By Blood (4 page)

What an exciting session! I could barely contain myself while the patient slammed the door behind her and the sound machine came on again. Beautiful legs in stomping boots! Women in high heels! Old- and
new-style
lesbians! As if sex had a fashion that waxed and waned with the design of shoes.

Throughout the long week that followed, I waited with almost unendurable anticipation for the patient’s return. For I wondered what new drama would ensue. I was certain I had come in on her therapy at just the right moment, one of those mysterious fulcrum points: a pure, Aristotelian shift in the plot wherein the therapeutic story of the patient’s life was about to turn. All my years of therapy told me this was true. Something had pressed up against her denials and evasions for two long years, and now—with all the inevitability of Oedipus killing his father—she must give way.

On the following Wednesday, therefore, I arose early and took special care to dress in comfortable, loose-fitting clothes (the better to sit absolutely still during any inadvertent titillation). I brought with me a small seat cushion (also for comfort during my immobility). It was barely nine in the morning when I boarded the N Judah; quarter of ten when I came within sight of our building’s eyeless gargoyles.

It was a dangerous time, hard upon the interclient interval. Dr. Schussler often left her office between patients, for a restroom visit, I assumed, or a coffee at a nearby cafe, and it was imperative that she not encounter me entering my office. My presence in the hallway, my body before the door so close to hers, would force upon her the very fact of my existence, my face and physique giving visual form to any sound she might hear. Yet she must not imagine a body in Room 807; she must believe the room holds nothing but air.

Accordingly I slowed my steps. Upon entering the lobby, I scanned the persons about, wondering if one woman or another was Dr. Schussler. Over the weeks, a certain picture of the doctor had grown in my mind—nearing sixty, a slight limp (which I heard as she walked by my door), gray hair, perhaps a bun—an image simultaneously particular in certain details but vague overall, the way a character in a novel, barely described, can yet occupy a distinct place in one’s mind. In short, I thought I should recognize her. Yet it was necessary that she not notice me in any particular way, even as a regular presence in the building. I had to be part of a crowd, an ordinary man in gray clothing: nothing. I was practiced at this; my nervous condition had given me a wealth of experience in the art of nonbeing.

I waited before the three elevators, watching the eyes of the cherubs circulate, an effect that had not entirely ceased to unnerve me. Eight other people waited. None among them was a woman who agreed with my image of the doctor; neither did she appear as one elevator and then another disgorged its passengers.

I therefore took the next car to the eighth floor and softly walked to my office. As I had practiced for the last weeks, I took extraordinary care with the keys and the lock and click of the door—always a tense moment. The mechanisms were old and not entirely reliable; I had learned to use a plastic card to control the release of the latch. Now having entered, I appointed my chair with the cushion, and then sat down to wait, listening all the while to the whir of the sound machine and the doctor’s shushuations.

The ten o’clock patient left. At the stroke of eleven—a nearby church bell bonged out the hour—the doctor’s sound machine promptly ceased. I stilled myself. Nothing but silence issued from Dr. Schussler’s office. A minute went by, then two, three, four: excruciating minutes for anyone expectant and immobile, as I was. The time moved on to five past, six past, seven past, eight. And now from the other side of the door came an odd, teasing, slippery sound. It vanished, then returned—a rubbing,
slip-slip
—then vanished again.

I was suddenly frightened. What if I had gotten everything wrong? What if the great, dramatic turning point in the patient’s therapy was not to be a grand story but an abrupt ending? With dawning dread, I remembered: the patient’s sense that years had gone by, that nothing had changed, that nothing would ever change—how often had such feelings led me to abandon whatever therapist, psychiatrist, counselor, analyst, social worker, doctor who had dared to presume I might be happy? The patient could leave Dr. Schussler. She could abandon me.

And now again came that rubbing, cicada-like
slip-slip
.

Then another sound, a scrape.

My nostrils were suddenly filled with the scent of phosphorus; now of smoke. A cigarette: Dr. Schussler was smoking!

I no longer smoked—my stale-tobacco smell had become too memorable—but my nose was yet lined with countless receptors for the bitter, brilliant, desperate, dangerous scent that now came sliding under our adjoining door. I knew at once, with utter certainty, that Dr. Dora Schussler was smoking not a Kent, nor a Marlboro, nor a simpering Kool or Newport, but that she inhaled nothing other than a Pall Mall or a Viceroy—Viceroy, I decided—so tuned was I still to the tender shadings of my former addiction. I could all but see the pack, the gold medallion pendant from a V-shaped pin. And along with this sudden visualization of her cigarettes, I could picture the doctor herself: leaning back in her chair, lifting her head, exhaling, tipping the ash into the ashtray, crossing and recrossing her legs. Of course. That was the slip-sound I had been hearing: the slide of nylon upon nylon.

