I came home from work a little late,
but I brought dinner, vegetarian,
and she wasn't there.
Once again, Anita, what you're saying is
that you got so caught up in your work life
that Elaine couldn't help but feel excluded.
And, Elaine... the moment that you felt shunted aside,
you ran back to your family.
Exactly.
It feels like you're kind of locked in this cycle, that's very diff--
Well, Paul...
Walter, you're a little early, and we're still in session.
Oh, jeez. I'm sorry.
- I'll come back. - Thank you.
So... I'm sorry, where were we?
Locked in a cycle.
In Treatment, S02E34 Walter: Week Seven
I'm sorry about earlier.
It happens.
I didn't realize how many fellow patients there were.
You're busy all the time, aren't you?
So, they...
finally released me, Monday afternoon.
Thank you for your help.
Connie and Natalie picked me up.
We headed straight out for the bay.
I have a few shacks there
that Connie likes to call a compound, on Shelter Island.
We drove up, a warm day,
first southerly wind of the new year.
It was a beautiful day on Monday.
It's amazing when the cold finally... breaks.
Everything was so muddy, though.
They're a few weeks behind the city, weatherwise.
The snow had just melted
and the ground was just soaked.
I imagine it felt good to be...
to be outside, especially after the last few weeks.
- You could say that. - But...
it didn't?
Well, no, the air felt great.
It's just that...
Connie and Natalie, they were just so...
tentative with me.
There's a separate studio near the main house
that I've used as an office sometimes, or sometimes just to...
for a little peace and quiet when the kids were younger.
I wanted to go there but they kept asking me why.
Was there anything you needed to do in your office?
Well, take care of some bills.
But mostly I just wanted to be by myself.
I just wanted to have a little peace.
That's unusual for you.
Well, Connie's a talker. She's always been a talker,
and, I guess, over the years I've learned how to tune it out.
But this time you didn't.
Something about her pitch, it just bothered me.
So, I went to the office,
and a few minutes later I looked up
and there's Natalie spying on me from her bedroom window.
She's still... still on duty.
Yeah, like I was a little boy that someone had to baby-sit.
You told me once
that when you were a little boy yourself,
you were the one on duty with your parents.
Oh, I didn't do that much,
just kept an eye on things. Really, it's nothing even worth talking about.
So what did you do when you saw Natalie
keeping an eye on you?
I glared.
Then about minutes later she brought me some tea
which I hadn't asked for.
And she asked if she could just sit with me.
- And how was that? - Brief.
She's my daughter. I don't go to her with my problems.
You have a good relationship with her, though.
You wrote to her almost every day when she was in Rwanda.
I imagine she'd worry less if you talked to her a little bit more
about what's been going on with you.
Well, I just didn't feel like talking.
I went to the shed
and had this immense pair of clippers and,
always started hacking away at the brush down by the water,
limbing the trees and paring down the bushes.
God, tore my hands up something terrible.
All that brush-clearing...
it's kind of like what we've been doing here.
You lost me on that one.
In the sense that we've been working on clearing paths,
opening up your view of how you got to where you are.
So, when you mentioned this week's thaw,
it made me think of the way our last session ended.
You know,
between the pills and the therapists I saw at the hospital,
I'm not sure I even remember that one.
You really don't remember?
I find that striking,
given how emotional a moment that was.
Well, I know we talked about getting me out of the cuckoo's nest.
And I showed you my pot holder.
Then I got angry about you bringing up Connie's rehab.
I meant after that, when we talked about the two Walters,
the one who you knew and the one you didn't know.
Oh, yeah. That's right.
You seemed quite moved
when we talked about reconnecting to the lost Walter.
Well, I might have teared up a bit,
but I was tired and there's been
a lot of stress.
I understand that,
but my memory is that you didn't just tear up.
You were actually sobbing.
What is it, Walter?
Where did you go?
I just remembered a dream I had this week.
Mr. Donaldson called me in for a meeting.
Only it wasn't in an office.
It was...
It was in an old garage.
I went in, we shook hands,
and he told me they'd traced
the source of the contamination and that it wasn't anything we'd done wrong.
Some nut job deliberately tampering with the product
and then putting it back on shelf.
Go on.
I felt vindicated. And then,
the old man did something he never did:
he apologized.
He said that letting go of me
was the biggest mistake he'd ever made,
that he wanted me to take my old job back.
You'd be Walter Barnett, C.E.O. again.
I tried to answer,
but I couldn't speak.
I opened my mouth,
but I couldn't get any words out.
