Gene shut his eyes. He drew up his legs. Turned sideways on the couch, that put him in a fetal position. His left hand drew close to his chest. I peered at it and discovered what I expected to: his thumb was hidden inside his fist. He was fighting an urge to suck it.
“I want to know what you feel, Gene. I’m not worried about whether you’re right or wrong to feel it. That’s something you can decide, or maybe the world can decide. Personally, I don’t think there is any right or wrong when it comes to feelings. Actions, yes. Not feelings. Our job is to help you know what you feel.”
Gene opened his eyes. He brought the fist with the hidden thumb up to his chin. “I didn’t want to come,” he said, his voice trembling. He paused, hardly breathing. What did he expect from me? Shouting? Violence?
“So you don’t want to be here?”
He nodded. His fist covered his mouth now, the entombed thumb centered on the lips. Was he pushing them in and out as before? That was a sucking motion. Freud would have his diagnosis by now. He’d grab a helmet and flashlight and move resolutely back into the cave of time to illuminate the story of Gene’s breast-feeding — and, I knew uneasily, he might be right to go on that quest.
“Do you want to be on the couch?”
He shook his head, moaning a little. He had regressed dramatically and it happened again: I didn’t like him. Why was he so undefended? I felt an urge to shout at him to sit up and act like a man. Fight me, I thought, staring at the ball he had made himself into.
“Then why are you lying on it?”
He shook his head and moaned again.
“Gene, I don’t know what that sound you’re making means.”
He moaned some more, head still shaking no.
I lost it again. “If you don’t talk to me, I’ll have to end the session.” There was sweat at my temples. I was literally hot from emotion. I was shamed by all these blunders, but I couldn’t seem to stop making them.
His moaning ceased at my scolding, of course. He dropped his fist to his stomach and covered it with the other hand. His face looked sweet and innocent. “Sorry,” he said in a low, contrite voice. Thanks to my mistake I had lost ground.
I should end the session, I thought. “If you—” I sighed, tried to settle down. “If you didn’t want to get on the couch, why did you?”
“I thought you wouldn’t like me,” he answered clearly.
“Why do you care if I like you?”
His thick eyebrows did their dance, up in amazement, down in a frown. I suspected this was a mimicked expression. Mother? Father? Probably mother. He added a shrug and said, “You’re the doctor.”
“If I told you to jump off a building, or I wouldn’t like you, would you do it?”
“Yes,” he said immediately and rolled onto his back. He stretched out, growing before my eyes into adolescence. “I like being on the couch,” he said. His innocent expression, the Picasso baby face, seemed to evaporate. His eyes narrowed; his full lips pouted.
“Is that how it works with everybody?”
“What?” he said — snapped it actually, in a loud irritated tone, very much the fifteen-year-old.
“Do you want everybody to like you?”
“Do I want everybody to like me?” he repeated musingly. “No,” he said, finally. “But almost everybody.”
“And would you jump off a building for almost everybody?”
“Yes,” he said and smiled at the ceiling. It was a becoming smile, his wide mouth generously displaying an array of white teeth.
“Do you like being so accommodating?”
“What?”
“Do you like being someone who would jump off a building to get people to like you?”
“Yes,” he said. He grinned. He was in full rebellion, goading me. The changes were rapid. He moved up and down the scale of maturity like a virtuoso playing the piano. There had to be more to his mystery than simple passive-aggression or an oral fixation. “What made the school think you should come here?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Come on, Gene,” I snapped. What was that? I had once again lost control of the dialogue. “Is it your grades?” I added, trying to recover.
“We don’t get grades.”
The One Room School was a failed experiment from today’s point of view in education, a sixties anomaly — open classrooms, no tests, teaching through projects rather than rote learning. I knew that and had my own opinion of their methods, but the therapist’s view of the world isn’t necessarily the patient’s. I wanted Gene to describe his landscape. “What do you get?”
“Pass, fail. So I guess it’s a grade. They say it isn’t. You know …” He sighed.
I knew. To an adolescent, adults remain hypocrites no matter how hard they try not to be. “Are you failing your courses?”
He nodded. “I guess. We haven’t gotten a report for the fall yet. I didn’t finish two of my projects. That’s how you pass. I was supposed to write a play for English and I messed up the biology field project. I’m bored, that’s all. I could do them, but I don’t have any energy.”
He was too comfortable with this subject. “What does your father do?”
“What?” Startled, his right leg came up.
“What kind of work does your father do?”
“He’s a …” Gene hesitated. “He’s a photographer.”
“For newspapers? For advertising?”
“No.” That was said firmly. “He’s an artist.” Gene gave the word a slight English accent.
“Un huh.” There was something here. I waited.
“That’s not how he earns a living,” Gene said.
The phrase sounded borrowed. Maybe this was his father talking. “Oh?” I said.
“He earns a living as a carpenter.” Gene warmed to this subject. “Well, more than a carpenter. He designs what he builds.”
“Yes?” I sounded interested, since he was. “What sorts of things? Cabinets?”
“All kinds of stuff. You know, like, people will want their kitchens built, you know loft people need their kitchens built, ’cause usually … because it was industrial space.”
Another borrowed phrase. Nevertheless, for the first time Gene was talking effortlessly. I asked more questions and he was glad to give me details. I let him ramble and enjoy the memories. He used to be picked up from grade school on his father’s lunch break, and he helped during the afternoons, measuring, hammering, sawing wood, cutting Formica, taking pleasure in being his Daddy’s assistant. His mother’s full-time work for a textbook publisher had meant his father often took care of Gene during the week, bringing him to class in the morning and covering the afternoons, until he was old enough to be on his own after school.
“When was that? When did you start coming home alone?”
“I don’t know,” he said impatiently. Gene didn’t want to change the subject from descriptions of his father’s jobs. “I didn’t go home for a long time. I went to where Daddy was working, even when I was old enough to walk alone. I remember he had a job in Brooklyn—”
I interrupted. “But you don’t go to his jobs now?”
“Well … no. Dad doesn’t do that much design and building anymore.”
“He’s concentrating on his photography?”
“He has a show.”
“A show?”
“An exhibition. In a very important gallery.” Gene said the words—“very important”—as if they were themselves very important words. He seemed to stop breathing afterwards, lying still.
“Is this his first show?”
“No.” Angry. “He has a lotta shows.”
“A lot?”
Gene grunted. He didn’t want to talk about this.