Too Near the Edge (17 page)

The next day all hell broke loose. It started
with a call from Elisa at 7:00 am. “Have you seen the paper?” “I
just got out of the shower.” “Go get it. I’ll wait.” Cell phone in
hand, I trotted off to the front porch and picked up the paper.
“Okay, ‘Six Jewish settlers killed, 30 injured, in West

Bank attack.’ Not good, but you had to call
me about it?” “Try the local section, page 1C.” The headline hit me
right in the gut.

Local Grief Therapist Accused of Fraud

A Boulder psychologist and grief therapist
was accused of malpractice Monday in a complaint filed by a faculty
member from the university psychology department.

Professor Donald Waycroft, who holds the
Lois Van Liere Distinguished Chair in Applied Behavior Analysis,
alleged that therapist Cleopatra Sims manipulated his 35-year-old
daughter into believing she experienced a false reunion with her
deceased mother, according to a complaint filed with the Colorado
Mental Health Section of the Department of Regulatory Agencies.

Dr. Waycroft, a prominent behavioral
psychologist, has consulted on, researched and taught behavior
analysis for over 40 years. The complaint he filed against Sims
alleges she has engaged in fraudulent and unsafe practice that
placed her clients’ safety and welfare in danger. He also charges
that Sims is delusional and questions whether she is fit to
practice as a psychologist.

According to the complaint, Waycroft’s
daughter sought treatment from Sims for help in coping with grief
over the death of her husband who perished in a fall at the Grand
Canyon last April. Waycroft alleges that Sims enrolled his daughter
in a program called the Contact Project, which purports to help
people work through their grief by contacting dead persons.

Waycroft further alleges that Sims used
hypnosis and other techniques to falsely convince his daughter she
had contacted and had a conversation with her mother, who died over
30 years ago. “This experience has caused considerable distress for
me, my daughter and my grandson,” Waycroft said, “and I think we
need to protect other people who might become victims of this phony
spiritualism project.”

Sims is a licensed psychologist in the state
of Colorado. She could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

“That asshole! I’ll call you back later,” I
screamed, closing my phone. Half way through re-reading the article
I got a call from Bruce, the man who funds my project, saying we
needed to meet. My anger made room for fear. Bruce didn’t sound
terribly upset, but he didn’t sound happy either. Kind of
unnerving. I worried he’d had some second thoughts about funding
the Contact Project, but I resisted the impulse to ask him over the
phone. We set a time to meet that afternoon.

As soon as I hung up, a couple of clients
called to cancel. By then, I’d had about all the phone calls I
could handle without screaming at someone. So I turned off my phone
and walked downtown to my office. Somehow, I managed to meet with
two clients there—one who hadn’t seen the story and one who had—but
I’ll admit I had a hard time focusing on their concerns.

When I had some free time, I warily started
playing my phone messages. To my relief, there were no more
cancellations. First was Sharon, very apologetic, then other
friends offering support. But two unexpected messages got most of
my attention. One was from Joel, and the other from Narmada—the
former Natalie, Adam’s first wife. Each of them said they needed to
talk to me urgently. I returned their calls and arranged times to
meet each of them.

Joel offered to pick up some take-out from
Wild Oats and bring it by for a quick picnic lunch. He showed up
with a southwestern tofu salad made with fresh tomatoes and
cilantro, feta cheese, focaccia bread, peaches, strawberries and
organic lemonade. We took the feast over to a park next to Boulder
Creek, where we found a picnic table near the busy playground area.
I was in a fog, kind of staring blankly around at the people around
me who were going on with their lives as if this was a perfectly
normal day. I watched a woman holding a baby on her hip with one
hand push a bigger child on a swing with her other hand, while she
kept watch over a toddler marching back and forth with a huge ring
of keys like a tiny jailer on his coffee break. The mother looked
like she could use a grande caffe latte espresso.

Looking for anything to focus on but my own
anxiety, I noticed Joel’s face had its usual two-day dark beard
growth. I wondered how he maintained it at that level. Did he only
shave every few days and I happened to catch him on the off days—or
did he have some trick of mowing it to a high level like grass in
the heat of summer? But his smile was as engaging as ever, and I
could see why Sharon might want to reconnect.

