Because of His Heart is literary fiction, a psychological drama with intimately-drawn characters and unforeseen trials. A happy marriage is challenged after an incidence of hurtful intimacy and a failure of communication. As Erica Seames and Charles Portland struggle to reconcile and recover their lives, a trusted counselor is in their midstâwho kills for love.
Erica is losing her identity and purpose. How could she have been so wrong about her husband? Charles is shocked by this personal tragedy, but as a reporter who knows his beat, he is determined to understand. âI am not a bad man, I am not.â He had acted foolishly, even meanly, but as he considers his joyful marriage of eight years, he discovers that there is something vital he is missing.
As Erica flees New York for her childhood home, Toronto, an anonymous blog is her creation and refuge. She is never alone. Yet when Charles discovers Ericaâs online diary, he no longer recognizes his wife or himself in her anguished assertions. To whom can he turn?
In this chilling psychological thriller, abuse, infidelity, psychological manipulation and calculated malice draw a group of near-strangers together to save Ericaâin pursuit of elusive justice.
Because of His Heart is literary fiction, a psychological drama with intimately-drawn characters and unforeseen trials. A happy marriage is challenged after an incidence of hurtful intimacy and a failure of communication. As Erica Seames and Charles Portland struggle to reconcile and recover their lives, a trusted counselor is in their midstâwho kills for love.
Erica is losing her identity and purpose. How could she have been so wrong about her husband? Charles is shocked by this personal tragedy, but as a reporter who knows his beat, he is determined to understand. âI am not a bad man, I am not.â He had acted foolishly, even meanly, but as he considers his joyful marriage of eight years, he discovers that there is something vital he is missing.
As Erica flees New York for her childhood home, Toronto, an anonymous blog is her creation and refuge. She is never alone. Yet when Charles discovers Ericaâs online diary, he no longer recognizes his wife or himself in her anguished assertions. To whom can he turn?
In this chilling psychological thriller, abuse, infidelity, psychological manipulation and calculated malice draw a group of near-strangers together to save Ericaâin pursuit of elusive justice.
Charles
The apartment, three rooms in a brownstone on the west side of Manhattan, contained one Charles Portland: reporter, columnist, alone. He did not treasure solitude yet lived with expedient loneliness professionally. Removal and distance were necessary to pursue his prey, the grand and political, that they might grant him the minutes he needed to reportâtheir purposes and motions interpreted late into the night. Often confined in hotel rooms with commercial chairs, lead-lined curtains, too focused bed lamps, he sent his processed words by email to a private service to be picked for publication, he hoped. Charles had paused his travels in recent weeks, returning to this apartmentânot home, a new solitude. The rooms were bright enough, hopeful, and from this new location his travel time each morning was greatly reduced.
He had decided not to remain in what was his home, their home, a large house on Staten Islandânot until her return, his wife, Erica, Doctor Erica Seames. If she was away, he would be too, their home extracted from that same place where all loss is reckoned. But he must carry on for a time without her, he had such courage. For Charles, the new apartment was a reinforcement of loss, an intensifier of distance:
Erica had flown, removed herself for more than six weeks by his calendar. Their time together was insufficient in those years in which they struggled; he, scorned by weaker souls and even friends at times, but rising above it, hiding the scars: a stern-eyed man; while she, floating in perceived contentment in her work, progressed in her career from Intern to Internist, clear in her path, almost silent of daily conflict in her passionate intensity. There were as yet no children.
There was his Erica then, for eight years or soâthough evidently lessâand then the other Erica who had left him, whose hardiness of will had been insufficient to her dreams, to the extent that he knew her dreams. She was not estranged but incomprehensible in her acquired distanceâshe whose eyes still yearned, he believed, but with a different light, she who found solitude even in his company. His Erica was still present, he hoped, suppressed in spirit but alive, with time to reconsider, to find him again...
As when, years before, she first found him as he waited, his body in question: His serum cholesterol was elevated, which for a large man of thirty-eight years required attention. In high spirits then, open to the future, he had reluctantly accepted an appointment at St Ambrose Hospital for a complete physical examination. Charles answered all questions to his doctorâs satisfaction, was prodded and probed, measured and admonished (some weight gain over the last year.) Intern Erica Seames had attended, she who would be his wife, as he made his entrance ignominiously half-cloaked backward in an examination gown to give blood, which she took, deftly drawing three vials from his large arm, like squeezing soft fruit. But she was the delectable berry, it seemed, his hunger to assuage. He remembered alternatively the continuous stream of her voice, my god can she talk, in curiously flowing but logical sequences, melodic even in her questioning, or then, how loosely irrelevant her clothing appeared, pleasant crisp, hospital-blue, as she leaned over him; and with that oddly crooked smile she blended the automatic action of her duties with an out-of-the-blue soliloquy on G B Shaw, and then the reference, something about the âDoctorâs Dilemma,â evidently a further test she administered with equal grace, which he passed with passing familiarity; just his nod of acknowledgment, it seemed, was sufficient for her approval.
