by Daniel Quinn
“She’s very beautiful, isn’t she, Greg? I’m afraid I don’t know her well, but I can see why you’re so much in love with her.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “You want very much to be with her, don’t you?”
A small crease of annoyance appeared on his forehead.
“You want very much to be with her, and you were with her the other night in Chicago, weren’t you?”
His jaw muscles tensed.
“Everything’s all right, Greg,” she crooned. “Everything’s fine. I want you to be with Ginny too. Ginny is very good for you, and it’s good you were together the other night in Chicago. That’s right,” she said as he relaxed again.
She paused uncertainly, like a surgeon about to cut into a body in a darkened room. “So you and Ginny were together. And you were happy, weren’t you?” She studied his face and thought she saw a barely perceptible nod. “But then something happened. I don’t know what it was, Greg, but you mustn’t let it worry you. It’s completely over and in the past.”
With a slight flick of his head, he seemed to deny this.
“Yes, everything’s all right now, believe me. Ginny is fine, and she’d like to talk to you again.
Another flick of the head.
“Greg, listen to me. Whatever happened in Chicago is all over now. You can tell me about it. Whatever it was, I’ll understand it. I want very much to understand it. Between the two of us, we can handle it. There’s nothing to be upset about.” She paused doubtfully. “Now I’m going to see if I can find out what happened, but you needn’t be upset. I’m going to ask some questions and you mustn’t become excited if I ask the wrong ones. Do you understand, Greg?”
He stared at the rain-bleared window.
“Did something happen to Ginny in Chicago, Greg?” she asked quietly. “Was she hurt in some way?”
Greg sighed, bored.
“Good. I’m glad nothing happened to Ginny. She was well when you . . . left her? She was happy?”
His lips twisted disdainfully.
“Yes, that was a stupid question. Of course she was. But something happened. Something that upset you. But you needn’t be upset by it now, of course. Whatever it was is over and done with. You know that.” Agnes paused and rubbed the bridge of her nose thoughtfully. “Did something happen to you, Greg?”
He closed his eyes for a long moment.
“That’s it, isn’t it? Something . . . upsetting happened to you in your dream. I understand. Dreams can be frightful some-times, but it’s all over now . . . Did the person you call the follower appear in this dream, Greg? Did he do something to you?”
Greg’s nostrils flared in disgust.
“No, not the follower.” The doctor sighed and sat blinking for a few moments. “In your other dreams, Greg, some very strange things happened. You remember. Someone called to collect a debt you didn’t owe. Someone tried to sell you a gun you’d dreamed about. These things upset you a lot. Was it something like that?”
His lips were compressed into a stubborn line.
“That’s it, isn’t it? Something bizarre happened.”
The muscles in his cheeks were jumping.
“Something bizarre happened that made you think—”
“Go away,” Greg whispered savagely.
Agnes expelled a long breath. “You want me to go away?”
“Yes.” Although he continued to stare out of the window, his eyes were blazing now.
“Are you sure? I don’t want to leave you if you’re upset.”
“Go away!”
“All right, Greg, I’ll go. But may I come back in an hour?”
“No.”
“Well, then . . . may I come back this afternoon sometime?”
“Yes. Go away.”
“Will you talk to me when I come back?”
“Yes.”
“You promise, Greg?”
“Yes. Get out!”
When he heard the door close, Greg blinked and felt hot tears course down his cheeks.
Two hours later there was a soft knock at the door. When it wasn’t acknowledged, Alan entered hesitantly with a tray. “Dr. Jakes said I should bring you some lunch.”
Greg, staring into the rain, said nothing, and Alan began setting a place at the table. Greg glanced at what he was doing and said, “No.”
The waiter straightened up. “No? You should eat something, Mr. Iles. Really.”
“Take it away.”
“I could leave it just in case.”
Greg closed his eyes. “Please.”
After gathering up the silverware and dishes, Alan paused at the door. “Anyway I’m glad you’re . . . feeling better.”
“Thank you,” Greg whispered.
When Agnes arrived at three, Greg acknowledged neither her knock nor her presence in the chair across from him. Although blowing rain continued to streak the window, the clouds were breaking up, and his eyes were fixed on the sky.
“You said you’d talk to me,” she pointed out. He shrugged. “But you’d rather be left to your brooding.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve had four hours to brood in, Greg, and it wouldn’t help to give you another four or another forty. At the end of it, you’re going to have to face what has to be faced.”
He said nothing.
“Among the things you have to face is that you’re alive here and now in a rest home in Kentucky, and you’ve had a miserable shock. The woman you love has rejected you.”
Greg shook his head.
“She hasn’t rejected you?”
“No.”
“Greg,” she said gently, “you can’t hold onto the dream. Or rather, you can hold on to it—but only at the expense of your sanity and your life. Is that what you really want? To sit here in this room staring out the window for the rest of your life, lost in a fantasy?”
He set his jaw stubbornly.
“I see. It is what you want. And just a couple of days ago you were all in a rush to be released so you could return to normal life. You demanded to know what program I was going to put you through before giving you your freedom. But now you want to sit here and feel sorry for yourself forever, while you gently rot away among your delusions. Poor, pathetic creature.”
