The Bronze Cast E-Book

Pam Stavropoulos

• Herausgeber: tredition
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 198

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

A man who has attempted to surmount trauma with willpower consults a female therapist. In the process of client-therapist interaction, with the stakes high for each of them, personal and professional boundaries intersect in navigation of a path for which there are few signposts.

Leseprobe

The Bronze Cast

A Novel

Pam Stavropoulos

© 2019 Pam Stavropoulos

Publisher: tredition GmbH,Halenreie 40-44, 22359 Hamburg

ISBN

Paperback

978-3-7497-8260-4

Hardcover

978-3-7497-8261-1

eBook

978-3-7497-8262-8

All rights reserved

cast (noun):

Something, such as molted skin, that is thrown off, out, or away

SYNOPSIS

What is it about driving across the Anzac Bridge that unnerves him? And why, when he has always been so active, is his energy slipping away?

Ryan has never doubted his strength. But for no accountable reason his sanity is on the line. He needs to talk to someone. But how do you communicate to another person what you don’t know yourself?

With his options running out, he consults Clea, a therapist who is more at home in the world of emotion but who has unresolved issues of her own. Ryan, her new client, is not like her former lover in any obvious way. But in light of the evolving synchronicities, perhaps the source of his distress is similar.

In the process of client-therapist interaction, and with the stakes high for both of them, personal and professional boundaries intersect in navigating a path for which there are few sign posts.

1

Beaded sweat, pupils dilated behind his sunglasses.

Acceleration of the car, and of his nervous system.

This is crazy, this is ridiculous.

I’m one of thousands of people who do this daily.

Indistinguishable from any number of them.

I can do this! Look Mum – no hands!

Apprehension always assails him on the Anzac Bridge. Its stark iron work and clean symmetrical lines are a mocking inversion of his inner turmoil.

Bridges don’t normally bother him. But there is something about this one that unnerves him. That casts a lethal pebble into the still pool of his equilibrium.

It’s clearly something psychological. Some buried association that, were he to confront it, might release its hold on him.

But trying to do that is not an option.

His teeth are gritted, his hands clench tightly on the wheel.

One of these days I’m going to have to get to the bottom of this.

Because it’s getting harder to pretend that nothing is wrong.

Begin at the beginning. That’s what they say, don’t they? But who are `they’ anyway? And with what authority do they presume to give advice?

Advice is what he needs now though. Or at least some kind of affirmation.

Some kind of sign.

Had he not been feeling so bad, he would have laughed aloud.

Signs? Portents?

What the hell is happening to him?

He is the rationalist who examines every premise. It’s one thing to see the limits of that. It’s another to embrace its opposite.

Next I’ll be consulting fortune-tellers.

Begin at the beginning.

Why should that simple age-old injunction elicit such panic in him? And such a desperate need to deflect?

Do I even know what a beginning is?

Much less how to address it.

But the search for origins is surely misguided. There is enough contemporary complexity to be getting on with; sufficient grounds for unease in unfolding of the everyday.

Wars. Corruption. The genocidal decimation of whole peoples. Social problems the magnitude of which dwarf his own mysterious dilemmas. And which make him guilty about experiencing them at all.

Isn’t this unease – this angst, these night-sweats - the corollary of existence? The price of being alive at this seething turn of the millennium?

Or is it more than that?

It is easier to pose the question than to query whether he is really `alive’ at all.

Shards of memory – razor-sharp. And the white expanse of nothingness.

It’s the forgotten bits that scare the hell out of him. And that make him want to leave well enough alone.

Not that any part of me is functioning well.

How has it come to this?

How can he be sitting in the reception area of a counsellor waiting for an appointment?

Must have really lost it.

Should get out before trying to communicate what is incommunicable anyway.

What the hell am I hoping for?

She sees him before he sees her. And is glad of the instant of unobserved appraisal.

Apparently relaxed demeanor. But signs of tension as well.

The body doesn’t lie.

