Faith looked me in the eye. Her own were the watery gray of the Hudson River during a storm. “Is something the matter, Susan?” she inquired forthrightly. “I’m not one to pry,” she continued, breezing past the irony, “after all, my mother was born when Victoria was still queen of England, and she taught me that it’s impolite to poke one’s nose into one’s neighbor’s business—but you look tired. Where’s that wonderful husband of yours when you need him? And don’t tell me he can’t stop drawing his silly comic strips in time to come home for dinner.” Faith had just hijacked the final seconds of her session; our roles had suddenly become switched and my client had begun to analyze me, a countertransference that’s not entirely uncommon when both the counselor and the client feel open and comfortable enough to connect on a deeper level. “You tell that man you deserve to be pampered!” Faith exhorted. “That’s what I told Ben from the day we were married, and he never gave me a bit of guff about it, no matter how tired he was from looking at his patients’ G.I. tracts all day. You make sure Eli comes home at a civilized hour. He should offer you a foot massage and pour you a generous glass of whiskey to give you some zip, and then simmer a nice Scotch broth or a pot of good solid mushroom barley soup to give you some nourishment.”
Perhaps unwittingly, Faith had touched a nerve; pushed one of my buttons. “Scotch broth? Faith, it’s nearly July.” Whenever someone is very nice to me, especially when I’m feeling particularly vulnerable, it always makes me cry. “I’m all right,” I said, blinking rapidly. I turned my head away so I could regain my composure. “I’m so sorry about that. And unfortunately,” I added, looking at the grime-covered clock above the doorway, “it’s time to stop so we can let in the masses.”
Faith opened her purse and removed a meticulously folded sheet of paper. “I keep forgetting to give you that pot roast recipe you requested. It was the mention of Scotch broth that jogged my memory. I’ve been carrying this around for weeks.” With a conspiratorial whisper, she added, “A pint of good Madeira is my family secret.” I glanced at the recipe and mentally tallied the number of fresh herbs I’d need to locate. For an older woman, Faith’s penmanship is still remarkably steady, very elegant; very Seven Sisters. She loves to tell people that she attended Smith two years behind Sylvia Plath, so I suppose that she comes by those old-school affectations honestly.
I shoved the recipe in the pocket of my jumper and unlocked the door. Stevo lets me use the laundry room for my private sessions from seven to eight A.M., before it’s officially available for the tenants’ use. In fact, if I’m down here to open up for the day, it saves him the trouble. Theoretically, my ladies could see me in a more conventional capacity at the women’s health center in lower Manhattan where I work on a part-time, sliding-scale basis three and a half days a week—that’s the primary source of my bread and butter—but the building tenants are more comfortable here, and it sure as heck is a shorter commute! Also, given the proprietary restraints and code of ethics of the American Psychological Association, because these “clients” are also my neighbors and acquaintances—and they know one another as well—I can charge no fee for my laundry room sessions. As an active placebo, the decor in the laundry room is excruciatingly uninspiring—and, frankly, butt-ugly—but the comforting scents of detergent products—powder fresh, spring flowers, summer rain—have a cleansing connotation. The metaphorical aromatherapy is in fact conducive to my clients’ progress. Down here, they’re literally airing their dirty linen, washing away real dirt as well as the emotionally damaging detritus of their lives. Down here, there’s an opportunity for a fresh start—goodness, isn’t that actually the name of a detergent? There’s hope of renewal. Besides, even if they did have to pay me for our gabfests, my ladies can’t simultaneously do their laundry down on Fulton Street!
“At the risk of sounding ‘shrinky’—but there’s no growth without risk—you’ve really turned a corner this week,” I told Faith. “You’re beginning to recognize that you’ve been back-burnering or even ignoring things that you might have wanted for yourself over the years. Keep it up! It’s okay for now to make things about you for a change. You’ve got a mission, should you choose to accept it. Actually,” I amended, “I’m not giving you a choice in the matter. I want you to sit up and take notice—maybe even write it down in a journal—each time you have a moment—however insignificant, or even silly, you think it may be at the time—where you’re focusing on your own needs and not your late husband’s.” I grinned. “I knew Ben too, don’t forget. And we both know he would have wanted you to move on eventually. There’s nothing wrong with mourning a death, but you mustn’t let the grief prevent you from embracing life. Okay? It might seem scary at first because these are untested waters for you, but I promise you, if last night’s behavior is any example, you’ll rise to the challenge swimmingly!”
Faith graciously chuckled at my weak pun. “Well, Ben always was more progressive than I!” She leaned so far forward I thought her ramrod spine might crack, but she displayed the resilience of a willow. She was going to be just fine. “My distaff ancestors were proud members of the DAR. His mother was a Socialist, you know—and his father was a card-carrying Commie!”
TALIA
The following day my seven A.M. client was Talia Shaw. A few months ago, on the heels of an unpleasant divorce, she’d approached me for counseling, yet it’s been like pulling teeth without anesthesia to get her to articulate what’s bothering her.
