of breath. Every move was choreography. Renee was a naturally beautiful woman, a tall creamy-skinned blonde with narrow hips. The kind of woman other women hate at first sight. Despite her endowments, she suffered from profound self-doubt, and the divorce from King had ripped open childhood wounds that had never done much healing. The relentless attempts she’d made to enhance herself in the wake of that trauma had only served to detract: her overly done make-up, her stiff couture clothing, her breast augmentation and revised breast augmentation, her quarterly Botox injections, her face lift. On the surface, Renee would seem to be the antithesis of my patient Allison. Exhibitionism vs. inhibition. Anger vs. depression. But it was only a different veneer for the same shaky core.
“It’s just like my childhood,” she finally said. “The sun rose and set on that snot-nosed brother of mine. I was so goddamned good to try to get Momma’s attention. So helpful. Pretty in my white pinafore. She looked clear through me. Right at him.”
I commanded myself to visualize that sad little girl. I wanted to feel for Renee. I really did. It wasn’t like I didn’t have experience with childhood longing. I tried to parlay sympathy for my child-self into some feeling for Renee, but I just didn’t seem to have it in me right then. Some patients are easy to love. Others take a while. Love in itself doesn’t cure, but no analytic cure comes about without it—or without some hate for that matter. Deep therapy is deep for the patient and the analyst. I trusted I could eventually come to love Renee, but we had a way to go.
“It wasn’t fair, and no one seemed to care,” I said. It was a mechanical response, but one I knew would mollify her.
“Story of my life. I’m that little girl all over again. I hate what Momma did to me. I can’t bear it. I won’t,” she said, jabbing the cushion of my couch hard with her elbow.
Yes. Renee hated her Momma, and I was Momma’s effigy, making my little girl pay for what she needed. I put my head back and closed my eyes again. I learned early on that being the target of primitive rage puts me to sleep. It’s some psychic possum reflex that’s like intravenous anesthesia right to my brain. Anyway, I must have dozed for a second. How else to explain the cold draft on my right shoulder and the distinct smell of Old Spice? Howard Westerman was the only man I’d known, besides my father, who wore that scent. My body jerked. The movement made my chair squeak. I was a little disoriented, but as far as I could tell, I hadn’t missed much. Renee was still revved.
“And you know what kills me? He kept my Mercedes. I’m driving the old Volvo that we let the housekeeper use. How the hell am I supposed to pass for a successful realtor driving that piece of trash? I can’t afford a Mercedes.” There actually seemed to be some pain in her voice. “Unless I stop this analysis. That’s a threat, in case you missed it.”
Morrie Viner, anxious for his three o’clock appointment, coughed at the consulting room door. We’d gone two minutes over time. I had to make some connection, tie things up and end the session.
“You’re angry about the unfairness,” I said. “But I heard some sadness under your anger. We need to look at that.” I took a deep breath. “Our time is up for today.”
Renee made no move to vacate. “I’m a little worried about you,” she said. “Wouldn’t you normally have gotten a new car this year? A car starts to look shabby after three years. Especially a black one.”
Her words felt like a knife in my gut. I squeezed the arms of my chair and pushed my tongue into the roof of my mouth, sensing what was coming. Renee had the high-speed gossip access of a niche realtor, and she used the information without mercy.
“It’s none of my business,” she said, “but with your being separated from your husband and all, finances must be tight. This isn’t the kind of real estate a working girl supports by herself.”
She sat up and leaned in for a close look at my face, which I knew beamed a tingling red. The corners of her mouth turned up ever so slightly. Just then, the phone rang. I glanced at the Caller ID to break her gaze. The screen read out Unknown Caller and 207-7635, a number I didn’t recognize.
I was curious about the out-of-routine message left by the Unknown Number, but by the time I’d peed, combed my hair and had a sip of water, the clock read 3:01 PM, and Morrie was still plastered to the door. He charged past me and threw himself on the couch.
“Twenty-three seconds late.” He jabbed at the face of his watch with each word.
It sounds horrid to say, but I took pleasure in knowing it had been more like sixty-six. Yes, this hateful reaction was my countertransference to Morrie. Psychoanalysts are prone to push such feelings off on the patient. The analyst wants to torture a patient? Probably the patient wants to be tortured, they’d say. Or wants to torture the analyst. The truth is that an analyst can be sadistic for her own reasons. How does one apportion the blame? Hadn’t Morrie sucked me dry with his demands? Hardened me with his absolute lack of gratitude for the minimal fee I charged him much less for my patience with his exasperating habits? Hadn’t he devalued me with his inability to show the slightest bit of empathy?
Of course, I knew that these were all symptoms of his Asperger’s Syndrome or whatever yet-to-be-named disorder he has. But understanding someone doesn’t just translate into liking or caring. I understand Richard, for example. Understand how his father Stu made a passionate hobby of demeaning his son, how his mother Esther considered him her possession. Understand that Richard treated me the way they treated him. And I resented the hell out of him in spite of my flawless insight.
“I don’t do seconds, Morrie,” I said.
“But I do. Twenty-three seconds times one-hundred-eighty sessions. Sixty-nine minutes a year. Adds up.”
“What about when we start a few seconds early?”
“That’s not my fault,” he said.
Oh, my god! Not my fault. Close to a feeling! A therapeutic opening!
I settled back in my chair.
In psychoanalysis, the patient has to say whatever comes into his head. Freud instructed analysands to report their thoughts as if those mental images were changing landscape through the window of a train. Most patients will start off talking in session, saying this happened, that happened, surface conversation. Then something appears that’s like a door ajar, an invitation to a deeper place, an opening that leads into a disowned part of the self. This happens seamlessly with most patients, but there are few such opportunities with Morrie.
“Tell me about fault,” I said.
I still consider that the right response, even though fault was a topic I was primed to pick up on in the wake of Howard’s death. Not that I felt to blame in a way that I’d ever be called to account on, of course. But an analyst respects the deeper workings of the mind and the ultimate power of the Unconscious. The Unconscious, that subterranean place where there is no such thing as forgetting. No such thing as coincidence. No such thing as accident.
“Bor-ing.” Morrie shook his head. I kept silent.
Freud, his brows elevated, glared down at me from the bookshelf. I heard him pointing out my mistakes: Don’t you remember how Howard fell apart at your lateness? Didn’t you register that he experimented with volatile substances in his lab? A tiny slip, a bit of distraction, a whiff of an emotion would have been enough to disorder his overly ordered mind. Ka boom. And then there was Camille. You encouraged him to be vulnerable to her, to open his fragile
