Karen and Hal walked and chatted pleasantly, eventually arriving at a modest cafeteria tucked away in the basement of the building. Students and faculty milled about, and the scene reminded Karen of an ultracool liberal arts college. She had gone to West Virginia State, studied accounting, and thought people who majored in the arts were destined to starve. These kids all seemed well nourished—for now.
Hal pulled out a chair and motioned for Karen to take a seat.
He was gentlemanly and came from an era where courtesy spoke of character. His suit was rumpled like his skin. His face was kind, with a broad and flat nose and big ears. She graciously accepted his offer to get her a coffee.
“I take mine black,” she said.
“Ah, a kindred spirit,” Hal replied with a wink.
He returned moments later with two black coffees. She noticed a slight tremor in his hands as he set the coffees on the table. Karen was not lucky enough to have seen her father grow old. For whatever reason, Hal’s shaking hands made her miss her dad.
“How is it you came to join the TPI board?” asked Karen.
“I guess you could say my day job led me here.”
“You’re a fertility doctor,” Karen said. “Head of the Greater Washington Fertility Center. You’ve been practicing there since 1987.”
Hal was impressed. “I feel naked and exposed in your remarkable presence, my dear,” he said. “How did you know all this about me?”
Karen’s expression turned contrite, her shoulder shrug intended as an apology of sorts.
“We have backgrounds on everyone who works here,” she said. “It’s standard protocol for folks of my ilk. But I would have remembered your job even if I didn’t have such excellent recall. My ex-husband and I looked into IVF after a number of miscarriages, but ultimately we decided one son was enough for us.”
Karen was not sure why she felt comfortable to share such a personal detail about her life. Maybe it was Hal’s profession or the way he reminded her of her father that had inspired such candor.
“How old is your son now?”
Hal’s brown eyes seemed to glow. It was obvious he took delight in hearing about children, regardless of how they came into existence.
“Josh is twenty-five, but he won’t see twenty-six if he doesn’t call his mother soon. It’s amazing how you can create life in a lab, but there’s no miracle formula for raising the perfect person.”
“Yoshi might disagree with you there.”
“How does he do it?” asked Karen. “How does he get results like these? The list of alumni is a who’s who of the amazing.”
“It’s all in the mind,” Hal said, sounding darkly mysterious as he tapped a finger to his head.
Karen gave a slight roll of the eyes. “The Secret Service doesn’t do new-agey well,” she said.
“It’s hardly new-agey,” answered Hal. “His approach is grounded in real science. Yoshi’s methods enhance the direct connection between the mind and body. He believes our thoughts drive our actions.”
“Well, that’s common sense, not science.”
“No, it’s much deeper than the idea of thinking of walking before you move your legs,” Hal corrected. “Our minds and emotions play a critical role in our health. Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine, taught that good health depends on a balance of mind, body, and environment.”
“Is that how you became involved? Because of a medical interest?”
“In a way, yes. Through my work, I was extremely aware of the psychological difficulty couples experience in struggling with fertility. My curiosity led to an interest in the mind-body connection, and I studied techniques to improve conception rates without medical intervention.”
“Wouldn’t that put you out of business?”
“I wasn’t thinking like a businessperson. I was thinking like a healer.”
This made sense to Karen on a profound level. She knew from many discussions how Ellen’s fertility doctor had healed the giant hole in her heart by helping to bring Cam into this world.
“But my interest in mind-body techniques evolved beyond just fertility and into child development when my son, Liam, became a drug addict.”
Karen grimaced slightly in a show of sympathy. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” she said.
“Liam was—is, I guess—an incredibly gifted artist. His drawings honestly look like photographs to me. But he also got it into his head that he needed drugs to enhance his creativity, foster his gifts. You know, the suffering artist trope.”
“Where is Liam now?”
Hal ran a wrinkled hand through the wisps of gray hair receding from his sun-spotted forehead. His sweet smile flattened.
“I don’t know. He’s lost to me. I tried to get him help, but drugs don’t care how much a father loves his son. When I heard about the TPI, I was immediately intrigued. Not only did it align with my interest in the mind-body connection, but it also made me keenly aware of the need for support systems beyond the family. I couldn’t help but wonder: if Liam had a support network like the TPI, would he have ever turned to drugs?
“I started volunteering my time as a medical consultant and eventually was offered a seat on the board of directors. Over the years I’ve become more passionate about Yoshi’s work, not less so. He’s a special man.”
“What makes him so special?” Karen asked.
“How much do you know about his teaching philosophy?” Hal responded.
“I know about would-be kidnappers and snipers. I don’t pay attention to the curriculum.”
Hal quickly dispensed with Yoshi’s résumé. Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Taisho University in Tokyo. Research and teaching positions at Harvard and Stanford Universities.
“There’s a lengthy tradition in Eastern cultures of exercises that are specifically mental in nature,” Hal said. “Yoga involving meditative techniques, for instance. If Yoshi taught me anything, it’s that the power of mental training to influence neurological and physiological functions should not be underestimated. In more Western terms, think about the job of a sports psychologist. They use mental rehearsal, or imagery re-creation, to re-create an event or image in the mind, so when the player goes to the field they can execute at a higher level because they’ve already visualized their success. They’ve enhanced the mind-body synchronicity.”