Most clients fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum when it comes to opening up during their sessions. At one end are the people I think of as the “reds.” They’re the ones who can talk incessantly; they are masters of volubility, but rarely say anything important for our work together. Their constant chatter without letting me get a comment in edgewise is an active avoidance of potential pain at hearing, or having to deal with, anything that might be unpleasant. At the far end of the spectrum are my “indigos”: those who are excessively silent and frequently withdrawn. My questions to them are answered—finally—with barely verbal responses.
Talia is dark blue.
At Talia’s sessions, usually I’m the one doing most of the talking. Most therapists rarely reveal something personal during a conventional session in a traditional setting (such as the fern-filled office envisioned by Faith), and even then employ self-disclosure only to further illuminate something directly related to the topic under discussion. But with my laundry room clients, I’ve found that when I open up, they do too. My methods of therapy down there are more unorthodox, more like sharing and dishing, which allows them to feel much more at ease than they’d be in a more classic form of psychoanalysis. With Talia, however, our discussions to date have been decidedly lopsided. While I still have learned very little about Talia’s background, Talia knows all about my laughably ill-fated forays into modern dance at Bennington, and my own bouts with only child syndrome and bulimia. To look at me now, you’d never guess that I weighed ninety pounds all through college. Maybe my stressful, lifelong weight issues have something to do with the fact that I’d gone completely gray by the time I was thirty-five. Or not. Who knows? I stopped dyeing my hair two years ago and finally made my peace with being youngish and silvery.
“So, what’s been up this week? You feel like sharing anything?” I asked finally, after Talia had spent the first ten minutes of her session seemingly absorbed with a bunion on her left big toe, leaving me to wonder whether she wouldn’t have preferred seeing her podiatrist.
“Ye-es,” she answered, as though speaking in slow motion. Several more moments elapsed during which I expected her to elucidate—or at least to be somewhat more verbal. I don’t like to sit back and wait too long; though I have colleagues, including my mentoring psychologist Dr. Maris, who believe that the more we try to manage the sessions, pushing our clients into responding before they might be ready, the longer the client will continue their obstructive behavior. And the more control the therapist takes, the less the clien
t assumes for her recovery and well-being. For me, personally, this view works better in theory than in practice.
“Okay.” I waited a couple more beats. “I’m listening.”
“Do you think I’m aloof?” Talia blurted, her question more or less coming out of left field, since we had started the session by returning to the subject of her divorce.
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” I replied. “You don’t need my approval. Or my condemnation. Do you think you’re aloof? ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with that,’ as Seinfeld used to say. There’s no value judgment connected to being aloof.”
Talia cracked a tiny smile. “Because I’m not, y’know. Ballerinas in general get a bad rap that way. I’m…I don’t know how to put this, exactly. Can I get up?” she asked me.
“Sure. You’re not glued to the couch.”
“I’m…I’ve just never been comfortable with words. It’s one reason why I had to become a dancer. I never could have been anything else. I can only express myself through movement.”
“Talia, this may be a horrifying reality to embrace, but unfortunately there will always be too many people out there who are ready to put you down because they can’t deal with their own shit, so they’re looking for someone to ‘blame’ for where they are; believe me, you don’t need to do it yourself. So how about rephrasing what you just said so that you’re not damning yourself?” Talia looked at me blankly. “Well, you could say that you feel that you express yourself most confidently through movement.” She considered it, then gave me another weak smile.
“So, people think I’m aloof, y’know, because I feel so overwhelmed when they’re yakking away about this and that, and all these words are zinging past like they’ve got wings, y’know, and I just can’t join in. I can’t think that fast in my head. I think in my feet. It’s like I’m from another planet than them, y’know what I mean? So I don’t say anything, and people think I’m aloof because of it. If I could, I don’t know, dance my answers, I’d be…”
Talia settled back onto the couch. She’d been pirouetting all the way around the large table in the center of the room while she spoke. “So dance,” I said. “Native healers all over the world use dance, chanting, prayer, song…whatever works. If dancing your answers works for you, it works for me. Do tour jêtés, if you need to. Just watch the fluorescents so you don’t hit your head.” Talia was visibly relieved.
“Let’s pick up where we left off last time,” I suggested, after another substantial pause during which Talia stretched her muscles. “We were talking about getting married. I was pretty young by today’s standards. I was almost twenty-two—”
“Twenty-three for me,” Talia said, jumping in as I’d hoped she might once I got the ball rolling. “And I’m twenty-six now. Almost twenty-seven. I was married for just about four years. We met in the Starbucks at Sixty-seventh and Columbus. Lance was a videotape editor across the street at ABC. And a few months ago he decided to leave me on the cutting room floor. He told me I was too self-absorbed. Which is pretty funny, y’know? Because if he could have put a mirror, y’know…” she opened her legs into a perfect split, “while he was…y’know, so he could watch himself…and people always say that a dancer can’t pass a mirror without looking at themselves…well, I think he liked mirrors even more than I do.” Her expression grew rueful and she returned her focus to the bunion. “When we first got married, he would like to experiment…with whipped cream, or honey, or chocolate sauce, y’know? And I thought that was pretty sexy because all the other guys I’d ever been with were more into vanilla sex. I don’t mean the flavor—I mean, more…y’know?” She rose again and began to perform a sort of interpretive dance, facing the row of washing machines. “More…regular. Boring. Uninventive, or uncreative, I guess might be a good word. And then I started to realize at some point that Lance was doing all that desserty stuff down there because…because he really didn’t much care for…I guess deep down, he really didn’t like who I was. And that was his way of trying to change me.”
