Father of Lies (9 page)

CHAPTER 6

Nights

I wake to find a dark shape spread above me, shaking me. I lash out, carry my fist through it hard. It falls to one side, dully strikes the floor.

I grope under the bed but find nothing to strike it with a second time. Stumbling from the bed, I turn on the lamp, my fist aching.

My wife is on the far side of the bed, on the floor, unconscious, a discolored mark rising from her forehead.

“Jesus,” I say. “I thought you were the devil.”

I lift her onto the bed and stroke her face until she starts to regain consciousness. She looks at me without knowing me, tries to scramble free.

I hold her still.

“I'm here,” I say. “I'm here.”

She stops struggling, looks at me oddly.

“What happened?” she asks.

“You're safe,” I say. “Close your eyes.”

When she does, I get out of the bed and take a washcloth from the bathroom. I soak it with water and wring it out, then fill it with
ice in the kitchen. I take it back to the bedroom, apply it to her forehead. She winces, then starts to cry.

“You hit me,” she says.

“What makes you think I hit you?” I ask.

“I watched you,” she says. “Why did you hit me?”

“I was hardly awake. I didn't know what I was doing.”

“I didn't know you could hit so hard.”

I shrug. “I wasn't awake.”

She closes her eyes.

“Leaning over me like that,” I say. “I thought you were the devil.”

She doesn't respond, just lies there with the washcloth pressed to her forehead, shaking.

“Are you crying?” I ask.

“It hurts,” she says. “It really hurts.”

I lie down next to her, throw an arm across her, my upper leg passing over her hips.

“I need to sleep,” I say. “I have a full day tomorrow.”

She is, I can feel from the way her belly vibrates, from the wet smell of her breath, still crying. I don't say anything. I pretend I am falling asleep. And then I do fall asleep.

“Are you awake, honey?” she asks.

I don't say anything, don't move.

“Are you awake?” she asks again.

“Starting to be,” I say.

“Sorry,” she says. “I didn't mean to wake you.”

“I am awake now.”

“I need to talk to you. I need you to tell me everything will be okay.”

“Everything will be okay.”

“Don't just say it: talk about it.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“You were saying the most awful things in your sleep,” she says. “Things I couldn't bear to hear. And in the strangest voice.”

“What was I saying?”

“I don't want to talk about it,” she says.

“Then why did you wake me?”

“I don't want to say them.”

“Tell me,” I say. “They didn't mean anything, but I want to know.”

“It was about that poor girl who was killed in the woods,” she says. “You were talking dirty to her.”

“That's nonsense,” I say. “You're crazy.”

“You were telling her what you were going to do with her. You talked dirty and then you told her you would kill her.”

“It was a dream,” I say. “It doesn't mean a thing.”

“It frightened me,” she says. “I couldn't believe you would say what you said, even in your sleep.”

“Look,” I lie. “Maybe I can't help thinking that if I had reported the brother to someone none of this would have happened. Maybe I feel responsible for her death because of that.”

We lie still for some time, touching without moving.

“Maybe that's it,” she says. “I might be able to live with that.”

“It was an awful thing her brother did,” I say. “And then to kill her over it.”

I roll over in the bed, toward the wall.

“There is something else I want to ask you,” she says.

“What?”

“When you came home the night the girl was murdered the knees of your pants were muddy. Your shoes too. There was some blood as well. Not much, but it was there.”

I am fully awake now.

“That's not a question,” I say.

“Why, darling?” she asks. “Can't you tell me why?”

“Why?” I say. “I stopped on the way to the church to play football with some kids, that's why.”

“You were late, you said. You said you couldn't stay and take the baby out of the bath.”

“Just a play or two,” I say. “On the way. It didn't slow me down any. They threw me a pass downfield and I slipped.”

She doesn't say anything.

“Don't you believe me?” I ask. “Do you think I would still be the provost if I could lie? Do you think God would tolerate it?”

“I don't know,” she says.

“You have to put your faith in God,” I say. “And in his earthly representatives. Doubt not, fear not.”

“Who did you see that night?” she asks. “For the appointment, I mean.”

“I was at the church.”

“Who did you meet at the church?”

“I can't say,” I say. “The interview was confidential. Someday, when things are less sensitive, I'll tell you all about it. But you've already proven you can't keep a secret.”

“Don't say that,” she says.

“You'll have to trust me.” I take her in my arms, feel the bones in her back. “You have everything to lose and nothing to gain.”

“Promise me you had nothing to do with that girl's death.”

“I had nothing at all to do with that girl's death,” I say. “May God strike me down if I am lying.”

She is silent long enough that I think she must have fallen asleep. I am falling asleep myself when she says:

“I think you ought to see someone.”

“What do you mean?”

“A psychiatrist. You are feeling things you shouldn't be feeling.”

“I don't know,” I say.

“It's coming out in your sleep,” she says. “It isn't healthy. You need somebody to work through this with you.”

I consider. If I keep talking in my sleep, I will give enough of the truth away that she will have a hard time dismissing it.

