My October

by Claire Holden Rothman

  Hugo was leaning against the wall a few steps away, his eyes half shut. Earbuds connected his skull to the CD player in his hand. His face was expressionless. He could have been asleep.

  Luc’s disappearance didn’t seem even to have registered with him. Hannah hadn’t broached the subject yet. She didn’t trust herself to. The thought of discussing Luc with him was, frankly, beyond her. And so she had turned to Mandelbaum—a specialist in teenage boys, a saviour of fractured families. That, at least, was his reputation. On the morning after Hugo’s hearing, Hannah had telephoned his office. He had sounded fine over the phone. Calm and reassuring, though not cheap. She had thought Hugo would be seen alone, but Mandelbaum dispelled that notion straightaway. Both parents were expected to attend the initial sessions.

  Hannah had resisted, imagining Luc’s reaction to this request, but Mandelbaum was firm. It was important, he said, for everyone to be on the same page. The metaphor had made her feel like crying. When Luc happened to call twenty minutes later to tell her he was alive, she explained what she had done. To her surprise, though he disliked psychologists in general and English-speaking ones in particular, he had agreed to attend.

  Hugo pushed himself off the wall with one foot, squinting at something down the street. Hannah turned and followed his gaze. Her heart jumped. The blue Peugeot had pulled into a space half a block away. The door on the driver’s side swung open and Luc stepped out.

  He paused on the sidewalk, checking the address against a slip of paper in his hand. The sun was on him. He threw his shoulders back and stood up straight. He looked like an ad in a magazine—for cigarettes or high-end sportswear—the distillation of manhood in a sunlit image. Well-fed but not fleshy, intelligent, slightly bohemian. He looked happy, she thought with a pang. And startlingly young. The opposite, in other words, of her own sad and sleepless self.

  It was strange seeing the man you loved at a distance, as if a few feet of concrete on a Montreal sidewalk could give you a perspective impossible to attain in the normal course of events. She wanted to run to him. She wanted to throw her arms around him, tell him how incredibly sorry she was, tell him that she missed him.

  He walked up to her and kissed her on the mouth, another surprise. She must not weep, she told herself. Hugo was watching them. She could feel his gaze, although the minute she glanced his way, he looked down at the pavement. Luc tried to pat his arm in greeting, but Hugo stepped away from him and Luc ended up patting the air. The three of them stood like that for a moment, off-balance, silent. Then they trooped into the building in single file, like a cartoon family.

  Just inside the front door was a steep staircase. Except for the dusty burgundy runner on the stairs, everything was white— the stairwell, the second-floor landing where they took off their shoes, and the small waiting room beyond it. The place reminded Hannah vaguely of her mother-in-law’s apartment, except that into this spartan setting someone had introduced paintings, some abstract, others more figurative, all of them in bright, warm colours, set under glass in expensive frames.

  Hannah found herself imagining what Luc must be thinking. His hard-earned royalties going to finance office art for a charlatan. A Westmount charlatan.

  Mandelbaum himself came out to greet them, which relieved Hannah somewhat. No added cost of a receptionist. Tall and athletic in a plaid flannel shirt, he looked as if he were welcoming them into a backwoods cabin and not into a shrink’s office in west-end Montreal. He was around the same age as Luc, and like Luc sported a beard, though his was more black than white. He had cut his hair short, about the same length as his facial hair, and you could see the thinning patches.

  “Hi,” he said, sticking out his hand first to Hugo and then to Hannah and Luc. When Hannah addressed him as Dr. Mandelbaum, he gestured at her to stop.

  “Call me Manny.”

  Manny Mandelbaum? It was a joke, surely. She glanced at Luc but could not catch his eye.

  When they went into his office, there was some confusion over where they were to sit. Mandelbaum had arranged four leather chairs in a circle, and somehow Luc had failed to note the brown cardigan draped over the one facing the door. He sat down in it, tense and serious, and Mandelbaum had to ask him in a polite voice to vacate it. Luc jumped up immediately, apologizing, but when he sat down in another chair he looked disconcerted and resentful.

