Memory Work

By J J Garrett

Phipp Kearney is a college professor who should have been a criminal. He, who grew up in a torture chamber hidden behind a middle class front door, suffers with a ruinous personality. His life is a waiting room for his childhood to sneak into the present and destroy him. The loss of his wife and his university position loom before him. Yet he neither understands why these losses are imminent nor recognizes the troubles that precipitated them. In a bitter-end effort, his wife lures him into a therapy called Memory Work. He accedes, and begrudgingly begins to write. In a cabin upon Georgias mighty Coosa River, with neighbors out of the book of the too familiar, he finds that past and present merge into a lethal profile of himself. Still, with a sense of stoicism and raillery, he shares with the reader his memories of being stripped of ego, self-esteem, spontaneity, creativity, and the ability to love, along the road toward disconnectedness as an adult. Infidelity, bigotry, suicide, and the masks of battery and abuse, scar the landscape over which Phipp travels in his search to unravel his pasta twelve year old boy and timid old man his most potent therapists.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 28, 2004
• ISBN: 9781418468330

J J Garrett

About J J Garrett J J Garrett is a product of Georgia. He is a novelist, a poet, a researcher, and an educator. He holds a Ph.D., M.Ed., and B.A. from various Georgia colleges. He has lived in and traveled most of the U.S. and Central America. He has consolidated his search for lore into six novels and seven chapbooks of poem (now in anthology) with a resolve to return literary fiction back to Planet Earth. He is married; has too many animals around the house.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Atlanta, Georgia, Mid-May

Phipp Kearney was a handsome man—and he knew it. But Joule Lansing figured most everything he told her was a lie.

She saw behind the façade of his dark gray eyes and radiant smile. She saw how he manipulated those gifts in alliance with high cheekbones and an expertly orchestrated rise of brow that endearingly conveyed a sense of amusement and confidence about being alive.

Nor did his physique escape her notice. He passed for a trim and athletic thirty, which, at age thirty-nine, he attributed to a diet of drinking great quantities of beer over long periods of time. At least his diet provided some honest insight into his character: that of an over-educated, foul-mouthed, workaholic, whose after-hours cocktail lounge exploits seemed, to Joule, remarkable expressions of a pulp fiction mind.

In all, he was a cocky son of a bitch, Joule told herself. But she was not his wife. Nor was she one of the female graduate students at the university who competed for his time. She was his therapist. Her mandate was to change him.

With this in mind, she listened to him speak—listened to the ugliness that played around his tortured and saddened and unwitting soul.

And though she sometimes wished to throw up her hands in futility, she found herself amused by the fluidity of his words and how he called full attention to them with punctuations of lewdness. In such a way he linked memory after memory into a life history that he explained away as quickly as he fabricated it.

At that moment he recollected his high school days in Gildlily, Georgia. He spoke a while, then broke into laughter.

What’s so funny, Phipp? To be the scoundrel of your high school football team makes you happy?

Nothing makes me happy, Joule. You should know that by now. But I was proud to be the meanest of the bunch.

And so you told me. You hoped to kill people during your teenage years—at least, cripple them for life.

Yes. That’s what I laughed about: the penalties the referees threw at me; and only because I took the momentary luxury of being me. Phipp grabbed his head with his hands and laughed a while longer. Eventually, he aimed his gaze at his therapist. I remembered just now, Joule, one of my brighter moments in the game. I kicked a big tackle in the nuts—we faced off on the forty-yard line; everybody else down the field; both of us alone under the stadium lights; and I, so pissed off, my team losing as always, him growling at me like some kind of bear eyeing a jerky stick. I took a bounce and kicked him in the nuts so hard I bet … Oh! I know … that night my cleats checked his prostate for free.

Phipp fell back into his chair and laughed again.

And you find that amusing?

Absolutely not. Joule’s client drew a face of calm as he lied. It was wrong. And my father beat me after the game for what I did. But that’s an example of how mean I was. I wasn’t afraid of anything. Nothing. Not even of dying.

Of that, Phipp, I’m sure.

