In the Land of Dreams

distribution.

Chapter 1

Being of sound mind and disposing memory, and not acting under duress, menace, fraud or undue influence of any person whatsoever, I do hereby make, publish and declare this to be my Last Will and Testament, revoking all other former wills.

This document is not about California feelings, nor even the sure and certain hope of anything, and certainly not a better world; its subject is the honest nuclear-grade fuel of our country’s East Coast, the loot, the booty, the very pelf of a Last Will and Testament! Money, and lots of it—that’s what this Will is all about, and what you will soon receive!

For this reason, I am pleased to examine the odd spectral evidence that has already manifested itself to me. Who would have imagined I might suddenly receive these visitations of the literal essence of the immigrant ancestor’s son—in a residential treatment program such as this one, in Lower Manhattan of New York City?

Could it be because of its physical proximity to Staten Island, where Thys Barentsen first served as magistrate under Pieter Stuyvesant?

I know the lies you’ve been told—that the much-discussed Old Money of the family is so old that it’s already been spent! But the money exists, and it exists in amounts that would stagger the imagination!

Did I mention that it would stagger the imagination?

2.

I currently live in reduced circumstances, in a residential treatment program in Lower Manhattan, in New York City. There was once a farm where this residence is situated, I am reliably informed; after that there was a church, most likely Episcopal or Dutch Reformed. Then, for reasons unknown, the two houses here today were built—perhaps to house an extended family of some kind, huddled together in an increasingly nonresidential neighborhood. Today, the two abodes are surrounded by lofts, small- and medium-size businesses, a day-labor agency, a heavily padlocked space where professional dancers practice, a Chinese restaurant and a laundry—the latter two owned by the same family—and a three-story parking garage. At some point a catwalk was built between the two houses, bedrooms were renovated, a staff office was created in both residences, and voila! … an aging but thoroughly respectable residential treatment program was created, just shabby enough to suggest the distress of its clients, but without such seediness as might add to it. At some point its funding nonprofit ennobled the two houses into a single mental health program, called Voyager House.

The house where I now live is set aside for transitional housing, whereas the house next door is an acute care program. Our neighbors were told a variety of things about the two abodes, including a vague story that the residents received advanced vocational training of some unspecified nature; but in reality, both houses constitute nothing more than a residential mental health program. (By the time I arrived, the appellation group home had fallen out of use.) I am not crazy enough for acute care, and my referral to transitional housing served my purposes in many ways—it is a long-term program, lasting from twelve to eighteen months, which means I might be able to remain a client for the full eighteen months, as long as I follow the rules.

My intake into Voyager House was done at night by a competent young counselor named Neil, who identified himself as a psychology student at City College of New York. He was the single overnight staff person in the transitional housing program on the night I arrived. Throughout my intake he shared small bits of information about himself, even as he extracted somewhat more substantial nuggets of information about me. The objective was to create the illusion of a conversation; but the difference between our situations, I quickly saw, was that his life story was in the present tense, whereas mine either resided comfortably in the past, or was experienced partially or wholly in my own imagination.

At some point, Neil mentioned that I had been accepted into Voyager House because of a municipal program for homeless seniors with chronic mental illness. There were currently five other clients in transitional housing, three men and two women. I was apparently the only person in the transitional housing program who didn’t take psychotropic medications.

Do the psych meds really help the clients? I asked.

Sure, when they’re appropriately prescribed, he said, but when a lot of these clients start to feel better, they stop taking the meds. Then they decompensate, and end up in acute care. Once we get them stabilized and back on their meds, they either go back to their lives in the community, or—if they’ve burned enough bridges—they come to transitional housing, where you are now.

How does your program get away with dispensing medications? I thought only doctors and nurses were allowed to do that.

We hand over their med boxes, and let them self-dispense their own meds. Then we check off the meds in the med book. That’s how we get around the state regulations.

And when they’re discharged into the community, they go off their meds?

