Dead Voices, page 16
About half-way into the show, they got a call that was red-flagged. It was from a guy who gave his name as Kevin. On the monitor it said the subject was spousal-abuse.
Dr. Ray clicked on the button and asked Kevin to give his story.
“I couldn’t help it, Dr. Ray,” Kevin said. “It happened just once. And I’m truly sorry and want to make it up to her.”
“Tell us what happened, Kevin.”
“I came home from playing poker with the guys one night. She was waiting up for me. I had drunk a bit, I’ll admit. You can’t drink too much when playing poker, though, if you know what I mean. Anyway, she was waiting up for me because she had warned me not to play poker. I was working at the bakery at the time, and me and the guys had a little poker game going every Friday night. No big deal, you know. But I was losing and trying to get it back. So I couldn’t quit. Anyway, when I got home she lit into me, called me all sorts of names, and I just saw red, you know, as if everything just came to an explosion of red, and the next thing she’s lying on the floor out cold.”
“What did you do?”
“I don’t know. I guess I hit her.”
“How did you hit her?”
“With my fist, I guess. I’m not sure.”
“You mean you blanked out?”
The upshot was that his wife left him as a result, got full custody of the kids, and left the city after the divorce. Now Kevin was getting more and more into drink. He had lost his job. His life was going downhill fast, all because of one mistake.
“Was it only that one mistake?” Dr. Ray said.
After some more prodding, some hedging and hawing, Kevin admitted that he wasn’t the model husband. He had made other mistakes, sure, but he had also bent over backwards to be a good husband and father. He had never laid a hand on his wife before, of that he was sure. She had her faults, too. Why couldn’t he be allowed his little poker games now and then, even if he lost every so often? It wasn’t easy working in a bakery. His wife did some cashiering. They weren’t destitute. Their kids got everything they needed. Sometimes they just eked by, with the mortgage and all, but what the hell, you had to live in the present as well.
By the end, Kevin was blubbering, hardly able to get his words out. Why should he be punished for his one mistake for the rest of his life?
Dr. Ray calmed him down, speaking into the mic as if Kevin were right in front of him, a kindred soul who needed some recon.
Kevin had to let go of his wife and kids and turn things around, Dr. Ray told him. He had to forgive himself. He had to move on. He wasn’t being punished by any outside force. He was punishing himself. As it should be, of course, but it had been going on long enough. Now it was time to break the chains to the past and go free.
“Wake up, Kevin,” Dr. Ray said. “You’re in a dream. Just wake up.”
“Wake up how?”
“Just do it. You make bread, don’t you? Look to the bread, Kevin.”
Dr. Ray gave Kevin a few of the help-lines and web addresses where he could go for further therapy and help, if he so desired.
After the call, a number of tweets came on the screen, most of them in sympathy with Kevin. There were a few women, however, who didn’t buy into his recon. It was just like the typical abusive husband, contrite one day, and then back to his normal sorry-assed self the next. That’s how many women were duped. If they showed any mercy to a violent husband, they’d only get stepped on again.
Dr. Ray read a few of the twitter feeds and basically agreed. But the show was from the point of view of the violator, and every one should be given some benefit of the doubt. Everyone deserved a second chance, didn’t they? Not with the same wife, of course, but someone like Kevin could start a new life, couldn’t he? Didn’t he deserve a ray of hope for the recon?
The next caller ID’d himself as Fabio, a forty-something businessman from Woodbridge.
“I think your show sucks, Dr. Ray,” he said straight off. “It’s blubber-ama, the crying game, the tear in my beer, and all that shit. All I hear are moaners and groaners. I don’t think we should be sorry for anything we do. We should live life to the fullest and take the consequences. Forget about being sorry. If you’re sorry for what you’ve done, then you’re only shirking responsibility. If you do something, then man-up and don’t be sorry. That Kevinguy, for example, is a loser, pure and simple. His wife didn’t leave him because he hit her. She left him because he was a loser. The smack probably woke her up to that fact.”
