“Excuse me,” I said. (I felt assaulted by his story. Couldn’t believe for a while I was hearing what I heard.) “I don’t see the point.”
“The point?” He laughed obscenely. “This is the point. “When we got into bed for the night, I would describe the experience to Anna Marie, blow by blow so to speak. That was when things were still good between us. In turn, Anna Marie would tell me everything she’d been up to that day in the sexual arena. We thought of it as a kind of sharing.”
My palms were sweating. (I was in a minor panic.) “This was regular practice between you?” I said, less question than a summing up. “You had promiscuous extra-marital relations, which you tended to confide to each other.”
“That’s on the mark,” he said. “On Fridays during my lunch hour, there’s this rich woman, a former client, who stops by for me at my office. She picks me up in her white Mercedes and takes me to this motel in Great Neck for a quick hit. That’s been going on for almost two years. I think of it as business as usual. The woman likes to be roughed up, which is not the way I operate. Also she’s older than me and she’s losing her looks. Why am I telling you this? I lost my train of thought here.” He caught me glancing at my watch. (Fifteen minutes to go.) “Am I boring you?” he asked.
“I feel mistreated by you,” I said. “You’re hostile and you’re an exhibitionist. Will you please get to the point?”
“I know what you’re saying, Dr. Tipton, but that’s the way we live our lives,” he said, smiling faintly. “I mean, hey we go for the gusto. This is the point. About a month ago, Anna Marie started to freeze me out. Do you know what I’m saying? She froze me out on the good stuff. She began to hold things back or tell me stories I could tell were not true.”
“Did you ask her her reasons for the change?”
He held his head in his hands. He dramatized suffering. “She said things like, ‘It isn’t worth talking about?’ If she had to keep it secret, it was like more important to her than what we had.”
“Did she cut off sexual relations with you?”
“You’re very perceptive, doctor.” He flashed me his soulful look. “Actually, she never stopped making it with me, but some of the fire, so to speak, was gone.”
“What fire is that?” I asked.
He started to say something in the same impassive manner, then he stopped himself and he got to his feet. “This isn’t funny to me,” he said. His face was flushed with anger. “This is my life.”
I rejected the impulse to apologize. “I don’t really want to see you again,” I said.
His smile had a reptilian aspect. “Is that a professional decision, Dr. Tipton?”
“Yes, it’s a professional decision,” I said. (I couldn’t believe how much I disliked him.) “I can make referrals. I usually don’t turn patients away, but I can see we’re not right for each other.”
“Are you afraid of me?” he asked. “Is that the problem?”
“Of course not.” I met his aggressive stare out front. (I was afraid of him. I had fantasies of shouting for help if he made the slightest move toward me.) “I think you’re a narcissist, Mr. Carroway. I think you’ve come to see me as an occasion to undress verbally.” I stumbled on the last word, say “versually.”
“I’ve been under stress,” he said, sitting down. “I’m not like this all the time.”
“I trust my intuitions,” I said, looking at my watch. (There is a clock on the wall which I tend to ignore.) “That’s all the time we have. We’ve run ten minutes over.”
“If you won’t see me as a patient, will you see me on other terms?”
“No chance.”
“It’s good that you don’t take any crap from me,” he said. “I like that. I like the way you handle yourself.”
The decision came to me before I came to it. “I’ll see you one more time,” I said.
He had a look of gratitude on his amazing face. I felt pleased oddly to have pleased him. We made an appointment for the following Friday at the same time.
The weight of his absence when he left troubled me.
In the early years of my marriage, I used to get anxiety attacks in which I felt I couldn’t breathe. It was like some enchantment came over me. I just couldn’t catch my breath. Once I almost passed out on a subway platform. A motherly black woman took me by the arm and led me into the air. Held me up (in air) until I could breathe again. If she would have adopted me, I remember saying to Yuri, if she would marry me, all my problems would be solved. I tended to discuss everything with Yuri then. I couldn’t make decisions without his advice. I hadn’t learned to trust my intuitions. It wasn’t that my self-esteem was low. It was just that I trusted Yuri’s judgments above my own. (I was full of self-doubts.) Yuri’s sureness seemed to me something near miraculous. A problem to be solved? Yuri knew the answer even before the question had been fully asked.
For the longest time, I trusted Yuri’s judgments over my own. It had to do of course (I say of course, though it is a new discovery for me) with my being a woman. For years I brought my difficult cases to Yuri as if he were a higher court of opinion. What I began to do was to solicit his opinion only to take the opposite tack. I had to have my own way to be myself.
Yuri also relied on me. He needed me to confirm him. I was there to admire the wisdom of his judgments. It was my role (my job) to give him back his own opinion as if it were also mine. I didn’t mind. When Yuri didn’t get what he wanted from me (I couldn’t always be his echo), he would struggle against my opinion as if it were crushing him under its weight. So much power scared me. I couldn’t ever advise him; he didn’t really want my advice. And then I no longer wanted his. (This has been a secret from ourselves.) We continued out of habit (continued and continue) to offer each other advice.
Carroway swoops in ten minutes late, silk shirt open almost to the navel, leather jacket over his shoulders. What timing! I had just about given up expecting him. The frisson of something unacceptable is in the air between us. He sits back in his chair and makes a point of crossing his legs. Makes a point of looking me over.
I am the one in charge, I tell myself. “How are you today?” I ask.
“I read somewhere that jealousy is the most humiliating of emotions,” he says. “The most destructive of all human feelings. I am living testimony to that.”
“What are you jealous of exactly?”
He looks down at his elegant hands, unsuccessfully conceals a smile. “I am jealous of every man who has a desirable woman that is not available to me. Your husband, as a matter of fact.”
“You’re jealous of my husband? That’s not really true, is it?” (My voice is like a cool breeze.) “I’m still not clear why you’ve come to see me, Carroway. What are you looking for really?”
“Peace of mind,” he says. “Okay? Look, I make good money. This last year, knock wood, has been terrific. I have a super-nice house with spacious grounds, a sauna, a pool room, an attack dog, a view of the sound. I’m like laying out my jewels before you, Adrienne.” (He mispronounces my name.) “And I have a beautiful wife — it is not my opinion alone. A lot of men would like to be in my pants, so to speak. Why aren’t I satisfied?”