The Summer Man

Chapter TWELVE





Phillip’s office was small but comfortable, blond bookshelves and soothingly neutral artwork. John slouched in the leather armchair next to the window, exhausted by their session, exhausted by the retelling of Annie’s murder.

“Do I need to remind you that it’s a process, what you’re going through?” Phillip asked.

John stared out at the windswept car lot. Sun flashed off metal. “Yeah. Remind me.”

“Shock. Traumatic stress. Stages of grief, guilt, regret…I’ve known you for a while, John. You liked this woman. There had to be something there, for you to be so taken.”

John nodded, his throat hitching. “Yeah.”

“That’s a lot of work ahead,” Phillip said. “You tired yet?”

“I was tired before,” John said. “I was planning to call you, anyway. I’ve been thinking about Lauren, a lot. And women in general. Then this thing with Annie…”

He’d told Phillip about seeing Annie at the picnic, about spending the night with her, about her death…but he didn’t know how to convey the experience of her, or how hopeful he’d felt, being with her. He thought about her half smile and her bright, golden-brown eyes, and how she’d looked, standing barefoot in his kitchen, drinking coffee with him. How dynamic and friendly and interesting in the bedroom, when they’d been together, when he’d been inside her and they’d locked gazes and he’d felt something pass between them, something real and possible. It had felt so good, to connect with a woman again.

Then he thought about the blood, and that brought it on, the loop that had played again and again in his mind’s eye, that had not turned off since he’d walked into the kitchen of Le Poisson.

When Rick had screamed, they’d all heard. A dozen diners had turned toward the kitchen, the room going still for a beat, the shouted words hanging in the sudden lull like some mad riddle. “Leave him alone!”

John hadn’t paused to see the expressions of his fellow diners, although his imagination had since provided his little mental movie with worried frowns, with shared glances of concern and mumbled surprise. He had been on his feet and through the swinging kitchen door as soon as he’d registered Rick’s voice—not the words but the tone, the shrill, petulant fury—and had been just in time to see Rick in the room off the back of the kitchen, mumbling something as he dropped a bloody knife, the clatter somehow muted. Rick dropped to the floor, disappearing behind the steel legs of a long counter that ran the length of the room.

John stepped closer, saw that the room was splashed with blood; it was everywhere, and someone else was near Rick. For some reason he saw the pattern of her skirt, first, before he understood that it was Annie there on the floor, holding her stomach with folded arms, more blood spilling out from beneath their trembling hold. He saw the flowers on the dress, sodden and red, and then he was moving, fast, grasping for the compression-to-breath ratio, finding it as he fell to her side, ripping his jacket off, bundling it, looking for the wound. She shifted, her poor bloody arms falling away from her belly, and he realized how bad it was.

He pressed his jacket against the worst of it. “Call nine one one!” he shouted. “Get over here, somebody get over here!”

He heard someone, a woman, scream, heard more people coming in, a shocked babble of rising voices. He rolled Annie to her back and saw her eyelids flutter, and there was more blood, rolling out of her mouth in a dark stream. Less than ten feet away, Rick lay on his side, holding his knees and grinning and shaking, making small, animal sounds in the back of his throat. The expanding pool of blood unfurled long fingers toward him.

An older woman in a light linen pantsuit knelt next to John, reached out to hold the compress against Annie’s abdomen. Her knees were immediately soaked red. “I’ve got it,” she said, her voice brisk but calm. He found out later that this woman had worked for better than twenty years as a trauma nurse in a Los Angeles hospital. “Is she breathing?”

John bent over Annie’s face, over her half-open eyes, touching his fingers to her neck—but there was nothing, nothing at all, and the gurgling, spluttering cough that erupted from her relaxing throat, that misted warmth across his face, was the part of the memory loop that became slow-motion. That was when it had finally occurred to him that there might be no hope.

He’d started CPR and known within a minute that she was gone. Besides the terrible mess beneath his locked hands, the salty-slick taste of blood when he’d breathed for her, he just knew. The nurse had probably known too, but they’d done what they could, they’d kept it going. A few people ventured to their end of the kitchen, and someone had started shouting that there was another victim, and someone else had screamed, and a man had stumbled past them, vomiting, his dress shoe sliding in Annie’s blood, leaving a red, broken skid mark. John didn’t look up, only kept up the compressions, thirteen-fourteen-fifteen, tip, pinch, BREATHE, lock, one-two-three, kept counting, his shoulders aching, telling himself that there were miracles, that people survived terrible traumas every day, surely worse than this. He was still telling himself that when a pair of EMTs pushed him out of the way. He stumbled to his feet, watching them work, watching Annie’s slack face bob and tremble as they pumped and prodded. He wiped wet hands on his brow, looked and saw that his hands were bloody. He realized how he must look, and turned, wondering where the woman in the pantsuit had gone, where Rick had gone, his numb gaze taking in what was in the kitchen’s back corner, although he wouldn’t really see it until later, in the dark and silence of his lonely bedroom. A cop he didn’t know had led him from the kitchen to an office in the back, away from the two men bent over Annie’s still body. Before they’d turned the corner, John had seen one of the techs shake his head.

