The Deep End of the Ocean (25 page)

“What’s her name?”

“Tess.”

“They’re not all T’s, are they?”

“Yeah. Unfortunately, they are,” said Kilgore. “Terrance. Tracey. Tara.”

“You got pretty lucky.”

“Don’t I know it.” He got up. “Reese, we’re pretty much out of time. I want you to remember the balloon-blowing thing, because that kind of breathing helps bring a panic attack to a close sooner, if you can concentrate on it. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“And next time we’ll talk more about how you can stop having them. And why you’re having them.”

“Okay.”

“And there’s one other thing I want to show you.” Kilgore reached out one hand and Reese cringed—Here comes the hug, he thought in disgust. But all of a sudden he was down on one knee; it was as if the guy had dug a piece out of his neck with the lit end of a sparkler.

“Jesus Christ!” Reese screamed. He was nearly crying.

“It won’t hurt long,” said Kilgore, and he was right. The place, the hollow just behind Reese’s earlobe, which had felt electrified a minute before, was now simply limp. Reese pressed it gently. It felt pretty normal. “I’m sorry. But you had to understand how this depends on surprise.”

“What’d you do?” asked Reese, rubbing his neck.

“We used to call them pressure points,” said Kilgore, taking Reese’s hand and putting his thumb against a place between two of his fingers. “See? You push…” And
bam
! Reese pulled his hand away.

“How’d you learn that?”

“Medical school. There are nerve bundles all over the human body. See?” Kilgore showed Reese a point behind the elbow, one near the small of his back. “You can look in an anatomy book and see where a lot of them are. Here—you can borrow mine…And you can tell when you find one, because you can make that place start to tingle if you press it just a little. And if you press hard, it will hurt like anything. You don’t usually press that hard on yourself, of course.”

“What’re you…?”

“It’s just, Reese, you can bring down an ox if you know the pressure points, and if you’re going to keep on getting in fights, I just thought you might…”

“Well,” said Reese. “Thanks. I guess.”

“I’m a short guy, too,” Kilgore said. “See you next Saturday.”

The so-called family session lasted longer than double overtime, as far as Reese was concerned. It wasn’t just that he was embarrassed by all of them (Grandpa Bill in aqua-and-green golf pants and Grandpa Angelo dressed like a pallbearer); he just had a feeling that getting them all together in one room was going to lead to ignition and liftoff. When his dad told his mom about the session—didn’t ask her, just told her—she got that wild-horse look in her eyes that Reese recognized only too well.

Go slow, Dad, he thought. There be dragons here.

In those agonizing, dull minutes in the waiting room before it all started, Kerry (who also looked just great, because she’d insisted on wearing her purple net tutu) had really humiliated him. She’d had all five of her Red Riding Hood finger puppets on one hand. “Be the wolf, Vincent,” she said all of a sudden. He took the wolf-head puppet and put it on his index finger and waggled it at Red Riding Hood. “I eat little girls like you for breakfast,” he growled.

“You suck,” Kerry said sweetly.

Great.

And then, of course, Grandma Rosie had clicked her tongue, once, so softly Reese knew it was an extra-special click just for him, like
he
taught Kerry to swear, which he didn’t; Kerry was able to cuss from birth. Just at that moment, Tom came out and herded them all in, and they spent another eternity getting all shifted around on Tom’s couches and chairs.

Reese felt sorry for Tom. Talk about having your work cut out for you. Reese had never, not once in his life, heard Grandma Rosie say anything, a single sentence that began with the words “I feel.” She just gave commands; she sized up stuff. He had never, on the other hand, heard Grandpa Bill say a single sentence that wasn’t in the form of a question; Uncle Bick said talking to his dad was like being the host on
Jeopardy.

And true to form, right away Grandpa Bill had said, “What can we do you for, Doctor?”

And old Tom didn’t waste time then, he jumped right in. “I don’t want all of you folks to think we’re here only to help out the master criminal here.” He gestured at Reese, like he was pointing a pistol and firing. “It’s my hope that you’ll all get something out of this, or I wouldn’t have put you all through arranging your lives to get down here. But I also know none of you wants to see a kid you love in this much pain, and Vincent—our buddy Reese—is definitely in a lot of pain.”

Everybody, even Kerry, nodded. “But what I’ve been hearing about, I’m just guessing, but I think it’s that this is a whole family in a lot of pain, for a lot of years, and Reese can’t get out in front of this until, basically, we open it up and let a little fresh air get to it. You know what I’m saying?”

Grandma Rosie looked at Tom as if he had just told her she should shave her head, put on bells, and become a Buddhist nun.

“I do not see,” she said softly, “how we can talk in this room and help Vincenzo be good.”

