by Diane Lawson
“Are you listening, Dr. Goodman? Do you even remember I told you that the news makes me nervous?”
“Yes, Morrie. I remember.”
“What happened is that the cable went out. That made me very upset. I was changing all the channels to make it come back on. They call that surfing, which is stupid because it doesn’t have anything to do with the ocean. Did you know that’s what they call it?”
“Yes, I know that,” I said, my irritation getting the best of me. “What you don’t seem to know is that Dr. Kleinberg and I had exactly the same psychoanalytic training.”
“If you know Freud’s rules then, why don’t you follow them?”
Morrie needed genuine Freudian psychoanalysis like he needed a hole in the head. Such standard technique would call for the analyst to inquire as to why the patient would doubt her memory or knowledge base. But such standard technique requires a patient to reflect on his own subjectivity. Morrie, in keeping with his Asperger’s, never questioned the truth of his perceptions. Any attempt I made to have him do so only constituted further evidence in his mind of my stupidity.
I shouldn’t have let myself get riled up. I knew the disruption of his usual route to my office had made Morrie come unglued, and I knew it was this anxiety causing him to devalue me. But devaluing is tough to take. It’s a nasty, malignant defense mechanism that destroys the source of any help just when help is needed most. It was difficult for me on a good day to deal with Morrie putting me down. And my days had not been good. Two patients were dead for sure and who knew what was up with John Heyderman. Three times five. Fifteen sessions a week. Thousands of dollars in lost income. Stop, I told myself. You’re acting just like Morrie. Making it all about the numbers. You’re the analyst. Think about what this means to him. What does all this mean to an autistic-spectrum jerk?
“I just think you get upset when I don’t do what you expect me to,” I finally said.
“Wrong again. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I get upset when you make bad mistakes that reveal your incompetence.”
“Sometimes I even think you enjoy being critical of me.”
“Blame the poor victim,” he said. “Is that the best you can do? There’s no point in talking to you today. You need to make time for some serious self-analysis before I see you tomorrow.”
With that Morrie sealed his lips.
For the next twenty minutes, he and I breathed the same air. Neither one was willing to give the other the satisfaction of breaking the silence. The phone rang once. I saw on Caller ID that it was Richard. I was so annoyed at Morrie that I was tempted to take the call. Even though I never answer the phone during session. Even though Richard was the last person I’d want to talk to. I fought down the impulse until I heard the record mode click in.
Freud looked at me disapprovingly, demoralized that I couldn’t follow his rules, disgusted that I never seemed to get better at managing the hateful feelings Morrie evoked in me. Then I looked at Morrie—his arms wrapped around his chest, his tennis-shoed foot flicking like the tail of an angry cat—and I felt furious all over again. I started calculating how much half of Richard’s and my investments could provide for me each month, if—like my husband never tired of assuring me—I were never to acquire another patient.
Morrie, I knew, was calculating revenge.
Chapter Fifteen
The voicemail Richard left during Morrie’s session informed me that he couldn’t pick up the kids from day camp as he’d promised. His testimony in some heiress’ child custody case ran hours long. The only flight available out of L.A. would get him home after midnight. I knew better than to have made plans, but that knowing-better part of me was getting harder to find. Since the nuzzle at the kitchen sink, my mind had been stuck in a gerbil wheel of thoughts about Mike. Every breath in. Every breath out. Miguel Ruiz. Miguel Jesus Ruiz. I’d found his middle name on an internet website for private investigators. I wrote his name on my note pad during sessions like a love-crazed teenager. My behavior embarrassed me, but even Freud’s sternest stare couldn’t make me stop.
I’m a psychiatrist. I know my neurophysiology. I understood that my caudate nucleus, that c-shaped organ deep in my brain, was obsessively squirting out neurotransmitters at the thought of Mike. And for no good reason. Nothing to do with rationality. Nothing to do with anything approaching true love of the enduring committed variety. My mental state came closer to drug-craving or an epileptic seizure. I knew all this. Stop it, I’d say to myself. This is a vulnerable time for you. Stop it. You have nothing in common with this man. Stop it. Your patients are dying, for godsake. Stop it now.
