Charles Baxter - Gryphon - New and Selected Stories

“Go home,” Jeremy said, “and never say another word about anything and don’t ever again knock on my door.” Jeremy was a lawyer. When speeches came to him, they came naturally. His face in its rage was as white as paper. He stopped, looked down, and hurriedly kissed the boy on the top of the head. As he straightened up, he said softly, “Don’t mind me.” Then, mobilized, Harriet rushed out onto the stoop and grabbed Jeremy’s hand. She tried smiling.

“You see that my husband’s upset,” she said, pulling at him. “I think you should go now.”

“Yes, all right,” the father mumbled, blinking, taking the Bible from his son and closing it. The air thickened with the smell of his aftershave.

“We’ve had an accident recently,” she explained. “We weren’t prepared.”

The man had his arm around his son’s shoulders. They were starting down the walk to the driveway. “The Bible is a great comfort,” the man said over his shoulder. “A help ever sure.” He stopped to look back. “Trust in God,” he said.

Jeremy made a roaring sound, somewhere between a shout and a bark, as Harriet hauled him back inside.

Benson’s office was lodged on the twentieth floor of a steel-and-glass professional building called the Kelmer Tower. After passing through Benson’s reception area, a space not much larger than a closet, the patient stepped into the main office, where the sessions were actually conducted. It was decorated in therapeutic pastels, mostly off-whites and pale blues. Benson had set up bookshelves, several chairs, and a couch, and had positioned a rubber plant near the window. In front of the chairs was a coffee table on which was placed, not very originally, a small statue of a Minotaur. Benson’s trimmed mustache and otherworldly air made him look like a wine steward. He had been recommended to them by their family doctor, who described Benson as a “very able man.”

Harriet thought Benson was supposed to look interested; instead, he seemed bored to the point of stupefaction. He gave the appearance of thinking of something else: baseball, perhaps, or his golf game. Several times, when Jeremy was struggling to talk, Benson turned his face away and stared out the window. Harriet was afraid that he was going to start humming Irving Berlin songs. Instead, when Jeremy was finished, Benson looked at him and asked, “So. What are you going to do?”

“Do? Do about what?”

“Those feelings you’ve just described.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t think there’s anything you’re supposed to do. It’s a choice. If you want me to recommend something, I can recommend several things, among them that you keep a journal, a sort of record. But you don’t have to.”

“That’s good.” Jeremy looked down at the floor, where the slats of sunlight through the venetian blinds made a picket fence across his feet.

“If you don’t want my help,” Benson said, “you don’t have to have it.”

“At these prices,” Jeremy said, “I want something.”

“Writing in a journal can help,” Benson continued, “because it makes us aware of our minds in a concrete way.” Harriet cringed over Benson’s use of the paternal first-person plural. She looked over at Jeremy. He was gritting his teeth. His jaw muscles were visible in his cheek. “Crying helps,” Benson told them. “And,” Benson said slowly, “it helps to get a change of scene. Once you’re ready and have the strength and resources to do it, you might try going on a trip.”

“Where?” Harriet asked.

“Where?” Benson looked puzzled. “Why, anywhere. Anywhere that doesn’t look like this. Try going to someplace where the scenery is different. Nassau. Florida. Colorado.”

“How about the Himalayas?” Jeremy asked.

“Yes,” Benson said, not bothering to act annoyed. “That would do.”

They both agreed that they might be able to handle it if it weren’t for the dreams. Ellen appeared in them and insisted on talking. In Jeremy’s dreams, she talked about picnics and hot dogs, how she liked the catsup on the opposite side of the wiener from the mustard, and how she insisted on having someone toast the bun. The one sentence Jeremy remembered with total clarity when he woke up was: “Don’t like soggy hot dogs.” He wouldn’t have remembered it if it hadn’t sounded like her.

She was wearing a flannel shirt and jeans in Jeremy’s dream; in Harriet’s she had on a pink jumper that Harriet had bought for her second birthday. Harriet saw that she was outgrowing it. With a corkscrew feeling she saw that Ellen was wearing a small ivory cameo with her own — Harriet’s — profile on it. She was also wearing a rain hat that Harriet couldn’t remember from anywhere, and she was carrying a Polaroid photograph of her parents. Harriet wondered vaguely how dead children get their hands on such pictures. In this dream Harriet was standing on a street corner in a depopulated European city where the shutters were all closed tight over the windows. Near her, overhead in the intersection, the traffic light hanging from a thick cable turned from green to amber to red, red to green, green to amber to red. However, no cars charged through the intersection, and no cars were parked on the street. A rhythmic thud echoed in the streets. Leaves moldered in the gutters. Harriet knew that it was a bad city for tourists. In this place Ellen scampered toward her down the sidewalk, wearing the pink jumper and the rain hat, the photograph in her hand, the cameo pinned near her collar. She smiled. Harriet stumbled toward her, but Ellen held out her hand and said, “Can’t hug.” Harriet asked her about the hat, and Ellen said, “Going to rain.” She looked up at the bleary sky, and, following her lead, so did Harriet. Flocks of birds flew from left to right across it in no special pattern, wing streaks of indecision. Clouds. Harriet gazed down at Ellen. “Are you okay?” Harriet asked. “Who’s taking care of you?” Ellen was picking her nose. “Lots of people,” she said, wiping her finger on her pant leg. “They’re nice.” “Are you all right?” Harriet asked again. Ellen lifted her right shoulder. “Yeah,” she said. She looked up. “Miss you, Mommy,” she said, and, against directions, Harriet bent down to kiss her, wanting the touch of her skin against her lips, but when she reached Ellen’s face, Ellen giggled, looked around quickly as if she were being watched from behind the shuttered windows, reached both hands up to cover her mouth, and disappeared, leaving behind a faint odor of flowers.

“Such dreams are common,” Benson said. “Very very common.”

“Tell me something else,” Harriet said.

“What do you want me to tell you?”

“Something worth all the money we’re paying you.”

“You sound like Jeremy. What would be worth all the money you’re paying me?”

“I have the feeling,” Harriet said, “that you’re playing a very elaborate game with us. And you have more practice at it than we do.”

“If it’s a game,” Benson said, “then I do have more practice. But if it’s not a game, I don’t.” He waited. Harriet stared at the giant leaves of the rubber plant, standing in the early-summer light, torpid and happy. Jeremy hadn’t come with her this time. The Minotaur on the coffee table looked inquisitive. “What is the dream telling you about Ellen, do you think?”

“That she’s all right?”

“Yes.” Benson breathed out. “And what do you have to worry about?”

“Not Ellen.”

“No, not Ellen. The dream doesn’t say to worry about her. So what do you have to worry about?”

“Jeremy. I don’t see him. And I have to worry about getting out of that city.”

“Why should you worry about Jeremy?”