One thing he doesn’t need to go to a therapist for is his work. He’s never had a writer’s block for more than two days or three, if you could call that a block, and it only seems to happen after he’s finished something he’s been working on a long time and is having trouble starting a new work. But he knows something always comes, so it’s never really a problem. It was more of a problem for the first ten years of his writing, which means up till about forty years ago, when he didn’t know something would always come. He writes every day, always gets something done. Page a day, most times; 300 pages a year, on average, enough for a book if he was writing a short one. That publishers, for the most part—major publishers and the prestigious small ones—aren’t interested in his work, also doesn’t bother him. Or bother him enough to stop him from writing for even a single day or slow him down. He still has a good time writing. Finds it interesting, what he writes: the contents and different styles and so on. He likes what he’s doing—always has—is what he’s saying, or maybe repeating. Likes what he writes. Though maybe, because he feels so good about his work, that that’s something that should be talked about with the therapist. Why? Is that a problem? He has a high opinion of his work, maybe higher than it deserves, and a fairly low opinion of the fiction of just about every living writer he’s read except for a couple in Latin America and one in Europe and maybe a few from some other places, or one or two of their books, but he doesn’t say so about any of that either. He never says anything good about his work to anyone, or never beyond saying something like “Maybe I did okay with that one,” and rarely badmouths another writer’s work, at least a living writer. But maybe he should say to the therapist what he thinks about his own work. “To be honest,” he could say, “since I think that’s what’s expected of me in therapy—absolute honesty,” he doesn’t think his work is getting, or has gotten, the attention and honors it deserves. No, don’t start something that might hurt his writing. That, above everything else, he wants to avoid. Skip the honors and big-time publishing. They really don’t mean much to him. They once might have—thirty years ago, maybe; thirty years ago, definitely—but not now. It’s enough for him just to continue writing and like what he’s writing and getting published, no matter how small and little known the publishing house. The money that comes with major publishing and honors would be nice to get, but not worth getting bitter and upset over and have that affect his writing. Talking about it won’t help his writing—it doesn’t need help, he feels—so what would be the reason to discuss it? So some things he might have to hide from the therapist. Things he knows would hurt his writing if he brought them up, or at least not talk about them till the time comes to. What does he mean by that? He doesn’t know or isn’t sure. It’s obvious he’s confused by the whole thing—conflicted is a word that’s often used in therapy—that he remembers his mother-in-law, a psychotherapist, using a lot—which also might be worth talking about eventually, his conflict over this. One thing he knows is he always feels lousy about himself after he thinks too highly of his writing. So maybe he could talk about that, why he feels that way, or something close to it. But there he goes again. Of mixed minds about it. He should probably only talk about things with the therapist that he’s sure he wants to talk about.
And he has enough dough. Money isn’t one of his problems. He inherited a little when his mother died and his wife inherited even more than that when her parents died, and he also has income from his pension, Social Security and investments. He’s invested wisely, he could say, or chosen the right financial advisor. And he does make, on the whole, a couple of thousand a year off his writing. It’s not as if nothing comes from all the writing he does and has done. So he has enough money to live modestly on for the rest of his life, he thinks it’s safe to say, and also to give to his daughters from time to time to help them out. He even tells them to use his credit card, the one they share but he pays the bills for, to take a cab anytime they want to when the weather’s bad or it’s late at night or just dark out. For things like that, and medicines, doctors, dentists, even yoga. Really, anything they don’t have the money for or that would cut too much into their budgets but they think is important. He thinks he can afford it. If he talked about that to the therapist, which he doesn’t see any reason to—it would just be looking for praise from her, if therapists give praise to their patients—he’d say he’s been generous to his daughters, but it’s the only right and fair thing to be. Not just because he wants them to be healthy and safe, which would be reason enough, but because around half of his money came from their mother, so in a way it’s theirs.
