Stepping out

The button is round and grey and glossy with the words Unfuck the world in glaring neon red.  Even as I lurch along with the other commuters I am transfixed by that stupid button, not even noticing if the bearer is male or female, old or young.  The messenger is irrelevant.  It’s the message that counts.  And clearly this is a message.  No, an imperative.  The fact that I seem to be the only one who’s really noticed the button at all, means this imperative is for me.  I feel myself shrink; compressed by the weight of this dubious honor. 

You might think the instruction is from God.  I might too, if I believed in him or her or whatever it’s politically correct to call an omniscient being these days.  It could be a psychic plea from the unborn generations begging someone to wake up and see how we’re wrecking what might one day become their playground – if there’s enough of it left to support life of any kind. 

And then, if you’d eavesdropped in our kitchen this morning and heard my wife, Melanie, bemoaning my inability to fulfill her apparently desperate desire for a child, you might claim she’s tapped into the collective unconscious and in doing so reinforced the message she gave me this morning. 

“We’ve been married for four years now,” she’d said.   

Married, yes.  For better, for worse.  For richer, for poorer.  In sickness and in health.  All promises I was confident I could keep, will keep. 

“And you did say you wanted a family.” 

A family.  Yes, I do want a family.  But a child?  What unspoken promises does a man make when he commits to fathering a child?  Does he swear to surrender every Saturday for the next eighteen years?  To learn all the latest slang or memorize Dr Seuss?  Or is his promise more fundamental, like making the child’s mother happy?  Like staying involved beyond the first nappy change?  Like helping out financially long after he’s physically and emotionally disappeared?  A child.  No, that’s not a promise I would have made.  Besides family can mean cats or dogs or both.  It doesn’t have to mean children.   

For better or for worse I didn’t share my thoughts.  I planted a kiss on a cheek hot with exasperation and said, “Let’s talk about it tonight.” 

Knowing that, you’ll agree, my wife is a prime candidate for having magically engineered this psychological reminder of my spousal responsibility for her happiness.  And yet, it’s not her voice that I hear over and over in my head, shouting with the same ferocity as that damned neon red. 

Fortunately, before I can reconfirm the message source, the train stops, thrusting me first forward, then backwards.  The seasoned travelers stand their ground, clutch more tightly at the leather straps overhead.  The greenhorns stumble, some even fall.  A person in grey gropes at my ankles.  I grab an elbow and pull what becomes a young woman to her feet.  

“Thanks,” she says, brushing the floor’s dirt from her tailored trousers. 

“Not a problem,” I say, pushing my black-rimmed glasses further up my nose then stepping past her and through the open carriage doors.  Yeah, me and a thousand others; spewed out onto the platform, black and white detritus sweeping towards the stairs.  Outside the station the sky is an overbearing white, as if the God I don’t believe in is glaring down upon the world, upon me, itemising transgressions, calculating the personal bottom line that he, she, it, will present on my judgment day – the judgment day I also don’t believe in. 

I squint and scuttle towards the familiarity of my office building.  As if complicit in my escape, the lift remains open long enough for me to step quickly into its sterile, though peopled, security.  I sigh with relief.  I have stepped back into a womb.  It is a tight fit, this manmade uterus. But the doors slide shut and I am safe.  Twenty-two floors later, they slide open and I stride meaningfully into the offices of Doctor Farrington and Associates, Child Psychiatry.    

*****  

By seven fifty-two I have made a cup of coffee and am sequestered in my office, staring out across the city.  From this height the people are no longer people, they are teeny tiny insects that swarm along the sidewalk, a colorful river that ebbs and flows.   

“There you are old chap.” 

