Coming Home to Love (Lakeside Porch Series Book 2) (26 page)

“‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’ How fitting I should pick a line from an unlovely love poem.”

Gwen came out from behind her desk. “I didn’t intend to analyze you standing up.”

Justin’s eyes swept over the spacious room and came to rest on the two chairs angled toward each other at the window. “Yet you don’t have a couch.”

“I’m not a shrink. Thanks for coming, Justin.” She held out her hand and they shook perfunctorily. “Right after you called yesterday afternoon, I had a call from Joel, making sure you contacted me. Sounds like we have a lot to talk about.” She motioned him to the chairs.

He chose the farther chair, the one with the straight-on view of the lake, and sat down with a heavy sigh.

“Do you know how this appointment came about?” Gwen began their first session.

“Of course I do. Joel and I had words. When I reached toward him to bridge the gap, he was terrified I meant to hit him. He believes I’m insane. He insisted that I get help, and I agreed.”

“A-plus for that answer,” Gwen confirmed. “What do you think about what Joel said?”

“About your expertise as a therapist?”

She shook her head. “That’s not in question. I meant about Joel’s fear.”

“That I’m insane?”

She nodded.

“I think he’s right.” He looked pensively out the window. “I think anyone who in the space of one hour can threaten, terrify and hurt beyond recall the two people who mean the most to him in this world must be insane, yes. And I would add that I am the most baffled and terrified of us all.”

Gwen shifted in her chair. “That’s actually an excellent starting point for some serious and, I suspect, long-overdue therapy. Are you game?”

He had the eyes of a man who is broken and lost and clueless about how to proceed. That, she realized, was the difference she’d seen as he stood in her office doorway. The arrogant, puffed-up, entitled, master manipulator was absent today. She rather liked the new, clueless Justin Cushman. This lean, handsome man sported well-fitting blue jeans and a muted green cotton Henley that showed his intelligent, gray-green eyes in their best light—she’d like to help this man.

“I am game, counselor. I warn you, I will probably bawl my eyes out.”

She produced a box of tissues. “I get a lot of that in this office.” She pulled several tissues straight up out of the box, made a nest of them and placed it on top of the box. “A good handful at the ready,” she told him. “I want to start with your argument with Joel that nearly led to violence, or so he thought.”

“Thank you for not mincing words.”

“My perspective first, if I may?”

Justin nodded.

“Manda suspects from things Joel has said that you and Joel sometimes argue with F-bombs, swearing in general, angry words, angry tone, all out shouting. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“And do you engage in that behavior with colleagues?”

“No, I wouldn’t dare.”

“With loved ones?”

“No, although swearing and name-calling have occurred, with no good result.”

“Violence toward loved ones?”

He narrowed his eyes as he met her gaze. “No.”

She thought he was being honest about that.

“Have you ever wanted to slug a woman, a lover?”

“I wanted to wring Alexa’s neck when I learned she’d been cheating on me, but I didn’t act on it.”

“Alexa?”

“The woman I loved and lived with in Switzerland for five, six, seven years, around the time Joel and I lost our family, back when Joel was at his worst.”

“I will need to hear more about Alexa, but I need to get us back to the point we’ve strayed from. Remember what that was?”

Justin looked out at the lake for a moment and nodded. “Am I willing to give up the aggressive Cushman method of processing disagreement? Yes, I am. However, I’m clueless how to do that.”

“I’m very glad to hear that.”

“That I’m clueless?” Justin chuckled.

She nodded. “That you’re willing and that you’re aware you’re not able, on your own, to change it.”

“And that last bit pleases you why?”

“In AA we have two steps that talk about our shortcomings. Step six says we’re ready for God to remove our shortcomings, and step seven says, we ask with humility to have them removed.”

Justin was deep in thought, maybe putting something together for himself.

“Does that mean you’re willing to work through the twelve steps with me, even though I don’t seem to be an alcoholic?”

“Yes. Tell me where that idea came from,” she said, “about going through the steps with someone.”

“It came up when . . .” He took a steadying breath and blinked moisture from his eyes. “Gianessa came to my apartment, Joel’s apartment which I had appropriated, to give me a cooking lesson in gluten-free eating. Our first cooking lesson. I had no idea why she would put herself out for me that way, but she did, and I appreciated it and enjoyed it. We talked about why I had come home.”

“Which was to help Joel?”

“It was actually more than that. I had lost my way, had lost my soul, and needed to find my heart and seemed to think Joel was the key.” He reached for the nest of tissues and buried his face in the soft, beige tissues. Sobs shook his shoulders.

Gwen left the room without a sound. When she returned with a glass of water, he was looking out at the lake, tears still falling from his eyes.

“Thank you. Most kind,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘What kind of monster destroys the very people he knows are put on this earth to save him?’”

“I would say a very sick one who forgot he was in need of saving.”

“I agree with that. Is it arrogance?”

He turned his green eyes to her, and she felt she was seeing into his soul. Yes, this was a very different Justin Cushman. She might be able to help this one.

“A lifetime of arrogance, I think, and denial and being in charge,” she answered him. “As you have discovered, meaning to change and doing it are not the same thing. How much do you want to change?”

“It is—I think it has to be my highest priority. Even more than being a father to my baby, the baby Gianessa is carrying. More than being an uncle to Joel. Because I’ve demonstrated that without changing, I can’t be a father or an uncle or anything else that is dear to me.” He exhaled and managed a ghost of smile. “It’s good to know there are some people and some responsibilities that are dear to me. I could not have said that before I came back here a few months ago.”

“Do you drink, Justin?”

“No, not in many years. Six or seven, I think.”

“First homework assignment,” she announced.

