Lying on the Couch (40 page)

knows? Suppose I had met her in the bookstore? Suppose we had become lovers? Maybe she's right — maybe I would have offered her more that way than as a therapist! But we'll never know — that's an experiment that can't be run.

"Carolyn, what you're asking—roll back the clock, become your lover . . , I'll be honest with you . . . you're not the only one who is tempted—that sounds wonderful to me, too. I think we could enjoy each other very much. But I'm afraid this clock," Ernest said, pointing to the unobtrusive clock in his bookcase, "can't be turned backward."

As Ernest spoke he began to stroke Carolyn's hair again. She leaned more heavily against his leg. Suddenly he withdrew his hand and said: "Please, Carolyn, go back to your chair again, and let me say something important to you."

He waited while Carol planted a quick kiss on his knee and took her seat. Let him make his little speech of protest, go through with his game. He's got to pretend to himself that he's resisting.

"Let's take a few steps back," Ernest said, "and examine what's happening here. Let me review things as I see them. You were in distress. You sought out my assistance as a mental health professional. We met and I entered into a covenant with you—a covenant in which I committed myself to help you in your struggles. As a result of the intimate nature of our meetings, you've developed loving feelings toward me. And I fear that I'm not wholly innocent here: I believe my behavior—hugging you, touching your hair—is fanning the flames. And I'm worried about that. At any rate, I cannot now suddenly change my mind, take advantage of those loving feelings of yours, and decide to pursue my own pleasure with you."

"But, Ernest, you're missing the point. What I'm saying is that being my lover is to be the best possible therapist for me. For five years Ralph and I—"

"Ralph is Ralph and I am me. Carolyn, we're out of time and we'll have to continue this discussion next session." Ernest rose to signify the end of the hour. "But allow me one last observation. I hope that in our next session you will begin to explore more ways of taking what I do have to offer rather than continue to knock up against my limits."

As Carol was getting her good-bye hug from Ernest, she said: "And a last comment from me, Ernest. You have argued—eloquently—that I not go the route of my mother, that I not abdicate

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responsibility for the course of my life. And here, today, I am enacting your counsel—I am trying to make things better for myself. I see what—and who—I need in my life and I am trying to seize the day. You told me to live in such a way as to eliminate future regrets—and that is just what I am trying to do." Ernest could find no suitable reply.

EIGHTEEN

arshal sat on his deck during a free hour and enjoyed his maple grove bonsai: nine tiny beautiful maples, their scarlet leaves beginning to burst their bud jackets. Last w^eekend he had repotted them. With the gentle prods of a chopstick, he had cleaned the soil from the roots of each tree and then positioned them in the large blue ceramic basin in traditional fashion: two unequal clusters, of six and three trees, separated by a tiny gray-pink boulder, imported from Japan. Marshal noticed that one of the trees in the larger cluster was beginning to deviate, and in a few months would cross the plane of its neighbor. He cut off a six-inch piece of copper wire, carefully wrapped it around the trunk of the wayward maple, and gently bent it back into a more vertical position. Every few days he would bend the wire a little more and then, five or six months hence, remove the wire before it scarred the trunk of the impressionable maple. Ah, he thought, if only psychotherapy were so straightforward.

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Ordinarily he would have called upon his wife's green thumb to adjust the course of the errant maple, but he and Shirley had had a blow-up over the weekend and had not spoken for three days. This latest episode was only symptomatic of an estrangement that had been growing for years.

It had all started, Marshal believed, several years ago when Shirley had enrolled in her first ikebana course. She developed a passion for the art and displayed unusual skill. Not that Marshal could judge her ability himself—he knew nothing about ikebana and made it a point to continue knowing nothing—but there was no denying the roomful of prizes and ribbons that she had won in competitions.

Shirley soon centered her entire life around ikebana. Her circle of friends consisted exclusively of fellow ikebana devotees, while she and Marshal shared less and less. To make matters worse, her eighty-year-old ikebana master, to whom she was slavishly devoted, encouraged her to begin the practice of Buddhist Vipassnia meditation, which soon placed even more demands on her time.

