Anniversary

My weekly heavenward journey begins inside a dim, wood-paneled box. The trip is slow and laborious, and the air is suffocating; somehow thick. It reminds me of my grandmother’s dank basement.

Muffled music creeps from every corner of my box; Barry Manilow seems grossly out of place. And then the groaning begins… like something or someone trapped underground, dying slowly. The first time I heard it I feared it was coming from me, but I realized it was something mechanical emanating from outside the top of the box. This determination was not in the least comforting.

The sounds and smells still weigh me down even after all these years. I slump against the softly tufted walls, impatient to arrive, to exit the coffin.

I cross the expansive waiting room to the receptionist’s desk and as surreptitiously as I can manage, search her upper front for a name tag but find nothing…Can’t remember her name…is it Martha? Amanda? Delores? Still searching my memory for a name, I realize that alas, she is not the same person as last week anyway, and therefore my efforts are redundant.

“Good morning… Mr. Desmond, yes? Very good sir, you are right on time, please take a seat.” 

My arrival is noted in the computer, her long nails tapping slowly on the keys. It occurs to me that this has been a different person four weeks in a row. Not sure what that is about…low wages? difficult hours? terminal halitosis?

I do not have long to wait. Marsha/Amber/Deborah returns the tethered phone to its cradle on her desk as she calls my name. Never making eye contact, she waves me toward the far door. I have been granted admission to the inner sanctum. I close the door behind me as I enter.

A cursory glance around confirms that everything on this side of the door appears to be the same…oh, no, wait. There is something new. Doc has a new “session” chair. It appears to be real leather, dark burgundy, soft and inviting. I pass it by with upholstery envy and assume my reclining position on the brittle faux leather couch where I await his entrance which will eventually be accomplished through a doorway behind me and out of my view.

The room is so still I can hear the dust motes as they crash-land on the otherwise pristine desk top back behind me. Layer upon layer, year upon year. What stories are buried in those layers? What truths, lies, admissions, revelations, confessions? How many layers belong to me? I wonder…

At the end of my couch stands an Ikea bookcase stoic and bored. It proffers a half dozen or so dark covered volumes all with embossed titles in very serious fonts, the implication being that someone has read them, that they are pertinent to the work committed within these walls. But how long ago? The dust of the years has muted their titles and choked their words, an indication of their impotence.

On the very top shelf of the structure, a clock toils away marking the passage of time, protected from the elements under its plexiglass dome. It is the dullness of the plastic covering that identifies this as a reproduction of the once popular anniversary clock that performed the sacred duty of time keeping beneath a heavy crystal dome. 

Four “brass” balls hang suspended from a center spindle. They turn like spokes on a wagon wheel that has been laid down flat on the ground, rendering it unable to make progress, unable to make sense of the life moving around it. Around me.

Or maybe more like a weathervane… always changing direction with the wind. Twisting clockwise, pause, counterclockwise, pause. I relate to that constant twisting – unsure which direction is right, unable to move forward, impossible to go back. Always, inevitably, tracing the same path.

This reproduction is driven by two AA batteries and there is a layer of sound that it adds to the crashing dust motes; a too-loud “Tic” as each second passes into the past, the hands jumping forward only to trace the same path hour after hour, week after week. The sound conjures a giant rubber mallet pounding a spike into an ancient timber. It shouldn’t be that dramatic an image, but the inescapable Tic is that pervasive. My time here within these walls has grown this image, along with the ever-growing layers of dust.

Without batteries, the original anniversary clocks sported a brass key at the back to facilitate an annual winding, hence the name anniversary. Years ago, the time pieces were pricey. I remember looking for one to give my parents on their 25th wedding anniversary. How perfect was that…an Anniversary Clock to mark a major anniversary of a couple that should never have spent more than twenty-four hours together let alone twenty-five years. Truly a wonder they made it that long without killing each other or the unfortunate soul that might venture to step between them. Even more a mystery was the fact that they would last another 17 years in the combat zone before my dad would pull the plug, and his tent stakes, and move on to a new partner. But that is a whole other story; perhaps for a future session.

Does Doc’s clock mark an anniversary of his own or is it simply a shelf ornament with a modicum of purpose? Mark time, fill a spot on the bookcase and protect those four or so circular inches of real estate beneath it from the bombardment of dust. Like me? The clock for the most part is ignored by all until one day it becomes more important, more noticeable for the absence of its voice, the silence created without its Tic, Tic, Tic. The batteries will have died from the tortuous boredom. Again… like me? But not today, the batteries live on, as time marches on. As do I.

Tic, Tic, Tic…

I know when Doc enters the inner sanctum because I hear the door open, hear it brush roughly over the wall-to-wall off-white Berber carpet. And I can smell him – his cologne, as heavy as time itself; it precedes him into the room. Something from the 70s; nothing as classic as Old Spice…maybe British Sterling? Or Brut? In my mind I see Pigpen of the Peanuts strip, always moving in a cloud of dust. Doc’s words drift to me on a wave of his cloud, a nostalgic fragrance.
“Good afternoon, I trust all is well,” he delivers the first of his three lines in our mini-drama series. It is a statement, not a question; no answer required or expected. I hear the door as it brushes back over the carpet, and the latch clicks shut.