I swing round.  I didn’t hear the door open, but it must have because Dr Thomas Farrington is standing in my office.  He’s tall, elongated somehow by the vertical threads of his double-breasted pin-striped suit.  His face has the texture of an under-baked pastry – all white and floury.  All he needs is a bowler hat and a London Times folded under his arm and he’d be the stereotypical Londoner.  He’s annoyingly British especially when he’s been to the Bahamas and come back all red and inflamed, like a rare steak you just want to cauterize out of its pain.  He’s more British then than when he’s twirling his moustache.  It turns up at the ends, making his top lip hair look like a grey smile.  Not that he needs another smile.  He grins like a circus clown or perhaps a male Mary Poppins; all sugary bounce, expecting the best of people, ignoring the worst.  Sometimes he’s so blinkered by optimism I suspect he’s been self-prescribing.   

When I’m feeling particularly disenchanted I like to imagine him wearing white boxer shorts – white with red spots - and doing that funny walk thing that John Cleese does in the Ministry of Funny Walks.  Sort of like a German goosestep, but just for fun, not as a military exercise.  I imagine that despite the boxers, he’s still wearing a white business shirt and his double-breasted pin-striped jacket.  And he’s doing it somewhere serious, like a courtroom where they’re trying a rapist, or through Accident and Emergency when there’s been a horrific car accident.  Strangely the thought of Dr Farrington and his stiff British upper lip going a bit ga-ga can make my world seem somewhat brighter.    

“Fuck you,” he says in that ever-so-polite English accent.   

“What?” I almost choke on my coffee.  Has he read my mind?   

“New patient.  Young chap named Farque Yew.  He’s eight.  Hates his mother and his sister apparently.  Tried to do his sister in with a knife.  His mother’s quite distraught.  But the thing is old chap, I’m booked solid.  So . . .” 

He waves a Manila folder at me and without waiting for an answer, places it on my desk and begins to back away.  Do the British do that with everyone?  Back away, rather than turning around? Is it because you’re not supposed to turn your back on royalty and there’s so many bloody aristocrats in Britain that it’s best not to risk offending anyone?  Or is it because they realise they’re so damned annoying that a turned back might very well garner a bread knife, a letter opener or at the very least a murderous glare? 

“Sure, no problem,” I say. 

“Eight-fifteen old chap,” he says, then disappears behind the closed door. 

I flop into my chair, pulling Farque’s file towards me.  It’s new-patient thin, just a single page with only the details gleaned from a frantic mother during a desperate telephone call.  I sigh and glance at my watch.  Seven fifty-nine.  Sixteen more minutes before I start unfucking the world one youngster at a time.  

***** 

I’m one of Farrington’s associates.  A child psychiatrist.  And because I’m a child psychiatrist, you might assume I care very deeply about the world’s children, our country’s future.  But if I really cared about the world’s children and our country’s future, I’d be working with the adults who see themselves as the victims of these supposedly demonic children.  Instead I smile politely at these parents all the while wishing they were the insects I see from the window of my office and I had a huge can of bug spray.    

It’s not that they’re intrinsically bad.  It’s just that they can’t see their part in the problem.  They’re conditioned to bury any festering resentments and unreleased guilt.  When challenged, they say, “We’re educated, balanced, high-functioning contributors to our society.”   

I want to ask them, “Have you looked at our society lately?  Are you sure you want to claim your contribution with such pride?”      

***** 

Mrs Yew; the name deceived me into thinking she’d be more exotic.  But Mrs Yew is middle-aged plump, not grossly obese, though spongy enough to indicate a lack of exercise and a mild excess of comfort food.  She’s got bleached-blonde hair and fake-tan skin.  She perches on the edge of her chair clutching the handles of the oversized handbag she’s rested on her knees.  Her blue eyes lure you in, but I can sense there’s a startlingly coldness there. 

Farque huddles into the far reaches of the chair beside her.  If his hair is anything to go by, Mrs Yew is naturally field mouse beige.  Nothing exotic there.  Farque’s skin is egg-shell white, but it’s his physique, rather than his color that makes him appear fragile.  He’s rakishly thin; as though his body steals growth calories to energize the nefarious activities his mother seems intent on itemising.  It’s fascinating.  Mrs Yew bleats on and on so rapidly I seriously begin to wonder if she can breathe through her ears.  Every word, syllable and phrase is chosen to throw blame, to foist responsibility onto an eight-year-old boy.  

