The Mourning After (14 page)

So I did.  I told her what the eighteen plus freckles meant.  They were kisses.  They were the kisses from all the angels who were watching over her.  “And that new one,” I added, “right there, right by your ear—that one is from David.”

“How are things at home, Levon?” Dr. Lerner asks. 

Levon takes his time answering.  He is studying the walls of her office and wondering which chairs his parents sat on when they came the other day.  He wonders if it was
their
idea or
her
idea that he needed to come too. 

She mistakes his quiet for having thoughts too painful to voice and silence ensues.

Dr. Lerner is a tall, sturdy psychiatrist whose formal certification includes marriage, family, and child counseling.  Her cozy office, high above Biscayne Bay, is oceans apart from her homeland of Israel, and when she speaks, a hint of the textured accent and culture slips through her sentences.

Levon begins with, “I don’t know what to say.  I’ve never been to a shrink’s office.  Is that okay to say—a shrink?”

She laughs, which puts Levon slightly more at ease.

“What comes to your mind when I ask the question?”

David thrashes through his mind like the wind and rain beating against windows.  He tenses.  If he starts talking about David, he may not stop.

He asks, “Did they tell you how he died?”

“Who?” she asks.

“You know who,” he replies.  “Isn’t that why I’m here?”

“Is that something you want to talk about?” she replies.

Levon goes silent again.  He can’t tell by her frizzy hair and sympathetic eyes if she knows the whole story.  The whole community knows the details of the accident. There’s something threatening, though, about this smart, refined woman thinking the worst of him.

“Do you think it would be useful for our work in here to talk about how he died?”

Levon scratches at his head.  His hands are clammy, and he wipes them on his jeans.  He doesn’t understand the way this works.  He imagined she would ask him questions, and he would give her answers.  Instead, she is being evasive, mysterious.  The stillness is getting to him.

Dr. Lerner stares at him.  He had memorized the three moles on her cheeks.  Her lips are turned up, not a full smile though not a frown either.

“You’re very serious,” he says.

“What makes you think that?”

He doesn’t even bother answering.

“I understand this is very painful for you, Levon.”

Finally, he has a response, “No, actually, you don’t.”

“Don’t what?” she asks.

She is good, he must admit.  The question fills him with sadness.  If he risks speaking aloud, the grief will pour out.  His eyes well up, and he fights the urge to rub the wet from her sight.  The clock on her desk says 1:15.  He’s been here only fifteen minutes, and it feels like an hour.

“Do you think he had to die?” he asks.

Dr. Lerner’s piqued interest doesn’t go unnoticed.  She swipes at the lively ringlets of curls that have fallen across her forehead, framing a nondescript face and unusually large nose.  She backs up in her chair and her hands clasp around her knee.  The elicited response doesn’t come.

“Are you the only one who gets to ask the questions?” he asks.

“Tell me more about David having to die.”

Lucy and her stupid words flood his brain.  “It’s nothing.  I just wondered if you believe that ‘everything happens for a reason’ bullshit.”

“Do you believe it?”

“I don’t know what I believe.  One minute David was alive, and we were talking, and the next minute he was dead.”

Levon begins to cry and she gets up, tall as a giraffe, and hands him a box of tissues.  After she sits back down, she crosses her legs and clears her throat as if she’s about to speak.  Levon is on to her antics and knows she’s not going to say a word.  He shares with her the next sentence that passes through his mind.

“He was such a good person.  He really cared about people.  Me, Chloe, he always took care of us.  He made everyone feel special.  He made them feel good about themselves.”

“He sounds like a likeable boy.”

“He had it all.  He had everything going for him…”

“How did that make you feel?”

Levon looks up from the wad of crumbled tissues and raises his voice. “I didn’t want him dead.”

“Who said you did?”

“You’re implying.  You’re tricking me into saying things I don’t mean to say.”

“I never said anything about you wanting David dead.”

Levon is beginning to feel the seeds of hysteria planting themselves in his stomach. “You have no idea what I’ve been through.  You have no idea what it’s like to be me and live with this…this…”

“This what?” she asks.

