“Yes. Dr. Abbot—one of my profs knew of you.”
“Well, I know of him. Nice man. Good lecturer.”
Then she stopped. The intro patter was over. To my dismay, she sat in silence.
Finally, I said, “Uh, I’m not sure if you want to ask me questions.”
“I’m interested in wherever you want to take our discussion, so no, I don’t have any questions, at least for now.”
My face must have transmitted a certain bewilderment, because I was feeling unsettled, expecting her to lead. She looked—aside from very attractive, with smooth features, a steady smile and clear blue eyes that held mine unwaveringly—perfectly content with the circumstances of our meeting.
I quickly perused her office: neat as my restaurant, no vagrant piles of paper anywhere, three soft, Navaho-white armchairs, a desk which was clean except for a state-of-the art phone, and in one corner, a small oak table with a computer. She avoided sitting behind the desk, but rather sat next to me in one of the comfortable easy chairs.
“Well,” I said, finally getting it, that the session’s topics would be up to me, “I’m in my early twenties, and I’m trying to be a writer. Like all folks in the wider entertainment field, that means I’m working as a waiter.”
“Heady ambition,” Dr. Agutter said, “but I see you are realistic as well.”
“That’s it. My mother has the attitude that at my age, I have to support myself. I don’t mean she’d abandon me, but her financial help was cut way back when I finished college.”
“Okay, so she cares about you and wants you to be on your own financially.”
“It’s complicated. Sure, she cares about me. Too much. I need distance from her.”
“Tell me about that.”
“She monitors me. My father and she broke up when I was pretty young, and ever since I’ve been like her man of the house. Only, a couple of months ago, she got married. A phony dude she can control. The only positive is that she isn’t on my case quite as much.”
“A lot of info in one long gush. Must be important to you.”
“Sure. I never really had an adolescent social life. Mother was my social companion, like it or not.”
“I take it for you it was not.”
“Well, yes. Who wants a mother instead of a girlfriend?”
“Never had a girlfriend.”
“I have one now. I guess you could say I’m rebelling. Mother doesn’t like her, and I say screw you!”
“Too bad if she doesn’t like her. You do.”
“That’s it. I do. Her name is Abby. She’s a writer, too. And she’s smart and pretty.”
“But Mother doesn’t like her.”
“Thinks she’s beneath us, that her family is crude or something.”
“And that’s not important to you.”
“She’s bright as hell, and I sure don’t give a damn about how troubled her family was. Of course, she has her residue of hurt from her child years. Just like me.”
“Talk to me about your childhood hurts.”
“Probably I’ve blocked out some of them. You know, too painful to focus on and all that. But I do remember my parents arguing when I was maybe six or seven. They’d yell at each other and it scared me, then one or the other would usually stomp out. Finally my father never came back. I don’t mean he disappeared completely; I still saw him, but not very often. My mother would bad-mouth him, and that confused me. I only had one father, and here I was being told he was a rat, a rotten man, not worth worrying about, and that he would be better off dead. Well, the day I heard that I had a nightmare, and my mother had to come in and wake me up. I remember she comforted me and said something like, ‘See what your father has caused.’”
“Hard enough to have your parents split up and to be told by one that the other wasn’t worthy of even being alive … what a burden for a little boy!”
She got it just right, but I began to feel guilty talking that way about my mother—and to someone I just met, even if she was a doctor. I began to shrink inward, as if I ought to take back some of what I said.
“Guess I’m pretty harsh about my mother, aren’t I? I mean I think she was trying to protect me.”
“Protect, or maybe overprotect.”
“What do you mean?”
“From what you say, it sounds as if she had more than one motive. Keep her little boy close to her, and make her ex out to be despicable.”
“True. I didn’t know that at the time. I know I resented her, especially as I got into my teens, but I also clung to her as my nurturer.”
“Pulled in two directions: resent her, but need her.”
“Yes.” I was silent for a moment, aware that this woman understood me pretty well. Finally I said, “My father moved fairly close to my mother’s house with his new wife and two stepdaughters. That was several years ago. I like the girls, and so I see my father a lot more. It frosts Mother, and I sometimes think she’s going to explode if I mention seeing him.”
“Kind of a slap in the face to her. Her ex living so close, and you being in his life.”
“I don’t think my dad even thought about that. He liked the neighborhood and his wife liked the schools for her daughters. Sure, it insulted Mother, but the way I saw it, she needed to suck it up and get on with her life.”
“And just recently she did that. Got married herself, but I gather you don’t appreciate her choice.”
“He’s—what do the kids say?—a dweeb! Totally self-absorbed. Of course, that fits nicely with my mother, because she is, too.”
We both were quiet for many seconds. It felt good to sit there across from this insightful and most attractive woman, without words, without a stormy agenda that had to be followed. I felt, suddenly, that it would have been nice if she, Sophie Agutter, had been my mother. She was too young, really, probably only in her late thirties, but positively nurturing, a woman with heart, with an explicit care for the wounded, for me. I told myself to be careful not to make too much of her empathy; it was, I had to remind myself, strictly professional. I wanted to study her face more acutely, but her eyes never left mine, and I already was worried she’d think me fey or at the least, insulting.
