Ask Bob: A Novel

by Peter Gethers

  My fingers hit only air. Pulling away from me, she said: “You felt like he was going to betray you.”

  “Yes.”

  “You knew that he would. You were certain that he would.”

  My sense of relief was fading, replaced by a feeling that things were about to spin out of control.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “The way you betrayed Anna.”

  Those were, by far, the five worst words I had ever heard. Her tone was cold, distant. The barriers hadn’t dropped away at all; now they’d become an insurmountable cement wall keeping us from each other.

  I nodded, felt my shoulders sag, and barely managed the strength to say, once again, “Yes.”

  She put her drink down, got back into bed, pulled the covers over her.

  “I wanted to tell you. I really wanted to tell you.”

  “Why did you wait? Why did you let him do this?”

  I no longer had the strength to give a coherent answer, but I knew exactly why I had waited. I hadn’t told her about that day because I was afraid of admitting to myself what I’d done, and I was equally fearful of how she’d respond. I was ashamed of my weakness, of my dishonesty. I was afraid of telling the one person for whom I wanted to be strong and honest. So I’d said nothing. And I said nothing now. I just shook my head and shrugged. Even the simple shrug felt as if I had several thousand pounds clamping down on my shoulders.

  She didn’t speak after that. I waited until I began to feel silly not touching her, so I gingerly slid over so my chest was against her back, my knees inside the backs of her knees, my arm around her, holding her close. Her skin was cold, and I wondered if this was how we were to sleep, with that wall between us. But at some point she shifted her position, turned so her breasts were against my chest and her lips were so close to mine I could feel the warmth of her breath. She kissed me, slowly and deliberately, and we made love. She didn’t speak or moan or sigh. It wasn’t soft and gentle lovemaking, but it wasn’t violent or harsh. It was determined, purposeful. And silent. Afterward, I hugged her and put my head into the crook of her neck. We fell asleep.

  In the morning, she was gone. That wasn’t surprising; she often left early to go to her Tribeca practice. I didn’t hear from her that night, but that wasn’t so strange, either. Although not as fanatical as she had been, she still tried to hold to her no-two-nights-in-a-row rule. But the next morning she didn’t return my call, and I didn’t hear from her the rest of that day.

  After three nights of silence, and many voice mail messages left on her cell phone, I walked over to her apartment. I knocked on the door; when there was no answer, I inserted the key she’d given me into the lock. Then I heard a rustling from inside; I removed the key and waited.

  The door opened. I was facing a man in his early to mid-thirties. Sandy-colored hair, cut short. He was too thin. His collarbone seemed about to jut through his skin.

  “You must be Bob,” he said. When I just stared at him, he said, “Cam told me you had a key.”

  “Is she here?”

  “No. That’s why I’m here.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. That’s when Rags came to the door and slid between the skinny guy’s legs, purring. And then I understood.

  “Thank you for taking care of him,” the guy said to me.

  “Rags is your cat.”

  He nodded.

  “And this is your apartment.”

  He nodded again.

  “Where’s Camilla?”

  “She went back to the Congo. She left yesterday.”

  “That’s impossible,” I said. He started to say something else, but I pushed past him. Stormed into the apartment and started looking around, although there was really nowhere to look and nothing to look for.

  “Hey,” he said angrily. “I don’t know what’s going on, but get the hell out of my apartment.”

  “She’s really gone?” I said.

  Something in my voice caused his annoyance to quickly fade. “She’s gone,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

  Rags appeared at my feet. I reached down and rubbed my fingers from his scrawny neck to the end of his tail.

  I handed the skinny guy my key to his apartment and left.

  Before I went back to Greenwich Avenue, I walked slowly over to the Sephardic cemetery on Eleventh Street. I put my hands on the locked gate, wrapped my fingers around the bars. I felt as if I were a prisoner locked inside the real world, instead of outside the small patch of land where I really wanted to be—the quiet remnant from the past that held several dozen dead bodies and an unknown number of beckoning ghosts.

