THE THERAPIST

Short Fiction

On the day of their last session, Patsy said it was time to move on. “I won’t stop learning, growing,” Patsy said. “But I need to do it on my own for a while.”

“What brought you to this decision?” said Margaret, and she thought: no.

“Life,” said Patsy. “Life has brought me to this decision.”

“Do you have any specific plans for this new journey?” Margaret said. She did not really care. She did not want Patsy to leave the office and begin the new journey.

“Will you stay in contact with me? It may be beneficial, in the pursuit of your goals, for you to check in now and then.”

“I have no goals. You know that.”

“You have desires, which you have always intended to fulfill. You may choose to call them something other than goals — desires, wishes. All involve fulfillment of needs you have, as a human being.”

“I call my desires vengeful, my wishes, self-indulgent. If they are goals, they are lies. All lies.”

“What do you mean when you call them lies?

Patsy looked at her and said nothing.

Margaret said, “I think it’s important we — ” but Patsy was standing. Patsy was moving towards her with hand outstretched. Margaret rose and took the hand. It was the first time she had touched Patsy in six years of therapy. Patsy’s hand was cold and smooth.

“Goodbye,” Patsy said. “Thank you for everything.” She stepped to the door and walked out.

Margaret had her own therapy with Henry (Dr. Moore) at noon. She did not enjoy speaking with him.

“How are you this week, Margie?” he said, as if it was no real concern of his, but he looked at her intently.

“My client. I had a session with her this morning.”

Henry smiled. “The One?”

“Yes.”

“Ah.”

She hated him immensely for saying ‘ah.’

“Well,” Margaret said, “she ended it.”

“Ended it?”

“Yes.”

“How did you react?’

“Well. I think.”

“Did you notice you used the term ‘ended it’?”

“So?”

“It is a rather intimate term for a client. It is a term one might use when speaking of a lover leaving them. Do you agree?”

“I agree.”

“Is there is a reason for this intimacy you associate with your client?”

“I’ve been working with her for a long time. I have been trying to help her for a long time. To bring her clarity and safely.”

“Safely?”

“Safety, I mean.”

“Ah.”

Margaret winced.

“How do you define safety? How were you going to help your client define it?”

“I’m not here to discuss my methods, Dr. Moore.”

He waited.

She looked away. “I guess that sounded a little melodramatic.”

“Margie. I am only trying to understand what it was about this person that so deeply compelled you — was your experience of her vicarious in nature? I think it may be important. Do you disagree?”

“No. But I feel as if I have to defend my interest in her, and it makes me uncomfortable. My interest in her was clinical and my concern for her was genuine and professional.”

“None of which precludes a profound emotional attachment. We need to explore your feelings of loss at her choice to end your professional relationship. It’s important for you to let go of a client as easily as you can accept one. Do you agree? Isn’t that why we’re here?”

“Yes,” she said. “What did you mean by ‘professional relationship’?”

“What?”

She leaned forward. “You said ‘professional relationship.’ What did you mean? Do you think there is another kind of relationship we could have had? We should have had?”

“I didn’t mean to imply that, no. Your relationship was clearly that of therapist and client. There is no suitable relationship you could have shared outside of that arrangement.”

“But perhaps I wanted to be her friend. Perhaps I wished she was my friend.” Margaret nodded to herself. “It would explain a lot.” She leaned back.

“It would explain a lot.”

Dr. Moore stared at her.

At their intake meeting, Patsy said her feet had to line up with the trim on the rug exactly so before stepping off onto the hardwood floor. It often took several minutes to get it right; it made her late for work. She hinted this was but one of countless compulsions.

“I always intended to go on functioning,” Patsy said. “Everyone has their shit, this is mine, it’s a part of me. But ignoring it when I’m wasting so much time on all these rituals seems self-indulgent. So here I am.”

“What do you mean when you say self-indulgent?”

“Don’t do that.”

“What am I doing?”

“I dislike the standard exchange. I am here for direct contact.”

Patsy leaned forward so her lovely face was all that Margaret could see. “Look at me.”

Margaret looked; Patsy’s eyes were large, brilliant and very brown. There were no flaws in Patsy’s eyes.

