As chatty as her employer was clipped — given Max’s name and age, Bella sighed and broke into a sedative patter — the receptionist caused Alex a mild palpitation when she named the cost of a forty-five-minute session (one hundred dollars). “It’s twenty-five dollars less than the usual rate,” she said. Sensing this wasn’t enough, she added: “And a hundred and fifty less than a therapist in the city.”
+
“What have I been up to?” Bender asked. Alex and Maya were seated in front of him, Max outside in reception. Alex had been considering the psychologist’s office with hostility — a globe on a spindle; a foot-long replica of a sailboat replete with baby sailors; for some reason, scales of justice — and had asked the question with an excessive and insincere enthusiasm. Bender joined his hands and shrugged: “I have written a book.” He rose and extracted a slim volume from a wood-paneled bookshelf that held heavy blue tomes expressing the full range of mental disorder. Between them, the glossy white volume roosted insignificantly, though Bender had augmented its presence by stacking a dozen copies together. “You can keep it,” he said, returning to his chair. “Maybe you’ll learn something.” They watched his thin fingers scrawl out a dedication on the front page.
In general, he had not aged. He did not look younger than his fifty-five or so, but not older, either. It occurred to Alex that it was this stranded age that made socializing difficult, for Bender and his wife (technically she was younger than Bender, but she looked like his mother, which always made Alex think of George H. W. and Barbara Bush, during whose tenure Alex and Maya had married) were older than Alex and Maya but younger than Eugene and Raisa. His own haleness Bender had once, on being faced with a less-than-salubrious table at the Rubins’, attributed to being a gourmand. (That is what he said: “I am a gourmand,” which Eugene sang out in mockery at least once a week.) Bender ate sushi three times a week and boiled greens most of the rest and did not long for any of the sinful indulgences Raisa had laid out. “You have a lucky metabolism,” he had said to Eugene, “but cholesterol is cholesterol. You are thin thanks to genes. I am thin thanks to consciousness.” “It turns out he’s a nutritionist also,” Eugene had said, flicking a slice of peppered fatback into his mouth.
“There you are,” Bender said, extending the title. Maya and Alex both reached for it, which led to nervous laughter. The Revelation of a Russian Psychotherapist on the American Land, the cover said. It depicted, in one collapsed tableau, a kerchiefed woman in a peasant smock alighting from a ship hold with a dusty valise and a trembling smile; the Statue of Liberty, its face crossed with something other than joy on sighting this belted Madonna of steerage; and the Chrysler Building piercing the sky like a phallus. The book was self-published and written directly in English.
“We will read it very closely,” Maya said.
“There is a section on the psychological lessons of Russian literature,” Bender said. “I hope it meets with Raisa’s approval.” Raisa had been a literature instructor in the Soviet Union. Bender bent his head in tribute.
“They send their greetings,” Maya rushed to add.
“How is Eugene?” Bender’s face clouded over. “I’m grateful for the jam, but in honesty — too much sugar. There are sugarless jams — he should look into it.”
“Since our time is so short,” Alex broke in, “we would like to tell you the situation with Max.” Alex looked at Maya, hoping she would continue.
Maya was about to start, but Bender cut her off. “I do not care what the parents think,” he waved his hand. “I care what the child thinks. How about you switch places with the boy? Just wait outside. Bella can give you coffee, or there is a deli just a quarter mile down the road. Come back in”—he checked his watch—“thirty-five minutes.” He looked up at Alex, who fought heat in his face.
“What are we supposed to tell him?” Alex said. “We thought you would discuss it with us. We said we are going to the doctor because his mother has an appointment.”
“Oh, yes?” Bender smiled with pity. “Perhaps, indeed, we should begin with the parents. But when the stove is broken, you start with the stove. Then you can check the gas lines.” He fell back in his chair to allow this observation to settle on the Rubins. “You are not professionals,” he went on, “but you haven’t helped with this deception. Now the boy will feel tricked.” He shot his cuffs, gathered his hands into a steeple, and laid his elbows on the edge of his desk. “Let’s work with what we’ve got. You made white black, let’s not make it white all over again. I’ll tell him that I’ve spoken to his mother, and now I’d like to speak to him, because maybe he can tell me something that’ll help. Does he remember me?” Bender said.
“We speak about you all the time,” Maya lied.
Maya dreaded explaining to Max that Bender wanted to speak to him, but even before the psychologist came bounding out after the Rubins, the boy put down the magazine in his hands and obediently slid off his chair, as if accepting a punishment.
The parents watched Bender’s door close. Maya’s heart tumbled. Was she doing damage? No, they had to try. What damage could a half hour with that man do? Bender, at least, seemed confident of improvement. And who knew? Her boy might walk out of the room changed; isn’t that what psychologists specialized in? She was cornering herself with worry so she could remember that things might, after all, turn out more positively. She wondered if she rang an alarm merely to feel relief at its falseness.
Maya tried to occupy herself by flipping through Bender’s book. Bender, who seemed disapproving of so much, turned out to also contain great enthusiasms, which he allowed to pour forth within the privacy of two covers. An immigrant at the not-very-old but no-longer-so-young age of thirtysomething, Bender had been driven by immigration and a motherly wife into a responsible vocation, setting, and lifestyle. But within burned a performer, a wit, an irregular mind. “Hello, my dear fellow Americans!” his preface began. “Russians have come! Being a psychologist I had paid attention to your American psychotherapy, of course. And so many thoughts and feelings came to my mind! Once a youthful poet from one good old Russian movie said: ‘Happiness — it is when you are understood.’ And I have a strong desire to share with you my thoughts and feelings. Reading textbooks is useful, but it is boring, I will tell you. But trying to help myself and other people to adapt to your country, I wrote my book, where the rules of psychology are expressed on the basis of the examples from life, literature, and art.”
Maya flipped the pages to see if Bender had culled any lessons from family life, but despaired to see, after the dedication — a quote about trees and flowering out that Bender had scrawled in a Soviet person’s unmistakable hand, at once florid and cramped — no such subject included in the table of contents: I. What Does Classical Russian Literature Tell Us About American Psychotherapy? “What Does Classical Russian Literature Tell Us About American Psychotherapy?” II. Psychological Sketches from the Lives of Famous People “What Does Classical Russian Literature Tell Us About American Psychotherapy?” III. Meeting Interesting People “What Does Classical Russian Literature Tell Us About American Psychotherapy?” IV. Special Topics “What Does Classical Russian Literature Tell Us About American Psychotherapy?” a. Cultural Shock b. Homosexuals