by M. J. Cates
“Well, I do,” Imogen said, surprised at her own vehemence. “I want a wonderful husband and at least two children—I want the fullest life possible.”
“Full of what—that’s what I say. But you’re not talking about yourself, are you? You’re talking about your mother.”
Imogen looked at her. “I don’t think you should use analysis as a weapon.”
“Oh, my darling—not a weapon. A scalpel is not a weapon.”
“It can be—when used carelessly. And who asked you for surgery?”
“Well, I’m not going to play dumb for you, if that’s what you want.”
“I just prefer not to make a case study of my parents, if you don’t mind.”
Donna got up and took hold of Imogen’s shoulders and swivelled her a half turn. She kneaded her shoulders lightly, a tender echo of Taunton’s manoeuvre. “You don’t have to talk about anything, if you don’t want. Never ever.” She kissed the top of Imogen’s head. “You have beautiful hair. Shall I brush it for you, my princess?”
“I’m as far from a princess…”
“Go on. Get your brush.”
Imogen retrieved the brush from her room and sat again at Donna’s desk. Donna ran her fingers through the long tresses, spreading them over Imogen’s shoulders in a wide cascade. As she brushed, she would hold a thick strand up and draw the brush along its length before letting it fall.
“Oh, that feels wonderful. I’ll brush yours after.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to. It’s nice to do something physical with a person that doesn’t have to be anything else.”
“Well, I don’t do this with everyone, you know.”
Imogen reached up and took hold of Donna’s wrist. They said nothing for a moment or two and then Donna resumed brushing. Imogen began to feel drowsy as a cat.
There was a knock at the door.
Donna laid the brush on her desk and went to answer it. She came back a moment later holding a handwritten envelope with a blue Special Delivery sticker attached. “I signed for it. Didn’t think you’d mind.”
Imogen took the letter and examined the return address. It was from Chicago, but she recognized neither the penmanship nor the address. “J.W.,” she said. “I don’t know any J.W.”
Donna stepped away from the desk and sat on the bed to give her some privacy.
Imogen opened the letter and scanned it. I’m sure you won’t remember me, it began. She turned it over to see the signature on the other side. The signature itself was illegible, but the writer had taken the time to print his name beneath it: Jack Wisdom. Imogen had to think a moment who Jack Wisdom was. Quentin’s poet friend—the one who was always advising him to quit university and explore the North Pole, or take a train out west and work as a cowboy for a year. Her heart began to pound. She turned the letter over again and read.
Dear Dr. Lang,
I’m sure you won’t remember me, but we met once or twice a few years back when you were seeing my good friend Quentin Goodchild. I am very sorry to have to inform you that Quentin was killed in action at Lens, France, on the 24th of August, 1917. I have made some inquiries and learned further that he was part of an important battle that advanced the cause of the Allies. Before he departed for France, Quentin asked me to inform you if anything should happen to him. Although we did not know each other well, Doctor, I close with the specific wish that should you want to contact me for any reason to do with Quentin—or, for that matter, anything else, I may be reached at this address.
Very truly yours,
Jonathan “Jack” Wisdom
Three weeks passed by, during which Imogen was not seen on the wards, in the dining halls, or in the courtyard—three weeks during which she did not stir from her room.
Late one afternoon she was lying in bed, awake—yes, painfully awake—but eyes closed, when she was disturbed by the smell of cigar smoke. The rattle of blinds being raised. She turned over and faced the wall, pulled the sheet over her face, the corner with Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic stitched in blue cursive. Her hair was greasy and from under the covers wafted the smell of old sweat, the acrid sweat of raw emotion. A deep ache pulsed in her forehead.
“Imogen?”
Donna’s voice entered her brain as if a pencil had been jabbed in her ear. Imogen lay motionless, hoping it would go away.
“Imogen, Dr. Ganz is here.”
Imogen opened her eyes and stared at the wall inches from her face. It had come at last; she was to be dismissed.
Then Dr. Ganz’s voice.
“Thank you, Dr. Artemis. If you would be so kind—perhaps you could remain in your room a few moments with the door open.” Imogen heard the rustle of her clothes as Donna left the room. The scrape of a chair, and the odour of cigar grew stronger. Imogen lowered the covers to her neck and turned to look. If Dr. Ganz was horrified by her appearance he managed to hide it.
“Good afternoon, Dr. Lang. I have asked Dr. Artemis to keep the doors open so there can be no question of impropriety. Under normal circumstances, I would not visit you in your room.”
“You’ve come to dismiss me.”
“Not at all. Please put that idea from your mind.”
“If you’re going to dismiss me, please let’s just get it over with.” Imogen turned to the wall once more.
“I have no plans to dismiss you. I want to help you, if you’ll let me.”
“Dear God.”
“You’re horrified. ‘My employer is in my private room and I am in bed. What could be more inappropriate?’ ”
“Mortifying.”
“I’m afraid I can’t hear you—could you turn this way, please?”
Imogen forced herself to turn once more onto her back but she could not look him in the eye. She spoke to the ceiling. “Mortifying.”
“And yet I’m a physician and you are a human being in distress. What could be more natural?”
