Trust Me (11 page)

CHAPTER 22

⍫

I’m feeling very uncomfortable about something.”
Holly looked at Art as she said this, but then felt compelled to look away.

They were sitting at a table in a coffee bar called the PygmyUp, one of hundreds of similar places with clever names that had recently sprung up throughout the city. Art said, “Facing discomfort is necessary for growth. Can you put it into words?” He sat opposite her, leaning back in his chair, and sipped at his coffee.

“Yes, but I don’t really want to. I mean, I’m not sure of my perceptions.” She felt awkward now and wished she hadn’t brought it up.

“Well, better to go with your feelings. What’s going on?” His manner was kind, curious; she had planned what she was going to say, but now it seemed entirely inappropriate.

She shook her head. “I don’t know . . .” she began.

“You’ll tell me when you’re ready.” Art smiled and reached across the table to take her hand.

She pulled her hand away and said, “That’s just it. You’re always so physical. It seems inappropriate. I just want to be really clear with you that we are never going to have sex together.”

“Holly, Holly . . .” Art seemed genuinely dismayed. “We have a friendship. A very special friendship. I would never do anything to jeopardize that.” He withdrew his hand and drank his coffee, lost in thought for a moment. “Listen,” he told her, “we are engaged in a deep process. A process more intimate than sex, and it’s bound to bring up resistance. The process is called uncover, discover, and discard. Each time we get together we dig a little deeper.”

“So you’re telling me I’m entirely off base?” She wasn’t convinced of his sincerity, but felt uncomfortable, slightly ridiculous even, in challenging him.

Art put his fingertips together and leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “The reason we get fearful and resistant is because we sense that we are reaching a new threshold of discovery and that something threatening is on the other side.”

“What does that have to do with what I said?” she asked.

“Simply that when we are fearful and unwilling to look directly at the thing we fear, we invent bogeymen. I am a convenient bogeyman so that you won’t have to look at the truth.” Art raised his eyebrows, as if inviting her response.

“And what truth is that?” She was annoyed, but uncomfortable. She didn’t know if Art’s proposal was an evasion or a real possibility.

“Well, we haven’t gotten there yet, have we? Let me ask you this: the other week, at Joanie’s, I noticed that you had a bruise over your eye. I’m going to assume that your friend Tony struck you. Now, why do you suppose it’s okay for him to hit you?”

“Why would you assume Tony hit me?”

“Holly, let’s not play games. Why do you suppose it’s okay?”

“I never said it’s okay,” she retorted. “There’s nothing okay about it.”

“Right,” said Art, “but let’s think about what we mean by saying something is okay. It means we are giving it permission. Now, had this ever happened before?”

It infuriated her, the way Art relentlessly dredged up things that he should have no idea about. She wondered again why she continued to meet with him. On the other hand, she thought, the last time they had been together had been quite pleasant.

⍫

They had met at his office in Westwood. It was situated in a quaint older building and overlooked a central courtyard and the checkered parasols of a European-style café. She had waited in a wood-paneled reception room while Art finished, she presumed, an appointment with a patient.

The room was pleasant, with hanging plants and meandering New Age music piped in. She read a magazine called
Aquarian Paradigm
while she waited.

At four o’clock sharp, Art appeared. He smoked a pipe, dressed in corduroy slacks and a beige cardigan over a white shirt and tie. He looked like an amiable college professor, smiling down at her as he beckoned her into his office.

“A beautiful day,” Art exclaimed. A cool breeze had come up off the Pacific, breaking up the monotony of an endless succession of sweltering days.

“Yes, lovely,” she said. She sat down in a deep leather chair. Art sat opposite and gestured to the walls. “Cozy, isn’t it?”

She liked the room. It was small but not confining. A bookcase, entirely filled, took up one wall. Another was occupied by a large abstract, warm colors and soft shapes with no angles. An oak desk occupied the corner. To her right was a window that looked out onto the yards and houses of the adjacent residential block.

“It’s nice,” she told Art. “But what am I doing here?” They usually met in restaurants or coffee shops, sometimes at the museum over by La Brea.

“It’s time to take the next step,” Art said. “You’ll like this. It’s fun.”

“What are we going to do?”

“I’ll show you. By the way, you didn’t drink any coffee today, did you?” He had asked her not to, without explaining why.

“No, and I got a slight headache. I never realized that I might be dependent on coffee.” He hadn’t said anything about aspirin. The headache had subsided around lunchtime.

Art said, “Good. What we’re going to do today is take the initial step in regression therapy. To keep the critical mind from interfering with the process, we employ hypnosis.” He got up and walked to the desk, returning with a plastic cup in one hand and a pill in the palm of his other.

“This will greatly facilitate our progress.” Art handed her the cup of water and the pill. It was a little thing, triangular and orange with some letters on it.

“What will this do?” She was uncomfortable with the idea of taking drugs.