I’d planned to cook a decent dinner for Mike that evening. A pre-meditated meal. If the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, the way to a woman’s culinary inspiration is through sexual desire. After I finished with Morrie, I’d make a quick trip to Central Market for some fresh fish to grill, whatever the rosy-cheeked guy behind the counter would recommend. For a vegetable, asparagus, maybe, oven-roasted in olive oil. Garlic mashed potatoes. Recipes within my skill set. Some Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia Low-Fat Yogurt. Throw together some of those Martha White brownies from the box that are better than scratch. A bottle of champagne to bridge the gap between his preference for beer and mine for white wine.
One would think that two dead patients might have taken some of the pleasurable edge off this fantasy. Two dead patients and another probably on the way. But one would have been underestimating the power of primitive emotional need to blow the circuit breaker of logic, to disable the frontal lobes of the cerebrum, the brain’s center of reason.
Central Market is the kind of grocery store you go into for a gallon of two percent milk and come out three hundred dollars later with staples like Lavender Champagne Vinegar, organic peppered goat cheese from the Texas Hill Country and three pounds of clamoring Louisiana crayfish. If you’re lucky, you remember the milk. Richard loved the place. He’d stop at every food station for samples, suck up to the guest chefs, all so that he could brag about his own recipes.
Central Market is not a place for children.
Alex and Tamar pushed and shoved their way through the produce section, fighting first for who got to push the shopping cart, then for who had to do it. They were hot, tired and, I assumed, righteously angry with Richard for leaving them high and dry once again.
At the seafood counter, the impatient-for-the-weekend crowd stood three deep.
“Don’t get fish,” Tamar said. “The smell makes me sick.” She put a finger in her mouth and made a gagging noise to prove her point.
“Quit faking. You’re such a brat.” Alex yelled, turning more heads. “Make her stop, Mom. You’re the psychiatrist.”
Please god, do not let a patient of mine be watching this scene. Scratch the fish idea. Something else. Anything else. Just get out of here. Alex developed a sudden revulsion to chicken—They look like little naked people, Mom. Tamar claimed allergy to steak—It always makes my stomach itch. Even I’d had it with pasta. In desperation, I grabbed a package of hamburger, another of veggie burger patties for me and some buns from under the nose of the white-aproned food guru at The Great Texas Outdoor Grilling exhibit. No, thank you. No samples today. I’m sure it’s terrific. Some other time. Yes. Absolutely. Yes, Richard is his name. I’ll tell him you said hello. I wheeled the cart down Aisle Five: Marinades, Rubs, Sauces, Pickled Delicacies. Speeding toward the checkout, I came within an inch of bringing down a special aisle-capping display of Prosecco. I grabbed a teetering bottle in each hand.
“Who’s drinking all that?” Tamar asked, hands on her hips.
“The detective’s coming for dinner!” Alex said. “Yes!” He did a little victory dance.
“We have a lot of work to do,” I answered too quickly.
“Mom has a boyfriend. Mom has a boyfriend.” Tamar did the singsong deal, swaying her head from side to side.
I whipped into the fifteen-item express lane.
Tamar escalated her
little song.
“Shut up. I like him too.” Alex pushed Tamar into the cart, which shot forward, clipping the well-dressed, elderly woman in front of us at the Achilles.
“Sorry, Ma’am,” I said.
Sorry, sorry, sorry.
Mike was sitting on the stairs to the office when we pulled into the garage. He stood up stiff, yawning and stretching both arms over his head. His shirt came untucked, revealing a lightly furred belly.
“Hey, Tamar. Race you to the house and back,” Alex shouted. He tore off across the courtyard, throwing a “Watch this, Mike,” over his shoulder.
“No fair. You got a head start.” Tamar was right behind him. “Cheater. Cheater. Cheater, cheater, cheater,” she shrieked.
Mike put his arm around my shoulder and squeezed too hard. “Your Dr. Perv’s still alive as of six o’clock. I detoured by the lab for a little peek. He was at the microscope ogling slides like they were views of his favorite he-she.”
