Awash in Talent (20 page)

My only answer was to take my hand away. It was overly ideal, like in a romantic comedy. It wasn’t anything a real boy would say to a real girl. I couldn’t decide how I felt about the whole thing or what to tell him.

Jill and I went back to our room. I wanted to talk it over, so guess what? I called my mother. J

To my husband:

It comes through the eyes. You have a technical bent of mind, so I think you’d like to know how it works first of all. It’s a sensory experience something like sound, but muted, like the voice in your head. You can tell it’s not passing through vocal cords and over teeth. It only took me until I was five to figure that out. But it’s also a little like watching a movie that flashes and jumps. Psychologically complex people can send me pictures with a muted soundtrack that has nothing to do with what I’m seeing. I married you because you’ve never done that to me. Despite your outward histrionics, you’re a one-note sensory experience.

But I became a therapist so I could act on the information people sent me without registering as a psychic, not so I could describe my experience as a psychic accurately. Let’s call it “thought energy,” to which I and other psychics are sensitive, while most humans are less so.

Because thought energy comes through the eyes, they’ve made special sunglasses “for any psychic who registers,” according to the public service announcements. I don’t know if you’ve noticed them—Soul Stoppers, they’re called. They’re supposed to encourage registry in a population the government can have no real control over—those of us with this, the most reviled of all Talents. They should have spent more time on the design of the glasses, because they draw so much attention to the wearer. I don’t know about other psychics, but attention is the last thing I want. Those strange slats over the lenses—I think it’s so we’re prevented from looking into people’s eyes while still able to see where we’re going. I can only imagine everyone in the street looks headless. I’d much rather close my eyes and look away if I get an intolerable beam of thought energy, though I’ve sometimes wondered if that makes me look even stranger than the glasses would.

If I seem too shy, no one’s said much about it to me over the years except you. I read recently that they tried rounding up psychics in the 1880s and ended up arresting a bunch of introverts. I think all psychics must appear somewhat introverted. Most with this kind of sensitivity must avert their eyes from people’s thoughts and emotions on a regular basis. But that’s my experience. Although I can identify other psychics, registered with the government or not, I can’t know exactly what it’s like for them.

I had a friend in grade school, Danielle. One day in the middle of art class, where we were learning about papier-mâché, she just started screaming. She didn’t stop screaming her wordless terror until they decided to take her to the special school for psychics, where they found out that she was one of them. I didn’t want to be taken away, so I kept my eyes to the floor. Later, Danielle visited our school, obligated by the authorities, who wanted to show children that psychics aren’t dangerous. Any fears I had about her new school were confirmed in the ugly glasses she had to wear and her new demeanor. She was too quiet. You might think it would be a nice contrast from the screaming, but her silence, which went all the way down to her slow-moving, abnormally uncluttered thought energy, terrified me.

Although I never scream, it doesn’t take long for all the thoughts to become too much, too stimulating. I decided to become a therapist because looking into one soul at a time is easier to handle and helps me feel I’m making a difference in people’s lives.

You think I have social anxiety, but that you’ve brought me out of my shell because I can gaze into your eyes for hours and it never gets overwhelming. The first time you said, “You understand me so well,” I saw jumbled scenes of rejection from your childhood and honestly didn’t feel there was all that much to understand. “It’s like we’re soul mates,” you rambled on.

I cut you off early. “You love me,” I told you.

“I’m in love with you,” you specified, and melted into an effeminate mess of tears and sobs that stemmed from memories of experiences from your distant and more recent past. Totally self-absorbed, you interact with me only as far as I can figure out what you’re thinking, which forged a bond between us that exists only in your mind. You have no idea that I can figure out what anyone is thinking, as naturally as I breathe. You assumed that because I could complete your sentence, I loved you, too. That’s the first time I was sorely tempted to tell you I’m a psychic. There have been many other times, but you might report me and I’d end up having to register. I didn’t pass unperceived through the world for thirty years only to register now and be subjected to those distinctly not fashion-forward glasses and who knows what tests or prisons. So I’ll write all these ideas down and try to decide what to do.

Maybe it’s my lot in life to be misunderstood. It wasn’t long after I got here that I noticed that in Providence, Friendship is a one-way street. I was comfortable with that, because for me, it really has been. And continues to be.

This little letter to you, dear husband, is going to be more useful than I thought. I have a lot to process with my newest client, and the official session notes are not the place to do it because the courts might subpoena them at any moment, given the nature of her problems.

When I found Emily on the other side of the office door, her presence forced its way into the room and I stood back to let it and her through. But when she slumped through the doorway and threw herself onto the couch, tossing a dusty backpack at the coffee table with a resonant clang, I realized all that energy was on the un-Talented level, the kind of vibes anyone can perceive. She glared dolefully right into my eyes, but I didn’t get any readings on her. In fact, on the level where I would usually sense thought energy, I heard and saw only a crackling kind of static buzz, sort of like an old broken television. I sat down in the chair across from her with our gazes locked, and yet if I hadn’t read the report, I would’ve had no idea what she was doing there. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.

Her case file is so bizarre, it nearly has its own presence atop my desk, behind the couch where the clients sit. Her sister is an incredibly rare Other-Talented Healer, but Emily did all the truly unfathomable actions in the report. I can’t blame her for disliking her current situation: she’s watched at all times and forced to go to therapy sessions in group or singly on a daily basis. The lack of freedom must seem appalling to a college student. Especially a college student who had previously been three thousand miles away from her family.

