The Practical Navigator (14 page)

“He's not that either.”

“Oh. Well, he sounds pretty normal then.”

“He is.”

Straightening in his chair, Walter Seskin tosses the pen he's just found aside and looks at Michael, his gaze now about as inattentive as a laser beam.

“Then why are you here, Michael?”

It's a sucker punch. This man has hit him first and Michael didn't see it coming. The anger and resentment at this place and these people, this situation, abruptly drains out of him.

“I just want him to be happy.”

Lame.

“Good,” says Walter Seskin. “Me too.” There's a framed photo on the desk. Seskin turns it around so Michael can see it. The boy is in his teens. Has the slack expression and loose features of someone deep on the spectrum. The resemblance is obvious. “This is my son, David. Now
he
is a head banger. And guess what? I love him to pieces. And what
I
want is that he understand me when I tell him that.”

“I'm sorry,” says Michael.

“Why? What have
you
done wrong? Did you ask for your son to be on the autism spectrum? Did I ask for mine? No. We didn't expect it, we can't change it. We can only work with it. We can try to make it better. Unless you want to give up and hope for the best.”

“I don't. I'm being an idiot,” says Michael.

“No. You've been treading water,” says Walter Seskin. “It's time to start swimming.”

A swimming analogy, thinks Michael. For a man who has nightmares of drowning.

Why not?

 

24

For some reason there is a rug on the wall. It is a small rug, not more than a carpet really, nicely framed, its patterns somewhat Arabic looking. However.

It's on the wall.

Anita isn't sure about the pieces of pottery on the sideboard either. They're vaguely Chinese looking, seem to be unglazed jars of some kind. And the painted glass lamps. What's with them? All that's needed is some good dope and a water pipe and it would be “come wiz me to ze Kasbah” time.

Anita laughs to herself.

“Ah, Golden Girl,” Michael would say to her, doing his best Pepé Le Pew French, “You are ze corned beef to me, I am ze cabbage to you. Le pant. Le heave. Intimacy iz difficult at zis range.”

Crap.

What is she thinking? She can't do this. She was out of her mind to even consider it. Which is the point, isn't it. She's out of her mind. As Anita starts to rise from the couch, the door to the inner hall opens and a dark-haired woman steps out, stopping her in her tracks.

“You must be Anita Beacham.”

The woman, dressed in a two-button Armani jacket, a knee-length skirt, and platform pumps, dark hair pulled back from her face, is far too young and striking to be anything so professional as a psychologist.

“Hi. That's me, yes.”

Who knew you had to dress up to go get your brain shrink-wrapped?

“I'm sorry to keep you waiting.”

“You haven't. No. I was early. I'm an early bird. Early bird gets the worm. Though why anyone would be crazy enough to want a worm, I don't know. Is it all right to say ‘crazy' here?”

Stop babbling.

Legally Blonde
notwithstanding, Anita has always felt that dark, serious women like this one—Spanish courtesans, Argentinean novelists, executive producers, and overachieving Sabras—make blond highlights seem like the most frivolous thing in the world.

“Actually I was just going to the ladies' room.”

“It's out and down the hall. But you'll need the key.” The woman starts to move toward the writing table.

“No. No, it's all right. I can wait.”

“You're sure?”

“Oh, yeah,” says Anita, sure of nothing. “I'll keep a cork in it.” She holds out the clipboard. “I filled out the paperwork.” The dark-haired woman takes it from her. Anita is trying to place her age and decides the woman is not much older than she is.

“I like your stuff,” Anita says.

“What stuff is that?”

“You know, the rug?” Anita points at the wall.

Which I really hate.

“It's a textile. An embroidered panel. From Lebanon.”

“And these?” Anita points at the jugs.

“Pharmacy jars. In the fourteenth century they were designed to hold ointments and salves. These are reproductions.”

“They're exceptional.”

Exceptional, shit. But then, you've been brainwashed by your mother who shops the furniture department at Sotheby's.