Three years ago Marshal had grown so concerned about the impact of ikebana and Vipassnia (about which Marshal also chose to remain uninformed) on their marriage that he pleaded with Shirley to enter graduate school in clinical psychology. He hoped that sharing the same field would bring them closer together. He hoped also that, once Shirley entered his field, she would be able to appreciate his professional artistry. Then, too, it would not be long before he could refer patients to her, and the idea of a second income was sweet.

But things had not gone as he had wished. Shirley did enter graduate school, but she didn't give up her other interests. Now her graduate studies plus the time spent in the collection and preparation of flowers or in meditation at the Zen center left virtually no time for Marshal. And then, three days ago, she had devastated him by informing him that her doctoral dissertation, in its final stages of preparation, was a study of the effectiveness of ikebana practice in the management of panic disorder.

"Perfect," he had told her. "The perfect spousal support for my candidacy for presidency of the Psychoanalytic Institute—a flake wife doing flake flower-arranging therapy!"

They spoke little. Shirley returned home only to sleep—and they slept in different rooms. Their sex life had been nonexistent for months. And now Shirley had gone on strike in the kitchen; each

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night all that greeted Marshal on the kitchen table was a new flower arrangement.

Tending to his small maple grove provided Marshal some sorely needed tranquillity. There was something deeply serene about the act of wrapping the maple with copper. Pleasant. . . yes, the bonsais were a pleasant diversion.

But not a way of life. Shirley had to magnify everything, to make flowers her raison d'etre. No sense of proportion. She had even proposed that he introduce bonsai care into his long-term therapy practice. Idiotic! Marshal clipped some new downward-heading slips of the juniper and watered all the trees. It was not a good time for him. Not only was he aggravated with Shirley; he was also disappointed with Ernest, who had precipitately terminated supervision. And then there were other inconveniences.

First, Adriana had not shown for her appointment. Nor phoned. Very strange. Very unlike her. Marshal had waited a couple of days, then phoned her, left her an appointment time on her voice mail for the same hour the following week, and requested that she notify him if the time were not convenient.

And the fee for Adriana's missed hour? Ordinarily Marshal would, without a second thought, charge her for the missed hour. But these were not ordinary circumstances, and Marshal ruminated about the fee for days. Peter had given him one thousand dollars— the fee for five sessions with Adriana. Why not simply deduct two hundred for the missed session? Would Peter even know about it? If he did, would he be affronted? Would he feel that Marshal was being disloyal or petty? Or ungrateful for Peter's largess—the bicycle helmet company investment, the memorial lecture series, the Rolex?

On the other hand, it might be better to handle the fee just as he would with any other patient. Peter would respect his professional consistency and adherence to his own standards. In fact, had not Peter chided him more than once for not placing a proper value on his services?

In the end Marshal decided to bill Adriana for the missed session. It was the right thing to do—he was certain of it. But, then, why was he so fretful? Why could he not shake the dark, lingering feeling that he would live to regret this decision?

This annoying attack of ruminitis was a minor dusky cloud compared to the storm that was breaking around Marshal's role in the

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institute's expulsion of Seth Pande. Art Bookert, an eminent humor columnist, had picked up the recall story in the San Francisco Chronicle (Move Over, Ford, Toyota, Chevrolet; Now Psychiatrists Recall Product) and had written a satirical piece predicting that therapists would soon be opening offices in auto repair shops where, in marathon sessions, they would treat clients waiting for automobile service. In their new partnership, the column said, therapists and auto repair shop operators would offer a joint, five-year warranty guaranteeing brakes and impulse control, ignition systems and assertiveness, automatic lubrication and self-soothing mechanisms, steering and mood control, muffler/exhaust systems and gastrointestinal tranquillity, and main shaft integrity and priapic potency.

Bookert's column (Henry Ford and Sigmund Freud Agree on Merger) appeared prominently in both The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune. The besieged institute president, John Weldon, immediately washed his hands of the business by referring all inquiries to Marshal, the executor of the recall plan. Psychoanalyst colleagues throughout the country, who were not amused, phoned Marshal all week. In a single day the presidents of four psychoanalytic institutes—New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston—had phoned to express their alarm.

Marshal had done his best to soothe them with the news that only one patient had responded, that he, himself, was treating this patient in a highly effective course of brief therapy, and that the recall notice would not be reprinted.

