“You’re the boss. By the way, I love you and want to have your babies.” He pulled back the tab on the plastic lid and took a slow, deep swallow. Nothing had ever tasted so wonderful. “Oh, yes . . . you know, I always suspected that the ‘manna from Heaven’ in the Bible was actually slow-brewed coffee. With whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles.”
Dr. Hayes smiled. “I figured that you’d be a little wonky from the medications, and I’d prefer that you not conk out on me in the middle of this.” “Thank you.” Already the dream—if that’s what it had been—was fading away . . . just not completely.
Don’t dwell on it, pal; dwelling on things is what put you here, remember? “How are you getting along so far?” asked Dr. Hayes. “Okay, I guess. I’ve already caused another client to blow a gasket and I didn’t have to say a word.” “Yes . . . Ethel mentioned something about Wendy. Do you want to talk about it?” “No, I don’t think so. I guess we’ll find out as we go along, huh?”
Dr. Hayes stared at him for a moment, then opened the file lying on her lap. “All right. I’ve spoken to your doctor, and he was good enough to fax me your records—you signed a form granting him permission to share them with any other doctor treating you—”
“I remember. I sign that same form every year.”
“I am required to tell you that.” She flipped through a couple of pages, then back again. “You’ve had trouble with depression for a very long time, haven’t you? Even before your parents’ deaths, you were being treated for it.”
“One hundred milligrams of Zoloft twice a day—mornings and afternoons; thirty milligrams of Remeron at night.”
“That’s pretty hefty, putting Remeron on top of the Zoloft. I take it you have trouble falling asleep?”
“Staying asleep, actually.”
“You wake up after a few hours, then toss and turn, go in and out for brief periods, maybe fall back asleep about an hour before the alarm goes off?”
Martin nodded. “Give that lady a cigar.” He took another glorious swallow of the large café mocha.
Still flipping back and forth between the faxed pages and various forms, Dr. Hayes asked: “I see that the Zoloft dosage was increased right around the time your father completed his last round of radiation treatments.”
“Things were . . . kind of tense. He had trouble controlling his bowels, and anytime he didn’t make it to the bathroom in time, he’d lose his temper or start crying like a baby; Mom and I would switch around—one of us would take care of Dad, wipe him off, clean him up, calm him down; the other would mop up whatever kind of . . . trail he left along the way. It was bad, and I was getting more and more shaky, and I was the only person they had to depend on, so my doctor increased the dosage and that helped a little.”
“Look, Martin,” said Dr. Hayes, closing the folder on whose cover she would continuously write notes for the rest of the session. “I realize that a large part of your recent depression was centered around your parents’ illnesses and deaths, that’s only natural. But their dying wasn’t what pushed you into planning your own death, was it?”
“It might have nudged things a little.” He exhaled, shook his head, and wasn’t surprised to feel a few stray tears dribble from his eyes and slide down his face. “One morning after Mom’s funeral I woke up, showered, got dressed, had breakfast, and was starting out the door when it suddenly hit me that . . . I had nowhere to go. I wouldn’t be taking Dad to and from his treatments or his doctor, I wouldn’t be taking Mom to her cardiologist or running errands for her, I didn’t need to separate their medications for the week and put everything in the dispensers, I didn’t need to do anything around the house because nobody . . . nobody was home anymore . . . all I had to do was go into work at five p.m. and do my job until midnight. That was it. And it scared the shit out of me.”
Dr. Hayes nodded. “So much of your day-to-day life had been centered on helping to take care of them that maybe you forgot to take care of yourself.” Martin shook his head. “Don’t make it sound so noble. I did what any kid should do for their parents.” “Did you resent it sometimes?” “Hell, yes—why wouldn’t I?” “There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s a natural reaction.”
“Thank you, but I’m not looking for . . . what’s the word?—validation. I know there was nothing wrong with feeling that way, it didn’t make me evil, it didn’t make me a bad son or a rotten human being who should go straight to Hell and spend eternity bowling with Eichmann—I know this, okay? Most of the time, I was grateful for having so much to do. It kept the days pretty full.” “What did you do before all of that? How did you fill your days?” “I read a lot. Watched movies. Listened to music. Went to work.” “You told me last night that you’d wanted to be a writer. Did you spend any time writing?” “No.” “Why not?” Martin took another swallow of coffee. “Because it’s too late.” “What do you mean?”
He set the coffee down and cracked his knuckles. “I mean that it’s been over twenty years since I last set foot in a classroom, and I don’t relish the idea of going back now and having to sit in a room with a bunch of kids who are less than half my age. I mean it takes years—sometimes decades—to build a decent writing career. Yeah, I’ve got a file cabinet filled with short stories and half-finished novels, but I’m guessing a quarter of the people in the world have the same thing—and odds are they’re doing something with their stuff.”
“So what’s stopping you?—and please don’t waste our time by going back to that ‘It’s too late’ argument, all right?”
“Look at me, will you? I’m a forty-four year old glorified janitor! I have touched no one; I have moved no one; I have helped no one, not really, not judging from the results—and I’ve got a pair of matching headstones I can show you to back up that last point. More of my life is behind me than ahead, and I’d rather not spend whatever years I have left working my ass off to fail at something else.” Even to himself, it sounded like whining, and he was sorry now he’d ever started talking. “What have you failed at before?” “I should have . . .” He stopped himself. “You should have what, Martin?” He shook his head. “I hear it in my head and it sounds so stupid that I’m too embarrassed to actually say it.” “I’m not going to laugh at or make fun of you.”
“I should think not. People don’t bring piping hot café mochas that can easily be thrown in the face to someone they’re planning to mock. That wasn’t a threat or anything.”
“I know. But I’d still like an answer to my question. You should have . . . what?”
“I was going to say, ‘I should have been able to save them,’ but even back then whenever I thought that, I knew it was stupid. Nothing could save them after a certain point; cancer comes back, its spreads and metastasizes and all you can do is pump someone full of pain killers to keep them comfortable; bad hearts give out, regardless of the catheterizations and stents and bypasses and nitro tablets. I don’t think I actually believed I could save them, but . . .”
“But maybe what you were feeling was something close to that?”
Martin ran a hand over his face, exhaling loudly, becoming irritated with the tears. “I should have been able to do more to help them.” “But from the sound of it, you did more than anyone had the right to expect.” “I could’ve found the money to buy her a goddamn dishwasher.” Dr. Hayes tilted her head slightly. “Beg pardon?”