Circe

by Jessica Penot

  In the months I had worked at Circe, I had grown comfortable with the routine. I had become accustomed to the notes and her daily criticism. There was a regularity to it that relaxed me. When it changed, the comfort changed. This wasn’t a bad thing. Rock climbing isn’t comfortable, but people seek it out for the excitement. The change was exciting and novel. She was exciting and novel.

  She always came by the office at 4:15, made a series of rude and demeaning comments to me, and left. That Thursday didn't seem any different.

  "I heard that you told Katie she was behaving inappropriately in group today," she said in her usual cold voice.

  "She was telling stories about her own life. That isn’t therapeutic or appropriate," I responded. Despite her glaring, I wouldn’t allow myself to be bullied by her.

  "You made the right decision."

  "I know."

  She smiled broadly and took off her glasses. Beneath them her face was chiseled and pretty. "You’re a conceited piece of shit, aren't you?"

  I leaned towards her and smiled back. "You know, if I told Dr. Babcock about the way you've been treating me, I think you would find yourself in trouble. This is an APA approved internship site and you have to meet some guidelines and standards. I know one of those standards is a period of regular supervision. You've given me no supervision and I believe that it is also not appropriate to call your intern a piece of shit."

  "What are you going to do? Go crying to Babsey that I haven't been nice to you? You don't think you’re the first intern to bitch about me, do you? I have all my bases covered, honey. I know the rules. I will give you this, you’re the first intern to stand up to me before they went to Babcock and I give you a gold star for having actual testicles. Most men are castrated at birth these days."

  I leaned back, speechless. I couldn't remember the last time I had been speechless.

  "Would you like to get dinner? I'll give you some pointers," she said.

  "Sure." I was shocked and overjoyed. I had entered some circle that no other intern had entered. According to the rest of the psychology staff, Dr. Allen never spoke or interacted with her interns. She was the queen of Post-It notes and blood red reports. She never considered any intern worth her time. Somehow I had made it through a labyrinth to a new world. I was the first.

  "Where are we going to go?" I asked.

  "There’s a greasy spoon a few miles down the road. Do you have a way home or do you carpool?"

  "Shit. I carpool."

  "I can give you a ride."

  "Okay."

  We sat in the back of a restaurant that was made of three pea-green trailers pieced together. The food was slop and mostly ambiguous as to content, but I had never felt more at the top of my game.

  "So," Cassie said, as she stuffed her face with fried okra, "How have you liked our lady Circe?"

  "Our lady Circe?"

  "You don't think she's a lady? I do. I think Circe is all woman."

  I laughed. "I enjoy working here very much. I've learned a lot and seen a lot that I've never seen before. We have a lot of interesting patients on the ward."

  "Some are more interesting than others."

  "You don't seem to work with them too much."

  "Just because you don't know what I do, doesn't mean that I don't work, Dr. Black."

  "I'm sorry. I'm just curious. I’ve never seen you interact with a patient."

  "What floors do you work?"

  "Mostly the first and the second. With the chronic men and women. Is this a test?"

  "What's on the third floor?"

  "The more dangerous patients."

  "Do you think that they don't get to see a psychologist just because you’re too wet behind the ears to be allowed to deal with them?"

  "I never thought about it."

  "Of course not. The entire point of me having an intern is that I need someone to help me with the more stable patient population so I can focus on the third floor."

  "Is Dr. Yoshi on that treatment team?"

  "No, the third floor has its own treatment team."

  "No one ever explained this to me."

  "Mostly because most of the staff likes to ignore the third floor, especially the lawyers."

  "The lawyers."

  "I'll tell you a story and you can guess why the lawyers hate this population. Two days before release, one of our long-term patients decided he needed to smoke. We don't allow the third floor patients to have access to anything that can start a fire or light a cigarette, but our patients are very creative. He broke through the ceiling, ripped out an electrical line and lit his roommate's hair on fire, lighting his cigarette off of his friend's hair. This was all handled with the proper paperwork, medical care, and discretion. Measures were taken to make sure it never happened again. But with the aggressive patients, things like this happen all the time."