“I see,” I say bringing my hands in front of my face and touching the finger tips together in a way that lets my patients’ parents assume I’m carefully considering their every word.  I’m not.  I’m simply awaiting a natural pause where it won’t seem rude to eject them so that I can focus on the whole point of the session they’re paying $500 an hour for – their afflicted child.  Sometimes the pause takes a while – perhaps a session, maybe even two.  Parents, particularly mothers, have a lot to say about their children.  What about fathers, you might ask?  You might ask.  And I, chastened by my Achilles heel, the absence of any direct experience in this regard, choose not to respond. 

The more Mrs Yew babbles, the more I watch Farque retreat.  Not physically, because he’s held captive, first by the chair’s wooden arms and then by the office.  No, he’s retreating emotionally, closing out the words he’s heard a thousand times before.   

“Right,” I say, hoping my voice will draw Mrs Yew’s attention away from herself.  It doesn’t.  Her blurting continues.  I should be amazed that in less than a decade the child before me has accomplished so much evil.  Clearly he is the devil.  I should be waving a silver cross or wearing a necklace of garlic.   But it’s not Farque who scares me; whose heart I’d choose to drive a stake through. 

I slap my hands loudly on the desk and stand.  “Thank you Mrs Yew,” I say.   “I’ll ask you to step outside now, so I can speak with Farque.” 

Mrs Yew stares at me with the incredulity of a three-year-old that’s just had its lollipop stolen. 

“But I haven’t finished.” 

“I’ve heard enough,” I say as gently as my impatience allows. 

“But you don’t understand.”  Her eyes flare with the cornered wild animal look I know so well.  “I have to be here.  He lies.  He’ll only tell you lies.  I’m not paying you to believe his lies.  I have to be here to tell you what the truth really is.  How will you help him if you don’t know the truth?” 

I take Mrs Yew’s elbow and try to gently raise her from her judgment throne.  She resists.  I lean towards her.  “I understand your concerns, but Mrs Yew, I am a seasoned traveler.  I can spot a lie from fifty paces.” 

I match her gaze.  She wavers, as though she’s unsure of what I mean, but sensing she has lost this battle.  She stands and I lead her to the door.  Before I can usher her out, she breaks the silence, turns back to Farque and says, “I’ll know.  Whatever you say, I’ll know.  I see everything, hear everything.  And remember, liars always get what they deserve.  Always.” 

Finally the door is shut.  Fortunately Mrs Yew is on the other side of it.  I am grateful for its thickness because I know that Mrs Yew will be standing in reception recounting Farque’s extensive list of transgressions to Maizie, our receptionist.  I smile.  Good old Maizie, and yes, I mean that word old.  I doubted Farrington when he suggested in his pompous English accent that we employ his old nanny as our receptionist.  “Sharp as a whip,” he’d said.  “Deaf as a post.  At least without her hearing aid turned on.”  As odd as it might sound to the uninitiated, Maizie’s perfect.  She’s the only one who’s stayed for longer than a month.  The others, young, college-educated, bubbling woman came full of enthusiasm for their quest to help tomorrow’s leaders.  But they withered under the unrelenting onslaught of women like Mrs Yew; women who were so sure they were right, they eliminated any pauses that might invite a conflicting opinion.   

“Right then,” I say, glancing at my watch and perching on the couch beside Farque’s chair.  “We’ve got thirty minutes left.  What would you like to do?”   

Farque shifts in his chair so he’s facing me.  He says nothing, just blinks, quietly examining me like I’m an exotic bug. 

“We could, um, let me see.  We could play cards.  Do you know any card games?” 

He shakes his head.  Well, at least it’s a response – of sorts.  

“Or we could build a model plane.”  I wave towards the dark wood cupboards.  “I have a kit for a B52.  Or perhaps you’d prefer a ship?” 

