Mind Games

by William Deverell

  What a fool I was to have unburdened myself. But I had to release, to vent, and if it hadn’t been Vivian Lalonde it would have been hypersomniac Katerina Welch or Larry Jankes with his body dysmorphic disorder.

  Ironically, my anguish acted upon Vivian as therapy.

  “Oh, Timothy, that’s terrible. I didn’t realize … I’ll come back another time.”

  She calmed completely, her own marital plight a dim concern against mine. As she was about to leave, she turned to me and, before I could shy away, kissed me on the lips. An impetuous act of compassion? Let us hope.

  I struggled through the next twenty-four hours, rescheduled patients, escaped to the sea aboard my cutter. But I could not escape Sally. I remembered how she used to sketch as she squatted on the bow, her T-shirt powdered with artists’ chalk, blonde curls ruffling in the wind.

  She’ll summon me back within days, I assured myself. A week, perhaps, to save face. I will return non-gloatingly to her bosom. I’ll mend my ways. I’ll carry a Daytimer. I’ll buy a pager, a cellphone.

  To allay her worries, I called her several times during the week to assure her I was coping. She was solicitous, then launched into rundowns of her day from which I picked up a lilting tone of freedom. I came by the house one evening to fetch my clarinet, but she was out – where, at half-past ten? I still had my key, and I prowled like a ghost through the darkened rooms. I felt smothered by all the loss and loneliness, by the smell of her in our former bedroom, and I grabbed my clarinet and ran.

  I had a dream that night that seemed almost facile, too obvious. I was playing my clarinet before the gates of a fortress with many windows. You may deduce that I was trying to entice Sally to one of them, but more likely to enter the fortress of her life, proving my talent, proving I was worthy, if even only as a musician. But now I was being drowned out by sounds from within, an oompahpah band, a lusty Liederkranz, “Valderee, valdera.” The fortress, I realized, was actually a Munich beer hall. Sally was nowhere to be found. She’d taken a hike …

  Now I spend my dream-filled nights bobbing on the waters of False Creek, in the shadows of the great bridges that connect to the heart of the city, amid the throng of seiners and plea-surecraft tied up at Fisherman’s Wharf. For one so scattered as I am, it is good discipline to be confined aboard a boat, where tidiness rules, where everything must have its place. I’ve undertaken a spate of sanding and varnishing, trying to achieve the mindlessness Nataraja counsels.

  I tell myself that I’m lucky to have the Altered Ego to escape to. The true claustrophobic revels in the freedom of the sea. Upon her, I’ve spent many pleasant days and nights, often weeks at a time, drifting about mystical Desolation Sound, the Charlottes, the Broken Islands. She’s a graceful lady in her polished dress of teak and mahogany Everything I need is here. There is a small shower in the head. There’s standing room in the main cabin, barely I have my books. I have my clarinet, my jazz collection, Grappelli, Parker, Peterson. I have loyal Vesuvio, my Italian aluminum racing bicycle.

  Yes, Sally will quickly realize she’s made a tragic blunder in sending me away Life will be a bore without Timothy Jason Dare.

  But just yesterday, I’m sorry to say, she buttressed her will. When I called to suggest lunch, she gently put me off. She did want to see me, she felt “tenderly” toward me, thought the idea of dating was fun, but she was worried about her resolve weakening, worried that she’d never achieve the strength to break free, to test herself as an independent person for the first and maybe only time in her life. I listened bleakly, uttering vacuities like “I understand” or “You’re to be admired, darling.” Then she said she thought it in our best interests “not to actually meet” for several more days. It’s like kicking smoking, she said.

  Why had I never – in my cruellest nightmares – imagined that the former first mate of the Ego would suddenly mutineer and cast this solitary sailor afloat? I thought I’d known Sally’s every caprice. How had I missed the signs? I, of all people.

  I have been butted from Sally’s life like a cigarette, dismissed as a bad habit. That’s what has finally driven me to the couch: the casualness of it all, the flip finality. I’m comforted only by the thought that worse could happen. I could be slashed to death by Bob Grundison. Wouldn’t Sally Pascoe be sorry then?

