Career Choices
By Ian Woollen
Cody lay on the sofa, staring up at the pressed tin ceiling, imagining himself as a rodeo rider on the back of a bronco. The evening sun flickered across the floor. Somehow 6:30 became 7:15, and a frowning policeman appeared at his side and cracked the spell. The man’s face was familiar. They had met before, under similar circumstances. The policeman sighed and shook his head.
He said, “Kid, what are you doing? This isn’t your house.”
“No, it’s my friend’s.”
“But your friend is away at summer camp,” the policeman said, “and his parents are visiting him, and they happen to have installed a surveillance camera before they left town.”
“Call it my home away from home.”
The policeman sort of smiled. “That’s what you always say. More like, the juvenile detention center is becoming your home away from home.”
“Do I have to bunk with the rowdies this time, or can I have my own cell?”
“Picky, picky,” the policeman said.
Don’t worry about following the plot line here. It’s the same thing over and over and over. Cody is a repeat offender. Technically, his rap is breaking and entering, but that is not what really happens. More like, entering and chilling. At first, he was a grade-schooler, and everyone thought it was cute. Especially his ability to silence the resident dog. The moms in the neighborhood would come home from the grocery store and find Cody sitting at their kitchen table, stroking the dog’s head.
“Hey, buddy, what’s up?”
“Waiting for Nick.”
“He’s at his piano lesson. You know that. We went over this last week. How’d you get in here, by the way?”
“Basement window.”
Cody never actually broke into anyone’s house and never stole anything. He was simply an intuitive master at gaining access. In his mind, that made it okay. He never recruited accomplices, and he always took off his shoes, so as not to track in dirt. The neighbors tried to explain it away as ‘quirky only child.’
Age 8 somehow became age 11. Cody’s grades stayed fine, and he was popular enough on the playground. His bewildered parents pinned their hopes on one positive pattern: their son never showed up in a stranger’s house. It was always the home of someone he knew, whether from school or church or Little League.
Social services became involved, after a complaint was filed by a dad who thought Cody was stalking his daughter. That meant testing and counseling and more testing by a psychologist who brought in Cody’s parents, Chuck and Jen, to discuss theories like ‘secondary gain’, all of which seemed to go nowhere. It was perplexing. Cody was un-diagnosable. Basically, an average pre-teen skateboarder, other than his trespassing compulsion, he acted surprisingly open and willing to participate in the counseling sessions. He appeared to be as interested as anyone about questions such as, is this behavior expressing something unresolved in the parents’ relationship?
Well, that’s another story. Chuck and Jen, both municipal employees and volunteers at Habitat, were a bit eccentric. They collected antique board games and vacationed on casino boats. Chuck prided himself on his sheet pan dinners. Everyone at city hall knew to expect Jen’s patented late-arrival act, slapping at her pockets and purse, as if she’d just lost something. Chuck and Jen tried to engage their son in family meetings, convened at the dinner table. The conversations went round and round.
Cody’s explanation for his motivation was, “I like seeing into things.”
“What things?” his mom asked.
“In the future. I daydream about fun jobs that I could have.”
“Son, are we doing something wrong?” his dad asked. “Is there something wrong with our house?”
“Do you want a different bedroom?” his mom asked. “You could have the guest room, the one with the skylight.”
“Grandma stays up there when she comes to visit. Where would she go? No, my room is okay,” Cody said.
“Are you curious about other people’s furniture and possessions?” his dad asked.
“It’s not about the furniture,” Cody said.
“Is it the thrill, the adventure?” his mom asked.
“I like seeing into things,” Cody said, again.
Despite all the warnings of dire consequences, about juvenile detention, and becoming a career criminal, and homeowners with handguns, Cody continued to pop up unannounced in other people’s houses. He understood it was wrong and promised to stop, but a few days later, a rumbling lava feeling would surface and convince him that just one more visit might reveal the answer, a vision of his future that would allow him to end this nonsense. He came close one afternoon inside a ranch with three dogs, on a cul-de-sac near the mall. It was his eighth-grade teacher’s house. He daydreamed about becoming a veterinarian. It almost did the trick.
“Mom, I think we should get a dog,” Cody said, afterwards.
“Would that really help?”
“Your mother is allergic to dogs,” his dad said.
“Wait, no, I’ll deal with it,” his mom said. “What kind of dog do you want?”
“Any kind,” Cody said. “I like them all.”
His dad said, “Everybody get in the car. We’re going down to the shelter.”
The dog, a brown Labrador, was briefly perfect. Cody welcomed the responsibility of feeding and walking his pet. He stayed out of trouble for two months. The dog liked to wrestle and fetch a Frisbee. But she also liked to run and disappeared over Thanksgiving. Cody tacked reward posters on telephone poles all around the neighborhood. No luck. The same thing happened again with a standard poodle from a breeder.
Cody’s arrest record continued to grow. Taller now, but still thin enough to squeeze under backyard fences, he became a familiar figure at the courthouse. Judges and clerks waved hello to him. At age 18, he graduated into an adult anti-recidivism program and got assigned to a new social worker, Anabel Stone, LCSW.
Her bright corner office, full of plants, looked out over the jail. Tiny and wrinkled, half-rim glasses permanently perched on her nose, Anabel Stone specialized in not giving up on tough cases. Also, a year away from retirement, she was willing to try anything.
