Whispering in French Read online

  “Yup,” I had replied.

  “I don’t know why you study so hard,” she had said, using her protractor to draw a geometric figure. “You okay with them getting divorced?”

  “Yup.” An economy of words had never hurt me in my life. Then and now.

  Major Soames’s snoring was impressive, and I allowed my mind to drift back to more than two decades ago when my own brand of post-traumatic stress had taken root.

  It appeared neither of my parents had thought enough to ask the other who would be in possession of their (or at least my mother’s) mixed gene pool the following year. Yes, that fifteenth summer, no parental unit appeared at LAX after the flight from Boston, post Miss Chesterfield’s. Evidently, I’d been cast off the merry-go-round of perpetual movements. There was just only so much parenting Antoinette, George, or I could handle.

  Very graciously, in all their weed-stoked generosity, the three UCLA graduate students, who had apparently sublet our rental house at some point during the divorce, offered me the cot in the garage, which had been converted into a dance studio complete with incense, mini fridge, hot tub, and a spare bike or two on the walls. It was silently understood in this pre–cell phone era that Mom or Dad would collect me in time.

  Or maybe not.

  Liberty was sweet. Hell, it was far better than boarding school. What girl could resist foggy mornings hitching rides to SaMo High before sunlit afternoons on the back of a surfer friend’s Yamaha? Darwin’s Theory became my religion—adapt or die, my motto. And surely, surely one of them was coming if only to curb my use of their credit cards. By the ninth week, assimilation was complete; emotions blurred under a circle of friends and the rotation of subletting tenants, who adopted me like a beloved pet, retrieved from the garage to sit at my parent’s dining table on the rare night someone made dinner.

  It was heaven for a teenager.

  It was supposed to feel like repressed sadness and insecurity to a trained psychotherapist, but it didn’t. Just seemed normal. It was—

  “This is a pleasant surprise,” Edward said, sitting up and looking again at the vista.

  I exhaled, unaware I’d been holding my breath. “The best part is that the views are always changing, along with the weather.”

  “True,” he replied. “But I was referring to your silence.”

  I did not reply. Instead, I moved past him and took the lead down the other side of the hill.

  “Is this how all your sessions go?” He called after me. “You just let silence do your work until the patient ties themselves up with curiosity?”

  “Is that what you are? Curious?”

  He must have gotten up and followed as his voice was close behind me. “Yep. Like wondering why you looked like petrified wood. Not one iota of emotion just now.”

  “Well, since talking to you last time was like having a conversation with the pyramids, I thought you might enjoy silence.”

  “Huh,” he grunted. “Are your eyes good, Doctor?”

  “What?”

  “Eyes. Good?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I’ve got a pricker I can’t get out.”

  I stopped, indicated a boulder to sit on, and bent over his hand. It was long and thin, and it looked like it hurt like hell, but he said not a word. I knew he wouldn’t.

  “So what’s the précis of therapy under Kate Hamilton? And can you prescribe drugs?”

  “Précis?”

  He shook his head. “Crib notes. Short version of a long story. Come on, Kate, keep up.”

  “In the colonies, they’re called CliffsNotes, major.”

  For the first time that day I saw his teeth. His version of a smile needed work.

  “CliffsNotes. Roger. We have them too.” He took off his sunglasses, wiped his eyes, and replaced the glasses. “So?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “How you purportedly cure people.”

  “Purportedly?” I said. “Your confidence is staggering. Is this how you inspired those under your command?”

  His eyes became focused. “What’s the cure? The short version, Doctor.”

  “It’s like I told you before. Revisit your childhood. Or in your case, revisit your war experiences. Maybe both.”

  “And?”

  “You asked for the short version. I gave it to you.”

  “A bit longer,” he said. “Please.” Such an effort for so little a word.

  “All right,” I relented. “We revisit the past horrors of war you’ve experienced. You did five tours, correct?”

  “Yep.”

  “Where?”

  “Iraq, Afghanistan three times, and Bosnia before that,” he clipped out.

  God, that seemed like a lot. “Well, oftentimes, just talking about what happened and finally feeling repressed emotions can make a huge difference. Or . . .”

  He was shaking his head. “Or what? I’ve heard all that before. Doesn’t work.”

  “Or, if there is a childhood wound, perhaps reopened by the trauma of war, with time and work, there’s discovery of unmet needs, resulting belief systems and fears, an attempt to take off false armor or identity, and with any luck, and a lot more time, much of it gut-wrenching”—why sugarcoat it?—“the person ends up deciding if they want to be courageous and make different choices, or sink back into the mire of the tried and not so true. Is that short or long enough for you?” I took a step closer to him.

  “What if I already know my past, know what happened, and have no false armor? What if it’s too late to make different choices? Damage done. Talking just doesn’t change facts.”

  “Don’t you realize almost anyone can say that? Talking, having the guts to hash out old events, doesn’t change the past, but it can make a huge difference for the future.”

  “Has it made a difference for you?”

  “We’re talking about you.”

  He raised his brows. “Now there’s a no.”

  “It’s more complicated for someone like me. I know too much.”

  “Sounds like an excuse to me, Hamilton.”

