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The Schuyler Fortune V: Rose Down, Rose Home-8
The next Monday, a Secret Service motorcade left the Schuyler estate, bound for West Linn. Rose, Jack Darnell, First Gentleman, was inbound to his Psychiatry appointment.
Through Sherwood and Tigard, to I-5 south, then the lovely I-205 east to the forested suburb of Portland named West Linn, the motorcade with a flashing, lighted-up police escort sped its way through tree-lined mansions high above the Willamette River.
It stopped in front of a large, well-manicured home. Jack looked out the window, stepped out of the now open door and walked slowly up the sidewalk to the front door. He rang as a penitent might have, not knowing, literally or symbolically what might be on the other side of the door. An older man with a kind face and serious eyes looked at him somewhere in the vicinity of his left ear, briefly at his eyes and invited Jack to enter.
A Secret Service agent entered as well. The home had previously been swept and inspected minutely. The doctor had passed his vetting. Dr. Smith asked Jack to follow him up to the study of the comfortable home and asked him to be comfortable in the high wingback chair by the fireplace. He offered bottled water to Jack and a coaster.
"My wife would have a fit if I don't at least pretend to have the coaster on her table."
"My wife is the same at the White House," said Jack.
"This water isn't bad." Dr. Smith said after taking a sip. "Would you mind walking with me for a few minutes?"
They walked briskly down the street overlooking the river far below for the next sixty minutes, neither saying a word. The silence between them was peaceful, the slight wind a little cool, no one stopped and stared, no one asked for autographs, no speeches were made. It was what other authors have described as `a companionable silence'.
The Secret Service, briefed before about the walk, had kept some quiet distance behind the walkers and at the end of that hour, Jack had but to shake Dr. Smith's hand and enter the limousine. He reflected that he couldn't remember an hour with a kind man on a quiet walk. Ever.
That was a first.
The following morning after breakfast Jack pulled on his jeans, put on a long-sleeved shirt he found in the dresser and the garden shoes in the closet. He left the house and headed for the garden.
"Hi Jack! I wondered when you would get curious and come to work." said Carol, a muddy smudge on her forehead where she had wiped the sweat off. "We are working with a couple of very different kinds of roses today. Would you like to help or watch?"
"I don't know anything about the care of roses, Carol. I like them, but I can't take care of them." A great glut of sadness threatened to rise inside of him, but she was smiling.
"I was clueless about their care and feeding until I started learning, pretty much at the beginning. I might have destroyed a few plants, but the gardeners didn't let me do that."
"Why don't you start at the beginning? Why don't you take this pile of roses to the burn pile first." It wasn't a question. For the next couple of hours, Jack loaded rose plants on to a wheelbarrow and took them down the bumpy path to the burn area.
"Why am I doing this?"
She told him that some of the plants had contracted a disease common to roses and that burning destroyed not only the ruined plants, but also the insects that had invaded the plants.
"It works." she said. "We get the exercise; the other plants get saved and no chemicals are used. What's not to like?"
Carol had decided early on to concentrate on hybrid tea roses. Floribunda and grandiflora roses sometimes did better in places that were colder in the winter but in her microclimate, the hybrid tea roses flourished. Each rose had to be planted in its own hole, fifteen inches deep and eighteen inches wide about three to four feet from the next rose. The bottom of the hole had to have a cone-shaped mound of potting soil in it for the roots to slide down over when planted.
Before planting, the roots had to be moistened, usually by soaking in water for a few hours. The roots required careful pruning before planting, removing damaged roots, tiny roots and more. Fertilizer was never added to the potting soil.
Several steps of planting, adding soil and water, making certain that all roots contacted soil without any air bubbles were necessary. Jack's hands got covered then stained with dirt. He thought that his hands made the better shovel for some of the tasks.
By the next week Jack had begun to learn the basics of pruning roses. The idea was to produce a plant that concentrates its energy on vital parts of the plant to produce healthy, vibrant blooms the next season. A rose bush growing without pruning sometimes looks like no one loved it.
That thought somehow resonated with him but in one ear and out the other it went.
Jack did learn exactly how to prune roots, how to prune the upper plant and when, then enjoyed the long, tall stems suitable for cutting, majestic blooms, dark green leaves.
He became aware of a natural growing process, which he began to compare to children growing up.
He wondered if his own growing up process had produced a beautiful flower or a stunted plant, unable to deal with a little explosion. Since he couldn't know this, the questions kept circling in his mind like bees around honey.
During the next few months, Jack dug holes, planted roses, dug up roses, picked off aphids from hundreds of rose leaves, soaked up a lot of sunlight changing precursors of Vitamin D to usable Vitamin D in the skin, and fell into bed at night; he dreamed, cried, tossed and just lived through what he later would call 'the numb phase' of healing.
The real angry part was yet to come.
