By Blood (2 page)

Still standing in the hallway, I leapt to an uncharacteristically hopeful thought. I dared believe that the piercing, sibilant voice coming through Dr. Schussler’s door belonged to the current analysand, not to the analyst (as I chose to call them, indiscriminately, since I was not inclined, as I have said, to be impressed by the naming conventions of the psychological professions). I reasoned that if it were the patient whom I had been hearing, all I had to do was be away from the office for one therapeutic hour per week, a mere fifty minutes, and the situation would be tolerable. Somewhat reassured, I went back to my room to wait for the conclusion of the current session and the beginning of the next.

Yet, as the remaining thirty minutes of the session crept by, all manner of alarming thoughts intruded. I shuddered at the consideration that, though the horrid voice might indeed be that of the patient, she (for the voice seemed to me eminently female) might be undergoing a true, orthodox, Freudian analysis, which meant she would be coming to whisper and cluck her problems at me every day of the workweek. It then came to me that the therapist’s name was Dora, the name of Freud’s famous hysteric. Surely, I reasoned (using the absurd, self-defeating logic that always ruled during nervous episodes), Dr. Schussler was a Freudian, the dreadful voice would haunt me daily, my work at the office was ruined, my dwindling financial resources were committed without recourse, and I would have to return to my empty house in a dreary neighborhood, where it was mortally dangerous for me.

In this foolish but inevitable manner, I escalated my own fears, growing ever more agitated, until I was startled by the slam of Dr. Schussler’s door. I then heard the patient tread past my office, the ding of the elevator bell, and finally, rising into my awareness as if it had suddenly been turned up in volume, the whirring torrent of the noise machine.

I forced myself not to become fixated upon the sound. This was difficult, because the whir, which had seemed so constant upon first hearing, now appeared to have patterns within it, coming in rhythmic waves. And there was something teasing about these subtle rhythms, a kind of phantom music that seemed to play just below the level of audibility, all the more seductive for being not quite music, a melody just beyond reach, vanishing when I gave it direct, analytical attention. Only through the greatest mental discipline could I consign it to the background, willing it to become part of the general sound atmosphere, along with the rumbling trucks below, the shrill of a traffic policeman’s whistle, the honking horns. This cognitive effort was exhausting, even for the brief ten minutes of the interclient interval. When I relaxed in any measure, looking up from my notes or glancing across the way to the windows of the Hotel Palace (where a maid was assiduously wiping a table), the quasi-musical patterns returned, luring my attentions.

So it was that the subsequent ding of the elevator came as a relief—or, I should say, at least an exchange of anxieties. For now I waited expectantly to see if the next client would be the solution to the problem of the sibilant voice. This new analysand walked past my own door; Dr. Schussler opened hers; and the patient entered the office. Due to the strong air currents that always blew through the hallways, the door closed with a
wall-rattling
slam (an annoyance, since I myself was always mindful of the draft, closing my own door in respectful silence). For one moment, there was only the whir of the sound machine and the noise from the street. Then, fulfilling my worst expectations (as life would always do, said my depressed illogic), the awful sibilance returned. And there was no escaping the conclusion: The horrid sound was produced by the tongue and teeth of Dr. Schussler!

I would move, I thought. I would carry my 807 down the hall, or I would accept another office on another floor, pursuing any avenue to get away from this therapist, counselor, psychoanalyst—whatever she wished to call herself. I was about to look for the building manager, demand he place me in a different room, when suddenly everything went quiet.

It was the sound machine: abruptly stopped. And in its absence was a stillness so crisp that I could hear the suggestive, teasing, slip-sound of a single tissue being withdrawn from a Kleenex box.

Then a voice, which said, Thanks. You know I hate that thing.

And a reply: So sorry. I do forget.

I was so startled by the clarity of the sounds coming from the next office—I could hear a sigh, an intake of breath, the lifting of a haunch, indeed to the extent that I knew with utter certainty that both client and analyst sat upon leather—that I could not move for several seconds. What was I to do about this sudden, forced intimacy? Perhaps I should have coughed or jostled a drawer, so that they, hearing me, would know the extent to which I was hearing them. Yet I sat still. And in a brief instant, through some quirk of reasoning (no doubt related to the generally twisted logic of my mood), I convinced myself that my making noise would be an imposition upon them, that my presence would inhibit them, and the only way for analyst and analysand to continue their work undisturbed was for me to keep my existence a secret.

