Baltimore (2 page)

“Would you like some juice?” she asks, as if I were there for a dress fitting.

“No, thank you. I helped myself to some water.”

Little does she care. Evidently, the fact that I’ve been waiting on this little bench for the last fifteen minutes didn’t even deserve a hint of an apology.

“All right,” she says in her calm voice, as she shows the woman who was laughing during my fifteen minutes to the door. “You may go in now.”

And then, suddenly, I’m in this other room, once again waiting for her.

She shouts from the other room:

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like a cup of coffee, tea, some juice, or something else?”

“No, really, I’m fine,” I shout back.

In the room I see two chairs, two sofa chairs, a coffee table, more flowers, and even more of the female garbage. Flower arrangements and the like. All right, everything is quite tasteful, but it somehow makes my stomach turn.

I bet she’s not coming in so she can see where I’m going to sit. But, I know that trick. I won’t sit anywhere. I’ll stand in the middle of the room and wait for her to come in.

And here she is, finally, with a cup of coffee in her hand.

“Where do you sit?” I ask.

“I sit here, across from you,” she says and motions me to a chair.

She then spends some time observing the potted Japanese violets standing in the window, and says:

“I don’t know what’s wrong with them. They won’t bloom like they’re supposed to.”

“That’s odd,” I say. “They certainly have enough light here.”

Could it be that she too feels a little uncomfortable, or is this the standard beginning – seemingly informal? Like, we just met to talk about flowers. What would happen if I were to tell her flowers were the last thing in the world I was interested in? If I were to tell her my mother’s home was always packed with rubber plants, cactuses, and by and large resembled a jungle so that we were never able to sit comfortably in any part of the apartment? What would happen if I were to say this, and if I were to ask her not to bother me with her flowers? Would that be considered impolite? What would happen if I were to tell her that I’ve made it a point not to have any plants in my home? And that in my opinion, plants don’t find apartments pleasant at all. In fact, I think these plants are unhappy, condemned to listen to our quarrels, to watch us having bad sex, to breathe in our cigarette smoke and the scent of our bathroom fresheners, and worst of all, sometimes they’re even condemned to endure light throughout the night. Plants that would have gone to sleep long ago, and dreamt about other plants. I could have told her all this, but of course, I didn’t.

Finally, she sits in her chair. Her cup is in her hand. In fact, she’s holding it with both hands. I’ve always liked it when people held their cups of coffee with both hands. It makes them seem so vulnerable. They look like someone who is trying to keep warm by holding this cup. I’m inclined to develop an instant and irrational liking to people who hold their cups in this manner.

Why is she doing this to me?

She smiles at me – a nice, warm smile. Not at all fake. Trained, maybe, but honest. It’s clear she’s not afraid of the silence between us. Leaning back in her sofa chair, which is, as I’ve just come to notice, significantly lower than mine, she slowly brings the coffee cup to her lips and takes a sip. Once again she places it in her lap, still using both hands.

“So, how are things?” she asks.

“Confusing,” I say, determined to be completely honest.

Since I’ve already decided to pay for the aggravation, the least I could do is try to be honest.

“Confusing. Aaall right. And what else?”

“Well… to be honest, I also find it all a little silly. Unusual. I even feel a bit humiliated, but not too much.”

“Why humiliated?”

“It’s like, well, you should be able to solve your own problems. If you ask for help, it means you’re weak. I guess?”

“Whose voice is telling you you’re weak?”

The voice of my husband, I’m thinking to myself. But I don’t say anything. He’s the one who thinks if he can do everything on his own then everyone else should too.

“All right. Here’s what I know about you. You’re forty-three years old, a writer by profession, you’re married… do you have any children?”

Oh, dear God. Here it comes.

“No, I don’t have any children.”

“Was this a mutual decision or….”

“Well, sort of, yes, I guess… we didn’t really come out and say we didn’t want children, but we didn’t really try to have them either. On the contrary. We made sure it didn’t happen. Had I decided I wanted children, I’m sure my husband would have supported me, but since it frightens me, he, of course, never forced me to do anything that frightened me….”

I shouldn’t have mentioned my fear. If she now starts pestering me about this….

“In any case,” I quickly continued so as not to allow her to jump in with one of her questions, “I don’t think this presents a major problem for me. It’s quite clear now that I won’t be having children and I’ve learned to live with it. Sometimes I feel a bit uneasy when I find myself with a group of women who have children, and they start talking about them, because I can’t participate, but for the most part, it’s okay.”

She smiled. I got the impression that she realized I didn’t wish to talk about it anymore.

I too leaned back in my sofa chair. The hell with it. I’m here. Whatever happens, happens.

“I’m afraid of this,” I said.

“What exactly frightens you?”

“Pain frightens me, naturally. I know this is a process and that it will last and that it will be painful the entire time. I’m afraid of what we’re going to dig up, and of all the feelings I’m going to experience on my way there, wherever that might be. I’m afraid of giving up halfway through. I’m afraid I might even make it all the way and then reach a place not worth all the searching and all that pain. I’m afraid of all the things that might creep out in the meantime.”

