Intensive Therapy Page 2

  Victoria knew she deserved the reprimand. He spoke with just enough “I don’t need to take this shit from anybody” to make her think he might send her away. She slumped into her seat, her anger giving way to profound sadness and the image of an eddying swirl of water spiraling down a toilet.

  “Whatever,” Victoria uttered dismissively, after which she responded sullenly to the standard questions: where she grew up—a big house in Abington Township; her age—she was twenty; where she lived—Hill Hall; her major—English literature; her family—her parents hated her. Eventually Dr. Speller asked about friends and if she had a significant relationship.

  Victoria wanted a boyfriend, because that’s what other girls had. But despite all the admiring glances from boys on campus, no one made it past the third date because she lost interest. “What kind of question is that?” she asked. “How long have you done this?”

  Dr. Speller sighed and looked elsewhere. Victoria thought he glanced at his watch. Why do I do this? she berated herself. Push people away and then feel bad.

  “Has anyone ever said you push people away?” Dr. Speller ventured.

  That was twice in half an hour. “How did you know what I was thinking?”

  Dr. Speller smiled, setting his glasses on his side of the desk.

  In truth, Victoria had picked a psychiatrist-in-training not just because it was all she could afford, but also because she figured the therapy would hurt less. Somehow, though, Dr. Speller had already poked her sore spots. She had been nasty to him, but he kept coming back, unlike her drunken nebbish of a father who took his wife’s abuse without standing up for himself.

  Victoria looked across the room. Atop the bookcase rested a sculpture of an orchestra conductor next to a thick blue paperback and an aged hardcover entitled Guide for the Perplexed. What did she have to lose?

  “I’m angry all the time. All the time. And,” she said, holding her breath, “ever since I went with my family to Florence, I’m terrified of high places. I think about walking off tall buildings all the time.” She braced for the worst.

  Dr. Speller pincered his glasses by their earpieces, twirled them around, and said, “Both ideas are intertwined, you know.”

  The notion bowled Victoria over. She looked out the window for the first time. “It never occurred to me they were related. You really think so?”

  “I know so,” Dr. Speller said. “As for your anger, how long have you felt this way?”

  “I don’t know. It seems like forever.”

  “Can you remember when you didn’t feel this way?”

  “You don’t give up, do you?” she said. “I wish my father was like that, but there he sits night after night downing double martinis in front of Walter Cronkite, while my mother bitches at him or me. I had to get out of there.”

  The room started to spin and Victoria’s stomach heaved. Too proud for anyone to see her on hands and knees over a trash can, she bolted down the hall seeking relief; the men’s room, the women’s room, it didn’t matter. She made it to the commode just in time.

  When Victoria returned, it was five minutes to four. Room 921’s door remained open. Dr. Speller was quietly reading the newspaper. He seemed pleased to see her. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yes, thank you. I feel much better.” Victoria searched Dr. Speller’s face, trying to get a read. “It was nice of you to wait for me. I’m sorry I was so nasty. I get that way when I’m overwhelmed. That’s not really me.”

  “I get it,” he said with a smile.

  Relieved that Dr. Speller had accepted her apology, Victoria said, “We’ve run late. I’m keeping you.”

  “There’s still time.”

  “When can we meet again?”

  Dr. Speller seemed surprised. “How soon would you like to come?”

  “The next time you can.”

  He surveyed his appointment book. “That’ll be this Monday afternoon. When does your class end?”

  “At four forty-five.”

  “I have someone then. How about five twenty?”

  “How long do sessions last?”

  “Around forty-five minutes, although some take longer to wrap up than others. I try to stay flexible, but I don’t like making people wait.”

  “Five twenty, Monday, it is. See you then,” Victoria said, feeling as though a cannonball had been lifted off her chest.

  “Good-bye,” Dr. Speller said grinning. “See you Monday.”

  3

  Monday, September 21, 1981

  “To her surprise, Victoria had not thought about tall buildings all weekend. Upon entering room 921 for her second session, she studied Dr. Speller more carefully. “Before we get into anything,” she said, “how old are you?”

