Chapter Fourteen
“T he point is mostly to get them bonding with each other, to test their boundaries, trust issues, that sort of thing,” Lex was saying as she walked toward the group therapy session with Bea.
“So… I just let them talk?”
“Pretty much. Try and steer the conversation in safe directions, stay on topic. Initially, it might be good to discuss why they’re here in the first place if they want to share, and you’d be surprised how many do. Most programmers don’t think they should be here, so sharing those stories promotes sympathy in the others, or occasionally forces the others to look at their own actions.”
“Right.” Bea could see an inherent problem with this. “Um, and what about if they get, well, angry?”
“Josh will be in the vicinity,” Lex said. “You have nothing to worry about. You might get shouted at occasionally, but nothing worse.”
Shouted at. Normally, that might not be so much of a problem. Except just this morning Alli had shouted at her and quite inexplicably, Bea had ended up crying. Maybe it was hormones or something. She just couldn’t understand it.
One minute, Alli had her all up in arms and ready to defend her own honor, which was completely out of character. The next she had her in tears, which was slightly more in character, but not by much.
It really didn’t help that for some reason every time Alli came close enough for Bea to smell guava, Bea felt a little hop of electricity, like she was about to be shocked, like her hair might stand on end.
“You’ll be just fine,” Lex said now.
“You say that with authority,” smiled Bea.
“I’ve done this before,” Lex said, suddenly looking very young.
“How many times?”
“In training? Plenty,” said Lex. She coughed. “Here, just one set of sessions. But I really need to concentrate on the individual sessions, that’s where I can be most helpful.”
Bea nodded thoughtfully. “I’m sure everything will go wonderfully,” she said with more confidence than she felt. Not that she had much choice. She had a job to keep, a paycheck to get, and a flat deposit to pay for.
“Best of luck,” Lex grinned at her.
The programmers were seated in a circle of chairs and they looked at Bea expectantly when she walked in. All except one. Alli was seeming to find the floor particularly interesting. Oh well, there were worse things. Bea swallowed to wet her mouth and then sat down in the one spare chair.
“Welcome,” she said, just the same as she did when she started a yoga class. “Is there anyone that has any concerns or something they’d like to say before we begin?”
Lex had told her to say this, but she was greeted with silence and more expectant looks. She swallowed again.
“Alright, then why don’t we begin with a little self-introduction. We’ll start with…” She looked around and saw Charles. He’d so far proven to be obedient, questioning nothing, and seemed harmless. “We’ll start with you, Charles. Would you like to share why you’re here?”
“For group therapy,” he said, looking puzzled.
“I mean, more in the big picture sense,” Bea said helpfully.
He frowned harder. “Um, like the meaning of life sort of thing? ”
There was a shuffling in the room. “No,” said Bea. She blew out a breath. “Alright, let’s start over. Why are you in an anger management program, Charles?”
Charles’s face cleared at the prospect of a question he could actually answer. “Easy, I’m getting divorced, my ex wants custody of the kids so she can move them up north, so she’s told her lawyer that I’ve got a temper. The court ordered me into a program so that I can prove that I don’t have one and hopefully I’ll get to see my kids.”
Bea’s heart cracked a little bit. If Charles’s story was true, he really didn’t need to be here.
“That’s a shit deal,” Marcus said. The others agreed with him.
Bea eyed his tattoos and bulky arms before deciding she might as well jump in at the deep end now that she’d got her feet wet. “How about you, Marcus? What brings you here?”
He squinted as though trying to remember something, then said: “I was in a fight in a pub and my parole officer recommended the program to make a good impression on the judge.”
Bea considered following up the parole officer issue but then rethought things as Julia and Izzy both slid their chairs discreetly further from Marcus’s. “Okay, thank you for sharing. Julia?”
The older woman smiled brightly. “Oh, thank you for asking, dear. Let’s see. Right. I got into an altercation with someone at bingo.” Her expression darkened slightly. “Not that I normally play bingo, it was a one off, you understand.”
For a moment, Bea paused, thinking that perhaps there was more to the story, but apparently not, since Julia just sat there beaming. Bea found it hard to picture Julia in any kind of altercation, though to be fair it was a lot easier to picture her in a bingo hall. As far as Bea had seen, Julia was kind and gentle, and had been a patient teacher when the group was baking biscuits.
