The Reluctant Healer

by Andrew D. Himmel

  It occurred to me as I crossed the Henry Hudson Bridge into Manhattan and headed south on the West Side Highway toward my building that I had no appointments, no responsibilities, nothing to do, really. I wasn’t sure whether I felt free or bored. I had nothing planned, and for the moment, I had no desire to do anything. I parked my motorcycle, gathered up my belongings, and almost fell asleep as I walked the stairs to my apartment. I lacked the energy to check my phone for messages and instead collapsed onto my sofa and would have fallen asleep were it not for the buzz of my phone announcing a text from Erica. “Will, I’m at your parents’. Call me.”

  My first thought was, How did she get there? She had no car and hated driving anyway, so it was unlikely that she had rented a vehicle. And my parents? This was . . . unexpected but somehow predictable in a way I couldn’t identify. I was surprised only because I knew I was supposed to be. I called her on her cell.

  “Hi,” she said brightly, and I could hear my parents happily conversing in the background. “Are you ready for this? I’m working with Matthias Kristen, the kundalini master you found on the Internet. He’s good, Will, and in one session, he brought me back from a very dark place.” I tried to recall whether I found him on page twenty-seven or thirty-seven of my Internet search.

  “The truth is,” she continued, “I thought about leaving, leaving behind permanently the pain and trauma I was experiencing. But I’m pretty sure I’m past that now.”

  “Let’s not even think of talking that way,” I heard my mother say. “I will not entertain these thoughts in my house, so that’s that.” Her voice sounded happy and nervous.

  “Well, the truth is, in the worst times, I found myself in hell, unable to control my body, debilitated, exhausted, and shocked all at once. I feel so much better, but I still have to take this very, very seriously.”

  “You can take it as seriously as you want to,” my mother said in the background, “but as far as I’m concerned, you’re fine. I’m imposing a happy-talk zone in this house, a zero tolerance for negativity. How’s that for modern thinking?”

  “Is anyone talking to me?” I asked.

  “I’m so much happier now, and guess what? I’m going to take a pilgrimage. Not right away, but pretty soon. Will, did you know that in the Middle Ages, the church encouraged people to make pilgrimages to holy places around the world? Shrines, really. If you went to these places, you would be forgiven your sins. Or maybe even find a cure for whatever illness you had.”

  “What sins do you need forgiveness from?” I heard my father ask.

  “How did you get out there?” I asked.

  “I took a train, and your parents picked me up. You’re okay with this, right?”

  “Of course, I am,” I said, simultaneously with my mother saying, “Of course, he is. Why wouldn’t he be?”

  “I’m still weak, Will, but there is a pilgrimage I’m interested in, when I’m ready, to the Jungle Kingdoms of the Ancient Maya. These are sacred regions, and I have reason to believe that I’ll experience the kind of spiritual rejuvenation that I really need.”

  I was fascinated by Erica’s ability to craft grammatically correct and organized sentences and still babble. I had trained myself over the last year to curb any rigorous application of logic to Erica’s pronouncements, but what were we talking about now? Salvation from madness? Healing? Selfimprovement? Forgiveness? And what was the deal with this pilgrimage? Where did the Mayan angle come from? Erica could never be part of a cult, because her attachments were so diffuse. Say this for cultists—they had their leaders, and they stuck with them. Not Erica. I never knew her to discard any mentor, but she supplemented them with new visionaries, like reverse-peeling an onion.

  “We could all go,” my mother said. I was suddenly dizzy, and I looked around for some solid object to grab.

  “Are you coming back to the city?” I asked.

  “No, no, you’re coming here. Right now. It is so beautiful here, Will. Did you appreciate growing up in the tranquility of your environment? I’m convinced the healing energies from a beneficent vortex has saturated this house, you know, like in Sedona. In fact, your healing capabilities are probably a direct result of your having lived right smack in the center of these vortexes. You absorbed it all, and now, your energy system is like a compressed, coiled spring, ready to catapult upward and forward and outward. Will, you still there?”