“You have no sympathy whatsoever for Kevin, then?”
“Hey, you’re either a man or a wuss.”
“And you’ve never done anything you’re sorry for?”
“That’s right, Dr. Ray. I’m not saying I haven’t made my mistakes. But a mistake is not something I feel sorry for. It’s something I learn from. And never make again.”
“You sound very sure of yourself, Fabio. Are you saying you’ve never hurt another human being in your life, hurt someone in any way?”
“What do you mean by hurt?”
“Hurt someone’s feelings . . . badly.”
“Hey, what can I say? I’ve played around a bit. Some of the ladies, I suppose, would like nothing better than to throw darts at my mug. But that’s the name of the game. Love’m and leave’m, you know. Live life to the fullest. With no regrets. But I’ve never physically hurt a woman. On the other hand, I don’t revere them either. You can’t revere them like the Virgin Mary and then do the dirty, man. I don’t know where you’re coming from. I respect them, yeah, but I don’t revere them. I just know how to love them. And they love me back.”
“You’re misapplying my words, Fabio. And you’re contradicting yourself. How can you love’m and leave’m?”
“Easy, Dr. Ray. I know how to give them a good time.”
“You mean a short time.”
Fabio gave out a laugh. “No, no, Dr. Ray. There’s nothing short about me.”
They went into a commercial break. Aaron was smiling at him through the glass. “The ladies are going to love that,” Aaron said into his headphone.
The Unrepentant Caller was always a good antidote on the show. A UC like Fabio represented all the listeners who liked to gloat over the more contrite callers. By the tweets coming in on the screen, he could see that most wanted to hang Fabio by the balls. One woman, however, asked for Fabio’s number so she could check whether he was short time or long time.
Towards the end of the show he got another red-flagged caller, a middle-aged woman, a Joanna from Mississauga, who was a widow and former teacher.
“Hey, Joanna from Mississauga. What would you like to confess on Recon Radio?”
“Nothing,” she said in a whispery voice.
“Nothing?”
“Well, I don’t think I’ve done anything truly wrong in my whole life. By saying that, who knows, I may be boasting and being too proud.”
Something in her voice made Dr. Ray take note. She was speaking in a weary and resigned manner — and yet with a deceptive edge.
“Yes,” he said, “that could be construed as pride, Joanna, unless it’s entirely sincere.”
After a short pause, she spoke again in her whispery voice. He had to pay close attention, trying to read through to the haunted edge in her tone.
“I think it’s sincere, yeah,” she said. “I was taught very early in life by my mother to be a good girl and always think of the other person first. My mother, who was a paragon of virtue, had to take care of four kids all by herself after my father left us. By and large, I’ve followed her advice. I’ve always thought of the other person first. I haven’t broken any man’s heart. I’ve been a good wife and mother. And I always thought of my students first. The worst thing I’ve ever done, maybe, was to speak ill against a colleague of mine to a principal.”
“Why do you call, then, if you’ve led such a good life?”
“I need the recon.”
“But you haven’t done anything wrong.”
“The wrong has been done to me.”
“Oh,” he said. “In what way? What happened?”
“It’s a witching time of night, isn’t it? When graveyards yawn and hell itself breathes out contagion to the world.”
“Ah, you know Hamlet.”
“I taught Hamlet, Dr. Ray.”
“Perhaps you can enlighten us, Joanna. We’re listening. What wrong has been done to you that you feel like a Hamlet?”
“Oh, it’s worse than Hamlet, pray tell.”
“Well, you can’t get the recon unless you unburden yourself, Joanna. Tell us what happened. What’ve you got to lose?”
She gave an uneasy laugh. He heard Aaron on the headphones warn him about this call.
“Give us a try, Joanna,” he pressed her. “Haste me to know it that I, with wings as swift as meditation, may sweep us to the recon.”
