Intensive Therapy Read online

  “It was a first session, for God’s sake. The girl really needed help. She was thinking about killing herself. You call that indulgence; I call it being humane. I’m a doctor. And a damn good therapist for someone three years into training.”

  “Three whole years,” Dr. Fowler snickered. “Quite the prodigy!”

  “I don’t care what you think. I did what was right.”

  “I see,” Dr. Fowler said. “Now I’m supposed to admire your defiance. Haven’t you read Oedipus Rex?”

  “Yes, I have. The whole trilogy,” Jonas said. “Ever since I told you my dream about moving into the office next door to you, you’ve been making the relationships with my father and with you sound perverted. What I want is for you to show me the psychoanalytic ropes and encourage me to become my own man. This isn’t quantum mechanics. Why complicate things with all this song and dance about sex and aggression? Last night, I dreamt about airplanes dodging bridges on takeoff and landing. What do you think that means?”

  “This constant need to out-analyze me—it’s about wanting a bigger analytic penis.”

  “Penis, schmeenis. What’s wrong with wanting to be better than you? You make it sound like a disease. Every time we disagree on an interpretation, I catch a ration of shit about Oedipus killing his father. Oedipus didn’t set out to kill Laius, Dr. Fowler. Laius’s chariots drove young Oedipus off the road. Like you; you knock me off track. I have serious issues we never deal with. I keep dating women who don’t challenge me, and the relationships go nowhere. If anything, my grief is worse, not better. Meanwhile, analysis feels like a battle for self-preservation.”

  Jonas drifted through the rest of the session, ending with a story about the Philadelphia Academy of Music box office. “I know a blue-haired woman named Mrs. Paquette. As long as I show up early and make eye contact, she finds me a ticket, even when the concert is sold out. Sometimes, there’s a student discount. I’ve never been shut out.”

  Jonas decided to take one last shot at being frank. “You know,” he said, “the concert thing is very painful, Dr. Fowler. Sure as shit, you and your entourage will be there, which means that awkward moment seeing you at intermission and feeling ignored because I want you to say, ‘Hey everybody, this is Jonas Speller. He’s going to be a terrific analyst,’ after which everyone asks my opinion about the orchestra, because you’ve told them I’m conservatory-trained and read more scores than contemporary fiction. Well, I’m going tomorrow night. I’ll get in again somehow.”

  “I see,” Dr. Fowler said. “Paulette—”

  “Her name is Paquette, not Paulette. Mrs. Paquette.”

  “Mrs. Paquette gets you in. Just like you want me to make it easy for you, give you a reduced fee and be your admission ticket to the analytic ‘entourage.’” Dr. Fowler, a devotee of puns and word-play, sounded especially tickled with his admission ticket double entendre.

  “I resent that,” Jonas said. “I’ve always paid my own way here. Full fee and don’t you forget it.” The clock read 5:14. Jonas left without waiting for Dr. Fowler to end the session. He felt relieved. “Today is an ending,” he said to himself on his way out. “Of what, I’m not sure.”

  6

  Half an hour after leaving Fowler’s office, Jonas was back at his apartment, half-hoping his date—another sultry graduate student looking for her MRS degree—had called to cancel. No such luck.

  Energized, he pulled on his running gear and bounded out into the late afternoon sun, completing the four-mile loop to the Schuylkill and back in less than thirty minutes, record time for him. He headed straight into the shower where, of all people, he thought of the Penn girl, whose last name he couldn’t remember. The Serengeti Plain came to mind; next, the emerald castle from The Wizard of Oz. “It’s her animalism,” he said aloud. “Dressed like a duchess. Family outings to Europe. Fancy suburb. I hereby christen you Miss Abington.” Jonas turned contemplative. Some night I’ll stroll into the Academy of Music to hear Invitation to the Dance with my own Miss Abington. Not tomorrow night … but some night, he told himself as he climbed out of the shower.

  Toweling himself off vigorously, he reached for the telephone.

  “Hello,” answered Jonas’s older brother, Eddie, a lawyer in New York City.

  “Good, you’re home.”

  “Greetings, Professor Freud,” Eddie said. “Any new shrunken heads today?”

  “You should have seen me today. I thought this gal was going to chuck a spear at my cojones.”