  “I am, but . . .”

  “You need to come out here now,” Erica said, and then, she laughed. “See you soon.” The line went dead.

  I rode out to Garrison, grateful for the distraction of the journey north. The early October air bit more fiercely as I neared Putnam County. As I crossed the Bear Mountain Bridge, a sharp wind gathered from the Hudson below, creating a momentary sense of imbalance. When I arrived, I rushed inside to escape the chill that had penetrated the surroundings. I found the three of them seated at the kitchen table, absorbed in conversation.

  “Will,” Erica exclaimed and ran over to embrace me.

  “Let’s not lose focus,” my mother said.

  “We’re planning your future,” my father said.

  I joined them at the table and saw that they had been passing around a piece of paper consisting of various charts, with edits, eraser marks, and figures.

  “So let’s say he consults with three people a week, for starters,” my father said. “And he charges them five hundred dollars per session. I know that sounds steep, but when you consider the benefit you’re providing, it’s more than reasonable.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” my mother said.

  “So with practically no investment of time, you’d be making fifteen hundred dollars per week, which—multiplied by fifty-two—comes to seventy-eight thousand dollars a year. And that doesn’t even include your law firm salary.”

  “And don’t forget,” my mother said, “that he could be handling a lot more than three people a week. He could handle three people per day, as far as I’m concerned, so what does that come out to?”

  “Well, now you’re talking real money,” my father said. “You’d be close to four hundred thousand dollars a year.”

  “And the beautiful thing is,” Erica said, “you’d be helping people and making good money, and you could quit your law practice eventually, because let’s face it, you don’t really love what you’re doing.”

  “You know she’s right about that,” my mother said.

  I marveled at the effortless balance struck by my parents. They were grounded in rationality, and I knew that they could never wholly embrace the legitimacy of Erica’s worldview. Yet here they were, lightheartedly complicit in mapping out a profoundly unorthodox future for me. How can I capture this paradox and camaraderie that bound the four of us? Erica surely understood that my parents found her beliefs peculiar, perhaps even unsupportable. But on a level beyond my grasp, we found common ground in a dimension where facts can be overrated, logic can be ruinous to spirit, and convention can rend the fabric of connection.

  The result was a quirky acceptance on the part of my parents, one that bestowed encouragement without undue promotion, that granted respect without unquestioning faith, and that found the entire landscape navigable with gentle humor, without ridicule.

  “Let’s all go to dinner,” Erica said.

  And, like schoolchildren, we bounded into my father’s Volvo station wagon and headed north to Cold Spring, New York, a town where artists and bikers congregate in rough-edged and trendy coffee shops. We settled on Beltin’ Betty’s, a gruff burger joint with crayons so patrons could doodle on paper tablecloths. The best drawings over the years were tacked onto frayed wooden beams throughout the dining room. We all ordered hamburgers with fries, and when the food was delivered, we saturated our plates with ketchup.

  “Here’s a secret,” Erica said. “We’ve all known each other in prior lives.”

  “I knew it,” my mother said.

  “So now you believe in prior lives? Reincarnation
?” I asked. My mother waved her hand dismissively.

  “We lived in an enchanted village called Malvec, hundreds of years ago,” Erica said.

  “That’s near Albany, right?” I asked.

  “If you’re not going to take this seriously, I won’t provide you any more details.”

  “Well, I certainly want to hear everything,” my father said, placing his hand on Erica’s arm, “and we can’t all be penalized for Will’s attitude.”

  “I’ll contain myself.”

  “Here’s the thing. Will, you and I were married, and you two . . .” She gestured at my parents with a red-tipped french fry. “. . . were my parents. You see, you were Will’s parents-in-law.”

  “Here’s some friendly advice, then, from your mother, or mother-inlaw, depending on what lifetime we’re talking about. You need a plan, Will, to develop a practice.”

  “He won’t have to do any marketing,” Erica said. “Clients will flock to him. The word will spread.”