With a sudden burst of vehemence she kicked her leg up on the top of one of the machines and began to plié with her other leg in second position. “And…here I am, not even twenty-seven years old and my life is almost over.”
Some major abandonment issues here, perhaps? “That’s harsh! So, okay, your first marriage didn’t last. But you’ve got the whole rest of your life—decades—ahead of you, to either meet someone else and try again, or more than one someone else, if things turn out that way. And Lord knows there are plenty of married women who would admit that they’re feeling unfulfilled—usually in more ways than one.” I suppose I’d fall into that category too, depending on the day of the week. “You don’t need to be married, or even in a relationship, to be fulfilled…y’know?” I added, parroting Talia’s favorite phrase.
“I know that, deep down. That’s not it,” Talia said, switching legs. “I’m an aging bunhead. That’s my problem. Like I told you, my life is almost over.”
I regarded her immaculate skin, glossy dark hair, and zero percent body fat. “Why don’t you tell me what you really mean by that,” I said gently.
There was another long silence before Talia spoke. “Any professional dancer will tell you that Dance—with a capital D—is their life. From the time you’re a little kid, you eat, sleep, and breathe it and dream that one day it’ll be you up there under the lights. For little girls, the dream usually comes with the tiara and the tutu and the tights. It’s your ticket to being a princess if you can just work hard enough. But a dancer—especially a ballet dancer—has a shelf life that’s shorter than a quart of milk,” she sighed, her voice full of resignation. “I came up through the SAB—the School of American Ballet—and was selected by Peter Martins, City Ballet’s artistic director, to enter the corps when I was only sixteen. That’s really young to be asked to join the company. So I thought I was going to be a star, y’know? Another Darci Kistler or Merrill Ashley. I was promoted to soloist at twenty. And since then…nothing. I’ve never advanced to principal.”
I noticed that when the subject was Dance, Talia became uncharacteristically eloquent. It was almost as though she’d rehearsed the words, just in case she might be interviewed about her career someday. Absent was her hesitation, her self-consciousness about her verbal acuity, and her “y’know” tic.
Placing her hand on the top surface of the washing machine as though it were a ballet barre, Talia began to do grand battements. “And y’know why?” She turned to me and waited for a response. “Because my head’s too big.”
“I’m not sure I understand why you think that has anything to do with it.”
“I don’t have a Balanchine body,” Talia explained.
I held up my hand. “Wait a sec! Hasn’t George Balanchine been dead for over twenty years?”
Talia nodded. “But the company body type remains true to his standard. Pinheads. You need a small head.” She rapped her knuckles against her scalp the way people “knock wood” as a joke. “And my head’s too big: pure and simple. I was good enough to become a soloist but not ‘ideal’ enough to get promoted to principal. So I’m destined to remain a soloist until I grow too old to perform the roles. I’ve got maybe two more good years—tops—before Peter starts looking at the younger dancers and putting me out to pasture. In fact, I think he’s started to do that already.”
Suddenly, Talia burst into tears. She returned to the couch as though she were approaching a shark tank.
“I’ll survive my marriage breaking up, y’know?” she sobbed.
“Even though I feel like a total failure. It’s hard to deal with the fact that I’ve been married and divorced and I’m not even twenty-seven. But…dancing…it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. More than anything. More even than being married. If I couldn’t dance anymore, I’d die. I can’t even do anything else. I’ve been dancing since I was three years old; it’s all I know. I never had to have another job. I’ve never even drunk a Coke that
wasn’t diet!”
“You’re not missing much on the Coke front, actually; I wouldn’t fret over that. What about teaching ballet? I mean eventually.”
“Never!” Talia snapped. Her narrowed eyes were filled with utter hatred and contempt. “You know that phrase ‘those who can’t do, teach’? Only failures end up teaching!”
“Oh, c’mon, you know that’s not true. I’m sure there are people leading company class over at City Ballet who have been—and perhaps still are—luminaries.” Talia begrudgingly conceded me that point, at least.
It was time to open the laundry room. “That’s it for today,” I told her, “so you can start focusing on what you want to dance about next week. And you’ve really got to stop dissing yourself all the time. Bite your tongue when you catch yourself doing that. There’s a big difference between acting modest and being self-destructive. God knows I can relate, but I don’t have your body or your skills. You’re young, gifted, healthy, and beautiful; and bunions aside, you have a world of possibilities at those talented feet.”
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