Singing Grass

By Ian M. Evans

Back cover synopsis
Richard Young, a psychologist with a troubled past, is now a psychotherapist in vibrant Taos, New Mexico. He is unsettled by a mysterious client, Christopher Carson, whose life-story bears an uncanny resemblance to the notable scout and pioneer of the old West, Kit Carson. Is this a case of a serious mental disorder or something more sinister, even mystical?
Richard's wife Sharon is a talented artist with a gallery in town. Typically supportive, she begins to question their relationship as she sees her husband's mental health unravelling. Her own quiet confidence is challenged when she discovers the new student in her art class is married to Richard's suspicious client, with whom he's becoming increasingly obsessed. Into this web of tension steps a vital Native American woman who was involved in the scandal that had cost Richard his university job. What is her connection to the enigmatic Christopher, whose untruthfulness and continuous derailment of his therapy sessions are so perplexing?
An unsolved murder fuels suspicion as Richard must confront the devastating history of the American Indian nations resisting the relentless western expansion. Sharon's patience is tested. Can she remain steadfast and hold together all these conflicting relationships, entangled as they are with feelings of guilt, regret, and cultural identity? Behind the drama and the sacred landscapes of the American Southwest, flickers the haunting essence of Kit Carson's first wife, a young Arapaho woman, Singing Grass.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098350017

Ian M. Evans

Ian Evans was born in England and grew up in South Africa. He completed a doctorate at the Institute of Psychiatry (Kings College, London) and has been a professor of clinical psychology at universities in Hawaii, upstate New York, and New Zealand. Forgive Me My Trespasses is his first novel, set in a fictional public university in New York State. In his second novel, The Eye of Kuruman (Pegasus/Vanguard Press, 2017), a young public health nurse travels to Botswana and South Africa, where she finds both romance and challenge. In Menace (Austin Macauley, 2017), a thriller, Ian draws again on the university setting and threats to student safety. On retirement from academia, Ian and his wife returned to Honolulu, Oahu, a place where the children and grandchildren love to visit.

Book preview

writing.

PART ONE

Taos, New Mexico. Spring

Psychotherapy is the art of finding the angel of hope in

the midst of terror, despair, and madness.

Cloé Madanes, co-founder

Family Therapy Institute

1. CLINICAL PRACTICE

Looking back months later, Richard Young, PhD, licensed clinical psychologist, would always remember this day as the beginning of his unraveling. Unraveling isn’t really a psychological term, but that’s what it felt like, as if he’d pulled a thread in his personal fabric and left a gaping hole.

He was hard at work in his office reading tweets when his part-time receptionist, Juanita Garcia, knocked and stuck her head around the door.

Chao, Richard, I’m leaving for the day. Don’t forget your four o’clock cancelled. You can go home early. Lucky Sharon. Yo! she protested, pointing sternly at his cell phone. You should be working on your backlog of reports, not obsessing over—

I wasn’t addicted to Twitter until the damn election. The country’s going to hell. Twitter’s the most immediate source of information. Hey, did you know today a record was set in Switzerland for the appearance of the greatest number of Charlie Chaplin look-alikes: six hundred and sixty-two of them?

Huh? ¡Yo tengo una tía que toca la guitarra! Will one of those Little Tramps help you fill out any of your Individual Therapy Session claim forms?

What? I was just observing you can still get light relief by finding odd things people have tweeted. I’ll spend my free hour on those wretched insurance forms, I promise. Thanks Juanita, what would I do without you?

I’d rather not answer that while you’re still my boss and paying my pitiful salary. Have a good evening. Don’t work late. And stop torturing yourself with Twitter. Hasta mañana.

And to you too, whatever it means.

Juanita, young, attractive, vivacious, rolled her eyes in mock despair, and closed the door.

I’m leaving the front door unlocked, just to let you know, he heard her shout as she left the office.

What would I do without her? Richard thought. After the scandal that had ended his university career, he needed stability in office practice and the management of appointments, insurance claims, urgent client phone calls that weren’t true emergencies. Practice was a business, so different from academia. He didn’t care for the business side, but the work itself he enjoyed. He would never say he was born to be a psychotherapist, but he knew he was very good at it. And that gave him much satisfaction, which helped clients feel safe because it seemed he was interested in them and he cared. Ever since his first psychology course as an undergraduate he’d been focused on the science—lab-based research, without a doubt, was where the answers to human complexity were to be discovered. He’d begun to realize, however, the clinic should be thought of as a sort of natural laboratory where hypotheses could be formulated and tested, admittedly on the unique individual case.

