Not that he wanted to go. Not that he had a choice. He’d gone to them before for this reason and that reason, for things that happened, for good reasons probably—even he knew that. In his moments of calm, he knew the intentions were good. But Mando’s intentions had been good, too, and everything in his life seemed to be nothing more than an illegible and tragic footnote to his older brother’s good intentions.
Interventions—that’s what they called them. If he didn’t come through, there was the matter of a suspended sentence hanging over his head. He’d escaped jail once. A crack through the door. Dave managed to get him through that crack. To the light on the other side. And for what? Here he was again, so maybe not a damn thing had changed. Well, this time he was a man and not a boy. As if adulthood was a simple matter of age. Plead guilty, get a suspended sentence, and get yourself some help. Dave and his goddamned ideas. He was like a farmer plowing fields. Nothing was going to stop him from the planting season. And was Dave wrong, to take charge of someone else’s life like that? Court mandated counseling. How did that help? They could all feel good about their intervention.
The failure would all be his. And the counselor, what did she have to lose? And Dave? And the judge?
He wondered what she would be like. She would dress in a way that would ensure you didn’t notice what she was wearing, the lady with MSW behind her name. The trained professional with the neat office who kept the pictures of her family in the desk drawer, kept her nice family far away from people like him.
He always thought about what the next counselor would be like. Mostly they were women. Sometimes men. Sometimes. But mostly, the ones he’d gone to were women. They were mostly nice. Sometimes a little severe, but that was only in the beginning—to show him they weren’t weak just because they were women. They were all good girls, all nice and decent and caring in predictable ways. Always decent. Always predictable. Some of them from bad families, and by some miracle they had escaped. But no escape was ever complete, and so, as if some severe priest had given them a lifelong penance, they wandered to and fro on the earth fixing things, picking up stray dogs and cats and fixing them, fixing damaged people, fixing grotesque and shattered families that were as bent and unfixable as theirs had been. They were up to every challenge, fixing and fixing, trying to get at something that had gone wrong with their own screwed-up lives. He could always tell when they were wounded. They couldn’t hide—not from him.
Others were just ordinary and normal, nothing special, but someone had told them they were good with people, and they had believed it, and having no other calling, they had decided to do something useful in the world—counseling screwed-up people made them feel as if their miserable lives were worth something. He had decided a long time ago that no one with a good mind would make a living talking to people like him. Who could respect that? The worst ones were the ones that had found Jesus. They wanted you to see the light—even if they never said it. Didn’t matter that they never spoke the name of Jesus. It was there, in the shallow little prayers they hung on a wall where you could see it, along with their framed degrees. They wanted you to walk in the light, walk hand in hand with Jesus. Then it would be all right.
The one he was going to, her name was, he’d forgotten. Grace. Grace Delgado—that was it. A Mexican name, and she was probably a Catholic, and for the most part he didn’t mind Catholics. They mostly left their crosses at home. He could picture her. In her late forties or early fifties—something like that. They were always that age. Probably she’d have a nice voice. Probably she knew how to keep calm. Probably nothing would shock her. Shit, they heard enough stuff, all kinds of crap. He wasn’t stupid or arrogant enough to believe he was telling them something new. Hell, what had happened to him had happened to a million other kids. In China and Mexico and Chile and fucking London and Belfast. Who could be shocked? He’d talked to lots of women with nice voices who went to church and had sex with their tax-paying husbands on Saturday mornings and who had become immune, had become incapable of being shocked, had trained themselves to listen as if everything he was saying was normal or neutral when they knew it was all too fucking much. They nodded in all the right places. Sure. And when they spoke to him, there was something in their voices that made him feel as if he was a disobedient dog who’d had a bad owner. Not your fault. Here, let me get your chain.
He would hate her. He would talk to her. He would answer her questions. She would take notes. Sometimes they took notes on a piece of paper. Sometimes they took notes in their heads. But they always took notes. They were mothers, most of them, and like all mothers, they had good memories, learned the habits of their children, the things they did and didn’t do—though they didn’t talk about that. Their children. Not ever. But he knew. They felt sorry for him, because of the things that had happened. Because he was an orphan. Because they were sentimental, and they mistook their goddamned sentimentality for care. But who could blame them? If he had been them, he would’ve fucking wept at the mere sight of a man like him.
He would talk to her. He knew that. He would tell her about his life. Some of it, anyway. He would have to decide how much to tell. But he knew this—the more they knew about him, the more they pitied him. That’s why he hated them.