So he has enough things to talk about to the therapist, or to tell her, whatever the way it’s said. More than enough for two or three sessions, he’d think. He’s ready for tomorrow, though he worries that he doesn’t need a therapist. That he can work out all the problems he might have on his own. He also does a lot of it in his writing. But he wants to make his daughters happy by his seeing a therapist. Not a good-enough reason to go to one, he supposes, if it were the only reason—he knows it isn’t, or maybe he’s wrong about that. But he can go to one at least once or twice, can’t he? If it doesn’t work out, if he doesn’t think it’s going anywhere, is useful and so on, after four to five sessions, maybe, because he has to give it some time—he’ll say so to his daughters and the therapist and stop going. He doesn’t want to waste the therapist’s time, he’ll also say. Though they might use that excuse as another reason why he should start therapy, or continue it: that he worries he might be wasting the therapist’s time. Oh, just go. His daughters have already said they’re proud of him for calling one of the three therapists they got from the Psychology Today online listing for his part of Baltimore County. When he told his sister on the phone what his daughters said about his agreeing to go to a therapist, she said “Isn’t that why we do everything—to please our children?” “Not for me, it isn’t,” he said, “or not everything, though part of what you say is true. Yes, I want to make them happy. ‘Proud of me’ I don’t care about.” “You don’t?” and he said “All right, maybe a little. I certainly don’t want them to think bad of me, but by my not going to a therapist, I don’t think they would.” “Can you repeat that in simple language? What you said is too complicated to understand, or the way you said it is. For the therapist, you’ll also have to speak more clearly. Though if you don’t, though I don’t know why you wouldn’t, she’ll see something more in it than I just did.”
So he’s ready, as he said. It won’t be a big bust. Doesn’t work, as he said, then it doesn’t. At least he tried and it made his daughters happy. But something will come of it, or should. His older daughter said “I bet you’ll also get a story out of it.” “Now that, for sure,” he said, “would be the last reason I’d start therapy. That’s not how I operate. If I were to write a therapy story, and I seriously doubt I ever will, I’d use my imagination and what I know from other people who were in therapy or practiced it—group, individual, marathon, if that’s still done; all of it. Your mother and her mother, for instance, and my sister, and that might be enough. If I need more, then former women friends. It seemed every one of them was in some form of therapy when I was seeing them or living with them. I never questioned anybody about their therapy, but I’m sure some stuff filtered in. Though who can say? I hardly ever know what I’m next going to write. But I certainly won’t tell the therapist what you said.” “Why not?” she said. “In therapy, you don’t have to hold anything back.” “I know. We’ve discussed it. Or I did with your sister. But I wouldn’t want the therapist to think she was in any way being used. Her time was. You know what I mean. Anyway, too many therapy stories and novels have been written and none of them, that I read, were any good. And mine wouldn’t say anything new. Like stories and novels about academia, I don’t think one can be written about it. They’re both too weak as subject matter to make good material for fiction. That’s what I think. I’m sorry.” “You’re probably right. Good luck. C
all me to tell me how your first session went. I hope you like it, and the therapist.” “I’m sure, because you and your sister chose her and the two other names out of what must have been a long list of possible therapists for me, she’s got to be good. At least for what I might need, because of her work, as you said she said in her brief bio, with artists and writers and academics and bereavement and trauma and such. Or as right as a therapist can be. After all, writer and teacher, that’s me.” “Another thing, while we’re on it, is that you should stop saying things so much just to please us. Or work on that with the therapist, too.” “Right. I’ll bring it up. I didn’t mean to irk or irritate you in any way by it.” “Believe me, I didn’t take it that way. I know you mean well. So you’re definitely going? No pulling out at the last minute? Though that’s all up to you.” “Definitely going. I won’t call it off. At least for two to three sessions. Then we’ll see. I also have to see if Medicare kicks in. And if it doesn’t, then my supplementary medical insurance. If neither does, then I don’t know if I’d continue. Though I’d hate to have money stop me. But let’s go one step at a time.”
Intermezzo
I’ve written about this before. But maybe I missed something. I don’t think I did. Though maybe something small but important. Right now I can’t think what that could be. Anyway, I love remembering the incident. And that’s all it is, an incident, but one of my favorites with her. It was all in about five minutes. Six, seven, but short. I’d gone to her apartment building on Riverside Drive. Walked the forty blocks or so from my apartment on West 75th Street. This of course was New York. We’d been seeing each other almost every day for a few months. I said hello to the doorman in the lobby. The elevator was waiting for me, door open, and I got in and pressed the button for the seventh floor. As I rode up I took my key ring out with the key to her apartment on it, which she gave me a month after we met. I got off on her floor. Right after I got off, or maybe a second or two after the elevator stopped but before the door opened, I heard her playing the piano in her apartment. There were two apartments in the small hallway the elevator and stairway were on, one to the left of the elevator as you got off it and Abby’s to the right, so I immediately knew where the music was coming from. Also, I’d never heard music of any sort from her neighbors’ apartment, neither recorded nor being played by one of them on an instrument, and remember remarking about this to Abby. Arguments from that apartment—sometimes hysterical screaming from both the husband and wife—we’d heard plenty of times, mostly through the walls separating the two apartments but sometimes while we were waiting for the elevator to come. “Let’s walk,” I said once. “It’ll be embarrassing if they open the door and see us standing here.” Once, we even heard the woman say “You despicable filthy bastard. I feel like killing you, and one day I might.” And the man say “You kill me? Not before I kill you first,” which made no sense, but it was said with such venom that it didn’t have to. We had nothing to do with her neighbors except, whenever we saw them alone or together, to say hello. As for Abby, I’d heard her playing or practicing one piece or another before but never this piece and I’d never heard her playing while I was still outside her door. Later, I asked her what it was. “A Brahms’ Intermezzo,” she said. “So there’s more than one?” And she said “Three, all opus one-nineteen. This one’s in B Minor.” Or she said “This one’s in E Minor.” Those are the first two. The third one’s in major, though I don’t know what letter. I know the one she said I heard was in minor, but I forget if it was the B or E.
