Counseling Technique #342
Count All This — Chapter 18: Snap out of it!
Just when Jo Kasten’s son encounters schizophrenia, she discovers she has breast cancer. Meanwhile, her marriage faces a test. Count All This is a story about love and loyalty, addiction and madness. This is the eighteenth chapter. Find the first chapter here.
The next day Eddy kept his distance. Karen and I lured him into playing the promised game of Settlers, which he won as usual, despite his apparently dulled senses, but he spoke little during the game, made his moves without enthusiasm, and left soon afterwards for a walk on the beach. He was gone for hours, reappearing briefly to rummage through the refrigerator, while making it clear he wasn’t interested in any interaction. Then, as he was preparing to leave again, he asked if he could borrow twenty dollars.
“Borrow twenty dollars? Why are you asking me for money? What happened to your own money?”
“I lost it,” he grinned.
“You lost it?! How did you lose it?”
“That was easy,” he said in a singsong voice. “I lost it when I lost my backpack.”
“You lost your backpack?!” I was incredulous.
“Yep.” Nonchalant.
“When was this? What was in it?”
“Oh, you know, the usual. Passport. Wallet. Cell phone. Money. Student ID. Poetry. Journal. Papers.”
“Jesus Christ, Edward! Did you have the credit card Dad and I loaned you in your wallet?”
“Hmmm, let me think about that.” He put his hand to his chin and gazed at the ceiling. “Yes, I think I did.”
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?!! Now we have to call up the credit card company and cancel it right away. Somebody could be using it right now to charge up thousands of dollars!”
“Nah. I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. I looked over at Karen. “Where did you lose it? On BART? Maybe we could call the lost and found.”
“Nah. It wasn’t on BART. I lost it before then.”
“Where? How?”
He looked at me with disgust. “The same way you always lose things, Mother. I put it down somewhere and didn’t remember to pick it up.”
I shook my head. “But how could you put down something as important as your backpack? I hope that thousand dollar check I wrote you wasn’t still in the pocket.”
“Thousand dollar check?” He looked surprised. “Oh yeah. I forgot about that. I guess I lost that too.”
“Great! Well, I’m not giving you any more money. And right now, I’m going to call the credit card company and cancel that card.”
“Okay. You do that,” Eddy said, turning to go out the front door as I was picking up the telephone. I burned as he walked out.
After I cancelled the card, I tried to regain my equilibrium. It was Saturday and the sun was shining. Larry was on his way. Surely some pleasure could be salvaged from the day. But I couldn’t dispel the sour feeling in my chest. How could Eddy be so careless? Why didn’t he express remorse? Was this just rude behavior? Or mental illness? Was he just an asshole? Or was he insane?
Despite my dour mood, Karen dutifully kept me company until noon, when Larry arrived on his bike and she went home to San Jose. I gave her a hug goodbye and invited her to come back for dinner.
“I’m not sure. Maybe. Let me see what’s happening at home. I’ll call you.”
“Where’s Eddy?” Larry asked as soon as Karen left.
“I’m not sure. He’s been avoiding me. He went for a walk on the beach for hours, then came home long enough to ask for money and get into a fight. Then he left again.”
“Probably out scoring drugs on the Boardwalk.”
“Probably…Except I didn’t give him any money.”
“How’s he been?”
“Not good. He’s coherent. But besides getting lost last night, he lost his backpack, which had all his valuables in it, including a check for a thousand dollars and a credit card I loaned him.”
“You’re kidding. Shit!”
“I called and canceled it.”
“Good.”
“But he didn’t even say he was sorry! And he isn’t the least bit upset about losing his stuff. It’s weird. He’s evasive. Or sometimes he’s in a strange guru-type mood where he’ll only ask questions. I tried to talk to him last night, to ask him what happened at the co-op, but he wouldn’t give me a straight answer. We got into a big fight.”
“Typical.”
I scowled. Was Larry commenting on my parenting? Easy for him to criticize, when he rarely engaged in the day-to-day work of raising our difficult son. “This morning he played Settlers with me and Karen, but he seemed very dull. His eyes were vacant. He didn’t have anything to say.”
“Did he win?”
“Yes.”
Larry laughed impishly. “That’s my boy. There couldn’t be anything too terribly wrong with him if he’s still got enough brain power to beat you both at that game.”
“I’d be more worried, but I get the impression he could wake up if he wanted to — that he’s doing this deliberately.”
“I know what you mean.” Larry nodded. Then he stood up and looked around. “What do you want to do now?”
“There’s the beach.”
He frowned.
“The Boardwalk?”
He shook his head.
“Shopping on Pacific Avenue?”
“Let’s take a bike ride.”
This was a new hobby, and a big relief. Finally, there was something Larry was willing to do with me. We rode south along the cliff, looking out over the Pacific Ocean, all the way to Capitola and back, which gave us some respite from worried talk. When we got home, Karen had returned, but not Eddy, so we went together to dinner, where we made an effort to talk of other things. We were back in the cottage, deciding what movie to cue up, when Eddy surged through the front door.