I woke up in a sweat.
I kept trying to dive back into the dream, but I couldn't get there.
You wanted to finish the conversation?
What did you make of that dream?
Well, I guess I still want to think the whole mess never happened.
I want my old life back.
Do you?
Because you said you couldn't get any words out.
Is it possible that you weren't sure if you
if you wanted to go back?
No. Probably just bargaining.
Could be.
Or perhaps now, with a little distance,
you have a greater sense of the enormous strain
you've been under for so long.
- It never used to feel like a strain. - That's right.
I think you genuinely didn't feel it.
You've become exceptionally adept at overriding your feelings.
That's what we were beginning to talk about last week.
Do you remember?
Right...
how the weak Walter couldn't handle the stress.
Did you think about that... Walter this week?
The lost boy?
No, not really.
- You did make me think about my father. - Your father?
How did I do that?
Just before, when I came in early and I walked in on you,
you just had a look on your face that reminded me of him.
In what way?
After Tommy...
after the accident,
he couldn't sleep at nights anymore.
Insomnia?
Yeah, and he started to work the graveyard shift.
And when he'd come home from the factory,
he didn't wanna wake up my mother,
so he'd go to sleep on the couch.
And I'd come downstairs and I'd want to talk to him, you know, about...
I don't know...
the day before, what happened at school,
and there was that look.
Can you describe it?
"How the hell do I get rid of you
"without making you feel bad?"
Come on, listen, it's okay. Really, you were busy.
If it had been my session and somebody walked in, I would have been pissed off.
Still, you felt rejected, even abandoned.
No. I was early.
Right. The same way you were too early for your dad.
Work comes first. That's life.
My mother didn't see much of him either.
She got used to it.
She'd come home from the hospital, she was a nurse...
and I'd fix her an old-fashioned.
We'd eat.
I'd fix her another.
I had to get the cherry and the orange wedge just right.
Then she'd go in her bedroom.
I was always nervous that
she'd fall asleep while she was smoking in bed,
so I'd check in on her,
make sure all the ashtrays were out.
That's a lot of responsibility for a young boy.
Listen, they were...
You can't blame her...
either of them.
- Their lives were ruined. - I don't think there's any need to
blame them in order to understand your loneliness.
They were too grief-stricken to take care of me.
I had to put away my childish things.
Actually, I think the verse is, "When I became a man,
"I put away childish things".
You were still a boy.
A lot of kids had it worse.
Do you remember any good times?
Did the three of you spend time together?
Not so much.
On weekends he was always tinkering with his car.
That thing was a real money pit.
- Did you have a garage? - Oh yeah. I used to peek in on him.
- And he didn't let you in? - After a while I figured out
how to stand on a garbage can and look through the window.
It turned out...
most of the time he wasn't working on the car.
He was...
staring at a picture of Tommy on the wall.
One time he saw me.
It was terrible.
You wanted to connect with him, but you felt
he didn't want you there. Is that it?
The boys used to spy on me the same way...
when I worked on weekends.
They'd want to play or...
go swimming, and...
I always had work to do.
I probably gave them the same look.
Maybe that's why we don't have anything to talk about now.
You know, it's not too late for you to get to know them
and for them to get to know you.
I don't think they'd be interested.
Maybe they feel,
I don't know, intimidated by you.
Repairing those relationships is something that we can work on in here.
I said I don't think they're interested.
You were interested in talking to your father,
about what you saw in that garage.
In fact, you're still dreaming about it.
We never discussed it.
A few years later we moved
to the next coal town over.
My mother didn't want to go, but
my father thought it would be better
to start over again in a new place without
Tommy's presence hovering over everything.
And how did you feel about it?
They didn't ask me.
It must be hard, as a child,
to know what your feelings are when you're not asked about them.
For a while there after we moved...
I'd run away...
back to the old home...
and... get my bike and...
just go there, I don't know...
to check if Tommy was waiting for us.
Go figure out a child.
What would you do when you visited?
Nothing.
I'd just sit there for hours, waiting.
He never came back, of course.
I wonder if maybe...
Maybe you didn't go back...
just to look for Tommy. Maybe there was someone else you were looking for.
Who?
The boy that you were before Tommy was killed.
Maybe the old house was...
the only place you could let yourself
feel your losses and...
find intimacy with something that was gone, with your...
with your dead brother and...
your memories.
There was nothing there for you, Walter.
And there was nothing in the new home, except...
duty, loneliness.
Don't worry.
I'm not gonna cry.
