Doctor Horvath motioned for Jack to take a seat by the round, low coffee table while he settled himself in a swiveling chair in front of the bare desk, and then he turned to face Jack while resting his right elbow on the desk. He tore a marked page from his pad (with the logo of a pharmaceutical company in the lower right corner) and dated a fresh page. Jack’s file lay close at hand.
“How’ve you been feeling this week, Jack?”
“Fine, thanks.”
“Stop being so polite. This isn’t a social call; it’s a therapy session.”
“Hmmm.” Jack picked at the cuticles of his left hand. “Okay. Some things good. Some things bad.”
“All right. Let’s start with the good things.”
Jack sat silently.
“Come on, Jack. We’ve been through this a hundred times. I know for a fact that something’s going through your mind. Let’s spit it out.”
Doctor Horvath’s manner struck Jack more as tired than concerned. Jack was aware in himself of his need to please people, and was wary that he was reading too much into Horvath’s manner: the gruff harumph as he set one leg over the other and twisted in his seat, the rumpled frown that swept like a cloud across his face, the gaze that dropped from Jack’s eyes to the dingy running shoes. Were these signs of disapproval? Or impatience? Or indifference? Or maybe they were signs of nothing at all. Whenever he started overinterpreting Horvath’s expression and posture, he began to worry that maybe he was narcissistic. Jack was terrified that one day his therapist might diagnose him with a narcissistic personality disorder. If that ever happened, Jack wouldn’t be able to live with himself.
“Jack?”
“Huh?”
Horvath made a motion like a theatre prompter. “Time to talk.”
“Well, on the good side, I’ve been back at work—part time. I’ve decided to make some rules about work—take only the work I like and only four hours a day—for now. And something else that’s new. I’m starting to get enthused about something—it’s been a long time.”
“How do you mean?”
“I’m talking about passion. I’m writing some music—part symphonic, part choral. I’m really pleased with the way it’s coming along. It’s assuming a structure, an integrity all its own, kind of a feeling like it’s writing itself. What I mean by that is that I’m not writing this work as a kind of therapy, not to satisfy my own needs—it’s an expression that can stand in spite of—or without—me.”
“Good. Good.”
“So I write music in the morning and go into the office in the afternoon. The other good thing is that I’ve started practising the harp again.”
“Are we talking about that singing harp?”
“Yeah. I was mechanical at first. I plucked the strings like I was, say, washing the dishes. But every day I force myself to sit down at the harp and play, and gradually things are beginning to thaw.”
“Do you enjoy playing the harp now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you dislike it?”
“No. Definitely not.”
“Then you should be pleased with yourself. Even a month ago, you hated your harp and wouldn’t touch it.”
“Yeah. But I still don’t have that …. It’s hard to describe. When I was younger—in my teens—no, not even then. There was a time until my mid-teens when playing the harp was a—I’m not sure what to call it—maybe a transforming experience. Every time I sat down to play the harp … I’m just looking for a way to describe it. A metaphor. I know. There was a time when—for me—playing the harp was like, say, having sex.”
Doctor Horvath laughed aloud. “I hope you practised safe sex.”
“I’ve never heard of anyone ever catching anything from a singing harp.”
“Do you want to get back that feeling? The feeling you had when you played your harp?”
“Uh-huh. I guess I have this vague sense of loss. Some people can tell you exactly why they have a sense of loss. They can say: oh, my wife died or I was injured in a car accident or I lost my job after twenty-five years at the same company. But that’s not me. There hasn’t been anything recent with me … you know … to explain this feeling of loss.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t be looking at recent events. Maybe some of your answers lie in your early childhood.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, for example, last week you told me a story of something that happened to you when you were nine or ten. Your mother gave you her only cow and asked you to sell it. Remember?”
“Yeah.”
“We ran out of time last week and so we never really explored all the issues coming out of that incident. What’s wrong, Jack?”
“Nothing.”
“You look upset.”
“No. Really, I’m fine.”
“Jack.”
“Well, I was just thinking back to that day and what a fiasco it was.”
“Why was it a fiasco?”