“Shut up.”
“I’ll surprise you, Greg.” She stood up. “I will shut up. I’ve managed to drag you back from the edge of cataplexy and psychosis, but if you actually prefer to throw yourself into that chasm, go ahead. I have other patients to attend to, and most of them, unlike you, are frantic to return to health.”
She turned to go, and Greg whispered, “Wait. Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow what?”
“Give me till tomorrow morning.”
“No, Greg. That’s what the addicts say. ‘Give me till tomorrow. Give me till tomorrow, but let me be drunk today, let me be stoned today.’ And so they stay drunk and stoned forever, because it’s never any easier tomorrow. And it won’t be any easier for you tomorrow either. It’ll probably be harder, in fact, because self-pity is like any other habit—the longer you indulge it, the stronger its hold becomes.”
Greg’s face twisted. “I don’t want to.”
Agnes sat down. “You don’t want to what?”
“I don’t want to . . .”
“Yes?”
“. . . be here.”
“I know, Greg. I know. But you are here.”
“I don’t want to be.”
“I know. This is why you won’t eat, won’t talk. To do these things is to admit that you’re here.” He nodded. “I understand, Greg, I really do. And, strangely enough, it’s all right. You don’t have to want to be here. You just have to acknowledge that you are here.”
“I don’t want to do that either.”
“I know. But, you see, you’ve already done it. You can’t rescind that acknowledgment now. You couldn’t even if you tried.” Agnes waved all this away. “That phase is finished, Greg. Now we can begin to do something constru
ctive.”
“Such as what?”
She sighed and settled back into her chair. “Do you remember the conversation you had with your wife two days ago?”
“Two days ago. Christ.” He closed his eyes as if in pain. “Yes, I remember.”
“Ginny was deceived by your appearance of health and stability, Greg. So was I, for that matter. And because she was deceived, she delivered a nearly mortal blow to your ego—and in this case I’m using that word in its technical sense, not as a synonym for pride. The ego that you identify as Gregory Donner was shattered and for a few hours was replaced by that of Richard Iles. During those hours you were once again the person you were when you arrived here—completely docile, completely malleable—as empty of emotional tone as a doll. Do you remember?”
“No, not really. I remember sitting in the restaurant talking to Ginny, and then at some point everything became . . . vague.”
She nodded. “We brought you back here, and I gave you some emotional first aid. I tried to resuscitate Greg Donner. I was afraid that . . .” She waved this away. “At one point, I foolishly told you, by way of encouragement, that you would soon be back in Chicago, living on Lake Shore Drive, and everything would be fine again. And evidently when you fell asleep that night you made this prediction come true—in your dreams.”
Greg sighed. “Yes.”
“I’d like to hear what happened in that dream.”
He shook his head wearily. “What difference does it make?”
“I won’t know what difference it makes until I hear it, Greg. What I do know is that in the morning you woke up screaming hysterically.”
“I woke up screaming hysterically because I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to believe this was happening to me again, that I’d . . . lost everything again.”
“I understand. Nevertheless . . .” She leaned forward earnestly. “Please trust me on this, Greg. This dream represents a gap in my knowledge—in our collective knowledge—of the development of the person known as Gregory Donner. I’m not just indulging my curiosity here. If I’m going to help you back to health, I must know what you know. This dream may well be a vital part of your personal history.”
“Okay,” Greg said wearily. “But not right now, okay? We could do this tomorrow, couldn’t we?”
“Greg, I’d really rather not put it off. In all my experience, in all my reading, I’ve never known therapeutically significant developments to occur at this terrifying rate. This is why, in the last twenty-four hours, I’ve literally assaulted you. I’ve battered and browbeat and tricked you relentlessly. I’ve taken unforgivable risks to force you to talk to me—precisely because I don’t know what the devil’s going on here. Your condition is so obviously volatile that I felt the risks had to be taken—and I don’t dare say to you now, ‘Sure, Greg, take your time. Another day doesn’t matter.’ It may matter. I just don’t know.”
He let out a long, hopeless sigh. “Okay.” he closed his eyes for a few minutes, then shook his head and muttered, “God.”
Then he began.
When he was finished, the doctor closed her notebook and shook her head sympathetically. “I’m sorry, Greg. Truly. I can see now why you reacted so violently. You had everything you wanted—and thought it was all nailed down for good.” She checked her watch. “Shall we take this conversation to the dining room? You must be famished.”
Greg shrugged indifferently.
“Hey, Mr. Iles!” Alan said, greeting them at the door, “This is great!” He picked up a couple of menus and led them to Greg’s table. “You remember I said I was going to buy you a drink?”
“I remember,” Greg said. He managed a feeble smile as he slid into the booth.
“It’ll be right along.”
“Bring some bread first, Alan,” Dr. Jakes said. “A bowl of soup. On a stomach as empty as his, a drink is definitely not recommended.”
“You got it, Doctor.”