The financial rewards were not generous, but enough for him to maintain a comfortable, unpretentious office in the relaxed but gently pretentious tourist town of Taos, New Mexico. There were surely more artists and more cantinas serving more dishes with piñons than anywhere else in the Southwest. Self-conscious or not, the town’s vitality provided an emotionally soothing balm. Five years should have been time enough for full recovery, but the professional wounds had been deep, and the scars still sensitive.

Another good antidote to his disappointment was provided by several memorable clients with fascinating personal psychopathologies whom he’d treated with some success in the years since he’d first hung out his shingle. Earning their gratitude and feeling useful made up for the occasional hours of tedium, listening pseudo-attentively to the inconsequential troubles of the worried well. He didn’t ascribe to the idea of psychotherapy being merely the purchase of friendship, but he knew that seeming to be a good listener and sometimes letting his clients simply vent for the fifty-five-minute hour was often as helpful to them as the more structured, directive, evidence-based approach that was his favored method.

Doing psychotherapy, even when grounded in science, requires unscripted intellectual juggling acts Richard had come to appreciate were more difficult than writing academic papers, much as he had enjoyed getting articles published in leading journals. At one level you’re nimbly dancing an intricate tango with the client, building a relationship of trust to serve as the choreography for shaping and melding new attitudes, beliefs, and rational thoughts. At the same time, you’re a scientist, probing for likely causes and influences and then designing complex exercises from your knowledge of psychological principles that will change old habits of mind and behavior. You’re also an engineer, judging the emotional and mental capacity of the clients to process new information and to understand what you’re telling them. You’re continually assessing their strengths as well as the environmental and social barriers constraining their ability to find a better life path. You’re in the driving seat, while constantly reassuring your patients their progress is all their own doing.

Just sometimes, however, a dissembling client throws a curveball you read incorrectly. Richard, being a New Zealander by birth, preferred cricket imagery to baseball, and he called these unexpected deliveries ‘googlies’. Encountering the occasional client who is deceptive and untrustworthy was to be expected. But for Richard, anything that hinted of dishonesty was particularly unnerving and threatened his equilibrium. For very good reasons he hated surprises, like now: the sound outside. The sound of a door opening.

He was still working in his office, as promised, on a backlog of insurance reports—that less glamorous demand of private practice—when he heard it. Someone had come in the front door. Strange. Had Juanita forgotten something? He wandered out to investigate. A slightly built, short, wiry-looking man with strikingly clear blue eyes was hovering there hesitantly. He was casually dressed in jeans, sweatshirt, and a down vest, much like everybody else who lived in Taos. Richard guessed he was in his late fifties.

Hello. I’m Doctor Young. Can I help you?

I hope so, doc. I need help, bad.

If you need to see me professionally you have to make an appointment after you’ve read this little leaflet we have about our services here— you know, like, costs, insurance options. My receptionist is gone for the day but if you call her tomorrow she’ll make an appointment for you. We really can’t handle walk-ins—

Are you busy right now? I don’t care about costs.

Richard looked at his watch. He did have the time. The last hour of his day would normally have been spent with Kerry Brandon, a depressed high-school senior, but her mother had called earlier to cancel. Kerry wasn’t feeling well.

I’m kind of busy, Mister er—

Carson.

—Mister Carson, but if it’s an emergency, I could spare you a few minutes and we could plan what to do. Although crises are better handled at the hospital.

I went there. They recommended I see you. They gave me three names of shrinks and you were the obvious choice. I’ve seen your name outside, walking past. But if you don’t want to try to help me…

I didn’t say that. Richard countered, recognizing the emotional manipulation—blackmail was too strong a word, but either way he stiffened. When clients try these tricks it usually tells you how they manage their relationships with others, especially partners and children. But much as he disliked unanticipated deviations from his expected routines, he also liked to be helpful to those in emotional distress. To top it off, he felt a twinge of responsibility, given the hospital had made a specific referral—if ‘pick one therapist out of three’, like the Judgment of Paris, could be called specific.

Okay, then, why don’t you sit down and fill in this information sheet—it’s quite short, just basics: name and address, contact details, next of kin, health insurance… Richard was rummaging around in Juanita’s desk until he found the standard client intake form …it’ll only take a few minutes. We can then chat and see what we can do for you.

Minutes later Richard was sitting next to Mr. Carson, glancing through the information sheet. The writing was untidy, juvenile.

Do you think your parents were aware of what they were doing when they gave you the first name of ‘Christopher’?

I’m sure they weren’t, doctor. Back east, the name ‘Kit Carson’ wasn’t so well known…

East being?