Neither of them move.

“I thought you'd be older,” says Anita Beacham.

“Please come in,” says the woman, this Dr. Akrepe-da-something, stepping back and out of the way.

*   *   *

“Couch or chair,” Fari asks the woman, this woman who looks like a Victoria's Secret model, photos of which her brother kept hidden in the bureau under his clothes. Glowing, fair-haired beauties who made Fari feel about as attractive as dark mud.

“Sorry?”

“Would you like to sit or lie back?”

“I'll sit.”

“I will too.” Fari smiles slightly, trying to put the woman at her ease now. She can see that Anita is trembling and pale with nerves.

“May I ask how you found me?”

“Internet search. Yelp. Four stars under
A.
”

“Really.”

“Really-really. Is this a problem?”

“No. It's just that most of my patients come to me as referrals or because I've been recommended.”

“Good enough for me.”

The blond woman beams. One of
those.
Wisecracks and jokes to hide their discomfort. Fari gives another practiced smile in return. “I should tell you up front I'm not inexpensive. And there's a good chance your health plan won't cover your visits. They should, but too often they don't.”

“I don't have one.”

“Oh.”

“But money's not a problem.”

That could be the problem right there, Fari thinks. “Have you ever been in therapy before?”

“
God,
no.”

Attitude also a potential problem. “Well. I like to think of a first session as two people getting to know one another. I'll ask some questions. Answer them as best you can. And if you have specific things you'd like to share, I'm interested in that as well. And if at any time you're uncomfortable with my questions or don't feel safe, you should say so. It could be I'm not the therapist for you and it's fine to say that too.”

“No. You're good.” says Anita Beacham. “I trust you.” As if already sure of it.

They stare at each other.

“Where would you like to begin?” Fari asks.

“Well, we could talk about you or we could talk about me. But if it's you, you pay me.”

The woman is smart and funny. Fari likes her. Pushing the feeling aside, she settles back, poised, professional, and ready. “Why don't we talk about you.”

 

25

She is seventeen.

She is seventeen and she can't remember a time when she's ever been happy.

She is seventeen going on seventy, her mother tells her, meaning she is exacting and intractable beyond words and has never acted like a little girl. Meaning she is a chip off the old block.

She is seventeen, and in the spring of junior year she has refused to return to the prestigious local private school, where, as the headmaster who insists on being called
Doctor
Schechter constantly tells the students, “Good grades are groovy.” That Dr. Schechter, who wears a pen pocket protector, wouldn't know groovy if his balls were stuck in his zipper is beside the point.

She hates the local public school only slightly less than the private one only because the teachers are too overwhelmed and distracted to pay much attention to homework assignments. She hates homework. She hates class. She hates sitting. She hates listening. Her mind is an open gate and her thoughts are wild horses that keep running out to the open prairie.

She suffers from migraines and her father tells her that they are caused by inherited abnormalities in the brain. This is just another reason not to like him. When he's around, her father is constantly on her, telling her she's lazy, she's selfish, that she had better get to work if she plans on getting anywhere in life. She has no idea where anywhere is, doesn't care, and from what she can tell, her father's idea of working hard is telling others what to do.

Boys pay attention. Like her mother, she is beautiful, and like her mother, she knows it and no longer thinks about it. She has noted, however, that a lot of attractive people end up on television and movie screens where the lives they're depicting seem vaguely exciting. It's something to consider. The money is irrelevant. She's known for a long time that there is a family trust, established by her maternal grandfather, and administered by her mother. A prudent amount is to be given on a monthly basis when she and her siblings hit twenty-one and a very significant lump sum is to be dumped in their laps when they are forty.

She joins the school's drama club. Though occasionally embarrassing with its well-earned nerd club–misfit status, it is a diversion. It's fun to pretend to be other people. It's reassuring to know the outcome of a scene or play. She finds memorizing lines easy. It bothers her that she can neither laugh nor cry on cue.

