Self-Esteem (9 page)

“Sorry, think about what?” Crawford said.

On the way home, Crawford avoided conversation, feeling afraid he might say something to Dorothy he would regret. Thoughts of Jenny were creeping into his mind. His one-word answers to Dorothy’s questions were not anger this time but self-loathing. The revived affair had been going on for several weeks, and even though he felt the urge, Crawford could only maintain what little order he had in his life if he put off a confession to Dorothy another day.
One day at a time.

As they were pulling into the driveway, Dorothy tried to get a complete sentence out of her husband. “So what did you and Phil talk about?”

“Not much. You know Phil, nonchalant as always.”

Peters was an anchor that brought back Crawford’s respect for psychology’s highest goals. Whenever he was around Peters, he realized there was in fact much to learn about human behavior from serious study, and that perhaps this study could improve people’s lives. Peters brought to mind Freud, Jung, Skinner, Maslow, Eysenck and Szasz — all of whom still meant something to Crawford. They were the originators, the men with the ideas, the framers of the Constitution of the mind. But Crawford hadn’t come up with a unique concept since completing his master’s thesis. After that, it was one rehash after another. Even the quotations cited in his books — from Plato to Shakespeare to Dickens to Mark Twain to Bob Dylan — were all straight out of
Bartlett’s Quotations
, nearly all of them sprinkled in without much understanding of the original context of the quote, or for that matter, the significance of the quote to his own work. It didn’t matter. His followers loved it, and for a short time he felt like an originator himself.

But wait!
Crawford had come up with
one
concept since that terrible thesis paper, one that he presented in his first book,
Self-Confidence
. It even caused some discussion — not much, but some — in the halls of psychology. It was his
Child-Adult-Self Theory
.

There had been the
Inner Child Concept
(or ICC), the contemporary version accredited to the likes of John Crenshaw, “America’s foremost personality development expert” (as he proclaimed himself). Crenshaw’s theory states that the key to discovering “the true self” is to discover the “inner child” of which you must become your own parent.

Become your own parent?

Crenshaw and others like him declared that only by confronting the indignity of one’s upbringing could an individual finally purge the cruel and authoritarian system of parenting that damages the child and creates a repressed adult, destroying the “true” self, which never had a chance to exist.

Huh?

Simply put, people need to get in touch with themselves as children — love that child, nurture it — so they can get in touch with their “real self.”

Bullshit.
Crawford, aware that Crenshaw’s inner child spent week after week dominating the
New York Times
non-fiction bestseller list, set his sights on confronting Crenshaw’s (and not his own) inner child — and with more than just a toy radio. As a result, Crawford came up with the “adult-as-child” theory, which he later called the “child-adult-self.” Dorothy had initially been concerned that there would be a lawsuit if Crawford didn’t distinguish his theory clearly from Crenshaw’s, but Crawford was way ahead of her. His concept would be different, a lot different. He would follow Crenshaw’s theory in maintaining that the adult was carrying around the unhealed wounds of childhood. But his concept would differ by proclaiming that yes, there was still a sick child inside — but
independent
of its adult self. No, that child didn’t need to be “healed” with love and affection. The “parent of self” needed to use its own authoritarian measures to control the
child-adult-self
that was trying to take control.
Yeah, that’s it
. Crawford had come up with something monumental, he thought — something that would have housewives plopping down $19.95 by the station-wagon load.

“The inner-child is not a part of you. You are an adult. Your child-self exists as it did when you were a child. You grew up. It did not. These two beings — you and your child-self — are not one person in two manifestations. They are actually two separate individuals vying for control of your being.”

Crawford’s revelation came about while arguing with Dorothy over his drinking — at the time, the worst it had ever been. She had called his drinking “childish,” which gave him an idea. It was his
child-self
controlling his
adult-self
therefore creating a
child-adult self
which had an inclination towards drunkenness.
That was it!
His child-self, who admired the self-indulgences of drunk old Uncle Jerry, had the alcohol problem, not his adult-self. Crawford told his wife that his drinking wasn’t so much “childish” as it was “child-selfish,” a term he later coined as a part of the
child-adult-self vocabulary
.

