The walls of the motel room were light gray; the furnishings, plain and sparse. Even inside and high on a hill, the sea seemed to be coming for me like a freight train never quite arriving.
Electric heat was just a slap on the wrist of the damp chill that had taken possession of everything—air, bones, hair, towels, sheets, clothes. Suddenly, the south wind began driving bullets of rain at my glass door. As I reached out from my cocoon of blankets for a sip of merlot, the sea crashing below sent an unsettling shudder up through the rock cliff and frame building into my bed. Back in the desert, the voice of the departed sea spoke to me small and still through the contours of basins and canyons, connecting me down through the millennia to the source of all things. I’d come to the sea itself with the hope of recovering the person I was before I lost everything. But now here I was huddling alone in the eye of some inexplicable terror. I should have listened to Dr. Fong....
Electric heat was just a slap on the wrist of the damp chill that had taken possession of everything—air, bones, hair, towels, sheets, clothes. Suddenly, the south wind began driving bullets of rain at my glass door. As I reached out from my cocoon of blankets for a sip of merlot, the sea crashing below sent an unsettling shudder up through the rock cliff and frame building into my bed. Back in the desert, the voice of the departed sea spoke to me small and still through the contours of basins and canyons, connecting me down through the millennia to the source of all things. I’d come to the sea itself with the hope of recovering the person I was before I lost everything. But now here I was huddling alone in the eye of some inexplicable terror. I should have listened to Dr. Fong....
•••
Dr. Fong was a small slender man. As he spoke, his white polo shirt and khakis blurred into the white cupboards and tan walls of the exam room. “I understand your concern,” he said, “that taking a psychotropic medication may flatten your affect as a writer. But given what you’ve just described....”
On the wall to Dr. Fong’s right, George Clooney smiled at me through a plastic magazine holder. The headline above the Sexiest Man Alive asked: Boston Nanny—a killer or victim? To Dr. Fong’s left, on the wall above the red hazardous waste receptacle was a photograph I recognized as the fluted black schist formation in Inner Gorge of the Grand Canyon. My mind drifted down the wild green Colorado, our gray raft floating and bobbing alongside the shiny jet-black Vishnu Schist infused with streaks of pink Zoroaster Granite, my fingers reaching back 1700 million years to a time older than grief and fear.
Dr. Fong had stopped talking and was handing me the small sample box of the drug. While I wanted nothing more than to take it, I shook my head.
Dr. Fong set the small white box on the counter behind him with the sound of a final straw. “I don’t understand,” he said, “you complain that you can’t write, that your mind is in disarray, that you’re experiencing strange and unsettling phenomena...” His voice and sage demeanor cracked as if he were about to leap off the Middle Way of his ancestors into a fit of rage. “I think,” he snapped, “this problem is beyond me.”
Anger shot through me like molten granite then welled up into hot tears.
Dr. Fong’s expression softened. “Perhaps,” he said following a moment of reflection, “you should talk to a friend of mine. A psychiatrist.”
“So you think I’m crazy?” I asked.
“No. I’m saying that Dr. Spinoza is in a better position to help you.”
“But I’ve run out mental-health benefits.”
Dr. Fong scribbled a phone number on his prescription pad, tore off the slip, and handed it to me. “Just call him,” he urged.
•••
Dr. Spinoza returned my phone call that evening.
“Good man, that Fong,” he noted. “So, please, tell me why he referred you.”
“It all started at the time of my mother’s death,” I began....
“Very interesting,” Dr. Spinoza observed after I’d finished, “but I can also see why you might find it unsettling. Would you like to come into the office to talk more about it?”
“The thing is,” I could feel myself starting to babble, “I’ve run out my mental-health benefits and don’t have—but on the other hand, I mean, if I’m losing my mind...”
“Oh,” Dr. Spinoza said, “I don’t think it’s come to that.” He paused. “Here’s a thought—we could meet tomorrow at the Macaroni Grill at 2:30. You buy me lunch, and we’ll talk.”
“Great! Wow. Thanks!” I exclaimed. “So you think I might not be crazy?”
“I’m not in the habit of having lunch with crazy people,” Dr. Spinoza assured me. “And for the record, crazy is not a word I like to use in any clinical or metaphysical sense.
Now this really does feel crazy, I thought after we’d hung up.
•••
I arrived at the Macaroni Grill ten minutes early. The host directed me across the sea of white tablecloths toward the back of a large mound of a man. As I sat down at the table for two, I tried to interpret the moment without staring. But Dr. Spinoza was a lot to take in.
A pale man with a large round face, the psychiatrist was a study in brown from his silky thin hair to his beige shirt, narrow tan tie, and brown tweed jacket. Knife in hand, he drew a thick smear of butter across the slice of bread in the palm of his other hand.
“Thank you for this opportunity,” I said.
The doctor smiled, or rather his cheeks rose, narrowing his small eyes so that I seemed for a moment to be gazing into the face of Buddha. “I’m looking forward to hearing your story,” he said. “But perhaps,” he nodded at the menu, “we should begin by getting the ordering out of the way.”
Next: The Macaroni Grill
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