“Virtually nothing, except that you will feel deliciously calm and centered. All those busy thoughts and anxieties will dissolve away, and yet your mind will feel sharp and alert at the same time.” When he saw her hesitate, he said, “Really, Holly, you must trust me. I’m a doctor and I’m your friend.”

Despite her misgivings, she swallowed the pill with some water and then gave Art the cup. “Now what?” she asked.

“Now we wait about twenty minutes. Actually, I’ll be leaving you for a while. Would you like anything?”

“No, thanks. I’ll just rest here.” The chair was very comfortable. The afternoon sun coming through the window had a lulling effect. She closed her eyes and barely noticed as Art left the room.

She was surprised, when he returned, to realize she had dozed. In her dream, she had skated along the bike path at State Beach, except she didn’t have any skates on. She would glide around other skaters, throwing her weight from side to side. It was like doing the bumps on a ski slope, her sandals barely skimming the concrete. The experience seemed so real that it was odd to open her eyes and be back in this room.

Art said, “You may close your eyes again.” She did, and found herself right back on the bike path, still skating, only this time she knew she was dreaming and that she really was sitting in a chair in Art’s office.

“Imagine,” he said, “that you are in a golden space with no boundaries.” She stopped skating and, eyes still closed, looked up into the sun. Everything else fell away and she floated in its radiance.

“Now,” Art’s voice instructed her, directionless, bathing her like the light bathed her, “will yourself to move upward.”

She felt the sensation of moving upward, like pushing off the bottom of a pool, but without the resistance of the water. She found that she could control the speed and started laughing as she accelerated.

“Okay, that’s very good.” Art’s voice was with her, even though she had traveled such a long distance. With her fingers she felt the smooth texture of the leather chair.

“Now move to the right . . . good, good, and now to the left.” She noticed that whichever way she tilted her head, she could fly through the golden space in that direction.

“Okay, now, Holly, bring yourself to a resting position.” Art paused. She waited, suspended in the radiant mist. “Good. Now, the sun is setting. The golden light is streaming outward from you, from your hair and face and fingertips. The sky has become dark. Do you see how many stars there are?”

She nodded. There were millions of them, clouds of stars against the black background. She willed herself to turn—it was the same in every direction.

Art’s voice joined her again. “One of those stars is waiting for you. It is your special star, your new home, the place where you will give up your body of light for a while. A great adventure awaits you there. Find the one that is calling you and go to it.”

She stretched her arms wide and tilted her head back, felt herself accelerate and saw a milky cluster of stars rush toward her. She coasted through it, turning slowly and opening herself to the possibility of each star. She was about to pass through entirely, set to race through the blackness to the next concentration of fiery pinpoints, when something caught her attention.

Off to her right, and slightly above, a star flashed brighter for an instant. She watched as it did it again, and then again. It was pulsating rhythmically and seemed to loom larger than its neighbors, warmer in its glow, calling to her now as she moved toward it.

Something in the nature of her motion changed. From flying, she was now diving, pulled by the gravity of the sun she approached, joyful as it welcomed her, tearful as a dark gap opened in its center and she entered, now curled up into the smallest ball, floating in the very center of it all. She heard a lazy gurgling and behind it a powerful thrumming, as of the tide racing through a channel. And, over it all, the distant bass sound of a giant echoing drum.

⍫

She pinched the bridge of her nose between her eyes, then looked around the coffee house.

Art was watching her, patiently, lines crinkled outward from his eyes as he smiled, his eyes blue against the tan of his face.

“Welcome back,” Art said. He seemed amused.

“I’m right here,” she retorted, flustered. She wondered how long she had sat there daydreaming. They had been having a conversation.

“I believe we were having a conversation,” Art said.

About Tony. That was it, she thought. She brushed at her hair with her fingers. “No, he never beat me up before.” Which was basically true. Except for when he would grasp her hair and speak right in her face, saying totally unacceptable things. But only when he had been drinking, she thought. Which was immediately followed by the thought,
When wasn’t he drinking?
When had she ever spent time with him that he didn’t wind up more or less insanely drunk?

“How about previous boyfriends?” Art persisted.

“Why is this important?” she asked.

“Well, among other things, it would be useful to discover what kind of behavior you accept, and then find out why you think you deserve that behavior. When your concept of what you deserve changes, you will begin to attract a different kind of man.”

“How nice for me,” she said, but in spite of her sarcasm she wondered if it was really possible that there was a whole world out there, occupying the same space as the one that she knew, but entirely different. Kinder. More truthful. Safe. She thought of her experience in Art’s office again, the perfect peace and safety of it, suspended in the liquid darkness, her blood pumping in time to the huge heart above her. If she could have believed that the pill she had taken was responsible for that feeling, she would have signed up for a lifelong prescription.

She picked at the muffin she had ordered. “As long as you don’t have any illusions about us having a physical relationship,” she said.

“Ah, we’re back to that.”

“Yes, we’re back to that. I’d like to get it settled.”

