The next day I went looking for a therapist in the local yellow pages under “Psychologists.” There were a lot of them, and I didn’t have any idea whom to choose so I just picked one, Arly Morelli, Ph.D., because she had a large ad that made her appear very experienced and professional. I dialed her number and left a message on her answering machine.
She called me back later that day. The first thing that struck me was her heavy New York accent; she sounded tough, but her carefully chosen words conveyed warmth and compassion. We chatted for longer than I would have expected. Her questions were penetrating, and I got the feeling she was checking me out as much as I was her; she wanted a match, someone she could relate to, not just a fee. I liked her. We set up an appointment for the next morning.
Her office was on the second floor of an attractive brick building on the main street in the town next to ours. The building, like most in the center of town, had been built in the early part of the century. I walked up a creaky old wooden staircase to the second floor and took a seat at the top of the stairs on an iron bench with oak slats.
On the wall opposite the bench was an antique blue-stained wooden bookcase filled with books on psychology, relationships, family dynamics, divorce, and nutrition. I noticed six little hardcover children’s books in the corner, too. Hanging on the wall above the bookcase was a broken sword that had been mounted on a large piece of bright red wood. I was the only patient waiting in the hall. Good.
I sat down nervously with ten minutes to kill and looked absently out a wavy double-hung window that must have been there before Harry dropped the big one. Across the street was a classic red-brick firehouse, and in its tiny front yard birds flitted around in a maple tree. My hands were cold even though it was a warm and sunny fall day, and I kept rubbing my right hand against my thigh so when Dr. Morelli shook it I wouldn’t give her frostbite.
Before long I heard some voices coming from the office, and then the raised panel door opened and an attractive middle-aged woman, wearing an expensive dark blue business suit, emerged into the hall carrying a huge tan leather purse. For a second I thought she was Dr. Morelli and I got a little blast of fear, but she looked at the floor, carefully avoiding making eye contact, and quickly hurried past me down the stairs and out of the building. My heart didn’t slow down, though, because I knew I was up next. I rubbed my hand on my pants a few more times.
About thirty seconds later the real Arly Morelli stepped into the hallway. Her face looked exactly like her voice had sounded on the phone—Mulberry Street. But her eyes were Monte Carlo—sharper than the crease in a gambler’s pants. She had a bushel of black hair and a crooked nose. She was medium height, trim, in her early forties, and she wore a long black linen jacket over a white shirt, a bolo tie, and faded blue jeans. There were no shoes on her stockinged feet. I noticed a ring with a big cobalt blue stone on the middle finger of her right hand.
She smiled at me and said, “Hi. I’m Arly Morelli. Are you Cameron West?”
“Cam,” I said, smiling tentatively.
She offered me her hand. I took it and it felt warm and strong. I bet mine just felt cold.
Arly’s office was small and narrow with a high ceiling, white walls with crown molding, and a big window that looked just like the one at the top of the stairs. The wooden floor was dark from age, mostly covered with an oriental carpet in deep shades of red and gold. On the right wall were two matching light brown chairs separated by a glass-topped table with a ceramic cat and a tall box of Kleenex on it. In the corner stood a hat rack filled with hats from the days of cigarette holders and cars with running boards.
Arly’s chair was maroon leather and there was a round leather ottoman in front of it that looked like it was meant to be shared. A tan portfolio lay on her chair and a black Montblanc pen stuck out of the crease in the middle of it.
Arly waved me to the chair opposite hers and scooped up her portfolio. We both sat down. She put her feet on the ottoman. I left mine flat on the floor and squirmed around in my chair trying to get comfortable. There was no chance of that happening no matter how much squirming I did; I was wishing I hadn’t called her in the first place.
Arly flipped open the portfolio, pulled out the pen, smiled and said, “I hope you don’t mind. I like to take notes.”
I nodded. “Go ahead.” I felt my emotions surging. This is a mistake. I’m outta here.
“Well then, Cam,” she said, “tell me why you’ve sought therapy.” Too late. She hit a bleeder with the first stab and all of a sudden tears welled up in my eyes. I looked down, trying to blink them back.