"Well … not always, but it’s fair to say that most of the clients living here went off their meds at some point. But going off your medications isn’t what got you into this program."

I wondered how much he knew about what I’d told the staff at Bellevue. To get a good referral to a community-based program, you had to talk about self-harm—or suicidal ideation, as the Bellevue shrinks like to put it.

I told the psychiatrists at Bellevue Hospital Center that I had suicidal feelings, but that I would never act on them—or at least, I didn’t want to act on them. That last twist was improvised, but effective, I’m happy to report, and I had good reason for using it, beside the fact that it was mainly true. It was November, and the chilly winds were blowing, so a referral to a decent residential program was my ticket to ride; it would enable me to survive the winter, and that fact alone would contribute greatly to my mental health. It was a simple, time-tested formula: you had to cop to suicidal feelings to gain admittance to a decent residential mental health program, but you had to be careful not to talk too much about it—or get too dramatic in the telling of it—or you might be put in a jacket and sent off to one of the forgotten backwards of Bedlam-by-the-Hudson.

It was a nervy play, but damned if I didn’t pull it off. I was now in a reasonably nice residential program with actual beds and toilets and all the other accoutrement of civilized life.

What are you thinking? Neil asked.

That I’m grateful that I still have enough balls to punch my own ticket.

He laughed. "Man, you don’t need psych meds."

3.

The clinical director was a funny, somewhat manic woman named Clarissa Rowland. She came bustling in on the morning after I was admitted to the program. Neil, the young man who had done my intake, had apparently snoozed a bit during the wee hours, but had thoughtfully deployed three alarm clocks—not to mention his so-called smart watch—and was up and writing in the charts long before the boss lady arrived. She, in turn, was sporting what looked like an expensive but extremely well-worn brown pants suit, once the universal uniform of management women in human services, and still capable of sending the message that advancement came, in her world, from expertise rather than somebody’s impression of her. Her weapons were words, the brown pants suit said, and for her the good fight had nothing to do with appearance. That’s what the handsome brown pants suit of yesteryear said.

I came up from the kitchen, where I had been trying unsuccessfully to operate the steaming dishwasher, and made my way to the staff office. I’m afraid the dishwasher is hopeless, I announced.

Never mind, Neil said. We have a client who specializes in repairing it. My eyebrows must have gone up a good inch, because he added, We can’t afford the repairman.

Rowland introduced herself, then took up my chart, which was lying on the table, and expertly flipped the pages open to survey Neil’s intake note. Yes, you were expected here, she said, reading. EMS told us you were coming.

This magical acronym EMS referred to the Emergency Management Services at the world’s most notorious insane asylum, Bellevue Hospital Center.

I’m glad you have a bed for me, I said.

Yes, well, the census has been down lately. That was exactly the kind of proprietary information she shouldn’t be sharing with a new client, I thought, but the fact that she had done so made me trust her.

I’ll try to be an asset to… to your—

Whatever.

Transitional housing program, I said.

She immediately went back to my chart. There’s no age here, she observed. "How old are you? You do have an age, don’t you?"

That’s—well, I’m not legally required to give my age, am I?

If you don’t want to give it, you don’t have to.

Nobody knows for sure when I was born, you see, except that it was in the state of New Jersey. After a certain time, I got tired of trying to ferret out the chronology.

"Well, I’m not sure I really buy that, but who knows, maybe you’re better off not having an age. She exchanged a quick smile with Neil, as though they shared a fascination with the exigencies of aging. The first group is at ten o’clock in the morning, she said to me. It’s the regular Tuesday check-in group, where we talk informally about … you know …"

Feelings, I suggested.

Ha, yes, she said brightly. She looked at her watch before hurrying off.

There’s coffee downstairs in the pantry, Neil said, by way of explaining the clinical director’s sudden departure. I make the coffee early, about an hour before anybody gets here. But watch out, if you decide to drink a cup. It’s strong.

