I nodded.
“So why did you go away with him in the first place?”
I had no answer, but I was sure that was because I felt ill and tired.
“Were you happy to go with him to Spain?”
I nodded.
“How come?”
“I loved him!”
“But you were so angry at him you lied and made him an exile from his own country? So why did you go in the first place?”
“I was testing him. Or really, testing myself, seeing if I could suppress my murderous impulses toward him.”
“You’re saying it was an elaborate plan of a frustrated ten-year-old’s ego? Not just a scared little boy who was glad to see and be with his Daddy?”
“Go away,” I said.
“You see. You’re losing this argument. That’s another thing about you. You don’t like to lose. You expect to win at everything. You think you can take care of everyone, fool everyone, and when you can’t, you don’t think you have a right to live. It makes me very angry.” To my amazement, she actually shook her fist at me, then released her grip and ran the hand through her tangled, dull brown hair, the same muddy color of her eyes. One mass of it was left stranded in the air as though a breeze were blowing, although the room was hot, its air stale. “I can’t treat you. Lookit, I know why you lied about your father. I’m supposed to lead you to it gradually, but you probably know that.”
I nodded.
“You say in your letter after Halston began treatment you read many books on psychology?”
“I read some.”
“Some. I bet you read plenty. So you know the technique?”
I nodded.
“You know why I think you did that?”
I shut my eyes.
“So you could win, so you could defeat Halston, even if winning meant beating yourself.”
I opened my eyes. She was right. I hadn’t liked being surprised about the Brown Bonnet. I smiled.
“But you’re not so smart. You know why? Because nobody is. Not even Freud. You aren’t smart enough to figure out why you testified against your father.”
I felt odd. For the first time, a little scared. What was there to be scared of? I was dead, really. I was furious and unhappy to be alive, but what could scare me?
“Think about it. What changed from when you arrived in Spain to when you decided to leave? What was new? It’s right here.” She tapped the folder, still on the floor, with her foot. “It’s not in your letter, it’s in Halston’s family history. Under the heading of siblings. It’s important to know, as I’m sure you found out from your reading, it’s important to know if a patient is an only child, and also what order.”
I stopped thinking. I shut my eyes and saw nothing, no past, present or future. I prayed for her to leave.
“Do you have a half-brother or a half-sister?”
I opened my eyes. The room was glazed pink for a moment before clearing to its hospital fluorescence.
“You don’t know and neither does Halston. Okay,” she bent over, got the folder, and stood up, straightening her white smock. “I’m going. But ask yourself, who did you send into exile? Your father or that sibling?”
The horror for me, at this revelation, was that I had forgotten completely about Carmelita’s pregnancy. Until Susan mentioned it, I would have said I was an only child. And, more shocking than that, I wanted to argue about it. I wanted to say: How do we know that child was ever born?
Susan moved toward the door and then, apparently irritated beyond all reason, turned back. “You blame yourself for all the world’s problems. You make yourself into the greatest villain in the history of the world, full of terrible feelings and fantasies. But the one, perfectly natural, unpleasant feeling, your sibling rivalry, that, oh no, not that, that you don’t remember, that you don’t even notice.” If someone had come in they might have assumed, from her passion and my passivity, that she was the patient and I the doctor. “You’re not a terrible person, Rafe. You’re not so great either. Here’s the awful secret, the thing you’ve been keeping even from yourself: you’re just like everybody else and there’s no escape from that. Not even suicide.” She waited for this to sink in and then she laughed. “I should be defrocked,” she said and walked out.
I was ready for her when she appeared next, late the following morning, bringing my lunch.
“You’re lying,” I said, while she maneuvered the tray’s legs so the boiled chicken, peas and mashed potatoes would levitate above my chest.
She untied my right hand and offered the spoon. I took it. “No kidding. What about?”
“You do think you can treat me. That’s just a lame trick.”
“No, you’re wrong.” She pushed the left side of her messy hair out and it stayed there again, signaling for something. A cab? A hairdresser? She was big and odd, like a clown. “I told them today to assign somebody else. You’ll be seeing Dr. Blaustein this afternoon. He’s very good.”
“You’re lying,” I said, my mouth full of peas. One of them fell onto my neck.
“That’s why I’m here. To tell you I’m out. Didn’t want you to think it had anything to do with our talk yesterday. It’s not your fault. You’ve read about countertransference, haven’t you?”
I shook my head no. She explained it. That the doctor’s personality and history could interact harmfully with the patient flabbergasted me. I ate less and less while she expounded on this theme.
“Well,” she said, standing up. “I’ll call the nurse and she’ll clear your meal. You know,” she moved to the other side of the bed and untied my other hand, “I don’t think we need these restraints.” She looked at me with an encouraging smile, her head hanging low between her broad shoulders. Her hunched posture was another habit born out of self-consciousness about her height.
“Do you think Halston did a bad job with me?”
“Horrendous,” she said with utter conviction. I had no idea at the time how outrageous this statement was, a complete violation of ethics and sensible procedure. It was also, I believe, a brilliant stroke, the very quality that makes Susan a gifted therapist. “And, on top of that, since he had treated your mother, he should never have treated you. There’s no excuse for it.”
“Why? Because she killed herself?”
“No. Because he wasn’t listening to you, only to you. He had heard another side. He had years of impressions and judgments about key events in your life that hadn’t come from you. There was no way for him to give what you told him proper weight. He was prejudiced before you walked into his office. And there was the relationship to your uncle, to someone who had given him so much money. He couldn’t be open to receive your signals without a lot of interference.”
I must have fallen into a trance thinking hard back to every session, every exchange with Halston. I was startled when Susan said, “What are you thinking?”
She had sat down again, elbows on her knees, hair still askew, peering at me with her small, shy and yet intent eyes.
“I’m thinking something you won’t like,” I said.
“Big deal.”
“Big deal?”
“Lookit. You gotta do me a favor.” She straightened, locking her fingers together, and stretching her long skinny arms. “You gotta stop paying attention to what everybody else thinks.” Done with her body-yawn, she sat up, head back, allowing herself to be tall. “You’re carrying too big a load. To hell with what the rest of us think. So — what were you thinking?”
“I was thinking, if Halston was a bad doctor, why didn’t I see it?”
Susan smiled. “Beautiful. He does a bad job and it’s your fault. You know what that is? That’s pride. Yeah, I know, you think it’s modesty, you think it’s being tough-minded, hard on yourself. It’s grandiose. You were upset and confused. You were vulnerable. You didn’t have a chance in hell with Halston. No one would.” Susan shook her fist at me. “Don’t you get it? You’re a kid. You’ve been nothing but a kid your whole life. You haven’t had a chance with any of these people, from your mother to your uncle. Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re smart.” She gestured to the dismal room, the barred window, my untied restraints. From the hall I heard the almost perpetual moan of a seventeen-year-old schizophrenic. “Look where it’s got you.”