Psycho Therapy

by Alan Spencer

  Susan didn’t wake.

  Craig looked about the room. There were acrylic paintings of monarch butterflies and one of those 3-D optical illusion pictures. Ah, let me guess, it’s of a butterfly.

  He could never see those things. He couldn’t cross his eyes hard enough.

  The vanity mirror was sixty percent covered in 3x5 pictures. Friends, her two sisters, and the singles club mostly. Her closet door was open, showing the dresses, work clothes, and an ironing board folded up inside. It was strange how realistic all this was, making it easy to forget none of this had actually happened. Dr. Krone’s machine was ingenious. Whatever allowed this to exist, it was amazing. He felt alive. Relieved too. Deep down, he regretted the way he had treated Susan.

  The idea of what could’ve been was bittersweet.

  He relaxed in bed, letting the scene play out as it was going to play out, and he closed his eyes to sleep.

  If he made a sound, Craig would hear him, so Dr. Krone kept his movements to a minimum. The treatment was coming along nicely. The patient was accepting his medicine, so to speak. He stood in the hallway by the door outside the bedroom. He’d tucked his pad of paper in his back pocket a long time ago. It was useless now. His clinical observations ended when the sex began.

  He liked to watch.

  Those moments were his favorite.

  Almost his favorite.

  Katie

  Craig opened his eyes. He wasn’t at Susan’s apartment anymore. He was in another room altogether. A gray coverlet was wrapped around him, keeping him warm. How he got here, he wasn’t sure. It just happened. He closed his eyes for a moment, and here he was. But he wasn’t about to deny the privilege of what was provided. It was wonderful to be with Susan, and now, he was with his wife. The actuality of it was overwhelming. Katie was on her side of the bed, and he was spooning her. He smelled her dark brown hair, what was a mix of day-old hair and the remains of her pomegranate lavender shampoo. They were pressed up against each other, naked. They’d just made love. He was having a lot of sex; too bad he didn’t enter the scene sooner to fully experience it. She was exhausted from working another evening shift at Bryer’s Pharmacy as a pharmacy tech, but as Katie put it that night, and other nights like this, “I’m too wired to sleep, let’s have sex. That always puts me to sleep.” It was a compliment despite the way it sounded.

  He was spent, the post-sex moment at a comedown. Craig battled to stay calm. He wanted to break down and cry and tell her he loved her and everything else a person said when a person they loved died.

  What she said removed him from the reverie. “How was Susan?”

  There was no accusation in her voice.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You just had sex with her, so was it good?”

  Confused by the question, he couldn’t do anything but tell the truth. “Yes, but how did you know?”

  “Let’s not talk about that—talk about Susan. Was it hot? Did she give it to you good?”

  “Wait, whoa, how do you know about Susan?”

  Katie stared at him, waiting for the answer to her question first.

  “Yes, she was good. I-I enjoyed it. But I love you. You know that, right?”

  She waved him to be quiet. “I know that, honey. I want you to be happy and horny.” She giggled. “It’s fine. I’m sure you’d want the same for me.”

  Craig was stunned. “Did you see us or something? How do you know about what happened?”

  Katie brushed off the question. What she said next he recognized from a previous conversation. “Do you ever think about other women during sex?” She always asked introspective questions, like little post-coital quizzes. But now Katie wasn’t speaking of Susan anymore, and according to Katie, she now didn’t have any knowledge of her. He had difficulty grasping on to the moment, but he tried to anyway. Every moment with Katie was precious.

  She gave her opinion about her own question. “I think about other men. There, I said it.”

  He scoffed, thrown off by the admission. “Yeah, like who? Fabio?”

  “Fabio’s gross,” she gagged, sticking her finger in her mouth. “He’s not real. He’s too primped and manicured. I like real men. Paul Reiser.”

  “Paul Reiser?—who’s that?”

  “You know the show Mad About You? He’s Helen Hunt’s husband on the show. Curly black hair, smartass charm, he’s cute.”

  “Wow, Paul Reiser. You think about him.”

