THE NEXT MORNING I awoke, nearly completely exhausted, but more determined than ever to begin to change my life. The night before I had been filled with growth for me because I had begun to realize behaviors that had undoubtedly affected Christine and our very sacred union. I awoke again with shame in my heart for all the things I had done to hurt a totally undeserving woman. Next to the shame was fear—a lot of fear. I dreaded what other awareness of poor behavior on my part that impacted Christine and our marriage would come to me. My heart was already breaking this morning. I wondered how many more realizations I could withstand as I began looking inward and becoming honest with myself.
No matter how I felt, I had to go to work. Work was my saving grace. Even when I was burdened with my own negative emotions, helping others through their difficult times always pulled me upward to a better state of feeling. Today would be no different.
Mary Bauer was scheduled for eleven o’clock and amidst all my personal problems I had an idea I couldn’t wait to share with her. Today I would do two things I knew would set me on the path I needed to travel. I would attend my first AA meeting as an admitted alcoholic, and I would find a psychologist to help me with the Two-Knock Ghost and who knew what else.
For the first time in years, I felt like I was on the precipice of achieving something for my deepest self. For years I had been contributing to the betterment of everyone else, so I thought. And as soon as I thought that thought, I realized that if that were true, Christine would not have asked me to leave our home and maybe our kids would call me more.
Another realization. I determined that I would call each of my kids beginning today. With Robert Phillip, then Lena, and Shawn Daniel, I would take the high road with each of them. I would ask them not only how they were doing in their lives right now, but if they felt that I had hurt them in any way while they were growing up. However they would answer me, I would acknowledge it, own up to it, apologize for it, if required, and deal with it as well as I could.
It would be a busy day. As I entered into it, my exhaustion abated replaced by curiosity and hope. I felt a loneliness that morning too. It was the hole in my heart that I always felt even when I was the happiest with Christine and the kids. I often thought it got there after the crash that killed my family, but in these hours of prolific revelations, I realized that I’d always had that hole in my heart. I was always lonely for some reason. I couldn’t figure it out. I had great parents, I had great grandparents. I had a great upbringing in Chicago. Why should I have gone through life with a hole in my heart that couldn’t be filled?
As I drove toward my office in downtown St. Pete, I realized nothing ever seemed to fill that emotional emptiness. Not Christine, not the birth of my kids, not my educational or professional accomplishments, not even rum and Coke.
Was that hole my yearning for God? Had I made the wrong decision to leave the Catholic Church over thirty years ago? Was there something wrong with my brain? I began to think that there was because the underlying feeling of emptiness that was plaguing me for years just didn’t add up. Did I need medicine? Did I need to see a psychiatrist, not a psychologist?
In the middle of myriad hypotheticals, I reached my office at First Avenue North in the Bank of America Building. I walked into my office reception area and greeted Amanda, my twenty-eight-year-old Italian office manager. She was a marvelous human being, already busy when I walked through the door at 8:15.
“Good morning, Dr. McKenzie,” she said with a smile on her face. I could not help but think her voice sounded like a mellifluous exotic bird singing an early morning greeting to the sun. It was impossible to look at her and be depressed.
“Good morning, Miss Amanda,” I said playfully.
She was a tall Italian woman about five feet seven and a half inches, very thin, but handsomely shapely. Her greenish brown eyes were beautiful and piercing. To merely look into their genuine captivating charm was enough to elevate one’s spirit. She was the perfect woman for her job. She was kind and sensitive to each one of my patients, somehow knowing what everyone needed from her during their interactions even though they came to my practice with utterly varied complexities. Amanda had just finished her bachelor’s degree in business from the University of South Florida. Three years prior to this point in her life she had fallen in love with a banker from Tampa named John Schiefele. John had three children ages six, eight, and ten when they met. His wife, Anntoinette, left him for a handsome stud nine years her junior to frolic in Europe. When Amanda first met John, John and Anntoinette were involved in a severe custody battle for their children. Anntoinette did everything she could to paint a horrid picture of John’s character. But after months of interacting with John and interviewing the children extensively, the judge did not buy into Anntoinette’s fiction.