Missouri. The suburbs of St. Louis. My mother was a nurse from St Louis, my father was a farmer from Kentucky. He was killed in a logging accident when I was quite young. I’m fairly sure neither of them was big on reading, or knew any American history. For all I know, they named me after Christopher Columbus or Christopher Robin or the Superman fella. I was never asked about my name until moving up here recently from Santa Fe. Even there nobody paid any attention. But in Taos, every single person asks me a version of the same question you asked—usually if I’m related in some way…

Are you?

I don’t think so. Carson’s a real common name. My dad’s family came from Scotland or Wales or somewhere, way back. I could be related to Ben Carson for all I know.

Richard smiled, briefly. Well Kit…

Mr. Carson’s face darkened. His ‘please help me’ expression was gone, and his eyes narrowed.

I prefer to be called Christopher, doc. Especially here. It’s ridiculous here…

Okay, sure. Sorry. But it’s not surprising it raises people’s interest. He’s buried here. He’s a local hero. Heck, there’s even a street and a park named after him and a museum dedicated to Carson memorabilia. Have you visited?

No. I’m just not interested. I’d like to forget all about him. He’s no hero to me. Christopher paused, then added: You might say the opposite.

Fair enough Christopher—or how about ‘Chris’? Richard suggested, making notes in a manila folder.

That’s okay, I suppose, but Christopher is better. People don’t talk about Chris Columbus, do they?

True, although Chris Christie and Chris Matthews and Chris Rock all seem to be accepted and get by. Christopher glared again and Richard wondered why he was already trying to crack jokes. Something was making him uncomfortable, but shit, the poor bugger should be called whatever he wants. He’s the customer. ‘What’s in a name?’ flashed, Bard-driven, into Richard’s mind. He re-focused.

Okay, now we’ve settled your name preference, why don’t you tell me a little about why you came in to see me today?

Like I said, you were suggested to me at the hospital ER. I knew where you were because I’ve walked past here and seen your office sign. I also looked you up on the ’net. Your homepage says your practice is based on scientific evidence, which I liked the sound of. I didn’t want some quack with crystals and mindfulness and inkblots and other b.s. I’m done with such chicanery. So I walked in, and that’s why I’m here.

Richard scribbled a note in the folder. ‘Smart but literal? In therapy b4—didn’t like it?’ Then he looked up and smiled at Christopher.

I meant, he said gently, what sort of issues or concerns were troubling you that you felt I might be able to help you with? And which took you to the Emergency Room in the first place? Often clients have been feeling distressed for a while before they take the therapy plunge; for others there is often an event or incident or experience or conversation that is upsetting in an intense way, which gives them the impetus to seek help.

Sort of like that, Doctor Young. I had a fight with my wife yesterday which was real upsetting to me. My black thoughts wouldn’t go away. I thought the hospital might give me something to take.

Did they?

No, doc.

Please call me Richard if I’m going to call you Christopher. I’m quite informal. Is this a good moment for you to tell me about the argument and how it made you feel?

It was a fight, a real shouting match. She accused me of something very troubling—to both of us. Guess it started as an argument, one we’ve had before, but soon degenerated. She kept calling me crazy, a nut case. My wife’s Mexican. She’s volatile. Call it the Latina temperament. She threw a plate at me. She missed. But it made me mad.

I do need to ask, Christopher, if you yourself were physically violent during any of this?

No. I deplore violence. I walked out of the house at that point. I admit I slammed the door hard. But there’s no reasoning with her once she loses control like that…

"But you didn’t lose control? There are limits to client confidentiality if you tell me you are hurting anyone. I should have mentioned this at the beginning."

No, nothing like that. That’s all in the past. I manage my anger now and I get the hell out of her way. I could still hear her yelling at me as I walked down our street. Embarrassing—I’m sure all the neighbors heard as well.

Okay Christopher, there’s a lot to unpack here, but if you’ve come for marital counseling, it would be most helpful if your wife came along with you, and I saw the two of you together, for couple’s therapy. How long have you been married?

Eighteen or so years. I never remember precisely. I know she won’t come. She says it’s all me. She’s my third wife. She’s way younger than me, seventeen years my junior…

You stated on the admission form you’re fifty-two...

Richard realized the moment he said this it sounded judgmental, querying, suspicious, intrusive. Christopher’s answer neutralized the possible error, but it showed he’d picked up the implications of Richard’s mental-arithmetic calculation.