I know how uncomfortable that made you.
Is that how you thought I reacted, Walter, to last week?
Oh, come on, Paul.
You don't need to pretend.
I know I've been a basket case in here.
I know how that disgusted you.
Why would I feel like that?
I'm a grown man.
I'm not a six-year-old.
And... men don't cry.
Maybe they do now. But...
when I became a man, they didn't.
- Was that what your father taught you? - He didn't have to.
Where I grew up, a boy wouldn't be caught dead crying.
How about when Tommy died?
Did you cry then?
I was upset.
I knew it was my fault.
Maybe I started to tremble,
maybe I started to cry.
Yeah. Because the old man, I remember, picked me up and...
shook me, hard.
"Don't you dare", he said,
"in front of your mother.
"Don't... you... ever."
Do you think that's when you started to, maybe...
shut down a little?
You mean...
that other Walter of yours?
Maybe it's not really fair to call him "the other Walter".
The truth is, he's a part of you,
a part of you that was split off and neglected...
for a very long time.
I was doing fine without him,
all this time, wasn't I?
You did more than fine.
You accomplished great things in your life, Walter.
So, why is this split a bad thing?
Well, it can be hard to live your life,
to be genuinely fulfilled,
when a part of your,
your true self is locked away.
I think that what happened was that the other part of you,
the part that took responsibility,
that shouldered all these burdens,
that's the part that got rewarded...
early and often.
Okay.
The more you took on, the more praise you got.
Your dad must have been relieved not to have to worry about his wife.
And your mom, I can imagine...
how important you felt, just knowing that you were her lifeline.
She was tricky.
We were always walking on eggshells.
My father and I didn't even tell her I was going to Vietnam until
two or three days before I left.
And you were...
a hero in Vietnam as well.
James Donaldson was the hero.
I just did my part.
But I'm sure you were a natural leader,
and, in the chaos of the war
people must have looked to you.
And they were right to do so. You'd been trained
from an early age to step up.
- It helped me survive. - It's always helped you survive, Walter.
Even thrive.
It's how you rose to the top of your field.
Except that...
it wasn't really your field, was it?
What do you mean?
It was James's.
Have you ever wondered why you spent your working life
building the Donaldsons' family business?
Was it just another rescue that you took on, like...
the way you nursed your mother...
or...
or your wife?
See, that's the paradox:
You've been rewarded for so long for your...
grace under fire that...
you just don't think you're of any value to anybody
unless you're in that role.
Now that you've launched them, your boys
don't want to get to know you. Natalie was done with you.
I don't want to see you at the door.
The only way to feel not rejected
is to carry the weight,
and to keep carrying it, even though your mind and your body
are screaming at you to stop.
Well... I've stopped now, haven't I?
Walter Barnett, the C.E.O., he's gone.
He came to you with a sleeping problem...
and within weeks his life was in shambles.
I think we both understand
that by the time you came to see me there was no way to prevent the crash.
You knew I was headed for this?
The Walter you knew...
the hero...
he staved it off as long as humanly possible.
If he could have held it together this time...
he would have.
Well, it doesn't matter either way, does it?
- We both know what you're telling me. - What is that?
I missed it.
What did you miss?
My life.
Isn't that what you're saying?
I'm 68 years old...
and I haven't lived one moment of my life for myself.
What the hell am I supposed to do with that?
Are you going to say anything?
Just that I think that now is the time
to stop taking care of everybody else, Walter,
and start reconnecting to yourself.
Was this your plan all along?
To break me down so that I'd become dependent on you?
This would not have been my conscious choice for you
any more than it was yours.
But the defenses that held you together your whole life,
they just finally wore out.
You have two choices now.
We can try to wrap you back up.
Work on simple behavioral changes.
And you and I can both talk to your psychopharmacologist,
get you back to managing things the way you always have.
It's a valid approach.
Or?
There's a more challenging route.
If we keep going, doing the work that we do, even at this stage of your life...
I know that you can achieve a new way of being,
with Connie, with Natalie and the boys,
but most importantly with yourself.
And we can keep exploring those parts of yourself
that we've just begun to discover.
- I'm an old dog, Paul. - 70 isn't old, Walter.
It will take work...
genuine... introspection.
And you'll have to come more often.
You really wanna spend a couple more hours a week with...
- an old man? - I wouldn't offer it
if I didn't think it was worth your time...
and mine.
Why is it worth your time?
Because you've rescued so many others...
I want to be there when you go back and...
rescue yourself.
Fine.
When do we start?