Imperfections (11 page)

“Yes, very.”

“Let me explain. From our brief meeting so far, it's apparent that, under the surface, you have a strong craving for the attention of your peers and your parents. You feel that attention is owed to you and it's overlooking you. Everyone has the need for attention. Some crave it more than others. It's perfectly normal, perfectly natural. You shouldn't think of it as a character flaw… ever. Lighting fires is a way for you to get the attention you need, but it garners feelings of fear and alienation, anger and confusion in those around you. It's the wrong kind of attention, not the kind you want or need. Attempting suicide, on the other hand, brings forward sympathy, caring and a host of positive, motherly, nurturing feelings.”

“I don't mean to scare people.”

“No, no. I know Richard. It's something too complex for you to deal with consciously. It's a desire you're simply too young to properly process right now so you deal with it in other, easier ways. Don't let it get to you, there's plenty of time.”

“There is plenty of time to let it get to me?”

“Richard, do you think often of attempting suicide?”

“No, you are the one who told me to.”

Mother called from the other side of the room, “Richard.”

“That's Mother calling. I should go.”

“Who are you talking to, Richard?” Mother asked.

“This lady in the waiting room, Mother.”

“Leave her alone, Richard. Dr. Sloane is ready for us now. Let's go.”

Two years ago, Mother came back sober and renewed. Her eyes were different. They were deeper. Her face wasn't tense anymore.

She said she was sick and would be for the rest of her life.

She said there was no cure for her sickness; she would be in “treatment” from then on.
 

I thought that sounded defeatist.

I thought she had given up.
 

Had Dr. Sloane been a real doctor, he would have diagnosed her, coding her disease as it appeared in the International Classification of Disease Manual. In the ICD, every disease that could afflict a human is provided a numerical code. Mother's code was F10.2:
Mental and behavioural disorders due to alcohol, dependence syndromes
.

Father was different for a while, too. He was helpful and attentive. He lost his caustic edge until he figured out that Mother was back to stay.

Treatment made Mother stronger than she was before. She was also more focused on herself, on her illness.

Father and I seemed to drift peripherally, to opposite corners of her eyes.

Within a year, her treatment became all-consuming. She bought scented candles, spoke of life centres, envisioned positive action to channel the energies around her, and swallowed several pills of valerian root extract before bed. Twice a week, she had other women over to the house, women who didn't wash their hair regularly. Mother wore her illness like a fashion statement. She talked of nothing else.

Father had trouble with this shift.

I found it hard to talk to either of them, what with Father brooding and distracted by Mother's distraction and Mother skimming along a positively altered reality, each of them inhabiting a different bit of the world's spectrum. The sun shone blue on Father and pink on Mother. These monochromatic worlds bumped along until one yelled and the other glossed over the wrong issue.

Two years of parallel talking, parallel seeing, parallel living, brought us here.

Mother enrolled us in family counselling with Dr. Sloane.

For the past few months, once a week, we gathered in the clinic's waiting room with the other people needing help. Every week we walked from the waiting room, where I had made a habit of meeting other patients, into one of the more well-decorated rooms I had ever seen. Every week, Dr. Sloane would greet us with the same wide, white smile. The same graceful wave of a hand would invite us to enter the “Discussion Circle”: a circle of cushions big enough for all of us to sit, cross-legged, facing each other.

I grew to think of it as “the arena.”

In hindsight, that may have been more accurate.

“It doesn't work like that,” Dr. Sloane's deep, smooth voice filled the air when Father had asked where the couch was on the first visit.

“We don't lie on a couch? What about chairs, can we sit in chairs?” Father had asked.

“The circle is the shape of continuance, completeness and honesty. There are no gaps, no breaks in the line. It is never-ending and it is the true shape of an honest discussion,” Dr. Sloane said.

“Circular?” Father asked.

Dr. Sloane continued, “We can't converge as we need to when we are in isolated pods with barriers, space, furniture and desks acting as walls to our joining. It's not circular, Jack, it is continual.”

A circle as a metaphor is also innate. It is a path you can travel forever and not go anywhere. A hamster wheel is circular.

“Okay,” Father had said.

“Please don't roll your eyes at me, Jack. It's disrespectful. You and your family have asked me to join you as a portal to your wellness, as the gateway for open communication.”

At the time, I was beginning to think of these metaphors. The lady in the lobby had been right; metaphor was a more honest form of communication. Dr. Sloane acting as a gateway made sense to me.
 

In hindsight, it was actually a simile.

Every month since that first meeting, Father asked Mother why we couldn't spend money on a real shrink, one who had gone to school at least, one who got an education, one who had a couch.

“Dr. Sloane is a well-respected life coach and spiritualist. You can't learn that from school,” was Mother's reply. She wore a blissful grin.

“Welcome to the Discussion Circle.” White smile. Gesture to the ring of cushions.

Mother, Father, Dr. Sloane and I stepped into the arena.

“Welcome, everyone,” Dr. Sloane said. He started every session in the same way. “Debbie, Jack, Richard, let's open our minds to the healing power of communication. The expression of love, from one to another, is found in this honesty. Allow the universe into your heart. Share your heart with those in this circle.”

Dr. Sloane closed his eyes. Mother followed with hers. The tightness in her face muscles loosened and a slight smile breached her lips. I lidded my eyes, but didn't close them fully, peeking into an eyelash-hazed room to give the impression of compliance to the outside world but allowing me to keep a careful watch.