Casually dressed, slightly dishevelled looking. Hard to read his age (early forties?)

`Ryan? I’m Clea. Please come this way’.

The room is small. Too small for his liking.

He feels caged, constrained. Wants to be out in the open air, to feel earth beneath his feet. Memories of the desert come back to him; the light, the space.

But things weren’t good out there either. And he is past believing that all he needs is a change of scene.

You think you want me to talk. But are you prepared for what you might hear? Am I?

It lies dormant much of the time.

Until it erupts.

There are two comfortable looking chairs, and she is motioning him towards one of them.

But as the door closes behind them he feels nauseous and disoriented.

Rather than a safe space, the room feels overwhelming and suffocating.

He almost stumbles into the chair. Checks himself; leans back against the cushion with as much nonchalance as he can muster.

Barely a word spoken.

Jesus it’s hard already.

`Are you right?’

Solicitous, but not overly so. She is not an intrusive presence. And if he were able to feel anything now it would be gratitude for that.

For the first time, he focuses on her face. Which is angular but not unattractive. Slightly olive skin, short hair, hazel eyes.

Dangly earrings which seem to catch the light. They are distracting; he resists the impulse to ask her to take them off.

`I’m fine’.

Off to a dishonest start.

`You said on the intake form –’

She is looking at him directly but it is not unnerving as he had thought it might be.

` - that you are experiencing panic attacks? How frequently? And what are they like?’

Straight into it, no preliminaries.

But for that, too, he is oddly grateful. Why exchange small talk when she already has the basic details?

Putting into words what he experiences is a big ask though. Not least because it means acknowledging what he now realizes he is still finding it hard to accept within himself.

A silence it is impossible to fill. Golden dust specks dance in the air.

Her earrings gleam like talismans.

`How often would you say you have them?’

How often? When don’t I experience them?

My whole life has become a panic attack.

`Oh – on and off throughout the week’.

Did she raise an eyebrow? Should he tone it down?

`And what are they like?’

What are they like?

Completely disabling. I’m a basket case. Have to pull over to the side of the road, sometimes can’t drive for thirty minutes.

`It’s like - ‘

How could he describe them, even if he wanted to?

`They’re – not pleasant’.

A rueful laugh.

Her eyes are directly on him again. But again it is not intrusive. If he could tell her, he would this time.

`I need –’

She pauses; sounds almost apologetic.

`I just need to get a sense of what it is you experience. I know it’s hard. And that it is certainly not pleasant. Do you sweat?’

`Yes’.

No hesitation now.

`Shake at all?’

`Yes’.

`Have trouble breathing?’

`All of the above’.

`And where are your thoughts? Are you aware of thinking anything? Of anything specific?’

Too early to go there.

`Not really, no’.

A shrewd look.

She doesn’t buy it.

Some more talk, seemingly inconsequential. Except that it can’t be; the context precludes it.

He is likely revealing himself all over the place.

Well that’s OK. That’s what I’m here for. I should say as much as I can say.

She is making it easy for him; she is implicitly helping him to relax. Some of his reserve is melting.

Some of it.

And then the session is over.

Hey, where did that go?

She is booking another one. Puts on little reading glasses; they make her look older.

How old is she? Late thirties? Forty? Around my age.

And her smile is warm.

`So see you then, Ryan’.

Those glinting earrings.

But he doesn’t mind this time.

And if he were to tell her, to the extent that he can, what would she do?

Does she really want to see my fragility?

To witness a gibbering mess? But he is beyond `big boys don’t cry’.

This goes deeper than that.

Memories of cowering; of absolute, abject terror. But little to attach them to.

Have I made things up?

Because I am certainly faking competence.

But it wasn’t always like that.

Why can’t I keep holding on? When I’ve been doing that for years?

2

`Coffee smells good’.

`Gotta have it’.

`Wish I could stop for some. But you pay big bucks if you’re late back to the pre-school’.

`Yeah, I remember. We’re in the wrong industry. See you tomorrow’.