It’s unclear why the family followed Emily, who started studying at Brown two years ago. The state took control of Emily’s psychiatric health when she attempted to kidnap her anthropology TA. Some kind of Axis II personality disorder is suspected. They asked me to take her because of my stellar track record with difficult clients and such disorders are so famously intractable.

They don’t know that my therapeutic success with all those other clients has been the result of my psychic Talent. I suddenly felt like a lazy fraud, faced with this unreadable girl. I filed mentally through all the courses and textbooks from grad school to figure out what to do without being able to read her. I think I covered my panic, even though I was sitting stiffly and could feel the heat in my cheeks, because Emily’s demeanor didn’t change. We spent maybe three minutes in utter silence while I admired her straight brown hair and the way it shone in the slanted afternoon light through the blinds. All I could come up with was a stereotypically therapist way to get the client to start.

“You don’t want to be here, do you?”

“I’m not sick. Everyone else is for thinking I am,” she replied in a mumble that resisted interpretation. “But they’re wrong. About everything.” Then her lips flattened against each other as if she never intended to part them again.

The blame-casting and refusal to be self-critical can indeed be early signs of a personality disorder. But which one? I couldn’t make a diagnosis unless she told me more. Another three minutes of that low humming silence, and I started fishing again.

“My name is Patricia.”

I haven’t mentioned it to you, but I hate being called Trish or Pat or Patty or Trisha. Especially when you say it. I find that when I insist on the full name, most people think I’m being elitist, to use the politest term. But Emily went the opposite way.

She nodded. “Dr. Blundt.”

“You can call me by my first name,” I insisted.

“Dr. Blundt,” she said with what I couldn’t be sure was aggravation.

My gaze darted to the clock on the bookcase behind her. We still had 45 minutes. I didn’t want to waste the entire time, even if she was the most difficult client I’d ever had.

“I hear we have something in common,” I began yet again. She looked at me with what I would say was expectation of failure. “We both came from California and ended up in Rhode Island. What part of the state are you from?”

She shifted her weight back and forth and folded her arms across her chest. “I’m not from California anymore. I’m from Providence.”

I can understand enjoying being away from home at college, but it’s unusual to want to erase all traces of one’s childhood at such an early age. Unless there’s been abuse or something else specific the client is running from. That could explain her discomfort, so obvious in her body language.

Then again, maybe her part of California was that boring. California is big in a way Rhode Islanders can never understand, so not all of it is San Francisco or LA, and some of it has little appeal for certain girls growing up. I’m utterly puzzled by my inability to read Emily, and until she starts talking or I figure out why she’s opaque to me the way no one else ever has been, I can’t even make a diagnosis for the insurance company or the courts. But there was no breakthrough in the first session. We sat together in uncomfortable silence because I didn’t want to lead her or let on that I thought she had any kind of disorder. She looked around at the bookshelves, craning her neck but expending as little physical effort as you can imagine, and checked the time on her phone every five to ten minutes. About two minutes before the hour was up, she stood and grasped her backpack, making to leave.

I said, “I’m here to help you. Maybe you’ll feel more like talking next time.”

“Not likely,” she breathed, and headed toward the entrance door.

“Please, use the other door. It protects client privacy,” I explained.

When she opened the correct door, a woman who must be her mother was saying, “How did it go?” in a nervous tone.

“Great,” Emily replied with no hint of sarcasm. “I think therapy is really going to help me.” Then the door cut off any other words.

This could be the biggest challenge of my career and all I feel about it is dread because the authorities are watching so closely.

That sounds paranoid, but as they say, it’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you.

Today, dear husband, was yet another time I nearly blurted out to you that I can see your thoughts. They keep stacking up, these incidents, and in my imagination they’re leading up to some future magic moment when I hand you this notebook and you read the words I have never spoken to anyone.

This afternoon, I was between appointments. You had already passed through the shouting, foot-stomping frustration—I heard you, felt the vibrations come up through the floor. I came downstairs to find you stumped on some piece of code—forgive me for never being able to retain even your most basic thoughts about the work you do from home—so you said we should walk down Thayer Street, spend some time in the university bookstore, maybe grab a bite to eat. I’m not sure why I still play along at these events. They have never turned out well. Well, yes, I
am
sure: the dogged devotion in your eyes, the distinct need to spend time with me, the despair, like a black void, that throws itself at me until I say yes. It’s a matter of human decency not to let you suffer. It doesn’t take a psychic to think you might be codependent.

We walked, with arms locked as much as possible on the crowded sidewalk, passing the eclectic shops and international panoply of eateries, with me mostly watching my step.

“Look up!” you said, unable to leave well enough alone. “It’s a beautiful day. You can’t waste it on being shy.”

I can hear the birds chirping and the bicyclists going by, feel the warm temperature, see the sunlight reflected on the sidewalk, all without risking seeing into some random person’s soul. “The pavement is uneven here,” I protested. “I’m keeping us both from tripping.”

You stopped short, causing a harried student and her parents to crash into you. You ignored their “Hey,” and grasped my hands in yours, painfully. Although your intent had been to give me one of your well-meaning pep talks that always end up so patronizing, the talk grew smaller in your eyes until all I could see was you, punching the father. I wrested my hands free and backed away, knowing there was nothing I could do to prevent it.