Watching You Read Online Free PDF Page B

issues of grief and abandonment.
    “I’m planning to kill myself,” Marnie told him when she came to her first session.
    “How will you do it?” he asked.
    “I want to choose a way that isn’t messy.”
    “There’s no neat way of dying.”
    “You know what I mean.”
    She described her physical symptoms—the heart palpitations and tremors, the clamminess and gulping of air. She was suffering from an existential anxiety that was so profound it went right to her core. Some people suffer from phobic anxieties, fearing things like spiders or heights or confined spaces. These are easier to treat because they have a specific focus. Existential anxiety is more difficult because the reasons aren’t obvious and the magnitude confounds everything in their lives.
    Marnie’s problem went beyond a missing husband, Joe realized. Something else haunted her—a sense of dread that filled her like a dark liquid. Hours would disappear. Fugues. Lapses. Mind slips. Joe had spent months trying to discover the reason, but areas of Marnie’s mind were closed to him.
    Finishing his breakfast, he folds the newspaper beneath his arm and gets to his feet, arching his back to prevent his stooped walk. Then he looks at his shoes, wiggling his toes and issuing instructions. One of the side effects of Parkinson’s is a tendency to trip over when he starts walking, or to move in the wrong direction. His brain can send the message but it doesn’t always arrive. He has learned over the years how to hot-wire his system and overcome the false starts.
    Walking confidently now, he checks to make sure both his arms are swinging and his shoulders are back. Just another pedestrian, he thinks. Not a cripple. Not an invalid. Just a man on his way to work.
    Joe’s secretary buzzes him through the door, because he sometimes struggles with keys and locks. She takes his jacket.
    “What a lovely morning? Did you walk?”
    “Yes I did.”
    “This needs dry-cleaning. I’ll take it today.”
    “You really don’t have to bother.”
    “It’s only downstairs.”
    Carmen is in her late forties, divorced with grown-up children and the singsong voice of a kindergarten teacher (her previous career). She has great legs, a fact she celebrates by wearing shortish dresses and skirts.
    “If you’ve got ’em, flaunt ’em,” she once told him, when she caught him looking. Joe apologized. Carmen said she was flattered. Joe told himself this wasn’t going to work out.
    “Mrs. Duncan has cancelled her twelve o’clock, but Mr. Egan called, wanting an appointment. I took the liberty…”
    “Thank you.”
    The intercom buzzes. Marnie pushes through the door and walks straight into Joe’s office. She takes a seat and grimaces slightly, clearly in pain. Joe doesn’t ask about it immediately. He’ll give her time. She sits in a closed way, anchored to the chair as though scared the world might shift suddenly beneath her. Marnie steels herself for these sessions. Survival first. Revelation second.
    Joe takes his seat and spends a moment studying Marnie.
    “How have you been?”
    “Good.”
    “Any anxiety attacks?”
    “No.”
    Marnie interrupts before he speaks again. She has a story for him. She starts twice and goes back, looking for the right words. When they come it’s in a rush of breathless descriptions and recounted conversations.
    “So I stopped someone committing suicide,” she says proudly, folding her arms in satisfaction.
    Joe nods, not showing any emotion. “You can see the irony, of course.”
    “What irony?”
    “You told a man to look at the positives.”
    “I don’t see why a person can’t contemplate suicide yet talk someone else out of it. They’re not mutually exclusive emotions.”
    “That sounds like self-justification.”
    “It’s better than self-pity.”
    “Do as I say, don’t do as I do.”
    “Exactly.”
    Marnie laughs. It doesn’t happen often. Normally she’s always holding something in reserve. Once or twice Joe