“I see a note here in the file about your reputation as a peer counselor to the other inmates,” Anabel said. “Apparently, they all want to talk to you. What’s up with that?”
“Guess I’m friendly enough and don’t pry,” Cody said.
“Do you give advice? What do you tell them?”
“I mostly just listen, and I don’t pry.”
Anabel blinked and jumped right on it. She said, “So, if you would do that for yourself…without prying, of course.”
“What do you mean?” Cody asked.
“If you would give yourself that same kind of attention, if you would listen to yourself…”
“Not sure what you’re after.”
“I’m just wondering what you would hear, if you would really listen to yourself about this trespassing habit.”
“That’s a good question.”
“And the business about breaking into houses to ‘see into things.’ A lot of notes in the file on that too.”
Cody explained, “I imagine myself in different circumstances, doing cool things for a living. I try to envision my calling, the job that’s meant for me.”
After eight sessions, Anabel Stone, LCSW, took Cody’s case to her monthly supervision group, a veteran crew. They’d heard about Cody from other colleagues. His was the kind of pathology they enjoyed dissecting. The group had been meeting since the. ’90s, gathering on their patios in the warmer months and around their fireplaces in winter, drinking red wine. The rational for the wine was that case conference discussions invariably produced a lot of iffy speculation, and the alcohol helped to cut through it.
“Well, at least Cody seems to be connecting with you, Anabel.”
“He claims that I look like his grandmother,” Anabel said. “She’s the one who always told him not to pry when he’d ask questions about growing up on a farm.”
“This kid breaks into houses so he can sit there and daydream about himself in the future, doing things like riding in rodeos and becoming a veterinarian. Why can’t he do that anywhere else, for example, inside his own house?”
Anabel said, “That’s the mystery. He just goes blank. He says that everywhere else feels blank. Cody can present as fairly normal, but some things about him are atypical for a teen. He doesn’t go in much for social media or get tattoos or smoke pot.”
“And it’s all so self-defeating. He wants to have these nifty visions of his future but does it in a way that prevents him from ever pursuing one.”
Anabel nodded and said, “Exactly. There appears to be something he has to escape, to get away from, before he can be free enough, or relaxed enough to daydream, and he does it by invading someone else’s space.”
“Sounds like he’d make a good shrink.”
Anabel laughed and sipped her wine. “Last session, we did a listening-to-yourself experiment. Cody got into it. He senses that his going-blank thing stems from the active-shooter drills in grade school, when the kids would be evacuated to the storage sheds by the parking lot and have to sit huddled in silence.”
“Oh, you’ve got that wily crone look on your face, Grandma.”
“I’m getting an idea for an intervention,” Anabel said.
At her next session with Cody, it all came to a head. Not explosively, just abruptly. Cody had been released on probation again, and their agenda was to focus on ways to stay out of jail, standard cognitive-behavioral stuff. Sunlight washed across the floor. Anabel spun a full rotation in her chair, and impulsively decided to shift gears.
“Cody, it feels like we work pretty well together,” she said.
“I do like coming here,” he agreed.
“I want to try another experiment,” Anabel said, “but you’d have to be willing to take a risk.”
“What kind of experiment?”
“To gather data, gain some insights.”
“Okay, sure. Let’s go for it,” Cody said.
“I’m going to give you the address of my house. I’ll plan to be out for a while over the weekend, and I’ll leave a window unlocked in the garage. I’d like you to break in and make yourself comfortable and have a daydream. Take notes on whatever comes to you.”
“That’s interesting,” Cody said, and grinned sheepishly, “especially because, please don’t get mad, I already did it, over this past weekend. You’d mentioned being away at a meeting. By the way, I like your beagle.”
Anabel Stone, LCSW, did her best to remain composed. She readjusted her half-rims. “Tell me what happened at my house. Did you see into things?”
He said, “Yes, and guess what? You’ll get a kick out of this. I saw myself sitting right here in your office.”
“Just you, or was anyone with you?”
“We were together, having a session as usual,” Cody said, “except I was sitting in your chair.”
Anabel said, “Try to keep going with that. Stay with it, right here.”
Cody closed his eyes and stroked his forehead. He said, “I can see myself at age 24, finally having finished college, and having to jump through a lot of hoops to get my arrest record expunged, so that I can receive my license as a counselor. I can see that getting inside someone’s head is like breaking into their house, except, hey, it’s legal.”
“And there’s always a way in,” Anabel said, “and you’d be free to pry all you want.”
“All I want,” Cody repeated.
Anabel tilted forward to offer a fist bump, in the style of her young male clients. Cody balled up his fist and held it to hers and stood and reached closer for a hug, careful not to squeeze her small frame too hard. Anabel signaled for him to go ahead and try plopping down in her chair. She and her notepad moved over to the davenport.
Cody leaned back and crossed his legs. He said, “Okay, ma’am, let me ask you a question. You’re getting ready for retirement. Do you have any plans?”
Anabel sighed and shook her head. “No, every time I think about it, I just go blank.”
Cody grinned and spun a full rotation in the chair and leaned forward to offer another fist bump. “Been there, done that,” he said. They agreed to continue meeting for a few more sessions, backing off on the frequency. Cody’s trespassing spell was not immediately broken. It receded and diminished, and eventually turned into a term paper topic.