Justin looked up obediently.

“For next week I want you to figure out, on paper, exactly how long ago you put the drink down, and why, and what happened after.”

“All right.”

“Do you do any drugs, Justin?”

“No, never.”

“Power drinks, energy drinks, marijuana?”

He shook his head and held Gwen’s eyes as she went down her mental list.

“What do you drink when you go out?”

“Perrier, espresso, tea.”

“Do you smoke?”

“No, not since a bout with pneumonia in college.”

“Do you have sex with women you don’t know?”

“I gave that up in the Middle East when I caught sight of myself in the mirror, naked, with a very young escort who’d been provided by my hosts. I could see she was probably fourteen and trying very hard to hide her terror and revulsion. I gave her more than her fee and sent her home and never accepted another escort.”

Gwen was aware of her leg jumping, displaying her anger at human trafficking. “Was that the end of it?” Her voice was hard.

“Yes, and I would add it was the beginning of my journey here. After that, I saw so many ways my life was . . .”

He looked out at the lake again, lost in thought.

Gwen used the time to get her breathing back to normal. “Justin?” she prompted.

He turned at her.

“You were saying that incident with the teenage escort opened your eyes to something about your life?”

“Yes, to the corruption of the systems and people I was doing business with. I started questioning my work, my purpose, my profession. I was making millions upon millions for a few people, but how was that benefiting the millions of people who lived in those countries? I’d become someone who made money for the sake of making money, and I’d crossed over to the dark side somewhere along the way without realizing it or intending it.”

“How did you know you were on the dark side?”

“I saw myself corrupting that beautiful young girl as though it was a normal part of doing business, and the truth was I was being pandered to, pimped to, at the expense of this beautiful young girl and all the others like her. They had few if any choices about their lives. And exploiting them was not what I wanted to do with my life.”

“How long ago was that?”

“A few years, I think.”

“Again, I will need a chronology of these key insights. I need you to do your best with that for next week. I don’t pretend it will be easy.”

“I suspect it will be humiliating,” Justin said. “Just as this is.”

“We use the term ‘humbling.’ I think you’ll find there’s a difference. And it will be worth your while to do the inventory and the chronology. Some advice,” Gwen said, “you might find it easier to do this work at a retreat house, away from your routine for a few days.”

“Since no one in their right mind is speaking to me, the time is right to go away for a few days.” He gave her a grim smile.

Gwen took a pad of paper and a pen from the lower shelf of the table. “Here are names and phone numbers for two retreat houses nearby who offer private rooms for individuals. I’ll want to know where you are.”

“Are we done for today?”

“Not by half. I need to get some insight into why you went off on Gianessa when she told you she was pregnant.”

Justin recounted all that he’d thought about during his walk along the lakeshore after seeing Joel.

Gwen nodded during the telling. When he finished, she said, “I’m glad you can see all that. It sounds like a big dose of honesty to me. One of the unanswered questions is how and why you started down that mental path. Some of it may come from unresolved anger toward Alexa. But quite often, the way we regard and act toward a spouse or lover has its roots in the relationship we saw between our parents. Did your parents drink, Justin?”

“Both of them drank. Father had his work and mother had her cocktails.”

“Meaning?”

“I think if he hadn’t been obsessed about making money, father would have been an alcoholic. There’s no question my mother was an alcoholic.”

Gwen hadn’t realized that. “She hid it well.”

“They were both very practiced in the art of deception.”

“What do you remember about your parents’ relationship with each other?”

“I remember that it was nothing I wanted to repeat in my own life.”

“Specifically?”

“They were all about wife swapping and sleeping around and multiple affairs. If my sense of history is correct, they were married just after birth control was legalized, and just before abortion was legalized.”

“And that behavior characterized your parents?”

“Yes. Why does that surprise you?”

She shrugged. “They were the epitome of propriety, as far as I knew.”

“They could act the part, no question. Behind closed doors was another matter.”

“Did they argue about the affairs? Did either object to wife swapping?”

Justin shook his head. “Not that I ever heard or sensed.”

“Did it bother you?”

“The hypocrisy bothered me. As you say, they seemed to be so proper, and mother espoused waiting until marriage for the girl and protection for the boy.”

“The double standard.”

“I’m curious. Why didn’t you marry?” she asked him.

“I’m curious, too. I don’t have much of an answer. I loved Alexa and enjoyed our life together until she cheated on me. After that, I was very focused on making money. I had no interest in having children, settling down, raising a family. Women were friends, business partners, lovers.”

“Did anyone try to talk you into marrying them?”

“Who’d want to?” Justin said with a dry laugh.

“Someone who loved your money,” Gwen said sharply. She worded it in a way that could be about Gianessa, though she had no way of knowing the truth of Gianessa’s motives. “Someone who saw you as a handsome, wealthy man who was away a lot and who didn’t care what she did when you were away.”

She was surprised Justin didn’t show any response.

“Someone who would bear your children, divorce you, and then leave with the children and a fortune for herself.”

“Are you suggesting I would want to marry a woman like that?”

“I’m suggesting a woman like that would want to marry you and would go to great lengths to make sure it happened. Is that a chapter from your life?”

“No.”

Gwen was fairly sure he was not seeing Gianessa in that role, which had been her point in asking.

“If I were you and I were an alcoholic, those facts of life would be the perfect excuse to drink my way through life, avoiding attachment, moving from one empty affair to another, cynically believing there were no genuinely loving and lovable women in the world.”

“I don’t know that I felt much of anything for a long time. Perhaps when I’m on retreat I will remember and will see how it fits.”

“Or not. I’ve given you a lot to think about. There is one more thing I need to address with you before we wrap up for today.”