  “That’s why the police were here?”

  "Accidents happen on the third floor. They’re unavoidable."

  “I had no idea.”

  "Of course you didn't." She lit a cigarette.

  "You have a reputation for being a cold bitch, you know."

  "Thank you."

  "I'm only saying this to ask, why are you taking me out to dinner? You've been using me as a punching bag for weeks now and this seemed to be the norm. Why the change in attitude?"

  "I'm testing a theory."

  "About what?"

  "The nature of supervisory relationships."

  "Really. Could you be a little more specific?"

  "I believe that I could improve the efficiency of my interns if I had more social relations with them. You’re my first subject."

  "You’re not going to get any statistical power if you have a sample of only one," I said jokingly.

  "I'm a Jungian. I believe in the power of the case study."

  I laughed. "We could probably argue all night, if that’s the case."

  "I always find a good debate exciting. Are you married?" she asked, casually pointing at my wedding band.

  "Yes."

  "Kids?"

  "No."

  "Do you enjoy it?"

  "What?"

  "Being married."

  "Yes. Very much."

  "You don't think it’s a cage?"

  "Not at all."

  "I think marriage is obsolete."

  "How so?"

  "Marriage is society's way of controlling the sex drive. Sex drive was considered a taboo in prior cultures. It was considered immoral. The superego was taught by religion and ancient morality that sexuality was something dirty, something contemptible. Marriage was society's way of legitimizing libido. Now society doesn’t need to legitimize it, so why do we still cling to this archaic notion of ritualized and false monogamy? It’s an obsolete notion and more and more people are moving away from it. The successful single mother is a symbol of the future."

  I nodded, not really knowing what to say. I didn't agree with her, but I had no arguments against what she was saying. I had never thought about it. I sipped my soda and ate my food.

  "Do you think you would have married your wife if you could have lived with her and had sex with her and as many other women as you chose without any judgment or negative repercussions?"

  "I love my wife."

  "That isn't an answer."

  "I don't think this qualifies as clinical supervision."

  "We’re developing a working rapport."

  "I’m assuming you’re not married." I attacked her in order to avoid her questions.

  "No." She responded without a flinch of emotion.

  "And you have no desire to be married."

  "No."

  "No part of you wants someone to love and talk to late at night."

  "I can find that any time I want to and discard it any time I want to."

  I began to feel uncomfortable. The level of intimacy felt more like a date than a work relationship. I shifted in my chair and tried to avoid eye contact.

 
"Am I making you uncomfortable?"

  "I don't get uncomfortable."

  She smiled again. She knew I was lying. I returned her almost flirtatious smile. She was lying as well. It was appropriate that our relationship began with lies and deceit. It was her lies that intrigued me. She wasn’t taking me out because she cared about supervisory relationships and I didn’t think she took me out for company or any other human comfort. She was a mystery to me. Her motives eluded me and this intrigued me.

  "Are you hitting on me?" I asked.

  Her laughter was mocking. It was loud and resonant. "No," she said firmly. "I just think you’re interesting. I believe you’ll go far. You do your work thoroughly and well and you aren’t scared of confronting the system when it’s making mistakes. You aren’t afraid to speak your mind and I suspect that you actually have one. I thought you might be up for a debate."

  "A debate? Is that why we’re here? What about? I don’t think I’m up to it. I’m just here to learn and you’re my supervisor."

  "That's okay. I just wanted you to know that I think you’re doing a good job."

  "I appreciate that."

  "What do you want to do when you're done? Private practice? Post-doctorate work? Working like us?"

  "I'd like to join a group, build up a client base and eventually open my own practice."

  She smiled again. "The same answer."

  "The same answer as what?"

