The Delilah Complex (2 page)

T
he lights on the subway flickered off and then returned. In front of me someone gasped prematurely, as if expecting disaster.

“Boom! Boom! Boom!” A man shouted in the rear of the car.

We all turned but there was nothing to see. An irrational outburst from someone who had already disappeared into the crowd.

Since the terrorist attacks on the city in 2001, we looked out for the stranger among us who might spell danger. And since the killings I’d stumbled on to last summer, and the murderer who hid from me in plain sight, I no longer trusted my ability to identify a threat.

I used to suffer the hubris of thinking I could identify who was dangerous and who wasn’t, blindly enjoying the fallacy that, as a trained psychotherapist, symptoms would present themselves to me as long as I remained aware. But now I know that’s not true.

The genuine lunatic, the real psychotic, can fool me as well as you, so I have become ever more vigilant and ever less sure that I can protect those I love. Questions keep me
awake at night: Will I be prepared when someone comes for me the next time? Or worse, if someone comes for my daughter, Dulcie?

Beside me, Dulcie sat oblivious to what I knew could catch us unawares. A pair of expensive headphones—a gift from her father—covered her ears, and her head bobbed to the soundtrack that was audible only to her. Silently, my lovely young daughter mouthed the lyrics to the score of “The Secret Garden,” because in four months, on January 5, she would stand on a Broadway stage and take on the role of Mary Lennox in a new production of the classic. Every day now on our way to and from the rehearsal studio on Lafayette Street in lower Manhattan, she burned the nuances of the music into memory, working tirelessly on her part.

A thirteen-year-old girl should not have a job, not even if her talent has bloomed early and she has acting in her blood. But the price of stepping on my daughter’s dream wasn’t something I was willing to pay. And so, more intently than I surveyed the strangers on the train, more doggedly than I observed my patients, I watched my daughter. Carefully. Always monitoring. Maybe too closely sometimes. But if the anxiety or pressure of performing weighed on her too heavily, I wanted to be prepared to step in.

Since she had been chosen for the part back in June, Dulcie was thriving, doing better than she had at her private school where too many label-obsessed kids had goals no more complicated than getting the next Prada bag. The Bartlett School, even with its emphasis on the arts and its high number of scholarships, still had its share of kids with limitless gold credit cards and limos at the ready.

The train doors opened. A middle-aged businessman entered and sat in the seat on the other side of me, despite
the empty seats across the aisle. I reached into my bag, pulled out a peppermint, unwrapped it and popped it in my mouth.

As I’m overly sensitive to smells, public places are sensory nightmares for me. I bit down. The intense flavor burned as the cool blue-green scent rose up and insulated me against any possible assault.

I felt his glance.

A dark-haired woman in narrow black slacks, a longsleeved white shirt and a black leather blazer, sitting next to her lithe thirteen-year-old daughter, who was wearing jeans, a pink T-shirt, a jeans jacket and a wristful of purple and light green beads, listening to a CD, was not a threat.

When I turned a minute later and he looked at me, I didn’t turn away. I don’t do that.

No, that’s not true. I look away from myself all too often, especially in the four months since my divorce. I ignore what is not in my life anymore and shy away from facing the one issue I spend my days helping other people deal with: sexuality. Dr. Morgan Snow, in denial. It isn’t something I’m proud of. But it is how I cope.

Once more the lights went out and the train came to a dead stop. It didn’t bother me, but I wasn’t certain about Dulcie. I didn’t have to search for my daughter’s hand. I just reached out, instinctively knowing where it would be, even in the dark.

“You okay?” I asked her.

“Yeah. It’s kind of creepy, though. How long do you think we’re going to be stopped here?”

“Hopefully not long.” I squeezed her hand.

She squeezed back and then pulled away to switch on her CD player again.

The lights flickered on but the train still didn’t move.

Down the aisle, a man in a ripped jacket streaked with grime turned and ogled my daughter’s legs. Dulcie didn’t notice him, but I did and stared him down.

Why was his jacket dirty? What had broken his spirit? What had cracked his self-esteem?

Occupational hazard #1: Reading the body language of strangers. Like judging a book by its cover, it is tempting to make a diagnosis based on insufficient information.

A woman with downcast eyes opposite us kept flexing her fingers in a habitual way that suggested she was slightly compulsive. About what? It would take hours on my couch to find out, but I could guess at the darkness that bound her mind like barbed wire.

The lights went off again, suddenly, and we returned to stuffy blackness.

You will be on a dark street and he will jump out at you, his knife gleaming in the lamplight. Or you will be on the sidewalk below a fifty-floor office building and the noise will take you by surprise, as will the glass that rains down and slices your skin. There are so many possibilities of catastrophe that sometimes you do not know how you stay sane
.

You manage because you have a child. You accomplish it because you still have hope, which, most therapists agree, is the hardest emotion to give up
.

We started moving again and the lights came back on. Another five minutes passed and we were at the stop before ours.

“Hon.” I touched Dulcie’s hand.

Dulcie hit the stop button and turned, cornflower-blue eyes wide and waiting.

