The Two-Knock Ghost

by Jeff Lombardo

  I not only understood, but I related what she said to my life and how fear had bound me, how I carried it around my waking days dreading the next dream onslaught of the devil and the absurd taunting of the Two-Knock Ghost.

  “I understand, Mary. I truly do.”

  “It’s as if fear itself has become a new dimension of me, an integral part of me. It’s made me short-tempered with the children at school, crabby with my husband, withdrawn from my mother and father, more distant from the people at my church. You would think I might have reached out to those people for support. But I’ve gone the other way. I’ve retreated inwardly. And even though it’s lonely in here by myself, I’m not sure how to get out. Even the news you shared with me today only makes me feel a little better. How do I get out of my fear head and get back to being my old self again?”

  She was looking directly at me with eyes of yearning, expecting a profound and immediate answer. I don’t know how long I paused before speaking to her, but my first thought after she asked me the question, was that I felt so inadequate this moment to answer what was probably the deepest and most sincere question of her adult life. I went for the obvious.

  “Going on the cruise would undoubtedly help, Mary. Now you and your husband can look at it as a celebration of your new peace of mind. Do you love the water?”

  “Very much.”

  “Do you love to travel?”

  “Ditto.”

  “Do you love adventure?”

  “Yes.”

  “You see, all those things are things you love. You will be pursuing things you love and that is the way you will overcome your negative self and become happy again. You must absolutely fill every aspect of your life with the things and the people you love. Gradually, the fear will dissipate because fear cannot coincide with an abundance of love.”

  “You’re right, Doctor. I know that intellectually.”

  “All change for either good or bad starts with a single thought, Mary. If you believe in the concept that I just shared with you, you’ll start pursuing what you love post haste.”

  “You’re right, Dr. McKenzie. What you told me today has given me the motivation to pursue love and break out of the prison I’ve been living in all these weeks.”

  She was sounding more optimistic. And I was feeling better about the session now than when she had first said, “I feel … different.”

  We continued talking, but much more lightly than the conversation had been up to this point. I even asked Mary if she had thought of anything she might need to buy for the cruise. She told me that she needed to buy two new bathing suits. When I asked her if there was anything else, she shifted gears and answered: “I need to lose the ten pounds I’ve gained since this ordeal began.” She giggled nervously when she said that. Then she said: “You may have noticed.” I said: “I have not.” Then she said: “You’re so kind, Doctor.” But I hadn’t noticed. Since I had met her several weeks earlier, I had always been a student of her face. I looked at it constantly for any hint, however subtle, as to how she might be feeling deep inside. I searched for the truth of her affect, the depths of her sadness, the degree of her fears, how she was feeling each moment. I never noticed the extra ten pounds. And I wondered if I could ever notice that little weight gain on any of my clients.

  When we came to the end of our session, Mary surprised me by showing me the only piece of physical affection she had ever shown me. When she said good-bye, she reached out to shake my hand the same way she had shaken it at each previous conclusion, but this day she placed her left hand on the right side of my right hand as she shook it with her right hand. Instantly, my hand felt like the cream filling between the black crunchy parts of an Oreo cookie. It was a good feeling—a genuine gesture of appreciation from a grateful client, one of the kinds of moments a good psychologist lives for.

  Then she said, as she held her left hand firmly against mine while she maintained her grip with her right hand: “Thank you, Dr. McKenzie. What you shared with me today has helped me to turn the corner toward more normalcy.” She removed her hands. “I’ve never been good at showing my emotions on the surface, so you may be a little confused as to what I am feeling. But I’ll tell you and this comes from deep within me, I not only feel different, I feel better. I’m learning new things all the time, how to be a braver woman, a better wife, teacher, and person overall. You’ve been an integral part of that growth.”

  Then she turned and headed for the door. I was silent, allowing her to conclude our session with the final spoken words.

  When she left the room, for the first time since I had met her, I believed that she would not only have a good life, but a great life.

  With Mary gone, I was alone again with my thoughts. I still had two clients to see, but I kept looking past them somewhat selfishly, to my phone call in four hours or so to Christine, my next session with Dr. Banderas, beginning a new run of sober days and contemplating how I would square off against the devil in our next dream and how I would motivate the Two-Knock Ghost to reveal itself the next time it came calling.

  Before I left the office at about 5:45, I called Christine.

  “I have a couple of filet mignons that I bought at Publix on sale Thursday, a cobb salad, some macaroni and cheese, and a package of mushrooms, if you would like to come over and share dinner with me.”

  “I’d love to,” I answered, as thrilled as a sixteen-year-old going on his first date. I know I’ve said that or something like that before. But it is what I truly felt.

  “Are you still at the office?” she asked.

  When I said “yes,” she said, “Good, then you don’t have to drive across town to the condo. You can just shoot over here from the office. You can come whenever you want.”

  “I called you as I was planning to leave work. See you in fifteen, okay? Can I bring anything?”

  “Nope, and I have plenty of apple juice.”

  “Yummy,” I said and then something popped out as if we had never been separated, “I love you, Christine.”

  “I love you too, Turf.”

