She hung up the phone and settled back.
“No offering?” she asked, looking at my empty hands. “No biscotti, no scone, no rugelach, not even a donut?”
“I didn’t have time,” I said. “I was dealing with a lunatic in my office who was trying to kill me.”
“He didn’t succeed,” she said calmly. “I’ve got some raisins in the drawer.”
“No thanks.”
“We can drink my coffee,” she said.
“No thanks,” I said.
I had twice tried Ann’s coffee. It was thick, bitter, and I never saw her drink it.
“Why did this man want to kill you?” she asked.
“Because he’s crazy. He thinks everyone is trying to… he’s paranoid. Nuts. A loony. He beat up his son in my office.”
“Your clients sound almost as interesting as mine,” she said, opening a nearby drawer and pulling out a clear, small Ziploc bag of raisins that she opened and began to eat.
“We’ll compare notes sometime,” I said.
“Now is a good time,” Ann answered, looking up at her wall clock. “We still have forty-five minutes. So, I’ll start with a question. Why does a hermetic, depressed recluse have any clients at all outside of those for whom he serves papers?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Common denominator,” she asked.
I’d heard that phrase before today. It had more than a hint of deja vu.
“People come to me,” I said. “I don’t ask for them. I don’t want them.”
“But you don’t turn them down,” she said, nibbling a raisin. “Why? You’ve described some of your clients in past sessions. I see a common denominator. I may be wrong but it’s a place to start.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“They all remind you of the most important person in your life,” she said.
“Who?”
“You, Lewis Fonesca. They are all sad cases. People calling out for help with no one to turn to. A runaway wife, a wife whose husband is dying, a runaway girl, an old man who has been robbed by his partner. And you help them as you cannot help yourself.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“And then what do you do with them?” she asked.
“Do with them?”
“When you solve their problem. What do you do?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“You make the survivors part of a family you are rebuilding,” she said. “You lost your family and so you are rebuilding one and at the same time you reject it. You are an interesting case, Lewis.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“I didn’t say you were the most interesting case I ever had,” she said. “You know Joe Louis the boxer?”
“Of course.”
“I treated him once for a while,” she said. “Nice man. Paranoid like the man you had in your office. Thought everyone was trying to kill him, particularly the Mafia. He would never give up the idea. He had evidence, proof, a distortion of reality that bordered on the creativity of a Borges. He was more interesting than you are, but you will do. So?”
“So?” I repeated.
“Did anything I just said do anything? How did it make you feel?”
“It made sense, I suppose.”
“It made sense,” she said in exasperation. “Of course it made sense, but did it feel right to you? Did you have an epiphany? A sudden jolt of understanding?”
“No.”
“Sense and feeling are not always in agreement,” she said. “You sure you don’t want some raisins?”
I accepted some raisins.
“When you feel it, it works. When it just makes sense, it doesn’t work. The truth must touch your soul.”
“I don’t believe in the soul,” I said.
“I remember you telling me that many times,” she said. “It doesn’t matter whether you believe it or you don’t. You can deny the sight of a mystic levitating, but he is still levitating. Your denial doesn’t change that.”
“Levitation is a trick,” I said. “Weak analogy.”
“Levitation is a trick until you learn to levitate.”
“Can you levitate?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “But I have touched and had touched the soul. I have an idea. Let’s not call it the soul. Let’s not call it anything. Your picture was in the newspaper today.”
“I know,” I said.
“I have an extra copy. Would you like it?”
“No, thanks.”
“Someone tried to kill you?”
“I think so.”
“Why?”
“Don’t you want to know ‘who’?”
“No, I’d prefer ‘why.’ It saves a step.”
“Because I’m coming too close.”
“To what?”
“Damned if I know,” I said.
“Interesting thing to say,” Ann said, fishing out the last of the raisins. “Why would this knowledge lead to your damnation?”
“I didn’t mean…”
“An automatic response from inside, a protective cliche, but one that bears meaning for you. You could have said, ‘I don’t know,’ or ‘beats me,’ or…”
“I’m lost,” I said.
“Yes, that is why you came to see me in the first place. Do you know what happened to Henry Hudson?”
“He designed a fat car back in the forties,” I said.
“We’re close to something,” she said with glee, throwing the empty bag in the nearby trash can. “You are dodging. I am throwing. Perhaps you’ll stop and I’ll hit something.”
“Henry Hudson,” I said.
“Hudson Bay. Hudson River,” she said. “Searched for the Northwest Passage. Got lost, frozen on the massive bay that bears his name. There was a mutiny. The crew was getting sick. The ice was closing in. Hudson was determined to go on. The crew sent Hudson, his son, and others adrift on the icy water and sailed for home. Hudson was never found. No one knows if he made land. There are Indian stories about white men who lived for years on the shore, of Indians they traded with, of remnants of bones or a shack. But never found.”
“Interesting. There’s a point here?”
“History always has a point,” she said. “Historians always make a point. Often they disagree with each other over the point. What is the point of Hudson’s story for you?”
“If you keep looking for something that isn’t there and you’re too stubborn to admit it, you might get yourself killed,” I said.
“Or, you might find the Northwest Passage. Samuel Hearne tried and failed.”
“Samuel Hearne?”
“Lewis and Clark tried later with more success,” she said.
“I’m looking for a truckload of novels and short stories,” I said. “Not the Northwest Passage.”
“Henry Hudson found the Hudson River and Hudson Bay,” she said. “Not unimportant discoveries. Maybe you should… what?”
“Look around at what I’ve found and guard myself from mutineers,” I said.
“Close enough,” she said. “Session’s over.”
She rose and so did I. I paid her twenty dollars in cash that I could afford this week.
“One last thing,” she said as I went to the door.
I stopped and looked back at her.
“Can you say her name?”
“Catherine,” I said immediately.
I stood amazed. I had nurtured, protected my dead wife’s name and memory, held it as my own not wanting to let go of my grief, feeling the simple utterance of her name would be a kind of sacrilege to the mourning I did not want to lose. I had spoken her name aloud only to Ann and to Sally.
“You know why you were just able to do that?” Ann asked.