Then one Monday, as the Secret Service line of cars held up traffic on the way to West Linn, I wondered why me. The whole thing wasn't fair. Why did I have to be away from my wife and kids? I didn't really miss the speeches. I didn't miss the reporters or the dinners. I was beginning to be very afraid that I didn't fit in anywhere anymore. Not at the White House. Certainly not at this phony doctor's house, like, the guy didn't even talk.
I couldn't go to the store and buy the legal marijuana or go to movies or watch porn or drink a lot or rent sex, not in my mother-in-law's house. That would have been awkward, and I wasn't really in the mood to hurt Barbara either. I wasn't that kind of guy, anyway.
So what kind of man was I? What was going to happen to me and when? How long was this healing thing going to take? Well, I wasn't going to sit and take it, by God.
This doctor was going to talk or else.
Dr. Smith invited me upstairs to the study there, offered me water, sat by the fireplace with me and said nothing. Not a word. For about a half hour we sat in silence, and then I began to yell. I was furious.
I was able to recount the story some years later and said to Jack Jr. years later that I didn't remember missing any curse word that I had ever heard or read.
The volumes of self-pity, self-loathing, fear and anger, along with frantic pleas for help (that I didn't hear myself utter) only dwindled when it became difficult for me to croak out another syllable and I realized that much of my diatribe had been directed toward the kind old man who had been the first to walk with me for an hour.
I might have collapsed, but don't remember that. I began to cry, but no tears came. I was fresh out of tears.
"I don't know what to do," I cried out, "and...I think I want to just take a very long rest."
"You are coming along just fine without answers for right now. Remember, Jack, this whole thing will take time you cannot hope to rush. You can't make a scar heal quicker. Give what you can to me to sort out, but I have to tell you that you are completely and normally in touch with a very difficult situation."
"Jack, I expect full recovery. I cannot tell you when. You will be the first to know, not me. That's how this process works, and, by the way, this IS a process."
"You aren't the first to have this happen to you and not the last. I want you to keep track of the steps in your own recovery, so you can share them someday with others who are desperate."
"By the way, you are doing this without medication. Some patients need it, some don't. In my judgment you don't at this time. We can consider those at the right time."
"Right now," explained Dr. Smith, "you need exercise, fresh air, sunshine, rest, time, trust in a power higher than yourself, perhaps some meditation, plenty of fresh cool water, good nutrition decreasing your fat and sugar intake to very low levels and an increase in your diet of fruit, nuts and vegetables."
"I will speak to Carol about the diet recommendations for you and give a copy to Blossom as well. I understand she is well regarded by the nursing community in New York City."
"She's the best there is." I sniffed.
Dr. Smith asked a few more questions, told me he wanted to see me next week and then asked if I would walk with him for about forty-five minutes.
Again, at the end, I popped into the limousine and back to the roses.
The next Monday, Dr. Smith talked. At first anyway.
"Jack," he said, "we haven't talked about you yet. Please tell me about your father."
I wasn't ready for the subject, I guess. He must have seen a twitch or a start or a jerk or something.
"How do you feel about him?"
This time I was ready to let him have it with both barrels.
"I hated him. Still do and I'm glad he's dead. He loved alcohol better than mom or me."
Dr. Smith just watched my face, non-committal at most. He acted like I had just told him that my favorite dessert was pudding or something.
"What would you like to ask him?"
"Not a damn thing. I hope he is rotting in hell."
I thought that would get Dr. Smith's attention. It didn't seem to.
"Do you think he is alive there?"
"Now how the blazes would I know that?"
"If he was alive and you had one question to ask him, what would you ask or say to him?"
"I would ask him why he didn't like me."
I had talked myself over the years into thinking that my dad didn't for any number of good reasons. He didn't spend time with me. He spent time with alcohol. He didn't teach me anything that he knew. We never did anything together as a family.
"If he had liked you, how would you have been able to tell?"
That was painful and awkward to answer so I didn't. I had just answered the question in my mind before he asked the question and somehow my answer didn't seem so hot or adult or important anymore.
Dr. Smith looked at my left ear for a while. "Tell me about your mother."
"She had men friends over. Lots of them. They would give me a dollar when they left. They never stayed over an hour."
Dr. Smith's gaze switched over to my right ear as if searching for symmetry or something. Was this a game to him or just work or was the man high on treating the First Gentleman? Wonder if there were bragging rights down at the monthly psychiatry club meetings? He wasn't taking this seriously.
I stood up and made to go. He made a quick notation on a paper and asked me to walk with him.
The next Monday I didn't feel well and skipped the psychiatry appointment. I thought about him during the day and how calmly he was taking all this in. A fleeting thought crossed my mind. It just flitted and left. It seemed important but like a butterfly it skipped in and right out again. I couldn't remember that thought to save me. So, I went to the garden again and got sweaty.
That night I dreamed about floating in a white porcelain tub of warm water with a yellow rubber duck which had an orange beak and someone holding me up and humming to me and washing my hair with baby shampoo and crying.
