Fractured by Lisa Lahey

I sat in Clarice’s office every week. My bedroom closet was bigger. A black leather couch with holes in it took up half the room. White stuffing like cottage cheese spilled out of it. Her pine desk overflowed with files. Clarice had more books on her wall than a library. They were in boxes on the floor. All that knowledge. Nowhere to put it.

“Clarice, you’re telling me my kids aren’t mine and my wife isn’t mine and my job isn’t mine?”

“Correct.”

“How is that possible?”

“You’ve been filling in for someone else for fifteen years.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’re not a real person.”

“This isn’t the Twilight Zone! I should report you to your licensing board.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“I bet,” I scoffed. “I’m as real as you are. Have you told Joanie?”

“Yes.”

“You told my wife about your voodoo? Shouldn’t I have done that?”

“She wouldn’t have understood Jamaal. It took an hour for her to grasp it.”

That explained Joanie’s vacant stare, her hands pushing me away when I came near, and the tears in her eyes. I thought she was having an affair. I worried she had cancer. I didn’t know what was happening to my wife when all this time it was happening to me.

I quit smoking six months ago. Wouldn’t you kill everyone in a crowded room for a cigarette?

I walked to the window and leaned on the ledge. My arms shook and my mouth went dry. I woke up this morning and got sucked into a black hole. Not a thing or a place, a vast nothingness in the blackness of space that wasn’t real enough to exist.

“Jaden is ready to come out, Jamaal.”

“Who?” The hackles on my neck rose.

“Jaden, the firstborn. He doesn’t believe in you anymore than you believe in him.”

I was a good father and a good husband. I was a computer analyst and made good money. I kept my family in a beautiful home. Took them on vacations twice a year. Cheered for my boys at their soccer games and took my wife out for a romantic dinner every anniversary. Why was Clarice trying to take all that from me?

Because she’s a bitch.

My eyes flooded with tears. Men didn’t cry when they were upset. Swallow it down. Deal with it.

“I can prove you’re not always here.”

“How?”

“What did we discuss at our last session?”

I paused to reflect. A fog as vast as the black hole that trapped me filled my mind. “I can’t remember.”

“Jaden kept the appointment.”

My nerves were so tight I could snap them like a rubber band. Were Joanie and the kids real? Was anything?

“Where has this Jaden character been?” my voice was raspy.

“Asleep.”

I glowered at her. “Fifteen fucking years is a long sleep. You sure he isn’t Rumpelstiltskin?”

“I’m sure.”

I left the window and walked over to Clarice’s bookshelf. I perused the titles to free my mind from this madness. “The Anima and the Animus,” by Carl Jung. Freud’s “Alter Ego Transference.” I turned away with a scowl.

“Let’s say you’re right. What happens next?”

“You’ll integrate with Jaden through hypnosis.”

“You’re going to hypnotize me?”

“If you’re willing.”

“I’m not willing, doc. I ain’t going anywhere.”

“Jaden has made significant progress.”

“How come I haven’t noticed?”

“Blink your eyes.”

I did.

“That’s how it is when he comes out. You lose time.”

Better than losing your mind. Or is it too late for that?

I panicked and felt as though I would faint. A soft, white cocoon encompassed me. Blurry shadows and muffled voices. Peaceful. Like a womb. How easy it would be to stay and never return. Moments in that womb happened now and then with Joanie. She would be talking to me about God knew what, then she’d raise her voice.

“Where the hell are you?”

Clarice said my name, ripping me out of the cocoon and back into her office.

I looked at her. “I can’t abandon my family. Joanie needs me. The boys need their father.” My throat closed up and my eyes flooded with tears.

“Jaden met the boys. They like him.”

I grabbed Clarice’s coffee mug and threw it at the window. The glass shattered and splintered all over the carpet. A woman laughed.

Clarice didn’t react. She stood up from her chair and said, “Our session is over for today.”

I knelt over the shattered glass on the carpet. There were slivers big enough to see my eyes. Others were a mere suggestion. I was somewhere inside those slivers. The fractured pieces were meaningless. They would only make sense when I brought them together and made them whole again.

Lisa Lahey

Image: Pixabay. com – shattered glass.