“I doubt it,” I said. “Henry’s stubborn, isn’t he? He makes his own rules. We like that about him.”
She said, “I think I’ve met your sister at some event or other. I’ve got nothing against her. But let me ask you this. What are they doing together?”
“Miriam is, of course, a Muslim single mother with a history of abuse. She has few taboos, and she sees straight to the centre of things. Your dad-a free, single man-loves that about her.”
Lisa was sitting on the edge of my analytic couch, waiting for these banalities to pass before she went into her rehearsed rap.
“We know better than anyone how to take care of him, while your family has been negligent.” She seemed to hesitate there but I knew she’d hardly started. “But why would you worry about our little problems? I know you spend a lot of time thinking about the dreadful dilemmas of film stars and celebrities. Didn’t they call you, in a newspaper, therapist to the stars?”
I said, “You know it’s not like that, though I have to admit that I’ve used my work to be with people who interest me. Just this morning I was wondering whether Kate Moss might like to see me. How could anyone not envy me that? Anyhow, I didn’t see the thing in the newspaper. Did you?”
“Of course not.”
Over the years several sportsmen had approached me. Having gone to the trouble to learn about their bodies, they assumed their minds could also be trained to obedience. It was when this didn’t work-when, as it were, they became curious about the mind-body relation-that they asked for help.
The incident Lisa was referring to involved a footballer I saw a few times. He had been followed to my place; photographs of him at my door, with half of Maria’s head behind him, had appeared in the papers. His unhappiness was mocked all over. He was called mad.
She said, “The little difficulties of the famous must be hell. But my father has stopped seeing his old friends. They bored him for years, apparently. These people are famous and high up in their field. But they are not pierced. He has resigned from two boards. As for those places he and Miriam go to together-”
“Places?”
“Fetish clubs. They are squalid and the people there riddled with disease. You think the women who go there want to be doing that? It’s rape, their husbands forcing them to have sex with dozens of people.”
Which of Lear’s daughters was she? I wondered how long I’d be able to resist the pleasure of giving her a little verbal slap.
“You’re worrying about your father,” I said. “He’s changed a little. Everything will calm down.”
“Fuck that patronising analyst quackery.”
Her mother’s tongue had been passed on like an heirloom.
I said, “Quackery?”
She was looking at the postcard of Freud I kept on my desk, sent to me by an enthusiastic patient. “Freud’s been discredited over and over. Patient envy-” She stopped. “Penis envy, I mean. Jesus.”
Despite herself, she laughed.
“What a lot of fallacious cock, you mean?” I said, laughing too.
“Jamal, my father loves you. He even listens to you. Valerie too. But my father is not in a good way, and you must take some responsibility.”
That word. Responsibility. When I watched Miriam on her TV “agonies,” it was the most used word, apart from I. Owning your acts. Seeing yourself as an actor rather than a victim. I am all for responsibility; who wouldn’t be? We are all responsible for ourselves. But what are our selves? Where do they begin and how far do they extend?
“Yes,” I said. “He is responsible for what he does. Not me. Certainly not you. Him. Just him. You and I,” I said, getting up and moving towards the door, “are irrelevant here. We must be happy for them both and for the joy they give one another. Let’s hope they marry-or at least live together.”
“Marry? Live together! Are you insane? Those two? Where did you get such an idea from? Is it likely?!”
I was being mischievous. She irritated me; I could only inflame her.
I said, “I like to see others contented.”
She was already gathering her things. She asked me if I minded her taking something home. It was the teabag I’d used earlier, which she wanted to put in her “compost” box. She squeezed it out before dropping it in a pocket of her rucksack.
At the door she said, “I will not let my father be destroyed.”
There was mud on the floor from her boots. She also “forgot” one of her rucksacks. My patients often left umbrellas and coats, as well as change, lighters, condoms, Tampaxes and other stuff which dropped out of their pockets onto my couch. It was a form of payment as well as of relationship. I knew Lisa would be back.
She returned two days later.
“Thank you for putting up with me,” she said, as though I’d had a choice. She sat on the couch, dragging her skirt up over her boots, another colourful thing, ethnic, like me. She was watching me looking at her legs and smiled. “Did you know Valerie’s got an Ingres drawing on her bedroom wall? It’s lost in a mess of other stuff, some valuable things, family photographs and so on, but it’s there. That’s insouciance for you. You have any idea what it’s worth?” I said nothing as she looked at me. “Valerie says you’re a sphinx without a secret. Aren’t you the one who is ‘supposed to know’?” She paused. “You nodded then, but tell me, how do you sustain that stillness, Jamal? The way you’re just there. Did you learn it?”
“I don’t think I ever did.”
“You never fidget, your hands don’t fuss, your brown eyes are steady. They’re soft but merciless. And that little Gioconda smile of yours, which seems to know everything as you hear everything…It’s enough to convince a girl you could hear her soul murmuring. I bet all your patients want to be like you.” She was smiling at me. “I could sit with you for a long time, surrounded by books, CDs and these lovely pictures.”
“They’re all by friends.”
“The sketches?”
“My wife, Josephine.”
“And your son’s work too. So many photographs of him! Unlike my mother’s friends, you’re not showing off your wealth or power.” Silence. “You’re not supposed to give advice,” she said. “You shamans don’t even like to admit you can cure-if indeed you can.”
I said, “The difference between therapy and analysis is that in therapy the therapist thinks he knows what’s good for you. In analysis you discover that for yourself.”
“What would you say if you had a patient who was destroying himself?”
“I would warn him.”
She said, “Jamal, please, will you see me? As a patient, I mean.”
I told her there were good analysts I could recommend, but I couldn’t see her. I would phone her with suggestions. If she was in a hurry, I could find a couple of phone numbers right now.
She said, “Why are you refusing to help me? I took your two books from Mother’s house and read them. I’ve studied your essays on the Internet. Like all good artists, you make me believe you are writing for only me.” She went on: “Will you answer this? What happens when you feel that the conversations you have are the wrong conversations with the wrong people?”
I noticed that, while I was looking through my address book, finding a pen and paper, she had put her feet up on the couch and lain down.
“Lisa.”
“But I have to tell you what happened.”
“What happened when?”
“When I called Henry and we agreed to have dinner at that place near Riverside Studios. She was there when I arrived.”
“Who?”
“Your beloved sister. She’s uninvited, but never mind, she starts to talk. Capricorn rising, or was it falling? Wizards she has known. Belly-dancing lessons. Posh Spice as a goldfish. Botox and how to get it cheap. Big Brother. On and on. A talking tabloid. He listens to every word. I think: How does he know what Big Brother is? She records it for him. How sweet! Then you know what he does?”