Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [37]
“You see that my husband’s upset,” she said, pulling at him. “I think you should go now.”
“Yes, all right,” the father mumbled, blinking, taking the Bible from his son and closing it. The air thickened with the smell of his aftershave.
“We’ve had an accident recently,” she explained. “We weren’t prepared.”
The man had his arm around his son’s shoulders. They were starting down the walk to the driveway. “The Bible is a great comfort,” the man said over his shoulder. “A help ever sure.” He stopped to look back. “Trust in God,” he said.
Jeremy made a roaring sound, somewhere between a shout and a bark, as Harriet hauled him back inside.
Benson’s office was lodged on the twentieth floor of a steel-and-glass professional building called the Kelmer Tower. After passing through Benson’s reception area, a space not much larger than a closet, the patient stepped into the main office, where the sessions were actually conducted. It was decorated in therapeutic pastels, mostly off-whites and pale blues. Benson had set up bookshelves, several chairs, and a couch, and had positioned a rubber plant near the window. In front of the chairs was a coffee table on which was placed, not very originally, a small statue of a Minotaur. Benson’s trimmed mustache and otherworldly air made him look like a wine steward. He had been recommended to them by their family doctor, who described Benson as a “very able man.”
Harriet thought Benson was supposed to look interested; instead, he seemed bored to the point of stupefaction. He gave the appearance of thinking of something else: baseball, perhaps, or his golf game. Several times, when Jeremy was struggling to talk, Benson turned his face away and stared out the window. Harriet was afraid that he was going to start humming Irving Berlin songs. Instead, when Jeremy was finished, Benson looked at him and asked, “So. What are you going to do?”
“Do? Do about what?”
“Those feelings you’ve just described.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do?”
“I don’t think there’s anything you’re supposed to do. It’s a choice. If you want me to recommend something, I can recommend several things, among them that you keep a journal, a sort of record. But you don’t have to.”
“That’s good.” Jeremy looked down at the floor, where the slats of sunlight through the venetian blinds made a picket fence across his feet.
“If you don’t want my help,” Benson said, “you don’t have to have it.”
“At these prices,” Jeremy said, “I want something.”
“Writing in a journal can help,” Benson continued, “because it makes us aware of our minds in a concrete way.” Harriet cringed over Benson’s use of the paternal first-person plural. She looked over at Jeremy. He was gritting his teeth. His jaw muscles were visible in his cheek. “Crying helps,” Benson told them. “And,” Benson said slowly, “it helps to get a change of scene. Once you’re ready and have the strength and resources to do it, you might try going on a trip.”
“Where?” Harriet asked.
“Where?” Benson looked puzzled. “Why, anywhere. Anywhere that doesn’t look like this. Try going to someplace where the scenery is different. Nassau. Florida. Colorado.”
“How about the Himalayas?” Jeremy asked.
“Yes,” Benson said, not bothering to act annoyed. “That would do.”
They both agreed that they might be able to handle it if it weren’t for the dreams. Ellen appeared in them and insisted on talking. In Jeremy’s dreams, she talked about picnics and hot dogs, how she liked the catsup on the opposite side of the wiener from the mustard, and how she insisted on having someone toast the bun. The one sentence Jeremy remembered with total clarity when he woke up was: “Don’t like soggy