“Holly,” Art looked at her intently, “the mind is a very funny thing. Philosophers have been trying to understand it for thousands of years. From Socrates to Kant, and the question still isn’t resolved.” He waved the waitress away as she offered more coffee. “Huxley said that the mind is a reducing valve, that there is a true world, but that the human mind can only assimilate so much information—the information it thinks it needs to survive and to thrive. So it acts like a filter. He said that the way that each of us reduces and filters reality defines our individual realities, and that each of our realities is by nature skewed. Sometimes our ideas outlive their usefulness. For example, your idea that men are bad may have been an appropriate reaction to something once, but it continues to fulfill itself in your relationships. And, it convinces you that I have ulterior motives. The good news is that sometimes we can take a quantum leap upward, out of the old paradigm, into a new one in which we are freer, more personally powerful.”

“Have you ever heard the saying,” she asked him, “‘If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit’?”

Art put his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his hands. “You’re a tough nut to crack,” he said. “Listen. There’s a story about a man on his deathbed. His wife is sitting next to him, and he tells her, ‘Remember before we were married and I got in that accident?’ and his wife nodded and said, ‘Yes, dear, I remember.’ And he said, ‘You were there with me.’ Then he said, ‘Remember when the business failed and I was in despair?’ And she said, ‘Yes, dear, I remember.’ So the husband said, ‘You were there with me then, too. And when I got in that auto wreck, I couldn’t walk for a year. Remember that?’ The wife shook her head sadly. ‘Yes, I remember that too.’ Finally, the husband said, ‘Now I’m lying here dying, and you’re still here with me.’ The wife nodded, tears in her eyes, and the husband said, ‘You know what I think? I think you’re a bloody jinx.’ Then he died.”

“Is that a joke?” she asked. “Because if it is, it’s not very funny.”

“No,” Art said, “it’s a parable about cynicism. The husband reduced the world in such a way that love was impossible. He couldn’t help himself.”

CHAPTER 23

⍫

By nine Saturday morning, Ron had already finished his run at Griffith Park, returned home, and eaten breakfast.
He poured his second cup of coffee at nine and decided it was late enough to call Marilyn Fenner’s parents. He wondered about the son, Jeff, as he dialed. The kid looked like he was in trouble—he had that beat-up quality that Ron had seen so many times.

The phone picked up on the first ring. “Hello, what did you find out?” It was a gruff voice, impatient and demanding.

“My name is Ron Pool. I’d like to talk to Mr. or Mrs. Fenner.”

“I’m Charles Fenner. Thought you were the goddamned attorney. So who are you?”

Ron explained that he was from the
Times
, that he had written the bit on their daughter, and was wondering if they had a few moments to talk to him.

“It’s not a great time for us, Mr. Pool. We’re dealing with a problem right now.”

He decided to push. “Mr. Fenner, I really only need about ten minutes of your time. I could stop by in the next hour.”

“Look,” the father said, “my goddamned son is in the county jail and I’m a bit more interested in getting him out than I am in chit-chatting with you.”

“He’s downtown?”

“Is that where the county jail is? How the hell would I know?”

“Maybe I can help,” Ron said. ““What’s he in for?”

“Drunk. Something about a goddamn gun. Oh, yeah, and he broke into an empty apartment.”

Ron asked, “How much is bail?”

The father said, “Hasn’t been set yet. The hearing won’t be until Monday. Now I need to clear the line so my lawyer can call me. Goodbye.” The phone went dead.

He drained his coffee. Drunk with a gun, lands in the county jail. Maybe it was the end of the line for the guy. It takes what it takes, he thought, wondering once again why problem drinkers are always last to recognize the enormity of their problem.

He dialed the phone again. Time to rearrange his day.

“Joe?” But it was only Joe Greiner’s voice mail greeting, the hello sounding like someone was really there. At the tone, Ron identified himself and said, “Listen, I’m going downtown to the county jail. If you get this message, can you help me get quick access to a new guy they got? Our boy Jeff Fenner just got himself busted.” The visiting lines at the jail were horrendous, especially on a weekend, when every mother, aunt, wife and girlfriend would come to scold, lament, and weep for their bad boys.

⍫

By the time he arrived at the jail it was 11:00. Joe must have called ahead, because the deputy led him through a maze of hallways to a room full of booths all lined up in a row. Each booth had a telephone on a table, and a chair. Visitors hunched forward, phones to their ears, looking through the wire-reinforced glass partition to the inmate on the other side. Some were arguing, others spoke in hushed tones, looking around to see if they were being overheard.

“Stay here and I’ll go get your man,” the deputy told him.

He watched the visitors come and go. No one smiled—these were not joyful occasions. A lot of these inmates, he knew, were being processed through this facility on their way to state prison.

The deputy returned. “Okay, you’re next.”

When the next visitor, a young Hispanic girl with a tiny baby, got up from her booth, he walked over and sat down. He looked through the partition at Jeff Fenner, who seemed somewhat surprised, and picked up the phone.