None of this Ever Really Happened (12 page)

Gene and I sat in a narrow, tall, bright room on living-room
furniture. Gene was a slender, balding man with a goatee,
an earring, and an easy manner. Before he could ask me a
question, I asked him one. I wanted to know if people can
ever really change, if they can make fundamental changes in
themselves. I was thinking of Lydia, but I suppose I knew I
was also thinking about myself. Gene looked at me thoughtfully,
and I wasn't sure he was going to answer, but then he
did. I would find in the weeks ahead that he often did the unexpected,
that just when I was positive I knew what he would
do, or he as psychologist would do, he'd surprise me. "I believe
that they can and sometimes have to. Not often—once,
twice in a lifetime at most. Never easily, because real change
is wrenching. But sometimes people have to find a new path,
go a different way. I couldn't be in this line of work if I didn't
believe that. Now, can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"Are you uncomfortable being here?"

"Sort of."

"Can you tell me why?"

"Well, I don't know. I guess I feel that coming here is kind
of an admission of failure," I said.

"How so?"

"Well," I stalled. I looked at him trying to decide if I was
ready to confide in him. It was the fact that he had answered
my question that allowed me to take the chance. I told him
that growing up I'd been a worrier, that I'd worried about
everything, but that I'd learned to quit worrying. It had
happened that year when Lydia and I had lived in Mexico. I
could almost say it happened one Sunday afternoon when I
was out exploring the farms and villages in my car and the
oil-pressure light on my dashboard came on. At first I panicked.
I was fifty miles from anywhere and thought I was
screwed. The car was the only thing of value I had. Then, as I
sat there by the side of the road looking at the little red light, I
began to have a conversation with myself. I said, "What's the
worst that can happen? Your car's shot. Suppose it is. Suppose
you leave it here and never see it again. You walk away. You
walk to a paved highway. You sit down in the shade and wait
for a bus; Mexico is full of buses. It takes you to another bus
or to a town. Tomorrow you're in Mexico City. The next day
Chicago, if you want to be. In ten years you won't remember
how much the car was worth. You'll laugh about it. It won't
even make a very good story. It's okay. You can handle this.
In fact, there isn't anything you can't handle.' That became
my mantra, and it stood me in good stead for a long time.
In a tight spot I'd just step back and say, 'There isn't anything
I can't handle.' It worked. It has worked until recently."

"And what happened recently?" Gene asked.

"It stopped working. I've run into something I don't seem
to be able to handle."

"And it has shaken you."

"It's shaken me badly." I told him about my anxiety and
irritability. I told him I felt alone, isolated, panicky, unable
to concentrate, unable to work, sometimes claustrophobic,
sometimes afraid that I would lose control. "I've depended
on this thing, and now it's gone."

"Do you think it's gone completely?"

"Seems to be."

"I kind of doubt it," he said. "My guess is that you've just
found out that you have limits. We all have them, and maybe
you've discovered yours." He told me that finding and then
accepting personal limits was one of the last stages in the
maturation process. Another was knowing how and when
to seek help because most of the time most of us can handle
most things, but not quite always. He asked me if I could
modify my mantra.

"How do you mean?" I asked.

"Well, can you add a word or two? Can you live with
'There's almost nothing I can't handle'?"

"Maybe."

" 'And then I know where to get some help.'"

"Here?" I asked.

He said yes. He said he would help me sort through things
if I wanted him to. I thought I did.

"Why don't you begin by telling me about what you're
having a hard time handling." I told him about Lydia and me;
then I told him about Lisa Kim. I told him everything, even
about the wet dream. When I finished, I felt self-conscious.
Later I would think that he did not. Later I would come to feel
that Gene Brooke was the least self-conscious person I knew.
"So anyway," I said, "so anyway." I chuckled. "My friends are
concerned about me. They think I'm going crazy. They think
I'm obsessed. I don't know; maybe I am."