“The whole thing was stupid. Somehow selling the cow was supposed to make everything right. You’ve gotta understand. We were really poor back then. I really screwed up bad that time.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Sure I did. My mother specifically told me to sell the cow for money. And what did I do? I decided—”
“Jack. Jack. Just stop. What I hear you saying is that you screwed up because you ignored you mother’s instructions.”
“Yeah.”
“Was your mother angry at you?”
“Yeah.”
“What did she do?”
“She yelled at me. I traded the cow for beans—magic beans—and she threw them on the ground and sent me to bed without any supper—which didn’t matter because we didn’t have anything to eat.”
“But why did you trade the cow for beans instead of money?”
“I don’t know.”
“Jack.”
“Really, I don’t.”
“Jack, whenever you say: “I don’t know,” I hear something else. I hear: “I know, but the reason is something I’d rather die than admit.” Well, let me tell you something I’ve learned with experience. Sometimes admitting something can be liberating. Now. Why did you trade the cow for beans instead of money?”
Jack sat, head bowed, gazing at his feet.
“Let me get you started. What did the beans represent, for you?”
Jack looked up. “A lot of things, I guess. Opportunity. Risk. Foolishness. You see, my mother …. ” Tears welled up in the young man’s eyes. “God love her, she was doing her best.”
“Let’s leave God out of this for the time being. God may love her, but do you?”
Jack sat puzzled. “It was such a stupid thing to do. Just because you’re poor doesn’t mean you should get rid of your only means of livelihood. It was so shortsighted.”
“But you never answered my question.”
“Love? I don’t know.”
“So why did you sell the cow for beans?”
“Because money was the short-sighted option. Even if the beans weren’t magic beans, we could get enough beans in the next year to sow a whole field. But the money would be gone next year and we’d have no way of earning any more. And besides. What if they really were magic beans?”
“And they were, if I recall.”
“They were extraordinary beans.”
“So let’s get back to my question. Do you love your mother?”
“I guess. In some ways.”
“Jack, love is not a half-hearted proposition. Either you do or you don’t.”
“When you put it that way, then … ” Tears formed in the corners of the young man’s eyes. “I just don’t know. I just don’t know what to think. Maybe I don’t love her.”
“Never mind what you think,” Horvath said. “Tell me what you feel.”
“What do I feel?” Jack wiped the tears from his cheeks and stuffed the tissue into his breast pocket. “I guess maybe I’m angry.”
“There you go again,” Horvath said. “You guess you’re angry.”
“Okay. I was angry. I saw things differently, but I wasn’t allowed to think for myself.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, to me, the beanstalk was an opportunity. I climbed up and found a hen that laid golden eggs. It was the chance of a lifetime. A chance to solve all our money problems. When I show the hen to my mother, what does she do? She says, “God I’m hungry!” and starts plucking the damned thing. Always looking to the immediate solution. She’s never really believed I could do anything worthwhile on my own. Everyone looks at me and says: “Oh what a talented young man.” “See all his accomplishments.” “You must be so proud.” And my mother gloats, but still, she can’t seem to see anything through my eyes.”
Jack went on with his story of his treasure from the castle in the clouds. Jack saved the hen from his mother’s cauldron, saved it just long enough for it to lay a golden egg. In fact, it was his mother who found the egg, nestled in amongst the hay where the cow used to feed, and because the woman was alone when she made the discovery, any wonderment, any thrill at the thought of riches, any pleasure in caressing the glinting oval, she enjoyed privately. And so when Jack’s mother returned to the hut carrying the egg in her apron, there was nothing in her manner that showed pride in her son’s achievement, not the slightest hint in her eyes that her boy had done something wonderful. It was this utter absence of acknowledgment—and not boredom as he once had thought—that drove Jack back up the beanstalk once again to risk everything for the sake of achieving something that, by the standards of the world below, was beyond comparison. And so he stole the singing harp from the giant.
The question that continued to gnaw at Jack’s brain was this: did he really need to chop down the beanstalk? Without question, the giant who chased him was a great threat. But there are other ways to subdue a giant. He could have shot the giant with a poisoned arrow; or he could have called all the villagers to come running with their pitch-forks and muskets. Why, instead, did he cut down the beanstalk? Ever since that day, he had carried with him a vague and inexplicable sense of loss.