“I think my old confusion about my parents’ fighting, and then my mother’s overindulgence and negativity caused me, well, to go underground, or whatever you call it when you block out things.”
“Painful memories go underground, or as we tend to say, into the unconscious mind. You think you’ve done that.”
“What else could these weird dreams be all about?”
“Weird dreams that hold unresolved hurts. As if they have messages for your waking mind.”
“But I don’t understand them. Some are eerie and don’t seem to make any sense. Others are snippets of different parts of my life. I’ve blocked out a lot of stuff that maybe my unconscious mind doesn’t want me to know about. Kind of a protective device.”
“Good insight, Clare. Old wounds lie dormant, until perhaps the right time presents itself.”
“When would that be?”
“When you are ready for them.”
Again we were silent, a long stretch where nothing was said. My eyes wandered, but I was aware of hers on me, steady and penetrating, though not in a harsh way, since her look was richly empathic. I sneaked a glance at my watch and realized our time was almost up.
“Is there any homework, anything I need to work on?”
“It’s all home-work. The session here is a stimulus; the real therapy is what you do with it. I’m sure you’ll do a lot of thinking when you leave here.”
I wanted one more question answered. “Can we really block out things and almost deliberately forget them?”
“It’s like intentional suppression. No question that people, you, can forget things for long periods of time; we don’t know exactly why, except for emotional self-protection.”
“Hey, I guess I’m a world class ace at protecting myself.”
Don’t k
now the reason for sure, but I left Dr. Agutter’s office whistling. A trio of thirty-foot tall date palms stood along the walkway, their frond-leaves glossy in direct sun, quivering in a light breeze. A dog barked somewhere, beyond a fence. Such events normally escaped me, something I never caught or focused on. But there I was, absorbed by flora and fauna and air movements and streams of sunlight. I didn’t bite my tongue, blink my eyes, crack my knuckles. I actually felt looser, more free, and yes, calmer.
FOURTEEN
Meeting with Dr. Sophie Agutter became an anticipated part of my week. She was my listening post, my anchor, a welcoming respite in my routine, yet not in the least an easy companion; my hour with her was hard work. Never cruel, not in the least judgmental, she was, nonetheless, assiduous, even relentless, in her pursuit of my hidden truths. I was a well-guarded client, wanting yet resisting insight. I began to understand that fear of comprehending buried pain is wickedly intimidating.
I decided against sharing details of my sessions with Abby. She had enough burdens of her own to have an added load trying to assist me to decipher mine. Along with that, I knew that her intermittent encounters with our Kentucky buddy were both irritating and magnetic. One evening, she tried to explain.
“He’s a jerk,” she said, “but I have to confess that I’m writing about him. It keeps me tuned in even though he repulses me. What fertile ground for a character study! Complex, aggressive, with almost no impulse control, he is also frail and vulnerable.”
“I never thought of him that way—I mean as subject matter for a story. But now that you mention it, I agree. He certainly is a multifaceted personality.” I smiled and added, “I’ll bet he’d relish seeing what you come up with. He’s not too self-aware.”
“Aware means you tune into what you do; he may have been there once upon a time, but now what he does is habitual, an addiction, unthought of, mechanical, automatic.”
“Hey, you sound like my therapist. Where did you get all that language?”
“From my therapist.” She giggled.
Amazing how little control we have over life’s contiguous events! There I was trying to work on my hideous historical secrets, whatever they were, trying to get them out into the light of day, expose them to air, shine the light of elucidation on them—trying all that, and at the same time writing away on a project that, remarkably, bore fruit.
I had mentioned that, as a teen, I had played a little baseball, and the experiences in that medium triggered an idea for a story about a naïve young man who sets about to become a professional ballplayer. In my tale he meets a young woman at a game, when a foul ball careens into the stands and hits her, despite his attempt to deflect it. Though she is not a fan, she came to the game as a social outing with some girlfriends.
The two manage to connect despite their differences, and my ballplayer focuses on two things—winning her as a partner and making it as an athlete. After a time of struggle, and the feedback that he will not be a Major League star, my hero, smart and aware, is asked to manage some minor league teams, first by the Yankees, then the Dodgers. As the story develops, he eventually wins the job of Dodger manager, has to hold the reins on a team fraught with dissent, handle a gay closeted player rebuffed by another, hold his men together as they drive toward the pennant, hold onto his primary relationship as another woman appears, this one a knowledgeable and astute fan—a dancer, beautiful, aggressive, and not above trying to steal him from his first love.
All that, along with a psychotic former owner of a minor league team out for revenge, after the Yankees had dismissed him based on my hero’s recommendation.
A complex tale, I realized, filled with sundry motives and slippery characters, and yet I was proud of how I orchestrated their moves. When I finally finished it, I sent the outline and the prescribed first few chapters out to four agents, asking for representation. Two said thanks, but no thanks, and one refused to read it, writing in a form note that he/she had too many authors already. But the fourth, a New York-based agent, expressed interest and asked for the entire manuscript, which I mailed off at once.
