Overheard in a Dream (32 page)

“Yes, that’s what you’ve done, isn’t it?” James replied. “You’ve made a plug for it. You plugged it in.”

“Yeah.” Conor looked pleased.

Pulling his stuffed cat from under his arm and setting it on the table too, Conor looked over. “There’s the boy’s cat. Standing on the table. Standing by the mechanical cat.”

James smiled. “Yes, there they are. Two cats.”

“Cats can see ghosts.”

“You believe cats can see ghosts,” James reflected.

“Many ghosts. Many ghosts to be seen. Many cats to see them.”

James watched Conor align the two cats carefully side by side.

“‘Come here today.’ That’s what the cat said. ‘Wake up, Conor. Time to go to Rapid City. Time to see the man. Today is the man’s day. Today we see the mechanical cat. Today we go where there are no ghosts.’”

“Are there ghosts at your house?” James asked.

“Are there ghosts at your house?” Conor echoed. He raised a hand and flapped it in a gesture James now understood to be an expression of anxiety. Then Conor recovered himself by picking up his toy cat. He pressed the stuffed animal’s nose to his own. “Lots of ghosts. Whispering, whispering. The cat can see ghosts. The cat says, ‘The ghosts are here. The man under the rug is here.’ The cat can see. The cat knows.”

Clutching the toy cat against his chest, Conor bent down to better examine the cardboard cat. He inspected it carefully,
then reached a finger out and touched the string hanging down from around its neck. “Here are the cat’s wires. Plug it in. Make him strong.”

“Like the mechanical boy?”

“Yeah.” Conor stretched out the string leash and pressed it to the table top. “Electricity. Zap-zap. Mechanical things are made of metal. They don’t die. They can last forever.” He touched the faded colours. “This cat has very good metal. It looks like fur.”

Unexpectedly Conor swooped the cardboard cat up in the air, as if it were a toy airplane. “Look, the man’s cat can fly. Machines fly.” He looked over at James.

A pause.

“Ghosts fly,” he said and his voice trembled slightly.

“Many things fly,” James said. “Birds fly. Mosquitoes fly.”

“Angels fly,” Conor said. “At Christmas time many angels fly.”

“Yes, it is almost Christmas time, isn’t it? We see lots of pictures of angels now, don’t we?”

“People don’t fly,” Conor replied. “Only angel-people. Only ghost-people.” Rising to his feet, he glanced nervously around the room as if he were doing a dangerous thing. Then he swooped the cat in a tentative figure eight. “But the mechanical cat can fly.”

“Yes, you are making him zoom through the air.”

“Machines are strong. They can fly a long way.” A more energetic swooping followed. Up, down, around. These were the most uninhibited movements James had seen Conor make. Whoosh, the mechanical cat sailed past James’s nose. Zip, it whizzed over the notebook.

Then Conor said, “I am going to run?” His tone was a mixture of question and statement, almost as if he were asking permission to do this normal thing.

He did run. The first steps were very tentative, up on tiptoe, then more boldly. All the time the cardboard cat was held high, dipping and swooping through the air ahead of him. “The cat can fly,” he said over and over.

Conor sailed around the room until he was breathless and only then did he stop. Holding the cardboard cat up before his face, he caressed the paper features. “The boy can do what he wants in here. The mechanical cat says, ‘Boy, do it. You’re safe. No ghosts in here!’”

From the moment the next session started Conor knew exactly what he wanted to do. Getting the cardboard cat from the box, he began to fly it through the air. At first the movements were hesitant, just between James and himself, but then he stood up and moved more overtly. Soon Conor was running, the cardboard cat held high above his head.

On one occasion as he approached the table, he stopped abruptly. There was a brief glance to James and then unexpectedly Conor jumped up on the chair opposite. “The cat can fly,” he said with an almost defiant tone to his voice.

“Yes, the cat is flying,” James mirrored.

Conor lifted up one foot as if to step on the tabletop then hesitated. “I’m going to get on the table,” he said but didn’t do it.

“Today you feel like standing on the table.”

“The mechanical cat says yes. The boy can get on the table.” There was a moment’s further hesitation and Conor softly set his foot on the table. He paused, as if waiting for James’s remonstration, then triumphantly stepped up with the other
foot. “The mechanical cat is strong! The boy can do what he wants!”

With that he took a flying leap off the table and ran away.

This bit of derring-do gave Conor more confidence. He came running around again, clambered up onto the table and once again jumped off.

“You are strong,” James said as Conor’s shoes passed in front of his pen.

“Yeah!” Conor called and leaped down to the floor. The cardboard cat was held high above him like a parachute. “Up and down, up and down. The mechanical cat can fly!”

Suddenly he halted and looked over. “That’s a song,” he said and smiled. “Did you hear it? That was a song.”

The comment surprised James. He raised his eyebrows.

“Listen. I’ll sing it:

Up and down, up and down

The cat can fly.

It will never die.

Metal fur.

It will never die.

Lots of wires.

It will never cry.”

He spoke a high, thin, crystalline sing-song.

“That’s quite amazing,” James said. “I like your song.”

Conor skipped gaily around the room, his movements free and fluid.

“The cat he knows,

His eyes, they glows.

The cat can fly and never die.”

Bending over his notebook, James scribbled quickly to record the precise words.

Conor noticed this. He paused. “You’re writing what I say again.”

James nodded. “Yes. It’s a beautiful song. I want to remember it.”

“Then you must write this: ‘The Song of the Mechanical Cat’. Write that at the top because that’s its title.”

“All right.”

“Now, underneath it you must write ‘By Conor McLachlan’.”