  Mandelbaum handed them each a pen and a clipboard to which a form had been attached. The form was simple enough, thought Hannah. Requests for four pieces of information with spaces below. He wanted her full name, her address, a phone number where she could be reached during the day, and her reason for visit.

  Most of the page was allotted to the reason for visit. Hannah didn’t need all that space. She wrote down a single word—communication—and passed the sheet back to Mandelbaum, who gave her an approving smile as he took it, as if she’d accomplished something. Luc was still writing. A dense, scrawled reason for visit. A crowd of words pouring out of him onto the page. At last his hand stopped.

  “It’s in French,” he said in English, handing over the paper. A rare concession, though Manny Mandelbaum couldn’t know that. He rewarded Luc with a smile.

  The only thing Hugo wrote was his name.

  “Can’t think of anything?” Manny Mandelbaum asked.

  Hugo shrugged.

  “That’s okay,” he reassured him. “You don’t have to write anything if you don’t want to. Maybe it will come later.” He reached for Hugo’s paper.

  To Hannah’s surprise, Hugo refused to give it up. He nodded at her, clutching the clipboard as if for protection. “I’m here,” he said gruffly, “because of her.”

  Manny Mandelbaum didn’t seem perturbed. “Because she asked you to come, you mean?”

  Hugo shook his head. “Because she told me to.”

  “That’s fine,” said Mandelbaum. “It’s a reason.” He mimed writing, indicating that Hugo should put it down. Which Hugo, frowning, did.

  And then they began.

  “First,” said Manny Mandelbaum, “I’d like to discuss the language issue.” He looked directly at Luc. “I’m American, born and raised in California, where I lived my whole life until I came here nine years ago to join the woman who is now my wife. There is a reason I am telling you this. My French is passable. I can converse with waiters and store clerks. But I learned the language late in life. What I’m saying is, my French isn’t good enough for me to conduct a therapy session. I work in English.” He paused, looking at each of them in turn. “This may be a limitation that one or all of you are not comfortable with.”

  “I’m okay with it,” said Hugo, surprising them all by being the first to speak.

  Hannah nodded and said it was fine with her. They all looked at Luc.

  Manny Mandelbaum pulled out Luc’s sheet and checked his name. “How does that sit with you, Mr. Lévesque?”

  Luc made a face. Not a happy face, but not outraged either. Hannah wondered for a moment whether the use of the word sit had confused him. But he waved a hand impatiently.

  “We’re good to go, then?” asked Mandelbaum.

  “Yes, yes, sure,” said Luc. He was still looking disgruntled, but Manny Mandelbaum either didn’t register this or chose to take him at his word.

  “I’d also like to tell you a little about my practice,” Mandelbaum continued. His voice was higher than Hannah would have predicted for such a big man, but it was calm and pleasant enough, and he enunciated clearly, which would be a help for Luc. “This is a safe space,” he said, indicating the room. “A space where you can say everything you need to say without fear of interruption or reprisal. My job here is to make sure it stays safe. I am not an expert any more than you are. I am not someone who can tell you what to do with your lives, what is wrong or right, or how to be. All I can do is listen. I’m good at that. I’ve had years and years of practice. And I can help you to listen too, to yourselves, and to each other.”

  He had a choker around his neck, a
rawhide string with three emerald-coloured ceramic beads. He resembled the boys Hannah had gone to high school with—Jewish boys, sons of dentists and lawyers, with a penchant for dressing like lumberjacks. That had been the style back in the seventies: lumberjacks wearing chokers. Mandelbaum had abundant chest hair, as Luc did. Tufts of it were poking through his open collar, the tips licking at the beads.

  “Listening is just the first part of the equation,” said Mandelbaum. “The overall focus is communication.”

  Hannah blinked.

  Mandelbaum reached behind him and took a dog-eared paperback from his desk. He held it up.

  On its cover, “Communication” was printed in white capital letters over a wash of dark colours from which a yellow flower emerged. Another word in pale cursive script was suspended above it.

  “Nonviolent communication,” said Manny Mandelbaum. “Otherwise known as NVC.”

