Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
That’s me in my next tape-segment starring role. Listen, and you can almost hear that haunting five-note sequence: G … A … F … F … C …
The segment starts off so innocently, really. There I am, sitting in my parked car after the Noon News, reciting my mission statement for the umpteenth time on Project Day Two, mulling over the uncanny symmetry of the twelve words I’d chosen several years back to define my goals in believing:
… in myself, through integrity, strength, initiative, and release.
… in others, through respect, compassion, generosity, and trust.
… in life, through passion, perspective, involvement, and faith.
And then it dawns on me, much as solutions to complex math problems suddenly make themselves clear, or once-elusive answers to riddles become obvious in an instant: rearrange the words and stack them in a pyramid.
So that’s what I do. Grab a pair of index cards from my notebook, and urgently sketch out top and side views: one side Self; a second side Others; and the third side Life. Then, starting from the base and working toward its apex, I give my three-sided pyramid four horizontal tiers (which I would later label Reverence, Resolve, Investment, and Surrender.)
Finally, I drop my twelve words into place.
There are few things in life more satisfying to an obsessive-compulsive than a solid sense of order. Perhaps this is why I find myself speechless as I gaze at the crude drawing I’ve just made. The symmetry. The associative groupings. The spatial relationships. A perfect model of the inner structure of belief. I can’t wait to finish up my shift at the station and get home to build a mockup. For three long hours on the air, I talk about homicides and interest rates and the Kings’ next big game, all the while thinking about one and only one thing: pyramids.
Once home, I begin mulling over construction options, and that’s when the whole Richard Dreyfuss thing kicks in. Remember that dinner-table scene in which his character becomes obsessed with some illusory mountain shape? He needs to give it form, so he does what any quick-thinking diner would do: he starts sculpting his mashed potatoes.
Samantha’s not serving potatoes or anything else malleable this particular night, so I power-eat my dinner and quickly excuse myself to the den, where I start cutting up cardboard. For the next several hours, I sit at my desk folding cardboard into pyramids of all sizes, giving three dimensions to the geometric shape taking up all the space in my head. By the time I climb into bed, I have put the finishing touches on a three-inch model with all twelve of my believing words stenciled neatly in their places.
Okay, you already know I’m nuts. I think I’ve made that abundantly clear. But I can only imagine what you’re thinking right about now. I mean, here’s this guy who’s talking to the stars at night, gleaning divine messages from his car radio, and now stamping out cardboard pyramids. Pretty damn weird, even for an admitted obsessive-compulsive who drives his car in circles, scrubs his hands till they hurt, and checks and rechecks everything around him. But here’s the craziest part of it all: that three-inch cardboard pyramid, the one I crafted that night and that sits on my desk to this day, still strikes me as the sanest, most rational, truest thing I have ever seen.
I dunno. Maybe OCD is just the beginning of my psychosis.
Trust. Strength. Faith …
Four days after building my cardboard mockup, I am at our church, mentally scrambling to affix my believing words to their proper places on the virtual pyramid I have etched in my mind. The woman extending her hand to me while I’m attempting to do this is making the process exceptionally tricky.
“You must be Jeff Bell,” she says, smiling.
She looks pretty normal, this woman. Composed. Dignified, in fact, with elegant features, perfectly coiffed silver hair and a big, light-up-the-room smile that reminds me at once of actress Andie MacDowell’s.
Maybe this isn’t the woman I’d agreed to meet today. I’m expecting a freak.
“My husband and I listen to you all the time,” she continues, waiting for me to say something. Anything.
A listener. Wouldn’t that just figure? I knew this was a bad idea. I’m supposed to emcee the Sacramento Ballet’s matinee this afternoon, and I’m already uptight about that. I don’t need this added anxiety. I want to bolt. Unfortunately, a quick assessment tells me that’s no longer an option.
Integrity. Initiative. Generosity …
“And you must be Carole Johnson,” I finally say, opting to acknowledge this woman before I become the one who looks like a freak. “Wayne speaks very highly of you.”
Wayne Manning has been after me for months to get together with Carole. “She’s written a book you might find interesting,” he’s told me, hinting that Carole shares some of the quirky habits I’d copped to during our sessions last spring. What made me finally agree to meet her today, on Day Six of my project, though, I can’t imagine.
Church is letting out, and the two of us are standing in the foyer, midstream in a rising tide of people.
“How ’bout we find someplace quiet to talk?” I whisper to Carole.
Walking down the hall I remind myself how carefully I’ve kept my secret, how I can still count on my fingers and toes the total number of people who know about my little problem, and how this built-in cap seems like the perfect limit for such private matters. I think about all the years I spent paying for expensive therapy out of my own pocket to avoid a health-care paper trail, how I slithered into and out of one shrink’s office after another to escape getting caught. Why on earth would I now risk my entire radio career on a stranger, no matter how much that stranger and I might have in common?
We find a place to tuck away, and Carole hands me a copy of her self-published book.
“It’s an autobiography,” she says. “But there are a number of local tie-ins you might be interested in.”
I stare at her, confused, for a second or two before it hits me: she thinks I’m meeting her to arrange an author interview for my show. That’s how Wayne must have pitched it. She hasn’t a clue. I’m home free. My secret is safe. I open my mouth, prepare to give her my producer’s name and phone number.
But then something happens, something I’m entirely unprepared for. Our eyes meet and lock, and I see in hers a reflection of my own. The pain. The fear. The embarrassment. The desperation. All the indescribably debilitating by-products of a life spent chasing the demands of a hiccupping brain. All of it right there, hidden in a pair of sparkling brown eyes fooling the entire world except for a select few like me, who from years of shared horrors, can somehow see clear through the façade.
It’s all so overwhelming, standing here face to face with another member of my rare and unspoken-of species. People are squeezing by us now in the narrow hallway. I should say something, move us off to the side. But I can’t move.
“I … I do what you do,” I hear myself stutter as Carole wraps her arms around me. Quite clearly, I need not explain what I mean by my confession.
“I know, Jeff,” she whispers in my ear. “I know. And now that we’ve found each other, we’ll never again have to suffer through all this alone.”
Something about the intimacy and vulnerability of the moment scares me. And yet at this same moment, I know this: every bit as much as my index cards and my mission statement and my pyramid model and my dog tag and Jackie’s regular guidance, Carole Johnson is going to play a huge role in my project. That she’d prove to have invisible wings and a halo, I’m not sure I yet knew.