He looked at me thoughtfully. Again he spoke when
I didn't expect him to. "I don't think you're crazy, and 'obsessed'
is probably too strong a word. I think you're preoccupied.
I think there's something deep inside you that's eating
at you." He said he could help me look for that thing, and we
made an appointment for the following week. At the door,
he asked me what happened with my car.

"The car? Oh. Nothing. It turned out to be nothing. I
drove the car another couple years and sold it."

I was relieved. Gene Brooke had treated me as if I were normal,
and it reminded me of how many people were not doing
that just then. I got Art, bought a
Trib
and an
Evanston
Review,
and sat on the sidewalk at Café Express. The sunshine
on my face felt very good. I read the seven-day forecast
and made some short-term plans for the first time in a while:
haircut, ball game, library for some audiotapes to listen to in
the car. I read all the sports stuff including the Cubs minor-league
statistics. I checked out the Ravinia schedule and read
a movie review. I looked at the police blotter and obituaries.
Then there they were: the Doctors Kim. Looking out at me
from some hospital benefit side by side smiling in black tie
and pearls. Jesus. I mean, true, the North Shore is not that
large a place, but really. I turned the page and read a review
of a new Japanese restaurant, then turned back. Was there
something of Lisa's smile on her mother's face? Was there any
hint of their tragedy in their eyes, the slope of their shoulders?
They were not alone in the photograph. A woman at the table
behind them was laughing, pretending not to see the camera.
A slim, handsome man who actually did not see the camera
was rising from the table, turning. A waiter was leaning to
place something on the table; you couldn't see what.

I turned on but then turned back again. There was something
about that photograph. I carefully tore it from the paper,
folded it, and put it in my breast pocket. I licked the suds
and drained my latte and tried to think of something else to
do so I wouldn't have to go home.

John Thompson came into my classroom after school, and
sprawled in the chair across the table, his hands clasped behind
his head as if neither of us had any finals to grade. He
was as straight as his name, a big, crew-cut, poetry-spouting,
Shakespeare-quoting, Marine of a man with whom I had
started at Lake Forest, and against whom I had competed for
a couple years when our enrollment was shrinking and there
were fewer and fewer positions. We both managed to survive
and made a connection in the process that grew into a
friendship when he got divorced and I listened to him about
that for a couple of years, and continued undamaged when
he recently became department chair and my boss.

"Let me see that picture again of the girl who was in the
accident," he said.

"Why?"

"Just let me take a look."

I dug the obituary out of the drawer and handed it to him.

He studied it. "I think I saw her in a mattress commercial."

"You're kidding."

"No. Bunch of adults jumping on mattresses like kids.
Some mattress-outlet store. She was funny."

"Funny? I don't think of her as funny." And I was reminded
once again how very little I really knew about Lisa
Kim.

"She was pretty funny." He tossed the article on the table.

"I'll look for it," I said.

"I hear you're going on the canoe trip," he said.

"Yep."

"You got a lot of work?"

"A shitload." I hoped he'd take my curtness as a signal,
but he didn't. He had a purpose.

"Listen," he said, "we've had some calls about the papers
you haven't returned. Jay wanted me to speak to you."

"I know. I'm going to Michigan to grade all weekend. I'll
mail them out Monday. You don't have to worry about it."

The 'Jay' part was to let me know the administration was in
the loop.

" 'I' am going to Michigan, not 'we'? Something going
on?"

"Maybe. I'm not sure yet."

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Not really, but it's nothing a summer won't cure."

"You want to talk?"

"I don't know what to talk about yet. I may when I do."

"Well," he said, "I've wondered from time to time. It always
has been a marriage of convenience, and there's only so
much weight those can bear. Has something happened?"

"Not to me, but maybe to her. She says she's gotten closer
to me, and I guess I haven't gotten closer to her."

"Closer?" he said a little dubiously.