I was immediately becalmed. It was as if a long, long snake had curled under the door and wound one end around the therapist and the other around me—so joined did I feel to the experience of Dr. Schussler’s cigarette: every breath she took, in and out, lung to lung. I inhaled her assurance. There was no need to worry. If not today, then next time: The patient would return.

And, soon enough, there came the ding of the elevator, the footsteps running down the hall, the therapist rising to open her door, the slam as the draft banged it shut.

Oh, hell, said the patient. I’m so sorry. A ridiculous argument at work. You know how I hate being late.

Sit down, said the therapist.

It was the third derivative, said the patient.

But of course. Sit down.

The patient took her seat with a great puff of a cushion.

Carl kept questioning our historical curve analysis, the patient went on. Get rid of that function on the third derivative, he says. But Marsha refuses. It’s done; it works; leave it, she says. But then Peter insists, Let’s consider Carl’s input. But Paul agrees with Marsha, and says, No, we tested it; it’s working; our model is predictive. And so everyone is arguing in my carrel, and no one hears me when I’m saying, Stop, I’ve got to go. Then even more people pile in.

The patient rambled on in this vein: Peter, Marsha, Carl, Sasha, William, Paul, John, Larry. If Dr. Schussler knew these people, she simply let their names go by, as did I, since they meant nothing at all to me. The patient spoke, besides, of secular trends and intermediate trades, of waves and quadrants and regression curves, not to mention various incomprehensible three- and four-letter acronyms, which, I presumed, pertained to her company’s insider terms relating to stock-market technical analysis and econometrics (subjects about which, again, I knew nothing).

But no matter. The sound of her voice soothed me. The curling remains of Dr. Schussler’s cigarette still threaded the air, floating by like the patient’s incomprehensible words. I simply sat still and enjoyed the tone of her voice, which played above the words like the sustain of a majestic chord. And there was something else, a little tremolo, the deep, inner unease I had noticed on that first day. For even as she raved on, it seemed that the little watchful person who stood guard over her speech had remained at his post, at attention, carefully ushering her confused
A
s and
R
s into the proper halls of culture.

She continued on for some time about her problems at work: a project that was late, a manager who disliked her, a woman in another group—was she perhaps a lesbian? Charlotte then made an appearance: another argument, this time initiated by someone’s failure to fold the sheets (whether it was the patient or her girlfriend who had so shirked her duties I could not tell).

As I sat listening, I considered how odd it was to know such intimate details about a person’s life yet have no context in which to place them. The voice that emanated from Room 804, the characters described, the situations and events—it was as if I were tuned to a radio play, a disembodied story floating in the quickening of my imagination. And what an odd narrator this story had, how risky, from a critical point of view; how much more conventional if she were only a financial analyst, or only a lesbian, or only an adoptee, if she did not have this odd mélange of characteristics living uneasily inside her. As the minutes went by, I kept pondering this, and saw the great difficulty in the work of the therapist: making a whole from the evidence of the broken pieces we bring them, these disparate stories that hold dark meaning for us, these unhappiness samples.

The patient was quiet for some seconds. Then:

Pretty dull stuff? she said to her therapist.

Not at all (lied the doctor).

But I suppose you’d like me to talk about what happened last week.

Silence from the therapist.

About my running out, the patient went on.

Dr. Schussler still said nothing.

You know, said the patient, I wasn’t late because of last time.

The therapist gave a little laugh. No, she finally said. Of course not.

It wasn’t … Oh, all right. Maybe. Maybe it did. I wasn’t exactly in a hurry to get here.

A long pause ensued.

It’s that adoption business, the patient finally said. You’re driving me crazy over it. It’s not like I haven’t looked at it before. There were times when I tried to find out about my past. I mean indirectly, in my own way, as I had to.

When Dr. Schussler gave no response, the patient went on:

I looked into the process of adoption, when I was young, thirteen, still in boarding school. It’s a good story. I’m assuming you’d like me to tell it.

But of course, said Dr. Schussler.

I thought you would, said the patient.

Dr. Schussler did not reply.

I thought you’d be overjoyed, said the patient. I thought you’d be encouraging, pushing, probing.

The doctor laughed. What can I probe, since you have not yet said anything?

Yes, yes, all right. I’m sorry. I’m playing games, aren’t I?

Well, no, said the doctor after a pause. I do not think it is a game at all. I think you are doing exactly what you need to do. I think you sense, correctly, that this subject will be unsettling to explore. And that you will explore it how and when you are able.

The patient gave a little hum. And I could feel the waves of gratitude pouring forth from her. (If only my own therapists had been so giving! I thought.) Thank you, the patient said at last. Because I’ve been feeling you’ve been short with me, that you’ve been disapproving of me. As if you’re getting bored with me. As if I couldn’t be an interesting client if I didn’t explore my “mysterious origins.”