“Do it for me, honey,” my wife says.

“Okay,” I say. “Anything for you.”

CHAPTER 7

Therapy

“Fochs,” the therapist says. “Interesting name. German? Long
O
or short? Mine is German too: Feshtig. And a provost for the Church of the Blood of the Lamb no less.”

“Yes,” I say. “Appointed almost a year ago now.”

“Good for you,” he says. Reaching his hand out, he draws me into his office. “Please, sit where you'd like.”

I look around. There are several chairs, a bench, a teak desk, a chair on casters.

“I don't care where I sit,” I say.

“Chair, then?” he asks, and gestures. I choose a chair and sit, and he sits across from me. It feels as if the floor is yawning open between us.

We sit looking at one another, until I smile and look away. I look at his shelves, the books there, all titles I do not recognize. I look at his desk, its surface spare, almost devoid of objects.

He asks me if he can tape our meeting and I tell him yes. He turns on the tape recorder and we chat for a while, general information. When it starts getting personal, I steer him away. He sits looking at me, waiting.

“I filled out a form up front,” I say. “It says why I'm here. Did they give it to you?”

“Tell me,” he says.

“Well,” I say. I consider what to say, how to phrase it. How much of the truth I can tell him without things getting messy. “I have been having bad dreams.”

“What sort of bad dreams?”

“More like disturbing thoughts and feelings,” I say. “The dreams came later. I imagine myself doing awful things and sometimes I can convince myself I have actually done them. Though, really, I never do them,” I say.

“Tell me about these thoughts and feelings,” he says.

“I think,” I say. “I think it all started when I was called to be provost. They called me to be provost but I'm not really worthy. I'm not the kind of person that should be provost.”

“Why not?”

“If I was the right kind of person, I wouldn't be having thoughts and feelings like these, would I?”

“What sorts of thoughts and feelings are they?”

“About children,” I say. “My guess is they are a result of feelings of inadequacy over being called to be provost. I'm certain of it.”

“So the thoughts tell you that you aren't worthy to be provost because provosts don't have such thoughts, but at the same time they didn't start until after you became a provost?”

“Yes,” I say, though it sounds odd when he phrases it that way.

“They didn't start before you were provost?”

“Before?” I say. “Never.”

He makes a note to himself on a pad of paper.

“What do you mean improper?” he asks.

“You know. Wrong thoughts.”

“What makes them wrong?”

Some people need everything spelled out for them it seems. I consider how most people would respond to this, then feign discomfort, as if I am reluctant to speak.

I realize I have not thought enough about how I should proceed. I mumble out noncommittal responses until the questions turn elsewhere. He asks me questions about my parents, but I know I don't want to tell him the truth. I begin to make up a family for myself, the family I would have liked to have had growing up. This goes on for a while until I worry I am making up more than I can keep track of. I stop answering or answer vaguely though he keeps prodding, until finally he stops, looks at me closely.

“I'd like to try something unorthodox,” he says, or something like that. “Do you mind following me along?”

I must admit, I am curious. “Why not?” I say.

“If I say to you, you're no longer a person, you're an object, what's the first object that comes to mind?”

“Well,” I say. “I don't know. A slice of paper I suppose.”

It's the second thing that comes to mind and I don't think it means anything, except maybe for “slice,” which comes out because knife is the first thing that comes to mind. He begins to question me and I answer as I can, slowly realizing that with a little explanation the image is as good as any other. I have two sides, but only one can be seen at a time. I've never felt like I had an inside, always felt like I was on top of my skin rather than down inside of it. I have never felt any sense of something inside nor, quite frankly, a sense of something beyond. What matters is what I can touch and feel, the surface of my skin shaping itself to meet the objects around it. The soul is tactile and comes and goes.

To think such thoughts makes me feel like I am hovering over the edge of a great void. I realize I am learning about myself something that, finally, I am not certain I care to know.

“All I want,” I offer, “is for you to cure me of my thoughts.”

“I understand,” he says. “But sometimes these things take time. What we need is to determine what lies behind the thoughts, what made you have them. That's the only way to make them leave you for good.”

“The thoughts come from my feelings of unworthiness about being a provost,” I say. “I told you that already.”

“Yes,” he says. “Perhaps. What we must discover, then, is what exactly makes you uneasy about being a provost. Why is your uneasiness manifested in this fashion instead of another?”

I know I have no interest in allowing him to uncover the truth. I have come to see him not because I am interested in him discovering what I am, but because I need, in some form, to vocalize what I have been doing to children over the last decade, and what in particular I have done in the last few months. I have kept too much inside and it is beginning to spill out. I need to release some of it.

So, I will meet with him a few times. So, I will talk the worst of it out, under the premise, for him, that I am speaking not of anything I have actually done but merely of my thoughts and dreams and fears. I will lighten the load a little, I will brag a little, I will enjoy myself. And then, when he comes a little too close to the truth, I will cut off treatment, go home to my wife, and sleep soundly, without dreams.

PART THREE

FURTHER RESEARCH