Supporting my decision was the fact that I understood almost nothing of what they were saying. Charlotte, Roger, Susan—who were these people? The hotel, our arrangement, the old project, the meeting, the assignment—references to empty space. How could I see myself as a trespasser when I had so little comprehension of what I was overhearing? Ten minutes passed with a discussion of scuba diving (the patient had or had not done this before?). Then she circled back to “the assignment” and “the old project.” Dr. Schussler of course would know the meaning of these references, or would have to pretend she did, since that was a therapist’s most basic function: to keep the thread of her patients’ stories, to remember all the names, relationships, and events, to absorb (somehow) the infinitely expanding expository action of an ongoing life. But it all meant nothing to me. I was like a person who had happened upon a novel fallen open at random.

So it was that I simply sat and listened to the sound of their voices—Dr. Schussler’s, in particular, her spat-out
T
s and whistled Ss. Of course! She was German. This explained the mysterious dentalizations and sibilance that had intruded over the whir of the noise machine. But now I could also hear what the machine had masked: a calm—even soothing—resonance, something throaty in it, a tone pleasantly raked by time. Her accent confused me. I had spent a sabbatical year in Germany, living in the home of a professor of linguistics, and I had come to understand that a hard S, like the doctor’s, was characteristic of a resident of Hamburg. Yet her unhurried syllables and soft tone were more indicative of Bavaria or, perhaps, Switzerland. I wondered if she had been born in the Baltic region and had moved to the south, or perhaps vice versa, for my knowledge of German was insufficient to discern which part of her accent was dominant, so to speak.

Her patient, however, was altogether American, with the flat accent of the Midwest—from somewhere along the rim of the Great Lakes from Buffalo to Detroit. Her cadence and inflection were like those of my female former graduate students, and I therefore took her to be in her mid- or late twenties. At some point in her young life, she seemed to have unlearned the worst aspects of her native region’s speech, for she had softened the jaw-breaking growl that passed for an
R
in that part of the world, and had widened the mashed, dipthonged
A
(a horrid sound, as if you pinched your nose while saying
ee-yeah
) into an airy, open, monosyllabic
ah
. The effect, altogether, was of a provincial who had acquired culture, at an out-of-town university perhaps. Now and then, her acculturated layer slipped—an A going nasal, an
R
growing teeth—which was not at all an unpleasing phenomenon, as it let one hear past her creamy alto into a core of watchfulness and vulnerability.

I merely let the sound of these voices play over me, as I have said, allowing the mentioned names and places to come and go without attempts on my part to understand their referents. The patient meandered; Dr. Schussler replied occasionally with friendly nonchalance; and in this way more than half the session passed. Then came a moment I distinctly understood. The doctor’s voice abruptly changed; her accent turned harsh; her tone pointed, as she said:

So, have you thought further about our discussion before the break?

A long pause followed. And as I waited to hear the reply, I realized I had distinguished this moment because of all the therapists and analysts who had insisted upon asking me this same demonic question. And I recalled how much I had detested it: this constant looping backward in time to the last therapized hour, as if everything that had happened in the intervening days or week was not real, or not quite as real as the life lived inside yellow-lamp-lit rooms where ivy trembled at the windows. My goodwill toward Dr. Schussler retreated. I found myself allied with the young analysand, with her resistance: What force there was in the annoyed sigh she gave off! And what a long moment she took to lean over and slowly withdraw a tissue from the inevitably close-by box.

I know we agreed we’d go back to it after the break, the patient finally said. But I’ve changed my mind. I think I’ve avoided it all my life for good reason. I don’t see how it will help for me to get into it now.

Dr. Schussler made a small, throaty sound but said nothing. There was now another pause, as analyst and analysand sparred to see who could longer endure the silence. Of course it was the client who gave way:

I really don’t see the relevance of that to who I am now, she said. I don’t want to go there. I told you. I don’t see the point. I’ve made my peace with it. It’s a fact, like where I grew up or the color of my eyes. Please, I don’t see why you keep coming back to it. I told you. Some things should just remain a mystery.

I was naturally enticed by the idea of a mystery, as anyone would be, and I hoped she might reveal at least the nature of this secret. But for some seconds, the analysand did not speak. She only stirred in her chair (was she lying on a couch? I thought not; something about the quality of her voice made me think she sat upright), and then she immediately changed the subject.

The topic to which she leapt was an argument with one Charlotte, a name that had already come up several times during the session. It seemed that she and Charlotte had argued over the arrangement of food in the refrigerator. Then the patient complained that Charlotte always left the kitchen-cabinet doors open. Finally, she decried Charlotte’s continual invasions of her privacy, saying, She talks to me all the time. When I’m in the bathroom. When I’m in the shower. While I’m washing dishes and can’t hear over the water. That booming voice: it follows me everywhere.