The boys in the drama club mostly pay attention to one another which is a relief. Outside the club it's another matter. Boys clamor and bay. She decides to lose her virginity to Dougie Nash, who is the son of a friend of her father's and is handsome and popular though perpetually stoned. She finds sex not quite the big deal she was led to believe it would be. The act itself is enjoyable enough but the aftermath less so. Dougie Nash wants to talk and she finds talk, especially the listening part, exhausting. She breaks up with Dougie after two weeks, wounding him, as he puts it, “brutally, man.” However, they decide to remain friends and as friends they continue to have casual sex on occasion, the difference being they don't have to talk afterward because there's nothing to talk about.

She wonders if she's a lesbian and at a party she allows Amanda Tannenbaum, who
is
a lesbian, albeit a cute one, to kiss her in the kitchen pantry. It's not uninteresting and they adjourn outside to a parked car. Other than the hardware and plumbing, it's not all that different from Dougie Nash. You lose yourself for a brief moment and then it's over. Snap back to reality, here comes gravity. What's different is that Amanda Tannenbaum shadows and then stalks her for weeks before fading miserably into the sunset. Women are more unwavering than men, says her mother. She's talking about local politics, but it obviously applies to relationships as well and it's something to remember.

She has begun to realize she isn't like other people. It's not just the ever-present feeling that something's wrong. It's that she doesn't seem to feel or act the same way. She feels detached. She feels she's constantly
pretending
to be normal. She wonders what it would be like to live in another person's head. Would there be a different view, different emotions, a different interpretation of the five senses? Maybe other people aren't flesh-and-blood human beings at all. Maybe they're oddly programmed robots. Or maybe's
she's
the robot and she doesn't know it.

She applies to college only because she can't think of anything better to do. Her grades are pedestrian but her SATs and ACTs are surprisingly strong. She has choices. And in the end her father has connections. Chapman University is an hour up the road in Irvine. It has a good drama program. Maybe she'll learn something. Maybe it will all get better if she gets away from home.

It doesn't.

She gets cast in a studio production as Emily in
Our Town
. It's her first role in a full-length play and she's excited. After a week of rehearsal she's bored to tears. Nothing happens. The Stage Manager wears wire-rim glasses and an old fedora, talks with a bad New England accent, and is supposed to be symbolic of God. The characters and dialogue seem old-fashioned, stilted, and clichéd. Emily is a complaining Goody Two-shoes. Maybe this is why the director gives her line readings. She doesn't
get
Emily. She doesn't
get
Grover's Corners. She doesn't
get Our Town.

Ten years later, watching Paul Newman in the play on cable she realizes she
really
didn't get it. It is devastating. It is about not knowing and never recognizing the perfection of the moment when it's in your hands. It is about death and eternity. She cries, not wanting to know or think about why she is crying.

She is in the middle of a social sciences class when she gets her first panic attack. It's as if a switch abruptly flips inside her and all of a sudden terror is moving through her in waves. The air vibrates and she can't breathe. Voices have turned to menacing whispers. Faces look blurred and satanic. Somehow she excuses herself and races to the girls' lavatory, which is thankfully deserted. The feeling of nameless dread passes. That will never happen again, she thinks. The next day, in a crowded school corridor, it does. And the day after, seemingly sparked by the clatter of keyboards in the computer room at the library, it does again. Both episodes send her running out of the building desperate for open air.

The attacks become a daily occurrence. They can happen anytime, anyplace, but usually it's when she is surrounded by people. Their chatter lights the fuse and begins the countdown to kickoff. Evenings are especially bad, the weekends worse. She starts going to bed early, hoping to escape the feelings of dread through sleep. Her roommate, a black girl who likes to party, resents the lights going off early and tells her so. She also tells her that she talks in her sleep—“crazy shit, girl! Don't believe me? Ask anyone on the floor 'cause I charge admission when you go off!”