Mentally I picture him because I can’t actually see him. I think I’ve seen his face maybe three times over the years… I remember the face as stern but with a shadow of concern, as inviting, but not open. His hair, salt and pepper, probably more salt than pepper these days, a textbook example of a victim losing the battle to male pattern baldness. Not tall and lanky, more stocky, just short of flabby. If he goes to the gym, he spends his time in the steam room, not the weight room. My mind settles on the doughy image of a steamed dumpling.

I hear him open the desk drawer, push hanging files around and I wonder whose stories are hidden in those other folders with whom I share drawer space… who are the souls I live in such intimate proximity to yet do not even know their names? Am I locked in amongst murderers? thieves? liars? I feel inadequate and uninteresting. I have not murdered anyone…yet. I don’t steal, at least not regularly or without good cause, and I only occasionally tell the random untruth, but of course, never within these sacred walls. I am sure he would know immediately. This all makes me feel anxious and unworthy of his attention. Good thing I have a therapist.

Finding what he is looking for (my file, I presume), I hear him shut the drawer, move away from the desk and closer to me. He falls into the new “session” chair, and I hear a soft sucking sound as his weight is absorbed. The impact causes a disturbance in the air around me. Yes, real leather. I smell it as it fights for life beneath the cologne. He is now just behind and to the left of my head.

Random thought #1: This would all be so much easier if I had eyes in the back of my head…

Tic, Tic, Tic…

Doc is old school. No fancy-schmancy recording device for this fellow. If memory serves me from my very first session, (before I entered the reclining phase of my treatment and could physically see him), a yellow ruled pad is balanced on an impromptu desktop created when he rests his right ankle on his left knee. I imagine the corners of the yellow pad are curled by now, if it is the original pad. I hear the rustle of the pages filled with my life as he flips them up and over the top to the back, providing a blank sheet, a clean slate on which to record today’s observations. He clicks his pen. We are now officially on the clock.

Random thought #2: What if Doc is not a real doctor at all? what if he is merely an overpaid sketch artist banned from the courtroom for bad cologne choices? Or…what if he is only an actor playing a minor role in this melodrama? I search for hidden cameras, then I wonder which of us gets the nomination for best actor.

Tic, Tic, Tic…

I hear the pen tip scratch over the paper, probably recording date and time, and I imagine he includes a note regarding my countenance… some observation as to how I am “presenting,” or how he perceives I am presenting. I do not always wear my feelings on my face, or in my posture especially since I am reclining. I like to think I make him work for it.

Random thought #3: If he is a real doctor and not some starving sketch artist or actor, why does he not have a regular cleaning service come in, for god’s sake? If he is a doctor, he has the financial resources.

Tic, Tic, Tic…

Doc rarely speaks during the session. His utterances are usually a phlegmy, stomach-turning throat machination. This is his moment; he moves into the spotlight and delivers his second line of our script with a singular lack of feeling.

“Just start where we left off last week.”

That’s my cue. He relinquishes the spotlight, moves to the wings, and I take my place on the mark, center stage. But my mind freezes; I scramble to regain my momentum. Where did last week’s talk-about end? Where do I begin? Why is this a struggle every week, determining where I left off, where to pick it up again?

In the distance I hear him urge and cajole me using that guttural throat thing again, his passive-aggressive nudge. My thoughts had obviously followed some detour to a parallel universe, and are only now drifting back, returning from some place way north of this laundromat; I’m unsure how long I’ve been gone.

The lack of words filling the airspace bothers him. Words are important to Doc. Certainly more important to him than to me. I must admit to fabricating a little (not to be misconstrued as lying; as mentioned earlier, I don’t lie) perhaps just some descriptive embellishments sprinkled into my narrative… a little sumpin-sumpin for him to write down and analyze later. Something to make him think he still has a role to play, a stake in our little production.

I regroup and return to the main menu offering: the plodding of my journey.

His affirming “hmmm, uh huh” assures me that I am now back on the right track to reach my goal, to attain some level of mental-health nirvana. And for Doc, well this may lead to his big breakthrough in the field of counseling the troubled.

We have been at this practice, this dance, for so many years – I want to say ten, but it may actually be fifteen. I can’t remember now; it’s been that long.

Tic, Tic, Tic.

Only now does it occur to me that we may both be tiring of our collaboration. I hear the sound of weariness in his voice, like a reluctant participant in a game of truth and dare. And I feel guilty for taking up space, for my role in continuing the charade. 

Does he feel as entrapped in this dance as I do? I don’t actually know if he is as weary as he sounds…I can’t see him…can’t confirm that his countenance supports my mind’s growing perception. Is he presenting as weary of our weekly life installments?

Random thought #4: Is he breaking up with me???

Tic, Tic, Tic…