  “The warrior type, eh? You’ve always had a thing for that archetype.”

  “Archetype? I didn’t know you studied Jung.”

  “Throw me a bone. Tell me about your Amazon.”

  “She’s a ball of fire. I’ve christened her Miss Abington. She’s from a prosperous suburb north of here, not exactly where we grew up.”

  “You’ll get there,” Eddie said.

  “Probably not. I’d prefer New York. Lincoln Center. Carnegie Hall. Besides, Miss Abington might aim too high and nail me in the heart.”

  “Sounds like she’s gotten there already.”

  “You know me; I can look out for myself.”

  “Are you sure? Maybe I should send you some chest armor and a codpiece. They’re made of titanium now.”

  “You’re just jealous,” Jonas said. “Besides, my date tonight is a dark-haired Kim Basinger. Eat your heart out.”

  “You sound good. How’s Philadelphia?”

  “It’s great. How’s everyone? Margo and the kids?”

  “We’re great,” Eddie said. “Think of this: While you’re making omelets with Ms. Basinger tomorrow morning, we’ll be schlepping the double-stroller to Central Park.”

  “We’ll see. Besides, who says I’ll be with anyone in the morning?”

  “What are you going to do? Call a limo and send her home?”

  Jonas’s voice trailed into a whisper, as a pang of grief erupted. “I wish we were together,” he said.

  “Jesus, Jonas. What just happened? You sound so different.”

  “Dammit,” Jonas said. “Does this ever fucking end? ‘Limo’ made me think about the car we rode in on the way to the cemetery, and shoveling dirt on our father’s casket.”

  “You keep talking like it happened yesterday, Jonas. Not three years ago. I thought that’s what therapy was for. What does your analyst say?”

  “Oh, him? Dr. Fowler thinks I’m angry at Dad.”

  “He’s not helping?”

  “I don’t know. I think he gets his interpretations from a cookbook. Everyone knows I should have had Dad go to Hopkins Hospital. The only reason I chose GBMC was because I sub-interned there, and I figured he’d be treated better since the nurses knew me. At least if he was at Hopkins, they could have tried to pull the clot out of his lungs.”

  “You can’t keep talking this way,” Eddie said. “Nobody blames you. It kills me that you still think that. He died because he waited too long to have the operation, because he wouldn’t get out of bed. You didn’t answer my question. Is Fowler helping?”

  Jonas looked out his window at the scraggly yard, where the descending sun cast shadows resembling tombstones. “Everyone tells me Fowler’s the best,” he said. “That I’m so fortunate to have him. Meanwhile, I think he’s more interested in my conflicts than he’s interested in me.”

  “That doesn’t sound right,” Eddie said. “You know, if you take the early train tomorrow, we can all go to the park together.”

  “Thanks, but I’m staying here this weekend. There’s a concert I want to hear tomorrow night.”

  “Fine. Just don’t let Miss Abington mess with your head.”

  “Jesus Christ, Eddie, she’s a patient. I’m taught to handle all kinds of characters.”

  “Then again, maybe that’s why you avoid certain women,” Eddie quipped.

  “‘Certain women?’ What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Whoa. Time out. I was just kidding.”

  “What kind of wome
n?”

  “Don’t be so thin-skinned, Jonas.”

  “Since when did you become the expert on my love life? Besides, you never asked what I felt about your getting married.”

  “What?” Eddie reacted sharply. “What are you saying?”

  Jonas bit his lip hard. “That I had feelings about whether you were ready to get married; but I was your kid brother whose opinion wasn’t worth two cents. Admit it, you still think of me that way.”

  “What? That’s not true. Where is this coming from?” Eddie said. “I’m sorry, Jo. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “Have a good weekend,” Jonas sulked.

  “You, too. I worry about you sometimes, Jonas. This is one of them. Margo and I love you.”

  “I know, I know,” Jonas said, but Eddie’s gibe felt like one of Dr. Fowler’s tongue-lashings. “We’ll talk later,” he said, knowing that later wouldn’t be for a while. He glanced at the portrait of his father atop the table on which he replaced the telephone. Willy Speller’s eyes looked pained.