Yeah, sure she was young when we got married, but she wasn’t like a child-bride or someone looking for a green card. She was born in Santa Fe, where I met her. She was living with her mother and step-father who she hated. We were both feeling vulnerable, I guess; my second wife had left me suddenly, followed her own road, you might say—threw all my stuff onto the sidewalk. I got the message. We met at a social mixer organized by her church in Santa Fe. She won’t come in. No way. When I told her I was going to see a shrink, she made a face, and said I needed a priest not a shrink. She talks a lot to the padre at St. Francis. She’s devout. I’m not.

What’s your wife’s name?

Pepita, I call her. Pepita Carson.

Richard jotted down another note to himself: ‘Pepita. child bride? 17 y o. 35 now. Green card? Why priest?’ He underlined ‘priest’. His own comment had been innocent, not hinting Christopher’s wife was either a child bride or an undocumented immigrant. But it was clumsy. New Mexico had once been a province of independent Mexico. People of Mexican ancestry had been there long before Anglo Americans ever had. It would only be natural that Christopher’s wife would be an American, albeit Mexican-American. Why mention green cards? Maybe the political ranting about illegal immigrants was making everyone nervous. Maybe it was his own selective attention intruding—it had been a bit of a struggle for Richard to get a green card when he first came to the States as a graduate student. He crossed out ‘Green card’ on his notes, but left ‘child bride’, put his pen down and smiled encouragingly at Christopher.

All right, we can start by examining your personal, individual needs and goals. But just to complete the chronology here, you said your second wife left you. How about wife number one?

She’d had a tough life growing up. There’d been a lot of violence. Child abuse. I knew a little about her first boyfriend, before we got together. He drank. He was killed in an accident. He was shot. A hunting accident, I believe. She died during the birth of our second daughter. The child died. I wasn’t around at the time. I was away.

That’s so sad. I’m sorry to hear about it all. The mother dies giving birth and then the baby herself dies. But you said the baby was your second. Tell me about the first?

Adaline. Adie we always called her. She’s an adult now. In her late twenties. Lives in Texas. I don’t know if this is the sort of thing you want to know, but we haven’t spoken for a long time. Only occasional e-mails or cards. We’re estranged, I think you’d call it.

Richard put down his pen, and leant forward, to sound decisive and firm.

Well, Christopher, you have much to tell me. I will spend the first few sessions getting to know you and learning a little about your family and your history, but more so we’ll be looking at the future. I like to focus therapy on what a client can grow positively towards, rather than analyzing and dwelling excessively on the past.

Christopher didn’t answer, just stared at Richard with a wistful, faraway look, as though it was the past he was interested in, not the future. As a well-established habit, Richard met his gaze, trying to pigeonhole him. He looked as though he’d spent a fair amount of his life outdoors, but on the questionnaire he’d left the OCCUPATION line blank. His handshake had felt bony and more gripping than was necessary in this professional setting, more suited to a meeting in a bar or out on the street with an acquaintance not seen for a while. The age of fifty-two he’d entered had surprised Richard. He seemed older, given his thinning light brown or reddish hair. He’d walked into the office with a stoop and had sat hunched up in the large easy chair he’d selected. But his blue eyes were so penetrating, and he made such direct eye-contact Richard had often found himself, during this brief conversation, looking away. Therapists notice all these things; it’s usually unconscious, a habit based on years of sizing up a new client in order to formulate the right sort of questions at the right level of difficulty.

How intelligent was Christopher? Hard to say. His handwriting was childish and there were spelling mistakes. These didn’t gel with his use of big words like ‘deplore’, ‘chicanery’, ‘volatile’, and ‘estranged’. There was a mechanical quality to his discourse—it was sophisticated but not fluid. Not many clients commented spontaneously on Richard’s adherence to evidence-based practice. In fact, Richard had never heard anyone mention it before. Christopher seemed sophisticated and verbal, yet he’d offered nothing in the way of insightful information thus far, nor had he laid out a clear pathway down which therapy might proceed. Even the fight with his wife sounded contrived. Was a shouting match with a bit of name calling enough to send a long-married man to the hospital emergency room? Didn’t make much sense. But the details mattered little, anyway. As Carl Rogers had once said, it is the meaning these experiences have for clients and the feelings they arouse in them to which the therapist must try to respond. Richard was still a fair distance from identifying meaning and feelings.

As it was now getting late, any further exploration would have to wait for the next session. And since even the brief contact seemed to have calmed Christopher, and as he didn’t seem like a danger to anyone, Richard arranged to see Christopher as early as possible the following week. Christopher asked for a time when no-one would be around; said he didn’t like sitting in a waiting room with other patients. Richard gave him a couple of simple questionnaires to fill in at home: a wish-list to help him define his goals for therapy, a quick and dirty personality questionnaire, and for good measure threw in the PANAS—worth getting some idea about positive and negative affect and moods. All basic stuff, which Christopher had accepted gravely, promising he’d complete carefully and bring them in to the next appointment. He thanked Richard, shook his hand too firmly a second time, and left.

