Lights On, Rats Out

by Cree LeFavour

  How enchanting would it be if falling in love fixed me, saved me, and solved my problems. More than ever it’s on me to decide what I want—not what I think I should choose out of duty, guilt, need, or obligation; not what I should do because Dr. Kohl wants me to; and certainly not what I end up with by not actively choosing because no choice is a choice. This is a lesson I’ve finally learned. No. I’ve confessed and analyzed and suffered and endured to get to a point where I can be with myself at least most of the time without flirting with tasty oblivion.

  But I love to fall in and I’m pretty good at it. To lose myself because I’m distracted or led in another direction—salmon, anyone?—would be the worst possible outcome. I think of this when I’m having what must be too much fun getting drunk with him at our favorite Mexican restaurant, going through baskets of chips and salsa, laughing too loud as we tell each stories for the first time.

  The drinking is new or renewed since college. As a freshman I drank Popov vodka with my roommate Heather, and spring of junior year passed most quickly with me and my friend Karen drinking pint after pint as we dissected our postadolescent disappointment. Taking on the abandon of drunkenness again with Dwight after several years of hardly drinking risks blurring my cautious, carefully guarded self-consciousness.

  The salt-rimmed margaritas on the rocks collide ever so predictably with Dr. Kohl’s sober credo—he calls it “ominous.”

  “You have a problem with alcohol,” he says.

  “I don’t have a problem with alcohol,” I shoot back.

  When I continue drinking he says, “You’re going to be getting yourself a new psychiatrist. 1. It’s malpractice. 2. It’s harmful to you.”

  I tell him I’ll stop but I don’t. Drinking carries a hedonistic appeal Dwight identifies with my exotic childhood and what he frames as my badass, chain-smoking persona. There’s an unhinged quality about me he finds exciting and dangerous. I’m taking it for a spin.

  The treachery of commingling appears risky but inevitable. On 11/11/92 I’m five minutes late for my appointment with Dr. Kohl. It’s precisely one year since I returned to his office after spending two months in the hospital. Over the course of three years of therapy I was rarely late, but since meeting Dwight I’m almost never on time.

  “Why are you late?”

  “No reason, I’m just late.”

  “Are you annoyed?” (At the word itself?)

  “That you even exist, yes. At the past years of therapy, yes. My attachment to this place, how not of importance it’s been. I don’t know why I come now.”

  “Now that you have your favorite buddy,” he says coolly, meaning Dwight. He’s referencing my mother in the cruelest possible way.

  I cringe at the idea that I’m playing cohort to or in any way taking care of Dwight, that I’ve become Dwight’s desire, his toy. But I don’t say that.

  “Maybe,” is all I can come up with.

  “You have trouble experiencing attachment to more than one person at a time,” he says.

  “Yes.”

  “Like splitting me off.”

  “Yes.”

  “You lose,” he says.

  At the end of the session Dr. Kohl raises his voice: he’s as angry as I’ve ever seen him.

  “The opportunity to continue growing is being undermined by identifying yourself with Dwight. I warned you about doing that here.”

  I’m not listening.

  Instead the absolutes of denial and abandon mix edges. Unruly as I feel, bathed in the endorphin-rich blood of being in love, I embrace the novelty of a coupled life. We spend Christmas together with my family at our “camp,” a funky summer retreat in the Adirondacks that’s been in the family for a hundred years or so. It sits right on the edge of Lake Pleasant, where the loons wake me at dawn, their unearthly cry coming not so much from the lake as from the heavy fog that covers it.

  We arrive late and my aunt Sid, coming from Camden, Maine, has brought lobsters. The family—seven at table—have demolished theirs. The remains form a massive redolent heap of crushed claws, tails, legs, pinchers, and vertebrae. Our live lobsters, still blue-gray, are on hold. We join the table, my “new boyfriend” the focus of all eyes. Soon the dappled red crustaceans arrive whole, one to a plate, at which point I realize Dwight, who grew up in Florida, has no idea how to eat lobster. I almost step in to save him the humiliation of trying, but before I can he readily cops to his ignorance and instantly has the whole table in his pocket. Such a charmer.

  On Christmas Eve we have furtive sex behind the thin walls separating the second-story bedrooms at camp, afterward exchanging gifts as I break every rule of the house by smoking in bed. I give him a Hamilton watch. It matters to me that he too keeps time.

