Intensive Therapy

by Jeffrey Deitz

  “Don’t you understand? I love them in different ways.”

  “You don’t want to sleep with her?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “So, what do you get out of it?”

  “She needs me; at least for the time being. I matter to her. Knowing that makes life better.”

  “What is she, some friend from high school?”

  “It’s more than that.”

  “What is it, then? I want to understand.”

  “We grew up together. It’s as simple as that.”

  “I didn’t think therapy was supposed to work that way.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t know if you can. You see, twenty-five years ago, psychoanalysts believed therapy was a one-way street. Analysts were expected to be blank screens onto which their patients played out their conflicts. It looked pretty on paper, but the result was a stilted pseudo-relationship. A natural connection goes both ways, but back then, analysis was an exercise in mutual deprivation. Analysts cared more about their patients’ conflicts and free associations than they cared about their patients’ lives. I knew that wasn’t right, so I searched for another way to look at therapy. She was one of the people who helped me find my way. We nourished each other. Do you see?”

  Eddie said, “It’s like a dance.”

  Jonas smiled. “You must have read my mind. I was just thinking that. Therapy is music, spontaneous and intuitive. Sometimes it feels like improvisational jazz. The music I make with Jennie is like the waltz in Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, lilting and melodious. Even though I’m still mad at her right now, I wouldn’t give that up for anything. The music I make with her is different, more like Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. She’s fierier and more unpredictable, but that doesn’t mean I want to live my life with that. I’ve met her husband; he’s devoted to her. And they trust me.”

  “I’m sorry I was so hard on you all these years.”

  “It’s over and forgotten.”

  “That’s easy for you to say, Jonas. It doesn’t mean that I forgot my night with Jane.”

  “Oh,” said Jonas, moved close to tears by his brother’s revelation. The breeze stopped and the night went silent.

  Eddie ground the remains of his cigar into the sand. He said, “Why didn’t you say something before?”

  “Dad told me the same thing he told you. The summer before he died, he asked me to look out for you. I didn’t want to hurt you, or Margo.”

  “Are you going to say anything to her?”

  “I’ll take it to the grave. I always knew it was because you were scared about your future. Isn’t everyone?”

  “You were that insightful even before you went to shrink school?”

  “It’s the way my mind works. It’s too bad I didn’t have that same natural talent for music as I did for figuring out how people worked.”

  “You would have gone for a life in music?”

  “Probably. But that would have meant a whole different life: no Jennie, no Gil and Gracie.” A wave of sadness and nostalgia came over Jonas. “Suppose you had met Jane earlier when you were unattached. Have you ever thought you’re living the wrong life? Someone else’s life?”

  “There’s no way of going back, is there?” Eddie said.

  “No, there isn’t. I dream about it sometimes. Four days from now, some man will mount the podium in Vienna and conduct the New Year’s Eve concert. At that same moment, I’ll be sitting on this beach; or maybe having a drink with my in-laws; or rehearsing Gil’s play. I’ve dreamt about conducting that New Year’s Eve concert since I was ten years old. I can smell the flowers decorating the proscenium. I’m holding the conductor’s baton. I can feel my hands quiver during the opening tremolo of the The Blue Danube Waltz, which is always the second encore.”

  Eddie meandered toward the waterline, where the moonlight turned the breaking waves into foamy swirls. Jonas followed, but not too closely. Eddie went a good ways out before he turned around.

  “I envy you, Jonas,” Eddie said, “the fire, the life within. I live my life in black and white. You live yours in high-definition color. I wish I felt emotions like you do.”

  “It’s not all sunshine and roses, Eddie. Believe me. My world can smell very dark and musty. Nobody gets through life unscathed by regrets. Nobody.”

  “Do you know how much it hurts? How sad it makes me feel?”

  “You said you want to feel your emotions. Welcome to the world of the living. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, is it?”

  “I’d rather deal with it.”