  * * *

  From Camilla Hayden to Bob Heller, sent to AskDr.Bob@HeraldCo.com:

  ASK DR. BOB

  Dear Dr. Bob:

  I am assuming this won’t make the final cut for your column. Jesus—at least I sure hope not. I don’t know if you’ll even read this. I imagine you’re so angry at me. It’s almost unbearable to me how much I must have hurt you by leaving the way I did. I’m hoping that by sending this as an “official” e-mail to your column address, you’ll read it and perhaps even be a little more objective about us and me. More than anything, I hope that after these several months, you’re not still hurting. Or at least not quite so much. I know how resilient you are. Anyone so capable of helping us wounded has to know a fair amount about how to heal himself.

  As difficult as this might be for you to believe, I have wanted to get in touch with you often since I disappeared on you. But I couldn’t. I was too angry. Too afraid. Too confused and too me. I know you’ll actually understand the “too me” part. That’s one of the reasons it’s been so hard to be away from you—your understanding. So let me try to explain myself and hope that one more time you can understand.

  You probably know me better than anyone I’ve ever known. Don’t think I’m unaware of it. You not only know what I’m going to order in a restaurant before I even look at the menu, you know when I’m going to get angry and when I’m going to retreat and what I’ll think is funny. You know where to touch me to excite me and where to lay your hands to calm me down. You know when I need space—god, I hate that phrase; sorry to actually put it in print—and when I need to be close to someone. I have never had a relationship like that, and I’m not sure I ever will again. This was probably a wasted paragraph because you already know all of this. It’s kind of annoying, now that I think about it. You know so much. Maybe too much.

  But there are a few things you probably don’t know. I wish I’d been able to tell you about them in person, but I think I’m incapable of saying something like this face to face. Perhaps it’s because I wouldn’t be able to rationalize to myself the hurt I caused; seeing it close up would be more than I could bear. Or perhaps it’s because if I did have this conversation with you, I might not have fled. I think I’m a lot weaker than I appear. And if I weakened and stayed with you, I probably would have wound up hating you. I’d hate you for all the things I’d believe you’d do to me. This way I can be far away and love you. And regret the fact that I wasn’t strong enough to stay and find out if you really would have done those things.

  Is that complicated enough for you? Jesus. I’m a bloody mess.

  Here’s the thing: It has taken me most of my adult life to trust someone, and unfortunately for you, you were that someone. I finally let myself believe that with you I’d be safe from the kind of destruction I’ve seen all around me for my entire life. But when you told me about your being unfaithful to Anna, it truly was like waking from a bad dream and finding myself in a real-life nightmare. I had envisioned such a perfect relationship between you two, one that was nearly impossible to compete with. I admired that relationship so much while at the same time hating and resenting it. And then, suddenly, you blew it up. It was as if I’d discovered that what I thought was a glimpse of heaven was actually nothing more than an illusion—that what I was really seeing was a well-disguised hell. I can’t quite explain what I felt
, except to say that all I saw in my future was more betrayal and more destruction. If you could betray Anna, I was sure I had no chance. What I thought I had finally escaped suddenly seemed inescapable. And that realization overwhelmed and terrified me.

  So I went back into the heart of the nightmare. I am back in North Kivu. I am helping people who desperately need my help. There is genuine destruction all around me. I am, once again, seeing limbs blown off and people dying. The crazy thing is that up until recently, I found all this less terrifying than what I feared might happen with us. How insane and unwieldy is the human heart?

  The good news, at least for me, is that I can’t stay here anymore. I have to get away to someplace safer. I am ready to come back to a world where death may certainly be present but is not life’s constant companion. The problem is, I don’t know what I’m coming back to. Or what I want to come back to.

  I need help, Dr. Bob. I need real help. Not platitudes. Not promises. I’m not sure exactly what I need to know … and I have no idea If you’ll even be willing to reengage with me or even if you’ve read this far without pressing the delete button. But I need to know something that will bring me back, and I’m turning to the person who seems always to know what I need.