“There’s no guarantees we can, Mrs…. uh, Mrs….” Tom was waiting for Reese’s grandma to say, “Call me Rose.” Wait on, Tom, wait on, Reese thought. “Mrs. Cappadora, there’s no proof that in this situation, the healing is going to come from talk. But this kid you love is a real angry kid. And you are the people he loves. He might not act like that all the time, but that’s the fact. And with a kid this angry, there’s a whole world out there with its hands out, and the stuff in those hands is stuff you don’t want for Reese. Next time it might not be sewer covers.”

“You mean drugs,” said Grandpa Bill.

“Bill,” Tom said, not taking any chances on the old cozy first-name front this time. “Yes. There’s certainly that, and other kinds of acting out. So what I want to know, while I’ve got you all here, is, is this new? I mean, was Reese always kind of the angry young man…?” Tom smiled, right at Reese.

Nobody said anything.

“You’ve got a great kid here,” Tom went on. “A kid with a mind that just doesn’t quit. You all know it. And with a kid like this, the waste could be big.”

“He came out angry,” said his mom. A hundred years of silence, and then
boom
—this. Good old reliably nuts Mom. Everybody, even Kerry again, turned to look at her. “He was always hard. I mean, since he was a baby, he had his own ideas of how he wanted to do things. Not all bad ones. I’m not saying Vincent is bad.”

“Okay, Beth, okay. But when you say he was ‘hard,’ was he difficult, like this?”

“No,” she said. “He would only get mad at me when he was little. But after Ben died—”

Grandma Rosie gasped. “Beth,” she said. “Benjamin is not dead.”

“Oh, Rosie,” said his mother. “He is dead. He’s dead. If he wasn’t dead, I would know it.”

Here we go, thought Reese, let’s talk about Ben for…like our whole lives.

“Beth,” Grandpa Angelo said gently, “the children…”

“But I can’t stand it! Everyone keeps pretending he’s going to come back. I think that’s half of what makes Vincent crazy. It makes me crazy. I don’t care, Pat. I came here and why waste the money? I’m going to say this. I’m sick of it. ‘Never give up hope.’ ‘Pray, pray, pray.’ Well, why
don’t
we give up hope? And just let whatever happens happen?”

“Because you can’t just bury him, Beth.” His dad spoke up. “You want to just bury him before we even know. I know why you feel that way, but…”

I’m here, thought Reese. I’m here.

“It sounds like there are a couple of camps in this,” Tom put in, “and Reese is right in the middle of them. Reese, what do you think?”

Reese said, “Nothing. I don’t think about it that much.”

“Come on,” Tom urged him. “Have you ever heard of the big purple elephant in the living room? There’s this elephant right in the middle of the living room, and the whole family walks around it and pretends it isn’t there…. You’ve got to think about it, Reese. It’s right in front of you.”

“I don’t, though.”

“I don’t, either,” said his mother, and a warm pulse in Reese beat toward her. “I don’t think about it ever. What does thinking about it do?”

“Well, in my experience, it sometimes, sometimes gives you some peace,” Tom suggested, and then they were off, his mom pointing out that the family did not put Easter eggs on Ben’s grave at Easter now or in the past. “He doesn’t have a grave to begin with,” she’d snapped—or hang a stocking for him, or buy him birthday clothes one size larger each year…and his grandmother putting in that she
did
pray for Ben every day, and so did her daughters….

Tom struggled to keep up, asking, “Does it bother you that Beth doesn’t do that, Mrs. Cappadora? If you think she’s given up, how does that make you feel?”

Grandma Rosie reached down and fingered her locket. “I am sorry for Beth. I have known Beth all her life. I love Beth like she is my own child. I am sorry for her, because she…she has lost her heart. She has lost her faith….” His mom snorted. Reese couldn’t believe it; it was like she’d jumped up on the uneven parallel bars. But Grandma Rosie wasn’t about to give up: “Bethie, dear one, you know you have gone away from God….”

“Oh, no, Rosie. No, Rosie. It was God who took the powder, Rosie. A long time ago. No offense, but…”

Gak and gak. Back and forth. Reese realized that, although he had never heard these words spoken, they were as familiar to him as the national anthem. He covered his ears. Finally, from the white throw pillow on the floor where he’d taken refuge, he could see the forest of their legs lengthen as Tom ushered them from the room. An instant later, Kerry’s little purple twigs bounded out from behind the sofa. At last, Tom leaned down and said, “Hey, buddy, you got a minute to spare here?”

“I got five minutes, no more. In five minutes, I’m trying out for the White Sox.”

“What position?”

“Center field.”

“I don’t want to interfere with a career in the show.”