Stress was inherent for Charles. A freelance reporter must always search. For his efforts, wire services picked up an interview with his Representativeâthe right question elicited the wrong answer. Charles tested his subject:
âThen how can you assert that your committee followed the lead as they claimed when you criticize the proposed legislation? Is this not hypocritical?â
âI believe that hypocrisy is too easy a claim in this context, but Iâll accept the epithet if it pleases you.â Which meant there was a storyâremembered in pride, relished as the opening to his future. It did not matter so much that he was not credited with the pointed question; the breakthrough was his, leading to a diminishing of the Congressmanâs fraudulent career and an elevation of his own. It was a clean and revealing investigation which led ultimately to his advancement, well earned.
Together, Charles and Erica had lived and strived in a progression of cyclical rejoicings, the experience of which became natural, the insertion of seasons upon their dense schedulesâthe ecstasy of designated nights, apostrophes of deleted weekends. She was a medical doctor and he a journalist: a marriage in their own styleâhaving evolved most recently an entropy of joyousness, as he rested at night alone in an apartment suffused with uncertainty and loss, an interrogative abode, a question mark.
Constable John Deuter, Toronto
They were laughing, he thought, if only behind their eyes. He didnât see that simian sparkle, shared furtively; he imagined it, an indignity he endured with only the defense of a frownâhis colleagues, Torontoâs Finest, laughing, of course.
Remembered and remembered, the scene replayed as in life; his responses returning, vivified in his head bitterly, though often edited as art to a better end.
His office door was open, by chance, as she walked directly to the reception counter, flowed, reallyâover dressed, under dressed in removing her coat, attracting the gaze of those same eyes, colleagues, laughing. She was alluring, yet in her claim, dangerous.
The scene: Uniformed men and women in primal awe, affecting professional indifference until she stopped flowing and spoke, becoming something new, someone, an offended woman, an image more complex. She stood at the public counter with natural dignity. He noticed and was listening as well. Her complaint was domestic assault. She had phoned earlier, inquired. Now she wanted to speak privately. The desk attendant asked,
âWould you prefer a female constable?â
âNo, I want John Deuter.â
âOf course, of course, yes, I believe Constable Deuter can see you.â
what? my name flies out from nothing, is it a joke, you idiots, to deliver her to me, yearning as she was, evidently in some pain, a woman compromised, challenging my weakness. Why would she ask, why name me? sure, Iâll serve, turn your backs laughing, apes
John Deuter, alone with new drama, yes, very funny. And there she was, a standing supplicant, drawing on that which defeats allure, dulls grace, would not pity this, out of my jurisdiction. Deuter was drawn to greet her at reception.
âJohn Deuter,â he said, expecting a name in return. She took his hand quickly, slender fingers, short nails, little pressure in response. They retreated to his alcove, she, leading from behind. John Deuter, contained (though unsettled, he recalled): âPlease sit down, may I offer you some water?â Head shake no. She was assessing her surroundings. What was it? Something wrong? Was it his hands on the desk as he stood, leaning forward? Or his papers and a pen positioned at attention?
âMay we?...â she asked.
âYes?â His response to her gestureâwhich he only recognized as she took the pen and moved it asideâwas to accept her lead. She continued to stand, compelling him to awkwardly match her posture. Amazed, he saw himself comply further by clearing his desk of all implements, to gain trust, I suppose.
âYou may speak freely, Maâam.â Still no name. He watched her turn to the chair in front of his desk and slide delicately into place. He remained standing, self-conscious, oblivious; she looked up at him, oddly familiar, elegant but restive.
âYes, John, you can sit. There is no one to hear, no recording, right? We can discuss privately, hmm? Oh John, how can I speak? I have such shame. Can you imagine what it took for me to appear here? To speak of someone good who became, well, altered, like another man, the same eyes, hands, almost the same face... But itâs him, my Charles. I accuse, I must.â
Deuter noticed that his door was shut, against protocol, causing the shadows of his dim office to deepen as if a screen had been lowered. He was captive and almost enjoying it, her control, just thenâhis doorway blocked, the door so closed as he listened, watched as she moved in her seat with natural grace, waiting, something about her, but I canât...
He thought of a confessional, remembered distantly, and he, John the Confessor, witness to her image just beyond his desk lamp, animated frame by frame, glimpsed only sidelong with his self-imposed screen of concealment, I give no penance.