Do you make it that way on purpose?

"The coffee has to be strong, after you’ve been here all night."

I nodded in the direction of the vanished clinical director. I wouldn’t say that that she needed any coffee.

Clarissa? He shrugged. High energy. It’s built-in with some people.

A moment or two later Rowland came hurrying back to the staff office, clutching a large cup of steaming coffee. She smiled brightly at me. Whatever it is, I’ll answer all questions when I’m awake!

I interpreted that as a polite request for me to leave, so I went to my room. Later, when I went to shave and clean up in the second-floor bathroom, I saw Clarissa and Neil counting meds in small plastic med-counters, pushing them around in groups of five with wooden coffee stirrers. A short time later, as I returned from the restroom, I saw that Neil was gone and that Clarissa was alone in the office, burrowing through the charts. She glanced up, smiled brightly, and returned instantly to the charts. It occurred to me that perhaps she’d had a long weekend and was trying to get caught up.

Or perhaps she simply relished work. There was something about her manic style that I found oddly comforting. I am in awe of those who are mad to work; it is a Protestant value, and a full-fledged emotional orientation, one that I unashamedly embrace—in the lives of others. As for myself, I have on occasion sought the easy way. You might well ask, have I sought—as one might say—to beat the system, even to malinger a bit now and then? Is the Pope a Catholic?

Yes, it is true that I admire others who are mad to work, but as for myself, I am agnostic on the issue. There’s a lot more to it, I say, than meets the eye, and besides, each case is different. Work won’t kill you, as a favorite great-uncle of mine used to say, but why take a chance? And the reality is, as you may already have guessed, I am currently on a mission that involves a more formidable kind of work than even the most hardened reader might imagine. It is dangerous, and it is demanding, but if I am successful it could change the world as we know it.

4.

We ate a simple, healthy breakfast downstairs in the dining room. My fellow clients referred to Director Rowland by her first name, and appeared to like her. The clientele were appropriately shabby—actually rather slovenly, I thought—but it was early in the day, and in a treatment program such as Voyager House there would be no dress code. Therefore, the threadbare appearance of the clients did not surprise me. (And it was a break for me, as well, since I lacked anything in the way of an adequate wardrobe.)

At breakfast I sat next to an older client who intermittently described the residential repairs to our building he was obliged to make, which included the daily rehabilitation of the dishwasher. I found out later he was a former building contractor who fancied himself still employed, and regarded himself as specifically required to make appropriate home improvements at Voyager House. Two of the older women at breakfast carried large bags with knitting supplies—interestingly, however, they did not actually knit until well into the afternoon or evening. Maybe, I thought, they were unable to fire up the knitting needles until the second cup of coffee, or were perhaps waiting for the proper signal to begin, a signal known only to them.

I had decided to wear some old slippers I’d found deep in a drawer in my room—they were too large for me, but flopped delightfully as I walked down the hallway. I had no robe, but by way of an unfettered and comfortable eccentricity that I imagined as natural to this place, I wore all of the three shirts I owned, leaving them all to hang out of my trousers for added verisimilitude.

After breakfast, I—like several of the others—took my cup of coffee into the group session. The group was held in a room that was once a parlor, but was now extremely rundown, as though it had been used for storage.

After the group settled down, Clarissa Rowland set her coffee down long enough to introduce me. Would you like to tell us about yourself?

I was referred here by—well, the Emergency Management Services at Bellevue Center.

Why? a middle-age black man asked.

I was delighted to see that both he and the former building contractor had not once taken their hats off throughout breakfast, and continued to wear them in group. The hats were of the workaday cloth kind worn by longshoremen, and were virtually identical. Wearing their hats in the house gave both clients the appearance of serious persons who were pondering the wisdom of leaving, but hadn’t yet made up their minds about it.

They said that this program at Voyager House would be appropriate for me, I said, by way of answering the black man’s query.

