No Time for Goodbye Part 7

This was the day when we met with Dr. Naomi Kinzler after work. Cynthia had arranged to drop Grace off at a friend's house after school, and then we headed over. We'd been seeing Dr. Kinzler once every two weeks for the last four months, after being referred to her by our family physician. He'd been trying, without success, to help Cynthia deal with her anxieties, and felt it would be better for her to talk to someone-for both of us to talk to someone-rather than see her becoming dependent on a prescription.

I'd been skeptical from the beginning whether there was anything a psychiatrist could accomplish, and after coming here for almost ten sessions, I hadn't become any more convinced. Dr. Kinzler had an office in a medical building in the east end of Bridgeport that had a view of the turnpike when she didn't have the blinds closed, as she did today. I suppose she had noticed me looking out the window during previous visits, my mind drifting as I counted tractor trailers.

Sometimes Dr. Kinzler met with us together, other times one of us would step out to allow her some one-on-one with the other.

I'd never been to a shrink before. About all I knew came from watching The Sopranos The Sopranos ' Dr. Melfi help Tony work through his problems. I couldn't decide whether ours were more or less serious than his. Tony had people disappearing around him all the time, but he was often the one who'd arranged it. He had the advantage of knowing what had happened to these people. ' Dr. Melfi help Tony work through his problems. I couldn't decide whether ours were more or less serious than his. Tony had people disappearing around him all the time, but he was often the one who'd arranged it. He had the advantage of knowing what had happened to these people.

Naomi Kinzler wasn't exactly Dr. Melfi. She was short and plump with gray hair pulled back and pinned into submission. She was pus.h.i.+ng seventy, I guessed, and had been at this kind of thing long enough to figure out how to keep everyone else's pain from burrowing under her own skin and staying there.

"So, what's new since our last session?" Dr. Kinzler asked.

I didn't know whether Cynthia was going to get into the crank call from that morning. At some level, I guess I didn't want to, didn't really think it was that big a deal, felt we'd smoothed it over in my visit to the shop, so before Cynthia could say anything, I said, "Things are good. Things have been very good."

"How's Grace?"

"Grace is good," I said. "Walked her to school this morning. We had a nice talk."

"About what?" Cynthia asked.

"Just a chat. Just talking."

"Is she still checking the night skies?" Dr. Kinzler asked. "For meteors?"

I waved my hand dismissively. "It's nothing."

"You think?" the doctor asked.

"Oh yeah," I said. "She's just very interested in the solar system, in s.p.a.ce, other planets."

"But you did buy her the telescope."

"Sure."

"Because she's worried an asteroid will destroy the Earth," Dr. Kinzler reminded me.

"It's helped put her fears at ease, plus she uses it to look at the stars and the planets," I said. "And the neighbors, too, for all I know." I smiled.

"How about her anxiety level overall? Would you say it's still somewhat heightened, or is it dissipating?"

"Dissipating," I said, as Cynthia said, "Still up there."

Dr. Kinzler's eyebrows went up a notch. I hated it when they did that.

"I think she's still anxious," Cynthia said, glancing at me. "She's very fragile at times."

Dr. Kinzler nodded thoughtfully. She was looking at Cynthia when she asked, "Why do you think that is?"

Cynthia wasn't stupid. She knew where Dr. Kinzler was going. She'd gone down this road before. "You think it's rubbing off me."

Dr. Kinzler's shoulders raised a fraction of an inch. A conservative shrug. "What do you think?"

"I try not to worry in front of her," Cynthia said. "We try not to talk about things in front of her."

I guess I made a noise, a snort or a sniff or something, enough to get their attention.

"Yes?" Dr. Kinzler said.

"She knows," I said. "Grace knows a lot more than she lets on. She's seen the show."

"What?" Cynthia said.

"She saw it at a friend's house."

"Who?" Cynthia demanded. "I want a name."

"I don't know. And I don't think there's any point beating it out of Grace." I glanced at Dr. Kinzler. "That was just a figure of speech."

Dr. Kinzler nodded.

Cynthia bit her lower lip. "She's not ready. She doesn't need to know these things about me. Not now. She needs to be protected."

"That's one of the toughest things about being a parent," Dr. Kinzler said. "Realizing that you can't protect your children from everything."

Cynthia let that sink in a moment, then, "There was a phone call."

She gave Dr. Kinzler the details, offered up a near-verbatim account. Dr. Kinzler asked a few questions that were similar to mine. Did she recognize the voice, had he ever called before, that kind of thing. Then, from Dr. Kinzler: "The caller said that your family wants to forgive you. What do you think he meant by that?"

"It doesn't mean anything," I said. "It was just a crank call."

Dr. Kinzler gave me a look that I took to mean, "Shut up."

"That's the part I keep thinking about," Cynthia said. "What's he saying they forgive me for? For not finding them? For not doing more to find out what happened to them?"

"You could hardly be expected to," Dr. Kinzler said. "You were a child. Fourteen is still a child."

"And then I wonder, do they think it was my fault that it happened in the first place? Was it my fault that they left? What could I have done that would make them leave me in the middle of the night?"

"There's part of you that still believes that it was somehow your responsibility," Dr. Kinzler said.