  "You all give the same answer. Private practice. You all want the same things."

  "Who am I being grouped with?"

  "All the others who come here. I don't know if they get what they want, but they all want the same thing."

  "Really? Is it wrong to want to go into private practice?"

  "No. It’s a boring life, though. Isn't it? Seeing the same garden-variety manic-depressives every day. Only working with people mentally healthy enough to maintain Blue-Cross-Blue Shield. Working with a clientele of rich whiners whose illness lies only in their dissatisfaction with their wife, 2.5 children, two cars, and lovely house. Or alternatively, working with their spoiled, whining children depressed about a life which has offered them everything."

  "I like the mundane. There’s a rhythm to it that I find satisfying."

  "But you like this too?"

  "This can be mundane."

  "Only if you don't think about it."

  "What does that mean?"

  "If you stop and think about the fine line we tread, all of us, it’s scary and exciting. All of these people are just like us, save for a faulty neurotransmitter or a slip on the porch. Mr. Guiles, for example, was a successful contractor until he hit his head on the job, now he can't even dress himself. It’s a delicate balance, our sanity. We all stand on the edge of this great abyss and even though we, as psychologists, pretend to know what causes one man to fall off and another man to walk the edge, we never really know. Every schizophrenic is different, neurologically, psychologically, and behaviorally. What if it isn't all in the brain? What if there is something else more powerful than that deciding our fate?"

  I smiled because she had left me without an answer, again, as she often would. I liked listening to her talk and I didn’t want to ruin her oddity with bickering and disagreement. People never said things like this where I came from. None of my professors or cohorts ever talked about fate or something more powerful than what we read in books. I vehemently disagreed with what she was saying, but I had no desire to voice my disagreements. I didn't want to ruin the spell her words had created. "I don't know," I said after a while.

  "You don't know what?"

  "I don't know anything about something else that decides our fate. I don't think there’s any evidence to suggest something besides a chemical imbalance or anatomical irregularities that contributes to schizophrenia."

  "There is more to heaven and earth than can be dreamt of in your science, Dr. Black."

  "I'm sure there is."

  "You don't think everything that exists is somehow quantifiable and easily studied in a double-blind controlled experiment, do you?"

  "I think everything we need to know about psychology is quantifiable. Everything else I’ll leave to the philosophers. I never liked philosophy very much."

  "Your loss. Philosophy is a fascinating subject, although I always preferred sociology.” Cassie looked at her watch and yawned. “Your wife is probably missing you, isn't she?"

  I had lost track of time. I looked at my watch. Nine o'clock. It was very late and we still had a long drive ahead of us. "Probably," I responded. "And I do have to be up early for work in the morning."

  "You do." She paid for both of us and we left the restaurant. The drive home was surprisingly quiet after the verbose nature of our dinner. We drove down the dark winding road without taking our eyes from the yellow line that divided the lanes. The motion of the car and the quiet progression of the road hypnotized us. When I got out of the car, she smiled and waved. I peered into the sky-blue convertible BMW, at her blonde hair and fair skin. In the dim smolder of the streetlights, her ordinariness melted away. Her skin was luminous and her eyes shone out from underneath her liquid gold hair. She had transformed in a conversation. Everything was different. I waved back at her and walked away, turning my thoughts to my wife.

  Pria was doing Taebo when I walked in the door. She was punching and kicking ferociously at nothing to the sound of bad techno music. She didn't say anything to me. I got a beer and sat down on the sofa to watch her, as I always did. When all the kicking subsided, and after the stretches and breathing, she turned off the television and looked at me.

  "It's almost eleven, you weren't at work. Where were you?" Her tone was neither hostile nor accusatory. It was curious.

  "I did it," I said triumphantly.

  "Did what?"

  I grabbed her and pulled her onto my lap, kissing her sweating breasts. "No sex until you tell me what you did," she said.

  "I got Dr. Allen to approve of my work and me. She says I’m one of the best interns she's ever had. She took me out to dinner."

