This Is All a Lie

by Thomas Trofimuk

  the formula declaring such remission.

  Protestant Theology. a declaration or assurance of divine forgiveness to penitent believers, made after confession of sins.

  * * *

  Here’s a thing you likely don’t know about Ray. One morning, about a year-and-a-half ago, he woke up and realized he could imagine his daughters successful and happy in the world. Not necessarily rich or famous, but rather, happy and mostly fulfilled. He sat down at the kitchen counter with his morning coffee, and knew they were going to be okay. The future would take care of itself. They will struggle and face heartache and be disappointed in their lives, but they’ll be fine. He watched them and even at ten and eleven he could see their resilience and gumption.

  A week later, he’s driving to work and sees a maple tree completely aflame in its fall colours – the stunning oranges and reds massed up against a grey sky. Maybe it’s a trick of morning light, but Ray chokes. The tears flow down his face and by the time he gets to work, he has no idea how he feels about anyone in his life. He understands the love he has for his daughters – this is irrefutable and intrinsic but beyond this, there’s a void. He feels nothing when it comes to Tulah. He does not care about trees or his job. He is removed and alone, standing in a massive hole. And he can’t seem to catch his breath. He can’t get a full breath.

  In that moment, he knows he could easily turn to Tulah and say – ‘I have no idea what I feel for you. I just don’t know. I might hate you. I might love you more than ever. I do not know.’ She might be upset about this and Ray can imagine himself not caring about that too. He neither loves nor hates Tulah. He can’t even say he likes her. There is just a horrible void. It’s as if all the possible feelings one person could have for another are mixed together – love and hatred, lust and ambivalence, repulsion and utter joy, and more. Good morning, and Go fuck yourself, and Did you sleep well? are all the same thing. Everything is the same and all feeling is washed away. It’s as if he’s been beaten to the point where he can’t feel the punches anymore. Ray sits in his car in the parking lot, numb and stunned.

  His life feels like a throwaway. And yet, the patterns of his life are just there – ready and waiting for him. The hamster wheel is waiting for him to crawl aboard and start walking again, and to keep walking until he is dead.

  At 9:30 a.m., Rebecca Foster, an administrative assistant in his unit who always smells faintly of patchouli, taps on Ray’s window, softly. Even this gentle knock scares him. He lowers the window.

  “Are you okay?” she says.

  “I don’t know,” Ray says.

  Rebecca nods as if she recognizes something. “Yeah,” she says.

  She walks around the front of the car and lets herself in. She sits in the passenger seat and says nothing. Ray is grateful she does not try to fill the space with small talk. She does not check her phone. She does not seem impatient. She just sits and waits. They look out the front windshield together. They look at parked cars. They watch the trees, and the sky. Eventually, Ray takes a big shaky breath, and exhales, and he tells her what he’s not feeling. He tells her this lack of feeling even threatens to overtake his daughters. Just the thought of his daughters has always made him smile – if not physically, at least in his head. But this thing is eating away at that smile.

  He talks about Tulah. He tells Rebecca he doesn’t understand what happened, and then asks her if she knows what happened.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “But I think you should sit down with Madame Chernakov.”

  “Madame what?”

  “Chernakov. Madame Chernakov. It’s what she likes to be called. She’s a Jungian. She can help, I think. She has helped me in the past.”

  “Is she a fortune reader? She sounds like a fortune reader.”

  “No, she’s a psychologist. Deeply Jungian. Mildly eccentric. You’ll like her.”

  * * *

  Rebecca Foster pulls whatever strings she can and Ray is sitting in Madame Chernakov’s office the next morning. She is a tall blonde who is turning grey. She’s letting the grey into her hair just a little – because, goddamn it, she earned it. Her hair is short and her bangs make her look younger than she likely is. When Ray shakes her hand, he recognizes a steady watchfulness in her eyes. Her eyes are fast and kind and they watch everything. He would not venture to guess as to what colour they are – somewhere between grey and blue, but maybe a speck of green too.

  Her office is sparse. It’s one big open space – a desk against a brick wall, and a sitting area with a couple chairs and a couch positioned on a blue-burgundy Persian rug. The floors are oak and they creak. The curtains are a blue sheer fabric and they soften everything in the room. The office is on the third floor of a brownstone on 96th Street, next to three buildings that are shuttered and derelict. Ray had to step over a sleeping man who had likely peed himself, repeatedly. In the lobby, he pushed the button for 314 and got a garbled voice that was all static, and then a buzzer.

  Madame Chernakov fills a pitcher with water from a gurgling dispenser in the corner, and sets it on an end table beside the couch. “My name is Russian,” she says. “But I am not. My ex-husband was Russian. My people are from Finland.”

  “You kept your husband’s name,” Ray says.

  “Why not? It’s a good name and I loved him.”

  He wonders if by ‘ex’ she means divorced. There’s something in the way she says it that makes him think she could have meant deceased. “And you like to be called Madame Chernakov.”

  “Yes. It’s quite off-putting isn’t it? I mean, am I a Madame? Am I a woman who manages a brothel? Or just a little eccentric? Now, tell me why you’re here.”

