A Tightly Raveled Mind Read online

  My good feeling about Allison carried me through John Heyderman’s session right up to my eleven o’clock appointment with Lance Powers. As usual, Lance was backed tight into the corner of the waiting room. He was the only patient who could come up my stairs and through the front door without making a sound. When he saw me that day, he sat up straighter and took a quick sniff of the air. His acute animal instinct had kept him alive in the jungles of Vietnam. Back in everyday Texas, it just made him weird. As always, his appearance was impeccable—every hair on his head preternaturally in place, his small moustache trimmed ruler straight, his polo shirt and khaki pants painfully pressed. He wasn’t wearing his reflective sunglasses though, and that told me he was in a psychologically safe place.

  To someone who didn’t know Lance, our meeting that day would have sounded like small talk. We covered ways to manage his younger son’s annoying antics, possible topics for his Sunday school class and problems posed by a slacker employee. But everyday stuff like this was foreign territory to Lance. In the seventies, he’d been an operative for a government agency he was still afraid to name. He’d been discharged from the military in body only, his internal world stuck in a perpetual cycle of horrific flashback, demonic guilt and deadening denial. He’d gone through the motions of constructing an ordinary life—marrying, going to church, spawning two children, building a successful construction business—but only recently had he started to get enough distance from the past to emotionally inhabit his current world.

  As we chatted, I felt like I was on a therapeutic roll—Allison, now Lance. For an instant, I forgot about my dead patient. Or so I thought.

  “You’re embracing your life, Howard,” I said, high on success. “This is meaningful.”

  Yes, Howard.

  My slip-of-the-tongue stunned us both.

  “That’s not my name,” he said, staring at me with a look that made me simultaneously shamed and concerned for my safety.

  He was out the door before I could think.

  Chapter Four

  “Tough luck,” Richard said. “The Westerman deal, I mean.”

  He was trying to make small talk while waiting for the kids for their off-decree Thursday evening with Dad. This spur of the moment behavior was typical of Richard, who tended to regard rules made by someone else—even if that someone happened to be Judge Negron who set the terms of our separation—as works in progress.

  “Hmm,” I said, using my body language to keep him penned in the foyer.

  “Stopped by their place on the way over here to give my condolences. I just couldn’t get out of New York in time to make the memorial service. Very important case.” My eyes did a reflexive roll—a bad habit of mine, I know. In the process, I took notice of his charcoal suit, one I hadn’t seen before, which was perfectly complemented by a shirt of the palest grey and a creamy silk tie. His understated, yet elegant, appearance seemed critical commentary on my own dated outfit. “Camille called me Monday morning as soon as she hung up with 911.” He shook his head in disbelief.

  “She called you?” I said. I hear about my patient on the news, and Richard gets a personal call?

  “We’d just that minute wrapped the show, so I was able to pick up. What a tragedy.” He did the head shake again. “But Camille is a strong woman. She’ll be okay.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she will,” I said.

  “Why the hostility here? She’s just lost her husband, and you know what she said? Are you listening? Said she was putting me up for membership in the San Antonio Country Club. That would include you too, of course, if we ever get things straightened out between us.”

  “Did it occur to you,” I said, “that accepting her favors might be unethical given that I’m her husband’s analyst?”

  “Deceased husband’s analyst.” He stared up at the light fixture, seeming to inventory the dead bugs congregating there, then slipped his keys into his pocket and jingled them around. “I have a place in this community, Nora. Unlike you. Camille’s just a dear friend. A dear friend and an amazingly generous person. Besides, the kids would love the club. You could drop them off at the pool in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon.”

  “Let me get this straight. Now the guy who had to be court-ordered to pay fifteen hundred dollars for summer camp can’t wait to shell out forty grand to join the country club? The same guy who wanted Ofelia, our elderly and child-phobic maid, to tutor the kids in Spanish and teach them to mop floors for summer vacation now likes the idea of them spending the day lounging poolside?”

  “It’s an investment,” Richard said. “Good for business contacts.”

  “We’re Jews. They don’t do Jews at the San Antonio Country Club.”

  “Things have changed there,” he said.

  “Bullshit.”

  “All my friends are members. People I’ve known my whole life. Did you know I went out with Camille in high school?” He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, leaned into his reflection and straightened his right eyebrow with a spit-wet index finger. “Nothing serious. She just wanted to make what’s-his-name, the quarterback, jealous. Small world.”

  “It’s your small world.” I said.

  I didn’t need to be reminded that absolutely every high-end woman in town had been with him at one time or another. There had been at least ten women from the Jewish Old San Antonio clan on Esther and Stu Kleinberg’s A-List of potential bearers of grandchildren. My name did not appear on that roster, a fact my mother-in-law never tired of referencing in my presence. I did not need Richard salting that old wound. And I didn’t need him telling me San Antonio was a small world, as if I didn’t live here every provincial day of my life. Most of all, I didn’t need him sticking his nose into the little bit of space that was mine, if only for the short-term grace of our separation agreement.

  We glared at each other for a minute. Richard’s eyes watered a little. I decided it was his contacts. The kids had let slip that he’d gotten new ones—green-tinted to intensify his eyes on camera.

  “You’re so bitter, Nora,” Richard finally said. “I understand the bitterness is a symptom of your inability to deal with being disowned by your mother and losing your father…and now Howard’s gone.”

  “My mother is irrelevant and my father isn’t lost. He’s dead. Just like Howard. D-E-A-D. Why can’t you say the word?”

  “There’s no need to shout,” he said.

  “I’m not shouting,” I shouted.

  “Just stop,” he said. “You’re out of touch with reality.”

  “Why don’t you ever say the word, Richard? Maybe because your parents are dead? Maybe you’re the one out of touch with reality. Maybe that’s the reason we don’t get along. Maybe it’s your fucking unresolved grief.”

  Ordinary people might think psychiatrists possess an advantage in human relationships, some kind of insider knowledge that greases the interpersonal gears. In our marriage, emotional insights had been converted into weapons of psychic destruction—plowshares into swords. Months before, I’d come to the conclusion that the only accomplishment of our union, aside from the kids, was the defeat of the town’s best marital therapist. After two years of twice weekly appointments, Dr. Bradley had concluded that separation was the only hope of saving the marriage. So much for that theory. The three blocks between the house and my estranged’s fancy apartment obviously hadn’t changed a thing.

  “You really should keep the shades drawn in the family room this late in the day,” Richard said, changing the subject, stepping from side to side, bobbing his head around, trying to scope out the house in search of additional maintenance failures. “I’ve told you a thousand times that direct sun drives up the electric bill and fades the rugs.”

  Pugsley, the older of our dogs, had gotten the gist of the situation. He positioned himself at the foot of the stairs, growling softly like a canine motion detector when the former man of the house threatened to violate the boundary.

  “How about we consider
my household not your business,” I said. “Until further notice.”

  “As long as I’m paying the bills,” he said, “this household is my business.”

  Although I chose not to acknowledge it, he had a point.

  The house and the money to renovate it to Richard’s standards came to us within weeks after our move to Texas, when his parents died together in an auto accident. Richard’s stubborn and mildly demented father was unquestionably at fault. 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 my arms and watched the performance: the lithe sweep of one tissue separating from the other, the prolonged dab at the corner of the eyes, the ratcheting intake 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.