Brock Clarke - Exley

“ ‘I’ve got human life — do you understand that? Human life! — in my hands,’ ” I say to my patient, and rise from my chair. She looks startled. As well she might. She is not like M.; she, as with my other patients, expects me to speak like myself. Although we, too, have a “groove”: each Tuesday, she wonders what might be causing her late-onset bed-wetting, and I explain that it is not actually bed-wetting if you have dreams about wetting the bed but don’t actually wet it, and that in any case it’s probably connected to her fear of the ocean. Not of the actual ocean water, but of the ocean floor and all the “yucky stuff” one might step on. I myself have the same fear and have had it since boyhood, and, as I tell her, “Look how I turned out!” Curiously, after the session the patient doesn’t seem to feel demonstrably better. I suspect she is a late-onset healer, as well, and any day now will find herself all at once healed.

“Must run,” I say to the patient, and I run out the door, into my Subaru, and drive to the college. On the way to the college, I notice a stone house. I remember that according to M., K. lives in an apartment in a stone house on the way to the college. I wonder if that’s the house until I pass another stone house, and then another one, and still another. By the time I’ve reached the college, I’ve passed seven stone houses. The North Country is known for its numerous limestone domiciles, but still, I don’t think I’ve seen so many of them together before. Drat , I think, because this means that in order to find K., I’ll have to search seven houses instead of just one. It’s as though M. (and his father?) have chosen to have a relationship with this woman in this kind of house only to make my life, as a detective, more difficult. This, of course, is a most juvenile way of thinking, “ways of thinking” being as contagious as any other sort of disease.

Anyway, I reach the college, follow the signs, and park in the lot by the Humanities Building. Fortunately, M. is most specific in our sessions. Just as he told me the number of the room in which M.’s dad is hospitalized, so, too, has he told me his classroom number: H-134. I find the room. The door is closed. There is a rectangular window in the door. I peer through it and see M. standing at the front of the room, just to the left of a lectern, which is resting on a table. His eyes are closed; his lips are moving, although I do not hear his voice. The window is wide enough so that I can see the whole classroom: other than the chairs, the table, the lectern, and M., it is empty. I look at my watch. According to M., his class starts at 6:00 p.m. It is now two minutes after. I look back at M. He seems so small, standing next to the small lectern, in front of an empty classroom. Last evening I was peeved at him for telling his mother I had said one thing to him, when in fact I had said another. I was prepared to remain peeved until our session tomorrow. But I look at him with his eyes closed and his lips moving in an empty classroom, and I am not peeved at M. any longer. Poor kid , I think, even though pity is not more productive in a mental health professional than peevishness. We mental health professionals are not put on this earth to pity our patients; we are here to heal them. I have put my hand on the door’s knob, which is more of a handle than a knob, when I hear a deep voice behind me tell me, “Don’t.”

“What the.,” I say, and turn to face the voice. It has come from a security guard: a large, scarlet-faced man wearing a blue uniform and a golden badge and a large belt with a baton dangling on one hip, a firearm holstered on the other. He is reminiscent of the guards in the Veterans Affairs hospital, and my left arch begins to throb in their memory. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t bug him,” the guard says.

“But I’m his mental health professional,” I say.

“Oh,” the guard says. His face relaxes somewhat, more concerned than distrustful. “Is the little guy”—and I suspect the guard is on the verge of uttering something adjectivally offensive, “nuts,” “loony,” “bonkers,” something for which I will have to scold him mentally — “sick?” he finally says.

“I’m not really at liberty to divulge that.” I am preparing to lecture him — I am in a hall of higher learning, after all — about doctor-patient confidentiality when it occurs to me that the security guard might be able to help me. “Is he always in there alone?” I ask.

“Always,” the guard says. “Every Tuesday.”

“No one is ever in there with him?” I say. “Not even a female named K.?”

“Not that I’ve seen,” he says.

“And you’ve never done anything about it?”

The guard’s face turns defensive, the brow descending toward the nose, the nose rising to meet it. “He’s not hurting anyone,” the guard says.

Except himself , I think but do not say, because I’m not certain it’s true. I look into the classroom. M.’s lips aren’t moving anymore, although his eyes are still closed. He has a grateful, shining look on his face, like someone is about to do something nice to him or for him. I am certain he’s thinking of his father or K. And then the look changes, and I know something has gone wrong: either someone hasn’t done the thing M. wanted him/her to do, or he/she has done the thing M. wanted, but it wasn’t so nice after all. Poor kid , I think again.

“What do you think he’s thinking about?” the guard asks.

“Probably his father,” I say. “He was formerly a professor here.”

“A professor, huh?” the guard says. “What’s his name?” I tell him. “Never heard of the guy,” the guard says. “I’ve been here eleven years. I thought I knew everyone who teaches here.”

I am about to respond to this when I notice M. is now walking toward the door. His eyes are still closed, and while they are still closed I consider fleeing. But then he opens them and sees me; the panic in his eyes must resemble the panic in mine. They dart here and there, as if looking for escape, but there is no place else to go. His feet must realize that, because they continue walking toward me.

“Good luck, Doc,” the security guard says, and walks away from me, from us. I turn back to the door. M. is standing in front of it. He looks minuscule, standing so close to the door; his head barely reaches the top of the window. I open the door for him, the way I’ve imagined opening the door for his mother at the NCMHP gala the day after tomorrow.

“What are you doing here?” M. asks, and before I can answer, he also asks: “How long have you been standing there?”

“Just a second or two,” I assure him. “I wanted to ‘watch you in action,’ but alas, it looks like I’m too late. How was class?” It doesn’t occur to me to speak like Dr. Pahnee, and evidently it doesn’t occur to M., either. He shrugs. “It was OK,” he says. “I let them go early. But before that, I read to them.”

“From what text?” I ask. M. raises his eyebrows, as though to say, What text do you think? I’m becoming quite adept at “reading” him, the way M.’s father (and M. himself?) are so good at reading the aforehinted text. “Do you think your father would want you to teach A Fan’s Notes? ” I ask, and M. shrugs. “After all,” I say, “he asked you not to read the book.” “And I didn’t,” M. says, “until two days ago.” Then, before I can say anything, he shrugs yet again. Oh, those shrugs! Those damnable shrugs! Sometimes I wonder: Is this really why I became a mental health professional? To be shrugged at by children? In the same vein, sometimes I wonder why people have children at all. Their parents, of course, must wonder the same thing. Although I cannot imagine M.’s lovely, loving mother wondering that. I cannot say the same thing about M.’s father, on the other hand. I tell M., “I have to say — have to say and, indeed, must say —that I wish I knew your father better.”