“He’s a skilled pathologist,” I said. “Doctors send him specimens from all over the world.”
“He collects some weird specimens himself. Local ones,” Mike said. “I met his Darla when I worked Vice.”
Alex skidded back alongside us. “Hey, Mike. Would you teach me to shoot?”
“Give you a gun? The way you treat your sister?”
“I’d be careful,” Alex said. “I’d follow all the rules.” He held up his right hand. “I swear.”
“Maybe,” Mike said, pulling the bill of Alex’s cap down over his eyes.
“Please?” Alex grabbed Mike’s free arm with both hands and started jumping up and down like a mechanical monkey.
“I’ll think about it.”
“Want to play catch?” Alex persisted. “I learned how to throw a curve today.”
The sound of ball hitting glove ticked off time while Tamar and I readied dinner. A breeze, the blessed gift of an approaching storm, blew through the open door to the courtyard. Family time. Leave-It-To-Beaver-ville. I’d watched that show as an about-to-be teenager like it held a secret code. I studied the details. If I only knew the proper words (Good morning, Mrs. Cleaver), had the correct outfit (white blouse with Peter Pan collar, plaid pleated skirt), ate the perfectly balanced meal (green beans, boiled potatoes with parsley, meatloaf) prepared by a mother in a pastel-colored shirtwaist dress, everything would change. If I’d only get it right, my father would settle down and give up looking for some place where the people understood he was a prophet. We could stay put long enough for me to have a boyfriend or be elected Student Council Secretary or at least where the kids would quit calling me that Jew girl with the crazy father. The situation wasn’t much better at home with my mother using the third person to refer to her husband: Nora, would you ask our very own personal messiah to pass the coleslaw?
“Mom, are you crying?” Tamar asked.
“Onions,” I said.
“You’re cutting tomatoes.” She was right, of course. “You and Dad are like divorced already. Why don’t you finish it?”
“We want to work things out.”
“It’s been a year.”
“Six months.”
“Whatever.” She shaped the last of the hamburger patties, adding it to the waiting others on the platter, all touching in a cozy arrangement. “It won’t work. You guys are too different.”
“What do you mean?” My question was sincere. I hoped at that moment that this little girl held possession of some absolute truth, some knowledge that might permit me to pronounce the marriage dead.
She shrugged. “You just are.”
“I worry about you and Alex.”
“That’s stupid. You’ll fall in love and get us a new dad. Maybe the detective.” She batted her eyes and flashed me a toothy grin.
I took a small slice off of my left index finger. I hate the feel of the knife sliding into flesh, the numbed pause before the pain receptors start screaming. I stuck the finger in my mouth and turned to look at Tamar.
“Just kidding,” she mugged another silly face. “Can I play computer until dinner?”
Mike grilled the burgers, and the kids gobbled them up like they’d come from McDonald’s. They both put on the charm, relating stories of silly friends and vacation disasters and mean teachers in a fast-paced show and tell. The sparkling wine was cold. Without asking my opinion, Mike popped the second bottle. I was hovering at that dangerous point of intoxication where I’m ever so pleasantly surprised that the alcohol isn’t affecting me, my personal sign that I’ve had enough. I opted to ignore the warning.
Mike steered me away from the dishes and onto the back porch. The sky, filled with thunderheads, glowed pink and purple in a perfect pre-dusk moment, the world poised on an instant. Thanks to the dust in the air, Texas comes up with some magnificent sunsets.
I descended a little too abruptly into a chaise. Mike leaned back against the railing, dangling his champagne flute in his hand and watching me, eyelids half-closed. His face was relaxed, his skin glowing a soft copper color in that light. He reminded me at that moment of someone I couldn’t put my finger on. I looked hard at him, as if my vision could penetrate his otherness. He raised his brows in response, like he was up to something, like he had a wonderful wicked idea of some sort. He lifted his glass in a semi-toast. My body responded to his wizardry, nipples jumping to attention, warmth between my legs. But this wanting brought on a hint of nausea, a sensation of unsteadiness and of the slightest lifting off the chair.