Father's gaze travelled the three of us. He sighed.

“Good, Jack,” Dr. Sloane said in a hypnotist's tone. “Let yourself relax. Let your body spirit open. Your thoughts align with the others in the room. All of us are working toward harmony.” Dr. Sloane's voice continued its lull. “If you try, if you really listen, you'll hear a hum deep in your mind…”

Father still hadn't closed his eyes, I saw.

“…and that's the thoughts of the universe, a river where everyone's energies converge.”

Mother gasped and breathlessly proclaimed, “I hear it. It's beautiful.”

“Good, Debbie. I want you to remember this mind corner. This is where you'll channel your desires, where you'll let your thoughts mingle with the universal energy. It will respond. Does anyone else hear it?”

“I do,” I said. The blurry image of Father's head swivelled to my voice. I concentrated on not reacting.

“Good, Richard,” Dr. Sloane droned.

“I don't,” Father said.

“Jack, don't let it frustrate you. You'll hear it when you become aligned. For some it's harder than others. Some are just slow…”

“My universe stopped,” I interjected in a panic. What an awful feeling to hear the universal energy just disappear. To feel every other thing envelope you in its soothing drone and then, suddenly, disappear. I shivered. The room grew cold with a very lonely feeling.

“That was the air conditioning you were listening to, son,” Father said. I'm responsible for helping spawn a moron, his tone said. What's wrong with my sperm, his tone asked.

“No, it wasn't,” I said.

“Yes, it was,” Father countered. “It was running and it just stopped.”

I was certain I had heard the universe and now I was alone. I shut my eyes tightly, concentrating, straining to hear it.

“Jack,” Mother commanded, channelling her warning directly into the universal energy.

It worked. Father was silent.

“Try and find it again, Richard,” Dr. Sloane said.

“It's gone,” I lamented. My heart raced, uncomfortable with being the heart of a universal orphan recently kicked out of the collective consciousness.

“It's not gone, Richard. It's always there,” Dr. Sloane assured me. “Your mother and I are here, waiting for you and your dad. Don't force it, Richard. Let your mind find us.” He was using that soothing tone again. “Let your mind connect.”

I was desperate. The universe had shut me out. One moment I was wrapped in such a sense of connection to everything, to everyone, that I could hear the soft energy and feel it wash over me. The next minute, the door slammed, leaving me on the doorstep, all alone in the rain of a cold, black night.

I wasn't really alone, I reasoned. Father was on the doorstep next to me.

“No shit.” Father's voice was full of disbelief.

“Jack?” Dr. Sloane made Father's name a question.

“Hold on a sec,” a beat of silence. “I got it. It is kind of a soft feeling.”

“Yes.”

“Kind of a fizzy noise you can feel more than hear. Kind of how an amber-coloured ribbon would sound if you could hear colour.”

“Yes. That's it.” No, that was ICD R20.8:
Other and unspecified disturbances of skin sensation.
Synaesthesia: experiencing one sensation as if it was another.

“I've heard this before.”

“Really?”

“It's a bit like the trumpet progression in ABBA's “The Name of the Game,” except a bit more sustained and a bit fuzzier… other than that, ABBA nailed it.”

I was alone, the porch was empty, the rain drenched me to the bone and the cold enveloped me, completely alone. ABBA had taken my father from the porch beside me and guided him through the door of greater universal understanding.

“Okay,” Dr. Sloane said. “Let's open our eyes like we have opened our minds and hearts. Let's connect with one another as we did with the universal energy.”

All eyes opened.

“Richard, what's wrong?” Mother asked, a look of concern crossed her face.

My face was wet. In the panic of being suddenly and completely disconnected from the entire pulse of absolutely everything, apparently I was crying. At the least, my eyes had started to water.

“I had it,” I stuttered. “Then it was gone.”

“I heard it,” Father said, drowning out my last words.
 

Gobsmacked with disbelief, his expression said.

“That's wonderful, Jack,” Dr. Sloane swelled visibly. Since we started these sessions, the relationship between them had fluctuated between -273˚C and absolute zero. Dr. Sloane was obviously bathing in the icy cold waters of vindication.

I got the hang of metaphor, I thought.

I lost the universe that day. For all I knew I would never get it back. I had lost the attention of the circle, too. The gateway of open communication was closed and locked and the portal to wellness had disappeared. I needed it back and I had no matches to light fires with.

ICD F63.1:
Pathological fire setting.

“Sometimes I think of attempting suicide,” I said.

The room fell silent. The kudos evaporated and the testicular camaraderie between Dr. Sloane and Father shrivelled.

“Well,” Father said, “that's just great.”
 

“Jack,” Mother snapped.
 

Perhaps if Father had intoned a little more sarcasm she wouldn't have.

Dr. Sloane smiled at me. “Don't be quick to judge, Debbie. Without judgment, that's the only way we can have open communication, the only way we can heal. I agree with Jack, I think it's great.”

“Dr. Sloane,” Mother gaped.

“Debbie, Richard is able to share. He feels comfortable here. We encourage that as we must encourage his thoughts.”

That was not what the lady in the lobby said would happen.

“Why would you say that, Richard?” Mother asked.

“That lady in the lobby told me to. She said lighting fires was freaking you out so she said that this would be better.”

“But it's not really you, Richard,” Dr. Sloane said.

“Yes, of the two options I would prefer you light fires, honey,” Mother added.