By Blood (8 page)

Oh, my poor patient! What a force of anger thundered in her steps as she passed my door! I could hear her breathing—steaming with the tears she would not shed—coming toward me then receding as she circled before the elevator. It was all I could do to keep myself still. I wanted to throw my arms about her, comfort her, provide her with shelter. My avatar, doing battle for me. And who could help her? That damned therapist! That Dora Schussler, analyst or psychologist or therapist—whatever she wished to call herself—and again I wondered, Was she up to the noble task of guiding my dear patient?

Or would there be a task at all? The seven days seemed twenty. I could do nothing but worry about the patient’s return—I feared once more that she might break off the therapy, abandoning me to my loneliness in that terrible cottage by the sea. As the days went by, I kept hearing the hot anger in the patient’s breath, which somehow mingled in my mind with the shushing of steam from the office radiators, the hiss of tires on the wet pavement below, the whisper of rain at the windows, the rush of Dr. Schussler’s machine—all around me the sounds of the patient’s broken heart.

Wednesday came at last. The doctor smoked. The sound machine went silent. Again came the slish of stockings, the exhalations of smoke, the window raised and lowered as if a semaphore telling the patient: Come. Come now. Once more the church bell played the carillon. Then the strokes of the hours: each seeming to say, no, no, no.

The minutes passed: one, two, five, fifteen. Would she never come?

Then: ding, elevator door, thud of steps, rattle of the door handle, and—slam!—the sound I had so resented but six weeks ago (could it be only that recently?), now so thrilling.

She burbled on about work—but no matter. She was here. Stochastic models and secular trends, Bayesian logic and probabilities, time horizons and intermediate “tops”—fine, anything she wished to discuss, I don’t need to understand (I sternly told myself), only let me hear the sound of her voice. As the talk of work went on, the doctor tried all her therapist’s tricks to return to the land of “last time”—as we were saying; we really should discuss; do you want to talk about?—yapping all about her client like a sheepdog. Finally she herded her charge into the desired fold, there to find the patient’s resistance as fierce as ever.

What’s there to talk about? Father hates Catholics! So he will always hate me. I’m marked—marked indelibly as something he cannot love.

Let us try to look at this another way, said the doctor. Perhaps he’ll love you all the more for “rescuing” you.

Huh! the patient replied. Absurd. How many times do I have to tell you the story about the “papist cultists,” or my friend Mary?

But—

But nothing. I’m certain about this. I might as well have a tattoo of the pope on my forehead!

The conversation went on in this vein, but the therapist could not budge the patient from her syllogism: Father hates Catholics; I’m branded as Catholic; therefore Father hates me. She replayed it throughout the hour, “stuck in a single organization of events,” as several of my own mental health professionals had put it when confronted with my own stubbornness. Seeing it from the other side (from behind the wall, as an observer), I understood the obsessive quality of such an attachment, something comforting in holding on to a smug, all-seeing knowledge, even a sad or hurtful one; something that let the patient control the precise amount of pain she administered to herself—playing her own executioner, as it were.

So the session wore itself away, as did the next, which began with the repeated trope, the therapist attempting to challenge it, the patient resisting, and so on, until the therapist gave in. She let the patient turn to other subjects, in this case her girlfriend, Charlotte, their arguments, the complicated social alignments among their friends. And another hour was gone.

The following week reprised the pattern: the broken-record recitation of her father’s hatred for her, then a jump to more quotidian matters.

Finally nudged away from this recital at one session, the patient turned to economics. The great difficulties our country was facing. Rising prices at the same time as stagnating business activity. A combination so new it required the creation of a new word: stagflation. She wondered how she could adapt her models to this “anomalous macro situation” (if I am transcribing all this correctly). She worried about the new Japanese imports—the word “econobox” had just entered the lexicon with the arrival of the first Datsuns; about high oil prices, lines at gas stations, the fear, the sense of the economic world as we know it coming to an end.

And what do you feel about all this? asked the therapist.

Come on. What do you think I feel?

Tell me.

Despair!

Do you think this has anything to do with what you learned from your mother?

A snort. Silence. Another run for the door.

Still she returned. Week after week she made her way to Room 804, the lodging of her psyche, where she successfully avoided any surgery to remove the knife she herself had thrust into her heart. At the next session she instead turned back to her problems with Charlotte, who kept calling the patient “a bourgeois” each time she tried to talk about her work, its difficulties, its challenging appeal.

(At least say “bourgeoise,” I thought, the female form, hating this Charlotte all the more by the second, if only for her ignorance of foreign languages.)

Do you ask yourself, interjected the therapist, why you stay with someone who so clearly does not accept who you are?

Yes, yes, the patient said with sighs. All the time.

But yet you stay.