  “Therapy is just one way of getting to the cause of a client’s pain, anxiety, depression, and a host of other issues.”

  “That’s when drugs are thrown into the mix.”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes not. It all depends on the condition presented. And . . .”

  “And what?”

  “Someone’s natural resilience.”

  He unfolded himself and stood, picking down to select a rock, which he threw into the valley below. His eyes on the horizon, he said, “Well, at least you’re not talking about mindfulness. What the fuck does that mean anyway? The Ministry of Defense therapist I was forced to see after the last deployment kept talking about mindfulness. Total bollocks if you ask me.”

  I had to laugh. “It’s essentially living life in the present moment, about—”

  “For fuck’s sake, is there any other way to live? Do we have a choice? We live each moment as it comes.”

  “You like to say fuck a lot.”

  “What? Now you’re going to try to take away one of my few present joys?” His smile deepened. “Pretty fucking unmindful to my way of thinking.”

  “A lot of people live in the past,” I said. “Or live for the future.”

  “Nothing all that wrong with doing both, don’t you think?” He picked off a piece of grass from the plaid monstrosity he called a shirt. “I say learn from your mistakes and build a better future.”

  “I see.” I pressed my fingernails into my palms. I wasn’t going to sell him on anything. He’d have to come to a decision to seek help on his own, no matter what his great-uncle wanted.

  “Look, no man in his right mind believes in therapy. At least in England they don’t. It’s for the weak. Okay, maybe we’ll go for a little marriage counseling upon threat of divorce, but that’s it. Americans, as I understand, have an affinity for talking about feelings, but not us. Not me.”

  “No surprise there.
”

  “Brits have far less suicides than Americans,” he continued.

  “You’ve examined military suicide rates, have you?”

  “Twenty a day in America, the land of the free.” The striated muscles in the hollow of his cheek tensed and then relaxed. “The way I see it, Doctor, I might be willing to start this experiment if only to get my family off my back, but I’ll only do it if you are willing to do the same. And absolutely no drugs. Got it?”

  What? “I’m sorry?”

  “Yeah. I’ll go through that examination of my past and other moronic crap, if you do the same.”

  “That’s not how it works. I must become a pseudo person to you—a mother, father, brother, commander, whatever. There is no tit for tat.”

  He blinked. “Take it or leave it. Trust is a two-way street.”

  He was a master manipulator and controller. And that off-kilter look in his wide gray eyes tinged with ashen darkness hinted at zero emotion, indeed, possibly a borderline psychopath, albeit a good psychopath, the newest favorite animal under the microscope of many psychology texts now. “You were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, correct?”

  “Such a dry, pretty little phrase.” He laughed. “I don’t know a soldier who spent any amount of time in a war zone who hasn’t suffered some form of PTSD.”

  “Understood.” I pulled off the long-sleeved cover I wore over a T-shirt now that the sun had emerged from the clouds.

  “You said you couldn’t protect someone last time,” he began.

  “And you said you’d tell me what happened to make you the person your wife and children left behind when they returned to England.”

  “Brutal,” he said and smiled. “You want to know what’s wrong with the military?”

  I waited. Denial via a change in subject was just so last Freud.

  “When you go into a war zone, you see the worst things you never imagined. And you see men in all their glory. The best and the worst. The real and the unvarnished. You learn about love and hate on a whole new level. What is love between a man and a woman when you compare it to the bond between soldiers? I’ve seen eighteen-year-old boys throw themselves in front of certain death to protect their mates. Soldiers don’t talk about feelings. They show and live their truths. In a marriage, it’s all about words, and petty emotions, and the mundane. To-do lists. ‘Clean the garage, water the garden, buy crisps and bin liners at Tesco’ lists. All part of the ultimate goal of a man going out into the world to provide. And it’s mostly a one-way street. To be fair, I’m a dick, but I get it.”

  “I see.”

  “You don’t see it at all. You have to live it to get it. And you’re missing some key anatomy to get it.”

  “Keep going. Explain it to me.”

  “I just did. I thought therapists were good listeners.”

  Unresolved anger—such a polite word for a pressure cooker of merde.

  “Anyway.” He stopped abruptly.

  “Let’s keep walking. There’s room to walk side by side up ahead. Why is your marriage a one-way street?”

  “It’s not really. She ran the household when I was away for months at a time and I owe her for that. But, really? We have nothing in common except our children. We made the mistake of marrying far too young by reason of raging hormones.”

  “And now?”

  “We have nothing in common and the hormones have gone dormant.”

  “Common in a long-term marriage. How do you feel about that?”

  “Really? Come on, Kate, you must know how most men feel about that.”

  “Yup.” I stopped abruptly.

  “What was your marriage like?”

  I forced myself to reply. “Not the best.”

  “You’re divorced.”

  “I am.”

  “Why not the best?”

  “We didn’t suit each other.” Understatement of the century. “My father said he was shocked we actually married. He said he’d have put his money on Oliver marrying a nubile, young secretary, and I a rich, old man.”

  “When did he say that?”

  “On my wedding day.” Why was I telling him this?

  “Any other little gems he told you?”

