I called Sheila’s office. She had a cancellation. I tried to make a joke about it. She didn’t laugh. I didn’t press the issue. I hailed a cab. The driver smelled of pastrami and motor oil. At last a home-grown cabbie.
He let me off across the street from her building. I stole a smoke before going in. A few minutes late, in the world of Sheila’s patients, meant nothing. It meant high-functioning.
I settled into the couch with a sigh of relief.
The one predictable place in the universe, I said.
She raised an eyebrow.
I’ll complain, I said. You’ll say a word here and there. I’ll have a revelation. I’ll feel better. Until the next time I call and find you have a cancellation. Right?
She gave me a grave look. I knew her take on this. I used humor to avoid the pain. Avoid confronting problems. Blah, blah, blah.
But her look sobered me.
Okay, I said. Things are not that good.
She waited patiently. I told her the story. Some of the story. We talked about Kelly. How to make it easier on her.
I told her a bit more of the story. I told her about Harwood.
Oh dear, she said more than once, that’s terrible.
I still didn’t tell her everything.
You know, I said, I have these dreams.
Yes? she said, leaning slightly forward.
They’re always different, yet all the same.
Yes?
They’re kind of inchoate. Hard to describe. Hard to decipher, one by one. But in one sense they’re all the same. How is that?
There’s always been a crime. A serious crime.
Yes?
And I’m the perpetrator.
Hm.
Usually murder. I’ve killed someone. And I’ve gotten away with it. But not completely. I know I’ve done it, for one thing. And I can’t live with that. And there’s someone pursuing me. Someone who knows. A man in a long black coat, sometimes. I see him on the corner. He gets into the cab behind mine. I’m never really getting away with it. Sometimes the murder happened long ago. When I was young. But the point of the dream is, I’m about to get caught.
These kinds of dreams are not uncommon, she said in a reassuring tone.
What’s uncommon, I think, is how goddamn real they are.
How do you mean?
I wake up. Or I don’t, really. Sometimes I wake up from the dream into another dream. In the second dream I’m waking up from the first dream. And the first dream seems so real, that in the second dream I have to ask myself if the first dream was true, that it really happened. And often it seems that it did. That I’m guilty of some horrible crime.
And then?
And then I wake up from the second dream.
And?
The same thing happens.
What thing?
It still feels horribly, excruciatingly real. I’m only half awake. I’m still guilty. It still happened. And then, after I get up, I slap myself around, I get out into the world, it follows me.
The dream?
The guilt. The reality of it. It can go on for days. I look over my shoulder. I expect the knock on the door. I see a man in a long black coat. I see accusing looks everywhere I go. I’m guilty. I did it. I’m a murderer.
That’s terrible.
You’re telling me, I said. Weeks later, it’ll still come back to me. Now, sitting here now, I ask myself, could it be true? Is there some dark deed I’ve been repressing, in my past? Could it be that I’ve actually killed someone? Is that why I have these dreams, these feelings? Could it be the truth, trying to make itself known?
I don’t think so, she said quietly.
I mean, you hear about all these repressed memory things, right? Some traumatic event, you don’t even know it happened, consciously. Your father raped you as a child, whatever?
There’s considerable controversy about that, Sheila said.
I know. But I can’t help wondering.
You haven’t murdered anyone, Rick, she said firmly.
She rarely used my name. She was taking this very seriously.
How do you know? I asked. I could have. You’d have no way of knowing.
She smiled a reassuring smile.
I know, she said. Trust me on this one.
I had no choice. I had to trust her.
I damn well couldn’t trust myself.