“This is why I don’t have any self-confidence,” a shitfaced Crawford told his wife, putting on the eyes of a sick puppy.

Dorothy thought the theory of the
child-adult-self
made sense, and perhaps this was something he could pursue. He needed to pursue something, she thought. And without Crawford’s knowledge, she did a mass mailing of query letters to publishers and agents with a book proposal.

“My theory concedes [sic] that self-confidence is a matter of telling the child inside to behave,” she wrote in her husband’s name.

And later, to Crawford’s disbelief, it worked. It certainly worked for a man named Lee Burns.

Crawford would later write, “Discipline your child-self. Do it today! He or she will listen to you.”

Crawford wasn’t in the mood to discipline his child-self that evening. He was in the mood for drink. After all, Crawford was parking the car in the driveway these days because he was superstitious about it being in the garage next to Cal’s.

I even avoid his car, Crawford thought.
Pathetic.

“Cal better be in bed,” Dorothy said.

“He’s okay,” Crawford reassured her, trying to shun the topic. “Is there any of that coffee fudge ice cream left?” Crawford asked as a diversion.

Crawford walked to the front door just a few steps behind Dorothy, watching her look through her purse for her keys. His abhorrence of Dorothy’s butt that morning was forgotten. As often happened after a day spent hung over, Crawford was overcome with a healthy affection for his wife, a physical one bordering on teenage horniness. It was probably best to keep the passion at bay, but a little tenderness couldn’t hurt. As they reached the front door, Crawford grabbed Dorothy by the waist and pulled her close.

“Come here, honey,” he said tenderly. “You’re something else. You know that?”

She was surprised.

He kissed her on the neck then held her close. It felt good to him. And like that warm feeling of security he got from a first drink, he couldn’t let go if he wanted to.

“Wow,” she said. “I guess you need to talk to Phil more often.”

Dorothy didn’t know what to think, but she suspected something. Over the years, she had noticed this kind of behavior only when Jim was up to no good. But she indulged him nevertheless.

Perhaps it was only the drinking, she thought. And we can work through that together.

Crawford kissed Dorothy’s neck as she held her hand to the side of his face.

“What’s that?” she said.

“What?”

Crawford thought she’d found something incriminating, though that would have been impossible.

“That,” she said, looking at the ground.

To the left of the front door was a package wrapped in brown paper. It was small, like a paperback novel. Dorothy picked it up, and just then Crawford felt an uneasy stiffness come over him. Could it be from Jenny? Could she be trying to get revenge by telling Dorothy of their affair?
But with a book?
Dorothy could have said “boo” and Crawford would have jumped.

The package had a small note attached, which Dorothy pulled off. It was a three-inch piece of paper, like a small postcard folded in half. Dread ran through Crawford’s mind.

The note was handwritten, and Dorothy read it aloud. “Stage One complete. I’m going to follow your program to the very end. Love, Happy Pappy.” Dorothy giggled. “Happy Pappy?”

“Let me see that,” Crawford said, hiding his relief that it wasn’t from Jenny. Crawford’s hand shook. Then he realized out loud: “It’s probably Jay and Albert.” Crawford looked over his shoulder and scanned the street as if they might be watching. “Yep, probably them, a prank from them.”

“Berry and Scott? Are you kidding? We saw them tonight.”

Crawford huffed as he scanned the lawns across the street.

“Dr. Berry wouldn’t do that,” she said.

“It’s the two of them, Dorothy. All they did in graduate school was pull tricks on me. And they did it together as a team.”

Dorothy wasn’t in the mood to argue. “Uh huh. We’ve had this conversation before.”

“They just wanted to make sure this evening was ruined for me.”

Dorothy noticed that her husband’s hands were shaking, as if he were about to strangle the former classmates right there. All she could do was try to calm him down. “Wait a minute. What makes you so sure it’s a prank?” she asked. “You don’t even know what it is. Look, it’s probably nothing.” Dorothy ripped open the package and pulled out the contents.
A videotape.
“See? It’s nothing.”