“Very good, Dr. Ray. Very good. But you’ll need more than Shakespeare for the recon. You’ll need the voice of revelation.”
“We don’t understand, Joanna. Tell us what happened. Make us understand.”
“OK, but don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she said. “There are things that happen that no one can understand. They’re beyond human comprehension. The story, even now, isn’t easy to put into words. But I’ll try . . . Who knows? Maybe I can help someone out there in Recon Radio. Anyway, a few years ago I lost my mother from a long illness. Not long after that, my husband’s tech business went bankrupt. We had to sell our big house in Oakville and move into a little condo in Mississauga. And then a year ago my husband and two daughters were driving from a swimming tournament on the highway . . . and they were struck by a drunk driver and killed.”
The air went dead. Dr. Ray waited.
“Even now it’s hard . . . very hard to talk about it. I had to identify their bodies at the morgue . . . they were partially burnt black . . . I had to be sedated. A lot is still blurry. I don’t know how I got through it. I was a zombie for weeks. I couldn’t go back to work for a year. And even when I went back, I was never the same. I tried to grieve and couldn’t. I fell into a despair so bad I couldn’t get out of bed. I had to get another extended leave of absence and finally leave for good. It felt as if this heavy weight were pressing down on me. I came to depend on the meds just to eat and move. Now, from the side effects, I’ve developed such brittle bones that I risk a fracture just by climbing stairs.”
Many would’ve called the long dead air that followed a death knell, but Dr. Ray knew better. Both he and his listeners needed the silence to give due respect to her words, let them settle in the mind and heart.
“I’m sure I speak for all our listeners, Joanna, in offering you our deepest and most sincere condolences.”
She didn’t respond.
“You’ve sought some therapy and counsel, I suppose?” he said.
When she came back on, she sounded more composed.
“The thing is, I’ve been a believer all my life. My mother raised us to be mindful of the Creator. To observe all the rules and commandments. And to accept one’s fate, whatever it was, and live the good life. She believed in the Protestant work ethic, in doing right regardless of the outcome. As long as we had love in our hearts, she said, and did our jobs to the best of our abilities, we’d be OK. Is there any better counsel than that? But after all that happened I still needed a psychotherapist and a grief-counsellor. And it was good at the beginning just to talk and get a few things out. I had no one to talk to. My brother and sisters couldn’t help at all. But after a while the talk went around in circles, as if the words were biting into themselves, and it got so bad I had to stop. I just couldn’t go on. It got to a point where talking about my husband and daughters became a desecration. I just couldn’t talk anymore, mention names, call up scenes from the past, open scabs, because I was dishonouring them. I was just . . . I don’t know . . . trying to fit them into these little words that just . . .”
The line went silent.
His first instinct as a phone-in host was to offer a few more words of commiseration and end the difficult call. But he was more than a phone-in host, and his professional training rebelled against such an instinct. Plus, when he gave it more thought, there was the challenge of the show. If he couldn’t handle the difficult calls, how could he gain the trust of his listeners for the easier calls? He had to prove to them and himself he could do something, even though he knew in his heart it would be difficult over the radio.
He couldn’t see her face, for one. Note the subtle changes in mien and body language. Feel her presence match her words. He only had a voice to work with. And he had to keep in mind that many others who were listening and that the conversation was being taped and could be analysed for every word and nuance.
“But you got through that time, didn’t you, Joanna? Somehow you got through it. You didn’t take the easy road, did you? And now the time for silence is over. And you can honour their memory by your own life, can’t you? And by your words.”
“I’ve spent many a night thinking about the easy road out, believe me.”
He spoke only after a short pause. “Why haven’t you taken it?”
“I just can’t.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Everything I’ve ever done has just backfired on me. Am I being punished for something? It just can’t be a coincidence, can it? I don’t understand why. I just want to understand why. Maybe I can’t go to my grave without understanding the why.”
