Holland Suggestions by John Dunning Read Free Book Online

of seeking professional help. Like most men, I was rebelling against the suggestion, even the gentle self-suggestion, that there was anything wrong with me. Besides, there was occasional basis for optimism. After a horrid New Year and a so-so January, February was a good month. I did not go into the Holland file at all during the first three weeks of February; at the end of the fourth week, when the depression had returned, I took Judy away for two days in the mountains. That was a mistake. The mountain scenery only reminded me of the photograph, and I stayed in the lodge all weekend, drinking and brooding, while Judy hiked in the hills.
Monday morning: 3:30 A.M. Things are as bad today as they ever have been. Christ, I don’t know how I’ll get through the day.
    I got through it somehow. But now, for the first time, came an ominous warning.
    Darlene: “Mr. Ryan, Mr. Harper on one.”
    And the heavy voice of Al Harper: “Jim, come over here for a few minutes, will you?”
    Al’s secretary wasn’t yet in, so I walked past her desk and knocked on the hardwood door. Al called me in and motioned me to a chair while he finished a phone conversation. That done, he shuffled through some blueprints on his desk and pushed them toward me.
    “Did you okay these?”
    I leafed through them. “Sure I did.” Looking closer now: “Is something wrong with them?”
    “Look for yourself.”
    I didn’t need a magnifying glass. The problems were right before me, circled in red.
    Al swung around in his swivel chair and gazed out of the window. “Normally I don’t double-check you. I guess it’s a good thing I did this time.”
    “A damn good thing,” I said. I felt the blood in my cheeks, and I knew there wasn’t anything I could say in self-defense. For these kinds of college-boy errors there wasn’t any defense.
    Al swung around to face me. “What the hell’s wrong with you these days?”
    “I don’t know, Al. What can I say? It’s just a stupid mistake.”
    “It’s not just a mistake.”
    “You mean there’ve been others?”
    “I mean you’re off in a goddamn dream world half the time; your eyes are bloodshot and you’ve lost ten pounds. You drove Sharon to the verge of a nervous breakdown and then made her move to another department…”
    “The thing with Sharon was personal. It didn’t have anything to do with this.”
    “Didn’t it? I’m not so sure. All I know is you’ve got a problem. Is it booze or what?”
    That was Al Harper for you: straight to the point with no diplomatic waltzing around the touchy areas. For a moment I didn’t know how to answer him. Telling him that I had my drinking under control wouldn’t sound believable under the circumstances, so I said, “Look, you’re right; I have had a problem and it’s been a real bitch. I’m still having trouble handling it. It’s just a personal thing, Al, and it isn’t booze, if that’s what you’re thinking. My word on that. I’m just sorry as hell that it’s starting to affect my work.”
    “Judy’s okay?”
    “Sure, she’s fine.”
    “Anything I can do to help?”
    “It’s just something I’ve got to work out myself.”
    “Well, I hope you get it worked out soon, old buddy. A mistake like this one”—he shuffled the prints—“could cost me plenty.”
    “I know it. What the hell can I say?”
    “It sounds to me like you’re going through something I used to call occupational menopause. It happens to a lot of guys your age; hell, I went through it myself twenty years ago. A man gets tied to a desk, a steady routine, he starts wondering if maybe life isn’t passing him by, if maybe he ought to get out where the action is.”
    I tried to laugh in protest but managed only a smile.
    “I’m serious, Jim,” Al said. “And if that’s what it is there’s just one cure for it. Take a few weeks off; get the hell out of town and see how other people live. Look, have I got to order you to take a goddamn vacation?”
    “I’ll