  The next weekend I leave the roommates I’ve resented for so long and move in with Dwight. It’s 01/01/93. There’s not much charm in the North End neighborhood where we live, but the place has plenty of windows and a screened-in porch where I contentedly smoke and read my days away. The apartment might be anywhere for all it matters to me. We inherit a long couch distinguished by its emerald-green cushions and ridiculous skirt. It’s better than no couch. Empty wine bottles roll across the living room without so much as a nudge. The dressers and bed want half-inch shims.

  From the start we’d shared toothbrushes as casually as we joined our debts and assets. Alphabetizing our books side-by-side on the shelf—Austen scandalized to find herself next to Auster; Bröntes confused by Burroughs; Cather sympathetic to Carver; Dickens alienated from DeLillo; Eliot failing to comprehend Ellison; Flaubert positioned in pained admiration of Faulkner; Gorky confused by Godot; Herodotus flummoxed by Hemingway; Ibsen intimidated by Ishiguro; James looking down on Jones; Kipling inspired by King; Lawrence cold to Lowry; Mann irritated by Mailer; Nabokov misreading Naipaul; Orwell pissing on Oates; Poe flummoxed by Pynchon; Rabelais stunned by Rushdie; Shakespeare gazing admiringly on Shakespeare; Tolstoy sympathetic to Thoreau; Updike in thrall over Updike; Verne peering cautiously at Vonnegut; Wharton scooting away from Welsh; and Zola happy to simply be Zola on a shelf that isn’t big enough for the rest of them.

  I clinch this broad, risky engagement of styles and types—and the prettiest, most sparkly, magic ring I’ve ever seen. I’ve fitted my new, coupled life into a better fiction: 6/11/94. That’s the date, of course, we’re to be married.

  CHAPTER 47

  A Bigger, Wilder End

  “There’s a paradox about love that sells a part of you out.”

  It’s dark in Vermont. Winter cold. Dr. Kohl’s words hit a tender spot in spite of the layers I’m wearing. He’s warned me from the beginning, cautioning me to take the relationship with Dwight slowly. But I’m engaged and living with Dwight. So much has changed, leaving too much to go back on if I choose to take his advice now. Am I supposed to make a choice between myself, Dr. Kohl, and Dwight? It feels like it—I have no idea how to hold on to all three.

  As the haze of my infatuation fades to normal I’m feeling depersonalized again; split in two, with one part of me observing and the other participating. Framed in more positive terms, this might be seen as my conscious remove coming fully to life, once again.

  “I’d like to work on not disappearing,” I say in February.

  “That’s what you’ve been doing here.”

  “Disappearing from you?”

  “Yes …”

  I’m also splitting during sex, something I didn’t use to have a name for but always did. That means it “feels like I’m in my mind, talking to myself inside my head. I go further away during orgasms; sense of lack of control, like with the 11s, a force.”

  He’s still gnawing on sexual abuse.

  “Abused children start off as objects,” he says. If I’m separate from my body during sex, if I’m splitting body and mind, then I’m missing out on one of the most important elements of the act. Freud observed, “Sexual love is undoubtedly one of the chief things in life, and the union of mental and bodily satis
faction in the enjoyment of love is one of its culminating peaks.” But I’m so used to going outside myself, I can’t imagine not doing it during sex, just as I can’t image not doing it when I go running. Isn’t this simply maintaining a critical perspective?

  That day he writes a note to himself: “Maybe the splitting has to do with something other than physical-sexual abuse. Her parents were interested in her saying what pleased them rather than how she really felt. Sex is a giving relationship: splits off there also: in giving to someone else what they want.” He then adds, “Corollary: if she asks for what she wants, the ‘giver’ will split off and depersonalize as they give to her so she avoids that at all cost.” This analysis has a certain ring of truth to it and yet I’m not convinced it matters, or if it matters I’m not sure I can change. Where my brain goes during sex isn’t a problem I need to solve.

  He notes in my chart the Zoloft has helped the depression but “Give it a chance for refractoriness, the depth of depression.” In other words, he’s not convinced by this sudden onset of happiness and now we’re finally talking about it.

  In April I tell him I’ve been really depressed. I’ve been with Dwight for six months.