“I am not here out of a misplaced need for validation. I am not here to complain. I am here because it is occurring to me that I might be wrong. About everything. Here it is either something awful will happen to me and those I love if I don’t line my feet up exactly with the trim on the rug, or step off with my breath held for exactly ten seconds and then back on it and then off it again in just the right way — or nothing will happen. I believe with all my heart something terrible will happen. Millions of people have bizarre fears like mine, they follow these silent commands just as I do.

“Are we all wrong? Can we all be wrong? Is it only a condition of our brains that we all believe our choices affect the very nature of our reality and the universe itself? Catholics genuinely believe wine is transmuted into blood. Jewish people repeat by rote the same ritual every Passover, from the food on the table to the story they tell, to the very way they sit — to do homage to an invisible being, year after year after year. Yet the rest of us are told to seek therapy for obeying our compulsions and exacting our rituals.

“If stepping on a rug in a specific way and all the rest of the it does, in fact, prevent some horrible consequence — then I’m simply cursed. I can live with that. But if not, then I’m afflicted with a condition which can be managed — not cursed. I must know. I must know if I can live free of fear. Does that make sense?”

Margaret nodded.

Patsy straightened up and stretched out her arms as if hung on an invisible cross. Patsy drew a deep breath; she smiled at Margaret.

“I will tell you everything,” she’d said. And she did.

It was Margaret’s habit to talk to Dr. Moore in her head when she was unsettled. The Henry of her head was faceless and reassuring. He spoke quietly and asked the right questions.

“Tell me about her, Margaret.”

“Patsy?”

“Is there another client you are upset at losing? Or to put it succinctly: Is there another client you would not be happy for, had they benefited enough from your work together to leave you behind and move on with their lives?”

“The work we do is always necessary for her.”

“You’re stalling, Margaret.”

Margaret shook her head. The conversation in her head was not going as she’d hoped. She preferred The Henry of her head to be compassionate and encouraging, sympathetic and warm. Comforting. She reset the inner session:

“Tell me about her, Margaret.”

“She amazed me.”

“Yes, I know.”

Margaret stopped the conversation. It would veer off again and she did not want to follow where it led.

Margaret waited two weeks to follow up with Patsy. She called Patsy’s number. The phone rang three times; a man’s voice answered.

The voice was ragged. “Yes, hello?”

“Hello,” Margaret said, startled.

Patsy lived alone. Patsy had no men in her life — her father and ex-husband had left such deep cuts on her psyche she’d taken ‘a life-long break from the company of men.’

“Hello,” Margaret said again.

“Yes?” the man responded sharply.

“I’m sorry. . .I was calling for Ms. Young. Patsy Young.”

There was a dreadful silence; then the man with the ragged voice said, “Who is calling?”

“This is her — I was her former therapist. I’m making a follow up call.” Her heart was pounding.

Again, there was a silence. “No,” the man said. “She didn’t have one.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Who is this? What do you want from me?”

“I — ”

“Patsy is dead,” the man said. “She killed herself. She didn’t have anyone to talk to. She didn’t have a therapist. I would have known.” The click of a phone hanging up.

Margaret hung up. Margaret sat down.

“No,” she said, and she wept.

She called Dr. Moore’s office. His secretary informed her he was out of town.

“Do you need to cancel your next appointment?” The secretary sounded concerned.

“No.” No, she would not do anything so rash. She sat for a bit with her hands in her lap.

She thought about the blueberry muffins Patsy baked for her dead father (who had never told her he loved her) and left on his grave in lieu of flowers. Margaret thought about this and wondered, now as then, if Patsy had kept one of the muffins for herself or left them all upon the grave for the crows.

Margaret once asked Patsy that question, and Patsy looked away.

“You have told me how you love baking. Is that why you shared the muffins with him? Was it your way of forgiving him? Showing him who you became?”

“It was my way of showing the bastard he didn’t break me.”

She dialed Patsy’s number again. The phone rang and rang.

“Hello.” It was a woman’s voice now. Tired, deflated, hollow.

“Hello, I’m calling for Patsy?”

“Oh, dear God in heaven.” The woman began to sob.