He chuckled. "Did they say why it would be appropriate for you? Might could be they have a reason they haven’t told you about yet."

No, I have a pretty good idea of what opened the door for me, I said.

Self-harm, said a young male client knowingly. His notebooks, which he carried with him, were full of violent drawings of weapons and fully armed space vehicles. "They keep asking you to tell them how you really feel. Then when you tell them, they punish you."

No, no, I said, I don’t feel punished. I’m lucky to be here, I think.

Maybe you can start out with some general background about yourself, Clarissa Rowland interjected firmly. I mean, where you come from, what your interests are, what your family was like, things like that.

"Actually, I don’t mind talking about why Bellevue sent me to Voyager House. In fact, I need to talk about it, if the group has no objection. I glanced at Rowland, and she nodded, so I continued. From the moment I awaken in the morning, I have this terrible feeling that I’m cursed, I began, avoiding eye contact with the others, but I don’t mean cursed by being referred to Voyager House—I’m happy to be here. Maybe I should say that I am struggling with the feelings that my life is cursed, that no matter which way I turn I will encounter insurmountable problems that I don’t fully understand. I believe I am being followed—shadowed, you might say—by a man who has some detailed knowledge of my situation, a man who may actually be an ancestor of mine, and who can therefore explain to me why I feel this way … that is, why I feel that my entire life is cursed, compromised, booby-trapped by dangers I cannot control."

"An ancestor?" somebody asked.

It’s a feeling I have. I can’t explain it.

Ask him to come over in the afternoon, said the eldest of the non-knitters. The afternoon would be good.

No, no, no, the young male client said. This man, the man he’s talking about, is dead.

What? said the woman, stricken. How do you know that?

"This man was his ancestor, so he must have lived a long time ago; therefore, he must have died a long time ago."

I was taken aback by the stricken look on the woman’s face, so I quickly interjected: "I believe that the person in question lived around here—or if he does not live here, he once came here often, somewhere here in lower Manhattan; and suddenly began appearing here every month since the horror of 9/11. I turned to the elder knitting person. It’s not entirely out of the question that he—or some essence of his personality—might visit today, but when he is likely to come, I can’t say."

A ghost or revenant of some kind, then, Director Rowland asserted. Like a ghost making the rounds in his territory, sort of like Hamlet in lower Manhattan?

More like ‘Lear’ or ‘Macbeth,’ if you have to drag in the Bard. The scapegrace scion of some squandered Manhattan fortune, late of the Upper East Side. Actually the block on which Voyager House was located was quite dangerous at night—for one thing, there was a perennially rowdy homeless encampment in an empty lot on the next block. Only the lack of a nightclub made our block even marginally safe, but it was still not quite safe enough to walk at night. I don’t believe in ghosts. But it’s almost like this man is stalking me, and that’s really of some concern to me.

But you said—

I know what I said. I may have implied that he lives around here, but I know that’s wrong. Yet, I just can’t stop believing that from time to time—at least once a month—he shows up around here, since a long time ago he periodically came to a place in this neighborhood. In short, the neighborhood has some meaning for him that I don’t yet understand. All I know is that he wants to talk to me.

Rowland was leaning forward, tapping her forefinger on the table. You don’t believe in ghosts, but you complain that a ghostly figure is haunting you.

That’s accurate.

Let me tell you what this sounds like to me. Rowland shifted in her seat. She seemed to have momentarily forgotten the other clients. I mean, you have this delusional system, is what it sounds like; and sometimes you’re in it, and sometimes you’re—you know, when it’s not convenient, you’re out of it.

Not exactly, I said, although I know there’s something weird about what I’m telling you. And most of the time it’s not an active delusion, but more like a story—but it’s a story that I can’t stop thinking about. In fact, I often hear the words themselves, repeating themselves in my mind.

Good, Clarissa said, looking expectantly with raised eyebrows around at the group. Obsessive thinking? Is that what we’re hearing?