  “Thoughts of burning, suicide?” he asks.

  “No,” and then I pause. “Thoughts,” I say, but “I have no interest. Life is good but I feel very shitty.” I’ve been accepted at NYU and I’m “in love.” Still. I can’t hold on to joy—sometimes I’m not even sure I know what it feels like. Dwight has noticed I’m not myself, which is refreshing since most people don’t notice, or if they do they don’t say anything.

  “I’ve been stuck in this my whole life. A few good days but the inevitable starts creeping back in.” I’m worried that my withdrawal, anxiety, and sense of dislocation will make me a failure in grad school and infect, possibly spoil, my relationship with Dwight.

  “I would be wary of stopping therapy and getting married in proximity. I’ve warned you about this before and I’m saying it again.” He’s serious but what can I do? I’ve reduced my appointments to once a week, a move he calls “leaving early,” a way of “acting out” to protect myself from the pain of actually leaving him. He’s trying to tell me attaching to Dwight as I have been doing is another way of ducking the real good-bye.

  I’ve shifted my love, taking along as much of Dr. Kohl as I can contain. Maybe it’s enough; maybe not.

  As the sessions wind down, the impending June separation gets hold of me. Dwight and I are leaving for New York, and my treatment will be over soon. I arrange a visit.

  “To bring Dwight in helps me take you with me.” I’m working on keeping the two of them alive and present in my mind at the same time. On good days I tell Dr. Kohl, “I see the price I pay for checking out—both in therapy and with Dwight. I feel better,” I say, “far less suicidal, happier, more directed. I’m not lonely.” I’m not sure if I’m reassuring him or myself.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Leaving 112 Church Street and all the weight it carries holds an unquestionable logic. My will and resilience can surely stick long enough to get me out of Vermont, long enough for me to become someone I don’t already know.

  Up next: a Ph.D. in New York City for me and a big-city journalism career for Dwight. We’re young and innocent. It’ll all work out. If it’s not a perfect future because we have no plan, it’s as close as I’ve ever come to one. There’s no money. He doesn’t have a job waiting in New York other than freelancing and my father isn’t paying for grad school. We’ll live on student loans and sign for a shiny new credit card. Our shared optimism and the security of mutual solidarity go far. The way Dwight and I fit together is enough to breed reckless happiness and varied, unexpected successes.

  Just as Dr. Kohl warned, I’m blissfully forgetting where this new infatuation begins and I end. Freud knew that “at the height of being in love the boundary between ego and object threatens to melt away.” I’ve done this before—most notably beginning on June 26, 1990, when I had my first session with Dr. Kohl. Free reservoirs of once self-directed energy go to Dwight and to the existence we’re constructing with implausibly uncomplicated enthusiasm. I’ve shed my good-girl restraint—the enclosed philosophy of a cautious, controlled existence I’ve breathed in at 112 Church Street all these years, along with layers of the behavior designed to hold emotional chaos at bay. I feel caution fray even as this Dionysian release explicitly rejects big chunks of the work I’ve done with Dr. Kohl. I don’t care. It’s time to go.

  I know holding a too-permeable consciousness apart doesn’t come easily if at all. What once was Dr. Kohl’s now belongs to Dwight. But being alone remains my favorite bad habit. By reading, writing, and spending time in a quiet room I can usually find my center.

  On June 17 I can’t entirely grasp I have just two sessions left.

  “It’s purely intellectual that I’m leaving. I’m not feeling it very much.”

  “You’re splitting from the pain of separation from here and your parents.” Yes, setting the painful part on a shelf to gather cobwebs while I go on with my life. I’m still really good at doing that.

  “I want to be able to miss you.” And I do. If I don’t miss Dr. Kohl when I go I might not even know I’ve lost what I wanted to keep.

  “You’ve worked really hard here,” he says.

  “I don’t know if I had a choice.”

  “That’s harder,” he says with that sober look of his. He’s showing a generosity I’ve come to rely on. The compliment—for that’s what it is—feels so good it holds me to him for days.

  June 21, 1993: my final session. He’s found me a shrink in New York City and calls her during the session to “pass the baton.” I don’t speak to her but he tells her about me briefly and gives her my name. I don’t plan on going to see her—at least not right away. But I have her number if I need her. He, as usual, has taken care of me.

