If I Should Die Before I Die Read Online Free PDF Page B

blanket, not even a sheet. He won’t even use a pillow, you know? In the middle of winter he’ll turn the heat up but he won’t put anything over his body. Oh yeah, and he sleeps with the lights on!”
    Toward the end he started to laugh, and then you could hear his snorting sounds on the tape.
    Then silence.
    â€œWhy did you say it wrong?” the Counselor’s Wife said.
    â€œWhat do you mean, ‘say it wrong’?”
    â€œDon’t you realize you said ‘If I should die before I die’ instead of ‘If I should die before I wake’?”
    â€œThat’s not what I said.”
    She recited it then, the lines from the kid’s prayer, the way he’d said it.
    It agitated him all right.
    â€œWhat’re you trying to do, twist my head?” he accused.
    By way of answer, she told me, referring to some notes on her desk, she’d rewound the tape and played the passage back for him.
    â€œâ€¦ deal, you know?” he was saying when the tape picked up again. “Big Freudian slip, you know? So what?”
    â€œWhy did you say it?” the Counselor’s Wife asked.
    â€œHow should I know? It was a mistake, that’s all. You’re supposed to be the expert on Freudian slips, why don’t you tell me what it means?”
    â€œIf I knew,” her voice said mildly, “I’d tell you.”
    Her tone, though, had no effect on his rage. You could hear it gargling up in him, how she was no different from all the others, how all they wanted to do was play mind trips on him and twist his head and then, when the going got rough, they dropped him like a hot potato. He had the language to go with it too. He threatened her. His voice trembled with it. She was so smug, he said. That was what stuck in his craw, he said: that she was so smug .
    Finally, a lull. Then you could hear a rustling sound on the tape, and she said:
    â€œI think that’s all we’ll have time for today.”
    â€œThat’s what you think!” he retorted. But if anything more had happened, the tape didn’t have it, because that’s where it ended.
    She played me parts of one more, from the next session and, she said, the last one. She dated it at the beginning of July.
    I didn’t understand, listening, why she wanted me to hear it. McCloy was all whiny and apologetic. He’d had no right to blow his cork the last time. He’d figured it out, he thought. The real reason he’d blown his cork was because he couldn’t stand not seeing her again till September. The Counselor’s Wife interrupted the tape to explain to me. The patient, she said, had gone a little bananas when she’d announced that her office would be closed the month of August. Most therapists closed in August, she said, and it was common enough for patients to have trouble with it. There’d even been a novel written about it. In any case, McCloy’s “revenge” had been to announce back that he himself wouldn’t be coming any more in July. He was going to Alaska. She’d spent a lot of time, she said, trying to convince him that by not coming in July, he was really punishing himself, not her, and suggesting that he postpone his trip till August. But to no avail. His friends were going, the whole gang.
    The tape went on. A drone of self-pity was what it sounded like to me, but quiet, flat even. At one point, he’d asked her what would happen if he canceled Alaska. Would she reconsider about August in return? Would she find a way to see him then? No, she’d answered, that would be impossible. Well, he’d said, in that case there wasn’t much more to be said.
    She let it play through to the end.
    â€œI think that’s all we’ll have time for today,” her voice said. Apparently she ended every session that way.
    Sounds of movement.
    â€œOkay,” his voice answered. “But you know? I think I’d like to shake your