There is one similarity between Dr. Evans and an outside-the-prison shrink.
They each have a large clock on the wall. The business of therapizing must fit tidily into the magic interval. It’s fifty minutes on the outside. Here, forty-five.
Every time he sits across from the doctor, safe in his personness, he thinks of the clock on the Carnegie Building, sitting just over the surface of the Kenoah.
The clock that stopped running and transformed its hands to angel wings.
The Water Clock...
“Let’s talk about your drinking, Jon.”
So he’s not picking up where they left off last week. He doesn’t remember—or care about—the insight Jon had started to tell him. But Jon the Charmer says amiably, “Sure, Doctor.”
Dr. Evans says, “You’re doing well in the program.”
There is an active twelve-step here. The majority of inmates have substance issues.
“Okay.” Merritt attends, he talks. He lies. It’s all good.
“You said that drinking makes you angry, Jon. Is that fair?”
Merritt doesn’t like the doctor using his given name. He’s heard about transference—a connection between doctor and patient. That’s the last thing he wants.
When you have a secret like the Truth, you don’t want to connect with anybody. Confessions sometimes happen.
But he nods agreeably. “Oh, that’s true.”
Watch the word...
“You mean you get mad at them.”
“I guess. At them, at everybody.” He shakes his head. “I don’t want to. It just happens.”
Then the doctor does the looking-off thing once again.
The light filters through the barred and thick-glass windows.
Dr. Evans returns. “When did you start drinking?”
“A kid. My dad’s bar. It wasn’t a bar. He called it that. Just a shelf in the kitchen.”
“He let you have some?”
“God no. Too stingy for that. I snuck it.”
“And replaced it with water, so he never noticed?”
“No.”
Tuna Doc lifts an eyebrow. “So maybe he knew. Maybe you wanted him to know.”
This sounds shrinky. Jon doesn’t want to keep going with it. But he says, “That’s good, Doctor. I think you might be right.”
And for half an hour, they run through the timeline of alcohol: When Merritt felt the problem got to be a problem, embarrassing or dangerous incidents caused by intoxication, putting people at risk, missed opportunities to turn his life around, what does he miss about drinking the most, now that he’s been in prison?
Jon the Charmer is a talented narrator.
Then Dr. Evans sails in a different direction. “You said your father was better when he drank. What did you mean by that?”