“So students here meditate?”
“Meditation, breathing exercises, visualization techniques, all of that and more.”
“So you’re like sports psychologists for the arts and sciences.”
Hal gave a laugh. “In a way, yes. Students are taught how to relax, how to breathe right, how to calm the mind to open it more fully. Every mental state has some physiology associated with it—some effect, positive or negative, felt in the physical body. Outside of the TPI students are required to practice meditation for twenty minutes a day, five days a week. They work on breathing exercises. While training here, instructors help students use positive mental imagery to learn complex new skills, to better understand the material, and manage anxiety and negative thinking.”
“And it works?”
“You’ve seen the posters. I’d say it’s miraculous. There’s a reason we have a five-year wait list. Yoshi’s methodology far surpasses what could be achieved through diligent practice alone. In some cases he’s taken the ten-thousand-hour rule to mastery and flipped it on its head, getting amazing results in a fraction of the time.”
“So what happens if you don’t have a gift, some special talent? Does this technique work for everyone?”
“Yoshi believes, and I’ve come to concur, that everyone has some type of creativity locked inside. It’s his job to find the key to let it out.”
“Not me,” Karen said. “Give me a pen and I’ll give you a stick figure. Hand me a musical instrument and I’ll give you a headache.”
“That’s because nobody gave you a chance to explore your inner self.”
“My new-agey alarm is going off
again.”
“Young students come here without a focus in mind. They are encouraged to explore a variety of disciplines, the goal being to unearth an individual’s innate creativity, regardless of his or her area of interest.”
“Right,” Karen said, sounding as if she’d just remembered something. “Cam started off in the music program before he demonstrated an aptitude for chess. Then he switched his focus of study.”
“That sounds typical. Once the students discover their True Calling, as we’ve named it, they learn from the best instructors. Some of our teachers are world-renowned. They come here because they believe in Yoshi, and he’s given them plenty to believe in. What we offer here is a holistic approach to learning.”
“You know how good Cam is at chess,” Karen said.
“He’s remarkable,” said Hal.
“In your opinion, could a student like Taylor Gleason suddenly eclipse Cam with extra holistic training?”
“Anything is possible, that’s what we teach our students.”
“What about cheating?”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I guess anything is possible,” said Hal, repeating himself. “But I doubt it.”
“So it’s all in the mind,” Karen said, still trying to grasp it. “I think it and it will come. I wish to be better than Cam and therefore I am.”
“No, it’s not all about thought here,” answered Hal.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Yoshi is a trained herbalist. He has a second doctorate in naturopathic medicine.”
“Which is?”
“Alternative medicine using natural modalities, especially herbalism.”
“So he gives these kids brain-boosting herbs?”
“He did for a time, yes, only to those who expressed interest. But over the years his thinking has taken a decidedly more Western turn, and he’s brought nootropics to the school.”
“Nootropics?”
“Colloquially they’re known as smart drugs.”
Karen’s face scrunched up in confusion. “He’s peddling pills?”
“No, he’s providing access to a new type of cognitive enhancer that’s part of a billion-dollar industry and growing rapidly.”
“Are these FDA-regulated?”
“I don’t believe so. For the most part nootropics are not considered controlled substances, which means it’s legal to use and own these compounds without any restrictions.”
“I can’t believe parents would give their kids something like that.”
Hal chuckled. “At first very few did,” he said. “But the company that markets the nootropic we sell—”
“What’s the name?”
“ProNeural, they started showing up here regularly and doing neurofeedback testing, quantifiably measuring brainwave activity, memory, and concentration. They found that the kids taking the nootropic performed significantly better than those who did not in a number of key areas. Well, you can imagine what happened next.”
“Parents wanted to give their kids the pill,” answered Karen.
“Almost all of them. Nobody wants his or her child to be at a disadvantage.”
“Including Cam?”
“Yes, including Cam.”
Karen had no idea Cam was taking anything, but it was not her place to track his prescriptions. That was Dr. Gleason’s arena, and despite what he thought of her, Karen did not go traipsing willy-nilly onto his turf.
“Is it safe?” asked Karen.
“I’m a fertility doctor and a board member. I’m not a nootropics expert, but what I can tell you is that many of the students take the nootropics, and they all seem to do fine on them.”
“Not just fine,” said Karen. “Better.”
CHAPTER 18
Maybe it was the chicken.
It was the only thing Susie Banks’s father ate that nobody else did. They had gone out to their favorite Italian restaurant for dinner and upon returning home all seemed normal, until her dad complained of feeling queasy. He went upstairs to lie down. Moments later, Susie heard the sound of him retching in the bathroom.
Nothing about the meal had upset Susie’s stomach, but it was knotted just the same. Tomorrow she would get the results of her blood work and MRI. Nobody could yet explain what had brought on the episode of what her doctor had called myoclonus.
