Résumé With Monsters (2 page)

He needed all his wits, and the first thing he did on arriving in Austin was to throw away all of Dr. Abrams' well-meant prescriptions. Pills might blunt the edge of his fear, but they were not the answer. A man could not spend his life splashing himself with tap water if he lived in a burning house. He had to fireproof his soul.

Books were perhaps the best antidote. Philip purchased used paperbacks. Occasionally, when he couldn't find the book elsewhere, he would check it out of the library, but he disliked returning a book once it was in his possession, so he availed himself of the library only when diligent search failed to discover the sought-after book.

He
read Crime and Punishment, The Enormous Room, Bleak House, Green Mansions, Invisible Man
(Ellison),
Tom Jones, Heart of Darkness, Eternal Fire, Hall of Mirrors, A Princess of Mars
.

He found that he did not have to read certain books, that simply keeping them near or upon his person offered protection. These books were
The Catcher in the Rye; Cat's Cradle; Little Big Man; Something Wicked This Way Comes; The Sot' Weed Factor; Alice in Wonderland; The Horse's Mouth;
Winesburg
, Ohio; Sense and Sensibility; The Way of All Flesh; Titus Groan
; and
War and Peace
.

And, of course, he kept the
Arkham
H. P.
Lovecraft
books close by, a reference and a warning (
The
Dunwich
Horror and Others, At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels, Dagon and Other Macabre Tales
).

Philip continued to work on his own novel— oh how Amelia hated that novel; and oh how she was wrong about that—presently entitled
The Despicable Quest
. The book was completed, but he constantly altered it. In over twenty years of alterations, it had grown to four times its original length. He had been sending it to publishers and agents since the late sixties, and he had a drawer full of rejections. Most of the rejections were form letters, often badly photocopied scraps of paper, but occasionally an agent or publisher would actually write or type a brief note, notes dashed off in great haste and suggesting a life far more eventful and momentous than Philip's own grind of blighted hope and menial toil. Recently, these occasional personal missives were filled with words and phrases like "unwieldy," "diffuse," "directionless," and "muddled." The influence of
Lovecraft
was noted by one agent who said, "Not everyone is familiar with
Lovecraft's
works or his
Cthulhu
stories, so a two-thousand-page novel about these obscure monsters might have a limited audience."

In any event, the novel, despite its increased thickness, was beginning to fail Philip as a buffer against dark thoughts and nameless anxieties. Where once the novel had been a refuge from hostile realities it now seemed—Philip stopped, stunned by the possibility that Amelia, intuitively, was right. She had said that the novel was not good for him, was the cause of all his mental problems, and while that was patently untrue and part of her own denial system, what if the novel were, in some way, a malign influence? What if the novel had become a sort of psychic magnet for ancient beasts? What if, every time he typed a sentence, vile, star-shaped heads turned on gruesome necks and listened with outrageous, febrile antennae?

No, the novel was what
kept
him sane. Indeed, the thought that it might be otherwise was probably
planted
there by inimical Powers.

These thoughts seemed to heat his brain. He realized that he needed help, someone who could aid him in sorting the clutter of his thoughts.

The next day, Philip perused the ads in the back pages of the Austin
Chronicle
, a free weekly newspaper. As Philip scanned fine-print blandishments for massage, Tai Chi, psychic healing and self-esteem counseling, he had to battle a growing sense of hopelessness. Was there really anyone who could help him?

He paused before an ad entitled
GREEN COUNSEL
,
How to seek solace and wisdom from common houseplants
and he saw himself sitting in a room confiding his troubles to an indifferent cactus or a coolly aloof African violet. At that point he almost abandoned his quest. Fortunately, his eye had to travel less than an inch before arriving at a small box with a dotted border.
ISSUES ADDRESSED!
it stated (in fourteen point Optima bold). It continued in an unassuming, eight-point serif:
Experienced counseling professional can help you define and address your issues. FREE initial session to determine client-counselor compatibility. THERE IS HOPE! Call now
.

Philip called the number (twelve-point Helvetica bold).

"I can see you today," the woman said.

"Ah," Philip said. He did not know if he wanted to address an issue that very day. He was coming down with something, the flu perhaps or a bad bout of Austin's famous cedar fever.

"Don't waffle, man," the woman said. "Where do you live? Yes? Well, you are right around the corner. I'll give you directions. I can fit you in at three."

The address proved to be a residence, a small, wood-frame house in a weedy lot.

A frail, elderly woman wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt and an ankle-length purple skirt rocked on the porch swing.

"You're Philip
Kenan
," she said. She looked disappointed, or perhaps even disgusted, although this may have been an expression created by the sunlight in her eyes.

Philip nodded his head.

"I'm Lily Metcalf," she said. She came forward and deftly hugged Philip around his middle, leaning forward and pressing an ear against his stomach. She smelled like baked bread, and her thin arms embraced Philip with surprising strength. Lots of gold and silver jewelry jangled on her wrists.

Philip tottered backward.

"Be still!" she shouted.

Philip froze, like a dog surprised in the act of chewing his master's slipper. Lily Metcalf's voice had an imperious quality, such as is found in certain high school shop teachers.

He was locked in her embrace for what seemed long minutes, although perhaps it was only seconds. Then she released him and squinted up at him.