“Oh,” sputtered Margaret. “Oh. Oh no.”

There was a clattering sound on the other end of the line, as the phone fell from a shaking hand. The sound of footsteps approaching. Another voice came on the line.

“Hello, this is Patsy’s brother Mike.”

“ — I’m a friend.”

“She passed away. She’s dead. I’m afraid my mother is not — she’s not up for speaking to anyone.

“Hello, are you still there?”

Margaret realized she’d not spoken for a long moment, and said hurriedly, “Of course she’s not. Of course. My deepest condolences to you both.”

“There is a memorial service on the tenth at four pm, at the __________ Funeral Home.”

“I’ll attend the service. Thank you for telling me. I’m so sorry, again.”

Mike had already hung up.

Margaret thought: She hates even numbers. She wouldn’t want the service to be at four.

Patsy.

Patsy’s mother had answered the phone. Her brother. But Patsy’s mother and brother died in the same car accident which killed Patsy’s father. All of them in a line at the cemetery, haunting Patsy day and night, because she had survived and prospered while they had died and were dead.

Patsy once told her of a dream, in which she’d awakened repeatedly in the dark, got out of bed and tried to turn on a light, but the light would not turn on and the world remained in shadow. Somewhere in those shadows Patsy heard the voices of her father, her brother, her mother (and sometimes the cry of a baby). But she couldn’t find her way to them in the dark.

“And then I realized I was dreaming,” Patsy said. “And the instant I knew I was dreaming it all felt so silly. I laughed in the dream and told them to leave me alone.”

“Did the light turn on in your dream, once you knew you were dreaming?” Margaret leaned forward, chin on fist.

Patsy waited a moment before shaking her head. She’d looked beyond Margaret’s chair, as if looking at something standing in her line of sight just over Margaret’s shoulder. Margaret was afraid to look over her own shoulder at that moment. She was afraid of what she’d see standing behind her.

“I don’t remember trying to turn on the light once I knew I didn’t need it,” Patsy said. And Margaret found that profound.

The memorial service was a neat comfortable hall attached to another larger space. There were folding chairs and a small podium. People milled about as they waited for the memorial to begin, dressed in dark colors. Margaret wore red — Patsy’s favorite color.

There was no viewing, and Margaret was relieved. She would have forced herself to look at Patsy and regretted it. Still, she was glad she’d come. It was a gesture she hoped Patsy was aware of and appreciated. She needed Patsy to know. To know. She looked around to find something, anything to focus on.

In the corner of the hall a man stood apart. He was the recipient of most hugs and arm pats. He looked as ragged as the voice she’d heard over the phone. More than ragged — tattered. Destroyed. Ripped apart and barely put together again.

Margaret walked to him. He blinked at her and started as if she’d woken him.

“I am Margaret Crane.” She stuck out her hand. He shook it vacantly.

“Friend?” he asked, and his voice cracked. He cleared his throat and said again: “A friend of Patsy‘s?”

“No. I was her therapist.” She felt silly.

He looked away from her and shook his head slowly. “She didn’t have a therapist.”

Margaret said numbly: “I am so sorry for your loss.”

“I’m her husband. I would have known.”

Margaret stepped back. Husband. Husband?

“Patsy and I were married for ten years,” the man said. “She told me everything. I would have known if she was seeing a therapist.”

Without warning he clutched her arm and led her to a nest of people gathered in a corner. One older woman, two men, and a little girl perhaps eight years old. They drank from fluted glasses. They looked lost.

“Did any of you know about this?” Patsy’s husband said. His voice was shaking. They looked at him blankly.

“Marvin,” said the older woman, and she went to him and held him close as he began to sob. “Know about what, honey?”

“The therapist,” he sobbed. He would not (could not) stop crying.

“What therapist?” said the woman, and the others looked at Margaret, and then to Marvin who was still crying, then back to Margaret again.

“Who are you?” rasped the older woman over Marvin’s shoulder.

Margaret did not know what to say.

The younger of the two men put one hand on the older woman’s back and the other hand on Marvin’s shoulder, and looked at Margaret with anger.