Lack of fear gives one freedom to survive as the smallest and emerge as the strongest, Joule. And the fans viewed me that way: as the headhunter. I’d go against anybody. After life with my father, I felt certain that no man less than two-hundred thirty pounds could ever hurt me.

I don’t know exactly. Mostly he just beat me half to death. But it didn’t work for my younger brother, Laurent. He got the same treatment and mutated into a pussy.

So tell me about your father.

Phipp took a deep breath. He let it out as he looked around the winsome-blue office and admired the Louis XVI antiques there. His eyes moved to the clock on the wall, then retreated to Joule.

We need to save that for another session, Joule. He winked and added, Of which, I will attend no more.

No more?

Correct. This talk-talk is a waste of effort; a waste of money. Today is the sixth session I’ve had with you. But you diagnosed me the first session: I’m neurotic. What’s new? You are, too. Everybody is. The only thing that cures neuroticism is dying—from it, or with it. Whichever. And, hey. Who cares, anyway?

But you’re a rare person, Phipp. Most people I see with your background are criminals. Instead, you’re a college professor. I need to get to know you. You need to get to know yourself. We must find the force in your life that pressed you upward into academia rather than downward to prison. That’s the force we will build upon to help you.

Phipp’s face darkened.

I haven’t told you anything that would make you say I act like a convict, Joule. I think you listen to my wife too much. But Moultrie has no right to diagnose my problems and report them to you.

Joule sat back in her chair and ran her fingers through her graying hair. She eyed her client.

Moultrie talks to me about her problems in her sessions with me; not about your problems, Phipp. But in the context of her problems, she reports to me your behavior—the same behavior you and I have discussed in each of your sessions here: your hatred for everything, your anger at everybody, your isolation from friendships, your compulsive working, your drinking, your pursuit of extra-marital affairs—

Phipp leaned forward and huffed.

If that were all true, how do I survive, Joule?

That’s what I ask myself, Phipp. Joule peered at Phipp with eyes as hard as she would direct at a child of her own. And that’s exactly what I want you to ask yourself.

Phipp glanced at his wristwatch as if he had not heard. He stood and stared upon Joule.

I know I have some problems with anger, Joule. But I get over my episodes quickly. And, sure, I do hate a few people who hate me. But beyond that, you describe my isolation and my joy of work as psychological problems. You’re wrong. Those two qualities got me named the youngest Ph.D. ever tenured in the Management College at Georgia State. Those same two qualities will earn me distinction as the youngest ever to gain a full professorship there.

Joule stood and approached her client.

But those characteristics feed your other destructive actions.

I won’t change my behavior at the expense of my career, Joule. No more than I’ll sacrifice my lifestyle. What makes those things are me.

Those things will destroy you, Phipp. Those things will come to get you, Joule whispered.

Phipp stepped forward, wrapped his arms around the psychologist, and hugged her.

You and your big heart, Joule—I credit Moultrie for her selection of you. He held Joule away from himself and admired the slowly aging face whose original beauty hung like a faded photograph. Consider me finished with this idiocy for a while. But I will make you one promise: since I won’t be teaching this summer quarter, I’ll spend some time pondering the things you’ve said to me. How’s that?

That’s not good enough, Phipp.

Phipp released her and went to the door.

But that’s the way it will be.

Talk to Moultrie before you stop these sessions, Phipp.

To hell with Moultrie. I don’t know what has gotten into her. After twelve years of marriage she decides to start bitching about my behavior—the same behavior by which she came to love me in the first place. Make her ask herself what’s wrong with her. Maybe she’ll get herself straightened out and leave me alone.

Just talk to Moultrie about your decision, Phipp.

Phipp sighed as he opened the door.

Yes, Dr. Lansing. And, now, if I may, I want to return to the university and conduct myself in my problematic way of supporting the wife who causes me the problems of which we speak.

Joule watched the door close behind him.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear, she recited sadly.

- - -

Moultrie heard the car door slam and knew her husband arrived. She knew by the force with which he slammed the door that he arrived angry. She noted that the clock on the stove read eleven p.m. His evening class ended at seven-thirty. She adjusted the temperature of the burner beneath sautéed pork medallions, and waited.