  —Frightened of Ordinary, Corrupt Human Love

  Dear Frightened:

  I can make this fairly short, if not all that sweet.

  No platitudes, I hope. And definitely no promises. Here’s what I’ve learned. For me this knowledge is comforting, in a strange kind of way. I don’t know whether you’ll feel the same, but it’s all I can offer.

  All guarantees are worthless. I suppose you realized that long before I did. But you see it as something terrible and destructive. I now see it as what it really is: normal life. I could tell you that I’d never be unfaithful to you or that I’d never hurt you. Or that nothing bad will ever happen to you or … or … or … you can fill in your own blank. It’s all bullshit. (At last: I can finally use the word “bullshit” since you’re right—I’m reasonably sure I won’t be selecting this to be printed in New York’s most popular newspaper.)

  Here’s what isn’t bullshit: the idea of someone trying as hard as humanly possible never to be unfaithful. And trying never to hurt you. And to never let anything bad happen to you. At some point, yes, one is finally judged by one’s successes. But it’s the process that defines us as we move through life. I can’t go back and prevent the wound from ever happening. I can only do my best to stitch it up and take away the pain and hope the scar is as invisible as possible.

  Here’s a borderline platitude (see? it’s very hard not to be treacherous on some level): Good people sometimes do bad things. People make mistakes. I have made several. Okay, plenty. But I think sometimes moments are just moments; sometimes a mistake defines a life, but sometimes it doesn’t have to. I believe we can rise above moments of failure. Maybe what goodness is about is trying to be perfect. (And, of course, not failing all that often.) And maybe what love is about is dealing with the failure to be perfect. Knowing when to stay in the face of failure. And then knowing when it’s time to leave.

  Here’s what this knowledge has left me with: a family. A weird family, but a family.

  Hilts is doing really well. He’s healing. My mother’s healing. Lucy is healing. Isadore is healing. I think that’s what family does, when one chooses one’s family correctly: They help the healing.

  Teddy called me recently. It was a strange call. I realized that he thought being family was an unbreakable bond, that he thought everything he did would ultimately be forgiven because he was a member of my family. But I realized that he’s not. Blood does not a family make. (Uh-oh—does that count as a platitude? If so, I apologize.) And so I cut him loose. I didn’t tell him that’s what I was doing, but he knew. I could tell he understood. Toward the end of our inconsequential conversation, he said, “You’re a bigger prick than I ever realized.” When I didn’t answer, he just said, “Congratulations. I guess my job is done here.” And then he hung up. I don’t think I’ll ever hear from him again. And if I do, it will no longer matter.

  The bottom line, Frightened? Life ends badly. There are no happy endings. A safe could fall on your head tomorrow. Whoever I marry next might die of stomach cancer, and whoever you decide to love might do all of the bad things you dread. But what happens if you skip that whole part between life and death? What will you have?

  I’m not big on opening myself up to too many wounds. But I’ll open myself up to this one: I don’t want to live in the graveyard any longer. I want you to be part of my family. I need you to be part of my family. I don’t care what you’ve done in various moments we’ve spent—or not spent—together. I care about what and who you are, not every mistake you’ve ever made. So if that’s what you want to come back to, the offer’s on the table. I will try to be faithful. I will try to do an excellent job of choosing your food when you don’t know what to order. I will touch you whenever and wherever you need touching. In return, you just have to be you. Not a perfect version of yourself. Not Anna. Not anyone or anything else. Just you.

  Here’s the simplest way I can say what I believe (and it’s only taken me my entire life to learn it):

  Pet weight is a wonderful, comforting thing.

  But it’s nothing compared to ordinary, corrupt human love.

  —Dr. Bob

  * * *

  CHAPTER 12

  HILTS HELLER

  For weeks after Camilla disappeared, I lived in a kind of daze. I took care of my patients and their pets, I took care of my mother, I took care of all the wounded people and creatures in my life. But I had no clear idea about how to take care of myself.