  After the phone call he offers me back the collage I made at the height of my pre-hospital crisis. It’s papier-mâché, formed with strips of wedding announcements from the New York Times—smiling, perfect couples’ faces and names glued together with flour and water. I’ve stuck a rotted, dried-out cherry with a long-dead worm emerging from its center on the surface next to a spaghetti stick figure of a baby. Abortion: 11/11/88. The whole is decorated with nature’s ephemera—bits of flowers, lichen, moss, wood. It’s no masterpiece. I’ve left it with him all this time because when I made it I was so afraid of dying. Giving it to him kept me safe. I wanted to believe I could never kill myself as long as he possessed the collage, so long as he kept that part of me with him.

  “I think of the collage as having good parts from here, not cast-off parts of my mutilated self. It has this place in it. It’s been well taken care of.” I’m choking on the loss, fat tears flowing.

  “You’d given up on that, you allowed it to happen here.”

  But, I say, “I won’t have you to take care of me anymore.” And with that childish plea the fear takes hold. I ask him to keep the collage—I’m afraid of the practically fluorescent glow of dangerous magic it still exudes.

  The clock winds down—just as it has done for three years, ever since the first time the two of us sat together in this serene space whittling away at misshapen pieces. I want to stay forever. As always, it’s never enough. But the next patient waits just outside the door and my 55 minutes are played. Rising from the brown leather chair for the last time to pick up my bag and the sweater heaped on top of it proceeds as in a dream. If I were fully present I would never leave—this is the only way out.

  In the waiting room his receptionist is busy finishing making a copy of my file. Dr. Kohl offered it to me so I said, “Yes.”

  “You might want this someday,” was all he said as he handed it to me. I feel that I’m taking a thing I don’t have a right to. It’s a familiar transaction by now—he’s given me something I don’t yet know I want or need.

  I anticipate that at this moment of all others I m
ight finally get the embrace I’ve yearned for. He doesn’t offer it and I lack the courage to ask for it. I wish I were in command of myself enough at least to lean in and plant a deeply affectionate peck on his cheek. We shake hands for the second time ever. Maybe it’s just as well.

  The anticipatory pleasure of returning to 112 Church Street falls away, his face and voice forfeited with a cool shake of the hand. It’s been everything to me. The loss seems impossible. I wander blind down College Street toward Lake Champlain. Unable to find a place to fit my grief, I gravitate toward the water. As I approach, its liquid brilliance reminds me of the February day just four months ago when the solidified gray-blue ice offered itself up, tempting me with its immaculate surface, formed in subzero temperatures without a hint of wind to spoil the thickening crust. I skated that day for six hours nonstop, moving over the frozen water without pause, Roxy Music blasting in my ears as I ventured with careless abandon toward the center of the lake, where the ice grew thinner. I sucked on the fear while reveling in the pleasure of physical exhaustion, a confusion of risky joy and wonder I could practically taste. I’d stolen bliss from the lake that day and it’s mine again now, the ecstasy emerging from a pulpy reserve of memory to quiet my overbusy mind.

  If I’m lucky and find a little grace I know there might be a bigger, wilder end not even I can guess at. The emotional gloaming that has long defined me refuses to release the day. I can live with it.

  Rather than holding on to Dr. Kohl I stash his words: “As long as I’m alive we will know each other.” The promise is his final gift to me. The words steady me, clinching a precarious belief in the present. I’m learning to breathe again, this time while wearing and almost liking, the feel of my own disfigured skin.

  Acknowledgments

  This book would not exist but for the efforts of the four most remarkable women I know. Different as they are, each one of them made Lights On, Rats Out possible; the absence of one would have been the loss of all. Elizabeth Gilbert’s encouragement, friendship, and faith in my abilities enabled me to begin and continue writing. Sarah Chalfant of the Wylie Agency effortlessly grasped my purpose in the early stages, believed in the book, and guided me to shape the manuscript precisely in the right ways. I also have Sarah to thank for shepherding it into the gifted hands of Elisabeth Schmitz at Grove Atlantic. Elisabeth’s tireless dedication to carving out the book’s most viable form through many drafts made Lights On, Rats Out what it is today. Finally, my current psychiatrist’s remarkable intelligence, humor, and perspective kept me going day after day. Her grasp of the book’s most essential objective enriched every page.