“You have to stop thinking that you’re being punished,” he said. “Things just happen. No one is punishing you, except perhaps yourself.”
“But why me?”
“We can’t torture ourselves with questions that have no answers. There doesn’t have to be a why. We can only move on.”
“But why move on if everything’s been taken away from you? What’s the point if you’re being swatted around like a fly for sport?”
Aaron was telling him to kill the call. They were going into uncharted territory. On the monitor the tweets had all stopped, as if the listeners were giving the story some serious thought — or no one wanted to touch it. His radio expertise said he should cut the call. It had already gone far too long. And he could sense it was making his listeners uncomfortable, as Aaron well knew. But he just couldn’t let it go. As long as he kept her talking, he felt he was doing some good.
“If this had happened to most any other person,” he said into the mic, “they probably would’ve ended it by now. Maybe it’s you because you’re stronger than anyone else. Maybe it’s you because of who you are.”
“And who am I?”
“I don’t know. Only you can answer that.”
“And torture myself further?” she said with a snide laugh.
He paused, feeling they were in some vicious circle of talk. His training told him that he should be dealing with this caller in his office, face to face, and that anything he said over the air would sound trite and counter-productive. But he was too far gone to stop now. He owed it to his listeners to bring the call to a close in some way.
“Healing is never easy, Joanna,” he said.
“Is that your ray of hope?”
“I’m in the healing business.”
“It’s a business, is it?”
“Well, I’m no faith healer. No miracle worker. It’s not an easy process.”
“Are you a medical doctor?”
“No. But I have a doctorate in psychology.”
“And you have no faith.”
“My faith is life. I revere life. As long as there’s life, there’s hope. Your mother was right. We have to make the best of it.”
“If you revere life,” she said, “you might as well revere death as well. They’re the same thing, aren’t they?”
“Well, in a way, yes, I suppose. You can’t have one without the other. But we have to choose one over the other, wouldn’t you say? To be or not to be . . . and all that.”
“Very good, Dr. Ray. Very good. Except Hamlet kills a few people along the way.”
“I can’t answer for the play. I can just do my job on the air.”
“Which is to listen to people’s misdeeds, as you call them, and offer forgiveness. Very religious, wouldn’t you say?”
“Well, I don’t really offer forgiveness. I’m just trying to get people to face their situations and problems squarely. To get them through a certain process of self-knowledge, as it were. And help them to heal themselves through that process.”
“The recon, right?”
“That’s just a radio term, Joanna. Listen, we can’t really deal with your problem on air. You should be talking to someone face to face.”
“I’ve done all that. And there are only two possible conclusions to explain what’s happened to me. One, there’s no justice. And, two, everything is a sham.”
“If that’s what you believe. If that’s what makes you feel better.”
“That’s right. It makes me feel better to know that everything we have, no matter if it’s from Moses or Jesus or Mohammad, or from all the scientists and therapists, is nothing but self-delusion.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way.”
“You know what else makes me feel better? Listening to your show. And all your smug listeners. All those who call in and offer their petty misdeeds, and the others who offer their asinine comments.”
“Well, we can only try the best we can to do some good.”
“Out of the good can only come the bad,” she said in a weary resigned voice. “And out of the light can only come the dark.”
After she hung up he looked at Aaron for a few seconds and shook his head. His radio training immediately took over.
“Well, folks, who would want to go through even half of what Joanna’s gone through? It’s a heart-wrenching situation, to say the least. Sometimes things happen that’re beyond reason and comprehension. And we throw up our hands. We can only hope she finds the strength and courage to go on. Tell us what you think, folks. The lines are open. Twitter is open. We need some help on this.”
During the commercial break, he had a little chat with Aaron. Aaron had never heard a caller like that before. She had sounded sincere, but one could never be positive. He told Dr. Ray he had handled it as best he could, under the circumstances. The lines and tweets were coming in strong and then like an avalanche.
