A Very Contrary Psychologist With the Memories of a Dozen Past Lives

2021

“I’m getting remarried.”

    The psychologist smiles. “Great. How old’s the girl? Any older than the last one?”

    “Not in the least! She’s eighteen, I believe, and very pretty.”

    “Congratulations,” he says. “Don’t invite me, I don’t want to come.”

    The man is shocked. Crossing one leg over the other, he stares, and his mouth gapes like that of a fish. “Alright, then. Shall I just relay it to you later?”

    Cheerily he shakes his head. “Spare me.”

    The session ends quickly and neatly, and as the man leaves, his bald spot shining like an eye, the psychologist rises from his chair. The room is small; there is a mirror and a desk and two chairs, placed to face each other. The psychologist has placed his to see the door, like most do.

    Opposite the mirror there’s a very square window. It looks out to a courtyard, white with snow, where there are tracks among the buried paths. The barren trees shift placidly in the wind, and he stands, watching, hands in pockets. He often does this. He watches things where there are no longer things to watch, and he sees things that are no longer there to be seen, and he hears whispers belonging to voices that can no longer speak. Such is the nature of memories; after twelve lives of them he lives in an echoing cave of existence, multiplying on itself by the second, a step and a step and another, pat pat pat—crush a butterfly and it flutters away.

    Despite this he’s surprisingly good-humored, and he makes for interesting company, if not agreeable. He likes people and they sometimes like him.

    He has twelve appointments today and his fifth should be arriving soon. Here he is. He’s knocking at the door.

    “Come in!” he calls, and swivels back to the chair. He sits and steeples his fingers together. The man is hunched, tired; his coat is dusted with snow. “How’s the weather? Nice and warm?”

    “Ah, I wish.” He shrugs off the coat and ice falls to the floor.

    “Tell me about your week.”

    “Well,” says the man, “I did have the funeral.”

    “That’s right, the funeral. Tell me about that.”

    Hesitating, the man looks down. His fingers clutch at each other. “Well, I don’t… there’s not much to tell. It was a funeral.” He laughs a little.

    “You’re right.” He grins, sitting back. “I guess it’s of no consequence. On to better things, then—how are your dogs?”

    The ice has melted to water and the man steps in it as he leaves. The psychologist rises from his chair and grimaces as his knee twinges. It’s a series of deductions at this point; when he was twelve the pretty old palfrey threw him in a ditch, and when he was forty-three he slipped when walking down the stairs, and when he was seventy, little Grace would sit on his lap and slam her plastic toys against his kneecap. Series of pains become memories and memories become explanations—an old knee is a knee twisted in the foul streets of England. Or a sore knee is a knee kicked in a dusty, dark nightclub.

    He’s a young man, deceivingly young, not entirely handsome but very sharp in the eyes. He has straight teeth but is still used to that snaggletooth. He has short hair but remembers when it was always long. He has a girlfriend—Ruth, with her soft laugh and kind hands—but he’s married again when he falls asleep.

    “Would you like to see a picture of my girlfriend?” he asks, when the conversation comes to a lull. “She’s the light of my life.”

    The man seems relieved. On his hand, where the ring should be, there is only a pale stripe of skin. “Sure.”

    He fishes his phone from his pocket and scrolls for the prettiest picture of Ruth, and settles for the one where she’s sitting in the sun, head tipped back, all shining in the day. He likes this picture. She doesn’t, because she thinks she looks frumpy in the dress and her bottom lip looks weird and delete it, seriously, but he doesn’t, because this is the picture that he looks at before he sleeps, and sometimes it makes the dreams go quiet. It’s an experiment, he says.

    “Very pretty. What’s her name?”

    “Ruth.”

    He has a specific group of clientele. His twelve appointments are very similar.

    Seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh. He knocks them out in one day. His peers think he takes on too much, but they’re all the same, and he gets into the rhythm this way. He crinkles up the plastic of his late lunch and tosses it into the bin, leaning back in his chair. Sometimes he calls Ruth. She’s busy, but she always picks up.

    “Are you married?”

    He lobs the ball back to the man, number twelve. “Nope.”

    “Smart man.”

    “Tell me about your week.”

    The man shrugs. “I’ve got a lot of things. I’ve got the wedding. I’ve got the funeral. My neighbor has a new horse. I’m going over to see her.”

    “Why don’t you get married?”

    “I am married,” the man says. Smiling, he throws the ball over the desk. “Light of my life.”

    “I’ve got one of those.”

    “Great, aren’t they?”

    “Great.” The psychologist looks across the room, and really looks, and then decides not to. The snow is beginning to fall again; the skies have clouded over, heavy and dark. “And the funeral. Tell me about the funeral.”

    The man’s face darkens. “I should’ve gone.”

    “No,” he says, “no, you shouldn’t have.”

    “I should’ve.”

    “Why?”

    “Because she died, and I was married to her. I put her on that horse.”

    He tosses the ball. “Catch. Remind me—how many kids?”

    “Three.”

    “And the little one.”

    “Very little,” says the man. “Little Grace.”

    “Do you have a picture?”

    The man smiles very brightly. “Just a second. I’ve got thousands.”

    “Thousands?”

    “Thousands,” he says, and he’s grinning down at his phone, and he’s flicking his finger over the screen, and he’s a very familiar man, a very familiar man. Oh God.

    He’s sick with the remembrance. How many times has he peered down this hole? He’s got a girlfriend and he’s got a handsome face and he’s got straight teeth.

    He rises from his chair and makes a straight shot for the door.

    “I’ve got thousands—wait just a second!”

    He slams the door behind him and breaks into a run, his steps thudding down the empty hall, and he bursts outside amidst the heavy snow and silence. His breath comes in gasps.

    As he straightens, he looks around the courtyard. It is still and serene, unmarred. Icy flakes catch in his hair and his eyelashes.

The snow is white and even, like the linen sheet she’s smoothing over the bed.

“Ruth?” he asks, in helpless vain.

Her long hair slips over her shoulder. “Who?”