Yes, I answered, although the question had been addressed to the group, and not me.

"And the curse? Rowland seemed simultaneously irritated and fascinated, a feeling I knew well. What is it with this curse?"

It can be different things, and has been different things, in different time periods—different historical periods, I mean. It has manifested itself to certain members of my family in ways that are highly specific to that time period, but deeply personal. I can’t stop the story that’s playing in my head until I figure out how it ends—until then, I can’t turn it off. But to understand the ending, there is some part that I have to play in the story. I still don’t know what that could be. When I figure out what I’m supposed to be in the story, I’ll have a better idea how the story ends.

The answer has to be inside you, Rowland said.

This man who is following you, said the older of the two non-knitting ladies, he can come pretty much anytime in the afternoon, as far as I’m concerned.

I’m sure he will want to visit sometimes, I said, "but I think he wants to visit me. Why don’t we wait and see how many people he can see in one visit?"

Now the younger of the two non-knitting knitters raised a tremulous hand. Does he have any, like, previous felonies?

Later on, I found out that this lady had witnessed a mugging in the neighborhood, and had overheard the police questioning both victim and suspects. The horrifying details of that interview had created in her mind a clear and present sense of the world’s dangers, and also functioned as a controlling metaphor for how seemingly disparate circumstances could work together to do harm.

These are things that happen that stay in our memories, Rowland was saying soothingly, and after a while they fade away.

Not the felonies, said the black man. "The cops got a big computer where they keep that information. If they got a jacket on you, might could be they’ll turn you every way but loose."

I paused to consider a way to express my next point, and found myself appealing directly to Clinical Director Clarissa Rowland. I didn’t invite these difficult feelings to invade my personality. But the feelings are there, and I’m willing to try to figure it out. But I’m not in control of any of this. At least not yet.

How can this stalker possibly help you? There was the barest hint of sarcasm in Rowland’s voice, a sarcasm of which she was almost surely unaware. Does he play a role in this? Can you guess which character he’s supposed to be in the story?

I think there’s something this man wants to give me, I said, and I still don’t know whether it’s good or bad. But I’m pretty sure it has something to do with a considerable amount of money that belongs to me.

The clients were impressed. After a brief pause, Rowland said: Okay, let’s get to the bottom of this. What is his intent in following you? What does he want from you?

Maybe he wants to give me something.

She hesitated, briefly flummoxed. We’re running on fumes here. We have no idea what this imaginary man’s reasoning is. Or what he wants to give you. For all we know, it might be a bomb. Or a—Rowland was temporarily overcome—"what the hell does he want to give you?"

Treasure! said the fraudulent building contractor sitting next to me. Money, gold, it could be anything! He leaned forward to regard me with a gaze that was intense but not unfriendly. Now that you’ve told us, sir, be careful where you go with this. I mean that in a nice way.

Rowland was not amused. If there were treasure here, it would have been discovered long ago, and I would have put it to good use!

His opinion is as good as any, I said, nodding to the faux contractor, although in the case of hidden treasure, there is always the possibility that it could be a trick. In some perverse minds, a treasure could be—well, a bad thing, a kind of sabotage.

Clarissa Rowland rolled her eyes and looked at the ceiling, and briefly appeared to be appealing directly to me to disavow the idea of hidden booty; but I found that I rather liked the idea of hidden treasure, and what it implied of some dramatic and previously misunderstood fate.

Treasure! insisted the wannabe building contractor. He lifted his hat up and gestured at me with it, then put it back on. You have no idea how much hidden stuff is out there, hidden in walls and under floors. He surveyed the group triumphantly. It might not even be buried, you understand—just hidden.

Yes, of course, Clarissa Rowland said in a low voice, "and now I will tell you what I think it means. This is classic. Classic."

