The Complete Collection. William Wharton
he’s picked up on the urgency in my voice or just doesn’t have much business, but I appreciate getting straight in. He asks if I’ll call Perpetual and have Dad’s records forwarded. Perpetual says I can pick them up at noon.
Privately, I tell Dad I’ve made the appointment and I’m going in first to check it out.
I get to Delibro’s office on Santa Monica Boulevard before ten. The office is comfortable, easy-California-life style. The walls are done in what looks like shipping-crate wood with stenciled black signs, ‘FRAGILE HANDLE WITH CARE ↑ THIS SIDE UP’; somewhat bizarre for a psychiatrist’s waiting room.
Delibro himself is young, perhaps thirty-five, short, with bushy sideburns and a full-lip mustache. He looks like a French cop. He has a nice smile and perfectly neutral handshake.
In his consultation room there’s no couch. It could be an office for selling insurance. He doesn’t sit behind his desk but in a comfortable black leather chair at a forty-five-degree angle to the chair I sit in. We’re semi-facing each other so I’m looking at him off my left shoulder and he’s peering at me over his right. It’s comfortable enough. I get a strong feeling nothing here is accidental.
He leads me on and I go through it all the best I can. He’s asking cautious questions, but it’s clear he’s as interested in my anxiety as he is in Dad. Then he gets caught up in what I’m trying to tell him.
He asks why I’m so particularly concerned. It’s a question I’ve been asking myself. I tell him this might only be ordinary senile experience, not worth wasting his time with; but I’d like an expert opinion. I also tell him Dad asked me to arrange for help.
The rest of the hour goes well. He’s obviously listening, not pretending. He asks pertinent questions. I hope Dad won’t be put off by the vaguely ‘hippy’ atmosphere. I was half afraid Delibro’d be one of those displaced-priest or rabbi types with shiny gold-rimmed glasses and a permanent smile. Delibro seems like somebody Dad can relate to. He also doesn’t give off ‘boss man’ vibrations, doesn’t project any threatening signals. Dad will feel more as if he’s talking to one of his nephews or grandchildren.
I drive home. I tell Mom how Dad and I are going to go see a gerontologist that afternoon in Santa Monica. She thinks I said gynecologist and gets upset. I explain how a gerontologist is a doctor who specializes in problems of old age. I don’t call him a psychiatrist; no sense giving more ammunition for the ‘crazy’ theory.
I tell Dad what I feel about Delibro. He listens and nods his head.
‘Johnny, I’ve been doing some thinking on this. The way I see it, the biggest problem is keeping things apart. Sometimes I have to stop and make myself think about where I really am. I’ll be working out there in the greenhouse, but in my mind I’ll be back in Cape May. Working out there in the greenhouse is one place where I do most of my daytime visiting. It’s another world, cut off, I’m out there alone with my plants and my mind goes. But don’t you worry, John, I’m working on it. I’ll lick this thing yet.’
Just before two, we get to Santa Monica. It’s easy getting Dad to the office because there’s parking in the building and an elevator up from the garage. Inside, I give the secretary Dad’s records I picked up at Perpetual. Dad’s taking the place in.
‘Gosh, this guy must be awful poor for a psychiatrist; he’s paneled his walls with broken shipping crates. Maybe he’ll have an orange crate for a desk.’
Just then, Delibro comes out. He’s wearing a calming smile and concentrates on Dad. Dad’s looking straight back into his eyes and I’m hoping it’ll be all right. Dad’s trying to decide if this fellow is a boss or not. He has an office, and he is a doctor, but he’s wearing a soft, dark blue turtleneck sweater.
We go into his consultation room together. Delibro told me in our meeting I could come in but he’d give a signal when I should leave. He’s arranged the room so there’s one chair relatively near the door; I figure that’s mine and sit there. Dad sits in the chair where I sat before.
Very gently, Delibro speaks with Dad while he goes over the medical records.
He asks Dad about Mother, her heart attacks; Dad’s operation. He’s full of sympathy and brings it off as real. He’s easing into the situation, establishing rapport, but in such a way it isn’t obnoxious. Dad’s nodding, smiling, listening. It’s not the ‘boss man’ nod. This is different; he’s enjoying being the center of attention.
It seems like tremendously casual conversation at a hundred bucks an hour but he couldn’t bulldoze into it; Dad would be put off. Then, finally, Delibro comes on.
‘Mr Tremont, your son’s told me you feel you have another life. Could you tell me something about this?’
He smiles and waits. Dad looks at me.
‘Sure, Dad. Tell Dr Delibro. Tell him about Cape May; tell him what you told me.’
He starts off slowly but as he senses the intense, positive interest of the doctor, he warms up. He intersperses his tale with ‘I know this sounds crazy but …’ or, ‘This might be hard to believe but …’ But he’s bringing it out.
I’m hoping Delibro won’t shoo me. Dad’s telling things he hasn’t mentioned before. More than when he talked to me, Dad’s convinced he’s been in two places at the same time. This bothers his sense of rightness. It violates his perfectionist, logical, engineering instincts.
At first, Delibro starts out using the standard psychiatrist come-ons: ‘Yesss’ … ‘That’s right’ … ‘Go on’ … ‘Hmmm,’ and so forth; but after five minutes it’s coming without help. This is a whole world wanting to be born; no need for forceps. I’m torn between watching, listening to Dad; watching Delibro; and letting my own head spin. Delibro’s so fascinated his mouth is partly open.
It’s the completeness of details, the description of making shoes, the box he designed for fitting the last, the leather sewing; there’s the planting of potatoes, watching for the flowering and the harvesting; the tying of onions in a knot so they’ll develop good bulbs. It keeps coming on. It’s clear Dad wants to reveal all this. The combination of his pleasure in it and his guilt about it has been tearing him apart.
It’s as if a painter spent thirty years painting a masterpiece of a mural in an empty room but hasn’t been able to show it because he painted it with stolen paints on borrowed time in somebody else’s house without their permission.
And Dad can tell it even more fully to Delibro than he could to me. Just then, I catch Delibro give me a blink of his eye; it’s time for me to go. I try to slip out quietly but Dad picks it up.
‘Where’re you going, Johnny? Is it time to leave?’
‘I’m only going for a drink of water, Dad; I’ll be outside in the waiting room. You stay here and talk to the doctor some more.’
He accepts this easily and I leave. I sit and wait. I read all the magazines but they’re in there almost two hours. Thank God, this guy doesn’t have much business. I talk to the secretary; she’s a Japanese girl, studying psychology at UCLA. She has some of the same professors I worked with twenty years ago. A university is a place where time seems to stand still.
I have an enormous temptation to get up and pace back and forth like an expectant father. I can’t help wondering about the lack of patients. Maybe this time of day is slow for ‘crazies’.
This office alone, in this building, must cost a fortune; then a secretary; some overhead. I’d worry myself into a loony bin in a week.
Finally, they come out. They’re chatting and laughing.
‘Well, Mr Tremont, I must say your father’s story is one of the most interesting things I’ve ever heard. I honestly don’t think most people have as much reality in their daily world as he has in his Cape May existence.’
I’m shocked. Here the secretary’s sitting there listening. I’ve been conditioned