I thought this Charlotte must be her roommate. With whom else does one have such dull domestic spats? Dr. Schussler had obviously heard much of this before, for she inquired whether the two women were following the ground rules they had established. As her client went on to reply, it was clear that the doctor was as bored as I with the course this session was taking. She signaled her disengagement by continually shifting her weight in her leather chair, sending out squeaks and creaks that somehow connoted a jeering disapproval.

Finally, she intervened. Remember, said Dr. Schussler. We did talk about whether you were going to take seriously these incompatibilities. It is not simply a matter of housekeeping standards. Charlotte is a bicycle messenger, and you are a financial analyst. She has barely completed a junior college course in accounting, and you have a master’s degree in business administration and econometrics. She accuses you of being a “collaborator” for not being open at work about your lesbianism.

(Lesbians!)

She jeers at you for wearing “straight” business clothes. She says you think like a man. These are serious problems, as you yourself have said, and they are not going to disappear simply because Charlotte thought you were “stunning,” as she put it.

Yes, said the patient. Totally true. You’re right. But just the same—she paused—all that bicycle riding has given her a truly amazing pair of legs.

The doctor coughed.

The thighs, most especially.

Silence from the therapist.

And let’s just say that I immensely enjoy all the many ways she considers me stunning.

Her analyst
tssked
. You know what I mean, she said.

Oh, all right. I do. Of course I do. We’re completely different. We have nothing in common. It’s ridiculous in so many ways. But when we take our clothes off … when the sex is so very good …

Lesbian sex! I experienced a moment of extreme titillation, for there is no one who is not curious about homosexuality, and especially about lesbianism, if one is a man. I felt my groin tighten and my penis begin to stir, bodily acts about which I could do nothing. One might as well try to stop one’s heart from beating as attempt to prevent this involuntary rush of blood to one’s manly parts, especially when one has been presented with an image of two women, naked, their beautiful legs, their breasts, the hidden places into which they—and so forth. Although I considered my reaction altogether normal—as I have said, any man in my position would have responded similarly—when the tumescence proceeded briskly, I became quite alarmed. Further engorgement would require me to stand and adjust my trousers—and then all would be lost. My chair would creak; they would hear me; I would never again learn about lesbian sex, or indeed any other aspect of the patient’s life. I would be plunged back into loneliness in my dreadful house by the sea. I therefore forced myself to think of the two women in their roles as squabbling roommates—the disputed refrigerator shelves, cabinet doors, shouts over running water—arguments so banal as to dispel the deepest desire and compulsion.

Oh, Charlotte’s all right, the patient was going on (to my relief, as I began to wilt). Really. You’re making too much of the surface differences. I know we’ve talked about it, but maybe the problems aren’t insurmountable. It’s just that she’s so steeped in the politics of lesbianism, the radical idea of it, she can’t exactly think for herself, react for herself. It’s as if her body belongs to some community, not to herself. She’s forever coming home from a meeting of one collective or another, and she has this struggle model in her head. Everything must be fought for; an action must always be planned. The personal is political, she never stops saying. I keep trying to tell her the reverse is not true! But then she says to me, Everything worthwhile requires a fight. Honey, don’t you
want
to struggle?

Now the patient burst out laughing, as did the therapist, and it was all I could do not to laugh myself. The women’s liberation movement was in a period of great militancy; the streets of the university were often filled with short-haired women marching with their fists in the air. And it was absurd to imagine these stalwarts going home to struggle over the correct way to arrange a refrigerator. (I preferred to imagine them otherwise, as I have said.) But the therapist did not permit this diversion for long, as she was clearly intent upon drawing her patient into deeper waters.

Yes, said Dr. Schussler pointedly. All that is true. But remember what you said not long ago: Charlotte chose you. You are not sure that you would have chosen her in return. The doctor’s voice then softened: And this does bring us back to the subject we were discussing before the break. Remember how we talked about the ways this mirrors your relationship with your mother, this profound sense of otherness?

The client snorted her impatience. She loudly drummed on the arm of her seat with her fingers and turned herself this way and that amidst much creaking of leather. I told you, she said finally. I don’t want to go into this again. I
like
not knowing where I’ve come from. I
like
it. Every child thinks it must have been switched at birth, these can’t possibly be my real parents, it’s all a big mistake. Well, I just happened to have more evidence than they do. Mine really aren’t my parents. I told you this a hundred times: I am not adopted! I have
mysterious origins
!

Dr. Schussler took in a breath and then released it. For several seconds, neither client nor therapist moved. They had arrived at last at the heart of the matter. But alas the hour was too far advanced. What came next were the softly murmured words with which every therapy session inevitably ends: Our time is up, the doctor said.