She leaned back and once more looked at the ceiling. "There is this fantasy, a generic delusion that keeps popping up in the literature. It has sometimes been called ‘the Lost Estate.’ People in the midst of hard times believe that they, or their family, were once fantastically wealthy … and of course, it’s just a matter of time until the true heir to the estate is discovered, and the proud, foundling prince, the rightful recipient of the fortune, is escorted to his palatial family estate where he proceeds to live in the very lap of luxury. Or perhaps our harried pilgrim’s family had titles in Europe, or once enjoyed every manner of aristocratic privilege—"

White privilege, murmured the African-American man.

Well, as a matter of fact, I said, but Rowland interrupted. "No. No. Keep your stories of lost estates until tomorrow. I’ll give you a one-on-one session then. Now let’s talk about somebody else’s problems. She looked around the room. Who wants to start?"

Chapter 2

On May 9, 1661, Thys Barentsen van Leerdam sailed into the colony of Nieuw Nederland on the St. Jan Baptist, skippered by the capable Captain Jan Bergen, and presented himself at Fort James, on the very tip of the island called Mannahattas by the tribal people, and Nieuw-Amsterdam by the Dutch colonial administration. The name Thys Barentsen van Leerdam was patronymic, literally meaning Thys, the son of Barent, with Leerdam being the Dutch town that he came from. He was accompanied by his wife Scytie Cornelis and their three children, age 15, 10 and 1 year old … also accompanying them were family friends Jan Teunissen, Walraven Luten, and the outspoken Pieter Billiou, a French-speaking Huguenot originally hailing from the Canton of Vaud. Two months previously, all had departed Amsterdam looking for a new life in the Dutch colony of New Netherlands.

Thys Barentsen from Leerdam almost immediately bought land on Staaten Eylandt, and was appointed a schepen, or magistrate, by the Dutch General-Director of New Netherlands, Pieter Stuyvesant; this automatically made him part of Stuyvesant’s governing council. His friend Billiou became the sheriff of Ould Dorp, the first town on Staaten Eylandt. Thys Barentsen’s ascendance to magistrate was seemingly automatic and done without opposition, either by prearrangement or—more likely—because nobody else wanted the job. The established colonists in Nieuw Nederland were already too familiar with Stuyvesant’s temper to attend his rare council meetings unless absolutely necessary, or unless ordered to do so by Stuyvesant himself. No doubt it was thought by most that he would do whatever he wanted anyway.

From studying related documents of the time we can determine the identities of the three children of Thys Barentsen van Leerdam. The fifteen-year-old would be Bernard or Barent (or Barnt, as he was usually called); the ten-year-old would be the daughter Beleyte; the toddler would be Anthony. Barent and Beleyte were the children of a first wife, from a French Huguenot family that had immigrated to the Netherlands; the clever Anthony was the son of the second wife, Scytie Cornelis. (His brother Willem would come later.) There had been other children—perhaps many of them—that did not survive; nor did children linger at home when able to work or marry. Boys were expected to help their fathers tend crops and animals, to become apprentices and learn a trade at twelve or thirteen, or attend one of the harsh schools of the Dutch Reformed Church. The average age for marriage of girls at that time was about sixteen years of age. All of Thys’ children were literate, however, including his daughter Beleyte.

They had come to a good place for crops and grazing cattle. Staaten Eylandt was eight miles wide at the widest point, and a good thirteen miles long. It was bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, the Narrows on the north, and on the west by Kill Van Kull and Arthur Kill, with Raritan Bay to the south. The first settlement consisted of Thys Barentsen and eighteen other families, which settlement became known as Ould Dorp, or Old Town, not far from South Beach.

And so it was that on August 22, 1661, Thys Barentsen, Peter Bielliou, and Paulus Direck stood before Pieter Stuyvesant and coolly announced that "the locality of Staaten Eylandt suited them well, and they requested therefore that some of the lands on said Staaten Eylandt might be allotted and given to them as property for farmland, meadow and pasture, and that lots for houses and gardens might be laid out at a convenient place."