"I like to listen right off," she said. "Before a client makes those interpersonal adjustments that are automatic."

"Well?" Philip said.

She shrugged. "I don't know. Sometimes I get a feeling, sometimes I don't."

They went inside. The living room was small and full of light from the gossamer-curtained windows. A breeze made wind chimes sing. Philip sat on a small couch—he'd encountered larger armchairs—while Lily Metcalf made tea.

"You can call me Lily," she said, returning with the tea. She sat down on the couch next to

Philip. “I hate it when people call me Dr. Metcalf."

Lily closed her eyes and leaned back. The sunlight showed her face to be a net of wrinkles. Her hair was a gray, spun-glass cloud.

She opened her eyes and cast a long, sideways glance at Philip. "You are what, forty, something like that?"

"I'm forty-five," Philip said.

She sighed and absent-mindedly patted Philip's thigh. "When I was forty-five, my son Homer rushed off to Vietnam full of patriotic piss and vinegar and got himself killed almost instantly. I hope you are having a better forty- five." She sipped some tea, closed her eyes. She seemed to lose track of time, drifting into a brief stupor of melancholy. Philip studied the bright walls of the room. They were covered with miniature oil paintings of a traditional nature (the ocean, some cows, or perhaps bears, on a hillside, a boat—toy, or menaced by a fifty-foot child). Philip studied the mahogany end table, the faded oriental rug, the bookcase full of paperbacks, and was surprised when Lily spoke, being himself fully occupied in his study.

"So, what's your issue?" Lily asked. "Ah—"

"Yeah, sometimes it is hard to leap right in. Maybe I can jump start you. Mid-life crisis? Relationship problems? Wait, would you say you want to address high-level or low-level issues?"

"I'm not sure I understand," Philip said.

"Well." Lily put her teacup down and rested her hands on her knees and leaned forward. "High-level stuff would be self-actualization issues. You might feel restless. Anxiety might trouble your sleep. You might wonder if your success was fraudulent. You might be immobilized by boredom and a lack of purpose."

Philip shook his head. "No, nothing like that."

"Good. Frankly, self-actualization is not my long suit. I'm not good with people who don't have real problems. I am better with people who come here because their lives are in the
shitter
. I prefer crisis issues, I guess."

"I guess that describes my situation," Philip said. "I guess I am in crisis."

"All right. Good. You mind if I smoke?"

"No. Certainly not."

Lily swept a pack of cigarettes off the end table, banged one out, and lit it in what seemed a single motion. She blew smoke at the ceiling. "Some people see smoking cigarettes as a failure of character. They don't want a therapist who smokes. 'If she can't even quit a bad habit, how is she going to help me?' they ask. What do you think about that?"

"I don't know."

"Good answer, Philip. But the truth is, Jesus Christ probably smelled bad. You know what I mean? Nobody is perfect."

"That's true."

"So what is the crisis?"

"It's a long story."

"I bet. Let's have something shorter up front. How about if you tell me, in one sentence, what's going on. Maybe there are a lot of things going on, but just give me one incident. For example,

'My wife left me' or 'The bank repossessed my car.' We can get at the underlying issues later, but I want to see a problem first, an event." "Ah—"

"You think you can do that? Just one sentence. You understand what I'm asking here?"

"Yes. Yes I guess so."

"Okay, let her rip."

"Well, I lost my job and my girlfriend left me."

"Good," Lily said, nodding her head in violent affirmation as a cloud of cigarette smoke merged with her cloudy hair. "That's just what I meant. Now we are getting somewhere."

"And hideous, cone-shaped creatures from outer space are going to leap, telepathically, across six hundred million years and destroy human civilization."

It just came out.

Philip glanced at his newfound counselor. Her eyes were closed, and she continued to blow smoke toward the ceiling. She seemed unperturbed by this revelation. Perhaps she was asleep, smoking in her sleep.

But no. She turned her head toward him and opened her eyes, blue eyes that had seen things.

"You are going to be an interesting client," she said.

2.

The session was over.

"Tomorrow, same time," Lily said. "You better come every day for awhile." Philip asked about the cost. "A hundred dollars an hour," Lily said. "Jesus. I can't afford that," Philip said. "I work nights at this ratty print shop. I get eight dollars an hour."

The old woman shrugged. "Okay, ten dollars an hour. Take it or leave it."

Philip took it. Walking away from Lily Metcalf and getting into his car, he felt a rush of well-being, an elevation in his self-esteem. He had just saved himself ninety dollars an hour on therapy. Not bad.

At work that evening, Philip was introduced to a new printer, a man named AL Bingham. Bingham was an older guy, sixty or so, bald except for a fuzz of fine gray hair that hovered over his baldness like steam. He possessed a long, pale face furrowed with lines that expressed weary incredulity.

"Pleased to meet
ya
," he said, shaking Philip's hand. "My heart goes out to you typesetting lads. You've got to read the crap. That has got to take its toll."

Ralph Pederson, Philip's boss, laughed nervously. "It is not for us to judge our customers," he said. Pederson, Philip had noted, was superstitious about such things, believing, perhaps, in an ever-listening god of customer wrath that was a jealous god and would brook no calumny. You never, not ever, said anything negative about a customer. In the restrooms were signs (72 point Helvetica extrabold) that read: