Neurotica

by Sue Margolis

  It was as her mind was running amok that she noticed he seemed to be reacting rather worse to having revealed a patient's identity than she had thought.

  His face was turning white, then whiter. Beads of sweat were beginning to appear on his forehead.

  “It's OK, Alex, don't panic. I won't let you get struck off. There's bound to be a way of writing the story without actually naming you. I promise that once I've written it, I'll speak to the newspaper's lawyers.”

  “No, no, Anna, it's not that. I don't seem to be feeling very well. I feel sick and a bit light-headed and the pain in my chest is beginning to shoot down my arm.” He grabbed the top of his left arm and grimaced.

  The next moment he sat up, his hand gripping his chest. His face was contorted. He was clearly in a great deal of pain.

  “Anna, I think I'm having a heart attack.” His voice was surprisingly calm and even. “Please, go to my desk and dial 999.”

  It didn't occur to Anna to question or challenge his self-diagnosis. She immediately shot to the desk, picked up the phone and called an ambulance, reading the address from a sheet of Alex's letterhead. Tightening the sheet round her, she then ran out into the hall, opened the front door and left it ajar for the paramedics. By now, she could feel herself shaking with fear.

  When she got back Alex was lying down. His expression had changed. He had a vacant, lost look in his eyes. Anna watched as his hands, which were still clutching his chest, began to turn as white as his face.

  She took one of his hands and gripped it. He gripped her back. His hand felt cold and clammy. She leaned over him and dabbed at his forehead with the edge of his sheet.

  “Just hang on, Alex. I'm here,” she said, fighting to stay calm. “The operator promised the ambulance would be here in five minutes.” She could barely watch as his face became more distorted and he cried out in pain. He was beginning to gasp for air.

  Tears streamed down Anna's cheeks.

  “Christ, I feel so fucking useless. . . . Alex, please, please, just hang on.” Her mouth was full of saliva, snot was running down her nose. “Hang on, just a few more minutes and they'll be here.”

  As she gripped his hand tighter, practical questions started flying into her mind: should she ring Alex's wife? If she did, what the fuck would she say to her? How on earth could she pick up the phone and announce, “I've just been shagging your husband, and by the way he's had a coronary”?

  Realizing that she had no choice but to phone Kimberley, Anna asked Alex for his home number. But the pain was so great he couldn't get the words out. Then, slowly, his eyelids flickered and closed.

  “No, no, Alex, don't do this. Alex, speak to me,” she ordered, her voice frantic. She leaned over him and began tapping his cheeks. “For Christ's sake, say something.” She shook his shoulders and gave his face a final hard slap. Nothing. Instinctively, she grabbed his wrist. His pulse was fast, weak and irregular. He was still alive. Just.

  “Where the fuck is the ambulance?” she screamed. She was sure Alex couldn't keep going much longer. She had only the faintest notion, gleaned through watching umpteen episodes of ER and Casualty, of how she might save him. As adrenaline took over, she pulled the sheet off him and straddled his upper body. She made a fist, raised her arm to shoulder height and brought it down onto his chest in a blunt thud. After punching him five or six times, she lifted his head with a hand under his chin and took a huge breath. She managed to prise open his mouth. Then she brought her head down towards his and breathed into his mouth. She carried on like this for a couple of minutes, alternating between pounding his chest and performing her version of the kiss of life. Tears were still streaming down her face.

  Days later, woefully ashamed of herself, she would confess to Brenda that by this stage her tears weren't simply tied up with her feelings of helplessness and her fear of seeing Alex die. In the final minutes before the ambulance arrived it passed through Anna's mind that if she lost Alex, she would also lose her scoop.

  As the two paramedics came running into Alex's office they were met by the rear view of a hysterical half-naked woman straddling an unconscious naked man. She was thumping and punching his chest like some kind of maniacal naturist. Over and over she screamed, “Alex, for Chrissake, don't go. Please don't go. I need you to go on the record. I need times. I need dates. I need fucking details.”

