Two in the Field (2 page)

 ONE 

“Sam?”

My attention snapped back to Dr. Sjoberg, whose soft, inoffensive eyes regarded me quizzically.

“Sorry,” I said. “I drifted off.”

“Has that been happening much?”

“No,” I lied.

“Anything else about the stress workshop?”

Having attended my first session of
Triggers and Safeties: How to Manage Stress Responsibly
, I’d already described for him the breathing and pillow-pounding exercises. I’d made a list of situations that “triggered” me and my scenarios for dealing with them. The guiding principle was that we are constructed like television sets: although we cannot change our basic wiring, we can learn to change output channels. An apt metaphor. Several years back, my heaving a TV through Stephanie’s parents’ bay window had been the catalyst for our divorce and my legal estrangement from our daughters.

“I had some trouble with the sentence completion,” I told him. “Things like: ‘When dad got angry_____.’ ”

Aware that my father had abandoned me in infancy after my mother’s death, Sjoberg smiled thinly at what he called my tendency to deflect. “The exercises don’t hurt, Sam.” He rubbed his smooth-shaven cheeks. Since I’d last seen him his hair had silvered slightly at the temples, and he’d added to the number of framed certificates and awards on the wall behind him. “Have you re-thought your actions at the ballpark?”

“I should’ve called for security,” I said glumly. “But I didn’t really expect him to swing.”

Sjoberg made a note on his pad. “Several times you’ve referred to your baseball cap being knocked off as the last straw. Tell me more about that.”

“What’s to tell? It got trashed.”

He nodded acceptingly and adjusted his metal-framed spectacles. “Intense anger can erupt when a cherished personal goal is blocked.” Seeing my puzzled look, he went on quickly: “What might your goal have been in the three of you wearing those caps?”

I shrugged, at a loss. “I guess I wanted the girls to know …” My words trailed off.

“Could it be the same reason you buy them vintage toys and talk to them about the past?”

“I guess so.”

“To communicate the importance, the
depth
, of what happened to you? So that they can understand what took you from them? And might take you again?”

I shook my head. “According to you, it’s all a fantasy.”

“Never mind that just now. I’m talking about your feelings. I’m suggesting that by such actions you’ve tried to put your daughters in touch with a portion of your life they can’t otherwise share.”

“Makes sense.”

“Are you doing it in case you have to leave again?”

I hesitated, aware of his scrutiny. Was I?

“Anger can also mask fear of abandonment. Your parents abandoned you, Sam.” His tone was gentle. “Your divorce and your ex-wife’s remarriage distanced you from your children. You managed to find a meaningful life—fantasy or not—and it too was taken away.”

With a stab of loss I pictured the cap falling. “Can I tell you something, Doc, without getting shipped off to the funny farm?”

“Given the current state of public funding,” he said wryly, “your being institutionalized isn’t likely.”

I took a breath and told him of the uniform and the beckoning arm. Sjoberg’s expression didn’t change but I could tell he wasn’t pleased to hear it. “You relate this incident to the Civil War soldier who summoned you into the past?” He checked a sheet of notes in my case folder. “Colm O’Neill?” When I nodded, he said, “Have you had other … glimpses?”

“Nope.” I didn’t appreciate his tone. “Haven’t laid eyes on Clara Antonia for a year and a half, either.”

Another glance at the folder. “The clairvoyant who put you in touch with Colm? Whom you claimed to see again here in San Francisco?”

“I didn’t just claim it.” I could feel us approaching the dead end we always reached: what I considered the most intense experience of my life, Sjoberg had little choice, professionally, but to regard as an extended flight from reality. “I
saw
her! Do you honestly think I make up all this stuff?”

He sat quietly for a moment. “You really don’t want to be in your present life, do you, Sam?”

A vision of a dark-haired woman with green eyes haunted my mind. “I want to be with Cait.”

“And you can’t.” Sjoberg spread his hands flat on the folder. “So you try to construct bridges to her—the vintage baseball caps are just one more example—and then you rage and despair when your bridges don’t make the connection you want.”

I said nothing, resenting him.

“Feeling helpless, you embrace your vision by attacking what threatens it. Your anger brings it closer, makes it seem real.”

“So you’re saying I had some kind of adrenaline hallucination after that fight?”