  Ray takes a couple breaths. He likes the directness of this woman. “It’s stupid, but I think I’ve stopped feeling,” he says. “I can’t feel anything.”

  “That doesn’t sound stupid. That sounds like a big problem, yes?”

  “Yes. Well, I’d prefer to feel things. I mean, I can think about feelings, and understand the feelings I ought to have, but I have no emotions. I’m numb. Well, I cried about a goddamned maple tree yesterday.”

  She tilts her head and smiles. “A maple tree? Tell me about that tree.”

  “It was red and orange – you know. It was as if the tree was on fire. It was stunning.”

  “So what was it about the maple that moved you? What was it about that particular tree?”

  “I don’t know. I saw it and I teared up. And then I couldn’t stop.”

  “Okay. Were there other trees around it?”

  “No.”

  “So the beautiful maple in all its fall colours was alone?”

  “Yes. It was alone. It was beautiful and alone, and it was turned already. I mean, it’s only the third week in September. It’s too bloody early.”

  Madame Chernakov wants to mention the Jane Hirshfield poem about a maple that burns for three days without stinting and then drops all its leaves, but perhaps another time. “And this was the morning you realized you had no feelings?”

  “Yes. It scared me,” Ray says. “It still scares me.” He wants to add that he suspects he still has feelings, it’s just he can’t connect to them. They don’t make sense. It’s as if his feelings have been translated into a hybrid of Chinese and he’s expected to read them.

  She writes in her notebook. She lets the silence stretch into the nearly empty room. Ray notices there are no books, no bookshelves, and nothing hanging on the walls. There are what look like framed diplomas leaned against the far wall, as if she meant to hang them but lost interest in the project.

  “Often, this sort of numbness is a cumulative response to things that have been hurting us – something painful has been building in you and you’ve not dealt with. And now, you’ve gone numb in order to stop the pain. Your body, mind and even your soul are telling you something needs to change. Does that make sense
?”

  “So this is fixable? I’ll start to feel things again?”

  “Do you want to feel things again?”

  “Are you kidding me? Yes. I don’t like this. It’s frightening.”

  “Frightening?”

  “I mean it’s terrifying. This emptiness is terrifying. I don’t know how else to explain it. I can’t feel anything.” He is lightheaded, dizzy, as if he’s been only half breathing.

  Madame Chernakov pours him a glass of water. She passes it to him and he takes a long drink. She leans back in her chair and picks up her notepad.

  “So why is this terrifying for you?”

  “Because it’s not normal. Because I’ve felt things all my life and now it appears to be gone. I never noticed how important feelings were before. That sounds flaky.”

  “All this is good. But why is this absence of feeling terrifying?”

  Ray would love to give Madame Chernakov what she wants but he has no idea what that is.

  “Isn’t it terrifying for most people to stop having feelings?”

  “Yes,” she says. “This is obvious. But there’s something more for you. I can sense it. There’s something beneath the obvious. What specifically scares you about this?”

  He thinks about sitting in the car with Rebecca Foster and looking across the parking lot at the East Yard. Trees poking up above the top of the fence. Trucks coming and going in the early morning. “I guess part of it could be that I can still function as if there’s nothing wrong. People don’t notice and that makes me sad.”

  Madame Chernakov writes things down. She takes her time. As if she wants to get it right.

  “Okay. We’ll revisit this. Tell me about your life. You’re married?”

  “Yes. And we have two daughters.”

  “And they are how old?”

  “Eight and nine.”

  “And your feelings for your daughters?”

  “Those feelings are still there. I know my love for my daughters.” But this is a lie. It is only a wish posing as the truth. He’s not sure about his daughters. It’s just too painful to admit these doubts in the air.

  “So it’s mostly your feelings for your wife?”

  “Yes, but it’s more than that. It’s the people I work with. It’s music, and art, and pretty much everything I feel strongly about. Trees. I work with trees. I used to love trees and now…I have no idea.”

  “What about parents? Your mother? Your father?”

  “My mother? She died. About six months ago, she passed away.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “It was sudden, unexpected, but I’m fine about it. I don’t know if I’ve been more sad than normal. Is there a right amount of sadness?”

  Madame Chernakov looks at him as if she is trying to figure out if he’s serious or not. “There is no right way to grieve. No right way to be sad. No correct amount of sadness.”

  “I have missed her,” Ray says. “In the past months, I have missed her.”

  “Do you mind me asking how old she was?”

  “She was seventy-four.”

  “And how do you feel about your mother’s passing?”

  “I honestly don’t know what I feel.”

  “And your father?”

  “He’s not in the picture. He left when I was five. I don’t know why. I don’t think my mother knew why either – at least she never said.”

  “Is it important that you know?”

  Ray smiles. “Sometimes I’m curious about it, that’s all. I mean, was he an alien who got called back to the mother ship? Which would make me an alien too. Which would be kinda cool. Or was he just a prick who, after five years, decided he didn’t want to be a father anymore? When I was a kid, I liked to imagine he was a spy who abandoned us in order to save our lives. Or, maybe he was just a really nice gay man who made a deal with my mom so she could adopt a kid. And after five years, he just couldn’t keep the charade going anymore.”

