Intensive Therapy Part 2

"Remember that German psychoa.n.a.lyst I trained with when we lived in Philadelphia? Hannah Schmidt. The one who looked like a Berlin dis...o...b..uncer?"

"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 psychoa.n.a.lyst Melanie Klein-was on the panel that day. She showed wartime pictures made by English children, claiming the aerial bombs and antiaircraft weapons represented t.u.r.ds and shriveled p.e.n.i.ses. 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 l.u.s.trous 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sociation'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 psychoa.n.a.lysis 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 psychoa.n.a.lysis three years earlier. At first Jonas was so flattened he would have laid down his life for Dr. Philip Fowler, the hot new training a.n.a.lyst at the Philadelphia Psychoa.n.a.lytic Inst.i.tute. Within months, Jonas entered formal psychoa.n.a.lytic training, and since all trainees had to be in a.n.a.lysis, it was natural to continue with Dr. Fowler. But as Jonas felt better and better, he began challenging Dr. Fowler's rigidity about cla.s.sical psychoa.n.a.lysis. That's when Fowler unsheathed his switchblade of a tongue, and the a.n.a.lysis deteriorated into a battle of wits and wills. Because he was training to be a psychoa.n.a.lyst, Jonas felt trapped, convinced he would be dismissed from the Inst.i.tute 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. Fowler 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 a.n.a.lytic 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 G.o.d," 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."

"It was a first session, for G.o.d'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 d.a.m.n 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 psychoa.n.a.lytic ropes and encourage me to become my own man. This isn't quantum mechanics. Why complicate things with all this song and dance about s.e.x 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-a.n.a.lyze me-it's about wanting a bigger a.n.a.lytic p.e.n.i.s."

"p.e.n.i.s, 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 s.h.i.t 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, a.n.a.lysis 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 s.h.i.t, 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 a.n.a.lyst,' 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 a.n.a.lytic '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 d.u.c.h.ess. 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.

"h.e.l.lo," 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 t.i.tanium 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 f.u.c.king 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 a.n.a.lyst 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. "n.o.body 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 women?"

"Don't be so thin-skinned, Jonas."