I didn’t use the door key to get into her apartment. I’d put the key ring back in my pants pocket while I was listening to her play. Then she opened the door for me. Big smile, happy to see me, and we kissed and hugged before we closed the door. I asked and she told me what she’d been playing—“I’ve just begun to learn it, so I’m not very good at it yet and probably never will be”—and what key and opus it was. She opened the door for me because I rang the bell. I rang it after she stopped playing—maybe a minute after, because I thought if she was going to play more of that piece, if there was more to it, or something else, then I wanted to hear it for a while outside her door. It’d disturb her playing, I thought, and probably stop her if I was inside the apartment listening to her play. But why’d I ring her bell instead of using the key? Good question. I hadn’t asked myself that before. It meant, for one thing, that if she was still sitting at the piano, she’d have to get up to open the door. She might not want to, I thought, at that particular moment. She might be resting a minute or so before resuming the piece she was playing or playing through it again or starting a new piece. So I’m really not sure why I rang. No, I don’t know. The reason seems to be lost or, I’ll say, escapes me. So think back. Maybe the reason will come back in my remembering the incident the second time around. Or third time. The first was when I wrote about it a few years ago.
I walked to her building from my building. It’s about a two-and-a-half-mile walk. I don’t remember if it was pleasant out. I do know I didn’t show up in her apartment wet and cold. Certainly not wet. We wouldn’t have hugged so quickly. I would have taken off my jacket or coat and cap. I went into her lobby, took the elevator to her floor. The elevator was definitely waiting for me when I walked into her building. Was its door open? If it was there on the ground floor, the door was almost always open. Whether I said hello to the doorman, I’m now not so sure. If he was there, I said hello. If he was taking a short break in the restroom in back of what we called the building’s office on the ground floor, which might have been what the building’s staff called it too, then of course I didn’t. I would have gone straight into the elevator, pressed the button for the seventh floor, and gone up. I first heard her playing the piano that day either while I was still in the rising elevator but close to her floor or just after the elevator opened on her floor and I got off. I know there was no one in the elevator with me. I’d say most times there was, and usually more than one person. The building was seventeen stories tall. Or sixteen stories and two penthouses, or roof apartments tenants in the building called them, which were reached by getting off the elevator on the sixteenth floor—that was as far as the elevator went—and walking up a flight of stairs. And, from the second to sixteenth floor, there were four apartments to each floor—the other two and their separate hallway and stairway you got to by going through a door to the right of the elevator. So I’m saying there were lots of people using that elevator in the front of the building—the one facing the entrance and its revolving door—and that I seldom rode up in it, it seemed, without another tenant or two or a deliveryman or visitor riding with me. There were two other elevators—one for the apartments in the middle of the building and the other for the apartments in the rear. But that has nothing to do with what I’m trying to get at with this except, maybe, to show how large the building was. Nah, knowing that doesn’t help anything. Why was I so sure it was Abby playing the piano in her apartment? Because who else could it be? I thought. She was taking lessons at the time—every Thursday afternoon after she finished teaching a Humanities course at Columbia—but took them in her piano teacher’s cramped studio apartment in the West Eighties. “She has two Steinway Grands,” she said, “which she gets tuned twice a year. Both are five times the piano my Acrosonic is, and playing the one she reserves for her students makes me feel I’m a much better pianist than I am.” Her piano teacher was who suggested she learn the Brahms Intermezzo and she eventually became a good friend of Abby’s and played at our wedding in Abby’s apartment three years later: the first prelude and fugue of The Well-Tempered Clavier.
Late Stories Page 16