The Boiling of the Bones

10. Follow Up Visit

"Your plan is good. Do it. Give it everything you can. What you're trying to do is not easy--a lot of people fail in the music industry. At some point in the future, you may decide it's unrealistic, and you may want to modify, or even change your plan entirely and that's OK. With more information you make better informed decisions. You could become a music teacher or a sound engineer for example. But if this is what you truly want right now, go after it and do everything you can to get it."

"My dad will go bananas. He thinks music is a stupid waste of time."

"Here's what you're going to tell your dad. You're going to work hard in school. Get better grades and graduate next Spring. That should get him off your back for now. After that, tell him you don't know what you want to study in college yet and you need to take a year off to figure it out. In life there's no rush, as long as you have a goal and you're honestly working on a plan and sticking to it and making progress. If you're procrastinating, looking for excuses to put it off indefinitely, then that's unhealthy and counterproductive. But if you need more time to work it out, you're allowed to take some time off and figure out what's best and make a realistic plan of how to get there. Tell him you need one year, and I think you should make a goal to reach that deadline yourself as a benchmark because if it takes longer than that maybe you are procrastinating or you're not going about it in the most effective way."

"OK, I'm gonna go for it."

I felt great. I felt validated and empowered to do what I wanted. One year should be long enough to prove myself as a guitar player. The confidence didn't last long. Dad went ape shit when I told him I planned to take a year off. He got on the phone and immediately dialed Dr. Weintraub. He put his phone on speaker so I could listen in. I think his plan was to grill us both as if it were a simultaneous cross examination.

"This is George Kelly. I've got a bone to pick with you. Is it true you told my son he could take a year off, from life?"

"I'm sorry but I have a professional obligation to respect the confidentiality of my client's sessions. I can't disclose any topics of conversations or even confirm your son is a patient of mine."

"Don't get smart with me. I booked his appointment. My son is sick. He needs help. You need to put him on medication. You need to write him a prescription for Xanax or some other potent medication in the highest dosage clinically available."

"I'm sorry, but I can't do that—that's not the way it works. If I felt a certain drug could benefit a patient, I would make a recommendation to that effect, but we don't force people to do anything they don't want to. You'd have to get a ruling from a judge to enforce a mandate like that and frankly he'd have to be a danger to himself or society before I would make that recommendation. To be perfectly blunt, that is not the case here. I give people tools they can choose to better manage their lives. I don't force anyone to do anything."

"My son is sick. He needs help because he can't even recognize that he's sick. I can't believe you're too incompetent to see that. It's your job to help him."

"With all due respect, I think you're the one who needs help. I suggest you find a good psychotherapist and talk through your own issues. It wouldn't be appropriate for you to talk to me, but I could recommend somebody."

I took a deep breath, concealing my satisfaction in the way Dr. Weintraub simply refused to be bullied by my father. He wasn't accustomed to people standing up to him. Most people submitted to his dominant, controlling personality. I walked out of the room because it obviously wasn't going how he expected, which surely pissed him off. If I stuck around long enough, he'd take it out on me. I walked out of the room, but just around the corner where I paused to eavesdrop.

I heard the clink of a glass and then the squeaky hinge of the liquor cabinet opening as he poured a drink. I heard him take a few gulps as he listened to Dr. Weintraub.

"Mr. Kelly, first off, I suggest you calm down. This situation is not as adverse as you're suggesting. Your son is not on drugs. He's not in trouble with the law. This is typical teenager stuff. He's becoming an adult. It's an awkward phase. Allow him to make that transition from a child to an adult. Give him some independence. He needs space to make his own decisions. Stop sheltering him. Give him a taste of the real world. Don't give him any money. Let him be responsible for his own expenses. With no money, he'll have to get a job—most likely a hard job in fast food or retail. He'll probably hate it and suddenly want to go to college to get a better job entirely of his own volition and you won't even have to say anything. You get to be the good guy. Life is hard. The real world is difficult. Life itself is the bad guy. Give him the freedom to discover that reality. You've got to allow him the space to figure things out and once he comes up with a plan forward, you can then step in and facilitate if he needs money for college. Let him come to you asking for help. In the meantime, I suggest you back off and allow him to take a year to figure things out. Let him experience a taste of the real world. If I were you, I would even schedule a meeting with him at the end of one year to discuss the plan he's working on. If at that point, he's spinning his wheels without making any progress, you can step in and offer a bit of advice and help redirect him in finding his way."

Dad was uncharacteristically silent. Had the doctor persuaded him? Or was he taking notes to use in a lawsuit? It would be characteristic of him to sue Dr. Weintraub simply out of spite. Or at least threaten to do so. Lawyers love to threaten people. They love to uncover dirty secrets and tear down and destroy reputations by exposing duplicitous deeds or threaten to do so by public exposure and humiliation in court or to extract settlement payments which seemed a lot like extortion or hush money. The entire industry seemed unethical to me. That shouldn't be the way the law works. It was like fighting evil with evil.

Either way, his wrath wasdirected away from me. I slipped noiselessly away to my room before he discoveredme lingering there.