🎧 Chapter Twenty-Five | Augustus Abrams
What you need to know:
Fran needs to tell the truth about Jennifer’s alcohol intake on the night of the car wreck, but the accident attorney calls this admission “irrelevant.” Bottom line, the friendship with Jennifer and Fran is at an end, and she’s now without any support beyond her high-end attorney. With every gap comes something new though and as Jennifer learns to how to wrangle her chickens into submission, she finally learns how to finally wrangle herself—or at least try the very thing she fears…another acupuncturist.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Augustus Abrams
Trish drives off in her bottle green Ford pick-up. The roar of the big engine, a wave of her arm out the window. She says that if I decide to get rid of the birds down the line, to let her know. “But I hope not,” she added. “I hope ya’ll work things out.”
Smelling of chicken shit and dust, I tuck her phone number into a cubby of my desk. Then go wash my hands.
The telephone rings.
Drying my hands on a towel, I cross into the dining room and study the caller-ID.
G. Abrams. That stupid acupuncturist, I think. No!
I turn back into the kitchen, toss the towel on the counter, and rotate a handle on the gas stove top. Blue flames whoosh to life under the tea kettle.
The phone continues to ring but it’ll go to voice mail in a sec.
I open a cabinet. Pull down a mug and a tin of tea. I measure out a teaspoon of leaves into a strainer.
Still the phone rings.
I toss aside the teaspoon, go back to the dining room, stare at that blinking name: G.Abrams. G. Abrams. G. Abrams.
I grab the handset.
“Hello,” I say.
“Hello! This is Gus Abrams,” the man says, that twang in his voice.
“I’m sorry. I left you a message…” I say.
“Yeah. I heard it but I thought I would try again. Inga says you’re not doing well.”
From the kitchen, the tea pot whistles. Phone wedged between shoulder and ear, I take it back to the kitchen, tug the pot off the stove and turn off the heat.
“Isn’t that kind of a conflict?” I say. “Her releasing my information to a stranger?”
“Not really. We consult on each other’s cases. She’s worried about you.”
Worried? Inga? She never says she’s worried though I’m hardly there when she works on me, my thoughts always on my troubles more than my physical pain.
“She says you’ve been seeing her for weeks now,” he continues, “and nothing is changing.”
“That might be the case,” I say, take up the pot with a potholder, pour water into a wide mouthed mug. Steam rises into my face, “but I’ve done acupuncture before. It’s not for me.”
“Did you go to The Natural College of Health and Science?” he asks. “Or was it the State of Oregon group?”
I ease the pot on the iron burner. The bump of metal on metal. “The state group,” I say. “How did you know that?”
Over the line, Abrams make a sound that could be a laugh or snort. “Anyone who has had a bad experience usually comes from one of those schools.”
“I didn’t say I had a bad experience,” I say.
“You didn’t say you a good one either,” he says.
Leaving the tea to steep, I lean against the edge of the counter, and look toward the window over the sink. Outside, those crazy chickens are calm. Quiet. They peck at the gravel like all is well. Just like that, everything can change.
“I’m married to the guy who did the bad acupuncture,” I hear myself say, surprised because they are the last words I would have expected to come out of my mouth. “We’re getting a divorce right now. I’m sure you know him. He’s a big deal in this town.”
“What is his name?”
“I’m sorry?”
“His name? Mr. Big Deal?”
Steam swirls out of my tea cup, dissipates, and then vanishes. I hear myself say Rick’s name aloud. “He was like Doctor of the Year back in 2006. Or 2005?”
“Was he now?” Abrams says dryly. “Never heard of him.”
I don’t want to like this man, but the way he says this makes me smile. He’s clearly not impressed.
“The thing is,” Abrams continues. “Inga is rarely wrong and now we’ve talked a bit, I think you might need some extra support. Sounds like you are in the deep end right now. Why don’t you come on in? Monday? Ten a.m.? We’ll sit, talk, and figure this out.”
I open my mouth to say no.
“No charge,” he says, just like Trish at the feed store.
I close my mouth and book the appointment.
The following week, I’m on the sidewalk before a stately old mansion that must have been built by one of Portland’s lumber barons or shipping magnate founders in the early days. It’s over-the-top grand with a wide portico and ornate columns. Up the steps, I push through a heavy oak door embedded with leaded glass.
Inside, intricate dark wood paneling. Box beam ceiling. Parquet mosaic floor tiles.
I cross to the listing of tenants on a far wall and study the different practices and therapist names. Couples therapy. Jungian analysis. Youth counseling. Elenore Ainsworth, Carlson Kleinsworth, Harold Bard, Kristine Zuckerman, and Augustus Abrams who has offices on the second floor.