“You called the other day,” he said. “Why are you doing this? Patsy didn’t have a therapist. If she had maybe she wouldn’t have — ” He fell away.

The older of the two men stepped protectively toward the group. “I’m Patsy’s father,” he said. “Please leave. Please leave.” He bent his head to the younger man’s (Mike’s?) back and cried quietly.

The little girl now joined the group hug. She put her arms around Marvin’s legs and said “Daddy, Daddy.” The little girl’s eyes were brilliant, brown and filled with tears.

“Please stop, please make it all stop,” Marvin sobbed. Everyone was crying. There was movement all over the hall as the mourners gravitated toward Patsy’s unraveling family. Margaret did not join. She was ignored as Patsy’s family was swallowed in a crowd of mourners, putting hands upon them, holding them.

Margaret stepped away until she backed into a wall. She flinched as if she’d been attacked from behind. She turned and fled.

Patsy had a husband once. Long ago. She had spontaneously married a man when she was eighteen, and left him less than a year later. She was pregnant when she’d left him. She lost the baby in a bloody tearing miscarriage. When she had told him, he’d wept, and she had regretted leaving him, though she had not gone back to him. She never remarried.

Patsy had tried to contact her ex-husband only once, ten years after the divorce. He was a humorist and essayist working for a local weekly paper and she had seen an article he’d penned, entitled ‘Local Woman Gives Birth After 30 Hours of Excruciating Labor, Husband Walks Around Looking Proud.’ She called to tell him she still loved him. She hung up before he could answer and had not picked up the phone when he called her back.

She had related all this to Margaret over the course of a single session.

It had taken some digging to uncover the lost child. And it had been the only session they’d had in which Patsy had seemed uncomfortable. Shifting in her chair, not meeting the eyes.

Margaret saw Dr. Moore once more on Thursday. He lounged on his chair and looked at her without concern.

She sat very straight in her chair. She noticed for the first time his chair was more comfortable than hers. His was a throne; hers, a place to sit.

“How are you doing this week, Margie?”

“Don’t call me that.”

He sat up and leaned forward. “How are things, Margaret?”

“I knew her better than anyone,” Margaret said. “But I didn’t know her. It was all lies.”

“Lies?”

“Don’t you understand? She wasn’t real! Nothing about her was real. Her life. The life she told me — all the monsters she faced. They weren’t real! They were all lies! She had a family!”

“Margaret, you shouldn’t tell me anything that would compromise your patient’s confidentiality — ”

“Fuck confidentiality! I knew her! I knew her! She gave her life to me; she told her life to me! I knew her!”

“Margaret, calm down.” His voice was measured, but for the first time in any session they had ever shared as clinician and client, he looked alarmed.

“Her life — ” Margaret bent her head to her hands. She was not weeping, but she was shaking.

“Consider this,” Dr. Moore said. “There are a few possibilities. One, your client might have needed to have a separate life. A place where she could create who she was from scratch, in order to vent in a way that didn’t compromise her perception of herself. Instead of embellishing or withholding, she simply made up another life, other circumstances, to describe her state of mind — you understand. She may have needed, and benefited from, having a safe place to create this fantasy. To create a person who embodied all the fears she secretly carried, so that the real world was easier to live in.

“Two, she may have been a pathological liar. Her therapy with you may have been the only venue for her to safely vent this behavior, enabling her to tell the truth in real life.”

“No. No.” Margaret shook her head.

“And last: She may have been telling the truth.”

Margaret looked up. “What?”

Dr. Moore leaned back in his chair, with the feverish, triumphant look of an interrogator who had cracked a difficult prisoner. “She may have been telling the truth.”

“I met her family. I met her father and mother and brother and husband and her child that did not exist, that she said had died in her womb. Met a family who according to her were corpses fifteen years past!”

“You met someone’s family, yes. But how do you know it was hers? What if your client was real, her story was real, but the name was a lie? Perhaps the woman who’s life you know so well was a friend or relative of the woman who died. Using her insurance, or simply stealing her name so she could reveal herself with true anonymity. That is a possibility. The rest then could be explained.”

“You think so?”

“I don’t know, Margaret. We will never know for sure. But that’s not important. What is important is that you let her go. Let her go.”