As time passed, the runaway mother communicated less and less with John, their children, or the judge. Nearly three years into their relationship, John, Amanda, and the children were living as a very happy family. Amanda was an even happier woman these days because John had proposed to her the week before, for the sixth time, and she had finally said, “Yes, John, I’m ready now.”
I couldn’t have the success I have had in my relatively new St. Pete practice without her. She has been a tireless and selfless worker on behalf of me and my clients. I noticed that her hair color was a reddish brown today and cut short, whereas the day before it had been blond and beyond her shoulders. She looked like a completely different woman, except for those glorious eyes and that inviting smile.
“Your hair looks stunning,” I said, forgetting all my problems in the moment.
“My sister, Melissa, did it last night. John told me it’s like being with a different woman. I told him that it’s more fun that way, no?”
“I almost thought you were a temp. Even though I know it’s you, I almost feel like I should give you another job interview.”
She giggled for an instant then turned totally professional.
“Here’s your schedule for the day, Doctor. And here’s your phone messages in the order of importance. I’ll bring you your hot chocolate in a few minutes.” We were back to our basic routine. I said, “Thank you, ma’am,” and headed for my office.
My schedule had changed. One of my patients had cancelled because of the flu. That was perfect because it would free up some time for me in the early afternoon to look through the phone book for a psychologist.
The first part of the morning flew past. I saw two clients before Mary Bauer arrived at 11:00.
“Mary’s here, Doctor,” Amanda said after she buzzed me.
Mary Bauer came into my office looking tired and withdrawn.
“Good morning, Dr. McKenzie,” she said softly.
“Good morning, Mary. How are you feeling?”
There was a long pause before she spoke again. Her eyes scanned the items in my office until they raised themselves to look out my window longingly toward Tampa Bay.
“I wish I felt better, Dr. McKenzie, but I don’t. I worry every day whether those three guys who assaulted me will find me again and do worse things to me. I feel violated 24-7. I don’t feel strong. I don’t feel safe. I don’t feel like I’m being a good wife to my husband. I still have nightmares of the event as it happened and morbid variations of it, and there is no doubt that I am not as good of a teacher as I was before all this happened.”
It was my turn to take a long pause. What could I say to her now that I’d not said to her before? I had taken so many different tacks with her so far. But once again I would try something new that I hoped might help her.
“Mary, so far in our journey, we’ve approached this as you in the role of the victim, that something priceless and irretrievable has been taken away from you. What if we turned this whole thing around and look at the event as you’ve been given a great gift.” She looked at me as though I might be crazy, but her eyes were curious and hopeful.
“Go on,” she said.
I spoke tenderly as a father to a daughter. “The event you endured changed you forever. Of that there is no doubt. But there is no doubt, as well, that you have gained so much experientially. No one wants to be a victim of a brutal crime. But if you survive it, you have gained a keen sense of what it is. It becomes part of the very bag of your life experiences. When you teach in the future, think of the wise attention you can give your little third grade boys that may be the attention that helps to dissuade them from growing up to be bullies or pursuing a life of crime. People often say that sometimes the love of one adult in a child’s life can save them from souring as an adult. Because of your experiences, your heart is more intuitive about the true power of teaching, with genuine love behind it. With your husband, think of all the kindnesses that he shows you. His touch is soft and affectionate. You’ve told me he is patient. These qualities are the antithesis of what you experienced in the store that day. Now, you have even more need and reason to seek out his physical love. The tenderness and passions that flow between a loving couple have intrinsic healing properties that are greater than almost anything else that life has to offer.”
She sat silently. I wondered if I should continue sermonizing or whether I should draw her in with a question. Before I made a decision, I thought about how everything I ever said to a client was conjecture, my opinion. I wasn’t God. What I was saying wasn’t absolute truth. It was more like a stream of consciousness. Most of all, I didn’t want to hurt or confuse this sweetheart of a human soul. She was staring at me silently with eyes that yearned for something to believe in, verbal medicine that she desperately wanted to help heal her. I decided to continue.
“You have become a specialist of sorts because you have had a rare firsthand training that has impacted you profoundly. If you look at it as something you have gained, it can immediately be labeled a strength.”
“How so, Doctor?”