I’d had too much to drink, but that wasn’t the issue. I was mired, caught up in a mess of conflicting inner commands. I yearned for the luxury of a singular focus. To be like Howard Westerman, tending to business. To be like Allison Forsyth, wallowing in grief. To be Lance Powers, ruminating on mistakes. John Heyderman, giving into lust. Yvette Cunningham, indulging in caprice. Renee Buchanan, nurturing rage. To be Morrie Viner, striving for order. Just to have a focus. What did I want? I wanted there to be some reason Howard and Allison had died. I wanted it not to be my fault. I wanted Mike to like me. I wanted him to make everything okay for me. I wanted Richard out of my life. I wanted to have everything I wanted and for nothing bad to happen. The jumble of feelings buzzed in my head.
“You’ve never told me why you left the force,” I said then, like an analyst, on the offensive, asking in the form of a statement, grounding myself.
“Did I miss some conversation somewhere?” he said, looking around as if appealing to an audience.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you.” My hand sought my necklace, an engagement gift from Richard. My fingers tugged at the diamond charm.
“How about it’s none of your business.” He sat down on the end of the chaise where my feet might have been, facing away, his shoulders slumped, the wind out of his sails. “It’s a long story.”
“I’m a good listener.”
“Why do you think I left, Doctor Goodman?” he said, the old edge back in his voice. “What’s your theory about your newest case?”
I moved forward, putting my legs to either side straddling the chaise, and took his shaved head in my hands.
“Ever hear about Phrenology?” I said, rubbing my fingers over his scalp. The slightest bit of stubble gave it the feel of fine sand paper. “The study of personality as revealed by the shape of the cranium. It’s a largely discredited science.” I massaged his temples with my fingers. My left thumb found a lump on the back of his head and circled around it. “Hmmm. This bump suggests you killed someone.”
I’m not sure why I said that. Killing someone isn’t a joking matter. Not the topic for parlor games. Was I intuiting Mike’s past somehow? Human beings do pick up on all sorts of unspoken things. Analysts merely hone the skill. Was I reading my future? Making a wish? Setting the stage for things to come? We humans do this too. Convey our expectations, our agendas—conscious or not—even when we haven’t a clue what we’re engineering.
Mike’s body tensed for a moment before he turned around to stare
at me.
“You’re not my shrink,” he said.
“Did you?” The red light begged to be run.
“No,” he said, before he stood and went inside.
I hoped he was lying.
Lightning played through the big clouds to the west, announcing the arrival of a cold front—cold being a relative term when used in the forecast of a Texas summer.
Chapter Sixteen
The kids insisted we end the evening with a movie, agreeing on Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. I made microwave popcorn. The dogs curled up on the couch, snoring softly. It was the kind of family scene that never quite came together with Richard and his just one more important phone call. By the time the show finished, rain pelted the courtyard, creating the illusion of thousands of tiny rabbits gone berserk.
Tamar started it. “Can Detective Ruiz spend the night?”
“Yeah,” Alex was quick to chime in. “Low water crossings are dangerous. He can sleep in my bed. I’ll use my sleeping bag.”
“Please, Mom. Please,” from the both of them.
“I probably shouldn’t be driving,” from him. “Between the rain and the wine.”
In the end, the couch in Richard’s study was made up. I dug out a freebie Central Market tee shirt—Friends Don’t Let Friends Eat Junk—and a spare toothbrush. The kids whirled around like we were hosting a superhero. The doors of our respective rooms shut rapid-fire. Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam.
Of course, I couldn’t sleep. The hours passed since the wine put me at the accursed point of alcohol metabolism where the breakdown products stimulate the nervous system. I was hot. I turned. I was cold. I tossed. I contemplated the next day. Richard would come by for the kids when he was good and ready. It occurred to me that he might encounter Mike. So be it, I thought, trying to deny the appeal of that idea. Mike had proposed our going over the case notes together in the morning and then driving by the homes of my patients, living and dead, just to see what came to mind. An adventure in intuition, he called it. His choice of phrase made me smile. A psychoanalyst might use those very words to describe her work, but the behavior Mike was proposing was very non-analytic.