“I’m not a patient.”
“Perhaps at this moment you are.”
“Dear God.”
“I will lay out the facts as they appear to me, and if you disagree with any of them you have only to say so. Three weeks ago you learned that a dear friend, a man you may even have loved, was killed overseas. A period of mourning is to be expected. You have taken to your bed, you have missed your shifts, your classes, appointments with patients, your studies…”
“I know how awful I am, Doctor, you don’t have to tell me.”
Dr. Ganz’s voice was gentle. “I am not making a case against you; I merely state facts. Progress is easier if you know where you are. May I go on?”
He took the absence of a reply for agreement and continued in the same soft voice. “You have missed meals—a lot of meals, and anyone can see you are suffering from insomnia. Dr. Artemis reports that you have all but ceased talking to her.”
“Exactly how many doctors do I have at the moment?”
“She says this as a friend. I’m sure you’ve noticed how fond of you she is? The rest of us certainly have. Your friendship has been a topic of admiration. She knows you better than any of us, but anyone who has the slightest acquaintance with Imogen Lang can readily observe that she is not herself. Do you disagree with any of this? Please feel free to do so.”
“No.”
“Will you face me as we speak? It would help me understand you better if you looked at me.”
It was agony to face this man she respected so much.
“Thank you. There’s no reason to hide from me. You’ve done nothing shameful.”
“Hah.”
“You disagree. Please elaborate.”
“Dereliction of duty, for one. Abandoning my patients…”
“Have you been in any condition to help your patients?”
“No.”
“So you have done them no disservice.”
Imogen shook her head.
“You shake your head but I don’t detect actual disagreement on this point—you perhap
s showed them consideration by sparing them your own unhappiness.”
“Uselessness, you mean.”
“That is a self-accusation. Uselessness is not a word any objective observer could apply to a physician of your calibre.”
“Not openly, perhaps.”
“Do you suspect me of writing negative reports about you? You can be candid.”
His expression was mild, waiting.
“No.”
“So the bitterness in your remark would be directed where?”
“I don’t really want to talk about this.”
“It’s often the case with terrible pain. We frequently accuse ourselves and perhaps one or two others in life of being whiners, but I find after extensive observation that this is rarely true. Human beings in terrible pain, pain that continues day after day, do not tend to whine at all. Quite the reverse.”
“Because it’s not acceptable behaviour.”
“True. Self-pity is not an emotion anyone encourages. But is that the only reason?”
“It’s boring. Pain is so incredibly boring. It doesn’t bear speaking about.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“What else about pain? Why do we not speak of it?”
“Because it’s depressing.”
“Yes. And I think we may say there is a unique feature about the type of pain we call depression. Depression is itself depressing. In depression we have a pain that causes more pain. Would you agree with that?”
Imogen managed a tight nod. “But I never said I was depressed.”
“Again, you seek to avoid so-called whining.”
“But really—I never said I was depressed.”
“Nor did I. Diagnosis, as you know, is not high on my list of priorities.” Dr. Ganz shifted on the chair. A waft of cigar smoke reached Imogen’s nostrils. Some still, quiet part of herself recognized it as the first thing she had liked in weeks.
“You have lost a dear friend; it’s only natural to mourn.”
“Yes,” Imogen said with some ferocity. “Exactly.”
“So all this—” He waved a hand as if pointing out furniture. “The sleeplessness, the silence, the not eating, the isolation—these are expressions of grief?”
“Of course. Oh God…” She put a hand over her face.
“And yet I see no tears.”
“Not at the moment. I cried when I read the letter.”
“And since then? Have you been weeping a lot?”
“No.”
“Why do you suppose that is?”
“Because I don’t have the right.”
“Really. Don’t have the right. That’s an unexpected turn of phrase. Can you explain a little?”
“Something Dr. Quinn said to me—when Millie Nielsen died. I started to cry and she told me to stop. I didn’t have the right.”
“I see. And how did that make you feel?”
“Hideous. I already felt hideous.”
“And now you turn this phrase that made you feel so terrible against yourself.”
“Because the situations are so similar. In both cases I did the wrong thing and in both cases someone ended up—”
Suddenly her throat was so thick she could not speak, could not swallow, and then with a loud sob—a choking sound—she began to cry.
Dr. Ganz took from his breast pocket a crisply folded handkerchief and handed it to her. She clutched at it blindly. After a few minutes he said, “Dr. Lang, will you come and see me tomorrow morning? Ten o’clock should be all right.”
* * *
—
The next morning, Imogen bathed and dressed and tried to make herself as presentable as possible before going to see Dr. Ganz. After that first session, she met with him twice a week for an unofficial “consultation.” They met in his private office, which was off to one side of his administrative office. Over the following two months she told him how she had hurt Quentin, how he had chosen war as his method of suicide, and finally, most reluctantly of all, she told him about her father and his covert second family.
Their meetings were by no means psychoanalysis; this was a purely cathartic endeavour—ventilative, to use Dr. Ganz’s preferred term—and supportive. Reticent at first, Imogen eventually found herself speaking of things she had never thought she would reveal to anyone. She even told him the details of her tongue-tie, something she had minimized on his questionnaire and had never mentioned to anyone outside the family except Quentin.