  Then she put her phone in its cradle.

  Twenty-four hours ago I had been in oblivion—a place and condition in which I thought I needed to be. Tonight I was back to living in hope.

  My evening with Christine was memorable. It seemed like she was sharing a duality with me. One part was thanking me for what I had accomplished in the three weeks prior to my fall from grace yesterday and the other part was strongly encouraging my future endeavors.

  It seemed that night that we talked about everything. I was not selfish. I asked her about her job and she told me myriad stories about how she helped people in dire need. I also boldly asked her if she was happy living without me. Whereupon, she answered, “No, silly. I miss you terribly. But now that you’re serious about getting your life back on track, we don’t have to wait too long to get you back home, right?”

  Considering that only yesterday she had seen me in my personal nadir, I thought her words were pretty magnanimous. I realized that what Christine had wanted from me was totally logical and fair. Above all else, she wanted me to realize that I had a problem with alcohol. She needed me to admit, primarily to myself, that I had gradually slipped from being the man I had been in the past, not due to normal aging, but due to all the subtle and negative effects of what a chemical addiction could do to a person. She wanted me to grasp what those changes had been and begin to turn the tide to alter those resulting behaviors. She didn’t expect me to turn back the clock, she was happy to be with a fifty-five-year-old man. She simply wanted me to change a variety of behaviors and become the best fifty-five-year-old man I could be. During the past three weeks as new awareness of how I had shortchanged Christine became almost a daily theme, I became aware of what my wife needed and wanted in the future. She wanted and deserved a running partner. She didn’t need a man who isolated himsel
f in his room most nights, no matter what his reasons. She loved not only the music that I wrote for her, but that it came from a place of deep caring within me. She had every right to expect those things and many more from me. The two nights we were spending together showed each of us how much the other cared and the extent to which we would go to love our mate more deeply in the future.

  At one point in the evening, long after our dinner was enjoyed and the dishes were cleaned and put away, we were sitting together on the couch. We were each snacking on a regular flavored Klondike bar with a huge glass of apple juice on the side when I decided to exert myself with profound and complete honesty.

  “Christine, I wish I could come home tomorrow. But there are a few things I need to share with you that will greatly affect the time table for that return.”

  She looked into my eyes with unwavering intensity.

  “There are four things that I don’t want to bring back home with me. One is alcohol. I can promise you that I will never bring another bottle of alcohol into this house again. I know myself I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep. Have I ever broken a promise to you?”

  “No.”

  “The next one is my devil dreams. I don’t know what will be harder, giving up alcohol or getting rid of the devil dreams. Even though they are very personal, they always leave me with a negative emotional residue. You don’t deserve to be around that when it happens. It’s the same thing as a hangover but on an emotional level.”

  “Then there’s the Two-Knock Ghost. I don’t know what it is or why it is, but it frightens me because I think it is going to exacerbate every bit of suffering I’ve gone through with the devil by a multitude of fold.”

  “Finally, you don’t deserve an isolationistic husband. For almost thirty-five years I’ve been going to my bedroom to work almost every night. For most of those years I felt justified in doing so—rationalizing that it made me a better psychologist to be super prepared for each of my clients. But since I’ve been on my own in the condo, I’ve realized more that I’ve always felt loneliness when I first went into that room to do my work. Something’s wrong with me to cause me to feel that way time after time. I’d like to find out what it is. As far as I can figure, I have absolutely no reason to feel that peculiar type of loneliness. I had great parents, super grandparents, met you young and we were always close, and had three great kids. There’s no reason for that emptiness I feel when I go into that bedroom. But those last four things are big reasons why I hired a psychologist. I’d like to come home free from all of those conditions. Those are my four personal demons, Christine, and you don’t need to be subjected to any of them.”

  Christine’s eyes were glistening with love for me.

  “Thank you for being so honest with me. A few months ago when I sent you away, I asked you not to come home until you were a changed man. In these past two days you’ve let me know that you’ve identified your demons. That is amazing, Turf. You’re so far ahead of many people who never identify their demons and consequently can never work through and conquer them. Everyone has demons.”

  “Even you?” I asked, somewhat stunned.

  “Even me, Turf.” She kept calling me that nickname seldom used in recent years, reminding me of that time when I was young, strong, happy go lucky, sporty, believed the future was golden before me. I watched her closely as she spoke, noticing in this moment her roundish, pretty, naturally puffy lips. Then my eyes went to her hair, seeing several more grays among the blacks then when I left the marital household a few months ago.

  “Like what? What demons could possibly torment you?”

  “Yours.”

  She paused for a poignant moment holding my eyes with her magnetic gaze.

  “All of your demons now belong to me as well. And as long as it takes for you to feel you have conquered those demons is as long as I have to wait for you to come back home, the man that you and I both want you to be. And that leads me to my worst demon of all.”

  She paused again, sadder than a moment before when she told me that my demons were hers.

  “What’s that, Christine?” I asked, kindly.

  “I thought that you might know this one, being that you’re a pretty good psychologist.”

  “I really can’t imagine. Tell me, please.”