  “What are we talking about?” I asked.

  “You will help people with their ailments, their problems, through meditative sessions lasting maybe twenty or thirty minutes.” Erica said.

  “So I should leave the practice of law?”

  “The truth is,” my father said, “you don’t love law. You’re good at it, but you’re bored with it. You don’t really help individuals; you help companies, and there’s nothing wrong with that, and I’m fully aware that healthy companies indirectly benefit their employees and therefore society as a whole, so don’t go down that road. I’m talking about you. Your lack of . . . fulfillment.”

  “So as I see it,” my mother said, “holding meditative sessions with individuals, one on one, is so direct, so meaningful. You either help or you don’t help, but if you do help, the connection is so personal, so gratifying, that it’ll lift your spirits. You’ll be interested, involved.”

  “What if I don’t help anyone?” I asked.

  “Then, you go on to something else,” my father said. “But this venture would cut your ties with the practice of law, and from there, you would do whatever you find meaningful in your life, and you’d be placed on that path. That’s a good thing, so we’re talking about a no-lose proposition.”

  Erica was beaming at my parents.

  “You’ve brainwashed them,” I said. “They’re pod-people now, automatons who will say and believe anything you put in their head.”

  “Look at me. I’m a pod-person,” my mother said, as she moved her arms in mock-pantomime motions.

  “Well, my career got off to a bad start last night,” I said, and I brought them up to date on my drunken stupor in Chappaqua.

  “I think you helped all of them,” Erica said, “whether they know it or not.”

  “My new business depends on people knowing it. Unless my marketing slogan is, ‘I’ll help you, but you may not realize it.’”

  I lost the sense of whether we were having a serious conversation or just engaging in banter that crept up the ladder of absurdity. It hardly mattered. I wanted to preserve not simply this night, but this arrangement. Stop time in its tracks, stop our development, our paths, which inevitably would introduce some new aspect into the mix that would cause just the slightest imbalance but would be enough to tilt us off our equilibrium.

  Later that night, Erica and I lay in the bed in the room where I had grown up, neither of us really exhausted, but still, we couldn’t fully connect.

  “I want to stay here,” Erica said, and I knew that this was more than a wistful aspiration but rather a concrete statement of intention. “For a while anyway. Would you have a problem with that? Would your parents?”

  “I have no problem with that, and my parents? Are you kidding? They’d give up their bedroom for you. They love you like . . .”

  “They love you so much,” Erica said. “To see that play out is amazing. Sometimes I think my parents were abusive.”

  I turned and faced her. “You don’t really mean that.”

  She sat up and breathed in deeply. “Of course, they weren’t physically abusive, and they were responsible and dutiful, but they are so stuck in their thinking. And when I became involved in my interests, they were polite but could barely conceal their contempt. I never needed them to believe. I could have handled neutrality, but that was beyond them.”

  She faced me. “Once, when I was angry, I accused my father of being close-minded, and he said I was close-minded, because I wasn’t open to the possibility that everything I believed in was nonsense. A father talking to his daughter like that . . .”

  Her voice was flat but controlled. “That exchange was the exception. But otherwise, when I think about my parents, all I see is my father’s expression, so dismissive he barely felt the need to engage me in conversation. And my mother wasn’t much better. They’re so alike, there’s no traction there. Just a smooth, smart couple. I don’t even think they like me, and their love for me . . . I suppose it’s there, but somehow it’s . . . mandatory, not heartfelt. Your parents though . . .”

  She turned to me. “They’re so familiar to you, and they’re not showy, but they are remarkable, Will, full of love and enjoyment. You want to hear something interesting? I wouldn’t be surprised if your parents and my parents have the same basic view of my life and my practice. But your parents have this ability to see beyond, or see through . . . I’m mangling my metaphors . . . this ability to get to the heart of things. And once they do that, once they reach the heart, if they like what they see, nothing else is important. Do you know how rare that is?”

  “They’re great,” I said.