  “Come on, you think about other women. It’s okay. I’m not mad.”

  “I’m not Mad About You.”

  “Oh, shut up.” She nudged him with her elbow. “You’re just going to make fun of me.”

  “Well, yeah,” Craig teased. “I’m no Paul Reiser.”

  “You’re better than him. Would you stop bringing him up?”

  He wrapped his hand around her belly. She was twenty weeks along in the pregnancy. He enjoyed touching her belly. It was an extension of her, something extraordinary, something he created. He leaned down and kissed her stomach above the navel.

  “You’re kissing our baby.”

  “I know.”

  Katie petted his head. “You’re just a big softie.”

  He kissed behind her ear. “You tamed the beast.”

  “You got into so much trouble as a kid. What made you that way?”

  He shrank back to his side of the bed. “I never figured that out.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  “Psychiatrists are full of shit.”

  A muffled laugh resounded from the left wall. Craig asked her, “Hey, did you hear that?”

  She wrapped herself up tighter in the blankets. “No. I think you’re ready for bed, though. You’ve got work in the morning. Sometimes sex makes you forget that.”

  She rolled over in bed and fell asleep. He tried to wake her, but he couldn’t rouse her, no matter how hard he nudged her or said her name. “Come on, honey. I want to talk longer. I haven’t seen you in years. You’re not alive anymore so wake up, Katie. Katie!”

  She was still and at peace. Like she was dead again.

  She’s not waking up.

  This is Dr. Krone’s fault.

  Craig bolted up from bed. He rushed into the hallway to pursue the location of the muffled laugh. The laugh had to be the doctor’s. He ignored it earlier simply to be with Katie that much longer.

  I still don’t trust him.

  “I know you’re out there, Doctor. Why don’t you face me?”

  He burst through the hall and into the kitchen. The screen door to the backyard clapped shut. “Oh, I’ve got you this time, you fat fucker!”

  Craig ejected himself into the twenty-degree cold, and he shivered against it, the effect a burning slap to the face. He stomped through three-feet-high snow and spotted him. The doctor stood beside a shed, caught.

  “You were watching me. You pervert!”

  Dr. Krone stepped into the porch light. He was stone-faced. “But you knew I was watching. It’s my job.”

  “You were watching me with Susan.” He leapt at the doctor and landed a wild punch to his nose. “You sicko!”

  Dr. Krone spilled onto the ground with a crunch of snow. Blood bubbled from his nose. He snorted it out and chortled, smiling wide, his lips colored in red. “You can’t hurt me. This isn’t my mind. It’s yours.”

  “But you’re bleeding.”

  “It’s everything you want to see. I’m not in pain. But you can feel pain. You can feel everything because we’re in your brain. This is very real for you.” The man’s eyes went small. “Be careful what you do here.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  The doctor raised his hands up in surrender. He dug into his pocket for his kerchief and dabbed the blood from his face. “We’re getting on the wrong foot again. Susan was supposed to be enjoyable to you. It’s a regret in your life, and you fulfilled that regret. You can check it off your list.”

  Craig was flabbergasted, just like he’d felt during their
consultation. “This is too weird. Whatever you’re doing, I’m not so sure it’s working. I want to be with Katie again.”

  It wasn’t fair. She was alive one moment, the next, asleep. “Please wake her. I-I can’t make her wake up. You can. I know you can wake her up for me.”

  Dr. Krone trudged through the snow and patted his back. “You have a lot of things to work out with Katie. I don’t think that memory was the correct one to put you in. That’s why I ended it. I know it’s a cold thing to do. You’re a very courageous man. You’ve been through a lot, Craig. There are a lot of things that happened you didn’t really ingest. No sane, red-blooded person could. Now you have the chance to ingest them with wisdom, and with my help.”

  “I just want Katie back,” he pouted. “Forget my childhood. My parents can go to hell. Give me Katie.”

  “I can’t,” the doctor sighed. “It’s not helping your treatment. There are other moments you need to explore first. Then I’ll reward you again. It’s for the best, I promise.”