I swallowed hard and said, “Something is very wrong with me. I ... I think I lost my soul.” And then my shoulders shook and I began to cry softly. Damn! I’ve been here thirty seconds and I’m already crying! My soul. Oh brother. Arly reached over and offered me a Kleenex. I took it without looking at her.
She leaned back and studied me. “You lost your soul,” she repeated, making a note on the yellow pad. I nodded, covering my eyes with my right hand and blotting the tears. I sniffled, took a fresh tissue, and blew my nose.
For the next fifty minutes Arly asked me background questions—about my relationship with Rikki, my job, my illness. Toward the end of the session she asked me if I’d ever been to a therapist before.
“Um ... actually I saw someone a few times when I was fifteen,” I said.
“How come?”
I cleared my throat and nervously picked a piece of lint off my pants. Then our eyes met.
“I tried to kill myself by swallowing a bottle of aspirin.”
Arly raised her eyebrows and wrote some more. “Your folks took you to a therapist after the suicide attempt?”
I stretched, yawned, rubbed my neck and looked out the window. “You know,” I said, “I used to want to be a psychologist. When I was nine or ten. Wanted to know what happens to the mind—”
“Cam?”
“What?” I looked back at her. “Oh,” I said. “No. They didn’t take me to see anybody. I took myself to a clinic and talked to someone a few times. They never said another word about it. It was a secret. It didn’t happen. Hell, I practically forgot about it till you started poking around.”
“A secret,” Arly said.
It wasn’t a question so I didn’t say anything.
She put her pen down and laced her fingers. “Cam,” she said, “how much of your childhood do you remember?”
I shifted in my seat and looked out the window some more. Arly waited.
“I got a belt with a big buckle for my tenth birthday.”
“Nothing before that?”
A flash of anger jabbed me. “What are you looking for? There’s nothing to know.”
Arly said nothing. She just looked at me.
“Sorry,” I said, embarrassed I’d snapped at a total stranger.
She waved it off. “What do you remember about the houses you lived in?”
“Just a little. The kitchens. TV rooms ...”
“Anything else? Your bedrooms?”
“No. Don’t remember them. The hallways go to nowhere.”
“To nowhere,” she repeated, picking up her pen and rolling it back and forth between her fingers.
“I don’t remember. Are you going to write something or are you just giving your pen a massage? Sorry, this is hard.”
“What was your parents’ relationship like?”
“They never fought. I suppose she told him what to do and he did it. They were very different. Her father was a banker and his father owned a chicken store.”
She started writing again, alternately glancing at me and her notes. “What was he like ... your dad?”
“I don’t know. I never really knew him.”
“What about your mother?”
“Christ, my mother. Ask me something else.”
“All right. Your brother. What was it like growing up with him?”
“I don’t know. Okay, I guess. I don’t remember. He looked like my father and I looked like her.”
She stopped writing. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“You looked like her.”
“I was her favorite. I was a good boy.”
I glanced at the clock. It was ten to. Our time was up. Arly asked if I wanted to set up a regular meeting. I hesitated for maybe half a minute before saying yes.
I wrote her a check, said goodbye, and walked into the hallway. Someone was sitting on the bench and I instinctively shifted my gaze to the floor just as the woman in the business suit had. I walked quickly down the stairs and out the door. The air felt chillier and it made me shiver.
* * *
Arly and I started off at once a week, but we moved it to twice pretty quickly. And it wasn’t because it was fun. The more I went, the worse I felt. She’d ask a question and sit there with her stockinged feet up on that ottoman and write and look up and ask another question and write some more. She never gave her opinion about anything; she just let me stew around, and it pissed me off. But I kept coming back.
The shifting in my mind increased, and faint confusing whispers licked at me like flames up the inside of an old chimney. Sleep became more difficult, too, as the darkness amplified the rumble of a comet hurtling at me from the edge of my universe.
And then, deep one cold and moonless December night, I abruptly awoke from a heavy sleep and my eyes opened wide to the bedroom’s pitch blackness. The stillness of the freezing night had been shattered by three words that kept repeating in my head. Safe not safe ... safe not safe ... safe not safe.