He folded his hands together, his eyes losing some of their
softness. “Exactly what is it about the past,” he asked, “that makes you want to give up everything and dwell there?”

I struggled to find words to describe the
connectedness
I’d felt more than a century earlier. And not just with Cait. I’d found a brother in Andy, a son in Cait’s boy, Tim. I’d found boon companions of a sort that didn’t seem to exist now. Had adventures that no longer could happen. Felt a wild, raw sense of
vitality
. My emotions were sharper and grander, my senses fresher. I missed sensations like the odor of wet leather in the early morning, the clink of milk cans as they were delivered, the raucous crowing of roosters even in the hearts of large cities, the clatter of hooves and wheels on cobblestones.

I guess I didn’t do a very good job of communicating it. Or maybe I did, but it made no difference. Sjoberg glanced at his watch, a signal our time was ending.

“Sam, let me be blunt.” He tapped my folder with his pen. “You escaped into drink and vanished for months, then reappeared claiming to have traveled back in time. You’ve consistently refused to consider other explanations for what transpired. If things are to go better, you must occupy yourself with the task of coping with
this
life. There’s no other constructive choice.”

“Why not?” I retorted, fed up with having my experience tossed into a psychological trash bin. “Maybe there
are
other explanations. Mysteries that can’t be explained.”

He shrugged dismissively. “I don’t see how you can benefit from further magical thinking. I will not encourage it. Your task is to discard fantasies.”

It was hopeless. I might as well claim I’d been abducted by space aliens. “One thing still bugging me,” I said, to provoke him, “is that Twain expected me at his wedding.”

Sjoberg sighed. “That would be
Mark
Twain?”

“Who else?” I rose and turned toward the door. “The ceremony was set for next winter, 1870. I missed it.”

“Wait a second.” His words quickened, as if inspiration had struck. “Since you found her once, Sam, why not do it again?”

“I can’t, that’s the whole damn—”

“Why not go to Cincinnati?”

“What?”

“Isn’t that where you last saw Cait?”

“Yes, but—”

“You need closure on this. If that’s where you knew her, why not go back?”

“And do what?”

“Well, if you don’t find her”—there was an unspoken
and you sure as hell won’t
—“you could at least verify that she once existed.” He smiled. “Or not.”

He meant check the public records. Of course I didn’t need to go to Cincinnati for that. It could be done by phone or fax. But he was challenging me:
Put up or shut up
.

“Go right away?”
Closure
resonated in me. Did I really want it? I realized how he was steering me, that he meant this to be a reality check. I wasn’t at all sure I could bring myself to view proof of Cait marrying (if she had) and dying. Yet the notion of traveling there carried tremendous appeal. At least I’d be closer to where she’d
been
.

“Why delay?” He tapped his pen, a staccato rhythm. “I’ll excuse you from the anger sessions.”

I’d done my best to adjust to being in the present, but it didn’t seem to be working out very well. By taking extra assignments the past two years, I’d piled up dozens of comp days on top of sick leave and vacation. The rawest of cubs could handle my regular beat of obits and nightside cop checks. Did I have any compelling reason
not
to go?

Sjoberg raised his eyebrows. “Well?”

The blue tunic and brass buttons … a shadowy face? … had the arm beckoned?

“I think I can get away next week.”

“It’s okay, Daddy.” Looking into my eyes, Hope spoke with impressively clear diction for a seven-year-old. “Mommy told us how you want to be with your other family, and that’s why you get upset sometimes.”

She did? Did she also say I’m stark raving nuts?

“Is Mommy like Cait?” asked Hope.

I looked at her, startled. “How’d you know her name?”

“You said it when the policemen gathered around us.”

“That’s right, Daddy,” Susy chimed in from the corner, where she had blockaded herself behind Lego units easily worth several thousand bucks. “I heard you!”

We were in the girls’ room of the house Daddy Dave had built for Stephanie, my ex. I sat cross-legged facing Hope on the lower level of a bunk bed roughly the size of my studio apartment. Plans were afoot to add a wing for when the girls would want separate rooms; it would hold a sound stage, a video lab, and the latest miracles in work/play stations. Having gone dot-com and then cashed his stock options before Nasdaq had crashed, Daddy Dave was richer than ever. He indulged the girls shamelessly. If we were involved in a competition, he’d won it long ago. I’d nixed his adopting them, but even that seemed to be growing less important.