  Craig seized him by the collar and shook him, the doctor’s blood flecking onto Craig’s shirt. He was losing himself to his trademark temper. “Look, you asshole, Katie’s all I want! You’ve taken her away from me again. How many times am I going to lose her? How many times?”

  The doctor pried Craig’s hands from his collar and clasped them in his, squeezing them hard and sternly reminding him, “Remember why you’re here to begin with. You haven’t done physical harm to that many people, Mr. Horsy. But you will. You’re on the course to serious violence. I’m going to stop you. It’ll take time, but I’ll remove the urge and replace it with a sense of calm.”

  Craig wiped at his eyes, but the cold had frozen his tears. “You’re doing a shitty job of calming me down.”

  “I tried to give you another peaceful moment with your wife. I’m sorry it didn’t last long enough for you. It wasn’t productive for your treatment.”

  “Don’t talk about my wife anymore.” He pounded his fists against the shed and kicked the snow in a wild demonstration. “I don’t know what’s real anymore!”

  He wanted to pummel the doctor into the ground. Really hurt him. The man was manipulative, and most of all, in charge of him. The bastard was in his mind.

  He missed Katie already. Years he’d been without her. He’d been alone since then, except for Willis and his buddies at Half-Time and the singles club before it disbanded. Drinking buddies weren’t true friends, he reminded himself. But Willis was a real friend.

  “There’s something not right about the way you’re going about this.” Craig rubbed his neck and tried to relax. “It’s intrusive. I don’t like you watching, especially when I’m having sex.”

  “I understand.” Dr. Krone lowered his head. “But you have to understand, it’s my job. Try and shut me out. I’m a professional. It’s for your own good.” He redirected the conversation. “I see you’re eager to get back to business. Let’s get serious again. This process doesn’t go without its emotional challenges. Tell me, Mr. Horsy, how did you meet Katie?”

  Craig stared into the yard next door, the Montaveys’ yard. The above-ground pool was covered with a tarp. The dog house was piled in snow. The scene was so real, he kept thinking.

  He replied to the question without animosity, “Why don’t you put me in the memory, and you can see how we met.”

  Dr. Krone understood his patient’s abrasiveness. “Then let’s get on with the treatment, but it’s my way, Craig. You’ll learn to understand it’s the only way we do things here.”

  The Blue Ride

  Craig’s father called the city bus “the blue ride”. Brandon only used it when his ’81 Ford Cruiser broke down, and this time, it was because the alternator was shot. The family only owned one car in order to save on auto insurance and gasoline. The supermarket and post office was within two blocks of their house, and Tina liked to walk for those trips—except during the winter, but she did so anyway. Craig was disappointed this was where Dr. Krone had placed him next.

  This wasn’t how he met Katie.

  He was eleven years old in this memory, he remembered, shifting his backpack strap so it was secure between his shoulder blades. During most of their normal car rides, his father was quiet. He sipped his coffee and played the rock station, the eighties hair metal his favorite—Def Leopard in particular. But today, the journey was on “the blue ride”. Craig looked up at his Dad and knew the man was hatching a plan, and it had nothing to do with taking his son to school.

  The bus was jam-packed at this hour. The air was stale. Somebody wasn’t wearing deodorant. Somebody had farted. Despite the distractions, Craig waited for the moment to happen, what had happened all those years ago. He wanted to warn his father, to tell him not to say anything to anybody, but he couldn’t. The childhood fear of the man prevented him from acting out before it was too late.

  He wouldn’t interfere with Brandon’s extra-curricular activities.

  He followed his father’s gaze, and there she was, walking up beside him, then staying inches from him. She was much too close to be a casual patron. She wore a leopard-skin coat, knock-off quality, black high heels, and a gray sheath dress underneath the coat. She was in her mid-thirties. She had applied spider-black eyeliner and her eye shadow was a shade of green. The woman clutched the bar overhead, working even closer to him. When the bus stopped, she over-exaggerated the impact and brushed up against his father.