As she expected, the front door flew open with the force of a foot. The same foot caught it as it rebounded from its collision with the wall. She swallowed tensely while the foot hooked the door and threw it closed. After the crash came the sound of a briefcase dropped upon the foyer floor. The crackle of a paper bag joined with footsteps just beyond the kitchen.

Damnit! Phipp entered the kitchen and dropped the bag upon the table. I should go back and beat that son of a bitch. That rude, oversized, Pakistani ape.

He jerked a six-pack of beer out of the bag, pulled one from the plastic chain, and threw the other five into the refrigerator. He slammed the refrigerator door. Bottles tumbled from the racks inside.

Screw you, he shouted at the appliance, Piece of trash!

He kicked the door. Moultrie moved closer to the stove.

What happened this time, Phipp?

Phipp whipped upon his wife. He ignored the thick brown hair which he once adored for its casual fall and curl upon her shoulders. He saw, instead, what he long had known as soft full lips decorating a broad smile now formed as flat thin lines, as if bitten and held from the inside. Her lips made him angry.

Don’t give me your ‘I’m worried sick about you look’, damn you, Moultrie.

Moultrie said nothing. She cut off the stove burners, left the kitchen, and headed for the den.

Why are you leaving?

Moultrie stopped in the center of the den. She wheeled upon her husband.

Do you need to ask? she cried, I kept supper hot for you for two hours while I awaited your return from another end-of-quarter drinking marathon with your students. I didn’t wait for you for the pleasure of your yells at me, and I don’t plan to listen to them tonight.

I don’t yell at you, damnit. I’m yelling about that worthless Pakistani who runs the convenience store on Piedmont Avenue.

And do you think he can hear you from here? Moultrie threw her hands upon her hips. Or are you so inebriated that the refrigerator and I look Pakistani to you?

No. Not at all. The problem is that he acts like you, Moultrie. He thinks he can tell me … me … the money paying customer … that I should rearrange his frigging beer cooler after he forced me to move all the hot beer in front to get at the cold beer he so stupidly stacked in back.

And how is that like me, Dr. Kearney? Moultrie asked hotly.

Phipp pounded his fist upon the counter beside the refrigerator.

Because you tell me that I should rearrange my frigging life to make your life easier. And that makes me ask myself, ‘What is marriage? What is life, for that matter? A series of convenience stores? A bunch of stopovers where I should work my butt off to make it convenient for those who can’t manage their own shops?’ Ha! I say, no way!

Moultrie gasped.

I think you’ll need one-thousand more sessions with Joule before you get yourself straight, Phipp.

Surprise! Phipp tore the top off his beer and drank. I graduated today. No more of those idiot sessions for me.

Moultrie’s mouth dropped open. She advanced from the center of the den to the chair where her husband used to read before he stopped spending his nights at home. She braced herself upon the backrest.

You no longer plan to see Joule? she gasped.

I gave her my notice today.

"Well! Let me give you notice, Phipp Kearney. Moultrie’s blue eyes squinted into dots of rage. She pointed her finger at him. I can’t take any more of this life of yelling and cursing and drinking … and working, working, working. I can’t watch a fine mind and a once affectionate and fun-loving man degenerate into the … the beastly and obstinate slob that you’ve become."

Me? Phipp shouted, I—

Yes, you! Moultrie yelled, And if you don’t make your session with Joule next Thursday, you’ll come home to an empty house that night.

You’re obsessive-compulsive, Moultrie. You make a mountain out of a molehill. You interfere with my life.

No. You interfere with your life, Phipp. Not only can you not see what you do to our marriage, you can’t even see what you do to your property. Look at the dent you just put in the refrigerator door. Go into the basement and look at the television set you threw into the hot tub. Look at the pane there in the kitchen door that you splintered when you slammed your fist into it. And … and look at the tree you backed into in the yard when you left from here in yet another rage. Can’t you see? You run totally out of control.

Pressures abound, Moultrie. There’s the nightly news and—

There’s you, Phipp. Only you. Get yourself straightened out.

Moultrie whirled and ran up the stairs toward their bedroom.

I will then! Phipp shouted after her. I’ll straighten myself out by starting with you. Let’s go see Joule together next week. Let me tell her in front of you how you drive me absolutely crazy.