She had arranged it all, closed the door, caused him to move his papersâactions of control, strength, John Deuter, confessor to beauty for a sin by proxy, she is staring at me, I think. It was too much, as he still imagined the furtive eyes of his colleagues, laughing beyond his lair, the too bright light of the common thoroughfare, the indignity.
âTell me then, how did this begin?â he asked, desperately.
âIâm unequivocal about this, John, thatâs why Iâve come to you here in Toronto, my birth city, not New York where I live... I mean, where I work, my home now for eight years.â
Iâm âJohnâ already and she has not spoken her name, how can she?... so sad, a Canadian, living in New York, returned home again, Iâll listen and watch, they gave her to me, she gave herself, closed the door... go on, laugh, apes (later, remembering: why did I not remember?)
âBut I donât understand, is there an assault you wish to claim here?â
âI must proclaim it. This cannot go unanswered. It is an injustice, a crime. This is not a Greek drama, despite that risible chorus out there. Am I no one in my home country? I will not be studied like a character in a stage play.â
my god yes, she sees them as I do, gesturing toward my colleagues, so deftly dispatched
John Deuter was not a simple man, though he aspired to live as such, and all that he had learned about people was hard-won: not drawn from empathy of feeling but from observation of action and words alone. He saw her then as she herself had suggested, secured within a drama, at the interval perhaps, preparing herself for the next act, full in the sweep of her tragedy, incomplete and unresolved, reviewing her lines and motivation as though her torment was not real but feignedâbehind the curtain, words in anxious latency. He would like to laugh too, like the others.
a Comedy is best, conflicts resolved, characters married at the end... not too much drama, I can tolerate only a little each day
Deuter stood again and stepped away from his desk, finding excuse in a paper cup at his water cooler. He could see her shape more fully, her hands folded in agitation in her lap. And remembering:
better open the door just a little, but no, she watched me as a child might, a command in silence, and how observant were you, Detective Constable? a momentary reflection of light, her wedding ring surely, did not see it before, her left hand concealed as she spoke
âIf you sit, I will tell it all.â
It was done. He sat again, the door latch untouched, his office secured as he observed her drama, as he was brought in and out of the theater, helplessly.
well, alright then âPlease continue. I have the time you need. I can listen, at least.â
âI have two homes now, John.â
again âJohnâ?
âI am not here so often. I escape, I guess, when I must. New York is where my marriage is, was. There is an apartment I keep here in Toronto. I need your authority. In New York I have a psychiatrist. Charles, you know, made me see a therapist, get the picture? Stupid irony. That shrink guy is my authority there. But I need a different voice here, local authority, but most of all, a connection.â
âBut I am not a lawyer. Tell me, what is it you wish to pursue, your complaint?â
âHavenât I said it? It was Charles, Charles, donât you understand? After eight years, it wasnât intimacy. He came home, he travels all the time. He made me pregnant, then took it away, again! It was not love, it was force. I think I might charge my husband with... abuse. He must be made to understand, donât you see?â
She was waiting, anxious, expectant. Deuter could not answer at first, frightened by the evocation, by the anger behind it. But he must speak.
âIâm so sorry, but was this here, in Toronto?â
âNo John, I told you, in New York, where we... I live.â
âMaâam, I see you are suffering, hurt, but you have not in fact told me anything. How can a constable in Toronto open a case for marital assault which occurred in New York? It is out of my jurisââ
âI need your authority, your standing with Charles, here.â
âstandingâ? âBut tell me, please, what is it you want me to do?â
âDo you have a family, John, children? No, you donât, do you? not even now.â
ânowâ? Her gaze finally left him, and her head bowed to her lap. She spoke quickly, almost reciting, only glancing up at short intervals.