"Look," I said before Cynthia could respond. "It was a crank call. crank call. All sorts of people saw that show. It shouldn't be a surprise that a few nutcases would come out of the woodwork." All sorts of people saw that show. It shouldn't be a surprise that a few nutcases would come out of the woodwork."

Dr. Kinzler sighed softly and looked at me. "Terry, maybe this would be a good time for Cynthia and me to speak one-on-one."

"No, it's okay," Cynthia said. "He doesn't have to go."

"Terry," Dr. Kinzler said, trying so hard to be patient that I could tell she was p.i.s.sed, "of course it may have been a crank call, but what the caller said can trigger feelings in Cynthia just the same, and by understanding her reaction to those feelings we have a better chance of working through this."

"What is it, exactly, we're working through?" I asked. I wasn't trying to be argumentative. I really wanted to know. "I'm not trying to be a jerk here, I guess I've just lost sight of the goal for the moment."

"What we're attempting to do here is help Cynthia deal with a traumatic incident in her childhood that's resonating to this day, not just for her own sake, but for the sake of the relations.h.i.+p the two of you share."

"Our relations.h.i.+p is fine," I said.

"He doesn't always believe me," Cynthia blurted.

"What?"

"You don't always believe me," she said again. "I can tell. Like when I told you about the brown car. You don't think there's anything to it. And when that man called this morning, when you couldn't find it in the call history, you wondered whether there'd even been a call."

"I never said that," I said. I looked at Dr. Kinzler, as if she were a judge and I a defendant desperate to prove his innocence. "That's not true. I never said anything like that at all."

"But I know you were thinking it," Cynthia said, but there was no anger in her voice. She reached over and touched my arm. "And honestly, I don't entirely blame you. I know what I've been like. I know I've been hard to live with. Not just these last few months, but ever since we got married. This has always hung over us. I try to put it away, like trying to put it in the closet, but every once in a while, it's like I open that door by mistake and everything spills out. When we met-"

"Cynthia, you don't-"

"When we met, I knew getting close to you would only bring you some of the pain I'd been feeling, but I was selfish. I wanted to share your love so desperately, even if that meant you'd have to share my pain."

"Cynthia."

"And you've been so patient, you really have. And I love you for it. You have to be the most patient man in the world. If I were you, I'd be exasperated with me, too. Get over it, right? It happened a long time ago. Like Pam said. Just get the f.u.c.k over it."

"I've never said anything like that."

Dr. Kinzler watched us.

"Well, I've said it to myself," Cynthia said. "Hundreds of times. And I wish I could. But sometimes, and I know this is going to sound crazy..."

Dr. Kinzler and I were both very quiet.

"Sometimes, I hear them. I can hear them talking, my mother, my brother. Dad. I can hear them like they're right here in the room with me. Just talking."

Dr. Kinzler spoke up first. "Do you talk back?"

"I think so," Cynthia said.

"Are you dreaming when this happens?" Dr. Kinzler asked.

Cynthia pondered. "I must be. I mean, I don't hear them right now." She cracked a sad smile. "I didn't hear them in the car on the way over."

Inside, I breathed a sigh of relief.

"So maybe it's when I'm sleeping, or daydreaming. But it's like they're around me, like they're trying to talk to me."

"What are they trying to say?" Dr. Kinzler asked.

Cynthia took her hand off my arm and linked her own fingers together in her lap. "I don't know. It varies. Sometimes, it's just talk. About nothing in particular. About what we're having for dinner, or what's on TV, nothing important. And then other times..."

I must have looked as though I was about to say something, because Dr. Kinzler shot me another look. But I wasn't. My mouth had opened in antic.i.p.ation, wondering what Cynthia was going to say. This was the first I'd heard her speak about hearing members of her family speak to her.

"Other times, I think they're asking me to join them."

"Join them?" Dr. Kinzler said.

"To come and be with them, so that we can all be a family again."

"What do you say?" Dr. Kinzler asked.

"I tell them I want to go, but I can't."

"Why?" I asked.

Cynthia looked into my eyes and smiled sadly. "Because where they are, I might not be able to take you and Grace with me."

8.

"What if I skipped all this other stuff, and just did it right away?" he asked. "Then I could come home." other stuff, and just did it right away?" he asked. "Then I could come home."

"No no no," she said, almost in a scolding tone. She took a moment, tried to let the calm wash over her. "I know you'd like to come back. There's nothing I'd like more. But we need to get these other things out of the way first. You mustn't be impatient. There were times, when I was younger, when I was a bit impetuous, too impulsive. I know now it's better to take the time to do something right."

She could hear him sigh at the other end of the line. "I don't want to screw it up," he said.

"And you won't. You've always been a pleaser, you know. It's nice to have at least one in the house." Half a chuckle. "You're a good boy, and I love you more than you'll ever know."

"I'm not really a boy anymore."

"And I'm no little girl anymore either, but I'll always think of how you were when you were younger."

"It's going to feel weird...doing it."

"I know. But that's what I'm trying to tell you. If you're patient, when the time comes, once the stage is set, it'll seem like the most natural thing in the world."

"I suppose." He didn't sound convinced.

"That's the thing you need to remember. What you're doing, it's all part of a grand cycle. That's what we're a part of. Have you seen her yet?"

"Yeah. It was strange. Part of me wanted to say h.e.l.lo, say to her, hey, you won't believe who I am."