  Erica lay back down and stared toward the ceiling. “I just want to hang out here for a while. You can come and go. I don’t want you to spend all your time here. And anyway, there’s something I need you to do for me in the city.”

  “I can’t take over your practice,” I said.

  Erica smiled. “I want you to take over part of my practice. Specifically, Josh and Sondra.”

  “I’m not sure . . .”

  “I don’t need you to conduct any formal sessions. I just want you to be with them, maybe once a week. I’m sure you can tell Josh has bonded with you.”

  I had noticed, but I attributed this to filling a fatherly gap.

  “It would be so disruptive to Josh’s well-being if you disconnected abruptly. You can do anything you want with them. Have lunch, travel, but be with them.”

  I wondered whether Erica was concerned, even for just a moment, whether she was wise in suggesting an arrangement that would put me in regular contact with an attractive, unattached woman. Not to mention that the circumstances of our meeting would involve the unpredictable but undoubtedly powerful emotional elements of tending to a beautiful, enchanting, and sick child. I strung out the conversation for a few more moments, offering token resistance, and then agreed.

  31

  Duality

  I now had no job, but I had a substantial income. I had a girlfriend who I continued to see, at my parents’ house, but sex was barely a part of our relationship. Erica attributed her lack of interest to her kundalini rising, but I wondered whether her encampment in Garrison morphed our relationship into one of siblings. Whatever the reason, I found my need for sexual contact heightened, while, at the same time, I was losing physical interest in Erica. But I was closer to her than ever. My parents were drunk with happiness to have Erica living with them, and when I traveled to Garrison, typically for two days a week, the four of us were inseparable. Erica and I found time alone, which we did not even need or desire, only when we slept.

  For appearances, I occasionally checked in with Stefan and the firm, where business from the Halter referrals was accelerating. But I was determined to utilize the full extent of my leave of absence, and neither Stefan nor the firm seemed to mind. My time in the city was aimless. I woke up late, took the occasional ride out of the city, walked around trendy locales, like Tribeca, Soho, the Meat Market, and Chelsea,
none of which seemed so trendy in the unforgiving light of day. I watched entire seasons of television shows, occasionally jogged, played online chess.

  And I saw Sondra and Josh. We quickly worked out the logistics. I told Sondra that I would not charge her for my time, and she offered no resistance. Sondra was unconcerned about Erica’s absence but was insistent that we keep to Erica’s recommendation of meeting at least once a week. I agreed but refused to engage in any of the formalities of Erica’s practice. Instead, we decided to simply spend time together, visiting tourist landmarks, meeting at coffee shops, seeing movies, having dinner.

  We graduated to more elaborate outings, like visiting parks along the Hudson River and in the northern counties of Dutchess and Columbia. Over the course of the next few weeks, we hiked trails in the Berkshires, ate ice cream in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, had lunch at the West End Cafe in Litchfield, Connecticut. We had dinner at trendy restaurants in Fairfield County. And always, we would come back to the city by the end of the day, never spending a night in the many inns and hotels along the way, although often it would have been far less physically taxing to do so. Josh was strong during these trips, never slowing down, never complaining of fatigue.

  I was meticulous in keeping Erica informed about our outings and never failed to invite her to join us. But she refused every time. She had achieved functionality in Garrison, but I should not be misled, she warned me. She was incapacitated from her kundalini rising and needed to remain within a zone of protection. She was also working regularly with Matthias Kristen and was making progress, she assured me.

  So I continued to see Josh and Sondra, and we became close. Sondra was predisposed to being aloof, but she was sexual and enticing in a way I had discarded as familiar after I met Erica, but which I now longed for. She was so different from Erica, reserved and suggestive, while Erica was impetuous and expressive. But Erica was unavailable physically, and I felt, indeed I knew, that the slightest movement toward Sondra would be reciprocated, though from Sondra’s perspective, I would have to make that movement. There was a line of loyalty that Sondra felt toward Erica, a line that could be breached without guilt or hesitation, but I knew that the line would have to be approached.