Instead of packing up and heading for home right away, Richard texted his wife, Sharon. Be home soon. Had a late client. Love R. Sitting at his desk, he thought about the brief session and the oddities he’d noticed. Suddenly he turned to his computer and googled Kit Carson. It was all way too weird, and to be honest, extremely unsettling. Wikipedia confirmed what he’d suddenly remembered. The original Kit Carson had been married three times—his third wife, with whom he’d lived in Taos, was Mexican. His second wife had left him suddenly. His first wife, Singing Grass, had died in childbirth.

Hold on to what is good,

Even if it’s a handful of earth.

Hold on to what you believe,

Even if it’s a tree that stands by itself.

Puebloan prayer

2. SHARON

When Richard arrived home that evening Sharon greeted him at the door with a gin and tonic in her hand and a smile on her face. She was wearing a smock covered in smears of paint. Sharon liked to welcome Richard home, although he wasn’t the sort of husband who’d shout ‘Honey, I’m home’ and expected to be waited on hand and foot. They were both modern people, independent and comfortable within themselves, so neither rigid boundaries nor pseudo gender-isms dictated their domestic roles.

Hi, my love, you’re not so late. Here, this is yours. I couldn’t find a lemon, but I figured a twist of lime would do.

Better than do, Richard replied, taking the glass from her, and simultaneously kissing her on the mouth.

I thought we’d just eat out back on the deck. It’s such a mild evening. ’Specially for this time of year. It’ll take me a few minutes to finish the salad, so I made you a drink while you wait. Be a gem and put the seat cushions on the chairs and spread out the tablecloth. I’ve left it out there. I should change into something more presentable and then I’ll join you.

Richard kissed her again. This was one of the many things he loved about Sharon. She didn’t, as he advised his clients to emulate, ‘sweat the small stuff ’. It was a cliché, of course, but the great thing about her was she went with the flow, oh, another cliché, also good for the more inflexible clients. Cliché or not, her greeting offered a perfect example of her flexibility. Another woman—one he’d lived with previously—would have been all fussing and remonstrating: ‘You said you’d be home by five thirty and look at the time now it’s five after six! The salad’s going to be soggy, and I worked so hard on it.’ But Sharon wasn’t like that. She knew not to pour her special lime and mild sriracha dressing over the salad until she heard Richard parking his car on the cul-de-sac where they lived. Better still, she’d bring it to the table and dress the salad right in front of them both, tasting it with her pinky finger before adding a little more salt and a handful of lightly toasted pine nuts. That’s flexibility. That’s what makes a good marriage.

Richard had met Sharon in Taos, the year after he’d arrived there. Four years ago now; hard to believe. Back in Baltimore he’d been engaged to tense, super-intellectual Melissa Shapiro, but they’d agreed to part, semi-amicably, after he realized he’d have to leave what Baltimore old-timers call their ‘big ole country town’. Mel was in the same department at the university, the rapidly growing research-intensive University of South Baltimore in the Riverside area. She was an up-and-coming, hard-driven experimental psychologist, likely to be awarded early promotion, thanks to her publication and grants record. She’d already had an early career award from the Association for Psychological Science. Very prestigious.

They both realized, however, it would be bad for her to continue to be connected with Richard in any way. She’d been working on the phenomenon of semantic priming and its effect on recall of traumatic experiences. It’s a topic, like subliminal perception or false memories, where the risks of corrupting data through poor methodology and inadequate controls are high. She helped Richard pack up everything he owned in a U-Haul, and that was the last time he saw her. She must have been relieved to see him go. He’d e-mailed to let her know he’d arrived safely at his friend’s place in Boulder, and again when he arrived in Taos and had a mailing address. But she’d never used it. On his first birthday in Taos she texted him brief good wishes, but not the following year. Unless she was cyber-stalking him, which he doubted, he reckoned she didn’t even know he’d gotten married. Richard knew she was still single as he googled her occasionally and read news items from the university about her continued rise in academia. He had downloaded one or two of her newest research articles, but they were so convoluted he’d only bothered to read the abstracts.

Friends had suggested New Mexico. The state would recognize his current license to practice clinical psychology before the Maryland Board of Examiners of Psychologists had time to revoke it. They did; no questions asked. Taos was a good place to start a small practice, and although he had no direct experience with Native Americans, his New