  “Good for you,” Jonas said.

  “I want the next part of my life to be different,” Eddie said.

  “Are you and Margo all right?”

  “Who knows, Jonas? Who knows? I’m a cliché: a middle-aged attorney with an overpriced co-op I can barely give away, much less sell. The kids’ll be gone before I know it, and unless I reinvent myself I can see Margo taking up journalism and running off with one of her writing professors. I need something more. I need passion.”

  “Of course you do, Eddie. We all do. It’s what I mean about her.”

  “We married young, not like you and Jennie. It was straight down the rails for me. College, law school, kids, partnership, Speller and Bodenheim.”

  “You did well, Eddie. I’m proud of you. You’ll figure this out. Maybe I can help.”

  “Really?”

  “Don’t act so surprised. No one knows you better than me—except for Margo, and even she doesn’t know you like I do. I know how much there is to you. Pete gets the limelight, but you were the person who taught him how to talk the other side’s expert witnesses into supporting your argument while getting them to expound their beliefs. It’s just this side of devious. That’s more than talent, Eddie. It’s a gift. You get people to admit things after half an hour that would take me two vials of truth serum. You’ve turned interrogation into an art form. Don’t you want to share that with the world?”

  “Sure, I’ll put it in my autobiography.”

  Jonas grabbed sprig of dried seaweed and pointed it toward Eddie. “If you don’t, who will?”

  “Seriously, Jonas. Who wants to know that half a lifetime ago, some wet-behind-the-ears lawyer made love with a beautiful young woman who’s lost to the pages of history? Who wants to know that I got married the following Sunday and every so often I wonder about that woman? What happened to the rest of her life? Did she become a mother? Did she die young? Did she change the world? Does she even remember that night?”

  Jonas thought about the afternoon he and Victoria met, and what would have happened had their paths not crossed. “I bet she does.”

  “Does it even matter?”

  “Of course it matters,” Jonas said. “Everyone has a story to tell, just like everyone needs someone to tell it to. You never know whose life your story touches; that’s why every person’s story is precious. It’s the only way I can reconcile the minutiae of every day with the vastness of the universe without feeling that life is meaningless. I don’t know what’s on the other side of my last breath any better than you do, but this I know for sure: We create our own stories one memory at a time. Whether you choose to type it up and show it to the world is your business.”

  A blank piece of music paper formed in Jonas’s mind. In an instant, staves and notes sprang to life across it. “Your story can be a building, a symphony, a painting. Or Gil’s play, or Gracie’s photographs. Or it can be a book about legal strategy. Think of the stories you have to tell.”

  “There’s a lot,” Eddie said.

  “You bet, brother. It’s the best we can do in the battle against mortality. You. Me. We’re all warrior poets. Damn if I’m going down without a fight. Neither should you.”

  “What about you, Jonas? Besides your family, what will you leave behind?”

  “My students for one thing; someone needs to teach the next generation. It’s an
honor. Then, there’re the cases I testify at. Every time we win, someone gets hit hard in the pocketbook. Do it enough and people will think twice before messing with someone’s mind. That’s my contribution to destigmatizing mental illness. I’m doing a case of legal malpractice where a colleague was wrongfully sued in connection with one of his patient’s death. If I have my say I’ll bankrupt the law firm that sued him. Call it my contribution to tort reform.

  “And my theories and approaches to therapy with teenagers. What’s happening with Gracie and Gil makes it clear there’s still plenty more I need to learn. Gracie got me reading Harry Potter, which I want to mention in my chapter on adolescent development.”

  “And your music? How many symphonies have you composed?”

  “I’m writing one right here, right now. This is our symphony. Yours and mine. We all need more than one her in our lives, people who make our dormant seeds germinate. Margo can’t tend your whole garden; just like Jennie can’t tend all of mine.”

  “I met her once, at the baseball game. I never forgot the way she looked at you. Or the way you looked at her. I remember her name, Jonas, just like I remembered Jane. Her name was Victoria.”