  CHAPTER THREE

  Date of Interview, Thursday, July 31, 2003.

  Timothy arrived ten minutes early, but on the wrong day, thinking it was Friday. He was even more excited and disturbed than on our first session, so I was obliged to ask another patient to wait, promising Tim twenty minutes.

  Yesterday, he received an anonymous note in the mail, You are next. The writer had sketched a heart shape below the words, pierced with what could be a sword or an arrow. Tim has taken it as a death threat, though I urged him not to jump to conclusions. I reminded him it isn’t uncommon for therapists to receive bizarre notes from former patients.

  I fear a paranoid disorder is at play. Not for the first time, he ascribed his burdens to “mysterious powers,” mystic or divine conspiracies “to fuck up my head.”1 The note, he says, has been “working like a worm into my brain.” He claims that “Grundy is watching me again.” He is vague about why he is so certain of this. “I can sense him, smell him almost.” Yet he never sees the man he presumes to be Bob Grundison.

  He became more settled after we talked it through. I assured him we would do more work on it tomorrow, on his regular day.

  Slow down and relax, okay? Let’s allow things to settle for a bit.

  I’m sorry, I’m a little shattered, I haven’t received a good death threat in years. Red-ink lettering. A dagger through the heart.

  It looks more like a sword. Or an arrow. What do the words mean to you, You are next!

  This is from Barbara Loews Wiseman’s killer. I am next.

  Have you called the police?

  Of course not, I’m not going to have them rooting through my patient files.

  Then what have you done about it?

  Gave it to Dotty Chung, a friend, a private eye. She knows Grundy. She used to be with the city, lead officer on Dr. Wiseman’s murder.

  It seems like a feminine hand to me somehow. Cupid’s arrow …

  Bob Grundison is not Cupid.

  Date of Interview: Friday, August 1, 2003.

  Because of difficult personal circumstances, I cancelled all patients today except for Timothy Dare, who arrived breathless, excusing himself for being late. He’d been stopped en route by a policewoman for bicycling without a helmet. He explained to her he’d lost it somewhere. Subsequently, we found the helmet in my waiting-room closet, where he’d left it yesterday.

  This is another graphic instance of his absent-mindedness, which is apparently not simply a consequence of his stressed state. He feels it is part of his “characteristic behaviour pattern.” He also forgets appointments with his patients. Twice last winter he had to buy replacement raincoats. He is able to laugh at this. In fact, during his recounting we both laughed, a welcome tension release for me.

  He rode up in the elevator today, which I took as an encouraging sign that he’s trying to come to grips with at least one of his phobic responses. He was much more relaxed than yesterday, and revealed a side that is both compassionate and entertaining.

  However, Tim appears no closer to reconciling himself to the loss of his partner – his self-esteem has been damaged by this – and I fear he’s regressed to the point of pursuing Ms. Pascoe surreptitiously.1 The possibility must be explored that he is projecting onto Grundison his own regrettable behaviour with regard to Sally. He has had odd and frightening dreams relating to her imminent departure for Munich.

  Aside from several minutes of tape, these clinical notes are transcribed from memory, though I jotted a few reminders while we sat on a park bench. I wasn’t functioning in top form, for reasons the excerpt below will make clear.

  I’m sorry, Allis, about yesterday, barging in.

  That�
�s fine. If you like, we can take a little extra time today, I had a hole open up. That’s a terrible way to put it. My next appointment had to be cancelled …

  You aren’t looking well. What happened? Did you lose a patient?

  I’m afraid so.

  Oh, my God, I’m sorry. Suicide?

  His faculties of observation are so well tuned that he seemed able to read this from my distracted manner and slumped posture.

  Carbon monoxide, he locked himself in his car. He couldn’t live with awakened memories. Parental sexual abuse.

  That’s terrible.

  He was coming along, his energy level had improved, he was no longer talking about the worthlessness of life. Though that should have put me on alert, that’s when one suddenly has the energy to implement a suicide plan.

  Whatever you do, don’t take on the responsibility.

  I know I shouldn’t. It’s hard to put that aside, though.

  Look, maybe you need to take the rest of the day off. I’ll come back next week.

  No. I can use some company.

