LITMIR.BIZ

       16

      IN MID-FEBRUARY—AFTER NEARLY SIX WEEKS shriveled inside my house, after I realized that I wasn’t Getting Better—I contacted a psychiatrist whose lecture (“Atypical Antipsychotics and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder”) I’d attended at a conference in Baltimore five years back. He didn’t know me then. He does now.

      Those unfamiliar with therapy often assume that the therapist is by default soft-spoken and solicitous; you smear yourself along his sofa like butter on toast, and you melt. It ain’t necessarily so, as the song goes. Exhibit A: Dr. Julian Fielding.

      For one thing, there’s no sofa. We meet every Tuesday in Ed’s library, Dr. Fielding in the club chair beside the fireplace, me in a wingback by the window. And although he speaks softly, his voice creaking like an old door, he’s precise, particular, as a good psychiatrist should be. “Kind of guy who steps out of the shower to piss,” Ed has said, more than once.

      “So,” Dr. Fielding rasps. An arrow of afternoon light has shot into his face, making tiny suns of his glasses. “You say that you and Ed argued about Olivia yesterday. Are these conversations helpful?”

      I twist my head, glance at the Russell house. I wonder what Jane Russell is up to. I’d like a drink.

      My fingers trace the line of my throat. I look back at Dr. Fielding.

      He watches me, the grooves in his forehead scored deep. Maybe he’s tired—I certainly am. It’s been an eventful session: I caught him up on my panic attack (he seemed concerned), on my dealings with David (he seemed uninterested), on my chats with Ed and Olivia (concerned again).

      Now I look away once more, unblinking, unthinking, at the books on Ed’s shelves. A history of the Pinkerton detectives. Two volumes on Napoléon. Bay Area Architecture. An eclectic reader, my husband. My estranged husband.

      “It sounds to me as though these conversations are causing you some mixed feelings,” Dr. Fielding says. This is classic therapist argot: It sounds to me. What I’m hearing. I think you’re saying. We’re interpreters. We’re translators.

      “I keep …” I begin, the words forming in my mouth unbidden. Can I go here again? I can; I do. “I keep thinking—I can’t stop thinking—about the trip. I hate that it was my idea.”

      Nothing from across the room, even though—or perhaps because—he knows this, knows all of it, has heard it over and over. And over.

      “I keep wishing it wasn’t. Weren’t. I keep wishing it had been Ed’s idea. Or no one’s. That we’d never gone.” I knot my fingers. “Obviously.”

      Gently: “But you did go.”

      I feel singed.

      “You arranged a family vacation. No one should feel ashamed of that.”

      “In New England, in winter.”

      “Many people go to New England in winter.”

      “It was stupid.”

      “It was thoughtful.”

      “It was incredibly stupid,” I insist.

      Dr. Fielding doesn’t respond. The central heating clears its throat, exhales.

      “If I hadn’t done it, we’d still be together.”

      He shrugs. “Maybe.”

      “Definitely.”

      I can feel his gaze on me like a weight.

      “I helped someone yesterday,” I say. “A woman in Montana. A grandmother. She’s been inside for a month.”

      He’s accustomed to these abrupt swerves—“synaptic leaps,” he calls them, even though we both know I’m willfully changing the subject. But I steam ahead, telling him about GrannyLizzie, how I shared my name with her.

      “What made you do that?”

      “I felt she was trying to connect.” Isn’t that what—yes, there it is: Isn’t that what Forster exhorted us to do? “Only connect”? Howards End—July’s official book club selection. “I wanted to help her. I wanted to be accessible.”

      “That was an act of generosity,” he says.

      “I suppose so.”

      He shifts in his seat. “It sounds to me as though you’re getting to a place where you can meet others on their terms, not just your own.”

      “That’s possible.”

      “That’s progress.”

      Punch has stolen into the room and is circling my feet, eyes on my lap. I hitch one leg beneath the other thigh.

      “How is the physical therapy going?” Dr. Fielding asks.

      I scan my legs and torso with my hand, like I’m presenting a prize on a game show. You too can win this disused thirty-eight-year-old body! “I’ve looked better.” And then, before he can correct me, I add, “I know it’s not a fitness program.”

      He corrects me all the same: “It’s not only a fitness program.”

      “No, I know.”

      “Is it going well, then?”

      “I’m healed. All better.”

      He looks at me evenly.

      “Really. My spine is fine, my ribs aren’t cracked. I don’t limp anymore.”

      “Yes, I noticed.”

      “But I need a little exercise. And I like Bina.”

      “She’s become a friend.”

      “In a way,” I admit. “A friend I pay.”

      “She’s coming on Wednesdays these days, is that right?”

      “Usually.”

      “Good,” he says, as though Wednesday is a day particularly suitable for aerobic activity. He’s never met Bina. I can’t picture them together; they don’t seem to occupy the same dimension.

      It’s quitting time. I know this without consulting the clock hunched on the mantel, just as Dr. Fielding knows it—after years in practice, both of us can time fifty minutes almost to the second. “I want you to continue with the beta-blocker at the same dosage,” he says. “You’re on one-fifty Tofranil. We’ll increase it to two-fifty.” He frowns. “That’s based on what we’ve discussed today. It should help with your moods.”

      “I get pretty blurry as is,” I remind him.

      “Blurry?”

      “Or bleary, I guess. Or both.”

      “You mean your vision?”

      “No, not my vision. It’s more …” We’ve discussed this—doesn’t he remember? Or have we discussed it? Blurry. Bleary. I could really use that drink. “Sometimes I’ve got too many thoughts at once. It’s like there’s a four-way intersection in my brain where everyone’s trying to go at the same time.” I chuckle, a bit uneasy.

      Dr. Fielding knits his brow, then sighs. “Well, it’s not an exact science. As you know.”

      “I do. I know.”

      “You’re on quite a few different

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