Nina was all warm tones. She had tawny skin and bright amber eyes. Dressed in a pair of chestnut pants and a toffee-colored sweater, with a rope of amber beads doubled around her neck, she looked professional but easygoing and kind. And she was. Despite being so maternal, so caring, Nina had never had children. Because of my daughter and me, she claimed she never regretted it. We were her family, she always said, but she was also my boss, and it was important for us to keep our roles separate in and out of the office. We didn’t always succeed.
Once I finished describing the tape, I handed her the confidentiality agreement. She read it. Leaning forward, she focused on me. “I believe, even more than I did before, that the Scarlet Society sounds like a perfect group for you to work with. I know you, so I know that nothing will be as satisfying to you as helping these women. And if in the process you wind up identifying a new trend, a syndrome, or a complex that no other therapist has noticed yet, it will give you even more gratification. This is what gets your blood moving.”
I nodded. She did know me best. “But what about the confidentiality agreement? Isn’t it insulting?”
“No, it’s just naive.”
“But they’re going into this not trusting me.”
“Do you blame them? If this organization is as you’ve described, what you learn could be explosive. Of course they are worried about confidentiality. Besides, Rush is a lawyer.” She looked back at the piles of books. “Do you want to go through these? See if there is anything you want?”
I shook my head. “No, I have my own stack of books waiting to be read. Too many books, not enough time.”
Nina scooted forward so she could put her hands on my knees. I could smell the spicy, Oriental scent she always wore. To me it was familiar and comforting, even if to everyone else it was sexy.
“Are you scared of working with these women, Morgan?”
I nodded. “But I don’t know why.” I was surprised that it came out as a whisper.
“You don’t need to know why. Not yet. You do your best work when you are scared. Sign the paper,” Nina advised.
Thirteen
The following Monday was exhausting. I’d scheduled back-to-back patients, and even with fifteen minutes between appointments-to get a cup of coffee, inhale a container of yogurt or return a phone call-I was still reeling from the information and emotion I’d dealt with. The most critical reason for those breaks was so that I could get up, stretch my legs, walk to the large windows in my office, look down on the street and change my focus.
Too often, I keep hearing the voices of my patients describing frustration that love has turned to hate, anger at how jealousy corrupts, fear about fetishes, obsession over a need to inflict or receive pain, self-loathing at an inability to become intimate, questions about a hunger that will not abate or an appetite that nothing seems to arouse.
I go over and over the conversations my patients and I have had, looking for alternative solutions, questions I need to ask during the next session, dark corners that need more light.
What I do is fulfilling. I am grateful that I have the kind of career that allows me to interact with people who need my help and want to lead more satisfied lives. But there is another side to my profession, even if I don’t spend much time thinking about it, that can eat at my soul and corrode my own ability to connect to people in my life.
It’s not that I am frightened of what can go wrong between lovers. I was married for a long time and, for most of those years, was content. I simply know too much. I’m too aware of how easily people break and how hard it is to make real, sustaining changes.
By six forty-five that night, I was so tired I regretted having agreed to fit the Scarlet Society into my schedule. In the fifteen minutes I had before they arrived, I got a fresh cup of coffee and called Dulcie.
She was just leaving rehearsal with her father, an independent film director. “Dad’s taking me out to dinner and then to the opening of An Hour Before Dark.” Breathless, she proceeded to tell me who had directed it and who the stars were.
As soon as I hung up, the receptionist buzzed to tell me she was sending the new group in.
I greeted Shelby, who started to introduce me to the other women with her.
“No, that’s okay,” I interrupted. “Let’s get everyone seated before we do the introductions.”
Everything that happens from the moment a patient walks into my office is potential information. I become a camera, watching and listening and trying to remember what I see, sense and hear.
During the day, when individual appointments are scheduled, my office feels spacious. I have a large desk in front of the bookshelves that line the east wall. In front of the desk is a chair. Against the west wall is a camel-colored leather couch, long enough for three people to sit, or for one tall man to lie down comfortably. Facing the couch is my oversized chair. When I have a group, though, I set up a semicircle of eight to twelve folding chairs and I sit so that I can face them. The large room gets smaller, but not uncomfortable.
A woman in a red suit was the first to take a seat, and she chose the one closest to my chair. Her clothes looked expensive, cut so the fabric hugged her slim body. She wore high-heeled black alligator shoes and carried a leather bag, which I recognized as Chaneclass="underline" the leather and gold chain were unmistakable.
Shelby Rush, in a black pantsuit and high-heeled black suede boots, put her tote on the chair on my other side and then stood, hostesslike, making sure that everyone found a seat.
There were too many faces for each of them to make a distinct impression, but I was very aware of two women. One wore blue jeans, a white man-tailored shirt and a brown suede blazer, and carried a briefcase as worn as the jacket. Her eyes never stopped moving. She looked at me, at each of the others, at the windows, at the floor, at the artwork on my walls. When it came time for her to take a seat, she sat at the center of the semicircle, where she would have the best view of everything going on around her. Her attentiveness didn’t appear to be nervous energy, but rather a need to observe. Her sexuality impressed me, too. She did nothing to hide it.
Like Shelby, there were several women dressed all in black-which is almost a uniform in Manhattan-but one woman was so blond, thin and pale that her black clothes overpowered her. She reminded me of a widow. Moving slowly, she appeared to have a hard time making a decision about where to go or which seat to take, and twice she stumbled over a chair leg. Her sunglasses probably weren’t helping. Large black frames with very dark lenses, they completely obscured her eyes. Without having to ask, I knew that she was in hiding. I just didn’t know if it was from me, from the other women or from herself.
As the rest of the seats filled up, it turned out that six of the twelve women wore sunglasses. One also wore a baseball cap. Another wore a scarf over her hair, tied in a retro “Jackie O” style.
I was used to treating groups who were strangers until I brought them together, choosing them carefully so that their personalities would play off one another. Week after week, I watched them become acquainted, exhibit personality and psychological traits and form a unit. But this was a preformed group, their dynamics already firmly in place. From what Shelby had told me, many of these women had been together in the society for several years. There was a lot of interaction I’d miss seeing acted out, making my work more difficult.
Even after they were all settled, they were oddly silent for people who knew one another well. Once, I had done grief counseling for a corporation where a tragedy had occurred. Even with that catastrophe overpowering them, there had been more conversation than there was with this group now.