âA small child doesnât question the world she is given, but accepts, you understand, as there can be no other. She searches for excitement, fantasy in each day. A child is blessed who expects happiness. Youâve seen it, Iâm sure, yes? When a child looks up, you can read her eyes, you know, what she expects from you, the soft and the rough. With⌠Charles, I was like a child. I did not want to find this pain, my joyous figure of a man become the silent agent of loss, of destruction, John, of evil, do you understand? I see disease every day at the hospital. It is my work to wash it away, the unseen, action to remove what destroys life⌠This is a good office, John. I see how you live here, keep your order, files, books, soda crackers, little refrigerator, water cooler, the right light. You have what you need, yes? Uh huh, I might have imagined it.â
why âimaginedâ? After a short pause she looked up again,
âYou can live here and think. Consider it then, for me. My man, an essential presence, chosen and loved, who slowly takes away all comfort, all joy. I see my hope dissolve as if eaten away even as I love him. Have you known this, John? Have you sat in this office with such a force, with an end to understand? It is as if there was a controlling hand that corrupts, that cannot be contained, some virulent actor. I imagine, sometimes, that it is not my Charles who creates this, but some dark angel, truly, another hand.â
âYou work in health care, is that right?â
âYes, of course, I thought you remembered.â
ârememberedâ? âDoes he come here to be with you?â
âCome here? Does who come here, you mean Charles?â
âYes, is he with you here in Toronto?â
âOf course not. I am away from him. He doesnât know I am here. This is impossible. Why donât you see? This is so difficult for me. I am working so hard at this. You should understand.â
âIâm trying, maâam, but I donât know what we can do here. Perhaps if youââ
âWhy donât you understand? Charles and I are apart now. I need your help, someone who can act for me, even at a distance. Someone who can grasp the tragedy of it, the loss. Donât you see that I have come to you, trusted you? Too long, I suppose. I had expected...â
She stared at him, watching, waiting for something, some recognition or understanding, preserving the silence almost as a reproach. But finally, when he did not answer or meet her gaze, her response was deliberate, resentment in motion. Yes, he saw that, at least. She stood up abruptly, opened the door herself (he remembered with mild self-rebuke) and before he could speak, she turned and whisked away. As he recalled it, often afterwards, she may have spoken, so softly, âGoodbye John,â but he wasnât sure. Fitting: She had entered as her own agent, closed the door as in confession, then opened it and left without absolution. Deuter sat uneasily, she was angry, I suppose.
The pen and paper were his own again. With a true feeling of regret, Detective Constable Deuter repositioned them on his desk, and restored his files to familiar disarray before him. His memory was more than sufficient, but he wrote it down automatically, what little there was, a matter of form. Having no name, no way to alphabetize, no phone number or address, he placed the page in a file folder and after a moment of hesitation, put it in his own bag, not police business, not here, thatâs all, I guess, donât imagine Iâll see her again, out of my...
There was no scent in his room, but there was the disquiet of memory, of her face transformed, restored in a smile, and the sound of laughter, words and gestures that did not yet connect. And âCharles,â what Charles? But the thought of her face, captured in memory as a silhouette, was dominant. Then turning to him, those eyes. And always the question, what should I remember? (and later, remembering, why did I not remember?)
John Deuter sat quietly, staring across his desk where the figure and spirit of his interlocutor had for some minutes ruled as an artist, mistress. He sat in the mercy of silence as time passed unrealized before he stood again, reluctantly, to resume his work: another case, some other drama of distant resonance. He drew himself a cup of water from the cooler, opened a package of soda crackers and sat again at his desk. He gazed across to her seat, the awful vacancy, perhaps still warm; but there before him were his hand-written file folders, a concrete presence, waiting. He had wanted to understand, to respond. There was something... How might she laugh, with what eyes?
Because of His Heart is a complicated novel, featuring stream-of-consciousness insights from almost every character, explaining his/her inner thoughts and struggles. It focuses primarily on Dr. Erica Seames and her husband Charles Portland, who are, at the beginning, happily married despite the gap in their ages. A physician at St. Ambrose Hospital in New York City, Erica is being treated by an ostensibly prominent psychologist, Dr. Nathan Milo, whose approaches to psychotherapy are popular but perhaps simultaneously questionable. He's a university professor and celebrated author who is in demand as a speaker as well.
His obsession with Erica, and his role as her "confessor," leads to confusing advice for the talented physician. She becomes convinced that her husband has abused her--and perhaps that her father did as well, which is why her mother left her father when Erica was young and moved to Canada (where Erica was born) without Erica's "daddy."
The characters are well developed and complicated. They pass in and out of each other's lives, sometimes by coincidence, sometimes by intent. The more complex the situations become, the more intense the interactions between the characters seem, leading to more stream-of-consciousness and inner dialogue from characters.
This is a lengthy novel, creating a tangled web of psychological challenges for the characters involved. I found the language to be heavy in some instances and had to go back and re-read some of the passages in order not to miss anything--any small clues that might have foreshadowed the book's future. This was especially true when Dr Nathan Milo was "preaching" to his patients about his psychological approaches to treatment, and how he uses those methods to control patients and non-patients alike. He claims to love poetry, and yet, his way of life and of practicing psychology are anything but poetic.
I also found myself needed to re-read some of the dialogue between characters. The author uses academic approaches to dialogue in countless instances, and these places are crucial to understanding the overall novel.
Readers who enjoy long, complex novels with complicated characters and references to real places (in New York City and Toronto) should be interested in this novel. However, I recommend that readers take the time to carefully absorb the ups and downs--and surprises contained--of this work of fiction in order to receive the benefit of this author's efforts. I will also confess to having had to pull out my dictionary and look up more than a few words with which I hadn't been familiar prior to reading this book. Always a learning experience for me when that happens.