Farque watches me as an untamed animal might watch its captor.   His eyes never leave me.  Still, he says nothing.  I sigh, stand, walk to my desk drawer and pull out a bar of chocolate and return to the couch.  I rip the wrapping, break off ten pieces and squeeze them into my mouth. 

“Wan thome?”  I ask, letting chocolate and saliva ooze down my chin. 

“My mother’s not paying you to be uncouth.” 

Finally, a reaction.  I swallow my chocolate, wipe my face.  “No?” I lean towards him, resting my elbows on my knees.  I frown.  “What is it that she’s paying me for?” 

“To make me into a nice boy.” 

“And how does she expect I’ll do that?” 

“She thinks you’ll give me pills to take.” “

Pills, huh?” 

“To make me nicer.” 

“Aren’t you nice already?” 

“No.  I’m selfish, intolerant.  I hate my sister.  I am lazy and messy and I don’t try hard enough at school.  I’m a smart aleck and a nasty little boy.  I am greedy and hateful and hurtful and . . .” 

My outward features don’t betray my inner cringing.  I know they don’t.  When I decided to become a child psychologist, I practiced in the mirror.  It took years, but I am finally able to hear this parental laundry list without crying, shouting, punching something or sinking into a depressive abyss.  “And your mother says you tried to kill your sister.”  I try to coax the truth.  Not his mother’s truth, but Farque’s.  I need to understand his truth, if I’m to help him at all. 

Farque is silent.  His head bowed in submission.  “It was an accident,” he whispers.   

“An accident?  Tell me about the accident.” 

Farque curls his legs underneath him.  The gesture shrinks him back into a fetus.  I want to reach out, to touch him, to warn him that even fetuses aren’t safe; they hear, they feel, they absorb.  But it’s too soon to touch him.  He’d recoil from that unwanted, unknown intimacy.  He’d scramble even further into himself. “Tell me about the accident Farque.” 

He turns his head away, perhaps trying to dissociate his being from the words he’s about to utter.  Lies, his mother would say.  I know differently. 

“The accident?” I prompt again. 

“I wanted to help with dinner,” he says.  “I wanted to cut the carrots.  Mum says I never help and I wanted to.  Petra hates me helping.  That’s my sister, Petra.  She says she wishes I was never born.  She’s mean to me, but only when Mum isn’t looking.  Anyway, I wanted to help and Petra wasn’t cutting the carrots.  She was peeling the potatoes.  So I got a stool and started cutting the carrots.  But she told me I was doing it all wrong.  She tried to grab the knife.  I lost my balance on the stool.  The knife slipped.  It hit her in the foot.” 

“It was an accident.  But no one believes me.  No one believes me because I’m bad.” He turns then and I see the tears clearing a path through the thinnest dirt veneer that layers his face.  Beneath that manmade pollution, there’s an innocence, a purity, a vulnerability that I’ve sworn to protect.   

I can’t help myself.  I sweep him from the chair, into my arms, onto my lap.  He struggles, but I hold him firmly, not tightly, not so he can’t breathe, so he feels stifled, just firmly enough that he can comfort himself with a half-hearted struggle then nestle into a security he’s never known.  He cries then.  Cries and cries and cries.    

Nineteen minutes and thirty seconds later my timer beeps, signaling the end of our first session.   

“You’re not bad,” I whisper into his ear.  “Deep down you know that.  Trust yourself.  Trust your own heart.” 

He looks at me with puffy red eyes, wanting to believe me, yet not wanting to betray the one who gave him life. 

“Next week,” I say. “I’ll teach you how to play poker.” 

He smiles.  It’s a drawn, uncertain little smile.  A less-seasoned observer might proclaim it merely a grimace.  It is not.  It is the biggest smile his crushed little soul can manage right now.  And that’s okay.  Little steps.  One-by-one.    

