The Visible Man

  “It must be fascinating to live with such a recondite person,” said Y____.

  “Not really,” I said. “I don’t even know what recondite means, exactly, but I know it’s not something that makes for a fascinating husband. He was different when I met him. I mean, he was the exact same person, but still different, somehow. It’s hard to explain. We talked about the same things we talk about now, but the conversations were more like regular talking.”

  The first half was over. Rice had still not scored.

  I looked at Y____. He still wasn’t there.

  I looked down at my right hand, which was resting on the surface of the table. I could see it, but it was fuzzy. It felt trapped. There was a hand on top of it.

  “I don’t think your husband is a good person,” said Y____. His voice was borderline inaudible. I had to lean closer. “And I don’t think he’s as smart as you think he is.”

  “No, you’re wrong. You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I protested into my phone, still staring at the TV, which now showed a commercial for dog food. “If you read his books, you wouldn’t say that. He invented a new way to write about the Civil War. He invented it. Do you know how rare that is? To invent a new way of writing?”

  “That’s not what I mean,” said Y____.

  I knew what he meant.

  I pulled my palm away from the table; I could see sparkles on the back of my hand, the glove’s residue. I wiped it on my pant leg. “I need to go home,” I said. “It’s time for me to go home.”

  “Why?” he asked. “What else do you have to do today? Why don’t you come over to my apartment? It’s not far. It’s a short walk. I won’t try anything untoward. I’m not a sexual person.”

  “I need to go home,” I said. “Maybe I can visit some other time.”

  “Why?”

  “I just need to go home,” I repeated.

  “Why? Give me the real answer.”

  “My answer is my answer.”

  “That’s not an answer. Quit talking like an infant.”

  “That’s insulting. That’s inappropriate,” I said. “I don’t need to give you an answer. I don’t understand why you’re suddenly acting like this. You were so nice before.”

  “I wasn’t any different than I always am,” he said. “All I want is to know why you’re leaving. Do you even have a reason? Is it so your husband can explain why you’re always wrong about everything? So that you can keep living a life you find unsatisfying?”

  “You don’t know anything about my life,” I said.

  “I know everything about your life, Victoria.”

  That sentence was all it took to remind me how disturbed this man was, and how stupid I had been for far too long.

  I left three dollars on the table and walked out the door. It was a ten-minute walk to my car, but I can walk fast. Did Y____ follow me? It felt like he did. In my imagination, he was never more than ten steps behind. But how could I know? When I got into my car and locked the doors, I punched around the backseat and the shotgun side of the vehicle with my fists, just to make sure I was alone. My hands were shaking when I gripped the steering wheel. It made the entire steering column shake.

  When I got home, John was in his office, working on an essay about Jefferson Davis. He didn’t ask where I’d been until we were eating take-out Chinese food at dinner; he barely listened to the fake answer I provided. I asked if he had seen any of the football game. He said, “There was a football game?”

  Sabbatical

  Lying in bed that Saturday night, it became clear I needed to make some decisions about how to move forward.

  If I didn’t feel safe around Y____, I couldn’t treat him. That was obvious. But did I really feel “unsafe”? Perhaps I’d overreacted that afternoon. Y____ had never gotten physical, and—as he himself noted—his language and posture hadn’t been any more or less abrasive than it had been on the first day I met him.

  Was I partially at fault for what had transpired? Absolutely. It was certainly not unusual for patients to become attracted to their therapists, but I had accentuated that risk by asking for a meeting outside of our established safe zone. I had allowed our conversation to become too intimate and I’d allowed myself to view Y____ differently than my other patients. I was responsible for my actions.

  But this situation was different. It was.

  Y____ had subterranean problems that made his problematic behavior a virtual afterthought. We weren’t even confronting his central issues. I mean, here was a patient I’d spoken with every week for half a year, and we’d barely even touched on the fact that he was a habitual drug user. His other problems were so profound that the denial of his stimulant addiction didn’t even seem worth mentioning! There was growing evidence that I was not helping Y____ in any way. He had ostensibly come to me to talk about his sense of guilt, but now I was just a sounding board. I was validating his solipsism. The sociocultural conditions he pretended to obsess over didn’t matter a fraction as much as his own desire to be seen as intelligent. He was not interested in changing. If anything, he wanted to be more like himself.

  Still, there were other issues to consider, many of which were tied to my own personal ambition as a psychological practitioner. Would I ever have a patient this interesting again? Never. This was like being Hitler’s therapist, or Springsteen’s, or Superman’s. This was an opportunity to work with that rare variety of person who lives other people’s dreams. Moreover, my time with Y____ had changed how I viewed my own self-worth; I still knew that helping bulimic college girls and unsatisfied commodities brokers was important, but now it seemed unremarkable. Their dilemmas seemed so obvious … so self-indulgent … so traditional. Working with Y____ was real work. If I could solve this riddle, who knew what the result might be? What if Y____ evolved from the selfish person he was into a man who wanted to make the world better? Is there anything more valuable I could do for any one person? Is there anything more valuable I could ever do for society as a whole?