“Yeah?”

“Next stop.”

“Really?”

She was always surprised the rides between our apartment on the Upper East Side and the rehearsal studio in SoHo were over so quickly. As she listened to her music, her sense of time deserted her.

Peering out the slimy windows into the blackness, Dulcie looked for a marker, not trusting how much time had passed.

“Mom?” Her face was still focused on the hollow tunnel. “Did you get nervous when the lights went out?”

“A little. I bet a lot of people did.”

“Will I get that kind of nervous if I’m onstage and just forget the words? Will I get sick from it? What will being nervous do to me?”

“I don’t know. But it’s not a bad thing to feel anxiety. We can talk about how you can overcome the feeling and learn from it.”

My job wasn’t to protect this budding teenager from the darkness as much as it was to teach her how to find the switches so she could always turn on the lights.

But I would have preferred to protect her. To wrap her in my arms the same way I had when she was only months old, to keep her away from the open windows, from the cold and the poisons.

T
he telephone was ringing as we walked into the apartment.

“Do you want me to get it?” Dulcie asked as she raced ahead of me.

“No, I’ve got it. You get ready for dinner.”

While I picked up the receiver, Dulcie threw her backpack on the floor and immediately opened the refrigerator. Pulling out a bottle of carrot-apple juice, she drank almost half of it without stopping.

I watched my daughter’s delicate throat as she swallowed, drank again and swallowed once more. It was eight o’clock in the evening and she was starving. Between working on the play, the tutoring that interrupted the rehearsals, and homework, she was burning energy. I didn’t like her having to wait this late for dinner as it was.

“Dr. Morgan Snow, please.”

“Yes, this is Dr. Snow.”

The last thing I wanted to do was get stuck on the phone and delay it even longer.

“I’m sorry for bothering you at home, Dr. Snow. Dr. Butterfield gave me your number. My name is Gail Danzig.
I’m a producer for the
Today
show. I was hoping you’d agree to do a segment on Friday morning.”

While my name and involvement had made it into the news last June, when I’d been pulled into a hunt for a serial killer after one of my patients had disappeared, I’d refused to be interviewed. Dr. Nina Butterfield, my mentor, my closest friend and owner of the Butterfield Institute— the sex therapy clinic where I work—had supported my decision not to comment in the press. But lately she had been pushing me to become more visible in the psychoanalytical community. This obviously was one of those shoves. As with the paper she’d asked me to deliver on women’s aggressive sexual tendencies at an upcoming conference, Nina wanted me to get out there. Success as a therapist was something that mattered to me. But notoriety? It had never been on my list.

“Dr. Butterfield didn’t mention it to me.”

“Oh, damn. She said she was going to call you—she felt this was something you would be interested in. First, let me tell you we’re very sensitive to what you do, and don’t want to exploit your profession at all.”

From the refrigerator and the cabinets, I took what I needed for dinner and put it on the countertop. “I’m sure the
Today
show is a big draw and that there are a lot of therapists who would jump at the chance, but I really don’t think that television is something I want to—”

Dulcie spun around from leafing through the mail and walked over to me, standing so close I could feel her breath on my neck as she whispered, “They want you on television? On the
Today
show?” Her eyes shone with admiration.

I nodded to her.

“Why?”

I shook my head—I couldn’t listen to what the producer was saying and what Dulcie was saying at the same time. “Excuse me, Miss Danzig, could you hold on a second?”

I put my hand over the mouthpiece. “Dulcie, wait till I get off the phone, okay?”

Her words rushed out of her. “You have to do it, Mom. You have to. The
Today
show? How could you say no to that?”

My daughter’s eyes didn’t typically shine over anything having to do with my occupation. Quite the opposite. She thinks my being a sex therapist is embarrassing. Occasionally, she even calls me Dr. Sin, in the derisive way that only a thirteen-year-old can. All too often, she’s introduced me to her friends or their parents as a heart doctor.

But here was something that involved me professionally that Dulcie wanted me to do. And I’m a sucker for making my daughter proud of me. I’m a softie for bending my own rules to see her smile.

“What is the subject of the segment, Miss Danzig?”

While the producer explained that the show was doing a week-long series on the sexual dissatisfaction of women in long-term relationships, I filled a pot of water and put it on the stovetop to boil.

“It’s a trend we’ve spotted. Women seem more frustrated sexually than their male partners. Especially working women. For many of them, their interest in sex increases the more they work, while men have the opposite reaction.”

I poured salt into the water. Supposedly salt makes the water boil faster and the pasta taste better. I saw that once on an episode of
Martha
, and anything I can do to make
the food I cook taste better, I remember. I seem to be missing the cooking gene; I can even ruin prepared food.

“It’s not a new trend as much as women’s sexuality is a hot topic now, thanks to drug companies who are making huge public relations efforts to hype their female sexual-dysfunction drugs.” I tried not to sound as if I was educating her, but I wasn’t sure I’d succeeded.

“That’s a good point. I’m making a note of it and will pass it on to our writers and researchers.”