Yes. I stay.

So I must bring this up again. Do you see how this mirrors your relationship with your mother? Did you not say that you brought up the subject of adoption—wanted to hurt her—because she will not accept who you are?

Right, said the patient. I did. Mother.

Suddenly an ambulance came wailing, its cry echoing between the buildings on our narrow street. Patient and doctor waited while the siren quavered away toward a distant corner.

Wonder what’s going on out there, said the patient.

Hmm, said the doctor. And in here?

You mean this room?

No. (A rustle of fabric.) Here.

Ah! The patient laughed. You mean inside.

She paused.

Inside me.

Once again she fell silent.

Horns blared in the street. The last seconds drifted away.

Until next week, the doctor softly said.

But next week, the patient was late yet again. And as before, the minutes crept by, my anxiety rising all the while. Silence reigned in Dr. Schussler’s office. She had turned off the sound machine, then sat, waiting for her patient.

At exactly twenty past eleven (according to my watch), Dr. Schussler lit a cigarette and turned on the sound machine. What was she doing—giving up on the patient? Was she just sitting there with her Viceroys, enjoying a smoke, glad to have a free hour on the day before Thanksgiving?

For we had arrived at that time of year, the last week in November, and I longed to hear my dear patient’s voice one more time before the assault of the holiday. She had mentioned, buried amidst the evasions of the past weeks, that she was doing something she never did: going home for Thanksgiving. Surely, then, she would need fortification from her therapist before facing the question of her origins—for how could she not raise the issue, there, in the presence of her adoptive family, of her father, the man at the head of the table with the carving knives who will think “Catholic!” (she believes) each time he looks at her?

Why did she not come? And what time signature was Dr. Schussler following that twenty-after should signal the end of the patient’s allotted period? Would she be turned away if she should come now, or in ten minutes? I dared not leave the office for fear that Dr. Schussler might do the same at any moment, and I had not given up entirely my hopes for the patient’s arrival. So I was forced into a simmering uncertainty and sat immobile in my chair, afraid for myself and for the patient, for I felt we should not be cast alone into the madness of the holidays.

I am not certain what came upon me, but I was suddenly racked by what seemed to be hiccups, silent hiccups; tears welled up in my eyes; I began to shake all over, as if in the grip of a seizure. I panicked—was I ill? I looked at my wet hands and could barely comprehend why they should be so—such was my long divorce from the experience of crying. My nervous condition had always draped the world in too bleak a bunting to allow for tears, since true sorrow is impossible without the hope of happiness. And here I was—crying! I was so glad at the return of this simple human expression that my eyes immediately dried and my sobs vanished; and then I was desperate for the tears to come again!

In the midst of such comedy—I’m happy I’m crying! Now I’m miserable that I’m too happy to cry!—there came a knock on the therapist’s door. Then another, and a series of impatient raps. I could not hear the doctor’s response—the sound machine still played—but several seconds later I heard the door open. There was a discussion at the door—the machine blew fog through their voices—and all I could distinguish was something about drinks and a party. Were they talking about an office party? Was that the patient’s excuse for coming late?

I was not to know, for that horrid Dora Schussler, forgetting her client’s wishes, let the sound machine play on after she had closed the door behind the patient. All I yearned to hear was reduced to sibilance and dentalization, the tongue and teeth of the therapist piercing the whir, and the occasional bass hum, like the sound of a television heard late at night through a hotel wall. And beyond all that was my dear patient! Her needs, her fears, her emotional preparations for the family visit—all was smothered by the machine.

When suddenly came silence.

Then the therapist’s Germanic voice:

We must end early, she said.

Yes, I remember, said the patient.

Then more silence; then a faint sound of breathing, growing stronger; then:

Oh, why did I waste this session! the patient cried out. I needed to figure out what I’m doing. What I’ll say, if I’ll say anything. Oh, God! I wasted it.

She said no more, only kept breathing deeply without coming to tears.

I am so sorry, dear, said the doctor. We have to stop now.

Yes.

You have the emergency number. If you are overwhelmed, please call. You know you can always call.

I know.

I will be here for you, said Dr. Schussler.

The therapist stood, then the patient.

Oh, God! exclaimed the patient. Why did I blow this session? What am I going to do?

There was a rustle of fabric.

Please don’t try to hug me, said the patient. I don’t want to be touched right now.

Again the patient circled the vestibule, awaiting the elevator. As before, her breathing came toward me and faded away—toward me and away—her breaths still laden with unshed tears. Oh, how I longed to stroke those sorrowing shoulders that did not wish to be touched; how I wished she could find the way to her tears.