“Mary, my mother always used to tell me that everyone is your teacher. When she first told me that when I was a teenager, I thought of it as just more ‘Mom speak,’ but I kept thinking about it for days, weeks, months, years even to this day. Long ago, I concluded she was right. Then when I was in college, I had a wonderful teacher who taught me that if I ever really wanted to understand an event in its entirety, that I should keep looking at it from as many angles as I possibly could. Like this cup on my desk here.” I lifted the cup and held it in the space between us. “It’s the entire cup that is the cup’s reality. Both of us see different aspects of its reality as we peer at it from our individual perspectives. Neither of us can see the whole cup. The way I am holding it now, we can’t see if it’s empty or full or partly full or what’s in it. From my perspective, I can’t even see if there’s a chip on the opposite lip of the cup from me, and from your point of view, you can’t tell if there is a crack in the handle that I am holding. So we keep turning it and raising and lowering it until we see the cup from every angle. Only then will we see the true reality of what the cup is.”
I paused again, this time shorter than a moment before.
“Could you elaborate a little more please, Doctor?”
I was on an extemporaneous roll. I liked it. It was fun. These were some of the best moments of my life, but even after all the years of being in practice, I hoped I wouldn’t lose my train of thought, get tongue-tied, screw up. All of those negative things had happened to me before, and it was always an unpleasant moment each time it happened. But I really didn’t want anything illogical or downright stupid to come out of my mouth right now because Mary was counting on me. I wanted to be at my best, so I dug more deeply from within myself than I usually did.
“Do you remember when John Walsh’s son, Adam, was kidnapped?”
“No, I don’t.”
“John was your basic average loving dad and husband a couple of decades back when his little boy, Adam, disappeared. An extensive search lasted quite some time until they finally found a singular part of his son’s body—his head.”
Mary gasped. I continued.
“You can imagine the heartbreak John felt and the anger as he experienced a father’s worst nightmare. John Walsh was a victim. Every negative emotion imaginable must have been coursing through his veins. He could have retreated into a shell and suffered deeply for the rest of his life but he didn’t. He turned that anger and rage and sadness into something absolutely positive and tremendous.” I paused only long enough to take a breath, but before I could begin speaking again, Mary asked a question.
“What did he do?”
“Have you ever heard of the TV show, America’s Most Wanted?”
“Sure I have. In fact I’ve watched it several times.”
“The John Walsh I’m talking about is the host of that show.”
“That’s the same John Walsh?” Mary asked incredulously.
I nodded a couple of times.
“I had no idea.”
“That’s because when it happened you might have been just a little girl or not even born yet. I’m not exactly sure what year it happened. But the point is that John Walsh took something that could have been eternally devastating and turned it into a nightmare for a multitude of really rotten men. And when you keep looking at the cup that is that story, you can see the countless fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends that were spared similar heartaches because John Walsh had figured out a way to get these thugs off the streets.”
“But, Doctor, a few minutes ago you told me that your mother always used to tell you that everyone is your teacher, then you told me the analogy of the cup and its reality and I get that, but what do you think that the man that killed John Walsh’s son taught him, especially since they probably never met.”
“First, Mary, you know already that you don’t have to meet someone to learn from them. Think of all the literature that you’ve read and poetry. You never met Jack London or William Faulkner or Shakespeare or Jules Verne or Ernest Hemmingway or Emily Dickinson, but think of what they have taught you as well as the joy they have given you. Think about all of the textbooks you have read over your years in school. You probably never met a single one of those authors.
“Second and most importantly, I’d like not to answer your question about what Adam Walsh’s killer might have taught John Walsh but instead, I’d like to ask you to tell me what you think that murderer might have taught Mr. Walsh because I think that the answer might be much more beneficial to you if it came from you rather than me.”
Mary swallowed hard and assumed an expression not unlike she might have had when posed with a difficult question by her teacher as a school girl.
“Doctor, you’ve just asked me a type of question I’ve never been asked before. It’s a kind of question that I’ve never even pondered before.”
“Can you give it a shot?” I said lightly and encouragingly.
“I’ll try,” Mary said then raised her eyes again toward Tampa Bay as if the answers would come from the serenity she was seeking by looking at the water.
“I think Adam Walsh’s murderer taught John Walsh never to quit on life, no matter how deep the pain is that you feel.”
I sat silently, hoping for more.
“He taught John that evil can inspire good.” She paused and thought as I remained silent.