No we’re not.

This work is fascinating.

But she can’t stay to argue the point. Not that anyone here would seriously disagree with her.

This is an industry where you have to love what you do. Pay rate notwithstanding. Despite the poor financial remuneration and the constant risk of burnout, there are riches in this field that she couldn’t have imagined.

Besides which, two years ago it had been hard to imagine finishing her studies at all. The constant assignments and self-work, as well as the need to pay the bills, had been exhausting.

Looking at her own `stuff’ had comprised a large part of the curriculum. How could you presume to assist others in their healing if you haven’t attended to your own?

Not that healing is definitive.

We are all works in progress.

`Mum!’

Her little whirlwind throws himself at her, wrapping himself around her legs.

`How’s my Matt?’

Ruffles his hair; kisses his beaming little face.

I used to think we all started out like that.

Now I know better.

She hopes she is giving him enough. He misses his dad. But the split was amicable and there is regular access.

It’s not what happens but how you handle it.

Or so she tells herself.

`Look at this Mum!’

A red finger painting, still wet and sticky.

`Hey, it’s great!’

It is too. It positively shines with the exuberance of the artist. Another hug, along with the hope that her clothes won’t end up stickily exuberant as well.

That stuff’s a bugger to get out.

Hard to embrace the moment sometimes – literally – and emerge unscathed.

Going with the flow. She so wants to. And is getting better at it. Being a parent provides constant opportunities to practise.

`Can we have pizza tonight?’

`No! It’s not Friday yet!’

It is tempting to indulge him, and also herself. At a basic level it would mean she doesn’t have to cook. But they have a weekly routine which for the most part it seems good to stick to.

So much for spontaneity and going with the flow.

But kids, like adults, need predictability and structure as well. Navigating the two is a basic life task. In various forms in the therapy room that challenge is present all the time.

Later, when Matt is asleep, she has the deferred coffee while washing up.

Running over the events of the day in her mind, and anticipating the day ahead, she can’t help but note the irony of trying to help clients to live more fully in the moment when she still has trouble with that herself.

Ah but I’m improving.

Slowly but surely.

It’s a relief to yield to tiredness. Coffee notwithstanding, she sleeps almost as soon as turning out the light. Oblivious to another irony this time as she begins to drift off.

I’m starting to fall asleep without thoughts of Luke.

In the morning she will need to tell herself differently.

In your dreams!

In which Luke has again figured.

`Unfinished business’ is the term.

It sure feels like it.

The morning air is mild as she walks to work. Relishing that luxury, as she rarely fails to do.

Well-dressed commuters are forging a path in the opposite direction; sidewalk cafes are already doing a brisk trade. As she reaches the plaza area near St. John’s, alongside the fountain and the park, figures moving their bodies in graceful arcs and parabolas come into view.

Members of the Chinese community, practising Falun Gong.

She is intrigued by what seems to be as much art form as spiritual practice and exercise activity. But the sight also triggers memories of Shen, the Chinese asylum-seeker she had attempted to assist. Whose application for permanent residence is unlikely to be successful.

Shen practises Falun Gong as well. Indeed he is a teacher of it. But the logistics of the law are such that he is unable to include that information in his visa application. The likely outcome of her limited involvement in his plight is almost too painful to think about.

But preoccupies her anyway. She is aware, too, as she arrives to greet her first client, of the fragment of the dream she has again had about Luke.

And which has lodged in her mind like shrapnel.

`I had a dream last night’.

`Oh yes?’

She has long ceased to be surprised by coincidence.

`Can you tell me about it?’

He can and he does.

In technicolour detail. It is filled with symbolism which is highly distracting.

She is tempted to run with that. But knows better.

Let the client lead. And focus on the feeling.

`So how did you feel while you were dreaming?’

`How did I feel?’

He looks bemused. And also disconcerted. Her question has arrested the content description he has clearly enjoyed giving.

A medium length pause.

`I’m not sure’.

