The difficult sessions she speaks of with R are, of course, her analytic sessions with Dad – Dr. Thomas Rubin, who, unlike the other characters in her journal, doesn't rate use of the first letter of his first name most likely because it's a name he and Tom Jessup share.
Correlating her references to difficult sessions with Dad's notations of similar difficulties and/or headaches, I'm able to date Barbara's entries to Friday, July 11; Monday, July 14; Friday, July 18; and the last session, the one in which she tells Dad she's fed up with his ‘Freudian claptrap’ corresponds to Dad's notation on Monday, July 28: ‘Very difficult session with F. Worried.’
From this I'm able to deduce that Barbara has received the envelope containing the newspaper on Tuesday, July 22, and the envelope containing the thousand dollars on Monday, July 28, the same day she made the claptrap remark and but a month from August 27, the day she and Tom Jessup were slain.
After seeing Pam off to the courthouse, I return to my room, too wound up with Flamingo to go to work. Impossible for me now to put the diary down, so I settle back onto my unmade bed and resume reading where I left off:
Monday
This morning R astonished me. ‘Consider me seduced,’ he said. ‘What?’ ‘Now that you have me in your clutches, tell me what you're going to do with me.’
Was the man mad? Did he want to get off on my fantasies? Fine, I decided, I'll give it to him all right, I'll give it to him in spades!
‘I want to suck your dick, Dr. R. I want to tie you to the bed and ride your face. I want to sit on your dick (I'm sure it's big, Dr. R!) and ride your huge, horsehung dick like I ride a horse. How's that, Dr. R? Do it for you yet?’
He sat there still, impassive, the cool all-knowing shrink, while I gushed all this out like a crazed harpy.
‘How ‘bout this, Dr. R? I want you to crawl over here, stick your head under my skirt, pull down my panties and bury your face in my muff. Then lick -me, lick-me, lick-me till I scream-scream-scream. Suck-me, suck-me, suck-me till I come-come-come all over you, till my juices coat your cheeks.’
The most amazing thing was that even when I yelled all this at him (and I didn't care whether there was anyone listening in his waiting room or not), I felt myself getting hot. Then I realized I was diddling myself, which kind of told me I really did want to do all those delightful things with him.
‘You've turned me into Blackjack,’ he said when I finally quieted down.
‘What kind of bullshit is that? I'm a sexual woman. I have erotic fantasies. That doesn't mean I've got an Oedipus complex. You asked me to fantasize, I did, and now, God, you pull that old Freudian crap!’
He looked stricken, but all I could think was how stupid this whole thing was.
"I've already got two lovers,’ I told him. ‘I get all I need from them. I don't need you in the mix. Or is it that you want to mix in? If you do, please tell me so I can figure out how I can accommodate you.’
That made him furious. ‘You're a very difficult patient. I want to help you, but you constantly reject my help.’
‘Do you think asking me to make up sex fantasies about us is really going to help me?’
Silence. We both sulked. Finally I turned to him. ‘I think you got hard listening to me.’
‘That's an interesting fantasy. What makes you think so?’
‘It's not a fantasy, Doctor. I've had lots of experience with men. When they get hard I can tell. Hey! Are you blushing?’
Figuring he'd had enough, I changed the subject, told him about the clipping, then about the thousand dollars. That upset him, proof to me that he wasn't the one who sent them.
I told him so. ‘My fantasy was that it was you.’
‘Why? What made you think that?’
‘It's so devious I thought it was maybe part of the treatment.’
‘You think my treatment is devious?’
‘Sometimes it seems a two-edged sword.’
He ignored that. ‘Who do you really think sent those letters?’
‘At first I thought it was my ex, then maybe J. I even thought T could have done it since we've been having trouble lately. But of course it couldn't have been T, he barely has a dime. Then I figured it out. At least I think so.’
‘Who is it?’
‘I'm not ready to talk about that yet. What I want you to do is make a date with me, a date for the two of us to screw so we can get it out of our systems.’
‘Fantasy time is over.’
‘Fantasy time has just begun.’
‘Sorry, the hour's up.’
He rose from his chair. As he did, I checked his trousers to see if I could detect a protuberance.
I find this entry mind-boggling. Did she really take control of the session like that? Is this why Dad's paper suddenly stops? Because he lost control?
She really is an impossible patient! How could Dad stand her? On the other hand, in her diary at least, he comes off as something of a dork, relying on the old analyst's scam of answering every question with a question of his own, and employing the classic standby, ‘Now what makes you think that?’
The next day, Tuesday, August 5, she receives a sealed condom in the mail. She's appalled, frightened. Based on her reaction, whoever is doing this is achieving his goaclass="underline"
Tuesday
First the article about the kidnapping, then the money, now a rubber. What's he trying to say? When I opened the envelope and that thing fell out, I nearly threw up. My heart was thumping. My forehead was wet. I called J. He said come over right away. I said no, I need to collect myself, I'm going out to the yard for a swim.
I must have swum a hundred laps, and even that wasn't enough. When I came back into the house, the phone was ringing. J again. He said W's been spreading around a story about my meeting a lover at a crummy motel. ‘For some reason he's got it in for you, cutie.’ ‘Don't call me that, Jack. Not today!’ ‘Sorry. But listen to me – the little bastard's got it in for you. Think about it. Think about why.’
I know why. Because I didn't tell him about T, didn't share my confidences, cut him off from my secret life. If you keep a secret from W and he finds out, he never forgives you.
‘I wonder if he's the one sending that stuff to you,’ J said.
W! Little W? Sure, the little turd's fully capable of a stunt like that. It's mean enough, cruel enough, sexually twisted enough, too. But if it is W, then it's not a warning from the kidnappers, it's just a mean, dirty act of a mean, warped, dirty-minded little man who hopes I'll confide in him again about the pain he's causing me, like I stupidly did two weeks ago.
I called up W, told him about the rubber. ‘Gawd!’ he moaned, ‘I didn't know people still used those things.’ ‘If whoever-it-is wants me to crawl through broken glass, they're succeeding,’ I told him. ‘I'm tortured, I'm in real pain.’
He wanted to come over and soothe me. I told him I was crying so hard I couldn't face him. Silence, then he snapped: ‘I think it's Jack.’ ‘But why, W? Why would J do a thing like that?’ ‘Because he's jealous. Because he thinks you're screwing someone else. He can't stand that. It makes him crazy. So now he's sending you all this crazy stuff.’ ‘But I'm not screwing anyone else.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I heard you were.’ ‘You know I would have told you.’ ‘Yes, love, I know. Listen, we'll talk later. Deadline pressure. Gotta run, get my column in.’
I phoned J back. ‘W says it's you.’ ‘That's his game,’ J said. ‘Stir the pot, then sit back and watch us tear each other apart.’
I told him I want revenge on the little freak. ‘I can have him beaten up,’ J said. ‘Break his legs.’ ‘No, no violence. I want everyone to turn against him. That'll hurt him most.’ ‘Well, that's your department,’ J said. ‘I only know how to strong-arm people, not how to get them disinvited from parties.’ ‘Well, I do!’ I told him. ‘And I'm going to do it. I know his weaknesses, where to get him where he hurts.’ ‘Well, good for you,’ he said, ‘but be careful, because if you're wrong and it's not him, he'll go to war against you, publish stuff that'll help A with his case.’ ‘Well, J, if it comes down to that, you'll have my permission to break his legs, his stupid neck, too, while you're at it!’