Then he pulled me back to reality, his dark
eyes drawing me in as he spoke. “I wanted to tell you how sorry I
am about Donald’s complaint,” he said, “and to encourage you not to
give up trying to help Sharon contact Adam. It’s important that she
find out as much as she can about what happened to him. Otherwise
she’s never going to be able to move on with her life.”

I rose to the challenge. “As far as I’m
concerned, it’s up to Sharon whether we continue. I’m not going to
let Waycroft scare me off, but Sharon may have some limits on how
much she wants to cross him.”

“I know Donald. I worked with him for years,
and I got fed up a lot. He can be bossy and rude, and he believes
his methods of shaping behavior are supreme. But underneath he’s
basically good-hearted. I doubt if he’ll really go through with the
complaint. He’s just trying to scare you off because he doesn’t
believe in your methods.”

This made no sense to me. It was like Joel
was talking about someone else. There was no way I could see
Waycroft as good-hearted. I couldn’t even come up with a
response.

I drifted off again, watching a stocky
middle-aged man dressed for the board room in dark blue dress
pants, a long-sleeved blue shirt and a red tie. He helped a toddler
in a pink hat climb up to the top of the slide. He coaxed her and
carefully stood by the side of the slide as a safety cushion. She
deliberated, then chose to back down the steps to the ground.
Invigorated by her accomplishment, the toddler headed back up the
steps. The man followed behind, squatting at the top of the slide,
holding her, arms extended, slowly releasing her to slide down into
the waiting arms of a woman wearing a straw hat. Independence
triumphs over fear every day I thought to myself.

Joel drummed his fingers on the table and
brought me back to the conversation. “Hey, Cleo. If you like, I
could try talking to Donald in your behalf. Basically, Donald likes
to get his own way and will fight for that, but he draws the line
at hurting anyone,”

This finally snapped me out of my reverie. My
anger at Waycroft came flooding back, but I kept it in check as I
spoke slowly and resolutely. “You don’t think he’s trying to hurt
me? In fact he’s already hurt me with slander and loss of income.
Joel, I appreciate your support, but Waycroft’s gone over the line
and I plan to see that he regrets it. No, don’t talk to him for me.
Thanks for the offer. I really do appreciate it. But I intend to
fight this complaint through channels and I intend to win.”

I helped Joel clean up the remains of our
lunch and thanked him for the delicious food. He decided to stay at
the park for a while, so I left him there and walked back to my
office to meet Narmada. On the way I, wondered what she could have
to say to me that was so urgent, and whether I could believe
anything she did say, given what Sharon had told me about her. She
showed up promptly at 2:00, bounding into my waiting room with
outstretched arms that enveloped me in an I-know-what-you’ve
been-though hug. “Cleo, I’m here to support your work against the
narrow-minded establishment.” She stepped back far enough to gaze
intently into my eyes.

No quick response came to mind, but I did
take the opportunity to move toward my counseling room, motioning
her to follow me. Once we were seated with several feet of space
between us, I took a better look at her. Narmada looked to be about
35, medium height and built like a dancer, a combination of muscles
and grace. A massive mop of brown curly hair hung below her
shoulders and stuck out in every direction around her head. She
wore a black tank top with a long slim black skirt splattered with
pink roses. And she positively radiated energy.

“I know who that Waycroft guy and his
daughter are, and I’m here to tell you they are both bad news, and
you should stay away from them. But you probably already know that
by now.”

“The article only told part of the story,” I
said. “I think it’s mostly a misunderstanding that I can clear
up.”

Narmada looked at me as though I were
speaking a foreign language. Which, given her views, I suppose I
was. “Don’t be naïve, my dear. This is no misunderstanding. Those
academic psychologists salivate at any opportunity to trash
us.”

I was pretty sure I didn’t want to be part of
the ‘us’ Narmada included me in, but I decided that to be fair I
should hear more of her story. “So, what sort of practice do you
have exactly?” I asked.