The word itself sounded scary to her. It had the ring of a rare disease—oh, I’m so sorry you’ve come down with myoclonus—but it was not, according to her doctor, a disease at all. It was a symptom of something else gone awry.
Susie had experienced more twitches and jerks since the first incident. Though none were as severe as the initial attack, each episode induced intense spikes of anxiety and fear. They occurred as a sequence of muscle contractions and relaxations, but sometimes had no discernable pattern at all. Susie’s doctor told her most people experienced some form of myoclonus—a hiccup, or a sleep start when the body jerks as it falls asleep—but this gave her little comfort. Most people did not experience such a violent attack while onstage, performing for a sold-out audience. She felt like a bomb was ticking away inside her, only she couldn’t see the timer and had no way of knowing the intensity of the forthcoming explosion.
Her doctor had rattled off a litany of possible causes, including brain tumors, infections, and even issues with Susie’s kidneys, describing the condition as a short circuit in the electrical activity in her brain, which made it sound treatable. But when Susie got home she did what most people would do: she Googled the term.
An onslaught of information greeted her, most of it distressing. Whatever disease caused the symptom, Susie sensed it was progressive to the point where she might not be able to walk, or talk, or heaven help her, play.
Since the horror show at the Kennedy Center, Susie had yet to play her backup violin (the cracked one was still in repair). Twice she had gotten as far as holding the instrument in her hand, but before she could draw the bow across the strings, a flash of that terrible night made her stop. The scenario played out in her mind in excruciating slow motion. She would see her arms flailing out in front of her; feel the violin slip from her grasp; hear the gasps of the startled audience ring loudly in her ears.
She wondered if she would ever find the strength to play again. These occasional moments of self-pity made her think of athletes determined to walk after being paralyzed playing a sport they loved, or a young child with cancer committed to beating the odds. That was when the guilt would set in. She’d feel ashamed for allowing one incident to define her. But the memory would return like a speeding train, and fear would take hold, and the violin went back into its case.
Susie sat on the living room couch, absently flipping through a Home & Garden magazine, wondering what her life would be like without her music. Upstairs she heard her father get sick again.
“Mom, is Dad okay? He sounds awful.”
“He’ll be fine, dear,” her mother called back. “I’m afraid he may have food poisoning. Are you feeling all right?”
“I’m okay.”
Actually, she was feeling a bit light-headed, but did not say so. Her dad needed her mom’s attention right now.
“Have you taken your pills?”
Her mother was like a clock when it came to the TPI supplements. Why bother? Susie asked herself. Unless she could take a pill to rein in her myoclonus, her playing days were all but done.
She went to the kitchen anyway, and took the supplements mostly out of habit. Her nightly ritual felt weighty and pointless. Three pills down the hatch: one white, one yellow, and one brown. She did not know what exactly these supplements contained, but her parents approved of her taking them, and that was good enough for her.
Susie’s mother called down to her from upstairs. “Sweetheart, could you please bring Dad a glass of ice water from the kitchen?”
Susie traipsed upstairs with the water glass in hand and recoiled slightly at her father’s green and sick
ly pallor.
“Daddy, are you all right?”
Douglas Banks clutched at his stomach. “Just be grateful you didn’t eat what I ate,” he said.
Addressing her husband, Allison said, “I’m going to tuck you into bed, and I think I’m going to go to bed myself. I’m not feeling all that great, either.”
Her mother had the fish, and Susie ate pasta, but at some point they must have eaten the same thing, Susie thought, because she was starting to feel worse. Could it have been the olive oil?
Doug Banks staggered over to the bed and collapsed onto the mattress with a thud.
“I’m a little queasy myself,” Susie said. “We are never going back to that restaurant.”
“Three cases of food poisoning from three different meals,” Allison said. “Maybe I should call the restaurant.”
But her mother did not look well enough to call anybody, and Susie doubted she would pick up the phone.
Susie’s stomach clenched and released. For a moment she feared another myoclonus episode, and was strangely relieved to realize it was just plain old nausea.
“I’m going to bed, too,” Susie announced. “Feel better, Daddy.” She kissed her mother on the cheek and gave her father a little hug. Doug mustered enough strength to pat his daughter on the arm tenderly.
“I love you both so much,” Susie said, feeling tears come to her eyes. She could cry at soap commercials these days. She was so moody and out of sorts, lost without her music. “Thank you both for being there for me.”
“We love you too, sweetheart,” Allison said. She gave Susie’s forehead a gentle kiss. “Get some rest. If you don’t feel well, come wake me. We have some Imodium or Pepto that might help. Damn restaurant!”
Susie let out a little laugh and off she went. Her bedroom had become her sanctuary in the days since the incident. The incident—what other name could she give it? Decals of the Eiffel Tower, a symbol of Paris, a city where she dreamed she would play one day, decorated her closet door. She kept her room intentionally uncluttered. It flowed like a good piece of music that way. She liked things to be simple and understated. She had sleek furniture, and mini blinds on the windows, and pretty framed photos hanging on the walls. She wondered what would happen next year—if she’d go to college or somehow resume her music career.
The First Family Page 10