Alan disappeared, and Agnes took out her notes and began to read through them. After a few minutes she looked up and said, “Do you understand what the dream is about in a general way?”
“No. I haven’t thought about it . . . as a dream. I don’t want to think about it that way.”
“I know, but you’re going to have to make a decision now, Greg. You can hold on to it, try to pretend it wasn’t a dream, or you can try to face it, understand it, and go on from there.”
“Go on,” he said wearily.
“If you feel like I’m rushing you, you’re absolutely right. I want to get this thing out in the open, where you can’t brood over it—and the sooner the better.”
“I told you to go on.”
“Okay . . . Waking up here a week ago was a devastation. You’d lost a career you loved, a woman you loved, a life you loved. Then, briefly, it seemed that at least one of these things would be given back to you—Ginny. But again reality rose up and slapped you in the face. Unlike the Ginny of your dreams, your wife rejected you. Utterly. Finally. Why? This was the question you were asking yourself when you fell asleep two nights ago after your shattering experience with her. Why? Why had the splendid life of Gregory Donner been so ruthlessly destroyed? You had to have an answer to this question, and you sought it in the realm in which you were born—your dreams.”
Greg sighed.
“And why would the answer be there, Greg?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you do, but you’re not ready to look at it. Greg Donner has no memory of the life that Ginny and Richard Iles shared; there is nothing in your memory that could explain her rejection of you. For this, you needed to draw upon the memory of Richard Iles—and that you can only do in dreams.”
“I don’t see what you’re saying, I’m afraid.”
Agnes thought for a moment. “You remember the dream you had in which you found Ginny in bed with an old man.”
“Yes.”
“My interpretation of that dream—dead wrong, as it turned out—was that Richard Iles was worried that Ginny might prefer the old you to the new you. It’s obvious now that the person he was worried about was not the old you but rather Ginny’s father. In that dream Richard Iles was telling Greg Donner something he knew that you didn’t—that your rival for Ginny’s love was Franklin Winters.”
Baffled, Greg shook his head.
“Greg, where is Ginny right now?”
“In New York, I suppose.”
“That’s right. Living with whom?”
“Her father.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come now, Greg, time to be realistic. I gather that the Winters family is well-off. She can presumably afford to live where she prefers to live.”
“I suppose so.”
“And where does she prefer to live?”
He frowned. “Okay. She prefers to live with her father.”
“Exactly. According to what she told me before she left here, Richard Iles knew when he went to Russia that Ginny would be gone when he returned. He knew that she would be in New York, living with her father.”
“Yes.”
“So you see. When you went looking for the truth in the realm of dreams two nights ago, Richard Iles gave it to you. Franklin Winters is the source of all your miseries. He has never stopped controlling Ginny’s life—and because he controls Ginny’s life he controls yours as well. He can make her do whatever he wants—and because he can make her do whatever he wants, he can make you do whatever he wants. Do you see?”
“I guess so.”
“Franklin Winters, according to Richard Iles, exerts a kind of magical power over your lives and your destinies. And if you want to win Ginny and control your own destinies, you’re going to have to do what?”
“Kill him.”
“Not literally, I think. You’re going to have to kill him as far as Ginny is concerned. In other words, if you want Ginny, you’re going to have to get Franklin Winters out of her life onc
e and for all. Once you’ve done that, you’ll have everything you want. This is what you were told in your dream the night before last.”
“Yes, I see.”
“I hope you also see that the situation isn’t as hopeless as you originally thought.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just told you, Greg. You can have everything you want—if you’re strong enough”
“Strong enough?”
“Strong enough to take Ginny away from her father.”
He shook his head. “If she really prefers life with him to life with me . . . to hell with her. She can have it.”
“You’re not emotionally ready to make such a decision, Greg. Give yourself a little time to get your priorities in order. If you really want her—and I think you do—you may not feel like giving her up so easily. Believe me, you’re not the first man who’s had to vanquish a father to have a wife.”
Greg shrugged. “Not my style.”
Laughing, Agnes shook her head. “‘Not my style.’ That’s the spirit. Keep it and I think you’ll be fine. Now, are you in the mood for something to eat?”
He was surprised to find that he was.
XXXI
THIS EPISODE, TRAUMATIC IN THE SHORT RUN, had one beneficial effect for the long run: it brought home to Greg his vulnerability and made him appreciate the support he received within the Glenhaven Oaks Sanatorium. He stopped agitating for immediate release and no longer thought of his stay in terms of days or weeks. Within a few days, he told Dr. Jakes he was ready to accept the name Richard Iles, but warned that he would continue to think of himself as Greg Donner; Agnes saw no harm in that, at least as a transitional matter, comparing it to a security blanket that would be abandoned when it was no longer needed.
In the beginning they met as doctor and patient three times a week, and Greg talked. After a month of this, Agnes had to agree that (apart from a tendency to wear his heart on his sleeve) there was nothing much wrong with him, and they agreed to meet twice weekly for a while. By the fall they were meeting once a week and spent the hour more in gossip than in any form of psychotherapy. On Halloween he told her he thought it was time he took his leave of the Glenhaven Oaks Sanatorium.