But no such soothing was possible when a highly irritated Dr. Sunderland, the president of the International Psychoanalytic Association, called with the disturbing news that Shelly Merriman had repeatedly, and aggressively, faxed and phoned his office claiming that he had been damaged by Dr. Pande's errant methods and would soon institute legal action if his demands for financial settlement were not met immediately.

"What the hell's going on out there?" Dr. Sunderland had asked. "The entire country is laughing at us. Again! Patients are bringing in copies of Listening to Prozac to their analytic hours; drug companies, neurochemists, behaviorists, and critics like Jeffrey Masson are pickaxing our foundations; recovered-memory suits and implanted-memory countersuits are nipping at our heels. Goddammit, this is not—NOT, I repeat—what the analytic enterprise needs! By whose authority did you place that recall notice?"

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Marshal calmly explained the nature of the emergency facing the institute and the necessity for the recall action.

"I'm chagrined that you haven't been informed of these events, Dr. Sunderland," Marshal added. "Once you are fully appraised of everything, I am certain you'll appreciate the logic behind our actions. Furthermore, we followed proper protocol. The day following our institute vote, I checked this all out with Ray Wellington, the secretary of the International."

"Wellington? I've just learned that he's moving his office and his entire clinic to California! Now I'm beginning to understand the logic. Southern California sprouts-and-spinach logic. This whole catastrophe has been scripted in Hollywood."

"San Francisco, Dr. Sunderland, is in Northern California, four hundred miles due north of Hollywood—about the same distance as between Boston and Washington. We are not in Southern California. Trust me when I say there is northern logic behind our actions."

"Northern logic.^ Shit! Why didn't your northern logic inform you that Dr. Pande is seventy-four years old and dying of lung cancer? I know he's a pain in the ass, but how much longer can he last? One year? Two years? You are the conservator of the psychoanalytic seedbed: a little more patience, a little more continence, and nature would have weeded your garden.

"All right, enough of this!" Dr. Sunderland continued. "What's done is done. The future is pressing in on me: I have an immediate decision to make and I want your input. This Shelly Merriman is threatening suit. He's willing to back off for a seventy-thousand settlement. Our attorneys believe he'd settle for half of that. We fear precedent setting, of course. What's your reading on this? How serious is the threat? Will seventy or even thirty-five thousand dollars make Mr. Merriman go away? And stay away? Will that money buy silence? How discreet is your Mr. Merriman?"

Marshal responded quickly, in his most self-assured voice: "My advice is to do nothing, Dr. Sunderland. Leave this to me. You may count on me to handle the matter effectively and efficiently. The threat is empty, I assure you. The man is bluffing. And as for money buying his silence and discretion? No chance of that. Forget it— there is significant sociopathy. We must take a firm stance."

It was only later that afternoon as he escorted Shelly into his office that Marshal realized he had made an egregious error: for the first time in his professional career, he had violated patient-therapist

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confidentiality. He had panicked while on the phone with Sunderland. How could he have made that comment about sociopathy? He should have told Sunderland nothing about Mr. Merriman.

He was beside himself. If Mr. Merriman found out, he would either sue him for malpractice or, being told of the International's uncertainty, escalate his demands for financial settlement. The situation was spiraling into full catastrophe.

There was only one sensible course, Marshal decided: get on the phone to Dr. Sunderland as soon as possible and acknowledge his indiscretion—a momentary, understandable lapse emanating from a conflict of loyalty: wishing to serve both the International and his patient. Surely Dr. Sunderland would understand and would be honor-bound to repeat his remarks about his patient to no one. Of course, none of this was going to repair his reputation in National or International Analytic circles, but Marshal could no longer concern himself with his image or his political future: his goal now was damage control.

Shelly entered the office and lingered at the Musler sculpture longer than usual.

"Love that orange globe, Doc. You ever want to sell it, let me know. I'd feel it up, get cool and soothed before every big game." Shelly plopped into his seat, "Well, Doc, I'm doing a little better. Your interpretations have helped. Better tennis for sure; I've cut loose like crazy on my second serve. Willy and I have been practicing three, four hours a day, and I think we've got a good shot at winning the La Costa tourney next week. So that part's good. But still got a ways to go on the other stuff. That's what I want to work on."