*****  

I didn’t grow up wanting to be a child psychiatrist.  When I was five I wanted to hunt dinosaurs.  My mother told me they didn’t exist.  When I was nine I wanted to be a fireman or a policeman or anything that seemed adventurous and heroic.  My mother pointed out my puny arms and distinct lack of physical co-ordination.  When I was twelve I wanted to be a rock star, until my mother recorded my singing and played it back at my thirteenth birthday party.  “My son, the rock star,” she announced.  I haven’t sung a note since; not even in the shower.  Having expunged rock star from my career wish list, I decided to become a scientist.  The thought of experimenting appealed to me.  I imagined my mother in a cage, fed only what I gave her, suffering through the side-effects of a new drug I’d concocted.  I’d smile gleefully as I thought that sometimes, only sometimes, I wouldn’t give her a drug at all, would just give her something to make her feel bad, make her vomit maybe, or get cramps in her stomach or make her head ache.   

I’ve kept mementos of those dreams in my office.  No smiling family in a silver frame for my desk.  No, I’ve got a stuffed dinosaur.  And on the shelves, amid an impressive array of academic texts there’s a bright red fire truck, an electric guitar, even a three yard long tapeworm that I keep in a jar of formaldehyde.   

Some might consider them playthings for my patients.  They’re not.  They’re trophies, reminders of the lives I might have lived.  Perhaps, if I do become a father, I can inflict one of my dreams onto my off-spring.  That’s what father’s do isn’t it?  At least, that’s what I’ve gleaned from movies; from the bleating protests that my rooster-pecked friends made throughout our high school and college years. 

What would I want my son to be?  A teacher?  A stock broker?  An air-conditioning salesman?  Or better yet, the ubiquitous claim that all the parents I see make, “I just want to see my kids happy.”  Ha.  That’s exactly what my mother said.  And her mother before her.  And probably even her mother before that.  If everyone’s so dedicated to making their kids happy, how come I’ve got a penthouse apartment and a holiday house in the Bahamas? 

Still, I consider myself one of the lucky ones; one of those kids that saw through adults and the defenses they consider to be impenetrable.  It was weird at first, hearing my mother’s words from my Grandma’s mouth.  Sometimes they came from Grandpa.  I made it into a game.  I’d tuck all the caustic comments, the snippy little remarks, the acerbic observations Grandma and Grandpa made into a special cupboard in my mind.  Then, weeks later when my mother would say something like, “You’ll never get anywhere with that attitude,” I’d open my cupboard, examine its contents and think, ah yes, Grandma, last Thanksgiving.  I believe the topic was starting an internet business and my mother’s concern over the costs of marketing versus eventual returns.   

My Grandma declared her daughter a defeatist.  Told her she’d always been a pessimist; that only optimists really made it in the world.  So my mother came home and started her internet business.  Perfumes.  She was going to sell perfumes.  The problem was, despite all the optimism she tried to muster, her efforts failed.  My Grandma crowed that she was right; reveled in my mother’s failure.   

But I could see that Grandma wasn’t right.  I could see that the failure of my mother’s business had nothing to do with optimism and everything to do with an absence of the marketing prowess that only more money than she had could buy.  I saw that my mother was right.  But instead of rejoicing, she waded into her own mother’s negativity, swam in its familiarity.  No doubt it felt safe, predictable.  It wasn’t.  It never is.  But my mother wouldn’t, didn’t, couldn’t absorb that truth.  

*****  

When Farque and I step out of my office into the reception area, Mrs Yew leaps up, takes Farque by the arms and peers at him.  Curious behavior, I think.  Reminds me of someone who takes their guinea pig to the vet, or a budgie or a gold fish, something that’s easier to replace than cure.  Is that what Mrs Yew thinks?  That it would be easier to replace Farque, than to fix what she perceives is wrong with him?  I let the words I long to say burn a hole in my tongue.    

I smile down at Farque, then address his mother.  “Same time next week, Mrs Yew?” “What?” 

“Next week?  Same time?” 