“Mom,” he walked over to stand directly in front of me, excluding the other people in the room and interrupting me mid-sentence. “This isn’t really working for me,” he said coolly, with the air of a rock star. “I want to go home.”
“Okay…” I answered deliberately. “Goodbye.” I fixed him with a hard stare before turning my attention back to Larry and Karen.
“Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out,” Larry added.
Ed was momentarily flustered, turning around to look at his father and then back to me. “Mom,” he interrupted again. “Can I talk to you?”
“Not now,” I said firmly. “I have a guest, as you can see.” I spread my arm, palm up, to indicate Karen. “We’re talking.”
“But Mom, could you give me a ride…”
“Not now Eddy!” I exploded. “If you want to go, GO! If you want to stay, STAY! If you want to talk to me, SIT DOWN and wait on the couch until I’m finished with what I’m doing. If you don’t, DON’T. You’ve been out wandering around all day without the slightest concern for what I wanted. I don’t have to drop everything I’m doing the second you decide you want some attention. The whole world doesn’t revolve around you!”
“Okay,” Ed looked stunned.
“Okay,” he said again, more quietly, before sitting down on the couch carefully and closing his eyes. I looked around the room in exasperation.
“All right. What do you want from me, Eddy?” I relented.
“I want a ride home.”
“What do you mean by ‘home’? Our house? Last time you were there you said you couldn’t stand our scrutiny. You didn’t want to live there another day.”
“I don’t know. I guess so.” He sounded almost humble. My heart softened a little.
“Well, I’m not going home right now. I’m not leaving until Monday, maybe Tuesday. You can stay here and get a ride with me then, or I can give you a ride to the bus stop, if you want to leave now on your own.”
Eddy sat on the couch with his legs crossed, guru style, and his hands resting palm upwards on his lap. It was a posture that reminded me of the day he’d been admitted to the hospital. His manner was chastened. He kept his gaze down. For the first time since he’d arrived, he seemed to be receptive.
“Eddy, I don’t understand what’s going on here. I don’t think you realize how rude you’ve been. First you make me and Karen wait here two days, then show up without any explanation of why you didn’t come on time as scheduled. Next you get lost and run your Dad around the entire Bay Area in the middle of the night, but don’t show any gratitude or remorse. You get kicked out of the co-op where your sister is planning to live, but you seem happy about it. You lose my credit card, but don’t bother to apologize or even tell me about it! And you have nothing to say to me, nothing at all, until you suddenly decide you want something from me — or unless you’re trying to make me cry!!”
I paused to give him a chance to respond, but he didn’t seem to know what to say. He gazed down into his lap. “I’m sorry,” he finally offered softly. I looked at Larry in amazement. We never heard those words from our troublesome son. Larry nodded encouragement for me to go on.
“Well that’s good, Eddy. That’s a start. Because you should be sorry. You should be sorry that you’re causing so much worry and upset to your family — to the people who care about you the most!”
“I know that.” Again, I felt amazed. What had happened to him this afternoon in his absence? He was transformed.
“And what about this idea you have that you’re some kind of guru?” I went on, gaining heat. “Do you know how presumptuous it is for someone 18-years-old to come in here and try to tell me what I should think and feel? Do you have any idea how obnoxious that is? Who are you to try to manipulate me, to instruct me, to evaluate the worth of my feelings? What do you think you know? I’ve been on this planet 45 years and you aren’t even a grown-up!”
“You’re right, Mom,” he said quietly. Larry and I traded glances again.
“And what about the creepy way you were talking — refusing to answer questions, to have a normal conversation? What’s that all about? What gives you the right to go around messing with people’s heads? Is that what you did at the co- op? Give everyone the runaround? Get them all upset? Why can’t you just do what’s expected of you? Why can’t you just conform?”
“I don’t know.” His submission sapped all of my anger.
“You know, Eddy,” I continued softly, “we’d be sorry, we’d be sympathetic to your problems, if it seemed like this was something that was out of your control. But it seems to both your dad and me like you’re making it happen on purpose. Like you’re playing some kind of head game that nobody else understands.”
“It seems like that to me too,” he nodded, still keeping his gaze down.
“Okay…So what do you want to do now? Do you want a ride to the bus stop?”
“No. I’ll wait for you. I’ll get a ride home on Monday or Tuesday.”
When the conversation was over, and Eddy had gone up into the attic to lie down, it seemed that something important had been accomplished.
“You really ripped him a new asshole,” Larry told me admiringly.
“I know!” I beamed, feeling proud of myself. “I didn’t mean to, but I was just so angry! And it seemed to work. That’s the crazy part.”
“Yeah. He sounded much better. It looked like he was listening,” Karen nodded.
“It was like a cartoon I once saw, where a patient is lying on a couch, and the psychiatrist is slapping him across the face saying ‘Snap out of it!’ The caption says, ‘Counseling technique #342.’”
Larry laughed. “Maybe that’s all he needed.”
“Yes! Maybe he’ll snap out of it now!”
That was the eighteenth chapter of my novel, Count All This. To continue, follow the free chapter links below or buy a digital copy of the whole book on Amazon, where leaving a rating or review will help others find my story.
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