“That murderer eventually taught John that the world can be beautiful despite great tragedy. He taught John that his crime didn’t have to limit John’s potential in life, but could increase it a hundredfold or more.”
She was rolling now.
“He taught John how to change his rage into a form of creative revenge. He taught John that love of family and humanity doesn’t have to stop because of personal heartache. In fact, love can and must increase after these kinds of events or the parents who are suffering from it will fall apart, as will the marriage and the other children involved, if there are any.”
She sighed deeply, not as if she had completed answering my question, but as though she was beginning to apply those lessons to herself and it was an enlightening moment. She lifted her eyes again to the water. Our silences filled the room. We were both deep in thought. I couldn’t have anticipated what she said next.
“I’m still afraid, Doctor.”
It was then that I decided to take a leap of faith. I asked her, “Mary, do you believe in angels?” I asked not because I believed in angels, but because if she believed in them, what I was planning to say next might give her comfort.
“I do,” she said softly, speaking in almost dulcet tones as she had the entire session.
I leaped.
“Mary, I want you to close your eyes and imagine that you have an enormous guardian angel standing directly in front of you. You have looked into his eyes before and you have not only seen the protective love he has for you, but the sadness he feels that you were hurt under his guardianship. You have prayed for him to come to you and show you himself and he has obliged. You have seen his face, again, a countenance of complete kindness. He spreads his wings, an invitation to come next to him. Once more you look into his beautiful caring eyes, but though you see the care, you also see a fierce determination to protect you from further harm. Slowly he closes his left wing around you, while his huge right wing remains open like a giant sword waiting to strike down any entity that would attempt to harm you. You feel safe beneath that wing in the presence of that magnificent enlightened being. When you leave here today, you can take those images with you and think of them. Maybe they will help you.” I chose again to be silent as I watched Mary pondering against her closed eyelids. A few seconds later, she reopened her eyes and spoke gently as always.
“Thank you for that, Dr. McKenzie. I actually feel better, and I know better what I need to do to get my life back on track.”
Our session was drawing to a close.
“Mary, do you remember that at the beginning of our session today I shared with you that my mother always told me that everyone was our teacher?”
“Yes.”
“Even though I was just a teenager when she told me that, I thought it was interesting. I took that concept and kept turning it over and over in my mind the same way we both turned that cup many times over. It took me years to see that we learn so much from one another. But as I continued to ponder it, I one day realized that each of us too is a teacher as well. I am a teacher, you are a teacher—I don’t mean our professions, I mean in everything we do, everything. Our behavior truly and absolutely affects everyone with whom we come in contact. I know you’ve been hurting for many weeks now, Mary, but you know what I’d like for you soon?”
She shook her head no.
“I’d like for you to shed your cloak of pain and fear and become the happy productive woman that you have always been. Then, at some point after that, without even trying, I’d like you to teach people how resilient you are. I’d like you to teach your students the powerful effects that having love behind whatever you are instructing can have. Beyond that, I hope for you to be the wonderful happy person that you are at your core because everyone who sees you will benefit from that. And lastly, and I’ll shoot for the moon on this one, I want you to change the world by being happy. If you can reclaim that intrinsic joy that you have for life, you will change the world merely by existing.”
I don’t know if I had said the right things to her, but my advice had come from deep within my heart and Mary had sat there patiently intently taking everything in and analyzing it.
“That’s a tall order, Doctor, but I understand what you’re saying and it makes sense. Now all of it has to forge its way into the parts of my heart and soul where the worries and fears and hurts still live. What you’ve said today makes sense to me. But it will take some time for all of this to percolate inside me. I admit I feel better and I can’t get that image of the angel, with his wing around me, out of my mind. Thank you for that and for everything else we talked about today.”
“You’re welcome.”
She stood and extended her hand to me with her usual elegance and grace. “Thank you for your kind and thought provoking words, Doctor.”
We shook hands, each smiling genuinely and warmly at one another, then broke our grasp and walked together to the door. Then as I reached to open it for her, I thought about the Two-Knock Ghost. Never before in my life had doors been a problem for me, but now and for the past few weeks I had often become apprehensive when approaching a door. Since I didn’t know what the Two-Knock Ghost was, it could be anything or anybody. I told myself not to worry. The Two-Knock Ghost had previously only invaded my dreams. I needn’t worry about waking doors.