  C H A P T E R F O U R T E E N

  “FUCKING FREUDIAN FUCKING BITCH.” Dan took the tin opener from the cutlery drawer, slammed it on the worktop and went in search of a tin of Heinz spaghetti. He bent down and opened the kitchen cupboard. One tin remained, at the back, hiding behind the cans of tomatoes and the children's baked beans with minisausages. He reached into the cupboard, grabbed the can and stood up.

  “She'll get this right up her fucking anal phase if she's not careful,” Dan fumed as he brought the tin crashing down beside the tin opener. He clamped the opener to the tin and, using the kind of force most people would reserve to inflict a multiple wounding, began to turn the handle. The can open, he reached across to the bread bin.

  Dan was alone in the kitchen. He had just returned from another session with Virginia Livermead in which she had informed him in that quiet, arrogant way of hers that, because of his childhood experiences, his personality was so flawed, so badly put together, that the only solution was for him to allow her to demolish it and then rebuild it.

  Dan rolled back the bread bin lid.

  “Supercilious, self-satisfied cow . . .” He took out a loaf. “Why is there never any sodding white bread in this house? Anna knows brown bread makes me ill.” His anger with Virginia Livermead was momentarily relieved by the combination of his exasperation with Anna and his colostomy fantasy.

  Dan took a plate from the drainer. He slapped two slices of wholemeal bread on it and held the can over one of them. The spaghetti came sliding out quickly in one tangled, glistening mass. Dan's head was suddenly taken over by the image of a filling colostomy bag.

  He spread Marmite on the second slice of bread and placed it on top of the spaghetti. He then flicked the switch on the kettle. While he waited for the water to boil, he checked the messages on the answering machine. There was just one from Anna reminding him that Brenda had taken the children to see Alfie at Brenda's mother's and that she was going to join them later. As it was Friday and the children didn't have to get up for school, they were planning to stay the night.

  Dan was relieved. That meant he wouldn't have to explain his foul mood to Anna.

  He rewound the answer machine tape and picked up a couple of unopened envelopes lying next to the phone. One was clearly from the bank. He flicked it back onto the worktop unopened. He was in no mood for dealing with complaints about their overdraft. The other was from Barclaycard.

  Dan ripped into the envelope and pulled out the statement. His eyes went straight to the total-amount-owed box. It was just over four hundred pounds—far less than he had bargained for. He began scanning the list of purchases. It was only when he saw cosmetics and underwear from Dickins and Jones in Richmond that Dan realized he'd opened Anna's statement by mistake. He was about to stuff it back in its envelope when one particular item caught his eye. Anna appeared to have paid £75 to something called Liaisons Dangereux.

  “What the fuck is Liaisons Dangereux when it's at home?” he muttered. He stared at the printout for a few seconds, went over to the kettle and poured boiling water onto his tea bag. His first thought was that Liaisons Dangereux sounded like some squalid suburban escort agency. He spooned the tea bag halfway out of the mug and dropped it back in. Brenda had warned him that Anna was on the point of cracking up over his hypochondria. For a few hideous moments it had occurred to him that Anna had either flipped or was now so angry with him and so frustrated over their nonexistent sex life that she had been seeing male prostitutes. Dan noticed his tea was turning the color of Guinness. Slowly his heart rate began to come down. The idea was preposterous. Even if Anna hated him, there was
no way she would get back at him by doing something as odious and vile as paying men to sleep with her. The likelihood was that Liaisons Dangereux was a new nightclub or the latest themed restaurant. Anna was probably writing a piece on it for one of the tabloids.

  Nevertheless, the bill still troubled him. Instead of leaving it on the worktop for Anna to find, he threw the envelope in the bin, folded the bill into quarters and stuffed it into his back pocket.

  Doing his best to forget about the Barclaycard statement, Dan went into the living room, dropped onto the sofa and put his mug of tea on the coffee table. As he bit into his sandwich, several spaghetti ends oozed out from between the bread and dripped tomato sauce onto the plate.