What the hell?
The eerie phrase droned on. Safe not safe ... safe not safe. My heart beat wildly and I was shivering as if I’d fallen through the ice on a skating pond. My fists were clenched tightly and I unballed them and touched the sheets, realizing that they were soaked with cold sweat.
Safe not safe ... safe not safe ... safe not safe. The bizarre phrase repeated in my head. STOPPPP!!! I looked over at Rikki, who was facing away from me, fast asleep. Safe not safe ... safe not safe. I clapped my hands over my ears, desperately trying to block the chilling phrase. I heard the heater kick on in the basement.
Guided by some strange force, I reached to my left and took a pen and notepad from my nightstand, the wrenching words incessantly marching in my head. In the darkness I began to write, “safe not safe safe not safe,” over and over again. The words filled a page. I couldn’t stop writing. “Safe not safe safe not safe.” I turned the page and Rikki stirred. I was afraid I might wake her.
I got up carefully, the pad in one hand and the pen in the other, my body shivering in the dark from the shock of the cool air on my damp skin. What’s happening to me?
I went downstairs without dressing, no light but the blue digital clock on the stove as I passed the kitchen, no sound but the whirring of the heater. In a strange otherworldliness, I glided through the living room, across the hallway, and into the blue room at the front of the house where the baby grand piano stood. My bare feet slid across the soft carpet, the words repeating loudly in my head: safe not safe ... safe not safe.
Without turning on the light, I sat down mechanically, slid under the piano, and resumed copying the message in the inky darkness. Time was liquid and my hand cramped from its tight grip on the pen, but I couldn’t loosen it, and I couldn’t stop writing. “Safe not safe safe not safe safe not safe.” Two pages, three, four, five. Then there was a change. “Safe not safe” became “not safe not safe not safe.” I continued writing in the blackness under the piano, feeling nothing. I was somewhere else, but where?
After some period of time the words in my head suddenly ceased and my hand stopped writing. I put the pen down. For a brief moment I felt strangely peaceful. Numb. Then I gradually began to feel again, a light tingle like a wind chime echoing in my mind and body. Then it wasn’t just a tingle. I winced in pain as I tried to wiggle my fingers. A creeping fear and confusion filled me like a pitcher of something foul. What the hell just happened? Naked and cold, I sat in the stillness trying to loosen my aching fingers, wanting and not wanting to understand.
After a few minutes I gave up and crawled out from under the strange safety of the piano and quietly headed back upstairs to bed. I stopped in the bathroom at the top of the stairs and picked up two dry bath towels to place between my body and the sweat-soaked sheets. I climbed into bed, closed my eyes, and fell into a thick and dreamless sleep.
The next morning I awoke early and immediately reached for the yellow pad on my nightstand. Maybe it didn’t happen. But it had. There were the words repeated over and over: “safe not safe safe not safe.” I flipped through six pages until “safe not safe” turned into “not safe not safe,” and that rambled on for another four pages. Not good. Definitely not good. I woke Rikki up, showed her the pad, and told her what had happened.
“God, what's happening to you?” she said, frightened, her soft face puffy from sleep.
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. I pulled her to me and we held each other tightly, wanting whatever it was to go away.
It was Sunday. The day passed quietly. Rikki and I played with Kyle and read books to him. We watched Bugs Bunny cartoons, which distracted and comforted me and made Kyle laugh out loud. Neither Rikki nor I said a word about what had happened; we let it lie. And strange feelings began to seep into my consciousness from very dark places in my mind.
That night, after Kyle was asleep and we were in bed, I turned to Rikki. “I think something terrible happened to me ... but I don’t know what.”
Rikki pulled me to her and held me close and it occurred to me that she wasn’t just holding me; she was holding on to me and I was holding on to her. I looked out our bedroom window into the thick night and, without my glasses on, the three-quarter moon looked like a giant cotton ball. For a second I wished it would come down from the sky and swab me like a naked baby in a bassinet. I didn’t know then that it would to take a cotton ball a whole lot bigger than the moon to get me clean.