  “That matters, doesn’t it?” Dr. Speller replied.

  “What kind of answer is that? You know about me; I need to know about you.”

  “What does knowing my age mean to you?”

  “Mean to me? It means I want a straight answer. Jesus Christ, it’s a simple question.”

  Dr. Speller hesitated. “I’m twenty-seven years old. I’ll be twenty-eight next month,” he said.

  “That’s good.” His age reassured her; it made him seem worldly. “So, what happens next?”

  “First, let’s decide on a schedule. You should come often enough that we can follow the themes in your thoughts from session to session. What feels right to you?”

  “How about Mondays and Thursdays, after class?” Victoria said.

  “Sounds good. If it’s too much or too little we can always change,” Dr. Speller responded.

  Victoria nodded.

  “So let’s get going,” he said. “The basic idea is to say what’s on your mind, uncensored, just as it goes through consciousness.”

  “My mind is like a carousel spinning out of control. There are so many thoughts racing through it, I don’t know where to start.”

  “Pick one. Any one.”

  “How will I know if I’m on the right track?”

  “It doesn’t matter. You’ll see. Thoughts are associated. Your mind connects them unconsciously. Among other things, my job is to see the connections.”

  “What other things?”

  “I try to put your thoughts and feelings in perspective. To see the world through your eyes.”

  Victoria looked around the room, settling on a photograph of Philadelphia’s Academy of Music. “Okay, here goes,” she said. “I called my mother Saturday night. Lorraine drives me crazy. You never know what mood she’ll be in. This time, she was complaining about Daddy’s drinking. Morris Schone hasn’t said a civil word to me in two years, except to complain about how much money I cost.

  “See this?” Victoria touched her Italian leather coat. “Lorraine took me shopping in Florence. When we got back to the hotel, he had a shit fit about how much it cost; but she was the one who wanted to buy it, telling me how good it looked on me. Which is another thing. Lorraine has this thing about my body. She hates certain skirts, because she thinks my hips and legs are too narrow. It’s all about appearances with her. Even though she was furious about my moving away to college, Lorraine would never send some Cinderella to Hill Hall wearing rags, not with the rest of the girls gallivanting around campus in Burberry skirts and cashmere sweaters. So, she bought this jacket just as much for herself as she did for me. I liked it, but I didn’t have to have it. But when Daddy blasted me, she turned on me like I was a greedy pig. That’s what I mean. You never know what kind of mood she’ll be in.”

  For the next half hour, Victoria surprised herself with how eagerly she shared her thoughts and feelings about life in Abington Township.

  “I see,” Dr. Speller said when Victoria stopped to catch her breath. “You mentioned that there were other thoughts on your mind. Feel free to include your memories, your daydreams, and your night dreams.”

  “I never talk about what goes on in my mind,” Victoria said. “Do you have any idea how weird this is for me? Sitting w
ith a perfect stranger, saying things out loud I haven’t even said to myself?”

  “It’s hard, I know, especially if you’ve never done it before, but that’s your job in therapy. Sometimes it’s best for me to remain quiet, so I don’t disturb your train of thought. Then we try to figure out what your thoughts mean. And one other thing,” Dr. Speller added. “Keep a pad and pencil by your bedside and write down your night dreams. Dreams are a peephole into the unconscious mind—more for us to work on.”

  Victoria liked his “we” and “us.” There was no “we” at Abington. Abington was Lorraine and Morris telling her what to think and feel.

  “Dr. Speller,” Victoria said as the session drew to a close, “you have no clue about the shit that goes through my mind, hour after hour, day after day.”

  “You’re right. I don’t,” he said. “But this is a safe place to share it.”

