My natural human instinct was to offer condolences to Bill, to be sympathetic about whatever had happened with Mallory, to reflect on the sad outcome of the situation with Rachel. But I didn’t. Instead I contemplated the fact that after so many years between visits with me his first association in my presence was to his long-estranged wife, and not to the tragedy of his recently absent daughter.
Ironically, one of the most difficult things about the psychotherapeutic relationship is the necessity for the therapist to, at times, put brakes on reflexive human kindness. Were I to presuppose to start this interaction with Bill Miller with expressions of compassion, or even overt sorrow, at his plight-or by giving him a big hug, a pat on the back, and a hearty “hey, big guy”-I might unwittingly interfere with whatever motivation he’d had for picking up the phone.
So I waited. The truth was that most of the time, when I reached over my shoulder into my therapeutic quiver I ended up drawing out the dullest arrow, the one that was marked SHUT UP AND WAIT.
“I bet you’d like to know why I’m here,” Bill said.
“Yes,” I said evenly. “I would. That’s a good place to start.”
Bill was dressed in wool flannel trousers, good leather loafers, and a crisp blue dress shirt that was the color of his eyes. His sport-coat wasn’t new, but it looked like cashmere, and hung on him with the drape of good tailoring. He wore no tie; few men in Boulder did.
“What’s your ethical problem?” he asked. The question was neighborly. He could have been inquiring about a problem I said I’d been having with my gutters.
“Explaining the circumstances would lead to a whole different ethical dilemma for me. It’s something I’m going to have to deal with on my own. When I reach a determination, I’ll let you know.”
“But you’ve obviously dealt with it enough to have this meeting?”
“I’m hoping to get a better understanding about why you’ve come to see me. That might make my concerns moot, or it might clarify things so I’ll have a clearer sense of what I should do.” That was the plan, anyway.
Bill closed his eyes for a moment, a long moment that grew into seconds. Five, then ten. Finally he opened his eyes, looked right at me, and with pain etched in his brow, he said, “You’ve been at my house twice over the past two days. Why?”
40
In the same way that a boxer who has just absorbed a right uppercut has many options as he’s lying on the canvas staring straight up at the klieg lights listening to a referee count “eight, nine,” at that moment I had many options.
I could have reached back into my quiver for the safety of my SHUT UP AND WAIT arrow.
Or I could have said something classically therapeutic, and classically arrogant, like, “This isn’t about me, Bill. This is about you.”
Or, of course, I could have out-and-out lied: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Instead, almost purely instinctively, I chose an alternative that I hoped might buy me a moment to think while at the same time it reinforced the separation that existed between, and needed to continue to exist between, my chair and that of my patient. What I said in reply to Bill’s question about why I was at his house was, “And that’s why you’re here, Bill?”
“Well, I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”
“Excuse me?” I was honestly perplexed by his quick reply. Bill Miller was implying that my appearance at his neighbor’s house was coincident with what, exactly? I really wanted to know. “What kind of coincidence are you talking about?”
“Why would you be at my next-door neighbor’s house twice in two days with two different people?”
He apparently wasn’t eager to answer my question; I was certainly not about to answer his. Discussing with Bill Miller that I’d been at his neighbor’s house because I’d been concerned about the apparent disappearance of another one of my patients, and the disappearance of my partner and friend, wasn’t about to happen.
“Is this meeting”-I waved my hand between us-“a professional meeting? Did you come to see me for psychotherapy, or for something else?”
He hesitated long enough that I knew he had hesitated, which told me that he’d had to think about how to answer my question.
I said, “The distinction is important. If we’re going to work together, the distinction is important.”
“Yes, yes, of course it’s professional,” he said. “I need your help, Dr. Gregory. But I’m also concerned why you’ve been… so close to my home in the past few days.”
Was that a reasonable concern for him to have? I could have argued yes, I could have argued no. But was reasonableness the point? “Go back three days please, Bill. Were you considering calling me for psychotherapy then?”
“What do you mean?” he stammered.
“You said that you’ve seen me at your neighbor’s house twice in the past couple of days. I’m wondering whether that is the reason that we’re talking today, or whether you had been considering asking me for help prior to that.”
Shit. By babbling on, I’d just given him a road map for how to respond.
No surprise, Bill consulted the map before he replied. “I’d been considering it. Seeing you next door brought everything closer to the surface, a lot of old memories, unresolved, you know, feelings about… what’s happened, so I decided to call and set something up. But I feel I deserve an explanation as to why you’ve been in my neighborhood so much. I do.”
Did he deserve an explanation? It was an interesting question. Were I truly interested in buying Doyle’s house, that would potentially make me Bill Miller’s next-door neighbor. If he and I were neighbors, the dual-relationships ethical restriction would definitely kick in: Preexisting therapeutic relationship or no preexisting therapeutic relationship, missing daughter or no missing daughter, I certainly could not provide psychotherapy to my next-door neighbor.
I decided to provide just enough of an explanation to allay his concerns.
“Bill, I can assure you that my presence at your next-door neighbor’s house had nothing to do with you or your family.”
Was that really true? I actually wasn’t sure.
“Are you thinking of buying that house?” Bill asked.
An easy question, finally. “No, I’m not.”
“You were there with the woman who is listing that house.”
“I’ll repeat what I said. I’m not considering buying the house.”
“Then why were you with her?”
“My presence had no direct relevance to you or your family.” Did it have indirect relevance? The question of indirect relevance had to do with Bob Brandt and the conversations he’d had with Mallory through the fence. The answer to the question of indirect relevance was either all chronicled in the pages in the Kinko’s box Bob had given me, or it wasn’t. My money was still riding on “wasn’t.” Barely.
I went on. “Assuming for a moment that we each decide that we are comfortable working together…”
“Yes,” Bill said.
“How can I be of help?” A quick glance at the clock told me we had precious little time remaining until my twelve thirty showed up in the waiting room.
“I’m under a lot of stress.”
I can only imagine.
“I’m not sleeping. I’m losing weight; I don’t have any appetite at all.”
Likely culprits for that constellation of symptoms? Depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress. Given the circumstances of Bill’s life, there were no surprises on that list. The most natural thing for me to do at that moment would have been to presuppose the source of Bill Miller’s symptoms. I cautioned myself not to do it.