“Well,” he said, his tone bordering on upbeat, “I’m feeling delighted that we’re having this conversation.” If our grandmother’s perception was even partly true, Bob went on, he must have been aware of my dearth of love and support. He spoke of it as an added factor beyond our parents maneuvering him onto a locked ward, where he was expected to capitulate to his diagnosis, to relinquish himself. Our grandmother’s words offered another layer in his understanding of himself back then. His voice held notes of release, as if this additional stark knowledge of the forces arrayed against him as a young man could somehow liberate him to finally fulfill his musical dreams. I was glad to hear this intimation of freedom, but I winced inwardly. I had my doubts that a better sense of such old personal history could lead him forward. Though I muzzled my thoughts, his belief in this struck me as misguided, a weakness, a hint of bottomless fragility, even as I rebuked myself for this reaction. I also felt shut out by what seemed his consuming obsession with redressing the past.
As our sessions progressed, I said I worried that Bob’s unrelenting ambition put an obstacle between us, that his desire, at age 64, to redeem the past by proving himself, at last, as an artist created a kind of wall around him. Writing this sentence now, I wonder if my saying this was an unconscious and insidious effort to subvert him, a resurfacing of primal rivalrous emotions that I wish were gone. Why should it concern me that he is driven to do more artistically — and at a higher level — than he does now, more than lead a band that plays at his church services, more than play sometimes for classes at a modern dance company in New York?
But Bob’s answer was an acknowledgment. “I have lots of relationships with parishioners and colleagues,” he said to Benjamin. “But really, if I’m 100 percent honest, other than that, except for Pam. …” He veered into mentioning the two deep bonds he’d made over the decades; one of these friends had died, and he’d lost touch with the other. “I come home, and I start practicing the piano or doing singing exercises. On Saturday, I do the same. Pam and I might go for a bike ride, and then I write my sermon or practice the piano. It doesn’t even come near the top of my priority list that I should have coffee with somebody or have a beer with somebody or ——”
“Call my brother,” Benjamin said.
“Or call my brother.”
“Daniel can’t compete with this ambition. But,” Benjamin asked, “is there room to let him in? Would there be room for sharing and being together, if the ambition takes a pause for 30 minutes?”
I added that if I shared something vulnerable with Bob, “the feeling would be of my words having to push through,” to permeate something that encases him, because his yearning to right the past cuts him off and means that he’s not exactly with me.