  The layout was bad. Mismatched typefaces struggled for ascendancy against a busy background. The eye didn’t know which way to look. The flower was distracting. The effect was kitschy, trite, off-putting. Luc shot her a look. He hated things like this: psychological fads and their accompanying how-to manuals. The books were cleverly marketed. They sold well and were rewarded with ever more space in bookstores. Literature was being crowded into dark corners, slowly suffocating at the hands of self-help.

  “This approach was developed decades ago,” Mandelbaum explained, as if anticipating Luc’s reaction. “A psychologist named Rosenberg came up with it in the sixties. He spent his childhood in a rough Detroit neighbourhood. He had an urgent, personal need to find peaceful alternatives to the violence he saw all around him. In the mid-eighties, he founded the Center for Nonviolent Communication.”

  Luc cleared his throat. “There has been no violence in our family.” He paused. “None to speak of.”

  Hugo chose that moment to look up. Hannah looked at the rug.

  “I am sure you’re a peaceful man, Mr. Lévesque,” Manny Mandelbaum said, “but I am using the term violence in its broadest sense. I’m not just speaking about the physical kind.”

  “He’s lying anyway,” Hugo said quietly.

  Luc’s eyes hardened. “You’re one to talk of lying,” he said to Hugo quickly in French. Then, keeping his eyes firmly on his son, as if he could silence him by the sheer power of his will, he addressed the therapist. “We are here today because of him,” he said, jerking his chin in Hugo’s direction, “not me. I agreed to come here only because of your insistence, Dr. Mandelbaum. My wife has told you, I think, that he bought a gun and carried it inside his school?”

  Hugo crossed his arms over his chest.

  Once again, Manny Mandelbaum held up both hands. “Look, you are each going to get a chance to speak. I promise you. I just want to finish my introduction, so you know what you’re in for. Is this okay with everyone?”

  Luc made a show of listening. He folded his left hand into his right, and then he squeezed. Hard, as if cracking a nut. It was an unconscious gesture, a gesture Hannah had seen many times before, a gesture that made her heart sink. Manny Mandelbaum described his method. Basic human needs. The perfectly natural strategies we use to get them. Core values. Hannah found it impossible to take it all in. She was watching Luc’s hands. His fingertips had gone dark from the pressure he was exerting. His knuckles had whitened.

  Mandelbaum fell silent. He bent forward and pulled something from under his chair. A piece of wood. This got everyone’s attention. The wood was almost black, mahogany or something. It looked varnished. It had two blunt ends and a small indentation in the middle, where Mandelbaum held it between thumb and forefinger.

  “The talking stick,” he said, holding it up for everyone to see. “We’ll go around the circle. Only the person holding this stick is permitted to speak. That is the sole rule you have to remember. The others must listen until that person is completely done. Then, and only then, will the person pass the stick back to me.”

  Luc was no longer even looking at the therapist. His fingertips were still purple. Hannah sat there wondering what she would do if he stormed out. She was caught off-guard when Mandelbaum held the stick out to her.

  “You start.”

  Her face went hot. She really didn’t want to—not after the fiasco at the school. But Mandelbaum had pressed the stick into her hands. Her fingers curled around it. It still bore the warmth of his touch. Luc was watching her. His contempt—for this place, for this New Age shaman she had forced him to consult, for her—was palpable. She could feel herself shrinking before it.

  “It’s okay, Hannah,” said Mandelbaum encouragingly. “Safe space, remember?”

  Hannah took a deep breath. It didn’t feel safe. But she was the one who had put this in motion. She was the reason they had come to this office. She couldn’t refuse.

  “Why don’t you start by telling us why you’re here?” Mandelbaum suggested.

  She stared at the tufts of chest hair poking out of his shirt. She wanted to cooperate. Truly, she did, but the words were hanging back, cowering like shy children. The last time she’d spoken, Luc had walked out on her. She didn’t know if he’d ever return.