  “Losing you, Turf. The fear of losing you to anyone or all of your demons is my greatest demon.”

  I was looking deeply into the vast reservoir of love Christine held in her eyes for me. They were different eyes that had firmly sent me packing a few months earlier. I knew it had been done for me and our own good, but in spite of my egregious stumble of a day ago, much of that good had already been accomplished. Christine had evolved not in the same way that I had, but she had evolved. She had studied me closely the past two days and had seen enough to conclude not only that I was on the right path, but that now was not a time to be harsh with me, but to be loving and supportive. Her eyes alone gave me the desire to speed up my healing so I could get back to her as quickly as possible. I wasn’t thinking of myself now, while focusing on the connection that was our mutual gaze, I was thinking of her, of minimizing her having to ponder the demons I had revealed to her.

  “Can I stay the night, Christine?”

  She didn’t say anything, simply slowly shook her head yes, while her intrepid eyes whispered, could there be any other answer.

  * * * * *

  The next two days were a symphony of kindness between us. We shared Saturday breakfast at home, Saturday dinner at Lee Gardens on Fourth Street North. Sunday I treated Christine to a marvelous brunch at Shepard’s on Clearwater Beach, spent the day relaxing on the beach two blocks away, then showered, freshened up as best we could, put on the nice clothes we had worn to lunch and capped off the weekend with another wonderful meal at the Salt Rock Grill, a few miles south of Clearwater Beach.

  Without even speaking about it, we were both thinking that it would be best if I drove back to the Beaches of Paradise after I dropped Christine at home after dinner. That would allow each of us a few hours to transition comfortably to our individual routines, which had been joyfully interrupted the past two days.

  How could I know driving back to our beautiful home on Snell Island that one of the most magnificent moments of my life awaited me before I left Christine? When we arrived there, I went to our bedroom, grabbed a few casual and tee shirts, a pair of dress shoes and a few newer pieces of underwear and socks to take back with me to the condo. I was only in the house five minutes. Christine had come upstairs too and was in our bathroom brushing her teeth when I said, “Honey, I’m just about to leave,” as I stuffed the items I had gathered into one of the many travel bags I owned.

  Before she rinsed the toothpaste from her teeth, she said, “I’ll be right down to join you and say good-bye.”

  I carried my things downstairs and placed the bag a foot and a half in front of the front door. By the time I turned to start for the living room, she was right behind me. I had heard her bare feet bounding quickly over the carpeted stairway from the second floor.

  “You’re cute,” I said, feeling boyish and I looked into the girlish glow in her eyes.

  “Thank you, Mr. Turf,” she said playfully.

  Mr. Turf … I wondered, where did that come from?

  Prompted by a boyish urge, I bent downward slightly and with a wraparound hug I lifted my beautiful wife off the ground. Instinctively, she wrapped her arms around my back. My boyishness dissolved as Christine rested her head on top of my shoulders, nestling it tenderly, as if it was a gift against my neck. And there it was, the moment I will remember till the day I die. It was the “Endless Moment,” the boy in me again becoming the man who fate had entrusted with the care of this lovely soul he held in his arms. It was the “Transforming Moment” because until it occurred, I was still feeling residue of shame for my Thursday slide back into t
he bottle. In this lingering moment I felt power flowing into my actual body and my spiritual and emotional self. Some of it was flowing into me from my wife, like she had an on button that she had flicked into position which allowed a palpable electrical love to flow from her body into mine. As I held her during the “Eternal Moment,” I felt like the star of a great romance novel that had been made into a movie. In this scene, the camera circled us quickly a multitude of times, revealing the depth of feeling the hug expressed from mate to mate from every angle. Some of the power was emanating from beyond the magnificent hug. I thought it might be coming from my higher power, God, the universe—from some entity greater than I. And I thanked it repeatedly, knowing with certainty that I would win in the end. Undoubtedly there would be a struggle, but I would learn from it things I did not know about myself. They would make me a better man, husband, father, psychologist. I would conquer the devil dreams, identify the Two-Knock Ghost, beat alcohol and figure out why loneliness always accompanied my isolationist treks to my bedroom. Through my hug, I soundlessly told my wife of the profound depths of love I had for her and assured her that in a short period of time I would figure out all of my challenges and return home a better husband than I’d been since the night of my twenty-fourth birthday.

  I chose not to pursue my wife’s lips. If she was feeling anywhere near what I was, the hug was more than enough. It was a novel in an instant, a history, our lifetime in a moment that would not end. Christine did not move. She clung to me like a child holding on to daddy. But this was a wonderfully loving woman who had not moved a centimeter since she had nuzzled her head into its current resting position several minutes ago.

  When gravity began to suggest it was time to put Christine back down on the ground, I listened carefully to what my wife was telling me she wanted me to do, how she wanted the Eternal Moment to end. It was her complete lack of movement that prompted me to carry her to the couch where with my right hand I positioned a large throw pillow upon which I would place my head. Then carefully I positioned my butt on the couch, slowly lowered my body to the pillow and cushion, with Christine immovably onto my body. Then I lifted my legs, with shoes on, onto the lower portion of the couch.