Alex Adams: White Horse

We don’t speak until we’re at the white mailbox and the old planks that form a halfhearted attempt at a fence are behind us.

Lisa cracks the silence. “I hope he’s okay. My dad.”

“He’ll be fine.”

“He’s my father.”

“I know.”

“You could have killed him.”

“But I didn’t.”

There’s a pause as she formulates the question. “Why?”

“The world you knew, that we all knew, is gone. Humanity is mostly dead and what’s left is dying.”

A ditch forms between her eyebrows, and it’s filled with ignorance.

“I don’t get it.”

“I like being human.”

The ditch digs a little deeper.

“He did it because he loved me,” she says after a while. “That’s what I tell myself so I don’t hate him. He’s still my dad, and a person shouldn’t hate their dad. In a way, I feel like I owed him something. It was a hard job, looking after me out here, being blind and all.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“Sometimes.”

“It’s no excuse,” I tell her. “You didn’t owe him that .”

She disappears inside herself for several moments before returning with a new question.

“During sex, did you ever close your eyes and pretend it was someone else?”

Did I? Maybe. When I was younger. Before I began having sex with someone other than myself.

“Sure,” I say to make her feel better. “Probably everyone does that.”

“I tried. It didn’t work very well.”

“Honey, what he was doing to you wasn’t sex or love.”

“Can I tell you a secret?” The question mark has a rhetorical curve, so I stay silent. When we reach the first crossroad stamped into the landscape, she says, “I think I’d still like being touched one day. By a man who likes me.”

“I think you will, too.”

“Do you have any secrets?”

I look at her sideways, tell myself I won’t let this one come to harm when I’ve lost so many along the way. “No.”

Dr. Rose opens a window. Sun and fresh air rush in like they’re in a hurry to go no place but here. This is their ultimate destination, their dream vacation.

I hold my face up to the light, smile. “That could be symbolic.”

“Of what?”

“Of what you do here.”

He smiles. “An optimist. That’s a step in the right direction. Often people who come see me look on therapy as a negative. A black mark against them.”

“ I called you , remember?”

He gets up, goes out to the waiting room. “You want something to drink?”

“Is this a trick question?”

“Yes. I’m going to read your personality based on your beverage choices, so choose wisely.”

I smile. I can’t help myself. This isn’t what I thought it would be. I expected a dry soul shoehorned into a somber setting.

“Coffee with cream. Two sugars.”

“Two?”

“Okay, three.”

“That’s more like it.” He returns with identical mugs, passes one to me. The liquid is hot, sweet, smooth. I alternate blowing and sipping until the first inch disappears.

“What does this say about me?”

He takes his own long sip, slurps a little, doesn’t apologize. When he’s satisfied he swaps the mug for a notepad and pen. “You like asking questions.”

“My coffee tells you that?”

The pen moves on the paper. “No, your questions do.”

I laugh. “If you don’t ask, you may never know.”

He smiles down at his paper. “Why don’t you tell me why you called me?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I’m a therapist, not a psychic.”

“That would make your job easier, no?”

“Scarier.”

I take another half inch of coffee. “I’m not crazy.”

“There are two ways to look at that. Either no one’s crazy, or we’re all crazy in our own way. As a great Greek philosopher once said: Man needs a little madness, or else he never dares cut the rope and be free.”

“Socrates?”

“Zorba.”

Again with the laughter. “I don’t know, Doctor, it’s possible you might be crazier than me.”

“Sometimes I talk to myself,” he admits. “Sometimes I even answer myself.”

“Only child?”

“Eldest. Of two. I have a brother.”

“I have a younger sister. She had imaginary friends. And because my folks wouldn’t buy me a Ken doll, I drew a mustache and chest hair on one of my Barbies.”

“Do you still do that?”

“Only if my date turns out to be a woman.”

The dimple in his cheek twitches. Am I serious and therefore nuts, or am I the perennial comedienne, stowing my pain under a funny blanket? Am I in dire need of analysis? Would I make a great research paper wedged somewhere between obsessive-compulsive plucking and multitasking personality disorder?

“If this is ongoing, you should be in therapy,” he says.

“Do you think?”

“Why don’t you tell me why you’re here.”

I lean back. Take a small sip. Arrange my lie.

“I’ve been having this dream about a jar. Not the grape jelly kind—the old kind. It’s the color of scorched cream.”

“How does it make you feel, this dream?”

“Terrified….”

“It’s old,” James Witte tellsme. Letters trail after his name, interspersed with periods to denote that he’s spent a whole lot of time with his head in books and his mind in the past. He’s an assistant curator at the National Museum. An old friend, although he looks the same as the day we graduated high school: thin, narrow-shouldered, pale. His eyes gleam as he circles the jar.

“Really old.”

“Is that a technical term?”

He laughs. I get a flash of him sucking on a beer bong at a postgrad party. “Yeah, it’s technical. Translation: I don’t know how old it is, but it’s really fucking old.”

“Wow. That is old.”

“If I had to guess, I’d say it’s Greek. Maybe Roman. The curve of the handles, the way they attach to the tapering trunk… But there’s no design. Yet, it’s symmetrical, which would suggest it was made on a wheel. And everything made on the wheel had some design, be it painted or etched.”

A soft shadow bats at the window. My next door neighbor’s cat, Stiffy. Because Ben’s a teenage boy living in the basement of a grown man’s body. The window barely has time to scrape against the frame before the marmalade beast’s squeezing underneath, launching his invasion.

“Can I take it?” James asks. “I’ll bring it back. But I can give you a much better idea of when and where it’s from if I can inspect it in my own space. That way I can get other opinions if I can’t figure it out. Our new intern sorts potsherds like some kind of savant. The other interns call him Rain Man.”

I’d trust James with my life. We’ve been friends since tenth grade when he moved to the area from Phoenix. He’s steady. Loyal. Decent to the bone. So I tell him what I can’t tell Dr. Rose: that someone sneaked into my home and I’m driving myself slightly nuts wondering how and why. All except the fear. I hold that close to my bones lest it seem trite, thin.

He listens intently. That’s how James has always listened. Every so often he asks a question and I do my best to answer it.

“Why don’t you just open the thing?”

“It’s not mine to open.”

On the door, the locks feign innocence. Don’t blame us, the security system failed you . The panel blinks silently. It’s just a robot awaiting instructions from a mother ship in a building downtown.

“Why not toss it in the dumpster?”

“It’s not mine to throw away.”

“Leave it to me.” He grins. “I love a good mystery. Worst case I’ll bring Rain Man here. I’ll tell him it’s a date.”