  Jonas remembered the scene as if it had just happened. “It still is.”

  “Thanks, Jonas.”

  “For what?”

  “It still hurts, but having you takes the sting out of it.”

  64

  Friday, December 31, 2004

  Victoria’s initial euphoria about Gregory’s survival gave way to a steadily mounting dread that his basic character might not have survived intact. His body’s functions were recovering more every day, but when she considered the possibility that the banter that they shared might be compromised or forever gone, Victoria felt paralyzed. Without her talks with Jonas to keep her grounded, her mood plunged violently in the days before New Year’s.

  With Anna Breckenridge gone until January, the hospital just wasn’t the same. Not that the fill-in doctor, Dr. Percy Walker, a descendant of the whiskey-maker, wasn’t well qualified and sympathetic, but he didn’t have the same investment in Gregory, or in her, that Anna did. He always seemed tentative, as if he was afraid to get families’ hopes too high.

  Victoria’s in-laws were unexpectedly supportive. Charles, who had bonded strongly with Melinda, visited frequently. Martin’s sisters sent Gregory multi-colored helium balloons with a get-well message, and they were friendlier to Victoria than they had ever been. They even canceled their Caribbean cruise, to be nearby. But nothing could counter Victoria’s increasing disconnect from Martin. Victoria found little comfort in her husband, with whom she discussed the mundane—who would do what, and when—as if he were a newly hired employee.

  By New Year’s Eve morning, the temperature inside 1912 Rittenhouse Square South was as cold as it was outside. Victoria awoke exhausted from dreams reminding her of childhood, angry that no one had offered her help when she was Melinda’s age. Stiff and sore, she felt as if she had run a marathon in cold rain. She wrapped herself in a lamb’s-wool throw and, brooding silently, sipped her morning tea. She stared blankly out the window onto Rittenhouse Square, trying to stop the sickening fantasies moving through her mind: picturing herself dead and gone while an imbecilic Gregory lay strapped to a urine-soaked, stool-ridden bed in a nursing home.

  Martin entered the room quietly. He came up behind Victoria and laid his hand on her shoulder tenderly.

  Victoria withdrew with a jerk. “Don’t do that. You know I hate to be surprised.”

  Since the nightmare with Melinda and Gregory, flecks of gray hair had begun to frame Martin’s brow and temples. “Jesus, Vic. Every time I touch you, you act like I’m a child molester. How long is this going to go on?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered.

  “What is it that you don’t know?” Martin said.

  “I don’t know; I just told you. I don’t even know who I am anymore. All this running around between CHOP and Pennsylvania Hospital has me exhausted. Now, I’m supposed to do it again,” she said, referring to the day pass that would release Melinda that afternoon for a test run. “I want the day off. You get her.”

  Martin said, “We agreed to do this together. It’s supposed to be a special day. Dr. Milroy said that since this is Melinda’s first time seeing Gregory, both of us should be there. Now that Gregory’s better—”

  “I don’t call wearing a bib and slobbering over himself while he eats applesauce getting better. He looks like a drooling infant.”

  “What is the matter with you, Vic? Look at the progress he’s made in the last week. Since this whole thing began, you’ve been treating me like a stranger. What did I do?”

  “This whole goddamn thing never should have happened. You know as well as I do that something should have been done about Melinda months ago.”

  “You mean that I should have done something? And what is it you think I should have done?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “How can you not know? What kind of father are you? You’re supposed to take care of things like this.”

  “What in God’s name do you mean?”

  “You spent the summer buried in spreadsheets getting your mockjury business off the ground, while Melinda hung out with that grungy kid. Aren’t fathers supposed to protect their daughters?”

  Martin rolled his eyes. “Excuse me for auctioning my shotgun collection. Or was I supposed to stalk her with a fish knife between my teeth and gut the first boy who came near her?”