  It feels ominous that I’m filling the space of a dead man. Let’s not waste a summer day – how about a walk in Stanley Park?

  As we strolled from your Denman Street office to the mowed margins of Vancouver’s great park, we traded roles; I listened and counselled. I hope I was of some help to you in this, a therapist’s worst horror: the catharsis with morbid consequences. Just remember: Things happen. Don’t listen to the whispered seductions of Self-reproach and her evil sister, Guilt. Confront them, unmask them, send them fleeing.

  But yes, be sad, don’t be afraid of that. It’s to your credit that you cared so much for this religious, trustful, and troubled young man – too young to have been toughened in the trenches of life. One can’t be a therapist without empathy. One can’t be empathic and not be hurt. Is there another profession so emotionally exhausting? And doesn’t that speak to the fact that the suicide toll is so high among our own colleagues?

  When you said it felt good to be able to talk to someone, I wondered about your husband, the media consultant – isn’t he someone? I suspect Richard is a busy man with all his public relating.

  I could see your shoulders lift, your tension ease as I launched into stories from the Kafkaesque world of Timothy Dare. I was pleased, finally, as we picked our way among the goose droppings by Lost Lagoon, to make you laugh. I play the sad clown well with my tales of seeding the town with coats, caps, and scarves. Not to mention the occasional file. It is as a result of one such lapse, and its awkward consequences, that I’m up on charges. They’re seeking a scapegoat over a boondoggle caused by my losing a patient’s file – but we’ll get to that.

  As for Grundy Grundison, maybe I am inventing a spectre. Dotty Chung had a casual chat with the babysitter, Lyall DeWitt, who said Grundy was home on the evenings I thought I spotted him. He told my sleuth Grundy faithfully attends classes at SFU and rarely makes trips into the city, and never alone. Dotty suggested I take a little holiday.

  I’ve decided I’m making too much of that note, You are next. You’re right: what therapist has not, now and then, received garbled, menacing letters? I’ve persuaded the courts to sentence many wrongdoers to penal or mental institutions. Any one of them could be my correspondent.

  So am I not showing progress? Note that I took the elevator down as well as up, and didn’t implode in panic. Note that I am now cognitively aware of former irrational thinking.

  If only the dreams would go away. They seem to foretell doom …

  This one, for instance, Saturday night, after too much wine and loneliness. Aware, even in sleep, that Sally would not be there to greet my awakening, I went deeper, into a Stage I-REM dream featuring (yes, it’s back) an oompahpah band in lederhosen serenading Sally as she signed copies of her latest, Miriam Runs Away from Home. I was struggling toward her table. I was late. So far, this dream is as obvious as a fart at a funeral.

  But it becomes tangled. My progress is halted by a banjo player, who says, “He’s vaiting for you.” Who’s vaiting for me? Sally disappears without as much as a curtain call, and I’m in a panic, lost in a crush of people propelling me to a car. Then I’m in the front passenger seat, Alpine vistas below, brakes screeching as we fishtail around a bend, and I can’t escape – the door handle is missing.

  I look at the driver, and an even greater fear grips me. He is in a robe, wearing a false beard, and as he removes it, I see Bob Grundison – he is the spectre of death …

  Whereupon I bolted upright in my cot in the bow of the Altered Ego and banged my head on a beam. I was in a sweat, tangled in my sheet like a mummy.

  He’s vaiting for you. Help me with this one, Allis. Why was a banjo player even in a brass band? Why was he serving as the messenger of Death?

  As I wandered about the Ego, numbly brewing tea, I was returned to the real world by the discovery of a hair clip among my socks. I’m continually finding scatterings of Sally from our sails together. A sketch pad, vistas of Desolation Sound cross-hatched in soft pencil lead. Her spare toothbrush, a tampon.

  I sat down to camomile tea and dry rye toast and ascorbic acid tablets and garlic pills – a breakfast routine so ritualized that Sally (in a bad mood) claimed it drove her around the bend. A shiver wriggles up my spine as I consider that bend, and now we see how free association helps unravel the metaphors of dreams: her brakes are screeching, my door handle is missing, we go off the road.