Crawford grabbed it from her and turned it over. It had no label, no writing, nothing. “A videotape,” Crawford said. “Something to aggravate me, no doubt.”

“Berry and Scott were at the banquet tonight, Jim.”

Crawford ignored her. “It’s probably a porn film or something. You know, with the Happy Pappy theme song playing or something like that. That’s the kind of thing they would do.”

“And what would be so horrible about that?”

“What? What’s so horrible? Berry and Scott did this kind of thing all the time when we were in school, Dorothy.”

“Did what?”

“Pulled pranks on me.”

“Okay. You’ve told me that before. And?”

“You have no idea. They were elaborate.”

“Elaborate?”

“Very elaborate. And they still haunt me, their pranks. There’s never any resolution.” Crawford was looking at the tape, convinced of his conclusion. “Got to make sure I know my place. That’s their job.”

“I think you’re overreacting, Jim. We don’t even know what it is. Look, if it’s a porn film then we’ll just watch it together. Okay?” she said with a wink.

No, I’ll watch this by myself
, Crawford thought. He also thought of getting out of those pants that were choking his balls. Crawford wouldn’t allow himself to consider a worse scenario: that the package might have been left by a deranged fan who wanted to do very bad things.

CHAPTER 6

Cal heard a car door slam but didn’t pay much attention. He was sitting on the edge of his bed talking to Darrin on the phone, listening to his strange proposition. It had been two hours since his last hit of weed and his high was in recession. Cal hated coming down. It made him feel groggy, like waking up after a night of eating too many sweets. And coming down from that other stuff, Cal was both restless and lethargic. But he just didn’t feel like smoking more.

Cal had sensed his new friend might help him overcome his troubles at home and at school, but Darrin was already starting to make Cal a little uneasy. Darrin was a self-proclaimed “idea man,” and Cal liked that about him. But Darrin had an idea that made Cal nervous. All Cal could do was keep telling himself that Darrin was the coolest and that this thing was probably okay.

Cal first met Darrin at a dirty, rundown used bookstore deep in the Valley called Zip Dance Used Books & Comics — not that Cal read comics or books or much of anything at all other than magazine articles on Rotten Tamales. Cal’s pot connection, Larsen Finn — or “Larney,” as he was called — worked part-time at Zip Dance helping its owner, a Cuban smuggler of mostly cigarettes and electronics, load, unload and sometimes deliver contraband, most of it from South America. Larney was a skinny white boy with greasy hair and crooked, auburn-colored teeth who wore the same filthy, hole-ridden Aerosmith T-shirt every day. But despite his unkempt appearance, Larney was very serious about a number of things — especially his illegal activities. For example, it angered Larney when his two-dozen or so pot customers dropped by his “regular job” for a purchase, which he warned them not to do. Larney knew that his little nickel and dime marijuana racket would not sit well with his boss, Oscar Arroyo (or “Fidel,” as most people called him), since it could bring just enough heat to put Fidel in the joint. Larney was so afraid of Fidel that he couldn’t quit his job to concentrate on his pot business, which started to pick up after he got seed money from working at the store. Unfortunately, that meant more buyers coming by his day job to procure.

“Just fucking page me, dumbass,” Larney often said to ridicule a stoner out of the store.

But Larney was different with Cal. Larney admired Cal’s fish-out-of-water status, attending a shitty public school in the valley while living in the lap of luxury in the Hills. He thought Cal’s dad was the coolest self-help author since Thomas Harris, maybe cooler. And Cal was trustworthy compared with the other dirty little puffers he dealt with. Once Cal, without a hint from Larney, had whipped out a credit card and bought a hundred-dollar vintage comic book on display next to the cash register when Fidel walked in on them discussing a new arrival of some kick-ass smoke called Morning Lights. Fidel didn’t suspect a thing. Larney was pleasantly surprised, subsequently making an exception with Cal when it came to store visits.

“So what are you doing here?” Larney asked, turning down the volume on AC/DC singing about how hard it is to be a rock star.

“Eh, fucking batteries are dead,” Cal said, holding up his pager. “And I was in the neighborhood. Okay to talk?”