  I swallowed. What did I have to lose? He wasn’t a patient. I wasn’t his friend. He was someone I’d never see again after I left here. “He said that I should never ever deny my husband his rights.”

  “Never?” Edward raised his eyebrows. He looked ten years younger in his shock. “An intriguing view. But, seriously? I’d never tell my daughter that. Your father sounds like a worse dick than I. And I should know. Sorry. But not really. He sounds like a fucking sad excuse for a father. You know that, right?”

  “He was impossible, but everyone loved him. He was the most charming, funny, intelligent man I ever knew.”

  “And meaner than a snake. What father says that to a daughter?”

  I hadn’t remembered those things for years. I looked at the ground. What was bringing up all these putrid, bone-sucking memories?

  “Okay. No need to go on,” he said. “Next question.”

  It looked like I was going to be a sister figure to him. More realistically, if I was honest, he was going to be a brother figure to me. “Do you have any siblings? Mother and father still living?”

  He looked at me as if I’d grown five heads.

  “I realize I’m jumping around here, but I sense, ahem, that your patience is limited. Just trying to move ahead at breakneck speed.”

  “How very untherapeutic.”

  “Indeed,” I agreed. “So?”

  “Three older brothers. All dead. In Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and the last in Afghanistan. One sister, living in Wales, where my parents moved to be near her new family.”

  “Why didn’t they stay in England, to be near you, your wife, and children?”

  “I was not their favorite.”

  “They told you this?”

  “They did.”

  “When?”

  “Who the fuck cares, Hamilton? There are always favorites in families. My sister is the light of their lives. Bingo on Thursdays, pub night quizzes on Wednesdays, and lunch after church on Sundays. It’s all good.”

  “Do you have a favorite between your two children?”

  Incredulity and disgust marred his features. “They’re like chalk and cheese.”

  “And which do you prefer? Chalk or cheese?”

  “Winnie loves animals, constantly has a smile plastered on her face and has a social life that rivals the royal family’s. She never stops talking, orders me around—a real ballbuster, which I love. My son wants to murder her half the time but is too busy playing some bloody vampire video game to actually do it. He is far too smart and stupid for his own good, and has a way with words that makes me laugh like no one else can whilst he’s doing everything he can to infuriate me.”

  “So you love them equally but differently.”

  He stopped in his tracks. “Don’t you dare say my parents should have loved us all equally.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you love your children equally, Kate?”

  “I only have one child.”

  He waited, refusing to keep walking.

  “A daughter. Lily.”

  “The one you didn’t protect.”

  He was getting too close. I started walking and he had no choice but to keep up.

  “Why didn’t you protect her, Kate? That’s your job, for fuck’s sake.”

  “It’s complicated.” God, I sounded pathetic. “So when did your marriage begin to fail?”

  “Answer me,” he barked. “Why didn’t you protect her? There’s no excuse. None.”

  There was a look of such darkness and disgust in his eyes that finally reason and the doctor in me returned. Or perhaps it was just my way—my favorite way to deflect someone. We were two of a kind, Soames and I. Two solitary creatures of the wild who didn’t know how to get along with the rest of the people in the wor
ld. And I had tried. There was a reason I’d chosen psychology as a profession. At least he was finally showing me he cared too much to be a psychopath. Or else he was a hell of a good actor, and I’d seen a lot of those. “You’re too intelligent for me to play games. Such an extreme reaction is really a reflection of yourself. Who did you fail to protect?”

  He stopped again along the path. A complete and total blank slate replaced the tumult of emotion in his expression. It froze the marrow in my bones.

  I’d taken a chance. Pushed him too hard. “I apologize. You asked me a question. We agreed—or at least you commanded— that we each share our lives with each other. And I get why. It’s to build trust. And really? You are doing me a favor. I could use a booster class on trust along with you. And hey, you’re not paying me.”

  “Do you have many clients, Kate?”

  “Of course I . . . Why do you ask?”

  “You talk too much.”

  I bit my mouth to keep from laughing.

  “And you never ever laugh,” he continued.

  “Me? Why, I’ve attended funerals with more laughter than spending an hour with you. And stop changing the subject.”

  “I laugh all the damn time,” he replied. “Inside.”

  “Okay. Live a little and try laughing on the outside from time to time.”

  “When didn’t you protect Lily?”

  I paused. “Last year. And, to be honest, I’d failed her a number of times before then. But last year was the ultimate betrayal.”

  “What happened?”

  I just couldn’t open my mouth. My throat constricted and it was so damn predictable and clichéd, I felt sick to my stomach. I reached toward an enormous, wild, white parasol-like flower just emerging from its veined envelope of protection. How could something so delicate survive the harsh winds of the Pyrenees? “May I not answer that just yet?”

  “Kate, I’ve sent so many men to their deaths. Tried to deny my part in it. And that’s just the tip of my mountain of lies and irresponsibility. How can anything you might have done compare?”

  “Because she is my child. Because if there is one absolute in life it is the duty of a mother to love and protect her children, like you said. I should know. Every day I see the walking carcasses of humanity whose mothers and fathers betrayed them. It’s just inexcusable. It’s what causes depression, unfulfilled lives, divorce, suicide, crime, even war.”