  He pressed the TV remote. Realizing he'd missed the nine o'clock news, he began surfing the channels. He found an ancient episode of Cheers on Paramount, but could only stay with it for a couple of minutes. Having pushed Liaisons Dangereux to the back of his mind, his thoughts kept returning to the therapy session.

  When, a couple of sessions ago, Virginia had first suggested leveling his personality, he had nodded eagerly. Chewing on his sandwich, he cringed at the memory of his initial enthusiasm. He had behaved the way he imagined trusting, confused old ladies behave when smooth-talking conmen try to flog them unnecessary double glazing.

  His naive assumption that Virginia was the expert and knew best, combined with his determination to consider doing anything which might make him better, meant that he did not immediately question her judgment. It was only towards the end of today's session, when he had been in the middle of telling Virginia about the imaginary friend he'd had when he was six and how his mother had preferred the imaginary friend to him, that he was suddenly struck by the sheer arrogance and downright pomposity of her suggestion.

  His mind might not have been in the healthiest of states, Dan thought, but then whose was? And who the hell was she to declare his only fit for the bulldozer? Sitting opposite her, he had been possessed by the overwhelming urge to get up and hit her. Instead he'd said: “Virginia, getting back to what you were saying about demolishing my personality . . . what would this actually look like? I mean, do you bring in the psychotherapeutic equivalent of Fred Dibnah and get him to scale the outside of my body and attach a whole load of plastic explosive to my head and detonate me in front of a crowd and a BBC film crew, or what?”

  Virginia sat looking at him, expressionless. Her feet were together, her hands were in her lap, as usual.

  “I wonder who it was in your family, Dan,” she said, employing her even, unemotional tone, “who couldn't face pain and taught you to turn everything into a joke.”

  “Virginia, this has got nothing to do with my family,” Dan said, trying to match her tone, but finding it hard. “I think you will agree, it's a pretty major step, allowing somebody to destroy your personality. I've had it for forty years. We don't always get along, I admit—I like Chekhov . . . it prefers to go and see West Ham even when they get slaughtered, but it's the only personality I've ever had and I was merely trying to find out exactly how you are proposing to flatten it.”

  “Dan, I detect some hostility. . . . I think there may be some unresolved issues around for you, to do with trust. Perhaps in the past it has been hard for you to have faith in people.”

  “Look.” Dan was beginning to get tight-lipped and cross. “I just want to make an informed decision before we pack my personality off to the knacker's. I wouldn't buy a secondhand car from somebody without asking to see the logbook and checking out its service history. As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter whether I am buying a car or trying to make up my mind about which direction my therapy should be heading, I need some facts.”

  “So, is that how you see me, Dan . . . like some crooked secondhand car dealer . . . a trickster, somebody who is out to get you? What do you think I might be hiding from you—a twisted chassis, perhaps, a faulty braking system . . . or perhaps something far worse. Could I be about to destroy you?”

  “Virginia, I'm getting sick and tired of this. Are you going to answer my question or not?”

  “Dan, I hear what you say, but I think the important issue for us both is why you feel the need to ask the question.”

  Dan, overtaken by utter fury and outrage, sat clenching and unclenching his fists and glaring at her. He knew that if he opened his mouth he would start swearing and that Virginia would simply use his abuse as more ammunition against him. Virginia, who, as always, refused to be intimidated by silence, sat perfectly still and at ease. She was happy for him to take his time before he started speaking again.

  After a couple of minutes, which Dan perceived as a silent deadlock, he got up from the black leather chair, marched over to the door and walked out, making sure to slam it behind him. Had he looked back, he would have seen Virginia still sitting upright in her chair with her feet together and her hands in her lap. Not even the faintest trace of emotion crossed her face.

  Driving home, feeling as if green steam was shooting out of all his orifices, Dan began to realize that Virginia's arrogance and persistent refusal to countenance being challenged wasn't the only thing about her which was infuriating him.