I opened my office door and Mary passed through.
“I’ll see you again next week, Doctor.”
“Till then, Mary.”
“Good-bye, Amanda,” she said as she passed through the reception area.
“See you next week, Mary.”
And she was gone. I hoped at least she was a little bit fortified by some of the things I had said to her. It wasn’t the first time I had used a dream I’d had to comfort a patient. I believed in the power of dreams and how they could impact a person’s life. I believed how perfectly, timely and appropriate they could be or how badly timed and horribly terrifying. I seriously hoped that sharing the dream had given something for Mary to take with her to refer to if she needed it on occasion.
It was lunchtime. Amanda had already pulled her brown paper bag from one of her desk drawers as soon as the door closed behind Mary. Most days Amanda “brown bagged” it and often continued to work although we had a service to take phone messages for us between noon and 1:00 p.m. Sometimes Amanda would opt to take a quick walk to one of the little cafés that dotted Central Avenue. Once in a while she would walk to one of the many downtown hot dog vendors for a hot dog or a Polish sausage and a soda.
“She’s really sweet, Dr. McKenzie, isn’t she?” Amanda said.
“She sure is, Amanda. Enjoy your lunch.”
Once inside my office, I decided to do two things in the next hour. First, I would call my oldest son. Secondly, I would find a psychologist. If my alcoholism was the cause of my devil dreams then I was going to start attacking it immediately, first by making amends with my children, if I needed to. I wasn’t at all sure but I knew full well about making amends and if I started doing that right away, I might put myself further onto the right path of beating my drinking and diminishing the devil dreams. What to do about the Two-Knock Ghost was a different story entirely. I knew what the devil was. But a Two-Knock Ghost? What in the hell was that? Where did that come from? And how absurd was even the thought of it? I forced all thoughts of ghosts and demons out of my mind and reached for my Rolodex and my son’s phone number. Next to the silver Rolodex was a picture of Christine, me, and the three kids when they were all under the age of ten. We were on one of our summer vacations. In the picture, we were at Disney World. How ironic. Disney World was only ninety miles away now and Florida was my home. How beautiful we all were then. How young. All together. I wiped the nostalgia from my mind and called Robert Phillip. He was working in San Francisco as a dentist in the Medical Arts Building on Van Ness. He loved that city. It was 10:00 a.m. in San Francisco, and I realized that he might be in the middle of a procedure, but I called anyway. I was determined to knock down all of my problems related to alcoholism and the Two-Knock Ghost, as if they were a series of lined up Dominoes. Robert Phillip was one of the first Dominoes and my heart yearned for it to fall right now.
“Hello, Robert.”
“Dad!”
“How are you firstborn?”
“I’m great, Dad, but you caught me on my cell phone while I’m drilling into a nasty molar.”
“I’m sorry, Robert. I’ll call you back tonight.”
“Dad, don’t hang up,” he said quickly. “I’m yanking your chain, but I will have to drill that molar in about eight minutes. What’s up? I heard from Lena that you and Mom separated a few months ago. Are you back together?”
“No, son, we’re not yet, but I’m working on it. I called for a couple of reasons. First, how are Emily and the kids?”
“Emily’s fine, Dad. Perfect, in fact, if that’s humanly possible. Josie’s as cute as a spring daisy and proud to be a kindergartener and I just put braces on Zack’s teeth. He’s a handsome boy, but he looks kind of funny when he flashes that silver smile. He looks like you, Dad. Like a Norman Rockwell kid, freckled and towheaded. What else is going on with you?”
My throat was tight, and I was nearly perspiring when I formed the first words of my next sentence. I knew that Robert was at work and that time was limited for him right now. I didn’t want to put pressure on him, but I desperately wanted an answer to my most important question.
“Robert, do you feel that there was any way that I might have hurt you as a child or a young man?”
“Holy shit, Dad! Where did that come from?”
“I’m working on personal issues, Robert. There are things I have to figure out and correct before I go home with your mom. I miss her tremendously, and I want to speed up the process of getting back to her.”
“Dad, you were a great dad. I remember you teaching me how to play baseball, coming to my Little League games, helping me with my multiplication tables, making us all kinds of wonderful breakfasts, taking us on vacations and little road trips to Starved Rock and Springfield, helping me pay for college. You were and still are a great dad. I have no complaints.”
