Irrational Fears

by Spencer, William Browning

  Jack recognized the voice. He dialed her number, sick with dread. Dear God...

  “Hello.”

  “Sara, my God, are you—”

  “You have reached the Janson residence. We are unable to come to the phone right now but...”

  Jack dressed and hurried to his car.

  There were three police cars, two at the curb, one in the driveway. A news van had already arrived.

  And this was the news: Renowned mathematician, Dr. Winslow Janson, had, for reasons unknown, killed his wife and then taken his own life, the instrument of death in both cases being a handgun (later determined to have been purchased three months earlier by Dr. Janson). No note was found at the scene, no explanation, et cetera. The usual media frustration was aired—as though life marched to certainties, was even faintly interested in the logic of appearances.

  Sara could have told them. The building block of the universe is nothing.

  Kerry said she was sorry and that she hadn’t known. She had hugged him, kissed him on the cheek, and stood up. “It’s not your fault,” she had said. “You didn’t do anything but love her, and even that’s not your fault. I think love is God’s meanest joke.” And she’d turned and run out of the room, leaving Jack sitting on the bed.

  After the unseasonable snowstorm, the weather had staged a retreat, hustling back to balmier days. The sun lit up the air.

  Martin Pendleton drove with the windows down, his hair flying. “This is the thing,” he said. “If you want to get sober and stay sober, you got to accept that you’ll have the occasional bad day. You got to hunker down and let it roll over you. Alcoholics can’t stand a bad patch, and they are always looking to fix it immediately, but that don’t work.” They were heading into Harken on a grocery run. Jack sat in the passenger seat. New Way’s director had, for reasons mysterious to Jack, taken an interest in Jack’s recovery, and so Jack was enlisted for store trips during which Martin would impart the acquired wisdom and experience of seventeen years without a drink. “New people are always saying AA don’t show them anything. They say it’s boring. Hell. Sure it’s boring. Where they been? There’s a ton of dross in your average day, and if there’s one trick you want to learn for survival, it’s how to weather the flat times. AA is where you learn that. This whole group therapy thing, this getting at your feelings, I’m not saying it’s pointless, I’m just saying that all the drama and insight isn’t gonna cut it for the long haul. Learning to hunker down, that’s the ticket.”

  “Speaking of therapy,” Jack said. “I’m worried about Wesley Parks. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he seems confused, maybe on the edge of a breakdown.”

  Aaron, the red-haired cook, shouted assent from the back of the van where he was sitting with Gretchen. Jack was the only patient in the van, and he felt oddly privileged.

  “Yes,” Aaron shouted. “You are on to something there, Jacky L. That man is like a cat that’s been tossed into a dryer and spun round for the full wash-and-wear. He’s been saying some nonlinear stuff. Like yesterday morning, he was sitting there studying his omelet for ten minutes, and finally I nudged him, asked if he was all right, and he said, ‘Intact. All engines primed and ready for reentry,’ and then he got this very intense look and asked me what my tribe was. I didn’t think I heard him right, so I got him to repeat it. Tribe was the word. ‘Got me,’ I finally said, and he smiled real sneaky and put a finger to his lips and winked like we had an understanding which—I assure you—we don’t.”

  “Well, I didn’t want to say anything,” Gretchen said. “Who am I to say anything? I’m a secretary, not a therapist. I don’t know from Adam about mental health. But I have to say that I’ve been having quite a time typing up Mr. Parks’s client reports. I mean, he fills the page with drawings—little lightning bolts, stick figures, cartoony things—and the words are all bunched up or moving around the page like ants on a kitchen counter. I said to him, ‘Mr. Parks, I can’t make sense of this,’ and he said, ‘That’s because it’s just the surface,’ and I asked him what that meant, and he said, ‘Surface. That’s just the surface, there,’ and I said ‘What?’ and he kept bobbing his head like a jack-in-the-box that’s just popped, and he said, kind of condescending, ‘Surface, Miss Payne. Like water. A water’s surface is where it stops being water, or starts becoming water—depending on how you look at it, of course.’ Then he finished off saying, ‘A stitch in time is another man’s ceiling.’ It wasn’t any of it helpful, and I’ve still got to type up a rat’s nest of crazy writing and cartoons. And I’m working forty hours a week and being called part-time with no benefits.”