  For a start, whenever he was late for a session, she always insisted on what she called “exploring” the reasons for this. Dan always explained that there was no deep underlying motive for his lateness. The only reason for it was the rush-hour traffic. Her response was always the same.

  “I think your conscious mind believes it is the traffic which delays you, but if we could summon up your unconscious voice, then I think we would discover the truth. You arrive late because there are issues in therapy that you find painful and want to avoid.”

  Dan always protested. Virginia simply looked at him and smiled a smile which said she understood the workings of Dan's mind far better than he did.

  After a while, whenever Dan arrived late he would invent a childhood trauma and confess to Virginia that he had been trying to avoid talking about it because he found it so harrowing. Each time he did this Virginia's face would fill with joy and delight and she would lean forward, take off her glasses and say:

  “Good, Dan. That is very, very good. I feel honored that you felt able to share your pain with me. I think at last we are making some progress.” At this point he was always overtaken by the urge to confess he'd just made up the story to get her off his back. For some reason he never acted on the urge. Dan frequently disagreed with Virginia's analysis of his feelings. Occasionally he got angry with her if he felt she was off beam. If this happened during a Friday session, she would say he was angry because the weekend was coming up and there would be two days during which she would not be available for him. If he got annoyed on a Monday it was because he was cross with her for abandoning him over the weekend.

  When Dan explained that he was an adult and, despite his dodgy mental state, could actually cope without her for a couple of days, she simply ignored him and suggested he was suppressing painful memories of maternal rejection.

  As the sessions wore on, feelings of bewilderment and frustration kept welling up inside him. Virginia rarely accepted his explanation for anything. She had clearly been furious with him for getting rid of his medical appliances. He could tell because when he told her, one side of her face and one nostril began to twitch. She made it clear that he should have discussed this with her and that she would have helped him build up slowly to getting rid of his emotional crutches. Dan said that might have taken fifteen years. Virginia said nothing, refusing to be drawn into an argument. There was no doubt in Dan's mind that she was determined to make him emotionally dependent upon her.

  Dan took a final bite out of his cold spaghetti-and-Marmite sandwich. He hadn't touched the crusts. These he left, as he had done since childhood, on his plate, in two neat angular smiles. He wasn't sure how one went about formally breaking up with one's therapist. He lay back on the sofa, his hands behind his head, and thought about it for a while. Finally he decided
to send her a handwritten note. He would give Virginia the same sort of spiel he used to give girlfriends when he got fed up with them. He would explain that he wasn't ready to make a long-term commitment to one person and wanted to be free to see other therapists.

  This did, of course, leave him with the problem of what to do about all his pent-up, unresolved feelings of anger towards his mother. On one occasion Virginia had brought a third chair into the room and asked him to imagine his mother was sitting in it.

  “Speak to her,” Virginia had said. “Let her know how she made you feel when you were a child. Allow yourself to get angry with her.”

  Dan stared at the chair. He opened his mouth a couple of times and looked as if he was about to say something, but each time he stopped himself. Finally he told Virginia that he felt ridiculous attempting to speak to an empty chair and he couldn't do it.

  As Dan trudged upstairs to bed carrying an apple and that week's Economist, he was still desperately searching his mind for a way to rid himself of his anger and of the hold his mother still had on him.

  He fell asleep an hour later, and began dreaming almost at once. It was night. In the moonlight, he could see a shimmering gossamer image of his mother floating up from behind her tombstone. For the purposes of the dream, this was shaped like a giant boiling fowl. She was naked except for a pair of spats and a rolled-up umbrella. Dan yelled at her to cover herself up, but she ignored him and began floating towards him, waving the umbrella. She was crying out to him, repeating something over and over again in a long, melancholy wail. It sounded like “Dan, Qantas has a leak.” Even in his dreaming state, Dan could feel the desperate frustration of having one irritated Australian airline executive after another hang up on him as he pleaded with them to ground their aircraft because his mad Jewish mother had come to him from beyond the grave to prophesy a midair disaster due to fuel seepage.