  Outside the tiny window, the afternoon sky had turned dark orange and pink. “There is one more thought on my mind today,” Victoria said. “It’s about the girl in the book I’m reading. Her name is Esther. Esther catches smallpox and barely survives, but while she’s recuperating, she meets her mother—who she’s been searching for her whole life—for the first and only time. Her mother has always known Esther’s true identity but was ashamed, because she bore Esther out of wedlock. Now, she was frantic, worrying whether her daughter would survive her illness.

  “I was thinking about Esther’s pock-marked face, about how scarred I feel, that there must be something grotesque about me that repulses my family.” Victoria burst into tears. “They don’t like me. I’ve been alone for so long. I have friends so to speak; I have a brother, but except for Grandma, no one knows the real me. They wouldn’t like it. Can you understand that?”

  “I want to. Very much,” Dr. Speller said empathetically.

  It had taken only two sessions for Victoria to open up. This she did not expect.

  Victoria and Dr. Speller shared a brief silence that felt like a memorial service. At that moment, she felt the loneliness of childhood begin to die. Not with the explosion she expected, more like the bitter sweetness of her favorite poem by Robert Frost.

  4

  Friday, November 19, 2004

  “I can’t believe you get nervous before these things,” Jennie Speller said to her husband. “You must have given this talk a hundred times.”

  “More like thirty, Jen,” said Jonas, checking himself in the hotel room mirror. “I prefer panels. It’s nerve-racking when everyone’s looking at you.”

  “You’re not fooling anyone, Jo. We know you love the attention.”

  “Well, maybe,” he laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Remember that German psychoanalyst I trained with when we lived in Philadelphia? Hannah Schmidt. The one who looked like a Berlin disco bouncer?”

  “Sort of. What made you think of her?”

  “You reminded me of my first presentation after residency. What a hoot! Hannah—a die hard devotee of psychoanalyst Melanie Klein—was on the panel that day. She showed wartime pictures made by English children, claiming the aerial bombs and antiaircraft weapons represented turds and shriveled penises. It was all I could to do to keep from breaking up. But she got me thinking how literal children are. Tell a child he has chicken pox and he’s liable to start looking for a rooster! Ironic, isn’t it? That I learned from her.”

  “And me? Have I taught you a thing or two? Or would you rather fantasize about Fraulein Schmidt?”

  “You should see pictures of Melanie Klein, Jen. Hannah cut and dyed her hair to look exactly like her heroine. Her head looked like Brillo.” Jonas ogled Jennie. “You look good enough to eat,” he said. “How come I can’t get enough?”

  “Must be all those adoring lady patients and residents you spend your days with. But there’re still a few lessons I could teach you, Herr Professor.”

  Dressed in olive pants, a yellow blouse, and brown loafers, Jennie looked more beautiful than the day they met, the twenty-third anniversary of which was approaching on Thanksgiving. Jennie’s dark brown hair had kept its lustrous sheen, and her green eyes looked out from a flawless face that defied time. Jonas couldn’t help admiring the subtle way Jennie’s waist contoured into her hips. A jolt shot up and down his spine, centering deep in his core. “When does class start?”

  “After the girls and I finish our spa day courtesy of the Foxwoods Resort and Casino. They must think you’re some kind of high roller. What did you tell them?”

  “Eddie’s partner made the arrangements for the Connecticut Bar Association’s fall meeting. When you bring in four hundred lawyers for a long weekend, you get perks. Everyone connected with Speller and Bodenheim is comped for whatever they want.”

  “‘Whatever they want?’” Jennie said, perusing the room service menu. “Suppose what you want isn’t on the menu?”

  “Huh?”

  “Remember that article I showed you in Cosmopolitan about ten ways to drive your man wild in bed? Maybe I should order a blonde wig and four-inch stilettos?”

  Jonas looked at Jennie from the bottom up, stopping at her chest. “That won’t be necessary. I like you just the way you are.”

  Jennie made one of her sounds that drove Jonas wild, but just as he went to embrace her, three loud knocks on the door announced that Eddie, Jonas’s brother, had come to fetch him for the conference. “To be continued,” Jonas murmured into her ear.

