"We take terrible risks with the natural affection of children," Jack would one day say to Dr. Garcia, but she complained that he had told her about these relationships in a sketchy fashion. Or was it that he'd had nothing but sketchy relationships?
Months later, although the dominant sound in Jack's house on Entrada Drive was the traffic on the Pacific Coast Highway, he would lie in bed hearing the ocean--the way he had listened to it in Margaret's house in Malibu, while waiting for Julian to come into the bedroom and wake him and Margaret. Jack sincerely missed them, but they had driven him away--almost from the first moment Jack entered their lives. It was Dr. Garcia's assessment that they were "even needier" than Jack was.
"I'm not needy!" Jack replied indignantly.
"Hmm," Dr. Garcia said. "Have you considered, Jack, that what you crave most of all is a real relationship and a normal life, but you don't know anyone who's normal or real?"
"Yes, I have considered that," he answered.
"I've been seeing you for five years, yet I can't recall hearing you express a political opinion--not one," Dr. Garcia said. "What are your politics, Jack?"
"Generally more liberal than conservative," he said.
"You're a Democrat?"
"I don't vote," Jack admitted. "I've never voted."
"Well, there's a statement!" Dr. Garcia said.
"Maybe it's because I started my life as a Canadian, and then I became an American--but I'm really not either," he said.
"Hmm."
"I just like my work," Jack told her.
"You take no vacations?" she asked. "The last vacation I remember hearing about was a school vacation."
"When an actor isn't making a movie, he's on vacation," Jack said.
"But that's not exactly true, is it?" Dr. Garcia asked. "You're always reading scripts, aren't you? You must spend a lot of time considering new roles, even if you eventually turn them down. And you've been reading a lot of novels lately. Since you've been credited with writing a screenplay, aren't you at least thinking about another adaptation? Or an original screenplay, perhaps?"
Jack didn't say anything; it seemed to him that he was always working, even when he wasn't.
"You go to the gym, you watch what you eat, you don't drink," Dr. Garcia was saying. "But what do you do when you're just relaxing? Or are you never relaxed?"
"I have sex," he said.
"The kind of sex you have is not relaxing," Dr. Garcia told him.
"I hang out with my friends," Jack said.
"What friends? Emma's dead, Jack."
"I have other friends!" he protested.
"You have no friends," Dr. Garcia said. "You have professional acquaintances; you're on friendly terms with some of them. But who are your friends?"
Jack pathetically mentioned Herman Castro--the Exeter heavyweight, now a doctor in El Paso. Herman always wrote, "Hey, amigo," on his Christmas cards.
"The word amigo doesn't make him your friend," Dr. Garcia pointed out. "Do you remember his wife's name, or the names of his children? Have you ever visited him in El Paso?"
"You're depressing me," Jack told her.
"I ask my patients to tell me about their life's most emotional moments--the ups and downs, Jack," Dr. Garcia said. "In your case, this means what has made you laugh, what has made you cry, and what has made you feel angry."
"I'm doing it, aren't I?" he asked her.
"But the purpose for doing this, Jack, is that when you tell me your life story, you reveal yourself--at least that's what usually happens, that's what's supposed to happen," Dr. Garcia said. "I regret that, in your case, you've been a very faithful storyteller--and a very thorough one, I believe--yet I don't feel that I know you. I know what's happened to you. Do I ever know it--ad nauseam! But you haven't revealed yourself, Jack. I still don't know who you are. Please tell me who you are."