There were lights on in the front upstairs windows of his house, so I leaned my bike against the front hedge, walked up the steps. There were two doors: the door to his office on the left, and the door to his home on the right. But there was only one doorbell. I rang it, then waited. It had gotten cold and windy and the fallen maple and oak leaves on Dr. Pahnee’s side lawn were swirling around. He had to be the last person in the neighborhood, in the city, not to have raked his yard. I had the feeling Dr. Pahnee wasn’t much for yard work. His hands were soft and white and marshmallowy. I knew this because when I talked to him every Wednesday, he clasped his hands together, his two index fingers extended, their tips touching his lips. It was like he was kissing the barrel of a gun or holding his lips hostage. Anyway, this was how Dr. Pahnee listened.
“Miller,” he said. I turned away from his lawn and toward the door on the right, where he was standing. I’d never seen him outside of our hour on Wednesdays, but he looked exactly the same: he was wearing faded jeans and a button-down blue corduroy shirt. His hair was brown with some gray in it, just over the collar, and his beard was brown with some gray in it, too. As usual, he seemed happy to see me. Or at least amused. His face was round and always gave the impression that he was smiling, although I’m not sure I ever really saw him smile. “Would you like to come in?” This was what he always said to me on Wednesdays, too, in his office, when he greeted me in his waiting room.
“I would,” I said. “Thank you.” He moved to the side and gestured with his right hand, and I knew this meant, After you. I walked past him, up the carpeted stairs, and into his living room, which looked exactly like Dr. Pahnee’s office. There were the matching brown leather couch that I sat on and brown leather chair that he sat on. There was the desk with the blotter and scattered papers and pens and pencils, the rolling chair behind it. On one end of the couch was the end table with the globe on it, and on the other end was a table with a green table lamp. On the other side of the chair was the green floor lamp that had obviously come with the green table lamp. Dr. Pahnee’s home, like his office, was like a Noah’s ark for furniture. But in any case, his office and his home looked pretty much the same. Funny: whenever I tried to imagine Dr. Pahnee outside his office, I couldn’t quite do it. It seemed that Dr. Pahnee couldn’t quite do it, either.
“Are you waiting for an invitation?” Dr. Pahnee said, settling into his chair. This was his usual invitation to sit on the couch. I did that. We looked at each other. “So, tell me what you’ve been up to,” he said. So I did. I told him everything that had happened that day. This was also normal. I talked and Dr. Pahnee listened. Because this was what he was there for. I told him about my feeling that my dad was home, and Mother crying, and finding my dad in the VA hospital and how terrible he looked, and me going to the New Parrot and thinking I’d found Exley until the Indian whose parents were from Pakistan told me I hadn’t, and then going to see K. and how she kicked me out of her apartment. The entire time Dr. Pahnee sat there with his hands clasped and his fingers touching his lips, waiting for me to get to my question. I always had one.
“Do you think I should tell Mother?”
“About?”
“About my dad being in the hospital and about finding Exley,” I said. “You’d better not,” he said.
“Why?”
“Why do you think?”
“Because she won’t believe me,” I said. Because Mother wouldn’t have believed me. She would have thought I’d made the whole thing up. Making things up was a problem of mine, according to Mother. This was why I was seeing Dr. Pahnee in the first place. I never bothered asking Dr. Pahnee whether he believed me, though, because I knew he did. Because that’s also why he was there. Mother thought she was paying him to help me stop making up the things she thought I was making up. But I knew Dr. Pahnee was there to listen to me talk and then to believe everything I said. “Because she’ll think I made the whole thing up.”
Dr. Pahnee nodded, unclasped his hands, reclasped them around the back of his neck in a satisfied way. “Better not tell her,” he said. This was the only advice Dr. Pahnee ever gave me. Before Dr. Pahnee, Mother had sent me to another doctor. The only advice he ever gave me was “Crying doesn’t do anyone any good” and “Stay positive.” It was too hard to listen to that first doctor’s advice, and much easier to pay attention to Dr. Pahnee when he advised me, “Better not tell her.” I got up from my couch, and Dr. Pahnee got up from his chair. “Thanks,” I said. “You were a big help,” I said, which was the truth.
“ ‘I’ve got human life — do you understand that? Human life! — in my hands!’ ” This was what Dr. Pahnee always said after I thanked him. It think it was his way of saying, That’s what I do. I help people. But anyway, you’re welcome.
“OK,” I said. “See you on Wednesday.” And then I turned and headed for the stairs.
“Miller,” Dr. Pahnee said. I turned and looked at him. Whatever was in his face that made me think he was happy, or amused, was gone. He looked serious. There were worried grooves in his forehead. “Maybe you should write all this down.”
This was something new. I always told Dr. Pahnee something and asked him a question based on what I’d told him and then he answered it. The first doctor had asked me to write down things I’d learned from my dad. But Dr. Pahnee had never told me to write anything down. He was sitting on his desk now, his feet stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles. In his office, he always wore clunky brown shoes: they looked like work boots, except lower. But I noticed now that he was barefoot. I couldn’t help staring at his bare feet: they were normal human feet — there wasn’t anything especially callused or yellowed or cracked or gross about them — but that they were bare seemed wrong, off, just like my dad being groomed in the hospital.
“Write what down?”
“Everything that’s going on with you and your mother and dad and everything else,” he said.
“Why?”
“There’s a lot going on in your life,” he said. “It might help you to keep things straight if you wrote things down.”
“The first doctor told me to write down things I learned from my dad,” I said. “Do you want me to do that, too?”
“If you’d like.”
“Will you read it?”
“Only if you want me to.”
“Beginning when?”
Dr. Pahnee shrugged and said, “Why not begin with what happened today?”
“OK, I guess,” I said. Then I said, again, “Thanks, you were a big help.” I waited for a while, expected him to say, again, what he always said after I thanked him for being a big help. But he didn’t say anything. He just kept looking at me in that serious, worried way. It kind of creeped me out. So I turned and made for the stairs again. This time, Dr. Pahnee didn’t say anything to stop me.
Doctor’s Notes (Entry 12)
A surprise visit from M. Normally, I would object to a patient’s stopping by on a Sunday, unannounced — unannounced and, indeed, without warning. Normally, I would explain to the patient that I was in the middle of something and send him/her away. But I’ve grown quite fond of M. He’s become my favorite patient, and not only because of his mother. Possibly because he’s told me how to help him, rather than making me figure it out for myself, as is the wont of all my other patients. Possibly because it is a relief to be told what to say and when; possibly because it’s sometimes nice — nice and, indeed, pleasurable—to not have to sound like oneself all the time. Possibly because the whole charade seems harmless enough: I do not think M. really believes me to be a different doctor; I don’t think he really believes that Dr. Pahnee and myself are different people. We are role-playing, that much is clear, although the origin of the name — Dr. Pahnee — remains unclear. But in any case, I am recording my sessions with M., in which I speak as Miller has told me Dr. Pahnee must speak, and during my presentation to the NCMHP, I will juxtapose those tapes with these notes, in which I write as myself. I’m certain the results will be quite revelatory. Regardless, when I find M. standing on my porch, I ask, “Would you like to come in?” as he has instructed me to ask, and he says yes.