"Listen, she's like she is because she was hurt badly when
she was younger." My explanation sounded canned even
to me; perhaps I had offered it too often. Was I defending
her again? I had long been aware that not all of my friends
liked or valued Lydia as I did. John was one of these. He found
her aloof. Well, she
was
aloof. She had a habit of both making
and breaking friendships with great ease. I saw it many
times. Someone new would come into our lives and for a
period of time be given a leading role, and then—just that
quickly—be dismissed. It was as if Lydia needed to prove to
herself that she could have real relationships and then prove
that she could do without them. John Thompson among others
saw this as insincerity on Lydia's part; I saw it as another self-protective
device. And again I was aware of how different things
were now, how much Lydia seemed not to want to do without
me.

It was a cool, breezy weekend and I set up shop on a card table
in front of the fire in the cottage. I read, graded, wrote, read,
graded, wrote, read, graded, wrote until I just couldn't anymore,
and then I chopped wood or raked leaves for a while.
I grilled some pork chops and ate them with brussels sprouts
and wild rice. I also thought a lot about Lydia's request that I
stay at Carolyn's. I had pretty much decided not to honor it
until Sunday afternoon, when Art and I went for a walk on
the beach. To my surprise, we found Carolyn sitting on the
bench in the corner of her deck reading a novel; I took her
presence there as an omen. She didn't look up until I came
up the steps.

"Hey, Pete. Hey, Art." She let Cooper out, and he and
Art went down the stairs to feint and gambol on the sand.
We watched them and talked. Wendy was already in France.
Carolyn had wanted a week to decompress after working
fifteen-hour days for weeks to close out her job. She'd been
here alone reading and sitting in the sun, and I saw now that
her hair was bleached white blond and that her freckles were
all out; her face and arms were brown against her bright white
sweater. She said, "I'm glad you came by; I was going to call
you today about bringing Cooper over. I'm leaving Tuesday."

She squinted into the sun and smiled the kind of smile that
makes you feel that life might not be so bad after all. "Move
out of the sun," she said. "Come sit." She put her book down
and pulled her knees up to her chest. She was barefoot despite
the coolness.

"Are you alone?" I asked.

"Yep."

"No little architect?"

"No little architect," she laughed, but didn't elaborate.

"So, what are you reading now?" We talked about books
and authors. She told me about the plot of her novel.

"Would you still like someone to stay in your place?" I
asked.

She looked at me uncertainly.

"I mean me. That way Cooper could stay in his own house."

"You? Just you?"

I nodded. She cocked her head. "What's going on?"

I shook my head.

"Well," she said, "I'd have to know that it's okay with
Lydia."

I told her that it was Lydia's idea and that she'd volunteered
to keep both dogs while I was on the canoe trip.

"Well," she said, and I could see that she was worried
about getting in the middle of something, "that would be
great, I guess, if you really want to; I'd want to phone Lydia
and talk to her." We made tentative plans to meet in the city
the next night so that she could show me the fuse box, give me
keys, go over Cooper's routine. When we finished, the ease of
conversation we had had earlier was gone. I said something
about getting back to work and left. On the beach, I threw
a stick for Art. He and Cooper both went after it. I looked
back. Carolyn was still sitting, still reading.

I got up at four on Monday morning. In the breast pocket
of the flannel shirt I slipped on against the morning chill,
I found the newspaper photo of Lisa Kim's parents and the
camera-conscious woman laughing and the oblivious man
rising; there was something in the picture that made me want
to look at it and look at it some more, so I taped it to the
mirror in my bathroom at the cottage and studied it as I
scraped three days of stubble from my face. Then I forgot it. I
left it there. I had locked up, carried my shopping bags down
to the car, and driven into the city before I realized it. Just
as well. I probably would have had an accident gazing at the
damned thing.

I avoided stopping by the apartment. It was still cool, so
Art could sleep all day in the car. He didn't mind that at all.
I called Lydia from school and was relieved when she didn't
answer. I tried to sound casual on her voice mail. I told her I'd
run into Carolyn and made all the arrangements. "She leaves
tomorrow, so I guess I'll stay over there tomorrow night." After
I hung up, I tried to tell myself it was no big deal.