Psycho Therapy (10 page)

His mother thought he was riding in the neighborhood, but he changed course without telling her. Three blocks of the same street was repetitive, but this bike course was much more adventurous.

I’m not sure what memory this is. I can’t remember.

He looked around, sensing a person was following him. Craig slammed the brakes and listened. The ruffle of leaves and the soft breeze circled him, and he trained his ears harder, trying to hear his stalker’s mistake. Perhaps the follower would step on a twig or crunch over a patch of leaves. After a time, he gave up and continued to ride his bike. But there it was again. The roll of his tires against the path, it was matched by another set of tires.

He hit the brakes again and turned around sharply. “
Is anybody there?
”

Craig was scared. Tina advised him not to venture out too far from the house. There were strangers out there, she warned, and he was not to talk to them.

What if a stranger really was following him?

He pedaled in retreat, not knowing how to escape. Craig looped back the way he’d come. The matching roll of tires didn’t change.

He peddled faster.

Craig shouted, his voice cracking, “
Leave me alone!
”

Then his bike chain snapped. He tipped over and slammed onto his side.

With the rush of pain arriving, now he remembered this memory.

“
Ahhhhh!
”

He cried so loud it hurt his own eardrums. Craig bounced three times onto the bike path. He turned his ankle and slammed his knee into the pavement. A large gash bled from his knee. He couldn’t move his right leg. The ankle was broken. The agony was threefold in a child’s body, a paralyzing endeavor. He wept, unable to move, his back flat against the pavement, saying, “
Help me, help me, help me, help me, help me!
”

The mysterious stalker didn’t show up to nab him. The wind brushed on the gash, and it burned in increasing conflagrations. “
It hurts
,” he complained to nobody. “
Ouch, it
hurts, it hurts
.”

And then there she was, standing above him—Alice Denny. The woman had regressed from blooming post-puberty woman to an eight-year-old. Her hair was fashioned in two ponytails, fastened by lady bug hair clips. She wore purple sweatpants and a purple top. Alice was the one following him on bicycle. Ironically, the bicycle was purple too and had a banana seat. Pink streamers shot out the handlebars, wildly whipping in the wind.

She was shocked, viewing the blood. It stole what bravery it required to confront him. She stood still as a statue. The only things moving were her widening eyes and jaw that steadily dropped. Finally, she managed a question. “A-are you okay?”

He stifled his initial response to cry some more. She wanted to help—to be his friend. He sensed now that he was thinking through an adult mind. “I’ll go tell somebody,” she relayed, speeding off for help. “Hold on, Craig!”

Before anything else happened, he was now sitting in his backyard. How he got there, it was blink-instant and without explanation. He rested on the patio furniture in his backyard with his bad ankle propped on a plastic bucket, his foot wrapped in a splint. He was bored and punished to house arrest. It was two days after the bike accident. Alice eyed him through the notches of the wooden fence. Craig noticed her but didn’t say anything. That’s when she started randomly throwing things into the yard—a beach ball, baseball, aluminum bat, football, and then a yo-yo.

“What are you doing?” he asked, looking over the array of toys. “Hey, come over here.”

He was desperate for company and was delighted when she raced around the other side of the fence and opened the gate. She was eager to play. She too was experiencing a droll summer.

Craig smiled at her, and this was the adult in him. “I’m bored.”

He knew those two words would send her into game mode. Alice picked up the aluminum bat and politely handed it to him. “You swing, I’ll pitch the ball. You don’t even have to get up out of your chair.” She raised her voice to a shrill, putting her entire body into the statement. “Knock it out of the park!”

This was the beginning of their friendship. Craig loved this moment. But he never thanked her for saving him in the woods.

And now was his chance.

Dr. Krone walked the bike path in Mason Owens Woods in a calm swagger. Again, he couldn’t get enough of the summer air. The present winter was miserable in Indiana. Bitter cold. It was hard to wake up from bed, it being so frigid. He wanted to stay under the toasty blankets and sleep the winter away until spring. Summer and spring were perfect, he kept telling himself. But fall was the best season, especially with the rain. It wasn’t anything an umbrella couldn’t fix. It brought people closer together, the rain.

But the mind is the greatest escape, he thought.

He sighed, enjoying the wistful moment by keeping his easy pace down the path. “I’m very comfortable in here, Mr. Horsy. I think I’ll stay for a while.”

Nobody utilized the bike path. He willed them to go away. He could do that.

He could do a lot of things in Craig’s mind.

Dr. Krone completed his trek. Stopping, he bent down onto his haunches. “Ah,” he announced jubilantly, “fresh air!”

He dipped his two fingers in Craig’s spilt blood and tasted it.

Trapped

“Stay the hell in there!”

“You’re drunk again.”

The throaty roar of “
Woman
, you’re controlling me. Why don’t you go out more? You can fuck about with Betsy. Go shopping with her, whatever it is you women do without your husbands around. You’re always home, and I’m tired of it. A man needs time to himself, but that’s something you don’t understand. Stay in there. Don’t say anything either. Shut your mouth. I don’t want to hear a word.”

Tina was startled by the
fu-whump
of the mattress being wedged against the bathroom door. She tried to open the door, but she second guessed herself, rattled, her face a mess of emotions. Her hair hung in split ends and random tangles. Craig observed purple-black bruises on her arms. She slid down the door and closed her eyes, her breath expelled in weak gasps as if afraid to breathe at all. “
I’m safe here
,” she whispered under her breath, “
he’s outside…he’s outside
.”

Craig hid under the large wicker laundry basket during the ordeal. It tipped over when he fidgeted, his legs tingling, losing circulation. She was startled, but then relieved. She drew him close, pressing his head up against her chest, her arms bringing him in smothering tight. Her trembles abated the longer she cradled him. She smelled of body odor. He also recognized another smell, categorized from an adult olfactory index. Sex. Her undershirt clung tight to her. She had no bra underneath. The top button of her blue jeans was undone.