“Right,” she said finally. “Okay. Izzy?”
Izzy went red. “I don’t want to say.”
“You don’t have to,” Bea said immediately. “But it might make you feel a bit better.”
“We all had to say,” Marcus grumbled.
“Yeah, it’s only fair,” put in Charles.
“Fine,” Izzy said. She took a deep breath. “I get angry with my children and my husband and I thought it best that I complete a program before anything gets out of hand.” She sounded like she was talking through gritted teeth.
“That sounds…” Bea really wanted to say that it actually sounded like a lie. Izzy talked incessantly about her kids, and in a way that made it obvious that she was crazy about them. But then, Bea wasn’t a therapist. What did she know? “That sounds like a very considerate plan,” she went with in the end.
She turned to Leslie, the quietest member of the group. So quiet that Bea often found her eyes glided over the woman like she wasn’t there. “How about you?” she asked gently.
Leslie shrugged. “Get angry,” was all she said. Which was fair enough, really. Bea decided not to dig any further into that one.
Which left just one.
“Alli?”
“What?” Alli said, glancing up but very much avoiding eye contact.
“Would you like to share with the group why you’re here?”
“By mistake, obviously,” Alli said.
All eyes were on her and Bea found herself feeling bad for Alli. “Could you maybe tell us what kind of mistake?”
Alli sighed and rolled her eyes. “Obviously, I get angry, but I have to. It’s a part of my job. If I didn’t get angry, people would just walk all over me, and no one wants that, do they? So I really shouldn’t be here. I don’t need to stop being angry. It’s… productive anger.”
“Ah.” Bea didn’t quite know what to say about that. She decided to turn things over to the group. “Can anger be productive, do we think?”
Surprisingly, the others calmly conducted a discussion about when anger was and wasn’t appropriate, and what benefits it could have. Alli included. Bea sat back in her chair and listened. There were some fair points being made about repressing feelings being bad for your health, and about the repercussions of losing your temper and how that might be different from just feeling anger.
“You can’t just never get angry,” Alli said. “That’s impossible.”
“But you could never lose your temper,” Marcus countered. “Like it’s alright to be angry, but you shouldn’t take it out on someone that doesn’t deserve it.”
“I tell my kids that all the time,” Izzy said.
“What if someone does deserve it, though?” Alli asked.
“Like a serial killer or something,” Charles said.
“Or a rapist,” put in Julia. “You could definitely be angry with someone like that.”
“And it would be deserved,” Alli agreed.
“Maybe anger isn’t the problem, it’s just an emotion like other emotions,” Izzy said carefully.
“It’s probably more how it’s directed that’s the issue,” agreed Charles.
“How does anger feel?” Bea asked, wanting to move things on.
The others looked at her.
“Hot?” hazarded Charles.
“Um… out of control?” Julia said.
“Like an animal inside you,” Alli said. “A wild animal, one that you can’t control, one that takes over everything like it’s controlling your body and all you can do is watch. It’s like… like having a demon.”
Everyone was silent.
It occurred to Bea that Alli seemed to be the only one with a grasp on what anger really felt like. Or the only one honest enough to describe it. She smiled. “Thanks, Alli, that was excellent.” She checked her watch. “And it’s about time for you all to move on to meditation. Thank you all.”
The programmers started to stand up and chat, filtering out of the door. Bea moved to stop Alli in her tracks.
“That was really good,” she said. “Really good. I’m impressed that you can put words on things so easily, impressed that you can be so logical about things.”
For an instant Alli looked like she might smile. Then the dark descended over her face again. “Whatever. It’s not like you asked difficult questions or anything.”
Bea breathed out and tried again. “Listen, about this morning.”
“Whatever,” Alli said again. “It’s not important. We’ve both got a job to do. The difference is that I’m not doing mine currently. Something that needs to change. Just get me my damn phone back.” She stepped around Bea and strode out of the room.
So much for progress, Bea thought as she watched her go.
It would be nice, she thought, if just for once she could have a conversation with Alli without losing her temper, crying, or being threatened in some way.