There’d been questions and more questions, and a quick exam by another EMT, a brisk, masculine woman with leathery skin and cold eyes, and finally they let him wash his hands and face, let him go…but the mind’s-eye movie really ended when that EMT shook his head, confirming beyond doubt that she was gone—and then promptly looped back to Rick’s angry, terrible shout. There was no one image that stood out, that seemed more or less important than any other, but his mind couldn’t let it rest. Like if he just went over it again, and again, some detail would stand out. Something would explain what had happened, how it had happened…

Phillip was watching, waiting for him. He was a good therapist, a colleague John had known for better than a decade, and John respected his opinion. Trusted it. John dragged himself back.

“I can’t stop thinking about what happened,” John said.

“It’s only been what, four, five days.”

“I know, but…” John closed his eyes for just a second and saw Annie in his kitchen, smiling over the rim of her cup. Saw Rick, dropping the knife. When he spoke, he barely recognized the anguish in his voice. “How do I get through this?”

“You got anything in the house?” Phillip asked. “Ativan, Xanax? Klonopin?”

John blinked. “You telling me to get high?”

Phillip leaned forward in his own chair. “I’m telling you to cut yourself a break,” he said. “This is a terrible thing, what’s happened. Stop me if this doesn’t ring true, but it sounds like you were finally taking some steps away from what you were with Lauren. Opening yourself up, letting your guard down.”

John felt his eyes well up again. “Yeah.”

“And lightning struck,” Phillip continued. “Of course you’re going to think about it. You’re going to remember it and replay it and analyze it, probably for the rest of your life, so give yourself a chance to, to acclimate. You and I both know that you’re strong enough to get through this, but you don’t have to do it all today, or this week, or this month. You can’t, anyway. It’s a process. I said it before, I’ll say it again if you want, but you know that. You bury it and suffer later, or you let it happen.”

John nodded, still struggling against tears. He wasn’t ashamed of crying, he was just goddamn tired of it; his eyes hurt. His heart hurt.

“So, you do what you can,” Phillip said. “Take a vacation, if you need it. Get sleep. Eat decent food. Go for walks. And if you want to turn your brain off for a little while, don’t beat yourself up about it.”

John nodded again, feeling like a child, grateful to be told what to do. “Lauren might have left something in the medicine cabinet…” Right before they’d split, she’d gotten herself a scrip for Xanax.

“I’ll call over to Arnie, get him to phone something in to your pharmacy,” Phillip said.

“I got a call from him just the other day,” John said, remembering with a pang that he’d been telling Annie about it, over their dinner. “Last week. He asked me to start sending referrals over to the new guy in Kingston.”

“Actually, I’ve been overbooked myself,” Phillip said. “Mostly people from Isley.”

“Me too,” John said, and sighed. “Though a few of my regulars are taking breaks, so it’s not too bad.” He was thinking of his last appointment on Wednesday, his incest survivor. Marianne. Marianne was divorced, middle-aged, and overweight and had struggled mightily with unipolar depression and a variety of dysfunctional behaviors throughout her adult life, mostly thanks to an uncle who’d repeatedly molested her when she’d been in her early teens. John had been seeing her five times a month for better than three years, since she’d moved to Port Isley, and had only caught glimpses of the sturdy, confident woman she was, beneath her little-girl voice and constant stream of self-deprecating jokes…except in their last few sessions, she’d been…better. Stronger. And Wednesday, she’d told him that she was tired of letting her past dictate her future, in a clear, grown-up tone that told him just how much better she really was. They’d agreed to move their sessions to once every two weeks, but he wouldn’t be surprised if she went to a call-as-needed by the end of the summer. Maybe sooner. He wished he could take credit for the change, but as far as he could tell, she’d just decided to get better.

People do recover, he thought. They move on. I will, too.

“Leave him alone!” Rick screamed, as he was pushing the knife into her belly, gutting her…

“Give yourself the same advice you’d give to a client in your situation,” Phillip said. “Take care of yourself. Let yourself heal a little. We can start some cognitive work when you’re ready. It is going to get better.”

“Just like that, huh?”

Phillip smiled his gentle smile. “Don’t forget that you’ve got resources, you’ve got friends. Use your support system. And I’ll make time, whenever you need it. Just call.”

John looked at the clock on the wall, saw that his fifty was almost up. He knew he could push it; Phillip staggered his appointments to allow for certain situations, but he wanted to get home, wanted to spend his last day off getting himself together. He was eager to go back to work. When he was with a client, he was the observer, the advocate; he’d learned how to leave his own baggage at the door of his office, a carefully practiced skill that had allowed him brief periods of relief when things had been at their worst with Lauren, and he believed—hoped desperately—that work would save him again.

Phillip stood up with him and walked him to the door. Usually, they chatted for few minutes about work-related stuff, articles of interest they’d read, colleagues they had in common, but John couldn’t think of anything to say. That made him feel like crying again, which made him think of the EMT who had shaken his head over Annie’s bloody corpse. Not gonna happen, that head shake had said. Don’t bother.

“Take care, OK?” Phillip asked.

John nodded and let himself be embraced. Phillip thumped him on the back and let him go. John hunched his shoulders and headed for the lot, squinting as he stepped out into the day, the sunlight an assault. He was as tired as he could ever remember being.