Fine. I’ll be there, Moultrie called from the top of the stairwell.

The closure and lock of the bedroom door followed. Phipp took another drink and slammed the can upon the tabletop. He noticed the dent the rim put into the finish. He cursed. He kicked the refrigerator door and made a second dent in it. He hated himself doubly.

Damned Pakistanis. I hate those sons of bitches.

- - -

Dr. Robert Blotch was not a notable man in appearance, personality, or academic accomplishment. Consequently, he made the perfect candidate for chairman of the Management Department of Georgia State University.

He was voted to the position by peer process: a uniquely professional mechanism by which the talented peculiar block each other from the position of department captain and vote by consensus for the least talented to run the ship. Usually, the ship doesn’t sink, but it goes nowhere either. With the exception of frequently mumbled or grumbled I told you so’s, the result of this process—that everyone loses in favor of the most unfavorable—makes everyone happy and responsive to the bumbling incumbent.

So it was that Dr. Phipp Kearney liked Dr. Robert Blotch. And, when the old professor appeared in the doorway of Phipp’s office, Phipp greeted him happily.

Dr. Kearney? Dr. Blotch cleared his throat and adjusted his bow tie. If you have a moment, may I speak with you in my office?

Certainly, Dr. Blotch.

Phipp left his book-crammed cubicle and followed the department chairman down the hall to the corner office. There, Dr. Blotch invited him to sit in his larger cubicle before a desk made of wood instead of metal. Phipp studied the titles of his chairman’s books while he waited for the man to work through his usual pace of coughs, throat clearings, and stutters in order to get to his point. The professor eventually achieved start velocity. Phipp dropped his eyes to him.

What I mean to say, Dr. Kearney, is that the members of the department voice concern about you.

The faculty of the Department of Management voices concern about me? Phipp repeated, surprised.

The chairman nodded, cleared his throat a few times more, and answered.

Yes, Dr. Kearney. They express the misgiving that they may be forced to vote for your dismissal.

What? Phipp shrieked his reply. He lunged forward and grabbed the edge of the chairman’s desk. What kind of concern is that, Dr. Blotch? And why do the idiots of this faculty want to screw me? Or, knowing those cutthroat bastards, when do they plan to screw me?

The chairman leaned back from the intruding face over his desk and again cleared his throat.

Nobody wants to damage your career, Dr. Kearney. But concern about your professional conduct grows.

Phipp whipped his head in denial.

I don’t understand, Dr. Blotch. I produce the greatest quantity of research in this department. I maintain my share of advisees, and I chair as many dissertation committees as any other professor. I know I don’t hold any professional association offices, but I’m not a convention animal and—

It’s not that, Dr. Kearney. Your professional credentials impress me. They impress your colleagues, too. I’m quite sure some envy you. But the complaints of your conduct don’t spring from either your performance or their envy. They spring … I guess you would say … from your increasingly aberrant conduct.

My increasingly aberrant conduct?

Phipp gasped and dropped into his chair. Dr. Blotch drew himself erect.

Yes. You’ve taught here eight years, Dr. Kearney. You’ve always shown what I might call a raspy personality: arrogant, cocky, self-confident, and even know-it-all. Frankly, I admire that in you and wish I possessed some of it myself. Then you and your colleagues would never have voted me department chairman. I wouldn’t need to listen to a bunch of prima donna professors complain about one another—or dole out messages like this one I give you.

Please, Dr. Blotch. Tell me what you mean to tell me. My career is the only thing I may possess after my wife leaves me next week.

That you experience problems on the home front, too, does not surprise me, doctor.

Either way, this conversation seems to mark an extension of what my wife says to me nowadays.

Which is?

What you said before you digressed—those things about my being raspy, arrogant, cocky—

Oh, yes.

Well?

Well, Dr. Kearney, after the university granted you tenure a year ago—by stronger vote than I thought you would gain given the way you mete out insults to your peers—your behavior intensified. It has now intensified to the nearly intolerable.

How so?

"Well, for instance, when Dr. Hudson says ‘good morning’ to you, he doesn’t expect your reciprocal greeting to be ‘up yours’—even if he may be gay.