She handed me a business card. It read:
Narmada—Intuitive Psychic, Massage & Healing, Aura Reader, Past
Life Regression, Chakra Balancing, Soul Surgery. Hmm… soul
surgery—could that help Waycroft?

“Wow, you must stay busy with all those
services. How long have you been doing all this?”

“About ten years. When I was married to that
cynical loser, Adam, I thought something was wrong with me. I had
premonitions of things that were going to happen to people, but he
told me I was crazy. So I learned not to listen to myself, not to
trust my intuitions. I wasn’t in touch with my abilities. I didn’t
know I was psychic. I thought I was imagining things.”

“So how did you get in touch with your
abilities?”

“My inner self wisely knew I needed to get
away from Adam. So I ended up unconsciously doing things that split
us up. Then after I got off all the drugs they had me on, I went to
India to get clear. I had to learn to listen, to find out who I
was, to be open to my dreams, feelings, whatever came to me in a
nonlinear way. I had some profound experiences. Like I discovered
that the voices I sometimes hear inside my head talking to me are
people who have left the physical realm.”

Hmm…voices in her head talking to her. Is
this how I sound to Pablo? I nodded a couple of times and said,
“That does sound profound.”

“For sure. And once I knew I had the gift of
seeing between the worlds, I went to Sedona and set up a practice
at the New Age Center. I’ve only been back in Boulder a couple of
years. I came back because it was made known to me that I should be
here. But it hasn’t been easy with Adam going around telling people
I’m a fake. Confidentially, once I learned to read auras, I could
see that he was rotten to the core. I’m pretty sure he was a brutal
slave owner in a past life. And he didn’t do much to redeem himself
in this one.”

“So you were upset with Adam in the last
couple of years?”

“You got that right! He spread lies about me
all over town. Said I had no powers, was just after people’s
money—that I had used him for money. Sure, I had some negative
patterns years ago, but I’ve moved though those. Some were blocks
from past lives that I had to release. I tried to tell Adam about
this, but he refused to listen. He made ruining my reputation a
personal crusade. Life will be much better for me here with him
gone, I can tell you that.”

“You may be better off, but Sharon and Nathan
miss Adam a lot.”

“I can not imagine why Sharon wants to
contact him now that he’s crossed over, but I can tell you it’s not
going to work. He’s not the type who would cooperate with someone
trying to connect with him from this side. He wasn’t in tune with
himself, no self-awareness, no clue about how his mental attitudes
were causing him emotional and physical stress. We know people’s
beliefs will cause them to create or attract the situations and
events they experience. No wonder Adam fell into a big hole.”

“So you think Adam caused his own death?”

“For sure. Not in the sense that he
physically jumped. But spiritually he was so empty, the canyon just
sucked him up.”

I was too dumbfound to go on. “Interesting,
Narmada. But I actually have an appointment out in Longmont in a
bit, so I’m going to need to leave soon.”

“Sure. I really came to offer support for
your work, to stand up against Waycroft’s attack. I’m active in the
local psychic community, and we want you to know we’ll be there for
you. We’d love for you to participate in our Fall Equinox Fair in
September. And some of us are planning to organize a rally
protesting Waycroft’s complaint.

I didn’t think her rally would help my
reputation much. After all, I was a licensed therapist—at least I
was so long as Waycroft didn’t get his way—and I try to maintain a
respectable image, even though my methods may be a teeny bit
unorthodox. So I tried to discourage her without being rude.
“That’s so thoughtful. I appreciate the support. But I’m hoping I
can work through the regulatory board and get the complaint
dropped. Maybe you could check back with me in a couple of weeks
and see where it stands.”

“The thing is, I’m pretty sure that
organizing against this attack on you is what I’m meant to do here
in Boulder. It may be hard for you to accept the love we’re
offering, but you need to take it in. If you can’t swallow the
powerful love that’s out there for you and your work, you’ll
choke.”

I could feel myself choking already and I was
unquestionably in touch with a powerful need to get Narmada out of
my office. “Look, I really have to go,” I said, standing and moving
toward the door.