“Johnson City.”
“Hill Country, right?”
“Right,” I say, feeling relieved, on solid footing again. “But I’m actually not very familiar with Real, Texas. What was it like there?”
“It was a small town . . . Well, it still is, really.” He lets out a small laugh. “My mother used to say it was the kind of place where there’s nothing to do every minute, and every minute counts. But that was her.”
“What was?”
“I don’t know . . . how she always saw things.”
“So she had a positive outlook.”
“No . . . that wasn’t it at all.” He looks down, shakes his head, and suppresses a grin as if trying to figure out how to explain something. “It was more like she pretended to have a positive outlook. You know the kind, right?”
I hesitate, because I do know all too well, but also because I’m trying not to let my past experiences, my personal bias, eclipse what could be an important communicative moment between us.
“How did that affect you?” I ask. “The way your mom was.”
“Sometimes it was okay.”
“Can you tell me about the times when it wasn’t?”
“Well, I guess it bothered me.”
“In what way?”
“How she liked to shove stuff under the carpet. You know, when things went wrong.”
“What kinds of things went wrong?”
Donny Ray turns his head toward a cheap painting that hangs on the wall. I look, too. Some generic street scene. A little girl wearing a blue dress stands in an open doorway, her expression pensive yet sad.
I give him time and space to sort through his thoughts, but his eyes seem slightly unfocused. A bit vacant, even. Much like our last session, he seems to be traveling back, revisiting a long-ago place. I observe his hands, opening up and falling gradually to his sides. I study his breathing, slower now, shallower. His face is expressionless. Though I’ve got no indication of his specific thoughts, my suspicion is they’re not particularly happy. I also have a feeling they might center on Miranda.
“Donny Ray?” I say. “Are you okay?”
He doesn’t respond.
I lean in closer, speak louder. “Donny Ray.”
He looks back at me, and as our eyes connect, I realize that whatever was on his mind is now gone, like he’s found his way out of it—or perhaps pushed his way out—and has no intention of going back.
Edging closer to what I suspect is his point of vulnerability, I ask, “What about your dad? How did he deal with difficult things? Did he avoid them, too?”
Donny Ray’s movements are slow and cautious. He seems more alert but also significantly more distressed.
“Uh-uh,” he finally says. “My dad wasn’t like that at all.”
“How was he?”
No answer.
I push a little more. “What was it like for you after he died?”
No answer for that one, either.
And now I realize we’ve uncovered the weak spot in Donny Ray’s armor. Not a complete surprise, considering what he spoke about during our last session. My job now is to take him down that rocky path.
“And your home life?” I ask. “How was that?”
“There wasn’t much to it.” Tension rushes his speech. “We lived in a double-wide. A trailer park. It was on the outskirts of town.”
“What was life like inside that trailer?”
“Not so great, but I don’t think I realized it. Not at first anyway.”
“Can you explain?”
“I guess it’s just that when you’re young, it takes time to figure out there’s more to this world than just what you see around you.”
“What did you see around you?”
No answer again.
“Donny Ray,” I say, knowing it’s time to guide him into that dark place. “What was your relationship with your father like?”
In a heartbeat, all the color I saw before in his face evaporates, and I’m again looking at the frightened young man who first presented himself when we met.
“A foreman,” he abruptly says. “My dad was a foreman.”
“Okay . . .”
“And we didn’t have much, but there was always food on the table. We were never hungry. We always had clothes on our backs.”
“It sounds like your dad was a very good man.”
Donny Ray doesn’t respond. He lowers his head, hands repetitively flexing into and out of tight fists.
“Was he a good man, your father?”
“I . . . I don’t really like talking about that part.”
“Can you tell me why?”
“If it’s okay, sir, I . . . ” Voice getting shakier, words coming out pressured. “I’d really prefer not to right now.”
I wait and watch.
With slow hesitation he looks up at me, as if the silence has given him much-needed courage to finally do so. And in his eyes, I no longer see the piercing intensity, the bluer-than-blue disconnect. There is vulnerability. There is deep inner fear.
Fear that I know so very well, have seen reflected back from countless patients. The kind that, from the moment of inception, never leaves, getting tangled and integrated into every thread of their physical being.
The kind of fear that I’m pretty sure still lives within my own eyes.
41
REFLECTIONS OF FEAR
The scales had finally tipped.
I no longer loved the man in our house because the man in our house was becoming a stranger. Now I only feared him.
That man wasn’t my father, anyway. Even when I caught familiar and fleeting glimpses of him, they were so fractured and shallow that I felt only a vague tug of recognition. It was like looking at a picture of a picture. A disturbing cardboard cutout. A fraud.