When Dr. Watson describes his newest research project before our faculty meeting, even if he can see that most everyone present struggles to restrain their incredulity at its mammoth irrelevancy and feeble design, he doesn’t appreciate you saying—at least I think you said—’that’s the lamest piece of pseudo-intellectual shit anybody has ever tried to poke up my ass.’ Dr. Watson is a proud and serious man.

He’s a dung heap and you know it, Dr. Blotch.

And, there you demonstrate another point, Dr. Kearney. By your tongue our management department, one of the most respected in the Southeast, would be staffed by ‘dick-heads’ and ‘cock masseuses’—along with a few ‘fish-breathed lesbians.’ Our advanced management research would come to nothing more than ‘idiotic logic’ applied by ‘daddies-boys’ with ‘vibrating dildos crammed into their left brains’ or by those who write on ‘toilet tissue’ with the fluency of ‘cranial microcephalics’.

Oh. Dr. Blotch! You know I said those things only in jest.

Those certainly represent some of your most memorable jests, Dr. Kearney. And their memory gains strength through your constant generation of other satirical and sarcastic barbs, followed by periods of brooding or by periods of blatant animosity toward anyone who stands against you or in any way criticizes you. You expect people to take you seriously at all times but you never take anyone else seriously. Consequently, you never listen to anyone. You offend people by that. You don’t facilitate the success of others. You do things alone and, at worse, retard the efforts of others. You’re not responsive to any member of this faculty except as a punitive or unpleasant experience. My students wouldn’t say that of me, Dr. Blotch. No, Dr. Kearney. To the contrary. They would pronounce you an adequate instructor and, certainly, a great party person.

Now too much is too much, Dr. Blotch! Phipp sprang to his feet. Do my honored peers also throw stones at my personal life? Phipp sent the mild-mannered chairman a furious glare. Dr. Blotch, his eyes round, mouth opened, a gag caught in his throat, kicked his chair away from his desk and rode it full speed into the bookshelves behind.

As the chair recoiled, he leaned back to its full measure, stuck out his bottom lip, and pretended calm.

Your peers would never throw stones at your private life, Dr. Kearney, he said with determined voice, But they may make observations of it. And they may also question its impact upon your professional performance and the professional reputation you all share together here at the university.

And specifically what questions do they raise, Dr. Blotch?

Please allow me to pose the questions, Dr. Kearney … since we deal on uncertain ground here.

Phipp agreed as he paced before the chairman’s desk.

Can you not be discovered in one of the numerous bars in the northern area of Atlanta on any given night of the week, Dr. Kearney?

Probably, Phipp answered, Usually with a group of students; or with my wife and her school teacher friends—considering I work so hard I don’t enjoy time to cultivate friends of my own. He stopped and eyed the chairman, who knowingly met his gaze. And, yes, sometimes alone … in search of diversionary companionship.

Diversionary companionship, Dr. Kearney?

Call it what you wish. Evolutionary thrust sounds better.

Dr. Blotch cleared his throat.

Dr. Kearney, one day your relationships with our female graduate students will catch up with you. Either your wife will find proof of your conduct, or you’ll get hold of a … a bitch who’ll lodge a complaint against you with the university.

And only I in this department have stumbled into the arms of a student who seeks romance with a titled intellect?

Of course not. And every year, somewhere in this university, they drum out a professor because of a student complaint about sex for grades.

I will only screw an honor student, Dr. Blotch.

Then maybe she will only tell your wife.

Phipp stopped in mid-pace. He peered at the floor.

Dr. Kearney, the chairman continued, Don’t force me to coordinate the removal from this department and this university of a young and talented associate professor like you. Clean your act up. Stop drinking, running college coeds, and behaving boisterously in bars. Stop insulting your peers and making every encounter with them a football game. Heal yourself with your wife if you experience problems on the home front, too. Take some time to think about such things. That’s exactly why I arranged for you not to teach—

Phipp’s head came up as if spring driven. With a growl he grabbed the chairman’s marble name plate as if to dash it into the bookshelves. He caught himself.

"You set me up not to conduct classes this summer, Dr. Blotch?"

