As I’ve documented in entries 5–11, M. and I have fallen into something of a “groove,” professionally speaking: M. tells me what’s bothering him and I listen, nonjudgmentally, until he asks me if I should tell his mother any of what he has told me. I always say, “Better not tell her,” as M. has instructed me to say. In this way, I have begun to heal him. It has been a most remarkable process: by my agreeing to just sit in my chair and listen, M. will talk — about school, about his father and mother. True, I am no closer to determining whether M.’s father really is in Iraq, or whether M. truly believes his father is there, or whether he truly believes that any of what he says is true. I am no closer to determining why, if M. is lying, he’d rather believe his father is in mortal danger in Iraq than believe he is not in mortal danger somewhere else. But at least M. has stopped crying. At least he seems to like me. That is progress enough.
Or so I thought until this evening, when M. tells me of a series of most disturbing developments: that he woke up to find his mother crying in the bathroom; that he took this to mean that his father had come home and was in the Veterans Affairs hospital; that he went to the Veterans Affairs hospital and found his father, who, according to the attending nurse, had been there for two weeks already and who’d been in a coma before waking up, briefly, today; that he went to a hotel — a hotel and, indeed, a motel — and believed he’d found the Watertownian — I believe his name is Exley—who’d authored M.’s father’s (and M.’s, too?) aforementioned favorite book; that said Watertownian was “in bad shape” (which I took to mean drunk — drunk and, indeed, inebriated); that M. escorted this individual halfway down the Washington Street hill until a man of Asian descent stopped him, revealed to M. the man’s true identity (it was not this Exley), and took the man back to the motel; that M. was saddened by this development but not deterred; that M. remains determined to find this Exley; that M. then went to visit a woman named K., a woman M. has visited before. This visit, as with others, seems to have involved only the consumption of baked goods and should seem innocent enough. Still, there is something sinister about it, especially since K. seems to know M.’s father but not his dear mother; in addition, today’s visit concluded with K. throwing M. out of her apartment, an ejection M. found most upsetting. At the end of this tale, M. asks me if he should mention any of this to his mother, and I am so stunned I can only say what he’s instructed me to say: “Better not tell her.” Although I do request, before M. leaves, that he put all of this down in writing, in the hopes that M. will then let me read what he’s written and that what is vague and disturbing in the oral tale will be clearer and innocent on the page.
Nonetheless, I worried — worried and, indeed, worry. Who is this man in the Veterans Affairs hospital? Can it really be M.’s father? If so, will M.’s mother welcome his father back into the family home? Will I be necessary if she does? And this Exley: How far will M. go to find him? What will happen if he does? What will happen if he doesn’t? Who is this K.? And why, oh why, was M.’s dear, lovely mother crying in her bathroom, especially if, as M. says, she’d received a call two weeks ago from the VA hospital and already dismissed it as another of M.’s lies?
I hope the good members of the NCMHP won’t judge me too harshly for what I do next. I call M.’s mother. She answers on the first ring. I can hear the television set burbling in the background. “M.?” she exclaims. “Where are you?” Her voice is a heartbreaking mixture of motherly concern and fury. I am suddenly and completely full of longing: I wish I was M. I wish I was the human male about whom M.’s mother is so worried, the human male she desires to be home with her so she can yell at him. The human male that she loves. I feel terrible: not because M. was at my home when he should have been at his, but because I am not he. I hope the NCMHP won’t judge me too harshly for this, either.
“No,” I say, and identify myself.
“Oh,” she replies. Her voice doesn’t exactly brighten, but it does become a bit less cloudy. “What do you want?”
“Well,” I begin. I fully intend to tell her everything, even though the NCMHP code of conduct makes clear that we are not to tell our patients’ loved ones everything — everything and, indeed, anything. I open my mouth, intending to utter the sentence, M. says he found his dad in the VA hospital, and then to continue from there. But all I can think of is M.’s mother crying in the bathroom and how whatever I will say will send her back there, weeping. My heart breaks a little at the thought. And I can also hear her coming back to the phone after her cry and wondering how I’d gotten M. to tell me what he’d told me, and me confessing to becoming the doctor M. wanted me to be, rather than the doctor she thought she was paying for, and how furious at me she’d be, and not out of love and worry, either. And my heart breaks a little more. So I don’t say anything. I just sit there, in my living room, with my mouth open, breathing like a masher into the phone receiver.
“What is it?” M.’s mother asks. I can hear the panic creeping into her voice. “Is it about M.?”
“No!” I say. Because I would have said anything not to say the things I’d been prepared to say, the things that would break her heart and mine. I will do anything not to break our hearts, including doing what I’d said, to myself, I wouldn’t: I will be a private detective. I will snoop around and try to learn something about K. and about the man in the VA hospital. I will even read this Exley’s book. I will not tell M.’s mother about any of this unless I have to. But for now, I have to say something. So I say, “It would be my honor if you’d accompany me to the North Country Mental Health Professionals’ annual meeting and dinner on Thursday.”
This seems to give M.’s mother some pause. She doesn’t say anything for quite some time. After a while, I can’t even hear her breathe, and wonder if she’s hung up or passed out. Finally, she says, “You mean, like a date?”
My heart wants to say, Yes, yes, exactly like a date! But as a mental health professional, I am trained to ignore my heart. Instead I say, “I’m the keynote speaker.”
“Oh,” she says. In the background, I can hear a door slam, and then nothing but dial tone. I can only assume — assume and, indeed, surmise — that M.’s mother has hung up on me. I push the Off button on my phone and then sit on my couch and replay our conversation mentally. What have I said that was so wrong? And will I be given a chance to make it right again? I am still asking myself these questions twenty minutes later when the phone rings. I pick it up. It is M.’s mother.