  I am no aficionado of cars, though I occasionally ride in a taxi or with Sally in her Saab. One can at least escape from a car (given door handles); elevators and airplanes make for a far grimmer test of courage. My preferred conveyance is Vesuvio. Astride it, I can whisper through the streets at night, unseen. I can wheel silently past the bungalow on Creelman Street to ensure that Sally is safely at home, her car in the driveway. Occasionally, when I cruise the alley, I see her silhouetted behind the wide windows of her studio.

  So far, I’ve not seen any man being entertained, though on one occasion, at dusk, I saw her entering a Kitsilano pub with the queen of punk, Celestine Post, who collects men as some do buttons and pendants, who knows the singles bars. From a vantage point outside the open door, I watched them spread maps and books on their table. Michelin maps? Frommer’s Guide to the Single Men of Italy?

  The next morning, I called Sally on my newly purchased cellphone, and claimed false surprise and falser delight when she told me Celestine has snapped up the cheap ticket to Europe offered by Chipmunk Press; they’re leaving in a few days. I take relief only in the fact her tripmate isn’t, for instance, Ellery Cousineau. (A frequent flier who owns a Cessna and has told Sally he’d like to “take her up.”)

  Sally has promised to meet me on her return. She’s promised we will talk …

  Enough of that. I haven’t told Sally about the strange note. Let her have her carefree holiday, unaware that someone is vaiting for me.

  Or is that someone you? You’re waiting, silently demanding: Open up, tell me about your father, stop blocking. I will, I will …

  At Beaver Lake, in the silence of Stanley Park, you sat on a bench to make notes while I watched dragonflies dart among the floating lilies and listened to the shouts of red-winged blackbirds.

  As we walked along the seawall promenade, I must have sounded as effusive as a tour guide. Was I being tiresome? You didn’t need the local booster to point out the convoy of sailboats bobbing in the wake of a grunting tug, the North Shore mountains gazing disdainfully at us.

  Welcome to my world, Allis. I’ve studied by San Francisco Bay, visited Boston and New York, travelled Canada by train. But where else would any person of average sanity prefer to live but here in Vancouver, my enclosed, familiar, coherent world? I’m a product as well of its West Coast eccentricity, its manic depressiveness – morose and soporific in the winter rains, kinetic, vital when the sun crawls from hibernation.

  We must have looked like an odd couple in that park. Dishevelled me, in m
y old khaki shorts; graceful, ever-fashionable you, in your long, belted skirt. Do you remember, on the seawall, how I pulled you from the path of three careless line skaters, and almost tripped over my own feet as you and I made contact? And do you remember how I averted my eyes when we came upon a handholding couple too obviously in love? What did you surmise? That I was unable to bear their happiness?

  (The book fair in Bologna will be a long series of cocktail parties. People engage in aberrant behaviour at conventions. Celestine Post will set no good example. I must confront these concerns. It’s no vast calamity if Sally has a fling. She has to get it out of her system. She’ll love me the more when it’s over.) And I realized: I was being selfish – I’d merely lost a companion; you were grieving a loss of life.

  A thoughtful stillness came over you, and I let you stay there a while, only too aware of how my distress pales in the face of your young man’s death. In a perverse way, that realization has begun to work as therapy for me. I must not take matters so much to heart. Things happen.

  I was glad I was able to divert you from your thoughts with my account of the bizarre trial of Huff versus Victoria Dare. An arcane message to me from Clinton Huff bears deep analysis, so let me replay the scene.

  First, as a preface, late Sunday dinner at my mother’s house – an unpretentious frame structure in working-class Grandview, just off Commercial Drive. I’d stopped off at the Kowloon Moon for takeout (I’ve never mastered the kitchen; without Sally, my life has become a restaurant), and as I toted in the steaming cartons Victoria was at her computer dashing off one of her eighty-dollar-a-pop obituaries.

  This is her latest business venture, writing death notices and seeing to their publication in newspapers, where her own ad also appears in the classified columns. (Unable to find words for your loss? Literary Consolation Services will be pleased to help.) Composing euphemism-laden obits nets her a better income than did her last job, managing a used-book store, but she finds the work boring.