Dr. Ganz’s responses were sympathetic, clarifying. He made Imogen feel that he looked forward to their sessions, and found her worthy of so many hours of his time. He was not reticent about expressing his own feelings. When she told him about being tongue-tied, he sat forward and slapped his knee and exclaimed in his Swiss-German accent, “Aha! Of course! No wonder you are so patient and encouraging to those who find it difficult to speak. I should have guessed something of the kind but I confess it never occurred to me. Fascinating.” He pressed the back of his pen hand to his forehead as if checking for fever. “Really, I am sometimes so imperceptive it frightens me.”
She told him about Laura, her dead twin, and even showed him the death notice she carried with her. Dr. Ganz examined it and handed it back.
“So you carry your departed twin with you always—physically as well as emotionally. You speak of her with such warmth and sorrow I’m disinclined to use the term ‘haunted.’ ”
“If she haunts me, it’s only in a happier sense of the term. I envy Catholics their concept of the guardian angel—Quentin told me about it—you know, a benign supernatural being that is always at your side. Looking out for you.”
“A charming conceit. And yet Laura is unable—or unwilling—to protect you from your current difficulties.”
“No. In fact she disappears at such times.” That sounded too crazy, and Imogen stammered a little trying to rephrase. “I mean, well, when I’m so terribly wrapped up in myself I don’t think of her.”
“And at such times she is replaced by—?”
“I don’t know. Loneliness, I suppose.” Imogen held back the tears. She had shed so many in this room.
“Interesting. I wonder if this isn’t a case of Imogen protecting Laura.”
Imogen had to think about that.
“Protecting her in death,” he added, “the way she could not in life.”
A perfectly innocent sentence. An easy—even obvious—remark, and yet it travelled through Imogen’s heart like a tiny, invisible javelin.
“I think that I shall never cry again,” she said when she was able. “You’ve quite wrung me out.”
“Oh, you will cry again. We will all of us cry again. But perhaps soon it will be over things that are present or to come, instead of the sorrows of the past. You said Laura got sick and died—what was the illness?”
“Scarlet fever. She was five years old.”
“Scarlet fever. Scarlet fever is highly infectious. Did you manage to escape it?”
It is a memory disconnected from all others, so disconnected it might almost be a dream, but she knows it is not. The details are too vivid: the brilliant green of the linden tree at the window, the gold ceiling (who had painted the ceiling gold?), and most of all the bed, just a few feet from her own, where Laura had been sleeping—now empty. It is early summer, 1899. Imogen is five years old and her sister has been dead for twenty-four hours.
The sheet is damp and clingy with her sweat. Her head feels as hot as an iron. Sometimes she feels about to suffocate. Again and again she wakes from a dream that an enormous animal is sleeping on her chest, perhaps an elephant, a giant beast, otherwise harmless, completely unaware that it is killing the little girl beneath him, a girl who hasn’t the breath to cry out, whose arm is too weak to lift.
But now she is awake and the room is awash in green and gold and the smell of linden. A dark shape looms over her. Her eyes can’t quite focus, or perhaps they are half-blind with sweat, but it takes her some few moments to re
cognize the shape as her father. The smell of linden is invaded by the odour of cigar that clings to him. A pale hand, impossibly large, impossibly cool and dry, presses her forehead.
The coolness of his hand is delicious. She wants to reach up and clasp his fingers but her arms are too heavy to move, and in any case the hand is soon withdrawn and her forehead burns all the hotter. The bearded face turns away as her father speaks to some unseen other—she knows it to be her mother, although she cannot see or hear her.
“It’s quite hopeless,” her father says. “This one’s going to die too.”
* * *
—
“Those were his exact words? He referred to you as ‘this one’?”
Imogen nodded.
“As if you were one of a series, an item in a collection—a defective item liable to stop functioning at any moment. Just like your sister.”
“And Laura was an absolute angel. You couldn’t imagine a sweeter little girl.”
“Which means what? It’s acceptable that he calls you defective, but not your sister?”
And on it went, the surgeon retrieving a blood-wet bullet here, a dripping piece of shrapnel there, making a brief comment before dropping it into a tray for disposal or further examination. Imogen sometimes wondered if Dr. Ganz wasn’t coaxing her out onto a ledge.
“Perhaps one could summarize it this way,” Ganz said. “Until Mr. Goodchild arrives on the scene, your sole experience of men is a father who is cruel to your mother while pretending he is not, who barely acknowledges your existence and dismisses you to the graveyard when he does.”
“Well, that’s putting it harshly.”
“I merely relate how you put it to me. If you want to revise, please do.”
“He was kind to us when we were little. More attentive than a lot of fathers—reading to us, making us laugh.”
“Thus having what effect when at the age of twelve you discover he has another family?”
Imogen could barely force the words out of her mouth.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear.”
“Made it worse.”
“Yes, you had so much to lose,” Ganz observed softly. “The kindness, the reading, the laughter. And given this excruciating experience, why should we expect a young woman to leap at the first chance to get married?”