Page 29 of The Therapist

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 knows that 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.

Will the kids notice? Maybe. He’ll just tell them he fell at work. They’re too young to question the validity of the statement.

He pulls up outside the school and, mindful of other parents, takes a cap out of his glove box and jams it on his head, pulling it low and keeping his sunglasses on.

Even so, as he walks through the school he can feel some curious looks but Felix and Lila are standing together instead of playing in separate areas, so they are in and out quickly.

‘Is Mum at home?’ asks Felix as soon as they are both buckled into their booster seats.

‘No, she’s still on her…holiday,’ he replies. Maybe she’s not on holiday, maybe she’s run away, maybe she’s with another man, maybe she’s dead. I hope she’s dead.

‘How come she wanted a holiday without us?’ demands Lila.

‘Because she needed to rest, I’ve told you.’

‘It’s not fair. I need to rest too.’ Lila pouts and Mike has one of those moments when he understands that if his life were different right now, he would be able to laugh.

If the right Mike was picking up his kids from school, he would try and remember his five-year-old telling him she needs to rest. It would be a cute anecdote to repeat at the pub or work.

But he can’t go to the pub because he has to take care of the kids, and soon, he won’t have a job to go to.

There’s nothing to smile at or laugh about right now.

Nothing is funny right now; nothing can be.

‘How about pizza for dinner?’ he says instead and both Felix and Lila cheer at the unexpected treat.

‘I’ll pick it up now and then warm it up later,’ he tells them, mindful of how much cheaper it is to pick up a pizza than to have it delivered.

He has no idea how much money the administrators will allocate to paying off staff. He has a few thousand in his bank account and some money in an emergency fund.

As he pulls away from the school, he can feel his frustration mounting. How can Sandy have put him in this position and why would she have done this? I think I hate her. I really do.

Stopping outside the pizza place, he turns around and looks at his kids, two children who would not be here if not for an accident that led to Felix.

Who would he be now if he had told Sandy that he wasn’t ready for a baby, if they hadn’t both still been in the stupid infatuation phase?

She would have happily terminated the pregnancy, he knows that.

He’s pretty certain they wouldn’t be together; he wouldn’t be tied into an awful marriage with a woman incapable of real feelings for him or his children. He would be free, maybe still single.

‘Don’t move, guys,’ he says sternly and both children nod, happy to stay in the car.

Stepping inside the small store, he orders and keeps an eye on the car through the large windows. And he allows himself a few minutes of fantasy, of embracing the idea of freedom from everything.