  “Your glib hyperboles won’t work, Martin. I’m not some starstruck judge in Ashtabula, Ohio, presiding over slips and falls. I saw the look on your face when Melinda talked about that Todd character.”

  “What look?”

  “The look of a man realizing for the first time that his darling daughter might have other interests in the male sex besides sitting on her father’s knee playing pat-a-cake.”

  “You know as well as I do that we had no idea of what was going on. We were both happy she had a group to hang out with.”

  “It never occurred to you she might get involved with someone older?”

  “Of course boys would be interested in her, but from what she said in therapy, it’s not like this Todd fellow was just out to put her on his trophy shelf.”

  “You don’t know that, Martin. And about what she smoked; she sees you with your glass of wine every night. Where do you think she got the idea to try marijuana? You enable her.”

  “Enable her? What?” Martin slammed his fist against the couch. “Just because you don’t like it, doesn’t mean everyone who enjoys a glass of wine with dinner is an alcoholic. Like your father.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “But it is fair for you to asperse my parenting? It is fair for you to imply I’m a drunk? Wake up and smell the bathroom vents, Victoria. Whether you like it or not, kids experiment with dope all the time. Just because you hated marijuana doesn’t mean everyone is like you. For all we know, she inherited the same sensitivity to marijuana you have. Her temperament’s a hell of a lot more like yours than mine. You both have the same mood disorder, yet you’ve never heard me say a word about that, have you?”

  Victoria stared out the window in silence.

  “Of course not,” he said. “And why is that? Because I’m not built that way. I would never, ever, come down on you for being in therapy. If there’s any blame, it belongs to both of us. You heard Melinda. She said she was afraid to call home, because she thought we’d yell at her.”

  “She was speaking to me, not you. She meant I would yell at her. How come the burden always falls on me?”

  “Look, Victoria. You’re making much too much out of what that Blount woman said.”

  “That’s another thing, Martin. You stood by and let that woman rip me to shreds without one single word. How am I supposed to feel about that?”

  “I apologized to you. But I’ll say it again. I�
�m sorry. I should have said something sooner.”

  “So why didn’t you? Why was it me that had to take all her shit? Why didn’t you protect me?”

  “I should have; you’re right about that, Victoria. I don’t know what I was thinking. But you’re not the only one who’s worried sick about Gregory and Melinda. I didn’t know what to do in those sessions. It’s not an excuse, but like I said, I’m truly sorry. I never said I had no role in this, but how many teenage girls discuss their first crush with their fathers? Did you?”

  “She should have told you about it, at least after the fact. If you’d had a better relationship with her, you would have known something was wrong and been able to get her to talk about it.”

  “‘Get her to talk about it’? You’re out of your mind!” Martin shouted. “Since when has any parent been able to get their fourteen-year-old to do anything? That’s ridiculous.”

  Out of your mind and ridiculous resonated with every accusation Victoria had heard as a child. She raised her hand to slap him. It took every ounce of self-control to fight the urge.

  Martin had finally had enough. “You’d better use your other hand if you’re going to hit me, or do you want to shatter your wrist again?” Martin taunted.

  “Ridiculous. Ridiculous? Don’t you dare try and turn this around on me.”

  “Christ almighty. Is there any use talking to you? What makes you think she should have talked with me any more than you? How much of your personal life did you share with your parents?”

  “My father was weak. He let my mother run roughshod over him and me just like you stood by while that Blount witch cornered me into the ropes. Like you let Melinda dump on me. It’s like it always was. My father, now you. There’s no man I can count on to protect me. No one.”

  “Are you finished yet?” Martin said unrepentantly.

  “Damn you! Damn all of you,” Victoria exploded in a rage that overshadowed all the good Martin brought to their marriage. “You’re not a man. You’re just like him.”

  You’re just like him. You’re just like him. As she said the words, Victoria began to tremble, and the room started spinning. Reeling, she staggered to the couch.