  I either had to walk away from Y____ or I had to embrace his treacherous imperfections. There were only two options, and I had to pick one.

  So, of course, I tried to choose both.

  Here was my plan: I would call Y____ on the telephone and cancel our next session (I would not even go to the office that day, just in case he refused to accept my cancellation). I would tell him that it was currently impossible for us to continue our relationship. If he had romantic feelings for me (which now seemed undeniable), we needed some tangible distance to reestablish those boundaries; I was confident that any misplaced attraction would dissipate if we removed the structured intensity of our dialogue. Then—if we both understood what our relationship was and Y____ was willing to accept conventional two-way communication and traditional therapeutic methods—we could renew our sessions in six weeks. That seemed like the proper time frame: It was long enough to prompt change, but not so long that we’d lose whatever progress we’d already made. On Sunday morning, I explained all of this to John during brunch, as casually and stoically as possible. He agreed that it was the proper decision. “This is the intelligent move,” he said over the top of the newspaper. “You’re being the intelligent person here.”

  On Monday morning, I called Y____ to talk this over. He did not pick up. I called again Monday evening; again he didn’t pick up, so I left a message urging him to return my call. I called again on Tuesday and did not get a response. On Wednesday, I called a fourth time and finally outlined all my intentions in a voice mail message. There is nothing in the previous paragraph that I did not directly say to Y____. I told him he could call me if he wanted to talk this through, and that I would contact him in five weeks time to see if he was still interested in my offer to reconvene. I called again on Friday morning to make sure he’d gotten the message, but his cell phone no longer rang. The number had been discontinued.

  At 4:04 a.m. on Friday, I received this voice mail message from a blocked number:

&nbs
p; “Victoria. This is Y____ speaking. I received your call and message … I’m disappointed. I’m very disappointed … if I’d known that our afternoon together was going to end so negatively, I would have never agreed to the meeting. I’m sorry about what happened, whatever it is you think that it was … I’m still not certain how you feel about what’s happening here. I get the impression you’re having a difficult time differentiating between our personal relationship and our professional relationship … I want you to know that my feelings for you are very real and important, but also ideological. That should mean something to you. We share ideologies and [inaudible], and that matters. Like I’ve said, I’m not a sexual person … I’m sorry I said those things about your husband, even though those things are true, and you know this … Perhaps we will continue my therapy again in two or three weeks, depending on how we feel. But I’ll gladly skip our next session. We both need some time to regroup and decide what we want, and I’m extremely busy right now. But I’ll see you again. You’ll see me again. Thanks for watching the game with me. I had a nice time. Don’t lose those sunglasses. This was Y____.”

  It has been my experience that patients who elect to temporarily suspend treatment rarely return to the same therapist (often, they give up therapy entirely). This being the case, I wondered if that message would be the last interaction with Y____ I’d ever have. As I replayed his message, it seemed like things were over; he spoke with the skittish, sheepish syntax of a man who knows he’s going to be late for dinner but can’t admit it up front. I was relieved, but also a little sad. I’m embarrassed to concede that Y____ was right, at least on one point: Once he disappeared from my life, I was just a person again.

  Something That May Have Happened (September 11)

  It was ten o’clock at night. I was watching television in my bathrobe (the E! network was broadcasting a retrospective on theorists who believe 9/11 was planned by the U.S. government). John was in his office, talking over Skype; an Australian writer was remotely interviewing him about the long-term consequences of the Monroe Doctrine. His office door was closed, but I could faintly hear John’s steady delivery and the stilted, digitized voice of the Aussie. The information on the TV was repetitive. I began to fall asleep. Nothing seemed unusual, until the couch changed.

  It changed.

  I was sitting on one end of the couch. It’s an expensive, high-end couch—plush microfiber, three cushions, not a sectional, good for napping. You sink into the softness, just like they say on the commercial. But—suddenly, and almost imperceptibly—the gravity of the couch shifted. It seemed like my seat raised up half an inch, the way it does when something heavy comes to rest on the other side. I swiveled my head. I looked at the far cushion of the couch. Was it slightly depressed? Was a person I could not see sitting three feet away? I had no idea, but that was my first thought. I’d never sat on a couch with an invisible person, so I didn’t know how it was supposed to feel. I tried to remember how it had felt to sit on the vinyl booth in the bar, but I couldn’t conjure a memory. I picked up a pillow and tossed it toward the other end of the couch. It landed on the arm, softly, in a manner that suggested no one was in the way.

  Is this how insanity begins?

  It wasn’t that I’d forgotten how it feels to be alone. It was more like I had never even thought about how being alone was supposed to feel, until that very moment.