“All of it.  I’m so alone.  I’m so alone in this.”

“I’m not sure what that means, Levon.  You are not alone.  You have parents who love you, a sister who needs you.”

“
They hate me!
” he yells across the room. “They blame me for everything.  They wish
I
died and not perfect David.”

“Your parents are in pain, Levon, and I can assure you that they don’t wish for anything to happen to you.  Do you think maybe you wish that for yourself?”

“What, now you think I’m suicidal?”

“Have you thought about it?” she asks.

“Great, my parents think I’m a murderer, and you think I’m suicidal.”

“You’re very worried about what I think of you.  Is it always that way with you?”

Levon shrugs his shoulders.  He worries about a lot of things when it comes to her.  Can she read his mind?  Can she tell when he’s lying? Does she know, like trained lawyers, that a criminal averts his eyes when he’s not telling the truth?  Did she already hear that he let his sister play with an actual live animal that almost killed her?

“I’m here to help you, Levon.  I think you’re in a lot of pain, and I’m your ally.  My job is to work with you to help you get through this.”

His parents told him the same thing when they dropped him off in front of her office building.  They even went as far as to explain the differences between a psychiatrist and a psychologist.  This was their way, he assumed, to prepare him to be put on some drug like Ritalin or Prozac, so they can blame his shortcomings on a chemical imbalance.

He asks, “Is it very common for someone to die the first time they try a drug?”

Dr. Lerner uncrosses her legs again.  “Is there a particular drug you have in mind?”

Levon’s head shakes back and forth.  “No.”

“My experience with drug use is that our bodies are all unique.  Like anything we put into our systems, we never know how we might react.  That goes for food, alcohol, drugs, especially drugs,” she adds.  “It happens, but not nearly as often as food allergies.”

“Aren’t you going to ask me if I’m doing drugs?”

“If you want to tell me, it’s privileged information.”

“Are my parents exempt from being told?”

“Whatever we discuss in here stays between us.”

“Anything?”

“Anything.  Unless, I feel you’re a danger to yourself or to others.”

“That’s actually funny, considering why I’m here in the first place.”

She asks, “Why is it you think you’re here, Levon?”

This time, Levon’s silence lasts longer than before.  He’s thinking and thinking, and the noiseless room swaths him in a breeze that is more prickly than soft.  It’s weird to be sitting across the room from someone and staring at each other without speaking a word.  His thoughts are loud and scattered, and he studies Dr. Lerner to see if she is someone he might be able to trust. 

Here is what he knows:

She thinks he may have wanted David dead.

She thinks he may be suicidal.

She thinks he is a murderer.

She thinks he does drugs.

She knows he’s in a lot of pain.

She knows how to trick him into feeling things he’s been trying to avoid.

Here is what she doesn’t know:

He’s smarter than she is.

He’s scared shitless of drugs.

He’s not a murderer.

He’s not suicidal (although the phrase
better off dead
makes some sense to him).

He loved David too much to want him dead, and the feeling was mutual.  David loved Levon too.

And as far as the pain, well, maybe she got that right.  He was swelled up with pain.  One poke and he would deflate, loudly and violently.

“You just went somewhere,” she interrupts. “Would you like to tell me where?”

“This therapy thing just isn’t working for me.”

“How do you know that?”

“Maybe because when I’m looking at you, I’m thinking about how grating it is being here.”

“That whole time you were quiet you were thinking about me?”

Levon nods.  Geez, he was stupid.  She’s a trained psychiatrist.

“Sometimes when things are too painful for us to talk about, we focus on something benign to cover the pain.  You asked me at the beginning of our session if your parents told me about that night. Why don’t you tell me what happened.” 

She starts to write notes on her pad.  Levon’s irritation grows and mounts into fantasies of swatting spitballs in her face.

“I can’t,” he says, while his hands drop in his lap.  He wishes he could drop, too, down on her couch.

“Why do you think you can’t?”

She thinks it’s because he’ll break down and cry and the pain will rise up through his throat and he will lose control and all the
feelings
will come to the surface and that would frighten him.  But that’s not it.

“I can’t.”

