another. There would be no going back.

  Frank awoke that morning to the slightly painful sensation of Lola jabbing the heel of her hand into the space between his shoulder blades. The clock radio was on and the announcer was reading the local news: “A coyote has been spotted coupling with a German Shepherd outside the Second Cup on Stavanger Drive—The mayor denies that that city contravened its own regulations in approving a new downtown condominium development—Only one ferry is in service on the Tickle—No major slow-downs in traffic—Drivers should watch for road crews filling potholes—The weatherman predicts a high today of eight degrees.”

  Frank’s first thought was to question why he always set the alarm when he invariably slept through it, leaving Lola to wake him, which she did dependably, if somewhat resentfully. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed while Lola, with a whimper, burrowed into the duvet.

  Staggering to the bathroom in his pyjamas, he set the taps at twenty-to and twenty-past before pulling the golf-tee shaped plunger on the faucet and stepping under the jets. The water was practically scalding; his instinct was to reach immediately for the cold tap, but his disciplined side stayed his hand, told him it would only be a few seconds before he acclimatised. Experience of discomfort, he had learned, made discomfort more tolerable and increased the degree of discomfort he could handle. Most pain swelled toward a threshold of mindfulness. Knowing this (a hidden law) was one of the benchmarks of adulthood.

  Standing under the showerhead, feeling his body adjust to the water temperature, Frank felt a swell of pride. His powers of rational thought were switching on, powers that would see him through whatever the day held in store. Applying dandruff shampoo, he considered his previous formulation about mindfulness and thresholds as a possible scientific axiom. The principle had prob
ably been discovered over and over again in isolation, with one lucky person (a so-called great mind) getting credit for it. As the medicated shampoo began to burn viciously into his scalp, his brain (always surprising in its pragmatism) took the next logical step. It’s all very well, he thought, to theorise about pain tolerance, but true pain atomized thresholds, was a state of mindlessness, a desert littered with the skeletons of one’s many selves. Who better exemplified this than Lola?

  Lola had already finished her breakfast and gone back upstairs when Frank entered the kitchen. He was wearing his royal purple velveteen bathrobe that bore his initials in silver thread on the breast pocket, a present from his mother. On the counter he found the remains of Lola’s tiny, half-eaten breakfast: a cup of peppermint tea, three quarters finished; one half of one piece of white toast, with barely a scrape of butter on it; and a small sprig of grapes, comprising two shrivelled green spheres and six fleshy stem ends where the fruit had been pulled away. There was a faint smell of cigarette smoke, and Frank noticed that the deadbolt on the back door was no longer engaged.