Holding to a carved banister, I go up a wide set of stairs. At the second-floor landing, I stand in a hallway and am about to sit in one on the leather chairs along the fall wall but a door opens and out steps an older man. Thin. Wiry. He wears gray wool slacks. A black V-neck cashmere sweater.
“Right on time,” he says, holds out his hand. “I’m Gus Abrams.”
We shake and his hand is small in mine. Warm. He is short with a horseshoe of thin white hair around the back of his mostly bald scalp. I compare him to Rick but right away know they are nothing alike.
“Lovely building,” I say, mostly to be polite.
“Yes,” Abrams says, looking up at the high ceiling and the ornate trim work. “They knew how to build them back in the day.” Turning, he motions for me to follow him down the narrow hall. At a closed door, he turns the knob and leads the way into a spacious room with another boxed beam ceiling and oversized windows shaded with metal blinds. The walls, an off-white color, display abstract paintings of what could be landscapes or ink splotches. In the center of the room is an elevated exam table with a sheet folded neatly at the end. Beyond this is a medicine cabinet.
Abrams does something called Five Element acupuncture. I know because I read about it on his site. It’s part of the original, pre-Mao tradition of acupuncture. I have no idea what that means but at least I’ve done some research.
Abrams crosses to a corner of the room furnished with a stiff-backed metal chair and an old-school rocking chair. To the side of these two sits a low table topped by a candle that burns in a glass cup next to a religious-looking painting. He tugs at his trousers slightly and lowers into the metal chair.
“Please,” he says, motions to the rocker.
I stand a moment and look at what is a lovely chair. Wide seat. Heavy wood. Old. Sturdy. “I’m getting the much better deal here,” I say, comparing his chair to the one being offered.
“That’s the point,” he says. “Please.”
I swing my purse straps off my good arm, try not to wince in pain or seem nervous, suspicious, or worried. It’s just another doctor’s appointment—no big deal.
Sitting, I hold my purse in my lap, study the image illuminated by the candle. It takes a minute but then I realize it’s an icon of the Trinity. The Father. The Son. And the Holy Ghost. I know because as a kid I was christened in the Catholic Church. Confirmed, too. My first marriage was what they called a Holy Sacrament (though later, I had it annulled because of abuse). Though I’ve given up on God, and the Church, I cannot look away from that image.
“Are you Catholic?” I ask and finally look at Abrams again. He sits very still, his hands folded in his lap.
“Yes,” he says. “I’m in the contemplative tradition.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“It’s an old tradition with the desert mothers and fathers who meditate on scripture.”
“Oh,” I say, eyes cutting to the image again. Each of the figures is outlined in gold and halos shimmer around their heads. “I’ve been doing Buddhist meditation for years…but I don’t know if I’m getting anywhere.”
“I believe that is a pretty common concern,” he says, then lifts his chin. “Which one is hurt? Right? Left?”
“What?”
“Which arm can’t you lift?”
“Oh. The left,” I say, flap the arm like a wing with that familiar pain I’ve largely gotten used to now.
He looks at the arm for a long time, then at me again. “This Doctor of the Year?” he asks. “What did he treat you for?”
It’s a very strange thing to be in that room with Abrams. I have a sense that it’s not just us right now, but something larger than us. Something holy and old and wiser than I can begin to know. I look at the candle in the cup again, watch that flame shift side to side in a pool of melting wax.
“Jennifer?” Abrams asks.
“I’m sorry,” I say, looking at him once more. “What?”
Abrams shifts side to side in his chair. The metal under him makes a sigh sound. “Maybe start at the beginning?”
“I don’t think you have that much time,” I say.
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” he says. “I’ve booked ninety minutes.”
“For free?” I ask. “Why?”
“Why not?” he asks, a slight shrug of his shoulder.
Outside, in the distance, the thwack sound of rotor blades and they grow louder and louder still as the helicopter passes overhead just like that night at Fran’s when I couldn’t fall asleep and I realized that I needed serious help. “What now?” I asked the darkness of that night.
The helicopter sounds fade and Abrams sits there looking like a solemn monk. Waiting.
I bundle my purse closer, like pulling a child onto my lap and hear myself start on that first day at Rick’s clinic.
“I was having these bad dreams,” I say…
Next:
Chapter Twenty Six - The Doctor of the Year
It’s time to go back to the beginning of Jennifer and Rick’s relationship, where she went to him for relief from repressed memories that were appearing in the form of flashbacks, and his initial treatments and diagnosis.
