Robert Lennon - Familiar

She hears him in the kitchen. Bottles rattle as the refrigerator door is opened. She hears ice cracking and clinking. A few minutes later he comes back into the room holding two ice waters in pint glasses and hands one to Elisa. She thanks him. He sits down.

He says, “You need to tell me what you want.”

The question takes her by surprise. “I came here because you told me to.”

But he dismisses this with a shake of his head. “You came so that you could say this to me.” He is back in charge now. His voice is clear and directed. He says, “Do you want to be cured of this apparent delusion, this dream of a previous, or alternate, life? That is, do you want to live fully in the life you are now occupying? And that I have helped you create? Or do you want to hold on to what you believe is real, and alter this life to suit?”

Until now, this question might have been easy to answer, had anyone asked. She wanted to hold on to what she believed was real. But now she isn’t sure. She admits this to him — she says, “I don’t know.”

“All right,” he says, “then that’s something we’ll have to figure out. I want to make sure I understand: you believe that Silas is dead, and has been for some time.”

“In the world I know, he is dead.”

“In the world you know, yes. In your memory, you haven’t seen him for years. You know nothing of him, this young man who is now an adult.”

She says, “I’ve been following him online. I know what his job is. I know Derek and I rarely speak to him.”

“Do you want to see him?”

“I’m going to,” she says. “I’ve been in touch with Sam. I bought a plane ticket.”

He appears surprised. He says, “You understand, much of the work I have done with you and your husband has involved helping you to detach yourselves from your children. Silas in particular. You have chosen your marriage over your children.”

“No” is all she can say.

He nods. “That’s what you’ve done. That’s what this reality is all about. From my perspective — and I am just telling you what I believe based upon what I’m seeing — from my perspective, you are having a psychotic break. Some part of you is rebelling against the choices you’ve made. Your guilt has gotten the better of you and you are denying the reality of your children’s estrangement from you.”

She is beginning to feel uneasy now. “I did not choose my marriage over my children.”

He is nodding, nodding, nodding. “The woman I know did exactly that. Sam allied himself with his brother, moved away with him. You tried to separate them, to persuade Sam to come home. You became depressed. You were hospitalized, more than once. This is not your first break. Your marriage nearly fell apart. Finally you gave up on your sons.”

“I love my sons. I love Sam.”

“That is not in question, Lisa, but you and Derek put them behind you.”

It is like the moment on the road just after it happened, the semi blowing past, her head on the wheel, the undented soda can crushing itself in her mind. Panic is blooming in her. She opens her mouth to deny for the third time that she chose her marriage over her sons.

But the truth is that she believes it. That it is possible. The psychosis, the hospitalization. Making the choice. She is, was, capable of this. More so, certainly, than the universe is, of moving her from one reality to another?

This is not your first break.

She has rarely bothered to remember — allowed herself to remember — the year leading up to Silas’s death. The van crash was like an exclamation point at the end of a cruel running joke — when they buried him, she took that whole year, rolled it up, and dumped it into the grave with him. They were of a piece.

But in truth, the crash was a fluke — an interruption of that time, not a completion of it. And she can remember feeling close to giving up. Lying in bed awake, making deals with herself. What would she sacrifice for it all to go away? To return to what she used to have with Derek, the kind of love that once defined her life, that was the point of her life, that moved her to give up the life she thought she wanted?

Elisa supposes that, in her world, in the world she knows, she suffered a first break after all. The year of blankness, of losing weight and embroidering until her fingers bled. But what was her first break here? What pushed her to it? What did it take her away from?

She looks up so suddenly from her thoughts that Amos gives a start. She says, “What was it? What broke me the first time?”

The question makes him uncomfortable. He fidgets. “You were addicted to the internet. Groups, forums. Many of them about children with mental illness. And politics, you became obsessed with politics, and you were angry all the time. You stayed up all night on your computer, posting on various forums under various names, and, according to Derek, you would only talk about those things, your children and politics. Sarah Palin, you became obsessed with Sarah Palin. You lost interest in sex. Derek nearly moved in with another woman.”

Elisa says, “Sarah Palin? Seriously?” She barks out a little laugh.

Amos doesn’t, or won’t, smile. His hands are folded in his lap and he is watching her intently. “You became dangerously thin, and chain-smoked.”

“I hate politics! I don’t smoke.”

“You chain-smoked. Your sons moved out west, and you engaged in loud and sometimes inebriated conversations with them on the phone, at strange hours. And you ended up in the hospital, after Derek found you knocked out cold on the kitchen floor. You hit your head on the corner of the counter and the coffee urn was shattered on the floor and you had been burned by hot coffee. You were treated for malnutrition as well as for your injuries, and when you got out and stabilized, that’s when Derek threatened to leave. Instead, the two of you agreed to come see me. And we worked out the terms. That you would leave the boys alone, and quit the internet and smoking, and eat regular meals with him. And he would give up contact with the woman.”

“Debra.”

“Debra.” He untangled his hands, wiped them on his knees. “Who, in any event, now lives elsewhere and is married, if I remember correctly.”

“Forever?” she says.

“Sorry?”

“The boys, forever? We are never to have contact with them again?”

He groans, and his tone, when he speaks, is exasperated. “ You were not to have contact with them. Derek could, if he liked, though he has not seemed inclined to do so. I don’t know. You were to cut off contact, and it could be restored only through mutual agreement. Between you and Derek.”

“I’ve broken the agreement.”

He nods. “Yes, you have. Derek is afraid for you, Lisa. He isn’t angry. Or rather, he has managed to control his anger. He’s worried. He is afraid you’re breaking down again.”

There is a long pause as she tries to get it all straight in her mind. It makes a horrible kind of sense. All those aspects of her personality that she fears, over which she feels she has only the most tenuous control, those are the ones Amos has informed her led to her breakdown. It is how things might have gone.

“Lisa?” Amos says, sounding somewhat alarmed, and she is surprised to find herself standing up. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going home,” she tells him over her shoulder, and then she’s out the door and heading for the car. She expects him to be right behind her when she turns, but he’s not: he’s standing behind the screen door, looking out at her with his hands at his sides. She waves at him through the windshield, to reassure him, and he raises a hand.

He looks sad, as though he’s failed.