Chapter

20

It was mid-afternoon, so I still felt like walking.  We took the long way back to the hotel. As we came to the lake with its assortment of children playing with toy sailboats and skipping rocks from one side to the other, the thought of what my own youth might have been like came rushing in on me. Where had I grown up? Had it been a happy time for me? Who were my parents? Did I have brothers and sisters? My eye caught a young boy and his sister sitting at the park bench with their nanny. F.A.O. Schwartz balloons were tied to their wrists. The late afternoon sun enhanced the antique colors of the balloon’s painted carnival scenes and I thought back to earlier in the day... how much I had enjoyed the toy store. As I approached the boy and girl, they did what I expected. They shyly turned away. I couldn’t blame them. A stranger walking up to you at 5 or 6 years old has to be uncomfortable, if not frightening. But, something inside me wanted to just sit down and take in their world...as they were seeing it.

“Mind if we sit a minute?” I asked Mathews. He nodded. After all, I was just taking a “breather,” doing what the doctor had ordered. It was okay to be in the space I was in right now, okay to think about other things, okayto say how I felt as long as I was careful...I thought.

I politely addressed the nanny. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but aren’t they the most beautiful balloons you’ve ever seen?”

She gave me a gratuitous smile and pulled the children closer to her. I tried again.

“Neat store, isn’t it?”

Right here, I need to say how difficult this part of the journal is to lay down, given it’s my voice, not my pen.  I feel very strange tonight as I speak this. The balance of the day, the nap I took, and then...the trip downtown to Soho and the old haunts of Mathews’ earlier days turned out to be an even stranger breather than the Tavern On the Park and the park itself. I’m looking down from my hotel room to the empty street. I’m thinking how difficult it must be for anyone to grow up, not just me, not just this guy who’s maybe 30 years old might have been here, but the millions that have undoubtedly walked the sidewalks below thinking the same thoughts as me. Probably everyone’s felt as I do right now...that growing up is never as good as staying innocent.

As one of the park’s horse and carriage comes into view, it makes me think of the past, the way my ancestry might have lived, the ancestry that gave birth to my great grandfather, my grandfather, my father, and me. Me.

Anyway, the nanny wasn’t going to speak, and the kids were...well, I should have known better...they were on their feet, walking away, the nanny joining them. I sat looking at the empty bench and turned to the water. “Guess I should act my age, before I get arrested.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Mathews.  “You’re just playing out the next phase.”

“Phase?”  I wanted to ask him, but didn’t.  I was not sure of myself, but his confident voice reminded me… he was.

“Ready?” He was up and stepping away. I hadn’t answered him.

Once, back at the hotel, it was without warning, nap time. The nap was something I hadn’t anticipated because I’m not one prone to afternoon rest, but today was beginning to feel like three or four naps, all at once.

I’d showered and felt better already so I tried Sara again. This time she answered. I would have felt even better if she had answered like the old Sara. But, she didn’t. She was nervous. “What’s the matter? You sound different.”

“What do you mean, sweetheart. I’m fine. Just a little tired,” countered Sara.

She hadn’t called me sweetheart before. Why now I thought. “Were you up late last night?”

“A little. Did some extra work with one of the students after class and then got something to eat. Must have been two o’clock when I got home. I thought you’d call back after leaving that earlier message. What happened?”

“Drank too much.  I was out of it last night.”

“Not alone, I hope,” she said.

“No. Mathews helped me drink myself under the table. Then he beat me running home.”

“What?”

“Not worth repeating.  Sara?”

 “Yes.”

“Is everything all right?”

“Of course. Why are you asking?”

“We’ll probably leave tomorrow sometime. I don’t know what his plans are right now, but... “

“What do you mean, ‘Is everything alright,  and  ‘his plans’?”

“It’s a long story. We’re doing things a little different. I’ll tell you when I get home. Gotta run. I’ll call you when I get there. I miss you. I love you, Sara.”

I quickly hung up. I was afraid to tell her my real feelings. I was scared and couldn’t tell her. I didn’t know what to believe about myself anymore. Mathews had me crazy inside. He’d said very little since I came out of that last session and he was still refusing to tell me what I said while he thought about it.

I needed some rest. That much I did know about myself. I took the phone off the hook and closed my eyes.

Another first. I’d not had any dreams of any consequence. Mathews was always asking me to record any the minute I woke, but no dreams...no nightmares...till now.

When I woke, there wasn’t any sweat, no convulsive arrangement of the sheets, no one standing over the bed trying to calm me. When I woke I was ice...frozen. I could see and hear, taste, touch, and smell, but I...I was still there...back there in my dream. My eyes were open, but I didn’t feel the comfort of my room. I was engulfed in an unrelenting grip of cold. My breathing was like that of someone playing dead, or the dead playing someone. I wasn’t sure. Under my buttocks, I could still feel the vibration of the wave...the tons of water beneath me cascading toward a distant shore. Over the edge of the wave, as if my eyes were extended beyond the crest peering up into the air-born abyss of swirling debris, was a single blue green light shooting its rays up through the water and behond, freezing my gaze, swirling my body, immobilizing my urge to leap, to swim away. Beyond, the land seemed void of any definition...seashore of endless sand, reaching farther and farther away from me. My eyes were again drawn toward the light, its beam further layered by more and more debris. It grew dimmer and dimmer until all was dark. Only the rumble of water turning to ice beneath me. The sounds of shifting ice, the deep moaning of glacial movement was all that was left. My eyes searched frantically for some form of light, but only the ethereal darkness and the cold were there. My senses slowed, my thinking numbed. It wanted me to surrender.”

“That’s the whole thing?” Mathews asked.

I nodded.

“It?” Mathews continued. He leaned forward from his perch atop the barstool where this crazy session was taking place.  He asked again, “It?”

The dream I’d had 2 hours earlier had taken a lot out of me, but, I had to speak.  “One for one Mathews,” I said.

“One for one?”

“Yes. You’ve had plenty of time to think about our previous session. What did I say you couldn’t tell me earlier?

Right at that moment, the bartender leaned over.  “How about another round?”

Mathews turned and engaged in a bullshit exchange over the kind of vodka the bartender had. That gave him just enough time, I thought, to get an answer ready. God damn, he was a master of the slip and slide. I heaved a sigh. I wanted to trust him, but...