Dr. Schussler inhaled sharply, and for some time she said nothing. I heard her shift in her chair; there was a crinkling sound; and I knew it could only be the Viceroy pack she was seeking: a cigarette, to help stave off the next thing that must happen. For everything now depended upon her reply. If Dr. Schussler did not admit to her own failings and humanity—if she hid behind the therapist’s ridiculous game of asking, So why do you think you thought that I had disapproving thoughts about you?—this therapeutic relationship, like so many of my own, would die.

The pause went on: eight seconds, ten, twelve. A fire truck wailed below then dopplered off.

Yes, Dr. Schussler said at last. I may have been … perhaps I …

She fell back into the cushions of her chair.

You know, she said, in our profession … it is often hard to know when to press on and when to let go.

(
Mirabile dictu!
)

Now the patient drew a breath. Do you think … she began.

Yes? asked the analyst.

Do you think it’s time …

What?

That I dealt with—

Your adoption? I do, but—

Find my mother? Do that whole nasty thing where I blow up my family and hers, and make everyone unhappy?

No, no, no. Not that—

Then what?

I mean—

What else can you mean? Once you open this door, you know there’s no way in hell to close it.

I glanced at my wristwatch, and to my dismay saw that the patient’s hour was now gone. Then I remembered how often I had done the same: allowed myself to approach the brink only when I knew I could soon back away. There is some instinctive internal clock, some narrative curve, we analysands surely follow, so that we may have the fortitude to tell the story of ourselves another day.

We will have to explore this next time, the doctor gently said.

I was filled with happiness—why deny it? The plot was turning, just as I had predicted. And it was now about to address the subject of my most ardent hopes: how the adoptee creates himself (or herself, in this case). I would learn how one separates from parents of all sorts, “real” or adoptive. And surely that path had to lead through the canyons of genetics. Even my dear friend Paul Beleiter had spent a year wondering over his blood relatives. How could one not? Such is the desire—irresistible, physical, cellular—to find one’s likeness; to know whence came this eye, this brow, this dimple in the chin, or, for that matter, this talent, this compulsion, this madness: whatever one feels is indelibly engraved within.

Yet it was also imperative that the patient, like Paul, investigate the birth parents as an
idea
—an exploration confined to thoughts, dreams, images in the mind. The slabs of flesh of her actual parents would debase her quest, I thought. If she found those whose genes she carried, she would be surrounded by yet more people owning the perquisites of parenthood—a whole coterie with the power to grant her joy, or snatch it away. Paul had never found his parents. Later he told me of his relief: What if they were only ordinary? he said. And I replied: What if they were monsters? He laughed and said: That would be better.

All now depended upon the skill of the analyst. The success of the patient’s endeavor, and my own, required that Dr. Schussler lead her patient through the ravines of inheritance without letting her stop there, so to speak. She must not stimulate in her client a thirst for her “true” mother, for that would transform those gloriously “mysterious origins” into a banal reality of blood. But I had no faith in the powers of the psychological professions, as I have said. Who was this Dora Schussler that she would presume to take on the role of psychic guide?

I feared for the patient. I rode the streetcar up and down Market Street; I went from my house to the office and back again; the weekend went by and then came Monday, Tuesday. And all through, the patient’s words hung in the darkening of my thoughts:
Once you open this door, you know there’s no way in hell to close it
.

Wednesday morning came; I trembled in my office; at last the patient arrived. The doctor wasted no time in returning to the subject of their prior meeting.

What we want to do, she said as they began, is probe your
feelings
about being adopted. We want to understand adoption’s effect upon who you are now, upon your relationships with your parents, your friends, your lovers, and, most of all, upon your inner concept of yourself.

The patient laughed.

I already know adoption’s effect on my feelings.

But really, said Dr. Schussler, we are just—

It hasn’t had any effect. There is some deep-down way that my parents—my adoptive parents—don’t affect me at all.

(Yes! I thought.)

That can’t be so, said the analyst.

Oh, really? What do you know about it?

The doctor exhaled, annoyed. Then she said: Of course it is my job to know just a little about these things.

But aren’t you supposed to listen?

Of course.

Then listen. There is some way that I am distant—unconnected—to my family. I will never be like them. Some core part of me is alien to them. I am … alone.

(Exactly! I thought. The apartness Paul had always spoken of, that sense of being a singularity in the world!)

Precisely, said the doctor. It is just this sense of being unconnected that we need to explore.

Please just listen! It’s the story I wanted to tell you last week before we ran out of time.

The analyst stirred in her chair. Yes, dear, she said in an odd voice.

What’s that about? said the patient.

What? said the therapist.

That “yes, dear” business—and don’t say, What do
I
think it’s about.

The doctor laughed. You have said many times that when your mother is resisting you, she says, Yes, dear.

Hell. I don’t want to talk about Mother. What I’m talking about is older. Original. Built in. Before Mother, before Father, before school. Before I even learned to think in words. As if it came out of my bones, my nerves, my skin. Original—she gave a laugh—like sin.

The analyst sat back amidst a great commotion of creaking leather. Please, she said. Go on.