`Try to describe what you felt’.

And he does. Haltingly, the words less eloquent this time, the pace and flow less smooth.

She feels more connected to his hesitation. Sees in it, as she hopes he will begin to, his potential for healing. In contrast to ideas and content, the emotional realm is less amenable to coherent expression. Because it is harder to articulate feeling.

`I don’t know. Curiosity. Some excitement even. But also – embarrassment’.

`Oh yes?’

Definitely need to go with that. The reluctance of consciousness to own the less comfortable sensations.

In which, if able to be tolerated, the best hope for healing resides.

`I guess it reminded me of – ‘

A reservoir of past experience and present attitudes to it opens up. Which engages them both for the remainder of the session. And which holds out the possibility of fruitful work for the next.

When he leaves he looks quiet and thoughtful.

3

How can he communicate what had happened to him?

To the extent that he has any idea. Even entertaining the question is a blow from which he recoils.

What had happened to him ….

Things weren’t meant to happen to him.

He wasn’t a passive pawn in the face of life’s vagaries.

Was that what he had become?

He was meant to shape and control his own life-course.

As he had always tried to do. As he is still exhausting himself in attempting. And which, considering what he is up against, he has gone some way towards achieving.

He had been a good sportsman. And a good businessman. Still has his own small company, the maintenance of which requires effort he is now unable to summon.

Every goal a personal challenge. And many of them attained.

Except, it now seems, those that really matter.

To feel connection. To know and be known.

Why should things so basic be elusive to him?

When he has accomplished what many would regard as much more difficult?

If it was a matter of energy, ability, willpower – those capacities had always been strong in him. Given what he’d experienced, he probably couldn’t have survived without them.

Although at this point, alarmingly, even survival seems ambitious.

What he wants, needs, covets- and the more he wants it the less accessible it seems – is a sense of internal solidity.

Some kind of self-acceptance.

Some kind of (he almost laughs aloud at the word, but without humour) some kind of peace.

Rather than withdrawing from contact (meaningful contact, not the vocabulary of commerce) he wants the affirmation of acceptance.

Acceptance from at least some others. And - the prerequisite, he knows, to experiencing that- from his own beleaguered self. Instead his life is a navigation course, littered with obstacles (minefields, bloody IEDs) which only he can see.

He isn’t the invisible man. Others are aware of his presence. And he can be assertive at times. But it is a presence that seems to have little to do with him.

I don’t identify with that guy.

The can-do operator who can fix everything but himself.

The more I `achieve’, the less real I become.

It’s as if I’m trying to override with `success’ a reality that is impervious to that method. I’m running faster, throwing further, jumping higher. But I’m not moving within myself.

It’s as if my `real’ self – whatever that is, was, or could be – has petrified. Like a bronze cast, riveted to the spot, while some kind of imposter forges ahead.

How can I communicate that?

And how can I put words to the experience I suspect – fear – has given rise to it?

A steady leaking of energy.

My pilot light is going out.

I need to do something about this while I still can. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.

Escalating panic attacks at the side of the road until implosion.

The bronze cast finally melted; a puddle on the street.

He needs sustenance. But is midway through ordering when he remembers the coffee here isn’t good.

Continues with the order anyway. Because he tries not to go to the pub before one, doesn’t do hard drugs anymore, and urgently needs some kind of stimulant.

It also seems rude to renege on the order half-way. But he regrets not doing so. And to the drip of desperation the familiar twist of self-reproach is added.

The pressure inside him is mounting.

I am a gasket starting to blow.

But the coffee tastes different this time. More pungent and bitter.

And as he tosses it back (like vodka, it is imperative it is consumed quickly) he feels that it matches his inner state.

Unexpectedly, there is satisfaction in that. The first satisfaction he has experienced all week. His own physiology must have worked the effect; converting the insufficiently hot liquid into the mildly restorative potion it has seemed to become.

And realizes how far he has fallen when miniscule unconscious influence over something so trivial seems to connote some kind of victory.