“It’s that hard?”

Levon isn’t sure if hers is a question or statement of fact.

“I just can’t.  Let’s leave it at that.”  His eyes burrow into hers, and he’s probably imagining it, but he swears she can read his mind and she knows he’s hiding something.

“Why don’t we talk about you, Levon,” she begins again.  “Let’s start over.  Tell me about yourself.”

Levon lets out a laugh.

“You’re not used to talking about yourself?”

“Usually about Chloe or David.”

“How does
that
make you feel?”

Levon sits on her question.  “I don’t know.”  And then he pounces, rude and snippy. “How do you expect it to make me feel?” Then, he quickly apologizes.  “I’m sorry, I’m really not such a bad person.”

“I would agree with that,” she says.

“But I don’t feel like myself in here.  I’m distracted.  I’m annoyed.”

“Yes, you said that.  Have you considered that you might be angry, Levon?”

He asks, “At who?  My parents?  My brother? Chloe?”

She answers for him, “Maybe all of them, including yourself.  I’d be mad if I didn’t get the attention I wanted and my siblings were receiving it instead.”

“I wouldn’t want the attention Chloe gets, and David is another story.  I’m prouder of my brother than anyone.  We were best friends.  He was my only true friend.  I could never be angry at him.”

Something about those words make Levon want to cry again.

“I’m sure you miss him,” she says.

Confusion begins to settle as she peels away his layers and probes into topics he had earlier tried to avoid.  He was getting confused about what they were actually discussing.  Who is he supposed to be angry at?  What is he supposed to be angry about?  He shakes his head back and forth.  It can’t be.  He doesn’t feel anger; it’s something else, something deeper and scarier that’s lurking inside.

“I miss him every second of the day.”

A moment passes as she looks at him. He thinks he might cry again.

She says, “Levon, I know this isn’t easy for you.  I know you’re worried about expressing your feelings in front of me, maybe even admitting them to yourself.  I do believe I can help you.  In fact, I know I can help you.”

This grabs his attention.  How could she know anything about him? And yet, the bandage for all his bruises buoys him in such a way that he almost feels guilty for the fleeting absence of melancholy.  He has no right to be happy anymore.

He’s in Dr. Lerner’s office and they’re talking about his feelings, though his mind drifts to a football stadium.  He is five years old, and he and his father are watching the Miami Dolphins play the New York Jets.  Mom is home, pregnant with Chloe, and seven-year-old David is at a birthday party.  His father thought he might be a tad young to sit through the three and a half hour game, but Levon proves him wrong.  It is one of the top-three best days of his life. 

The weather was in the seventies and the day was a bright, clear blue.  They had club seats on the fifty-yard line.  It’s picture postcard perfect, though what mattered the most, what left Levon spewing in his journal years later, was the closeness he and his dad felt.  They tailgated hours before the game with colleagues from the office.  They tossed a ball back and forth, and his father remarked on what a strong arm he had.  “Little Marino,” he called him.  When they got to their seats, their togetherness didn’t end.  Levon was bursting with questions about the yellow flags, the downs, and the multiple penalties that had the crowd going wild.  His father could have easily tuned him out and focused on the field.  He was a diehard Dolphin fan, talking aimlessly about the ’72 champions and how the ’Phins were the team none other could rival.  Bob Griese.  Don Shula.  There he was, watching hall of famer, Dan Marino, toss bullets across the field against the nemesis Jets; nevertheless Craig Keller had only one person on his mind, and that person wasn’t wearing the number thirteen on his back.  It was Levon. 

The memory was carved into the walls of Levon’s mind and remained there for years.  Sitting on his father’s lap—that cannot be undermined.  Consider football and the effort that goes into bringing your opponent down.  Ultimately, the game concludes with a W or an L.  The Dolphins and their Marino got a big W that November afternoon, as did Levon.  However, the memory was bittersweet.  How can a child not feel some sadness when remembering the last time his parent held him close?

“Levon, can you tell me where you were just now?”

Levon was starting to grasp the whole Q & A thing.  When she asked where he went, she wasn’t referring to a physical location.