I cut through the plastic of a package of precooked chicken breasts and started to slice them into strips. I was probably using the wrong knife—they were shredding.

“So, is that what you want me to discuss?”

“No. We’d like you to be on the show the final day of the series to talk about when it’s time to stop trying to cope with your sexual frustrations yourself and seek a sex therapist.”

The water wasn’t boiling yet.

“We’ll need you here at 7:30 a.m. for hair and makeup. Your segment will probably air between eight-thirty and nine. Is that doable? Do you need a car to pick you up?”

Dulcie’s face broke into a grin as I gave the producer my address. Meanwhile, the water in the pot still wasn’t boiling. I checked for flames. I’d forgotten to turn on the burner. I sighed.

“Something wrong?” Miss Danzig asked.

Once I hung up, I continued making dinner: pasta with chicken and pesto sauce.

When the penne was almost cooked, I opened the last of the prepared food—the sauce. Scooping the emerald paste into another pan, I turned the heat on, added the chicken, and gave it a quick stir. Then I left it on low to find Dulcie and tell her it was time to eat.

She wasn’t in her room. Or in her bathroom. And she wasn’t rummaging around in the makeup box in my bathroom, which was one place I found her too often.

Our six-room apartment, on the fifth floor of a prewar building on the corner of Eightieth East and Madison Avenue, was not that big. Since she wasn’t in either of the two bedrooms or bathrooms, and obviously not in the kitchen, she had to be in the den.

I’d taken the formal living room and dining room— spaces we’d never used—and had the walls ripped down, creating a large, cozy, book-lined space with comfortable couches and an entertainment area in one corner and my ersatz sculpture studio in the other.

Dulcie was standing in the dark, looking out of the windows that faced the street. Her shoulders were slumped and her forehead was pasted against a windowpane. She was too preoccupied to sense my presence.

Too often I can feel my daughter’s pain. Both physical and mental. I can’t read her mind—I am not psychic—but we’re in sync in this way. So without knowing why, I knew she was sad, because I was suddenly sad.

When it comes to my daughter, I’m not a good therapist: I’m just another parent. All I could think of as I stood watching her was how treacherous the world is for a thirteen-year-old girl. Especially one like my daughter, whose parents are divorced, whose mother works full-time, and who has aspirations of becoming a serious actress. Anything could shift her into melancholy. Just as anything might shake her out of it.

“Hon?”

She turned. Her face was in shadows and I couldn’t read her expression.

“Dinner’s ready.”

“Okay, I’ll be right there.”

I could hear the worry in her voice. As much as I wanted to ask her what was wrong, I held back. The direct approach didn’t usually work with Dulcie, just as it hadn’t worked with her father and, in most cases, didn’t work with patients. Most people don’t know what’s wrong unless they’ve been educated through therapy to identify their feelings, express them and work through them.

Being the daughter of a psychotherapist, Dulcie was better than most teenagers at dealing with her feelings and naming the issues, but she still preferred to talk around her problems and let them surface on their own.

Back in the kitchen, I gave the heady garlic-and-basilscented concoction one more turn, then dumped the pasta into a colander. Quickly—I always take too long and the pasta gets cold—I emptied the colander into a wide ceramic bowl, added the sauce and the chicken, tossed it and scooped it on two plates.

I was just putting everything on the table in the kitchen—we are luckier than many New Yorkers, who live without eat-in kitchens—when Dulcie came in and sat down.

I poured her a glass of milk and myself a glass of wine and joined her at the table. She took the first forkful and her nose wrinkled slightly. This came as no surprise. I’d probably burned the pesto, or hadn’t gotten it hot, or there had been too much water in the pasta. Rather than ask her, I took a bite.

Something really was wrong. It definitely didn’t taste right. The meat was sour and salty and didn’t work with the pesto. I put my head down. It’s usually faster for me to smell what’s wrong.

How had I missed it? Had the scent of the garlic in the
pesto overpowered everything else? Or was it because I was on the phone when I’d been cutting up the food? Because I’d been thinking about the sexual frustrations of women in relationships? Because I’d been wondering why Nina Butterfield was suddenly pushing me to make a bigger name for myself? Unlike my father, who lived in Palm Springs with his second wife and was simply satisfied that I was productive and healthy, Nina had aspirations for me.

“Mom—what is this?”

“I was on the phone…” I started.

Dulcie was stifling a laugh. She was such a good kid; she was trying so hard to hold it in.

“It’s awful. What is it?” she asked.

“Instead of chicken, it’s filet of sole cooked in soy sauce.”

“Soy sauce and pesto?” Dulcie couldn’t hold it back; she was laughing out loud and I laughed with her. I think I would cook badly on purpose to make my daughter laugh like that. There wasn’t very much that could bother me when she was happy.

“Peanut butter and jelly?” I asked.

“Let me help you. Or else it might be peanut butter and mustard.”

We scraped the food into the garbage can and started from scratch. And while we made the sandwiches, I watched her from under lowered lids to see if the shadows fell upon her face again. But they didn’t. Not that night. We were safe. For at least a little while longer.