Amazing, the casual arrogance of it, when seen in retrospect! They did not posture themselves as humble partners in the precarious experiment of New Netherlands; they simply arrived and claimed that part of it they coveted. Note that they not only wanted living quarters, but lots for gardens as well—at a convenient place. A convenient place! The dream, you see—which is to say their dream, was of a bourgeois but tasteful comfort, abutted and justified by a thoughtful and unalienable Constitution, in their case the Constitution of the United Provinces of the Dutch Republic. As supporters of the Dutch Republic they styled themselves good republicans all, but there is no mistaking the imperial—that is, the imperious—nature of the way they established themselves in this New World place.

And partly because of that imperious attitude, this is a story of how a curse, a maldición, is allegedly made—or laid—against an entire offending family, either by those offended, or by those who have witnessed some great wrong; and how such curses can become secret over generations, making the curse ever more malignant when entire families are not conscious of it. But it was not Thys Barentsen van Leerdam who caused the curse, but rather his son Barent, the privileged young Barnt, who was everywhere at once in various struggles real and imagined against authorities both British and Dutch. The nightmare of which he would become the unknowing, sleepwalking protagonist was a dream of infinite land ownership; in time it was precisely this dream that would morph into a nightmare, to such an extent that those lost in its wastelands could no longer tell the difference between a succubus and a pleasant reverie, between normal ambition and irrevocable evil.

Thirty years after arriving in New Netherlands, Barnt would take one side in a civil conflict, for reasons both of pride and an insane love, thinking he was doing something good and necessary, and instead doing something terrible. It is an old story, variations on the sins of Adam and Cain, criminals who, if the Bible is right, were also our first family. If a butterfly’s wings in China can change the course of a whole epoch ten thousand miles across the world, so can an egregious crime continue to victimize people after many centuries. I am, as the reader may have guessed, a descendent of Thys Barentsen van Leerdam, so this entire matter is more than academic to me.

It was a dangerous gamble of Barnt—Thys Barentsen’s oldest son—that resulted in the fact that I, and several thousand other Americans, use the same surname. And why, once a month or more, he now appears in downtown New York, on this very same street, not to drink at his tavern or carouse with his roustabout friends, but—as I believe—to at last apologize, and make his case to me, and explain his reasons for acting out the perfidy that named, branded and claimed us. I do not know why he chose me, but I do know that by making his case directly to a descendent, he sought to at last be free of the sin of 1691. But at the same time, I could not be sure to what extent his atonement might, by its violent and disturbing nature, compromise me as well.

Chapter 3

I went out on the morning of my second day at Voyager House to shop for clothes at a local secondhand place. The place was quite disorganized; in the 1950s such establishments were known as jumble shops, and in this case the name fit admirably. I got some basic items of clothing, nothing too old or too new, in order to avoid attracting attention to myself. Best of all, I was able to purchase a beautiful, rust-colored smoking jacket, appropriately shabby but with remnants of a shawl collar, front pockets, turn-around cuffs and intact tie belt—the perfect garment for lounging about in one’s residential mental health program.

I feigned indifference to the jacket—which the owner immediately noticed, having seen such gambits every day of his working life—but I was able to buy it for only twelve dollars. Where on earth did you get this beautiful smoking jacket? I asked the owner after he had put my money away in a wooden drawer.

We have a deal with Trinity. With their used clothing shop.

Trinity Church, you mean.

He looked at me over his twisted-wire reading glasses, of a kind that has, for at least the third time in my lifetime, become quite popular. Well, if it’s got Trinity in the name, it’s bound to be some kind of church. That’s the only Trinity I know about in this neighborhood.

Not only a church, but a very famous one, I added.

I noticed that the shop-owner’s clothes were not at all secondhand, but doggedly fashionable, and he exuded cologne. I repressed the desire to tell him that his small teeth were far too well-maintained for his jumbled secondhand station in lower Manhattan; furthermore, I could already imagine, and in fact could not stop imagining, the neo-Dickensian character that might with much more verisimilitude inhabit this disordered place, instead of this self-conscious dandy in a new suit. These were not delusions, I point out, but merely pleasant fantasies.