  To my great surprise, having Hilts around helped a lot. My nephew fit into his new world much more easily than I’d expected. Perhaps that’s because a sixteen-year-old’s most exhilarating skill is the ability to look forward rather than backward.

  For the first couple of months he was with me, I spoke to his teachers and his principal on a regular basis, hoping to hear that he was making friends, hoping to hear that he was making the right kind of friends—trying to make sure that he wasn’t heading toward a repeat of the Arky and T.J. fiasco—and doing whatever I could to help him, in fact, move forward. Hilts was not particularly verbal, nor was he easy to read emotionally. Getting him to talk was an effort; getting him to reveal his feelings was almost impossible. Understandably, he had wrapped himself in a protective cocoon; he was unwilling to trust other people and make himself vulnerable. His father had done a lot more than sucker punch him in the chest; he had stuck a dagger in his heart. I guess there was a lot of that going around.

  Hilts was an easy mark for anyone who was nice to him, and I came to understand that this was the source of his fantasizing. Eager to live in a kinder world than the one in which he’d grown up, he responded to kindness much like a small puppy—with no discernment and no awareness of motive. If he were younger, he’d be prey for a child molester. At his age, he was open mostly to either manipulation or misinterpretation. Over and over, he would take a simple human gesture and exaggerate it into whatever he so desperately wanted it to be.

  One day he came home and told me that Mrs. Elander, his English teacher, had said she was definitely going to get him into Harvard. I tried not to sound too skeptical, but I explained that it was hard to get into Harvard with a B-minus average and a deficit of about eighty percent of the tuition. He countered by insisting that she had guaranteed it—and that she would get him a scholarship, too. I said, probably not as gently as I should have, that I doubted an English teacher at a small school in the West Village had that kind of pull with any Ivy League college, but he was adamant.

  He was so adamant that ten percent of me believed him (he was, after all, Teddy’s son), so I called Mrs. Elander, a lovely, caring woman, to find out what she’d really said to him. It turned out, of course, that all she’d done was be nice to the boy. She asked him what his goals were,
and he replied that he wanted to go to a great school like Oxford or Harvard. (He didn’t realize that Oxford was in England or that Harvard was anywhere real; they were just concepts to him, magical places where people went to get educated so they could ultimately wind up with great jobs.) Mrs. Elander told him that to get into a top-flight university, he’d have to study hard, improve his grades, and start getting involved in a lot of extracurricular activities. He asked if she could help and she, of course, said yes. Somehow, in his hunger to please and to find someone to whom he could attach himself, he had morphed this conversation into a guarantee that she’d get him into Harvard. It was Little League coach redux.

  Keeping Hilts positive but disabusing him of his fantasies was a delicate line to walk. I was pretty good at it, mostly because I could understand his instincts. I’d come to realize that I wasn’t so far from being a fantasist myself. After all, I’d done a pretty good job of creating a past and a present that weren’t really what I thought they were.

  Hilts was still not an easy boy to like. I saw too much of Ted in him; I worried that he, too, might be empty at the core. But as we became closer and began to trust each other, I realized that at heart he was a decent boy. He didn’t always know the decent thing to do, but he did understand that decency was the ultimate goal. What motivated him more than anything else was this: He was terrified that he’d grow up to be like his father.

  I spent a lot of time trying to help Hilts understand both of his parents, hoping that understanding might replace hatred or resentment. I didn’t know Charlie well enough to really comprehend what made her tick, but I could say with confidence that she was not deliberately destructive. I spoke about her in terms of choices made and not made, and I told Hilts that it was difficult to condemn someone for her choices—at least on this kind of personal level—without knowing what caused her to make them. Ted was harder to explain away. When Hilts asked me if I liked Ted, I said no, I didn’t, but that being his brother was not the same as being his son. And I said that Hilts didn’t have to like his father; he just had to avoid hating him.