  “Oh sorry,” she apologized, holding his arm briefly. “I didn’t mean to bump into you.”

  Brandon ogled at her cleavage. The man was suddenly knocked from his morning routine. The man liked to flirt. He was a true cheater, and it couldn’t be any more obvious to Craig, especially now.

  You really fucked over Mom.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “Damn bus drivers,” he joked. He held her arm gingerly. “I guess I can’t let you go. The driver might take another sharp turn, and down you’ll go.”

  Craig predicted it. Brandon peeked at her cleavage yet again. Her breasts were small. He supposed the chest wasn’t the most important feature to his father. The plumbing was number one.

  She licked her dark brown lips. The shade was between cinnamon and dark spice. Craig knew the distinctions because his mother sold Avon products for a brief spell. She tested the application process on Alice Denny, his next-door neighbor and friend. “Doesn’t she look pretty?” Tina would ask him during dinner sometimes. “She looks very nice, Craig, yeah? You should ask her out. Oh, it’d be so cute. Dad could drive you guys to the movies.” He talked a lot to Alice now that J.J. had moved to Cincinnati and Neil had made new friends.

  Craig found himself distracted, so he focused on the woman on the bus again. She was sleazy. A child’s eye refused those details in the past, but now Craig could see her for who she really was. She practically had her hands reaching into her purse for a condom to flash at his father.

  “What’s your next stop?” She forced a lisp. It was intended to be sexy. “I’m off work today. I haven’t eaten breakfast. I know a place. It’s the next stop.”

  She pulled the cable above them, and the light dinged overhead. The bus soon pulled over and stopped. The location was between a long strip mall and a Denny’s.

  “Missing summer school won’t be such a bad thing, huh, pal?” Brandon relayed the fact without expecting a response from his son. “Let’s call today a wash. And don’t tell Mom. I’ll buy you that Atari game you wanted. We’ll have fun later together, okay? Promise.”

  He turned to the woman without waiting for his son to respond. “What’s your name?”

  “You can give me a name.” She batted her eyes seductively. “Pretend I’m somebody. Whoever. It’s funner that way.”

  “I’ll call you Tina.”

  Craig’s grip tightened on the pole. Butterflies gnawed at his stomach lining when he was ten, but now, he was fuming.

  They walked out of the bus, Craig following behind them. Brandon
would’ve forgotten him otherwise. He tagged along with the two, battling to decide what course of action to take, if any.

  Brandon said, “I’ll call in sick to work, and I’ll buy you some breakfast.”

  He thought his father was talking to him, but he was engaging “Tina”. Once his father completed the call to work, the woman sauntered to the back alley of the strip mall. “Forget breakfast.” She beckoned him with her pointer finger. “Come here.”

  Brandon stalked after her, playing into her game. “You stay here, Craig. Don’t move. Don’t follow me. I’ll be back soon. I promise. Just stay here.”

  He watched the philanderer at work. Craig walked to the mouth of the alley beside the closed-down bookstore and the hind end of Denny’s. Laughter echoed to him, a woman’s giggling. It made his stomach turn. This was the same man who’d make love to his mother and claim her as his wife.

  Get a divorce, you dickhead, if you want other women so bad.

  Craig hid behind a Dumpster. He dug his nails into the brick wall to abate his anger. The woman had somehow removed her panties and twirled them on her finger. “What are you going to do with me now?”

  Brandon reached to caress her when a man in a white undershirt and faded black jeans leapt from behind the other end of the alley, armed with a Louisville Slugger. A superman tattoo was inked on his left shoulder. The man was nearly a foot shorter than his father, but he was burly and wore the face of lunatic. “Throw me your wallet and put away your hard-on. This is my woman, so back the fuck off!”

  His father’s fantasy abruptly crash-landed. Brandon cowardly tossed the man his wallet.

  You deserve this.

  For some reason, Craig couldn’t stand by like he did back then no matter how much of an asshole his father was. The incoming scene that would occur was brutal and unnecessary. He remembered the scene from his childhood with alarming clarity.