But I did not share these particular fantasies with the shop-owner. Do you also get garments from Saint Paul’s Chapel? I asked.

That’s part of Trinity Church, isn’t it?

Yes, yes, of course. I’d forgotten.

Since the wind-hawk of the Hudson River was shrieking just outside the door, I also bought a battered leather bomber jacket which was far too big for me, but warm. I thought about how nice it would be to go to Trinity Cemetery, but I knew I didn’t have the energy to get there. Too bad, because there is a collateral ancestor of mine buried there, a loyalist who abandoned the American Revolution in New Jersey to go to New York, where the British were still firmly in control. Then, unexpectedly—just after making a place for himself in British-controlled territory—he gave up the ghost. I’ve always felt this was somehow rather clever of him, to die so quickly after abandoning the patriot cause. For me there has always been a bizarre integrity about it that eludes all attempts at analysis.

I thought I’d visit one of the burial places, but I’ve changed my mind now, I said, putting on the bomber jacket. It was so old the leather in front was almost white, but the zipper worked. I just don’t have the energy these days to get to the Trinity burial place, even if I hop the bus. Some days my body hurts all over. It’s the weather, maybe.

And now the owner of this secondhand shop, the reigning monarch of a secondhand world, sighed and nodded. When we get old, there are some things that can’t be done anymore. If we tried, we’d run the risk of getting seriously hurt.

I mean, I’d like to walk there, but—

That particular Trinity Cemetery is quite a way uptown, if it’s the one I’m thinking of.

I’m afraid so.

Ed Koch is buried there, he added mysteriously.

I pondered that for a moment before deciding to let it go. Well now, I said, there you are.

Having had enough of the secondhand shop, I quickly gathered up my new-old garments and started back to Voyager House. I was scheduled for a one-on-one counseling session with the director, Clarissa Rowland, right after lunch; and I looked forward to it, because I liked everything about this endlessly energetic woman, including her name.

As a child I was able to avoid grade school through the fortuitous intervention of severe asthma, and it was at this time that I read the epistolary novel Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady, by Samuel Richardson. The Clarissa of this novel was driven mad by her family, whose New Money caused them to obsessively pursue men with titles, resulting in Clarissa’s death in a brothel. That deliciously horrific story—with its delicious denouement—came across to me even then as a garish parody of Jane Austin–type ambition and social climbing. But the beauty of the name stayed with me.

2.

My one-on-one counseling session with Clarissa Rowland was to be held in a small room at the end of the hall on the second floor, a place once probably intended for a servant or cook, or perhaps (or so I imagined) the enforced confinement of the occasional young girl in a family way. I say enforced confinement because there were no windows in the room; it had probably also been used for storage at some point. I do not know how old the house was, but I’d place it somewhere in the late Victorian era: it was not well-constructed, but it was not badly constructed either. Interestingly, just across from the small room a red, neon EXIT sign had been recently installed above a steel door leading to a fire escape.

As the time for my one-on-one psychotherapy session with Director Rowland approached, I poured an especially strong cup of coffee and took it with me into the small room. There were photographs of clients push-pinned to the wall, and an abandoned computer over in the corner; it was all oddly cozy. Therefore, the small room did not make me feel claustrophobic, despite the fact that the first thing Rowland did was to close the door.

Confidentiality, she said by way of explanation.

Speak freely—I’ll never tell.

No, no, no, it’s not like that, she said, sitting down across from me and briskly opening my chart. "You can say whatever you want to about me. I just don’t want other clients hearing what you say about yourself."

Thank you.

I had worn my tattered new-old twelve-dollar smoking jacket to the counseling session, and Rowland noticed it. Well, she said, a new garment. What style is it?

I