  I was scared (not horrified, but nervous enough to remember the feeling). I wanted to yell up to John, but I could still hear his voice through the door (“A hands-off policy on the Western Hemisphere seems reactionary today …”). He’d be annoyed if I interrupted his interview, especially if this was only my imagination. Instead, I paced around the living room, trying to remember what the empty atmosphere of life is supposed to feel like. I checked the door locks and the windows. At one point, I said “Hello” aloud, but not loud enough for John to hear. Around eleven p.m., I made a cup of coffee and watched two consecutive episodes of Project Runway, followed by two black-and-white episodes of The Twilight Zone. Nothing else happened. I still have no evidence that anyone besides me was ever in the room.

  Normally, I’d view this as nerves. That’s what I would tell anyone else. It’s easy to believe there’s a monster under the bed if you’ve spent the last six months arguing with a monster. Maybe I was ridiculous. But I probably wasn’t as ridiculous as I wanted to be. I probably wasn’t ridiculous at all.

  Something That Probably Happened (September 15)

  “He was here again.”

  This was what John said when I returned from work. My instinctive reaction was to ask, “Who was here?” But even as those words escaped my mouth, I knew whom John was talking about.

  “The invisible man,” he said. “Your invisible boyfriend.”

  “He’s not an invisible man,” I responded. “It’s impossible for a person to be invisible.”

  “Enough semantics,” he said. “I can’t see him. True? You can’t see him. True? So he’s invisible, and he keeps coming into our house. We need to do something about this. This is a crime. He’s a criminal.”

  I had not told John about what (I suspected) had happened a few nights before, and this didn’t seem like an especially good time to bring it up. But I was worried now. I didn’t know if this was really happening, but I knew it couldn’t continue if it was. It was time to think like a victim. I asked John to explain what happened.

  “I bumped into him,” he said. “I literally ran into his body. I was in the living room, and I started to walk toward the stairs. But I remembered that I’d left my glasses on the coffee table, so I turned around and walked the other way. I suppose it was a sudden movement on my part. I ran right into him. I’m sure of it. I know how it feels to run into a person, and that’s what it felt like. He must have been directly behind me. He was trailing me. That’s the only explanation.”

  I asked what happened next.

  “I confronted him.”

  “How did you confront him?”

  “I made it clear that I knew who he was, that I knew everything about him, and that he was doing something illegal. I told him that breaking into someone’s house nullified his constitutional protection. And I made it clear that I was extremely unhappy about this.”

  That seemed like a lot of information to deliver on the spot. I asked John how he worded those sentiments.

  “It doesn’t matter how I worded it,” he said. “I’m sure your boyfriend inferred the proper meaning.” Had Y____ responded? “No. There was no response. I even took a swing at where I expected him to be. All I hit was air. But he was in this room. I know it. He was here. He might still be here, for all I know. This is a problem. Are you finally going to accept that this is a problem?”

  John and I discussed our options. Going to the police was the logical move, but that felt hopeless (and borderline comical). There was just no way to explain our situation to a law enforcement official; I wouldn’t even know where to begin, and there was no way to come across as normal. Who would I claim was doing this? I wasn’t even certain I knew Y____’s real name. I didn’t know where he lived or how to find him. His cell phone was no longer active. We would essentially be filing a report that read, “A man we can’t see and that you can’t find may (or may not) be breaking into our home in order to steal nothing and hurt no one.” It’s hard to place a restraining order against a person who doesn’t exist.

  We agreed to pay extra attention to our doors and windows, but that was a limited solution; if a mostly invisible man wants to break into your house, there’s no way to stop him. We considered an alarm system with a motion detector, but we didn’t know if Y____’s “motion” was even “detectable.” We tried to outline just how serious this menace was, and we tentatively wondered if Y____ was nothing more than a terrifying nuisance. We also wondered if any of this was happening at all—what if our collective anxiety was causing both of us to turn every unclear moment into a brush with Y____? I was still rational enough to
consider the possibility of being wrong, regardless of how true our feelings might have felt. But John was cracking.

  “I’m taking this situation over,” said John. “I won’t let this person infiltrate our lives. I won’t. You say he’s harmless, but I disagree. If he comes back here again, I’m going to deal with him. I’ll hammer him.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “With this,” said John. He held up a hammer.

  I didn’t even know we owned a hammer. I knew we had paintings on the walls, but I had never considered how they got there.

  “You can’t be serious,” I said.

  “I’m as serious as Truman,” said John. “I’ve had enough. I almost hope he comes back tonight. Violence doesn’t scare me. I’ve seen violence. I’ve experienced violence. I know my rights.” He slid the handle of the hammer into his belt loop and looked straight at me, defiant. He had made his decision. “I’ll knock his goddamn block off.”

  So this is what my life had become: I was married to an aging historian who carried a hammer everywhere he went, with the sole intent of bludgeoning an invisible man as punishment for falling in love with me.

  Unlike the rest of my life, it was too crazy to regret. I just had to swallow it.

  A Point of No Return