  Gretchen’s voice rose on this last outrage. Her eyes sparkled behind her glasses, and Aaron reached over and patted her shoulder. “I know, I know. It’s a sin. The County is nothing but scoundrels. But one has to look on the bright side. You are doing good work, helping sick people.”

  “Sick people depress me,” Gretchen muttered.

  Aaron sighed. “That’s true. They do have a way of slouching around that makes me want to prod them with a fork. A lot of them go after suffering like there’s an Academy Award in it. You take that Eunice woman—who, by the way, has no business wearing pink—that woman has got gloom down to an art. If she is really having all those conversations with Jesus, all I can say is Our Lord is probably about fed up. I’m gonna slap this broad is, I expect, the thought foremost in His mind. There’s only so much anyone can take.”

  “Soda stop,” Martin said, pulling the van off the road and into the Glad Whiz convenience store. Martin drank a Diet Coke every fifteen or twenty minutes. At the Glad Whiz he was able to obtain this beverage in a plastic container that required two hands to hold.

  The skinny clerk behind the counter was drunk. He was in that condition of inebriation where standing up is a major undertaking, requiring frequent, spastic acts of adjustment. He was smoking a cigarette, and had achieved an impressive length of ash on the butt that dangled from his mouth. He was wearing what Jack at first took to be a bandanna, but which was, on closer observation, revealed to be the Glad Whiz clerk’s regulation paper hat, a jaunty red-striped boat that the clerk, dissatisfied, perhaps, with the regimentation of his attire, had torn open and poked his head through.

  “No change,” the clerk said when Martin handed him the five.

  “Huh?” Martin said.

  “Fucking little pennies, dimes, nickel shit,” the clerk said, glaring at the cash register and reeling. “Fuck em.” He shook the cash register, his thin shoulders twisting as though they might snap. “Fucking change!” He turned and handed the five back to Martin with a haughty air. “Get your fucking change at the laundromat,” he said.

  “Look—” Martin said.

  The clerk held up a hand. “That’s it. Finished. End of argument.” He lifted a beer from behind the counter, raised it to his lips, and drank deeply, his adam’s apple dancing.

  Martin shook his head and said, “Come on.”

  At the gas station, the service station attendant was taking a leak against the side of the building when they pulled up. Other than that, he was well-behaved, filling the tank without incident. He did stink of bourbon, and he did proposition Gretchen, but in a shy, gawky manner that wasn’t offensive.

  “I’m a secretary at a treatment facility,” Gretchen said, rather primly. “I’m not allowed to date alcoholics.”

  The grocery store was filled with inebriated people. Two teenagers were smoking dope and giggling in one of the aisles. A fat man had knocked over a bin of cantaloupes and was wringing his hands and shouting, “Lopes!” (a warning to others?) as the softball-sized fruits rolled at his feet.

  Martin was unmoved by any of this, pushing the cart briskly down aisles and consulting with Aaron on purchases.

  The checkout clerk, an elderly woman with gray hair and tiny, silverframed glasses, worked with a cigarette lodged in the corner of her mouth, pausing occasionally to sip from a wine glass. She rang them up, gave them change, and m
ethodically bagged their groceries. All the while, her lips moved. Leaning forward, Jack was able to hear a whispered litany of obscenities (mutherfucking shitcrappers limp-dicked asshole cocksuckers).

  Jack and everyone else helped tote the groceries out to the van. In the parking lot, two old men were fighting, a staggering brawl. They were throwing wild punches, falling down, cursing each other ineffectually. A small scruffy dog was barking at them from the sidelines where an old woman guzzled a bottle of wine.

  On the drive back to New Way they passed a billboard advertising deodorant (a fat man in his underwear surrounded by babes in lingerie) and a police siren sliced the country calm.

  Martin immediately hit the accelerator. “Shit,” he blurted.

  “Shouldn’t we slow down?”

  Martin shot Jack a look. “You’re right. It’s a reflex, still. Some habits are hard to shake,” Martin craned his neck, studied the rearview mirror.