“We have to come back?” 

“These things take time Mrs Yew.” 

She stares at me, like I’ve said spoken too quickly in a foreign language she’s only just beginning to learn. 

“It’s in Farque’s best interests,” I say, then add, “The best interests of your family.” 

“What about pills? Can’t you give him pills?” 

“Pills wouldn’t help.” 

“How do you know?” 

“That’s the point you seem to have missed, Mrs Yew.  I do know.  I can see very clearly the source of Farque’s problems.” 

Mrs Yew tries to speak, but it’s like there’s too many words vying for supremacy; they seem to fumble in her mouth, fail to stumble out in any order and instead become an incomprehensible murmur. “

"Well, that’s agreed then.  Book Farque in for next week, Maizie.”  I ruffle Farque’s hair.  “See you champ.”   

Farque quivers under my touch.  He doesn’t smile.  That’s okay.  It’ll take some time before he’s ready to step outside the false self he’s been lead to believe is real.    

***** 

The train home is crowded with adult-sized black insects whose faces bear the troubles of their adult day.  An irate boss or client; a lost account; an overwhelming challenge; even a pay rise can cause us a grief we’re conditioned to ignore.  It’s fear.  And I see it every day.  Fear of success.  Fear of failure.  Fear of cats or dogs or spiders.  Fear of speaking a truth.  Fear of not speaking a truth.  Fear, in all its horrific machinations drives us all; inexpressible, incomprehensible, unavoidable fear. 

As I look around the carriage at the city’s detritus, I don’t see the badge, that round, grey button with Unfuck the world written in glossy neon red.  But maybe they’ve taken it off or slung their jacket over their arm, bundled it into a bag or briefcase.  I wouldn’t know the wearer if they held a gun to my face or even if they offered me a million dollars no strings attached.  Wouldn’t know which arm or briefcase or bag to search. 

I’ve seen ten clients today; ten troubled children struggling to understand their place in a world that affords them little comfort.  It’s not their fault.  I know though, that no amount of truths whispered conspiratorially into their eager ears will erase the damage.  No, the horrible things they believe of themselves are never totally erased, the imprints remain, like whiteboard markers.  You can wipe away the surface color, but there’s still a trace, a remnant of the message that was written there.  That’s what I can’t erase, no matter how hard I try. 

It’s night time now.  The tonight that seemed so distant this morning now looms like an obstacle to be overcome.  But I keep my promises.  That’s why I’m coming home fully intending to discuss Melanie’s request for a child, our child.  I know what she’ll say.  Hell, I know what I’ll say.  We both do.  We’ve been having the same conversation for two years now. 

“Why don’t you talk to someone?” she’ll say. 

“Someone?”   

“A counselor.  Someone who can unravel the real reason you don’t want a family.” 

“I never said I don’t want a family.” 

“Then why don’t we have one?” 

“It’s more complicated than that.  There’s more to having a family than just wanting a child.” 

“Like what?” 

And that’s where it stops, where I stubbornly refuse to dive deeper.  What would happen if I did?  Would Melanie recoil in disgust?  Would she calmly, silently pack a bag and leave without another word spoken?  I don’t know and because I don’t know I am afraid.  I’m afraid because I’m supposed to know.  I’m supposed to have the answers. 

Unfuck the world.  That damned bloody button.  Unfuck the world.  As though I knew how to bring my father back.  Unfuck the world.  Like he ran away because of me.  Like it’s all my responsibility.  Yeah, well why doesn’t someone come in and unfuck my world?  Why doesn’t someone hold me on their lap, firmly, but not tightly?  Why doesn’t someone whisper in my ear, “It’s not you, it’s her?”  Why doesn’t someone tell me how can I step outside myself to the me I might have been?  The me I ache to be but don’t know how?  Yeah, unfuck my world. 

I step from the train, push my glasses further up my nose and head home for that talk with Melanie – because I, at least, keep my promises. 

 --ENDS--