Your … your wife requested it of me, Dr. Kearney. She knew you’d never agree to cancel your summer teaching schedule. The faculty had begun to conspire against you at the time and … and I’ll say this stoically in the face of your barely confinable anger, young man: I exchanged your career at this university for the mere consideration of one summer without classes—with hope that you might try to reorganize yourself.

Phipp trembled. He, hammer-like, replaced the marble weapon.

Damnit-all! He backed away and eyed the gentle man who sat speechlessly and motionlessly and peered lamely back at him. He forced himself to relax. He dropped his hands into his pockets to show the good professor his intention. So now, Dr. Blotch, you want me to thank those who hope to screw me?

I think you should, Dr. Kearney. But you would not be thanking those who wish to screw you. You would be thanking those who wish to save you from yourself—if that is possible over a three month summer vacation.

And what happens if I don’t or … if I can’t, Dr. Blotch?

You’ll never earn a full professorship here, Dr. Kearney. Of course, I’ll fight nobly as your mentor, in accordance with my responsibility in these cases. And then, as the last few wavering members of the faculty become fed up with you, they’ll band with the others and the peer review process will end you.

That’s just great. My wife and my job.

I beg your pardon?

I meant to say, I don’t see how I behave any different than I behaved two years ago—or four years ago, or six years ago, Dr. Blotch.

That’s the sad part, Dr. Kearney. You’re no different than you were. You’re only better at being the worst of what you were. The good that you used to be, that counteracted the bad that you used to be, has disappeared.

That doesn’t sound good, Dr. Blotch.

"No, Dr. Kearney. It doesn’t sound good at all.

Chapter 2

This consult typifies one more example of my wife’s manipulation of me, Joule. Phipp uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. I agreed to come here with Moultrie so she could bitch at me in your presence and hear me explain why I intend to stop these discussions. Instead, she schedules back to back sessions: the first one I must talk my way through in order to arrive at the second one, where I finally get to say I didn’t want to come to the session I just finished.

Joule sat, lips puckered, thinking. When she saw Phipp stared quietly at her, she spoke again.

I still want to hear about your father, Phipp. Your mother, too, if you would rather talk about her.

Christ.

I told you about my father. I told you about my mother. I told you about my childhood.

That your father was an asshole; that your mother was ‘stuck in wimp’; that your childhood was something you lived through.

That’s right.

You mentioned in the past that your father beat you.

So? Fathers beat on their boys. For that, they’re assholes. And mothers stand back wall-eyed and watch. For that they stay stuck in wimp. But ‘beating’ is an accidental use of word, Joule. The correct word is ‘spanking’.

Tell me about that.

There’s nothing to tell. Were you never spanked? A spanking is something one gets when a child. Just like one expects birthday presents while a child. Childhood is a mandatory term during which one gets stuff, and then one grows up and starts to give it all back.

Have you been giving it all back since you played as a football letterman, Phipp?

How do you mean?

I don’t know exactly. That’s why I ask you. What do you give back that you received in childhood?

Come on, Joule. Don’t get all hypothetical with me. Let’s keep this on the ground.

Let’s do better than that, Phipp. Let’s get right down in the dirt with it.

You push me, Joule. Phipp frowned. A hint of anger weighted his brow.

This is our last session, Phipp. I want to leave you with something.

Then leave me with my sanity.

That’s what I hope to do.

Phipp sat motionlessly, then stood and crossed the floor to the wall of diplomas Joule displayed there. He studied them as if with a new curiosity. Joule left her chair, went to her desk, and leaned against it.

My doctorate stands as my greatest accomplishment in life, Joule, Phipp said as if preoccupied, I always wanted to be smart. He sighed. No. Not smart. I always wanted to understand things—the why of stuff. Since I never understood why I came here, or why I did things, or why things happened to me, I opted for being smart. Now I am. All because of a diploma; a piece of parchment. And for all that task of paper procurement wrung from me, my parents never told me congratulations.

That hurt you.

Phipp eyed Joule, a ghost-like quality in his face.

"On the other hand, maybe my parents did tell me congratulations. I felt all up in the air at the ceremony, and at the party afterward. So many people. So much booze."

Joule groaned. She suppressed an impulse to cross