Stu, as was his habit, ignored the No Left Turn sign at the busy intersection of McCullough and Hildebrand. The rule, he always maintained, didn’t apply to him, since he’d lived in the neighborhood for thirty years prior to the sign’s posting. That day, the slow arc of the elder Kleinberg’s perfectly preserved Cadillac put them smack in the path of a behind-schedule Pronto Produce delivery truck destined for the nearby TacoTaco Café.
Richard and I remained in lips-sealed, crossed-arms, standoff pose until Alex and Gizmo finally came barreling down the stairs.
“Shotgun,” Alex yelled. “I called it.”
“It’s my turn!” Tamar screamed from the landing. “Dad, tell him it’s my turn!”
She flung her backpack at Alex’s heels, startling Gizmo, who broke gait and skidded down the last two steps on her ample belly. She hit Pugsley like a well-placed bowling ball, sending him tumbling into Richard, who jumped back, brushing at his pant legs. Pugsley righted himself, shook his head and went directly to pee on the umbrella stand.
“He’ll keep urinating there until you get rid of that thing,” Richard said. “I spent a small fortune fencing the backyard so these animals could stay outside.”
“I’ll get rid of what I want to get rid of,” I said, trusting he’d get the subtext.
“I wish you two would stop fighting,” Tamar said, retrieving her backpack. “It’s not a good example.”
Richard mussed her hair. “Your mother and I are having a little discussion,” he said. “I’ll have them back right after the movie. Got an early day tomorrow.”
“Movie?” Alex said. “You said we could go to the batting cages.”
“I said if we had time,” Richard said. “Besides, it’s too hot.”
Now Alex’s arms were crossed too. “Why don’t you invite Mom to come with us?”
No one spoke.
I wouldn’t have gone anyway.
Chapter Five
What I’d perceived as Camille Westerman’s festive aura at Howard’s memorial service nagged at me the entire weekend. My kinder self told me she could be in shock and that I should give her the benefit of the doubt. After all, she’d agreed with me that Howard being dead didn’t seem real. But my attempt at this empathic perspective failed to take hold. The sense that she had a role in Howard’s death and that I’d somehow been her unwitting accomplice chewed at me. I was still feeling uneasy when I woke up Monday morning, the one week anniversary of Howard’s accident. Anniversaries, even minor ones, power superstition and expectation.
I checked my voicemail as soon as I got to the office. In addition to the usual weekend tirades from Morrie Viner, my three o’clock patient, Allison had called in to tell me she wouldn’t make her session that day. The message had clocked in just before my twenty-four hour cancellation deadline, so I couldn’t charge her—as if she’d even notice the money. In a playful voice, she said that she’d scheduled a meeting with her attorney that would conflict with our time. Her newfound happiness, she explained, made it possible for her to move ahead on her overdue divorce. She thanked me, a tad too profusely, for all my help and confirmed she’d be there for session on Tuesday.
Renee Buchanan, my two o’clock patient, had been on a particularly hateful rampage of some considerable duration. In honor of the one-week anniversary of Howard’s death, I decided to take it easy with her. Just stay cool, I advised myself. It’s only negative transference. Nothing personal. For extra insurance, I stuck my Freud action figure in my pocket. As Renee lay on the couch pounding the cushions with her fists, I fingered the hard pointy tip of Sigi’s goatee.
“Just how am I supposed to get beyond this, Dr. Good-man?” she said. Her Louisiana drawl made two words of my name, and the reverse stress seemed to question my gender. “This jerkweed makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year,” she went on without a pause for an answer. “He starts having unprotected sex with this foreign whore who has millions of her own. Dumps me. Then tells the judge that he’s bankrupt, and I get nothing.”
The jerkweed, M. King Buchanan III, was a venture capitalist and entrepreneurial genius that Renee had snagged from wife number three at a jet-setting Mardi Gras party. We’d been plumbing the depths of her outrage at the turn-about dealt her by an Italian heiress ten years her junior, outrage unmitigated for Renee by the fact she’d been awarded over three million dollars in the court’s generous interpretation of her pre-nuptial agreement.
“Nothing?” I said finally, noting that I’d failed, despite conscious effort and frantic Freud-fingering, to disguise the irritation in my voice.
I’d been having trouble controlling my irritation with Renee. I’d done my homework. I’d analyzed my feelings about her, my countertransference, as best I could, and knew that my reaction was multi-determined. For one thing, this woman was just plain irritating. She irritated family, friends and co-workers, and I’m sure she irritated the daylights out of M. King. Strictly speaking, this would not be called countertransference since that term is more properly reserved to describe an analyst’s idiosyncratic emotional reaction. And on that more personal level, it was relevant that Renee had recently started to be competitive with me. This was okay. In theory. But, in reality, she was prettier and younger and thinner already, and the nasty nature of her competitiveness added insult to injury. Then there was the stuff about money and divorce. I knew I’d never come out as financially set as she if Richard and I ever finalized our split. And I also knew she could make a lot more selling high-end real estate—if she’d quit pitying herself— than I’d ever make doing therapeutic piecework. There was more than enough resentment to go around in the room.
As usual, Renee resisted my attempt to rewrite her story. “You can’t be referring to that diddly-shit excuse of a settlement. I’m living in a condo, trying to learn a job I detest, and now they’re building a ten-thousand square foot house in Terrell Hills. They tore three houses down for the lot. Three houses in Terrell Hills! Do you have any idea what that cost? Probably not. What do you know about the real world? Life out there isn’t fair, and no one gives a damn. No one gives a goddamn about me. I’m including you, in case you missed that point.”
I hadn’t. And the shrillness in her voice made me want to comfort her as much as I imagined M. King Buchanan III wanted to give her alimony. It came to me that Renee’s growing anger probably had everything to do with the fact that she’d just had to start paying for her own analysis. The cost of her first two years of therapy had been covered under the divorce settlement. Psychoanalysis was exactly the treatment Renee needed, but its initial appeal had primarily to do with the price it extracted from her ex. Now—although she was far from being able to admit it—she’d realized our work was helping her, just as she had to cover her own tab.
“Can you tell me more about that feeling?” I said. It was a lame response to her assault on me, but my adrenaline was pumping. I needed time to get my emotions reined in.
Renee propped herself up on her elbows, rotated her head toward me and dropped her jaw. “Just what don’t you know about that feeling after all this time? You a-maze me.” She shoved herself back down on the couch and pulled five tissues from the box one-by-one before bursting into practiced tears.
I crossed