Laney would not have been critical. She had been generously receptive to him as he had never been to her.

Or perhaps to anyone for that matter.

Hey we might as well have the full self-indictment.

Rather than regarding them as defensive, Laney had seen all such comments as appealing self-deprecation. As evidence of his ability to laugh at himself.

Where is Laney now when he needs her? She’d slipped his hold.

Or had he driven her away?

The possibility is one he doesn’t want to ponder. But there is little on which he wants to reflect on this cold winter morning of failure, with congealed dregs of coffee in front of him and a future which seems as unappetizing.

Always receptive to distraction from the unpalatable (so I don’t, after all, lack receptivity) he scrutinizes the other patrons of the café. Checks out other accomplices in the pretensions this place has to being a decent coffee house.

For those are the words emblazoned across the window- `Joe’s Coffee House’.

An indolent scrawl, a hopeful suggestion. An aspiration perhaps.

Maybe Joe, whoever he is, is having a tough time of it as well. Had envisaged, in his younger years (is he, too, middle-aged?) a profession more compelling than purveyor of indifferent coffee in premises at best banal and at worst sleazy. Maybe he had missed opportunities, fumbled the ball. And is now, in a different way like himself, not so much settling for less as valiantly holding on.

Maybe the ability to hold on in the face of crumbling expectations is the most exacting skill of all.

At the age of forty two, I have yet to master it.

He needs to arrest his thoughts while he still can.

Knowing and fearing where they could lead.

A memory suddenly insinuates itself. A memory of doublebooking an engagement. He had arranged a dinner with friends when he’d already committed himself (except that he hadn’t) to a function with Laney’s family.

How come, she had asked, you can recall all those work statistics yet not remember a simple arrangement with me?

He’d said `they’re not comparable things’. And had been content to believe it; to leave unexamined a contradiction that surely indicated something concerning about the way his mind worked. Or about how it didn’t.

Perhaps it also revealed something concerning about his character. Because of the two engagements, he had remembered the less important.

The coffee shop is now thoroughly oppressive. He is not quite at the point at which he can locate the oppression within himself.

He pays for the privilege (I am always paying) and seeks refuge in the street. Leaves eddy and swirl; a Bogart hat would not be inappropriate.

For warmth. For protection.

For disguise.

And recalls something else as he saunters to the pub. It’s now almost one, and he needs food as much as he needs a drink.

A(nother) conversation with Laney. A playful conversation (or as close as he could get to that) in the aftermath of sex.

We can’t disguise ourselves from ourselves, she’d said.

And he had said (and believed it)

Ah but we can.

How long had he believed that?

And why, at this point, does it seem important to find out?

Something jars him. He remembers a movie in which the quiet but potent denouement had been the realization of the protagonist that he had failed some obscure but significant test.

That in the multiple, and sometimes unrecognized challenges life throws up, he’d been presented with one that had revealed him to be wanting. And had been forced to acknowledge an internal deficit of which he would have preferred to remain ignorant.

Memory of that movie is disconcerting.

For what other reason than that he can identify with it?

But if he has failed to deliver in some important and irrevocable way (for that was the crunch; the self-insight had been non-negotiable) is that solely the product of his own weakness?

Given what had happened to him – what had happened to him; those words still unseat him - could he have coped better?

When he had always driven himself so hard?

What chance had he ever had to indulge particular qualities and capacities, including some that denoted a fully functioning human being?

What had happened to his ability to relax, to connect, to empathize?

To spontaneity, generosity; the capacity to relate?

He’d experienced those things fleetingly. Only to find himself withdrawing when something more seemed to be required of him.

Sometimes, on those long night drives when almost all he could see was his own incapacity, he wondered whether it was possible to reconfigure himself.

Or even to recognize what that might entail.

Something has been taken from me.

I don’t even know what it is. But I want and need it back.

How did one begin to disclose to another, to a therapist, the enormity and devastation felt to have been wrought?