“They waited this long,” Reese told him, “they can wait five more minutes.”

“Actually, we’ve got maybe fifteen good minutes here.”

Reese got up. “Maybe I should get down on the couch here, Tom, like in the movies. I never did that. You could say, ‘So, Mister Cappadora, why do you think you look like a sheep?’”

“I think you’d fall asleep.”

“Why?”

“You look like your candle burns at both ends, ’bro. Are you putting in enough sack time? Is it the business?”

Tom meant the betting. “No,” Reese said. “That’s just…I do that mostly on the weekends.”

“It drives your father nuts, you know, Reese.” Reese knew it didn’t, not at all. His dad was as proud of his business as he was ashamed of it. It was the same way Grandpa Angelo felt about gangsters. “Most kids your age, they have a paper route.”

“I can’t have a paper route.”

“Too strenuous, huh?”

“No.” He hated to do this to Tom. “Kids…a kid once got kidnapped on his paper route. It was very famous. Johnny Gosch? They never found him. In my family, it’s just not a thing…My father…my parents would freak….” Tom wasn’t like other adults, though. His face didn’t get all waxy and soft, like he didn’t know where to put his cheek muscles, when Reese said it. He just shook himself a little—like, as Grandma Rosie said, when a goose walked over your grave—and plowed right on.

“And what about you? Would you freak?”

Stiffly, Reese told him, “It wouldn’t scare me.”

“Not even a little?”

“I don’t know. Anyway, who wants to get up at goddamn three o’clock in the morning?”

“Not me,” said Tom. “Or you. Especially if you get to bed pretty late. Do you go to bed at a reasonable hour? Ten?”

“Yeah, I go to bed.” Reese shifted. “But then I have to wake up and change the tapes, and it takes me a while to settle down again.”

“The tapes?”

“I sleep with music on.”

“Must be very restful for your parents.”

“I use earphones.”

“What d’you listen to?”

“Mostly classical stuff at night. And opera. Italiano. You know. It’s a birth defect, like you being a Red Sox fan.”

“Pardon me, Reese, but getting up to change the tape deck all night doesn’t exactly sound like healthy slumber to me.”

“It works.”

“So this is why you look like death on a cracker.”

“Well, it’s not the music….”

“What is it?”

Now. Reese thought. Now he was going to have to talk about it. He’d mentioned the running dream last session, just before they ran out of time. In fact, Tom had accused him of doing it on purpose, knowing perfectly well the time was up and the family was coming this time. Old Tom felt cheated; shrinks cranked up on dreams.

“Okay. It’s the dream I started to tell you about.”

“The running dream.”

“Yeah.”

“Where are you in it?”

“I’m in this big room, and the tiles on the floor are what I’m looking at. They’re like…they look like meatballs. It’s nutty. They’re pretty ugly.”

“Are you alone?”

“Shit, no!” Reese looked up. “I’m sorry. No. There’s a zillion people there, and they’re all talking.”

“What are they saying?”

“Well, that’s the thing. They’re not saying anything.”

“You said they’re talking.”

“I can tell they’re talking because I can see their mouths move. But I can’t hear anything. I’m just standing there, but I’m
not
just standing there.” Reese frowned. “I’m running.”

“But you can’t move.”

“Is that how everybody feels?”

“It’s a common thing that happens in anxiety dreams. What matters is, who’s chasing you? What are you running from?”

Reese strained. He tried to take himself back—the gulls flapped again, as if they were getting pissed, but it was okay, he knew how to breathe it down. He tried to look behind him. “There’s nobody behind me. I’m running…
after
somebody.”

“After who?”

“Uh…I don’t know.”

“You do know.”

“I don’t know. I mean, if I knew, why wouldn’t I tell you?”

“You tell me why you wouldn’t tell me.”

Because I’ll die, Reese thought. I’ll die here on your couch if I tell you. Or maybe it’ll be worse than that. Maybe I’ll just shit all over your couch. Reese lay down on the couch, folding his elbows over his eyes. It wasn’t the crying he minded, or even Tom seeing him; it was that he felt so damn worn out, so hauled down by anchors.

“I’m running after…somebody on the other side of the room.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know who.”

“Listen, buddy,” said Tom, getting up and tapping on the frame of one of the thousand horse pictures. “You know what I make an hour?”

“What?”

“A hundred and twenty bucks an hour is what I make.”

“Well, congratulations,” Reese said, sitting up. “Maybe you can buy some more horse pictures.”

“And you know who pays me that hundred and twenty bucks?”

“Who?”

“Your dad.”

BFD, thought Reese. It was, after all, his dad’s idea, this whole head-shrinking party, in the first place. “So?”