“Son, could you do me a favor for just a moment and dig deep and tell me if there was anything I ever did that bothered you, maybe threw you off-kilter a little bit.”
There was what seemed to me like an eternal delay on the other end before Robert spoke again.
“There was one thing, Dad, a little thing really, when I compare it to the scope of all the good things you did for me.”
I was so nervous, I wanted to jump in and ask him right away what it was, but I held back and waited for him to formulate his description. Again time, though it was only seconds, passed slowly.
“I always wondered why you spent so much time in your bedroom in the evenings. Sometimes, when I was a little boy and I’d have done something naughty and you’d scold me, when you’d go into your bedroom I thought you were mad at me. I thought you were avoiding me. But as I got older, nine or ten, I realized that you were merely just taking a ton of work in there and preparing for the next day. You were real good at coming to planned events that I had in the evenings, but it seemed like every night that we were home with no outside activity planned that you would go into your room and stay there until Mom came and got you to come to tuck us in. That’s all there ever was, Dad. You did it my whole life so I got used to it. I wondered about it from time to time and sometimes I wished you would watch TV with us, but you never did, except for Frazier Thomas and Family Classics on Sunday nights. You seemed to like that. But that’s it Dad, really.”
“I haven’t thought about Family Classics in years,” I said.
“Hey, Dad, you remember what I said about that molar? It’s ready for me now.”
“You go work your magic, Robert. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Dad, if I wasn’t so darn busy with work and Emily and the kids, I’d call you more often, but I love you, Dad. I hope you know how much I do. Now are you sure you’re all right?”
He asked me with kindness and sincerity in his voice.
“I’m working on it, Robert. I’m thinking that maybe after I get back with your mother, we can have a big family reunion.”
“Wow! That would be super, Dad. I gotta run. I love you, Dad.”
“Me to you, Robert.”
I didn’t want to hear his end click off, so I pushed my phone quickly away from my ear and placed it back in the cradle. It was a bit of a quirky move on my part I thought, but I figured I’d hurt less at our good-bye if I was in control of hanging up.
I still missed him more after the call than before it, but now at least I knew that I hadn’t hurt him too much. He had a lot of great shared memories and he loved me. I thought it acutely interesting, however, that he brought up my nightlife in my bedroom, something that I had been wondering about lately myself.
I looked at my watch, figured I had about twenty-five minutes before my next patient. I heard my stomach grumble and suddenly felt hungry. I decided to forego my plan to find a psychologist and cater instead to my hunger. I would look for the psychologist later in the day. I decided to go downstairs and out the front door, turn left, walk a couple of hundred feet and grab a hotdog or a Polish sausage at a nearby hotdog cart. I nearly hated to turn right when I walked out of the building because then I would be heading in the direction of All Children’s Hospital, where Christine worked. She might be there now. I had communicated with her so little lately, that I didn’t even know what her current work schedule was. It seemed odd to me that if I was walking along Central Avenue, as I often did at lunchtime, I felt much closer to All Children’s and Christine than I did when I was driving in my car. Walking only a mile or so from All Children’s hurt more. I missed Christine more when I was on foot. I felt the pain of our separation more. I felt the futility of my life without her, more. I liked to stretch my legs at lunch, to look at the cute little shop windows, sometimes go in and browse or buy, have a quick lunch at a trendy restaurant. But I didn’t like the emotions that walking West out of the Bank of America Building did to me.
I decided to get two hotdogs with ketchup and spicy mustard and an Orange Crush. I got the simple meal, everything in a small brown bag, and turned to walk North up Beach Drive to find a bench, eat and relax while gazing at the water. I was feeling pretty good emotionally. I believed I had given Mary Bauer some comfort in our session. I had talked pleasantly with my son. Later today I would find a psychologist I hoped would provide some comfort for me, and tonight I would attend my first AA meeting as an admitted alcoholic. I would pour my heart out with the truth, the way I was finally beginning to see it. I would spill my guts in public for the first time no matter how challenging that may be. I would begin turning the corner and heading back to my darling Christine instead of allowing my denials to take me further from her. No wonder I felt kind of good. I had a right to feel kind of good.