When I awoke, I sat straight up and yelled like a banshee. I wasn't angry. I just wanted to finish the dream. Blossom came running in, wrapped her arms around me and held me for a few minutes. "There, there, Jack. I thought you would feel again."
Then she left, and I slept until morning broke. When I woke, I felt as if I had been working in a salt mine all night. Drained pretty much. Cautiously interested but I still couldn't remember that thought.
The next visit with Dr. Smith wasn't more of the same. He wanted to eat with me. He told me that it is important to eat a meal with the patient. Sometimes it told him things people couldn't bring themselves to say. Things they didn't know to say.
I hadn't heard of this technique, was beginning to think my own thoughts about where he came up with things but went along to an average American buffet of the type where people load up their plates from several counters all full of pretty average food. A smorgasbord it was not. Even worse, it wasn't a taco stand.
We took our food to a quiet corner several tables from anyone else and through the window the only thing I could see was a bush and a couple of Secret Service guys, probably hungry, by the bush facing outward. There were a couple inside the place, too, and cops out front.
We began to eat. We just picked up the utensils and started to shovel it in. I felt like an egg being inspected and candled before shipment, so was careful to handle my knife, fork and spoon just so, used a napkin placed just so, was careful to wipe my mouth, didn't talk with my mouth full and even though the food was tasteless, cleaned my plate."
Dr. Smith leaned over and with an intensely serious look into my eyes asked me "Imagine you are seven years old. What did that get you?"
"Not a damn thing."
"After all that careful eating, obeying the house rules for meals, being a good boy, nothing changed?"
I started to giggle. Then I began to laugh, and then I laughed strangely harder, an angry and strangled mixture of laughter and cries of rage and had to excuse myself to the rest room, mercifully empty, and sobbed for ten minutes. I could not get the image of that little boy doing his best to change things out of my head.
I washed my face with cold water, marched out to the table, the Secret Service did not stare at me, God bless them, and we left. I felt like a prisoner of myself, a prisoner of my head for some reason and told Dr. Smith. I also told him about my dream and the idea that I could not remember for the life of me. He just nodded.
When I saw Dr. Smith again, only two days later at my request, he told me that he knew a good deal more now about my ability to heal, to cope with trouble.
He told me that there had been a misunderstanding between my parents. It didn't matter, now, whether the chicken or the egg happened first. He told me that some partners reacted to partner behavior by acting out, usually by some equally stunning behavior.
Sometimes those behaviors were masked cries for love and attention, he said. On occasion, the dance, the pas de deux, continued on for years, damaging any person caught on the dance floor with the sparks generated. He suggested that I as a young boy had no power to change my parents or their behaviors, flawed or not.
He told me that no child has that power.
As the child grows up, another factor enters, however and that is the added factor of choice. Children all escape childhood, some gracefully and some not. The common thing is that all children have choices, options to rise above or to magnify and be better or worse than their parents in some way or other.
Mom religious? Son becomes a priest. I can be holier than you, mom. Another example: Dad without education? Daughter gets her Ph.D. in Biology. She'll show him how to do life! Jock Dad becomes a wheat farmer? Jock's son is gay as a flamingo.
Dr. Smith suggested that sameness with a parent in all aspects of life is rare. He reminded me that I did not have a substance abuse problem. I thought about that and shuddered. Who would want to do that, anyway? He shocked me with his next statement.
All children learn something from each parent and faithfully reproduce it. My first thought, which I didn't repeat out loud, was `I don't think so, chummy."
I couldn't wait for my next session. I was on fire to say some things. It was my duty to set this guy straight. I didn't get to be the First Gentleman by stupidity alone. I married well and loved a top-notch girl and I was a great father.
Dr. Smith listened for as long as I wanted to talk. Then he remained silent and just watched my face and hands, but strangely not my ears. He asked me only one thing that session. "Have you figured out who gave you the bath?" Two shocking questions in one week. Had the doc really listened to me with that intensity?
No, I didn't know. How could I have known? Did that parent love or hate me? Was it my mom? My dad? Did it matter? If so, why was that important? What if I had chosen along the line as an adult to be a lover and a great father...could my own dad that I thought I hated been the model for that?
What if it had been my mother? Her idea of love was to divide it among many. If I learned that from her, did I have the full role memorized yet? Did I learn from both parents? None of the above?
I told Dr. Smith at the next visit that I still didn't know, and he calmly said, "All right." as if he had asked me if I had brushed my teeth that morning. Why did I overthink that one just to get an `All right'?
A real chilling thought pierced my head. It was the same thought I had not been able to grab earlier or remember. I didn't need to hear `All right' from anybody. I could say it to myself whenever I wanted and to my kids when I saw them again and to Barbara and Carol and Blossom and the Rainier pilot and Dr. Smith...
I came to the moment again after some length of time thinking. Dr. Smith was looking at my left ear, seriously, and with a suspiciously moist set of eyes asked me if there was anything else I needed to say.