James did so.

Conor came around to James’s side of the table and bent down to see the notebook. “The Song of the Mechanical Cat, by Conor McLachlan,” he read. “That means it’s my song. I am the author. I created it.”

“Yes,” James replied.

“Will you keep my song? In your notebook?”

“Yes,” James said.

“Everything the boy says, the man will write down. In his true book. Everything the boy says. All the true things. It’ll be our book.”

Conor smiled and held up the cardboard cat. “Today you will write: ‘The boy heard the mechanical cat’s song. He heard it out of nothing and made it something. The boy sang the song all day long.’”

And so the session went with Conor singing freely, his conversation bright and natural, his movements those of any normal, happy boy.

James always gave a warning to the children about the approach of the session end. So, as usual, when only five minutes of the session were left, James said, “It’s almost time to go. When the big hand reaches the ten, that’s the end.”

“No. Today I don’t want to go.”

“You’ve been having a very good time today and don’t feel like going,” James interpreted. “You’d like to stay longer.”

“Today I’ll stay longer,” Conor replied. “I’ll do finger-paints.”

“You wish you had more time,” James said. “Unfortunately, every visit is the same amount of time. When the clock reaches ten minutes to, it’s time to stop.”

“But not today. Today I made a song.”

“Unfortunately, even today.”

“But I don’t
want
to stop. I’m not finished yet.”

“You’ll be here again on Thursday. Then you can continue.”

“No!” Conor cried in an anguished tone. Then defiantly, “The mechanical cat says ‘No!’” He held the cat out in front of him like a crucifix. “The mechanical cat says, ‘Don’t listen to that man!’” Conor ran off across the room. Clambering over the bookshelf, he hid behind it.

The clock ticked away the last minutes.

Rising from the table, James crossed to the playroom door and opened it.

Alarmed, Conor stood up and peered over the bookshelf.

Dulcie was standing in the hallway outside the room, Laura behind her. “There’s your mum,” James said. “It’s time to go now.”

Conor screamed. Scrambling over the bookshelf, he ran towards James. “No!”

“Here, let’s put the mechanical cat back in the box with his friends,” James said.

“No!” Conor pressed the cardboard cat tight against his chest, shrieked, ran around the table and then out through the
open door. He burst past Dulcie before she could catch him but Laura managed to grab hold of the shoulder of his shirt.

Conor screamed so loudly that James’s ears reverberated.

“What’s he got?” Laura asked. “Conor, what’s in your hand? What is it? Here, give it to me. You can’t take things out of the playroom, honey. Let Dr Innes have it back.” It took all three of them to prize Conor’s fingers open enough to remove the cardboard cat.

He howled.

Over the din, James said to Laura, “Would you like to take him into my office? I have another client coming into the playroom, but if you want a few moments to calm him down, Dulcie can go with you.”

Laura shook her head.

“Are you sure?” James asked.

“
No
,” she replied through gritted teeth, “but, please, just notice what he’s like.” James saw tears in her eyes. “Notice, so that you’ll quit taking Alan’s side on this. Because he
isn’t
getting better. I’m living in hell at home. He’s like this
all
the time with me. I honestly don’t think I can take it much longer. I mean that. I can’t.”

Then the tearful mother and sobbing son departed.

J
ames felt that Conor’s behaviour at the end of his session was a positive sign indicating that Conor was confident enough to express anger when his wishes were thwarted.

Laura’s behaviour, on the other hand, troubled James. He and she had shared so many positive sessions together, establishing what had felt to James like a good rapport, and yet she was still so quick to perceive him as taking Alan’s side.

This led directly into what had been James’s other longtime concern about Laura: why did she never bring Conor up? Why did she never enquire about his progress or openly talk about her issues with him at home? Aside from the very early days when they were establishing intake information for Conor, Laura had never even spoken her son’s name in therapy. Indeed, the way she’d thus far structured the therapy sessions by giving this careful chronology of her life’s unfolding story, she’d made it fairly difficult even for James to bring Conor up.

This created a conundrum for James. An important aspect of his therapeutic philosophy involved giving the client complete control. James did strongly believe in the value of this. With a sense of control, with the ability to decide when and how things would be revealed, clients came to trust James and James’s environment enough to explore the fears and secrets that had paralysed their lives. But how long did one stay with that? This had been where everything had come undone in New York. Taking the passive role of listening, reflecting and waiting patiently, James had been too slow to save Adam.

When Laura arrived for her next session, she looked distinctly nervous. Appearing at the door of his office, her hands pushed deep into the pockets of an oversized cardigan, she wrapped them tight around herself as if she were cold.

James smiled kindly. “Come on in.” He gestured to the conversation centre.

She crossed to sit down in the big overstuffed chair. The “womb chair,” as Lars liked to call it. James exchanged a few pleasantries with Laura, mainly about the impending holiday season.

Then Laura said, “I’m sorry about that scene with Conor.”

“No problem,” James replied. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really,” she said and didn’t meet his eyes.

James let the silence flow in around them.

“I really don’t,” she said.

“That’s all right,” James replied. “In here you decide.”

“It’s Fergus I need to talk about.”

James nodded.

She began quietly, her voice slowly growing in confidence as she relaxed back into storytelling.

“If Fergus had any uncanny gift, it was his talent for turning up wherever I happened to be in spite of my complex schedule and the size of the city. Occasionally, even when I was out shopping, I’d return to my car in the car park to find him standing beside it. He said he did it by focusing on my life force and because he loved me so much. He couldn’t bear to be away from me. However much time we spent together, Fergus always wanted more.