This seemed a productive session, though when I got home I couldn’t define why.
I hadn’t thought about Eva when three days later, I ran into Eva in front of our building. She was coming in as I was going out. We nodded to each other like relative strangers. I took a longish walk by myself to clear my head.
The next day or the day after that she knocked at my door. “I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you,” she said.
“I could say the same,” I said. “How are you?”
“Ron and I have split up,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“That’s all right. It was my decision. So. I’m free to take a walk with you again one of these days. I can’t stand around and talk. I just wanted to let you know.”
I made some innocuous remark and she returned to her apartment.
I meant to tell Klotzman about this encounter but he was absent on the occasion of our next visit and I ended up talking to Carol.
“The reason I took this job,” she told me, “was that when I finished my training I’d like to be a therapist myself.”
Her assertion surprised me but I made an encouraging remark in exchange.
“I had always wondered why anyone would want to be a therapist,” I said, thinking out loud.
“If you feel you have the gift,” she said, “it’s an obligation.”
“Do you ever sit in for Dr. Klotzman?” I asked.
“I never have,” she said. “Would you like me to, Melvin?”
I thanked her, said another time, and backed out of the office. I wasn’t prepared to share my secrets with this young woman.
“It’s probably not a good idea,” she called after me. “I have another year of training to complete.”
“Why does anyone want to become a therapist?” I asked Eva on one of our walks.
“There was a time I wanted to be a therapist,” Eva said, “but I realized I didn’t have the gift and I gave it up.”
“How do you know whether you have the gift or not?” I asked. “And what does it mean?”
“You just know,” she said, brushing off my question.
“And you knew you didn’t have it.”
She shrugged. “Yes and no. Perhaps I made a mistake. I sometimes wonder about that. I made my decision on what I thought I knew about myself. It’s not an exact science.”
“I wouldn’t think so,” I said. “Well, I know I don’t have whatever gift is required nor do I have the inclination.”
“And so you’re not a therapist.”
“That’s right. I’m a writer, or like to think I am, and you need a gift for that too.”
“I think we’re using the word in two different senses,” she said.
I wasn’t sure what she meant, but I didn’t what to acknowledge it so I merely nodded.
“The gifted therapist can read his patients,” she said.
“And if he can’t, he shouldn’t be a therapist?”
“I didn’t say that,” she said. “As with all things there are degrees. Yes, I suppose if he or she can’t read his patients, he or she shouldn’t be a therapist.”
“I don’t think Dr. Klotzman reads me very well,” I said.
She thought about it, played with the idea as we walked.
“He might read you better than you know.”
“He might,” I acknowledged, though I didn’t really believe it.
During my next session with Klotzman, I asked him if he thought he had a gift as a therapist. Was it his gift that convinced him to be a therapist?
“Gift, schmift,” Klotzman said. “I believe in method. The method is the true gift. I’m a scientist not a sorcerer.”
I was willing to let the subject drop. So the gift school was only one way of perceiving the problem.
“I’m a trained analyst,” Klotzman said, unwilling to let the subject die. “Not a magician.”
Did that explain anything? I wondered. He seemed obsessed on the issue. “What made you want to be a therapist?” I asked him.
“Aside from wanting to help people, I’ve always been fascinated by the varieties of neurosis. Does that answer your question?”
Two men calling themselves detectives came to my door the next day which was a surprise though not unexpected. A childhood friend of mine had been murdered in his own house and they had come to ask me questions. I hadn’t seen this former friend in at least five years — more enemy these days than friend, we had once been like brothers — which is what I told the two men. “That’s odd,” the smaller of the two said, “your name is in his address book.”
The bigger man asked, “Where were you two nights ago between eight and twelve”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose I was at home.”
“Do you have any witnesses?” the other asked.
“I live alone,” I said.
“That’s unlucky for you,” the small one said. “We may ask you to come down to the station to stand in a lineup.”
“I told you I haven’t seen this man in a very long time. We were childhood friends. We moved in very different circles.”
“If you haven’t seen him, how do you know what circles he moved in?” the small one asked.
How did I know? “His name has been in the paper from time to time. Wasn’t he accused of a ponzi scheme? He was always looking for devious ways to make money.”
“Is that why you killed him?” the big man said, threw it at me. “Didn’t he date your former wife?” He looked at his notes.
“I didn’t kill him,” I said. “I don’t go around killing people for making money illegally. Or for dating my former wife, which I didn’t know.”
This went on for a while, then the two men got up, thanked me for my time and left. “Don’t go anywhere,” the small man said.
I was shaking when they were gone and I thought I’d call Klotzman and ask for a special session. I needed someone who understood me to talk to. And what was my name doing in Henry Kleiburn’s address book? It must have been a very old address book. And when and how did he get together with my former wife? Henry had a way of taking what belonged to other people. He was an inveterate thief.
I recited my grievances against Henry to Klotzman, but first I told him about our childhood friendship. “Henry was my oldest and closest friend. For a period, from about six to ten we were virtually inseparable or so memory would have it. Henry’s house was across the street from mine and we would spend as much or more time in the other’s house as in our own. I remember preferring his house. His parents were more permissive and there was more to eat. The refrigerator was always crowded with the kind of junk foods kids like and we were never reprimanded there for helping ourselves. It was hard to imagine why we spent any time in my house at all, but for his own reasons Henry liked being there. My mother doted on him, wanted me to be more like him, which must have made me resentful.”
“Maybe that was the beginning of the falling out,” Klotzman said.
“We were always very competitive, grades, games — the main game was stoop ball when we were small — and we were fairly evenly matched, though Henry usually came out on top in the long run. Even then, even in games like stoop ball, he tended to cheat in small ways. When I won a game he would sulk and not talk to me, as if I were the one who had cheated. To keep his friendship sometimes I had to let him win or at least try not to care about losing.”
“It could be that the falling out was an accumulation of incidents,” Klotzman said. “Resentments build up.”
“We used to steal things, little things, from five and dime stores and one time I got caught and I was taken to the police station and my parents were called.”
“Henry acted innocent, though he had been the instigator. He was just better at it than I was, but he never admitted to my parents that he was also shop lifting. There were incidents like this that finally got me to stop seeing him. His whole life has been seizing the main chance and now someone has killed him.”