LITMIR.BIZ

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Taylor Building was two blocks north of the subway station. It was a lovely day. Wanda walked it. Therapy Associates was on the twentieth floor. The receptionist had Wanda fill out a long form, though what relevance her childhood diseases had to her current emotional problems was beyond her.

      Dr Sullivan would doubtless be small and slim, with a goatee and a Swiss accent. He’d wear a black jacket and pinstriped pants. Perhaps he’d have a pocket watch that she’d be asked to look at while he twirled it until she was ‘under’ and a slave to his perverse will. Would he …?

      ‘Miss Wanda Mitty? Come on in, please.’

      So, he had an English or a Boston accent, she could never tell them apart, and he was well over six foot, built like a going-to-seed ex-quarterback, in a check shirt and expensive jeans. Her imagination wasn’t always a hundred per cent right. The lack of a pocket watch was a bit of a disappointment though.

      He sat in a big green leather chair and waved her to a smaller version of the same. His desk was a sheet of glass on spindly chrome legs. It wasn’t at all the sort of desk that a girl would want to be bent over to be buggered. No doubt it was strong enough, but it looked flimsy and the thin glass edges would be hell on her thighs.

      There was a file in front of him. He had a file on her already?

      He opened it. ‘I see that your mother made your appointment for you, Wanda. Was it against your wishes?’

      ‘No, not at all. I know that I need help.’

      ‘Pre-wedding jitters?’ he asked.

      ‘Does that seem trivial to you?’

      ‘Getting married is life-changing. Does having concerns about it seem trivial to you, Wanda?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Then it doesn’t to me. Is there anything about your upcoming nuptials that worries you in particular?’

      ‘Um.’

      He waited for her to say more and, when she didn’t, he asked, ‘Tell me about your young man, your fiancé.’

      ‘He’s big, about your height but not so …?”

      ‘Bulky as me?’

      ‘If you like. He’s very good looking, charming, fastidious …”

      ‘Financially?’

      ‘Very well off. There are no worries there. Oh – and he draws, I’ve been told, though I haven’t seen his work yet.’

      ‘He sounds well rounded, then.’ He glanced down at his file. ‘Does the age difference bother you?’

      ‘Not at all – in fact, I like it that he’s a bit older. It gives me a feeling of security and it’s just a bit naughty, now that I think of it. I kind of like “naughty”.’

      ‘He seems just about perfect. So?’

      ‘Should I give you some background?’

      ‘Excellent idea.’ He picked up a pen.

      ‘It’s sort of an arranged marriage, but not exactly.’

      Dr Sullivan nodded.

      ‘That doesn’t mean that I don’t love him.’

      ‘Of course not.’

      ‘You see, my mother got into genealogy. A lot of people are, what with the Internet making it so easy. There was something in our family history that’d always fascinated her.

      ‘Our ancestors were Puritans who settled in Oregon – mixed farming. They did OK, I guess, until the two brothers who’d inherited the farm, Henry and William, had a falling out over a servant girl.’

      Dr Sullivan nodded as if he’d been expecting exactly that information.

      ‘One night, Henry took off with all the portable valuables, including the cash, and the girl. William searched for him, in vain. As it happened, Henry had only gone fifty or so miles, across the border into Nevada. He set himself up with the family money in the corn business and changed his name to Chandler. Not much imagination, you see.’

      ‘What’s your fiancé’s given name,’ the doctor asked.

      ‘Henry. Why?’

      ‘How’s his imagination?’

      ‘I don’t know.’

      ‘I see. Go on.’

      ‘It seems that, as well as buying and selling corn, Henry cooked and distilled it. He made a lot of money, which he invested in land, at first. Later, in all sorts of good solid things, like banks and railroads. He became a pillar of the community, a church elder, all that kind of thing.’

      ‘And the other brother, William, your direct ancestor?’

      ‘He went broke. He tried publishing and was unsuccessful. For a time he was a travelling carpet salesman, failed at that, then got a job on the railroad, walking the line. William was industrious enough but a bit absent-minded. He got run down by a locomotive; but not until after he’d married and fathered two sons to continue the line.’

      ‘So one side of the family prospered while the other suffered?’

      ‘I wouldn’t say “suffered” but we were never wealthy.’

      ‘And then your mother found Henry’s mother, and they got together?’

      ‘And became mutually obsessed with healing the family rift, using me and Henry as the glue.’

      ‘Does he seem to resent that?’ the doctor asked.

      ‘He seems genuinely in love with me.’

      ‘Seems?’

      ‘Henry isn’t very demonstrative.’

      ‘Tell me more about him. What does he do?’

      ‘He sits on boards. He’s a lawyer but he doesn’t practise that. He’s on the committees of several charities, two churches, an orphanage, a private girls’ school, plus he administers the family trust and runs the family businesses.’

      ‘Very respectable, then.’

      ‘Very.’

      ‘Too respectable?’

      How to answer that? Best say nothing.

      Dr Sullivan prompted, ‘He’s ultra-respectable, and you?’

      Fuck, he’d got right on it. Well, what would you expect from a shrink? She blurted, ‘I gave my virginity away when I was quite young.’

      He nodded.

      ‘I have a healthy appetite, that way.’

      ‘I see. And you suspect that he doesn’t?’

      ‘There’s Puritan blood in the family.’

      ‘On both sides,’ he said. ‘The original Henry wasn’t so respectable, from what you’ve told me.’

      ‘My Henry wears dark three-piece suits.’

      ‘Is that a problem?’

      ‘All the time? I bet he’s even got three-piece chalk-striped pyjamas.’

      The doctor smiled at that. ‘You haven’t actually seen his pyjamas yet, then?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘The physical side of your relationship?’

      ‘Zero. A few kisses, but not real kisses. My mother warned me, when she took me to visit for the first time, “No bad language. No flirting. Don’t dress sexy. Be respectful and respectable.”’

      ‘But you haven’t always been so respectable, in the past?’

      ‘You better believe

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