  Jack leaned out the window and looked back. The cop car had gone off the road, taking out a section of fence. One of the cops had vacated the car and was reeling around in the open field. As Jack watched, the man fell to his knees, yanked the gun from his holster, and fired twice at a cluster of cows, startling them into fleeing over a brown hillside.

  “Well,” Martin said, speeding up again. “It just goes to show that sometimes the old reflexes are the best. A lot of times, a reflexive action is the wisdom of the years asserting itself.”

  He said nothing more, studying the road, pleased, no doubt, with the wisdom of this summation.

  Jack was silent too, nonplussed. Finally, he said, “You’ll notice that we didn’t encounter a single person in Harken who wasn’t drunk. Don’t you find that remarkable?”

  Martin pursed his lips. “Well, this is a powerful disease.”

  “Powerful? What? Look. Every time we go into town, everyone we meet is drunk—except at the AA meetings, of course. Don’t you find that unusual ?”

  “Well, it just goes to show. You can’t underestimate the importance of regular AA attendance.”

  Jack turned to Gretchen and Aaron in the back. “Doesn’t anyone find this crazy?” he asked.

  “I think it’s crazy,” Aaron said.

  “Me too,” Gretchen said.

  “Thank you,” Jack said, turning to face forward again. But he wasn’t satisfied. He couldn’t help feeling he was being humored, like a feminist at a stock car rally or a science-fiction writer attending a literary salon.

  At lunch that day, Jack watched, fascinated, while Wesley Parks talked to his jello.

  A low, savvy chuckle had caused Jack to glance in Wesley’s direction. The alcoholism counselor was sitting by himself at the head of a long table, grinning savagely at his plate.

  A squat translucent cylinder of green jello sat alone on Wesley’s plate. Wesley held the plate in trembling hands that caused the jello to shiver.

  While Jack watched, Wesley leaned forward and said, “No way. No waaaaaaaaaay.”

  Jack had the distinct impression that Wesley was unaware that it was his own hands that were animating the jello, in the same way Ouija board players are unaware that their subconscious, and not some interested astral party, draws a plastic pointer across a lettered board.

  “You think you are soooooo smart,” Wesley told the jello.

  As far as Jack could see, the dessert had given no indication that it was unduly proud of its intellect, but Jack suspected there was more to the relationship than met the eye.

  With one deft flick of his wrists, Wesley sent the plate into the air. It hit the floor, shattering. All heads turned as the green jello landed intact but splayed, flattened on the linoleum floor.

  Wesley looked up furtively and met Jack’s eyes. Wesley smiled. “Whoops,” he said.

  After lunch, they all went to the rec room where Martin Pendleton passed out the mail. Jack’s mail consisted of a postcard from his mother. Ellen—she had always insisted that he call her by her given name and not Mother, which made her feel old and sadly pigeonholed—never wrote letters. A high-powered businesswoman, she traveled extensively and preferred communicating with her son in succinct paragraphs written imperiously on the backs of cards that featured a photo of some luxury hotel’s lobby.

  She had written from Seattle: Dear Jack—A wasted trip. The contract is ludicrous, nothing to negotiate. What were they thinking? I’m off to Chicago, writing from the airport. So pleased you are addressing your alcoholism. Your father—may he rest in peace—left you that legacy, all those Irish drunkards. Sorry you got the gene, but I know you’ll do what has to be done and be back in top form in no time. Love, Ellen

  As usual, his mothers no-nonsense encouragement felt like an anvil on his chest.

  “Kerry Beckett!” Martin called out, waving a large manila envelope in the air.

  Kerry retrieved the envelope and walked into the hall studying it, a puzzled expression on her face.

  Group was scheduled for two in the afternoon. Jack went back to his room and lay on his bed. He had time for a nap, but he decided to work on his Fourth Step, part of the Alcoholics Anonymous program designed to get one back in sync with the world. The Fourth Step was a personal inventory in which one reflected, in writing, on people and institutions one resented. Invariably a resentment grew from some perceived threat, real or imagined. The book Alcoholics Anonymous urged its readers to consider their own part in the resentment, to rigorously examine where they were at fault.