  Pria arched an eyebrow at me. "Are you sure she isn't just trying to get you in bed?"

  I laughed. "If you ever saw this woman, you wouldn't say that. She isn’t sexual and I can't imagine her wanting me."

  "And just yesterday you said she thought you were a babbling, incoherent imbecile. Didn't she even write that on one of your reports?"

  "Probably," I said.

  "Well, you managed to miss my mother. I bet you’re overjoyed about that, but she left something for you." Pria handed me a pink envelope with my name scrawled on it. I put it on the table beside the couch and returned to her breasts.

  Pria lifted my head up again. "Aren't you going to read it?"

  "I can read it any time, but we can only celebrate this one time."

  "Is this how we celebrate?" she asked as I kissed her.

  "It's the only way I have ever wanted to celebrate."

  It was late when I finally opened the envelope Pria's mother had left for me. Pria liked to watch TV after we made love, so she sat watching some chick flick while I carefully opened the pink folds of her mother's psyche. The letter was neatly written and carefully worded. Her handwriting was soft and feminine. It didn't say much. In the most poetic terms, it described her love for Pria. It described her as a child and as a baby. She called Pria her forbidden fruit, the perfect product of secret love. It ended abruptly, with an entreaty. It simply said, "Cherish my baby and make her happy, she is all I have."

  * * * *

  I dreamt again that night. I held Pria in my arms and watched her breathing become deep and heavy and as soon as my eyes shut, I dreamt. She was there again. Black blood, pulsing beneath diaphanous skin. Her eyes were black, solid black like the ink that jets from a squid, organic and foul.

  "Follow me," she said.

  I followed her, not because I wanted to, but because I was a prisoner in the dream. I was locked in motion that was beyond my control. She le
d me through winding halls filled with dust and old hospital beds. She climbed up stairs, gathering cobwebs on her face as she moved. I didn't realize where we were until we had arrived.

  "Do you see it?" she asked.

  I looked down from the white tower that overlooked Circe and saw the hospital at our feet. It slept, nestled in dark and fog.

  "I see Circe," I answered.

  Insects crawled out of her nose and spilled down to her feet. Centipedes curled up like puppies at my feet and cockroaches swarmed up my legs. I was paralyzed.

  She shook her head and began to back away, taking her swarm of insects with her. "You are one of us," she said. “One of our own.” Her voice was a hiss. It was neither feminine nor masculine. It slid off of her forked tongue and slithered through the air like one of her centipedes, seeking refuge from her smell.

  I shook my head. "I’m not."

  She disappeared as my eyes opened to the safety of my room. The bright light of morning painted our room with warmth and familiarity. Pria still slept in my arms. The carpet was still a god-awful shade of pink, and the curtains were still dotted with tiny roses. The world was the same. Nothing had happened. I had only slept. The window was open, although I had no memory of opening it.

  I got out of bed and leaned out the window, examining the net of spiders and oak trees that was my back yard. Her voice lingered in my mind, like some memory of a childhood trauma long forgotten. I couldn't wash it away and replace it with images of pink roses and Pria's hair. The dog saw me get out of bed and began barking to go out. I let it out into the yard and watched it chase nothing. When it was done, I returned it to its place, at Pria’s feet. That animal always did love her more than I ever could. It spent its nights and days waiting to return to her feet.

  I ran ten miles that morning. I ran fast and hard and did sit-ups until there was nothing left of me to give. The exercise freed me from my thoughts and dreams. When I ran, I became a machine. Only the motion of my body mattered. The sound of my feet on the pavement beneath me, the tempo of my breath flooding my sweat-soaked ears. Sometimes, I remembered mountains. I remembered Kilimanjaro. The efficiency of my body pulling me ever upward. I could see the summit, covered in volcanic rock and lava towers. I could feel the cold and the snow, but if I looked back I had to remember her. Pria.