And then I told her all those things about the writing. How my writing used to give me great pleasure, how nothing could be more important, and how the satisfaction I felt after writing a story couldn’t be compared to anything else.

“Maybe the problem is,” I said, “is the fact that I’ve decided to write a novel. Maybe I’m expecting too much of myself, who knows. Maybe the short stories were an ideal genre for me. You lift the lid just a bit, for a few days, dig around your inner self, write the story and quickly close it again before all the demons find their way out. Open, write, close. Over and over again. And now, suddenly, a novel. This means that lid, that manhole, has to stay open for a long time. For months and months. And I have to live next to it, sit on the edge of that ravine, look down and feel my legs tremble above the abyss. To be exposed for months to the stench that is about to gush forth. And this is why I haven’t written anything for the last two, three years. I tell people I’m writing a novel but, in truth, I’m doing nothing. I wander aimlessly about the apartment, clean it to no end, play computer games, write to strangers all over the world, have conversations with cyber maniacs which, had I made notes, could have been played on Broadway that same instant, but I never bothered to write them down. That’s the strangest thing of all. It’s not unusual when you find it hard to do a job you never really liked. But when you suddenly can’t do something you used to like, something you used to enjoy, well, then there must be a problem somewhere. This is why I came to you. Primarily because of this. I want to know why I can’t write a novel.”

To me this sounded like an excellent explanation. I almost believed in it myself.

Our conversation revolved around this problem a little while longer. I told her a little about my family. She posed small, pleasant questions, and I talked. About my mother, about my father, about the nice, green house where I grew up. I felt like crying again when I came to that part, but I controlled myself. She said:

“Feel free to cry.”

I suddenly felt like this was all too much. I thought things would go more slowly. That it wouldn’t hurt right away. I told her I have nothing against warm and open communication; that I’m willing to make an honest effort, but that I nevertheless need time to open up. I felt like I was walking on top of an enormous ball, contemplating whether or not I’m going to stay there and waste our time, or if I’m just going to dive into the depths. And I knew the latter frightened me immensely.

“I see,” she said, “that you have a very pleasant way of letting others know where your boundaries are, how far they can go with you. You do this in such a way as not to hurt the other person.”

I was both thrilled by her compliment as well as ashamed by the fact that such little praise could make me so happy. Could it be that I crave approval to that extent?

“Would you say your life has been a happy one so far?”

What a tough question! Is there anyone who can honestly say they are happy? And as far as the other question goes, the one about the meaning of happiness, I don’t even want to think about it, let alone discuss it. It’s so overdone.

“Hmm… I don’t really know. Let’s just say that the only thing I can tell you for certain is that, so far, my life has not been an unhappy one. I’ve been blessed with so many things. Compared to other people, I’ve fared well. I’m not ill. I’m not an invalid. I’m not unattractive. I have the right number of fingers and toes. I didn’t have to experience the things I truly dread, like being born in a town consisting of ten houses stacked on top of each other on some mountain somewhere. For me, that is the worst imaginable fate, even though this might not be the case. But, when I travel somewhere and see such places and houses, and think about the people who live there, I know I’m very lucky I’m not one of them. Compared to the people who are really unhappy, I guess I’m happy. I don’t know.”

A small clock stood in the window, sideways, strategically positioned so that I could see it, and be aware of how my time was running out much faster than I would like it to. I remember the operation from two years ago. That was easy. You go in, they put you out, remove a few gallstones, which caused you unbearable pain, and – you come out healthy. Sheer magic. How great would it be if the therapist could do the same.

“And if therapy did work like this,” she asked, “what would you like to change?”

Finally, an easy question.

I blurted out, all in one breath, a few hundred of my faults. Then I stopped myself halfway through because it was clear that the surgical removal of just the first half would mean a great deal.

“You know,” she smiled, “those who love themselves are inclined to forgive themselves for their faults. I wouldn’t want you to have unrealistic expectations regarding therapy. Therapy may not be able to help you fix everything you might consider a fault, but it can help you to accept it. To be at peace with it. To discover things about yourself that are unique and then embrace them, love them, and live with them.”

I wanted to jump up and kiss her.

However, my time was up, and while I was getting ready to get up and leave, she began telling me about how we were going to start with about ten sessions and then see how we were getting on, and whether or not all this had any sense.

“Actually,” I said at the door, “that would be really devastating, to hear you tell me after a few sessions that you no longer wish to be my therapist because I’m a lost cause.”

She laughed, honestly, as she was showing me out.

You idiot, why do you feel the need to make your therapist laugh?

As I was driving home, my cheeks were burning and I had a minor headache, but I kept thinking about how absolutely wonderful her last comment was. She is someone who gives me permission to be who I am. No better, no worse. I don’t think I’ve had anything like that with anyone in my entire life. Even if she wasn’t one-hundred-percent honest, even if there was a hidden motive behind her permission, it was still nice of her to say it. It was as though she told me I was just fine, no matter what I was like. The point was to find out what I was really like. This, perhaps, didn’t have to be that difficult?