“He’s drunk is all,” she murmured trancelike. Her lips were so close to his ear every word was clear, though she didn’t mean for him to hear. “He gets horny. And then he gets angry. He’s dropped from the greatest feeling after we’re done, and then he’s brought back to reality. It makes sense. He doesn’t mean to hurt me. He doesn’t mean to…”

He listened with anguish, cringing on the inside. Dr. Krone was a genius to drum up this memory. This is what gnawed at him on a subconscious level. How many scenes like this were saved up and shoved into his psyche and stewing about his brain? He was bound to burst at some point in time, and Willis, his best friend, had been the victim. An overwhelming sense of appreciation washed over him for this gift bestowed on him. It was magnificent as it was unbelievable. This treatment would be effective. He’d come out of it a changed man, even a bettered man. The first thing he’d do after his treatment had concluded was to visit Willis and hug him. He would apologize and mean it.

Tina kept chattering, inducing her own form of therapy. “He’s wonderful when he’s sober. If he could stop drinking. He’s not happy with his job. That’d make anybody moody. As long as he doesn’t hurt Craig. No, I wouldn’t stand for it. He needs time alone. I have lots of time alone. Every time he’s at work, I’m alone. I could start a new job, if he would let me. No. Forget it. He won’t listen to me. He wants to be the sole breadwinner.”

Craig had listened to the words without comprehending them as a child. He was maybe eight or nine then. Old enough to start absorbing their marital mess, but not decoding it.

He was about to speak up and boost her confident when she added, “He can do whatever he wants. I can forgive him because I have secrets too.”

Preacher Stevens

Craig scrambled to stay in the moment, but it wasn’t possible, because the change was inevitable as it was jarringly fast. He was disappointed the change happened when it did. Tina was about to reveal something, and here he was in his backyard, away from the important facts. Now, the sun was hot against his back. Alice wasn’t in the backyard. He was alone. He kicked at the grass and clods of dirt shot up. “Damn it, what was she going to say? Dr. Krone, you asshole, why did you pull me out of there when you did?”

The doctor was watching him from somewhere nearby. Perhaps on a computer monitor, because the man said he was hooked up to the machine. And how did the device pick out the memories? Did he have a mental locker of juicy history, a membrane in his cerebellum that contained this psychosomatic bullshit? Psychobabble talk was one thing, but to actually rip open the mind and relive these moments was an attack on his personal history.

Craig was disoriented, and the backyard spun around him, the sky tilting and the sun blinding and golden white. He landed on all fours and wretched at the assault. He was around thirteen or fourteen, he guessed, as he clutched his aching head, sucked in a round of breaths, and stood up again. He wiped the side of his mouth dry. The nauseous sensation stayed in the pit of his throat, and it would make its home there for a time.

A stifled laugh breeched the silence, rousing his attention. He peeked through the wooden slats of the fence at his next-door neighbor’s yard. It was Parker Stevens’s house. But what was Tina doing there? They were both exiting the back sliding door together. Tina’s face was flushed pink, and her smile, her face was conquered with the glowing sentiment of joy. It was a womanly thing he recognized with Katie as the after-sex glow.

This is getting interesting.

Parker was dressed down in black basketball shorts and a Celtics shirt. He dyed his gray hair brown. Tina wore a black tube top and cut-off whitewashed jeans. They hugged each other and punctuated it with a friendly kiss. The fence border was up on Parker’s property, and Craig supposed they were comfortable with the backyard display of affection.

The gate to their property opened. Craig ran back to the swing set and acted like he was minding his own business. Tina waved the man into the yard after spotting Craig. She whispered something in his ear, and there he came, edging toward him to have a talk.

I remember this. But now it makes sense.

Parker relaxed on the swing beside him. “Hey, kiddo. What’re you up to this summer?”

“Nothing.”

He smirked, thinking a second on what to say next. “All the kids say that. You’re doing something. You’re swinging.” He snapped his fingers. “You’re having a swinging summer.”

Good one.

The joke was lame even as a kid. He couldn’t think of what to say in reply. It was the on-the-spot feeling he couldn’t shake.

“You ever think about going to church?”

Craig had a good response, and this was his original statement. “My dad doesn’t believe in it.”

He placed his hand on Craig’s shoulder. “But do you?”

That’s a heavy question for a kid. Tell me your religious faith, kiddo, and while you’re at it, how do you feel about the Middle East and yoga?

“I like to see friends there,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. The adult in him added, “That’s about it, really.”

Parker moved on. This was a test, and he became more intrusive. The point of the entire conversation was about to happen. “So how are things, Craig? Are you happy? Anything you’re concerned about? You know you can tell me anything.”

He did say this back then, and he said it again now, “My dad yells at Mom a lot. He gets mad easily.”

“Do you love your father?”

“Yeah. He’s my dad.”

Parker understood, looking at him from the corner of his eye and then training his focus on the house. He caught Tina standing in the window. Parker admired her. She gave them a quick smile and went about what she was doing in the house.

He initiated conversation again. “Do you love your mom?”

“Yes, I love my mom.”

“She’s good to you.
 
And she’s a wonderful lady. Your dad’s a lucky, lucky man. The good Lord will see to it she gets what’s due to her.”

After a stretch of awkward silence, he asked another question. “Is there anything at all you want to talk about?” He crossed his heart. “I swear it’s between you and me.”

And the good Lord, and my mom…

He stayed silent, and Preacher Stevens prompted him, “You wish the best for your mom, right?”

He shook his head, baffled. “What do you mean?”