  Spending more time at his closet than usual, Jonas fussed over what to wear that evening. Something about Miss Abington’s dress stuck with him. He finished dressing hurriedly, wondering what she was doing that very moment.

  7

  Tuesday, September 22, 1981

  The day after Miss Abington’s second session dawned clear and crisp. Jonas awakened from a series of dreams overlaid and intertwined like a Bach fugue. In the most vivid, he was playing first violin in a Philadelphia Orchestra performance of Invitation to the Dance, Dr. Fowler conducting. Jonas’s father appeared and snatched away the baton, berating Dr. Fowler for being musically obtuse, whereupon Jonas’s gut-wrenching grief transformed into sublime joy, the pianissimo of the cello’s concluding notes enfolding him like the farewell embrace he longed to have shared with his father before he died. Jonas awoke feeling incredibly sad, and incredibly peaceful.

  Enveloped in the afterglow of the dream, Jonas drove to analysis hearing the melody.

  The Institute of the Pennsylvania Hospital in West Philadelphia, where Dr. Fowler practiced, had seen better days. The fenced-in property was ringed by graying, cracked pavement that looked like aged scrimshaw. The first-floor offices had identical, room-wide windows reaching from radiator to ceiling. To protect patient identity, the exterior was guarded by a row of boxwood hedges, silent witnesses to the hourly drone of murderous dreams and incestuous fantasies confessed on the couches within by Philadelphia’s finest and brightest.

  Jonas lay down at 9:10 AM.

  “Wasn’t the Tchaikovsky inspiring?” he began, hoping for the umpteenth time to extract a dram of affirmation from his analyst. “I loved it, but …” He fell silent, replaying his morning dream.

  “What’s happening?” Dr. Fowler inquired.

  Jonas had attended the concert alone. Mrs. Paquette found a seat in the parterre. At intermission, he and Dr. Fowler had made eye contact briefly. As Jonas lay on the couch that morning, he saw his future flash before his eyes: a Dr. Fowler clone. It felt awful. Next, Jonas imagined looking through the telescopic sight of a high-powered rifle, panning the faces of the concertgoers until he pinpointed Dr. Fowler in the crosshair.

  Ready. Aim. Fire.

  “This isn’t what I want anymore,” Jonas said. “Lying here day after day, acting out a part scripted by a self-aggrandizing prick who doesn’t get who I am or what I’m about. You know I hate it when you ignore me at concerts, but you do it anyway. Outside this room, I don’t exist to you, do I?”

  “I didn’t ignore you. I didn’t acknowledge you the way you wanted,” Dr. Fowler said. “What does that mean to you?”

  “I’ll tell you what it means. It means you put your bullshit ideology ahead of basic human kindness. What a wonderful role model! Thank God I have Stan Amernick to talk with,” Jonas said, thinking of his favorite supervisor, a man who encouraged Jonas to follow his instincts, instead of spouting old-school psychoanalytic dogma.

  Jonas heard papers rustling, the scratching of pen on paper. “What are you doing? Writing your shopping list?”

  “What does it mean to you to hear me writing?”

  “I’m done with that.”

  “Done with what?” Dr. Fowler said.

  “Done with your ‘What-does-that-mean-to-yous.’ You say that so much, it’s meaningless. I need analysis to get over my father so I can become a better man. I need analysis to understand my mind so I can become a better doctor. What happens here? I wind up with neither.

  “So what if I have a sentimental streak. It’s what makes me, me. So what if I had a dream about occupying the office next to you and having a door that connects us. It was a beautiful dream, and you spoiled it with all those interpretations about repressed homosexuality you ram down my throat. You know why I dream about airplane crashes? It’s because their pilots don’t know how to steer. Just like you. You have no clue where my analysis—or my life—is headed. If I keep going like I am, I’ll be shredded through your analytic mill like tractor tires. I’ll wind up recycled into another you. Enough of this; that’s not going to happen. I won’t let it.”

  “I’m honored by your oration,” Dr. Fowler said. “As long as you’re at it, is there anything else you’d like to say? I’m all ears.”

  “You fucking bastard.”

  “Don’t stop there. By all means, keep going.”

  “I don’t care whether you believe this or not, but you apply your ideology to me the way internists pigeonhole patients into catchall diagnoses. It’s time to update your thinking. That’s what competent analysts do.”

