Page 43 of The Therapist
‘Nothing…nothing, I just need to speak to the police.’ I can feel my body starting to relax now, can feel that the immediate threat is over. I am trembling all over as the adrenalin leaves my body. How close did I come to getting hurt? Would he have done something?
‘Should I cancel your three o’clock?’
‘No, it’s fine, it’s fine,’ I say. ‘I would rather be distracted.’
‘I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have let him come. I mean I shouldn’t have?—’
I hold up my hand to stop her speaking. ‘You weren’t to know but no more new male patients until I know what’s happened to Sandy, until all this is…over.’
‘Right, of course, do you want a coffee, some water, some juice?’
‘No, thanks.’ I shake my head. ‘I just need to talk to the detective.’
I turn away from her and go back into my office, closing the door behind me. Sitting down on my sofa, I drop my head down onto my knees, taking deep breaths to try and regulate my nervous system.Nothing happened, nothing happened.
But something could have happened. I go to my desk drawer where I have left the gun and I take it out. It doesn’t feel heavy enough to cause any damage but it would scare him if he tries to come near me again. It would definitely scare him. Knowing I will have to take it home I think about where I can put it in my house so that Iggy never knows it’s there but so that I can get to it if I need it. Hating the way it feels in my hand, I return it to the drawer. I really, really hope I will not need it.
If everything Mike said about Sandy is true, if she lies and she’s the one who hurts him, then what might happen to a woman married to a man with a temper like that? How far did Sandy push Mike, and was it one step too far? Is that what has happened here? Is Sandy, who lied and manipulated a violent man, now a woman who has paid the price for those lies?
SEVENTEEN
Mike
In his car, he struggles to breathe in and out slowly. Deep breaths are supposed to calm you down but he can only manage to take in small amounts of panting air as his fury mounts. ‘Idiot boy,’ he hears his father say, ‘useless piece of shit.’
The man’s voice will always be inside Mike’s head, always. He knew from the time he was small that his father didn’t like him and it only got worse as Mike got older. Once he turned fourteen, everything became his problem. His father told him he needed to pay for his school uniform, his books, his clothes and his after-school activities.
‘Just like I had to,’ he told Mike as he slumped in an armchair, a beer balanced on his potbelly. ‘Made a man out of me.’
Mike knew what kind of a man it had made out of his father but he dutifully got himself a part-time job, sacrificing hours of study to keep himself in school shoes and to make sure he had the right textbooks. He worked illegally until he was nearly fifteen and then joined a fast-food giant, flipping burgers and filling orders six afternoons a week.
His mother didn’t work because his father didn’t believe in that but she saved what she could from her household stipend to give to him. Now Mike sends her money to an account he has set up for her and that they keep secret from his father. He groans as he thinks about what is going to happen now that he doesn’t have a job. He won’t be able to help her.
The life insurance policy on Sandy floats through his mind. It’s enough money to give him time and space and the freedom to work out his next move. Money has always been about freedom for him but it nearly cost him his life.
At sixteen, he grew tired of waiting to get out of his house and he left home carrying a backpack and nothing else. He had a thousand dollars in his wallet, saved up from his part-time job. When he walked out of his home, he had no idea where he was going or what he was going to do. He spent one night on the street, happy enough because it was summer and warm and people were out late. He stayed awake, worried about keeping everything he had safe. The second night, he searched for a place to stay and ended up in a men’s hostel, where he sank instantly into a deep sleep only to wake to hands all over him as two men tried to grab his wallet from his pocket.
Mike freaked out at the idea that he was going to lose everything and just started hitting. And he felt, as his fists flew and connected with one man’s nose and the other man’s cheek, that everything he had repressed was erupting. Every smack, every ugly word, every sneer from his father was at the end of his fists until he was pulled off and held down to wait for the police.
He thought his life was over before it had even begun but somehow, he ended up with a public defender who was very good at her job, and instead of being sent to prison, he was sent to a supervised group home where he was able to finish school and get a scholarship to university, despite having a conviction recorded. His record was cleared after ten years but Mike knowsthat if anyone was looking hard enough, they would find it. Lana will call the police about him coming to her office and they will find his record and then they will come for him.
Every day that has followed his attack on the men who tried to steal from him, he has reminded himself that he is not his father, that he does not use violence. When he and Sandy had been together for a few months, he confessed this story to her and he remembers her saying, ‘You never need to feel like that again.’ But that was when things were good, and it seems to him, at times, that she is pushing him to become the man who beat up two people again. And it also feels like she has succeeded, like everything that has happened in his life over the last year has pushed him here. The man he didn’t want to be is here. And Mike hates that man as much as he has always hated his father.
Using his hand, he hits his cheeks, repeating the words, ‘Useless piece of shit, useless piece of shit,’ over and again, feeling the sting of the slap on his cheek, feeling the pain through his body as he hits harder and harder and his breathing gets faster and faster. Sweat collects under his arms as he keeps going until his arm begins to cramp and he stops, his head falling forward onto the steering wheel.
He is exactly what his father told him he was, and even worse than that, he is his father as well. He is both too weak and too strong. All his life he has been fighting the man inside himself, the one who wants to lash out and hurt people. He has tried to turn his anger on himself, tried to let Sandy use her anger on him in the hope that he will keep the monster at bay, keep the animal away, but here he is and look what he’s done.
Grabbing his phone, he plays the detective’s message again and then he stares down at the number. Maybe if he calls them back, he can get this over with. Maybe they know something already. Maybe they know where she is.
Maybe they already know her phone is at the house. How long does it take to trace a phone these days? He and Sandy don’t have those apps on their phones that allow them to find each other because why would they need them?
But can the police locate a phone in moments or days or weeks? How long does he have? He picks up his phone and calls Sandy again, leaving a version of the same message he has left many times. Her phone is on silent and so he can tell them, tell the police if they find the phone, that he had no idea it was there. Will they believe him? He could have given it to them already. He could even have given it to Lana, but would anyone believe that she just left it for him to find? If he was the police or the therapist, there’s no way he would believe that.
An image from the terrible night after their session with Lana pops into his head. He sees his hands around Sandy’s neck. But that didn’t happen. He went to her room, he was drunk but that didn’t happen, did it?
If he hands over Sandy’s phone, it will point them directly at him. It’s always the husband and Sandy has convinced her therapist that he’s abusive. Lana has spoken to the police. If he reveals he has the phone, they probably won’t even stop to ask questions before they lock him up. He has to be here for his kids. There’s no way he’s telling anyone about the phone.
It’s getting close to 3 p.m. and school pick-up time so he drops his phone on the passenger seat and pulls off, his cheek burning fiercely. At a traffic light he pulls down the mirror to see what he looks like and is shocked by how bad it looks, as though he has actually been touched by fire.