  “Hi Jen. You look nice,” Eddie said when she opened the door. Then to his brother, “Jonas, did you know that more than two hundred people registered for your presentation? If I had known how renowned you were gonna become, I would have syndicated your speaking rights, like thoroughbred stud fees.”

  Jennie and Jonas smiled at each other. He said, “Bye, Jen. We’ll look into that stud business later and see if there’s anything to it.”

  Jonas was to give one of the keynote presentations after his first order of business, an appearance on a panel with several distinguished litigators about the psychodynamics of cross-examination.

  Since the conference center was on the far side of the sprawling complex, Jonas decided to go by car. All the way down in the elevator, Eddie gabbed about how people were praising the conference and how proud he felt of his brother.

  By the time they reached the lobby, Jonas’s BMW had arrived from valet parking. Another encounter from his training days popped into mind. About a woman far more important to him than Hannah Schmidt. “Get in,” Jonas told his brother. “I’ll drive.”

  5

  Friday, September 18, 1981

  As Jonas Speller drove hurriedly from the clinic to his 4:30 psychoanalysis session, he laughed, thinking about what had just occurred: the Penn undergraduate girl teetering into his office at five minutes to four. What a sight. A fractious filly dressed like an aristocrat. She spent the first forty minutes with her nostrils flared but left wearing a smile that lit up the hallway.

  By the time he lay down on Dr. Fowler’s couch, Jonas was five minutes late. His father’s sudden death just before Jonas’s medical school graduation had driven him into psychoanalysis three years earlier. At first Jonas was so flattened he would have laid down his life for Dr. Philip Fowler, the hot new training analyst at the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Institute. Within months, Jonas entered formal psychoanalytic training, and since all trainees had to be in analysis, it was natural to continue with Dr. Fowler. But as Jonas felt better and better, he began challenging Dr. Fowler’s rigidity about classical psychoanalysis. That’s when Fowler unsheathed his switchblade of a tongue, and the analysis deteriorated into a battle of wits and wills. Because he was training to be a psychoanalyst, Jonas felt trapped, convinced he would be dismissed from the Institute if he broke with Dr. Fowler.

  The couch felt scratchy that afternoon, like lying on burlap. “I did something today you’re going to hate,” Jonas opened the session warily.

  “You should know by now,” Dr. F
owler scolded, pouncing on a theme of that week’s sessions, “that you’re projecting onto me the unconscious hatred you harbored toward your father.”

  “There you go again.” “Hammering about hatred.”

  “Hammering?” Dr. Fowler interjected smartly. “What does hammering bring to mind?”

  Jonas’s first thought was of helping his father with home repairs, but he kept quiet, his mind returning to staying late for the Penn girl, a no-no in analytic practice.

  “Hammering reminds me of jackhammerers who need headphones for ear protection,” Jonas said, hoping Dr. Fowler would get the dig. “You know, Dr. Fowler, it feels like you’re more interested in your theories than in my psyche. This business about me reliving a love-hate relationship with my father is your idea, not mine. This analysis feels like lying naked on a butcher block with my hands tied behind my back.”

  “Naked on a butcher block? No doubt with me wielding the meat cleaver?”

  “Good God,” Jonas said. “Not castration anxiety again.”

  Dr. Fowler’s pen scratched, the sounds reminding Jonas of clawing mice at the lab where he had worked summers to help pay for Johns Hopkins medical school.

  “I broke the rules today,” Jonas said. “I had a new patient. She left my office five minutes before her session ended. Instead of shutting the door, I waited until I was sure she was okay. I was reading the review of yesterday’s Philadelphia Orchestra concert. The program starts with Invitation to the Dance, a piece I adore. The strings are so lush. I’m living in the wrong century. It should be 1881, not 1981.”

  Dr. Fowler remained silent.

  “The girl came back fifteen minutes later. It made a difference that I had waited.”

  “Clearly, you want me to admire your bedside manner,” Dr. Fowler said, “while in fact you indulged her dependency and allowed her to manipulate you.”