  She tilts her head, puzzled. “So there’s a biological dad too?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about a connection with him?”

  “It’s not something I’ve thought about.”

  “So there’s been no contact at all?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Do you think you’re depressed right now?”

  “Is depression a feeling?”

  Madame Chernakov nods. “It’s more a state of being.”

  “But mostly, someone feels depressed?”

  “Yes, we feel depressed.”

  “Then, no. I feel nothing. That’s why I’m here.”

  The therapist smiles. As if he’s been amusing and she approves. “So you might be depressed. And we know that you are terrified about not feeling anything. You have these two overwhelming feelings – fear and perhaps sadness, but nothing else. So we will begin where there is evidence of some feeling and from there we will move forward.”

  At the end of the session she tells Ray to start keeping a dream journal. “Every morning you will record your dreams and you will bring them here for our sessions.”

  “I don’t remember my dreams,” he says. “Only the strange ones. And very rarely.” He is doubtful. How can he write down his dreams when he barely remembers them.

  “Put a journal beside the bed and in the morning when you see it, you will remember your dreams.”

  “Can I ask why you want me to do this?”

  “Yes you can. But I think you wanted to say ‘may’ I ask why? – which is a different question.”

  “Did you just correct my grammar?”

  Madame Chernakov grunts and smiles. “No charge,” she says. “We look at your dreams because the subconscious is where the gold is hidden – I think the key to your missing emotions is there, in the subconscious. This is soul work. When you share a dream with me, I will always say to myself, I have no idea what this dream means, then we can begin. We will try to look at them clean.”

  “Okay,” Ray says but he is sceptical.

  She can hear the doubtfulness in his voice. “Dreams offer insight into ourselves that we are likely unaware of. That’s their value.”

  The next morning, Ray wakes up, sees his journal, and writes down the details of his dream. He’d dreamed he was in the mountains, standing beside his car, and a bear was coming up out of the ditch beside the road. He felt safe beside the car but he could not move. The bear was massive – though he had yet to see it – and it was coming toward him but he could not move. He wanted to get back inside the car and shut the door, but he was paralyzed. As if by telling him to remember his dreams, Madame Chernakov had willed it to be true.

  He starts seeing Madame Chernakov twice a week and tells no one about these sessions. Rebecca Foster knew but she was the one who got him an appointment. They always began with a dream. These talks became a refuge where he was listened to, and there was no judgement. He trusted her and she started to call Ray ‘dear.’ He, in turn, called her his Madame.

  “Oh my dear Ray,” she would say. “How are your feelings today?”

  “As well as can be expected, Madame,” he says.

  After three months with the therapist, Ray’s feelings start to shift back to normal. Not fully, but he is able to navigate his way forward. There is no longer a massive void. He starts to know what he feels about the people in his life again.

  * * *

  temenos

  noun

  a temple enclosure or court in ancient Greece: a sacred precinct

  (Greek – a piece of land cut off and assigned as an official domain, especially to kings and chiefs, or a piece of land marked off from common uses and dedicated to a God, a sanctuary, holy grove or holy precinct)

  * * *

  “You said you were adopted?” Madame Chernakov says.

 
; “Yes. I’ve always known. It wasn’t some secret I stumbled across.”

  “Okay.”

  “And before you ask, I don’t need to find my birth-mom. I am not an episode of Oprah. I am not some teary-eyed, middle-aged woman whose life is not complete until she finds her real mom. I know enough.”

  “Do you mind sharing what you know?”

  “My birth-mom was alone when she had me. She took a trip to visit an aunt in Saskatchewan. She went by herself and was gone for about nine months.”

  “So you have relatives in Saskatchewan?”

  “No. You’re not getting it. There was no aunt. There was some sort of home for unwed mothers, a place run by nuns. My so-called dad was long gone by then. He probably didn’t even know. Still doesn’t know.”

  “And how do you know this? How do you know about the trip to Saskatchewan, and that your biological father was out of the picture?”

  “Do we really need to go through this?”

  “Humour me. It gives me a fuller picture of your life.”

  “There was a note. A sort of love note to an abandoned kid. You know…I’m giving you up out of love. I’m too young, and want a good life for you…I’ll never stop loving you. I’ll never forget you. The usual stuff birth-moms say before they disappear. Except, I noticed it’s all about her. It’s not, we’re giving you up, or we’ll never stop loving you.”

  “Okay. So you were adopted and then?”

  “Yes. And then that dad left too.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Five. Probably not supposed to remember that far back but I think I do remember the day he left.”

  “Jesus. You’ve certainly filled up on abandonment haven’t you?”

  * * *

  When Ray meets Nancy at the hockey game, he quickly stumbles forward into her, into infidelity, into a mostly hopeless, nothing-to-lose embrace.

  “There’s a complication,” Ray says to Madame Chernakov.