Three weeks later, he—his name was Granger Lowe—called me on the phone and said he was sending me an agreement to sign and that he would try to place my manuscript. I was in heaven! Abby was delighted. Even our inconsistent buddy, Ken, expressed approval.
While this obviously elevated my mood, and had me flying above the radar for weeks, it did little to mitigate my nighttime distress. Dr. Agutter was impressed by the news, and could see the difference in my manner, but she was also keen enough to keep my emotional focus on the trail, that elusive trail I was struggling to negotiate that would, once and for all, expel the ghosts that spawned my torment.
“You talked about repeated dreams where you seem to be rejected, or even ridiculed, by girls.”
“Yes. They snarl at me, or show total disdain, or make me out to be a joke of some kind. I can’t remember having a dream where I am appreciated by a girl, let alone where I win her.”
“A failure with women.”
“In my dreams.”
“But not in your waking life.”
“Well, I have Abby. I think she likes me.”
I hesitated, and Dr. Agutter picked it up.
“But. There is a ‘but’ in your voice.”
“Not exactly. I was only thinking that she told me once that I’d run, that I’d get frightened off by her.”
“And you believe that?”
“I told her she was wrong. I’d never run.”
“And…?”
“She disagreed. Said I would.”
“So, what do you think about that?”
“She can get unhinged in a hurry if something sets her off. It scares me, but so far it doesn’t chase me away.”
“You say ‘so far.’”
She was relentless in catching every nuance of what I said. Nothing, no implicit meanings, were let slide.
“I’m not all that sure of myself. When she goes off I get wary, kind of pull into a shell. But it hasn’t been so bad that I want to get out. I don’t know what will happen in the future.”
“It does seem as if you are on your guard with her. Given your dream history, I can see where this daytime real relationship could seem precarious. How could it last? Something is bound to sabotage it.”
“See, that’s it, I guess I worry that she could turn on me, that her fury could eat me up. One more example of a hurt that would find its way into my dreams.”
“Find its way into your dreams—because you don’t fully deal with it in your waking mind? Is that it?”
“It’s what seems to have happened in the past. I have a lot of buried issues that I can’t even recall that plague me at night.”
“You use the word ‘can’t’ and I wonder if you would be willing to substitute the word ‘won’t.’”
“What do you mean?”
“You decide not to recall them. You bury them. It’s your choice. You won’t focus on them, won’t remember them.”
“Why would I do that? Is it a sickness? Why would I want to hide from the raw crap that happens to me?”
“Seems as if now you don’t, but there was a time when you might have, when it was too painful to hold on to, consciously. Perhaps when you were a child and were frightened and confused.”
I was thoughtful; her response had sent me rummaging through my mind for sources, for the trigger or motive that might have made me choose to go underground, to inter in my deeper recesses what was too ugly to face. What in hell happened to me when I was little? What could have terrified me that much?
Finally I said, almost in a whisper, “It seems as if you’re saying that something so alarming might have happened that I built a barricade around it and stored it away.”
“Could be.”
“But what could that be?”
“That is our mission, to unearth that little gem, or if there is more than one, excavate all of them.”
“How?”
“It’s a process. When you are brave enough to face it, open and exposed, you will choose to dredge it up.”
She was so evasive. Well, not evasive, but not conclusive either. It was always up to me. Was that the purpose of therapy: to make me do all the work? I decided to vocalize my thought.
“Seems as if it’s all up to me. What do you do?”
She smiled broadly—she was a very pretty lady—and said, “I’m doing it.”
One afternoon, Granger Lowe called me and said, “I think I’ve got a publisher. It’s a small outfit in New England that specializes in sports. The guy, ironically named Dimaggio, said he’d draw up the agreement. He’s willing to give you three grand up front. What do you say?”
I couldn’t say anything. I was stunned. Published! My book was going to be published!
I couldn’t wait to tell Abby—but for some eerie reason my thoughts kept going to my mother, and I wanted to say, “There, what do you think of that? Screw you with your controls and your agendas! I made it on my own. How do you like that?”
FIFTEEN
I liked the texture of the audience at the Writers’ Guild meetings. I presumed their intelligence, anticipated clever comments and challenging questions. These were not folks to sit on their hands and consume offerings routinely, like morning oatmeal. I wanted them to be brilliant, unusual, creative, dissonant; I wanted them to be outrageous. No doubt I invented what I didn’t see.
When I was with my mother and her crowd, the comparison was stark. Not that she wasn’t bright, and without question successful, but the focus was on the mundane, on the latest movies, newest fashions, political gossip, coming travel plans. Ideas, I finally came to understand, were absent.
At the Guild meetings as is true in any assembly, a couple of the men seemed to cherish the sound of their own voices. One in particular—I didn’t even know his name––never missed an opportunity, regardless of the speaker or the topic, to display his own assumed brilliance. He was not outrageous; he was relentlessly tedious. It drove Abby nuts.
Next to me I could feel her squirm whenever this guy started up.
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