  “I—” she began, and then closed her mouth. She looked up from Mandelbaum’s chest. His eyes were hazel. The left one had a dab of blue. A pretty colour, she thought. A recessive gene speaking out. Without warning, tears were pouring out of her. She hid her face in her hands. She knew without looking that Luc would be mortified. Her son too. Not half as mortified as she was.

  Mandelbaum held out a box of tissues. She blew her nose and pulled herself together, then picked up the stick again, gripping it tightly in both hands. She looked again into Manny Mandelbaum’s strangely coloured eyes and began to speak. Not about Hugo. Not even about Luc, although she was devastated by what was happening in their marriage. What she found herself talking about was her father, this colossal presence in her life whose words had so recently and cruelly been extinguished.

  Mandelbaum listened, never taking his blue-brown eyes off her, holding out the Kleenex box when she needed it.

  “Sounds to me like a heavy time,” Mandelbaum said when she paused.

  Heavy time. What a throwback. She hoped Luc’s English was too poor for him to notice. He was looking out the window, probably wishing he was anywhere but here.

  Manny Mandelbaum smiled at her, the blue in his eyes gleaming like a little patch of sky. He leaned forward and reached out a hand, and for a crazy second Hannah imagined he might stroke her thigh. But the hand stopped in front of the stick on her lap. “Are you finished with that, Hannah?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, giving the talking stick back to him. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry.”

  Luc crossed his arms, tossing his head when Mandelbaum held the stick out to him. “I do not need that. I do not need a stick to speak.”

  Hannah was surprised at how thick his accent was. It was much stronger than she remembered. But in truth, she couldn’t actually recall the last time she’d heard him speak English.

  Empty-handed, he told the story of the gun, and the suspension, and the disciplinary hearing. No mention of her outburst or her exchange with the head of the parents’ committee. It was Hugo who received the brunt of his anger.

  “He lied,” said Luc. “You want violence in a broad sense, Dr. Mandelbaum? Telling a lie in public to your own father. Bringing shame on him. This is violence.”

  “Sounds to me,” Mandelbaum said, “like honesty is one of your core values.”

  “It is a value for most people,” Luc snapped. “Not for you, Dr. Mandelbaum? Not for my son, either, I think.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” said Mandelbaum. “In my experience, sons are frequently similar to their fathers. Hugo may very well attach a lot of importance to being honest.”

  Luc exhaled audibly. “Not my son. I do not think so.”

  “In this instance,” said Mandelbaum, “he may just have valued something else
more. You say another boy was involved?”

  “Vladimir,” said Hugo, taking all three of them by surprise.

  Mandelbaum held out the stick, which, again to everyone’s surprise, Hugo took.

  “Hey,” Luc objected. “You ask me the question, no?”

  “I did,” said Manny Mandelbaum. “That is true. Is it all right if your son speaks?”

  Hugo leaned back in his chair, rolling his eyes. “I don’t need his fucking permission.”

  Luc’s eyes hardened. “Voilà,” he said. “La violence. He cannot articulate a single sentence without these, how do you say, gros mots?”

  Mandelbaum crossed his legs. “Do you mind if Hugo takes a turn? I think it’s important, Mr. Lévesque. He has something to say.”

  Hugo leaned his elbows on his knees and rolled the stick between his palms. Despite his claim about not needing permission, he did not speak until his father nodded.

  “I wasn’t going to rat him out.”

  “No,” agreed Mandelbaum. “Vladimir was the student who sold you the gun, correct?”

  Hugo nodded.

  “It belongs to the father,” Luc broke in. “The boy stole it. They are alike, this Vladimir and my son. Two drops of water.”

  Mandelbaum nodded at Hugo’s hands. “He’s got the stick now, Mr. Lévesque. It may seem arbitrary, but it’s important.” He turned back to Hugo. “Go on, Hugo. Please continue.”

  But Hugo had apparently said all he was going to say. He passed the stick back to Mandelbaum. As he let go of it, however, he turned to his father. “I’m not a liar, for your information. I just don’t like to rat.”

  Hannah saw uncertainty on her husband’s face. She began to translate: “Il ne voulait tout simplement pas—”