  The Fourth Step was executed by creating four columns consisting of:

  1. Who one resented, 2. The cause of that resentment, 3. What was threatened, and 4. One’s own culpability in the matter.

  Jack drew the columns. For his first resentment, he wrote, God. Why resent God? Because God was a crazy hotheaded bully so puffed up with pride that he was ready, if not taken seriously, to fly off the handle and smite all the firstborn. Yes. God who put Job through hell for... well... on a bet. Yes. And when Job asked what was going on, God, unwilling to admit that He had been goaded into torturing Job, took refuge in the cheapest sort of evasiveness. “How can you understand me?” God asked. “I created the giraffe and the behemoth.” Covered with boils, Job must have found this a lame excuse.

  It was easy to fill out the first three columns but what, Jack wondered, was his own part in all of this?

  Believing! That was it. Perhaps not believing in God, but believing in civilization, in the possibility that goodness and decency might prevail. Yes. Jack had forgotten about the universe’s prime ingredient.

  Jack had been told that the Fourth Step, in conjunction with the Fifth Step, would be a freeing experience. So far, it was not producing that effect.

  He tore the piece of paper from the legal pad, wadded it up, and tossed it in the wastebasket.

  Tomorrow is another day, he thought. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...

  In group, he shared his Fourth Step difficulties.

  “Faith can move mountains,” Eunice said.

  “I don’t know,” Jack said. “I read that Billy Graham just took a leap of faith, swallowed it all without question, and I know he is considered one very devout guy, but that looks a hell of a lot like this denial thing we keep talking about. I mean, if you are drinking yourself to death and you believe you are in great shape, that’s called denial. It’s not called faith, right? A person can believe any number of things that are contrary to logic. If you believe that little green men in the radio control your bowel movements, that’s not faith, that’s insanity.”

  “Get thee behind me, Satan,” Eunice hissed.

  “Hey, hey,” Wesley said. “Group’s not in session yet. We are missing one of our members.”

  Kerry had yet to show up. Jack looked at his watch. It was ten after two.

  “All right, troops, let’s go get her,” Wesley said, slapping his thighs and standing up.

  Whenever someone was late, the rest of group would fetch that person, the intention being to demonstrate g
roup solidarity—or, perhaps, to lay a guilt trip on the tardy one (we’ve all of us had to hike down here thanks to your inconsiderate ass-dragging ways).

  Kerry did not open her door when Wesley knocked. “Hello,” Wesley said, pushing the door open. “Someone’s forgotten all about her reeeeeeesponsibilities.”

  Kerry sat at the small writing desk, her back to the door. To her left was a small curtained window, an African violet on the sill. A framed needlepoint of the Serenity Prayer was on the wall, and a wall shelf contained a dozen books, including the ubiquitous Big Book, the Twelve and Twelve, and the popular Alcoholism for Dummies.

  She did not turn when Wesley called, and Jack, peering past the counselor, felt an immediate sense of foreboding.

  “Kerry,” Jack said, pushing past Wesley.

  She sat back in her chair, arms thrust forward, her hands flat on the table. The manila folder was torn open, its contents, an eight-by-ten glossy black-and-white photo, revealed.

  Kerry was staring at the photo, and seemed, in her stiff-armed, thrust-back attitude, to be attempting to shove it away.

  Her left hand was slapped flat on the glossy surface, palm down, and Jack could see the eyes of the portrait staring between her fingers, eyes that, even in a photograph, seemed to glow with sharp, fanatic light.

  Kerry was staring at Dorian Greenway’s portrait with terrible intent, her mouth partially open, a small, pinched vee of skin between her perfect eyebrows. Her eyes were eerily empty, someone awakened suddenly from a bad dream, her mind still in thrall to nightmare images.

  Jack bent over her, smelled the pungent odor of urine, blinked at her feet and the wet yellow pool.

  Jack touched her shoulder. He reached for her hand.

  “Nothing sudden,” someone said, and he turned and saw Ed Tilman beside him.

  “Talk to her first, get some response. Don’t jolt her.”