  “I see.”

  “What exactly is it you see?”

  Dr. Fowler said nothing. Thinking of when Victoria asked him his age, Jonas said, “I asked you a simple question.”

  “If it’s so simple, Dr. Speller, enlighten me with the answer.”

  “This analysis has become a joke.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “Of course you don’t. That’s the point. This whole thing is ludicrous.”

  Dr. Fowler’s chair creaked. Jonas began to feel more sorry than angry. Sorry he hadn’t taken better care of himself. Sorry he’d assumed Dr. Fowler would understand him better than Jonas could himself.

  Neither man spoke for minutes.

  Jonas said, “You must know by now that I don’t tell you what’s on my mind when I’m here. Or are you too arrogant to know that?”

  “Oh,” Dr. Fowler said, followed by a long silence during which Jonas heard Invitation to the Dance in his head.

  He hummed the melody out loud: “Bawm bibawm bum bah, dah diddle dada, dah diddle dada; bawm bibawm bum bah, dah diddle dah daaah.” Double stops in the violins on each attack. Then, the sweet violin melody: “Bawm 2, 3, 1 diddle dum. Bawm 2, 3, 1 diddle dum. Dum diddle dum, dum diddle dum, dum diddle dah-dah dum.” The fingers of his left hand danced up and down the neck of an imaginary violin, his right wrist and arm bowing in synchrony.

  “Can you put what’s going on in your mind into words?” Dr. Fowler said.

  “Sure, I can, but why should I?”

  “Because you’re supposed to say what’s on your mind.”

  “You don’t deserve it.” Jonas sat up on the couch and faced Dr. Fowler, the first time in three years he looked the man in the eye. “I like my new patient. She’s full of fire, like I used to be. If I let you, you’ll puree my soul into mousse for your next before-the-concert dinner party. Do you know the name of the piece I was just humming?” Jonas persisted. More silence. “I asked for the name of that piece. I’m not going to stop until you answer.” Dr. Fowler’s chair creaked again, like the rusty door hinge of the Institute Library—old and musty, like a mausoleum. “Don’t be scared. I won’t tell on you.”

  “It’s Invitation to the Dance,” Dr. Fowler said in an unfamiliar, wavering voice. But by that point, it didn’t matter.

  “I dreamt about it last night. I felt the music in a place you’ve never
earned the right to enter, someplace sacred.”

  “I’d like to hear about it.”

  “It’s too late for that.”

  “Too late?”

  “Too late for us. We’re done. You’ll have four open hours once I’m gone. It’s time you took a refresher course. That’s the only way you’ll be invited to my dance.”

  Jonas rose to leave. “I was wrong to say I got nothing from you. You saw me through my darkest hours and taught me to trust my unconscious mind. For that, I’ll always be grateful. You tried. I know that.”

  He paused at the door. “I’ll miss Friday afternoons here; they reminded me of how much I looked forward to Saturdays when I was a kid, singing in the children’s chorus. We sang beautiful Christmas carols in four-part harmony. Maybe it was too much to hope you’d understand me. That’s over now, like my childhood. I’m no kid anymore. It’s time to take care of myself. That’s what my father would have wanted. Not you. Not this. Thank God it’s over.”

  8

  Friday, November 19, 2004

  Victoria’s thirty-second commute to work had advantages, but the biggest disadvantage was the lack of transition time. Like the stuffed prize in an arcade game, she felt plucked from her kitchen each morning and dropped into the legal mill downstairs.

  Throughout the morning, Melinda was on Victoria’s mind. Melinda, so angry with the world, was far prettier than Victoria had been when she was fourteen. So active that she needed her tennis racket restrung monthly, Melinda had not been to the pro shop since June. And despite growing two inches over the summer, she hadn’t asked for new sneakers either. She was so much younger than Victoria was when she began to need therapy. Melinda couldn’t be as distraught as Victoria had been back then. Could she?

  For her first appointment of the day, Victoria met with Flora Arrestia. Schone and Braun had taken on Barlow v. Duke’s as a favor to the Arrestias’ accountant, who golfed with Martin Braun’s father in Upper Merion. Although no one would be funding their retirement based on the outcome, the case reminded Victoria of a novel she read in college—a book that changed her life.