Suddenly the impulse to follow her took hold of me. It was as if my flock of crows—my large, fat, shiny crows, the sort that look like small vultures—as if they had flapped up from a dense tree to cut crazy angles around me and shout,
Her! Her! Her!
(So did the desire present itself to my imagination, which, as I have said, was morbid and afflicted at the time.)
Her! Her! Her!
All the many psychologists, counselors, therapists, and psychiatrists who had plied their trades upon me would have trembled to learn what had become of their charge, the ruinous uses to which their work had been put.
Her. Her. Her
.

The elevator was a conspirator; still it did not arrive; still the patient paced the hall; there was yet time for damage to be done.

I struggled against the impulse. I thought of the day I had first entered the building, the flash of white, the lobby as immaculate as my desire for normalcy; the cherubs who floated above, their circling eyes watching over all the inhabitants; the sheets of marble lining the corridor in procession; beyond all, the cool inner breath of the place, which sighed,
It will be all right here
.

And at last I was freed; finally came the twin whispers that signaled my release: the shush of the elevator doors closing, the suspirations of the sound machine come on once again.

The horrors of the holiday lay before me. Turkeys, Pilgrims with muskets, smiling Indians, cornucopia, families at table—images taped to every shop window; disgustingly cheerful music spilling from every door. I found no relief at the office. The management had installed some sort of loudspeaker through which treacled an endless round of holiday songs—
chestnuts roasting, no place like home, to grandmother’s house, laughing all the way
. The lobby was empty, yet the music played on, and the black eyes of the elevators’ cherubim circled without cease, while empty cars rode up and down, up and down (the call buttons pressed by whom?), trolling for passengers who did not exist. Even a sane man, I thought, would consider suicide in such a situation, if only for the pleasure of never again hearing “Jingle Bells.”

Thanksgiving Day itself dawned gray and cold. The downtown district was deserted but for the desperate men who haunted the streets wrapped in dirty blankets. The next day came up sunny, and shoppers inundated Union Square. I joined them and let myself be jostled as I mingled among them, finding myself pulled in the currents toward Macy’s or Nieman Marcus, Bullock’s or the Hound, Joseph Magnin or I. Magnin; offered foulard ties and perfumes in purple bottles, chiffon scarves and fine leather briefcases, tennis sweaters and felt hats with narrow brims, each with a small feather in the band; even fine satin lingerie for “my lady.”

I left the stores and sat down upon a bench in the corner of the square. On the bench perpendicular sat a young woman and a lovely doe-eyed boy of about twelve—the girl’s brother, it seemed. He had crow-black hair and smooth, coffee-colored skin—I imagined the family had come from somewhere in Asia, perhaps Indonesia. He was slim and angular, with impossibly long fingers for a boy his age. He fidgeted and glanced about as the girl took out her makeup case and began to apply a deep-purple tint to her lips. She had dyed her hair blond, which altogether ruined her prettiness, I thought, as the shade she had chosen—a brassy yellow—clashed with the warm brown of her skin. Nonetheless, I tipped my hat to her, and she responded with a dazzling smile. The boy ignored me.

When the girl was done with her makeup, they rose and started off across the square. I soon found myself rising as well and ambling off in their direction. I had no intention of doing so—I was completely unaware of my actions for the first ten minutes—but I soon realized I was following the girl and boy in and out of the department stores that surrounded the square.

I tried to stop myself. I had pledged not to do any such thing. But (said the voice I could not still) that pledge had been made in the darkness, and here we were in sparkling daylight, amidst a crowd, so what harm could be done? Besides (the voice continued), I had already followed many shoppers in and out of the stores, and the girl and boy were but two more. And the pair seemed to be retracing the very route I had taken—Macy’s, Bullock’s, Joseph Magnin, I. Magnin—such repetition making the act appear all the more familiar and normal. So it was that I trotted on behind them, as they examined a sequined sweater, a pink silk scarf, a pair of men’s pigskin gloves in a deep cognac (very expensive), a black leather briefcase, a woman’s purse in red suede, and ties of various description. Now and then, the young woman allowed herself to be sprayed with perfume, so that the scent that trailed behind her was like that of an overgrown garden wherein every flower had once bloomed and was now rotted.

It was at the I. Magnin glove counter—the boy was trying on a pair in brown suede—that the woman finally wheeled and turned to me:

What in the world are you doing? she demanded. Are you following us? I will call a guard!

(What could I say? Could I tell her mine was a harmless compulsion? Who would believe me by now?)

Forgive me, I replied. I was simply overcome by your beauty.

Her purple lips firmed with indecision, then relaxed, lay flat, and suddenly swept up into a smile. She touched her brassy curls; blushed; melted.

Why, thank you, she said.

The boy rolled his velvet eyes.

How foolish women are, I thought. This one was like all the rest. Now she would let me follow her anywhere.