“How can I live without ever knowing?”

“Margaret. As you very well know, that’s what we have to do with our clients when they leave us. We must let them go and hope and believe they are ready to face the challenges they have with the tools we have given them. That is all we can do. We do not own them. We are not responsible for them once they leave our care.”

“And they to us.”

“What?”

“Are they — ” Margaret leaned toward him as Patsy had once leaned towards her — “are they responsible for us? What is their responsibility to us?”

Dr. Moore opened his mouth. He said something but she didn’t hear it. She stood up and left as he was still speaking.

Margaret walked hurriedly down the street, staring at the pavement. The click of her heels on the sidewalk was all she could hear. She was not thinking of anything. She was not going anywhere. She just walked.

She walked to the _____________ Funeral Home. It was far from Dr. Moore’s office, so she walked a long time. It was an old brownstone with clean wide stairs leading up to stately double doors. All was silent.

Margaret sat down on a bench across the street and watched.

She thought: if Henry was right, and her Patsy was a friend of the dead Patsy; then her Patsy would come to pay respects. Of course she would come. Patsy did not leave loose ends. Patsy left nothing unfinished. She would not have come to the memorial; she’d have known Margaret would be there to recognize her. So she would come on another day in secret. Perhaps today.

Margaret waited. No one came.

Margaret canceled all her appointments for the week. She called Dr. Moore’s secretary and said she would not be coming in on Thursday. Dr. Moore’s secretary said, Are you sure?

She was sure.

She went every day to the funeral home where the body waited until the funeral on Sunday. She sat on the bench across the street, watching.

Once, Patsy had mused about death. Patsy said that she did not believe in heaven, but she did believe in God.

Margaret asked why she believed in God. Margaret really wanted to know.

“Because I believe I have a soul,” Patsy said. She had been looking at her lap as she spoke, but at that moment, she had looked up at Margaret, her brilliant eyes filling all the space around her. “What I don’t know is whether God has a soul. That’s what scares me.”

And then she looked past Margaret, behind Margaret, at something there, invisible. And Margaret had felt all the hairs on her body stand up.

A woman had appeared outside the funeral home. She stood at the foot of the steps, looking up at the doors. The woman wore a tan trench coat, and her head was wrapped in a scarf. Her back was to Margaret and her face was concealed, but she felt familiar. The woman walked quickly up the steps and disappeared into the funeral home. Margaret furtively crossed the street and hid at the corner.

She waited for a long time. Mid-afternoon came and went, and the sky deepened into grim twilight. It was seven pm when the woman in the scarf exited and made her way purposefully down the sidewalk. Margaret followed, barely daring to breathe.

Was it?

The woman turned her head slightly, the silhouette of her nose and a small part of her cheek visible in the dusk. But she was too far away, and it was too dark. Still, the way she walked, that quick even step — swift, deliberate. Graceful.

Margaret followed with growing urgency. The woman’s steps seemed to slow and become languid. As if she knew she was being followed and did not care.

So like. . .

They came to the steps that led up to the train.

The woman with the scarf went up, people came down, Margaret followed. People passed near but Margaret did not see them. The woman in the scarf walked faster up the steps and was lost among the crowd on the platform.

Margaret hurried after her, looked for her, but there were so many people. Too many people. She scanned every form but none of them shone.

Then she saw her. The woman with the scarf leaned against a pillar. She was far away, at the end of the platform. People kept walking by the woman in the scarf; Margaret strained to see her face. But the woman did not turn. She stared resolutely ahead.

So like and yet

The train whined into the station and shuddered to a halt. The woman boarded the train, and Margaret felt her heart sink because it was going to take the woman away.

Margaret saw her again in the train windows as she walked through the car. Margaret walked parallel to her outside the train, straining to see. The woman sat down.

Then. The woman turned deliberately, looked at Margaret. Her eyes, obscured by the grimy window, may have been brown, flawless, and brilliant. Her face may have been lovely. She looked innocuously at Margaret. She did not smile.

Margaret opened and closed her mouth. She thought please, please. But the train was already moving.

The woman turned away. The train rolled out of the station.

Margaret ran after it.