And to think Dr. Benaron had advised me to bring up religion, not romance, believing it was really romance she had on her mind. As far as I could tell, she had nothing at all on her mind other than trying to make me look foolish. For people with borderline personality disorder, this was a practiced art.
“Well, my instructors are trying to teach me,” I said, and laughed.
“Good!” Norah slapped her knee. “As long as ya can laugh, you’ll do well in this game. The ones who can’t laugh, they’re the ones people kill themselves on.”
I knew exactly what she meant. If you try too hard to keep someone alive, if you become too earnest (which I was always at risk of doing), you risk losing the person because you cease to connect with their reality. If a person says to you “Life sucks!” and you reply, “Yeah, life sucks,” chances are that person will feel much better than if you replied with some reassuring statement, because in the former instance the person feels understood.
“Thank you, Norah,” I said.
“For what?”
“For letting me off the hook. For telling me it’s good to laugh.”
“Jesus Christ, Doc, you’ve gotta get a grip here. I’m your patient, you’re my doctor. Can we please get back into our proper roles before you drive me crazy?”
“I’d like that myself. Thanks for the reminder.”
“My pleasure. Now let’s get down to business. When the fuck do I get out of here? Are ya gonna try and commit me? Ya better not, ya know, or I’ll make so many suicide attempts it’ll make yer head spin like a fuckin’ top.”
“Well, you know the drill probably better than I do. We have to keep you if we think you’re going to kill yourself. But it’s a guessing game, and you sometimes try to mislead us.”
“Asshole. Why the fuck would I do that?”
“You tell me. It’s what you do.”
She smiled coyly. “I suppose I do, at that.”
“How can you change so quickly, from cussing me out to smiling demurely?”
“Oh, my, what a fine Harvard vocabulary. You’ve impressed this lovely little Irish lass.”
“Now what would you call me if I called you a lass? I’d hate to think. Since when do you call yourself a lass?”
“I’m just playin’ with ya, ya know that.”
“My only hope is to be as dumb as I can be.” The idea is to be as “dumb” as possible so that the patient can supply the facts. Dr. Gutheil had taught us this.
“Well, that shouldn’t be too hard fer ya now, should it?”
Dr. Benaron wanted me to talk to Norah about religion, so I tried that. “You mentioned the priests and the nuns. Do you still care about that stuff?”
“Oh, my, now, you want to get deep. It’s no joke bein’ raised Catholic, ’specially Irish Catholic. Talk about the fear o’ God, you have no idea. You ask me why I play all my games and why I manipulate all of you so much? That’s why! To take my mind off the fear o’ God, off o’ the guilt, the shame, the burning in hell forever. Do you know what it’s like to be taught from as early as you’re able to understand the words that yer gonna burn in hell for all of eternity just fer bein’ human and doin’ what every human bein’ does every day? That’s what those bitches and bastards did to us. They toyed with us just like they’d been toyed with. They played with our unsuspecting little minds, and they fucked us up good ’n proper.” Norah was red and shaking now. “It’s a fine tradition, isn’t it? Thousands of years of totally fuckin’ up children in the name o’ God and Jesus Christ. Gotta love it, Doc. Gotta love it.”
Whew. Dr. Benaron was right. Norah did want to talk about religion. “How does it feel to talk about it now?”
“Jesus, Doc, you jus’ gotta do better than that. ‘How do you feel about it?’ is so lame. You’re in the big leagues now. Step up to the plate.”
“You’re a baseball fan?” I asked eagerly.
“You can’t fuckin’ grow up in this city and not be. Even the fuckin’ cardinal goes to Red Sox games.” As worked up as she had been, she was calming down quickly, undoing and doing her ponytail again, teasing me, taking control. For such a young woman, she’d lived a long life, it seemed to me.
“Yeah. I grew up rooting for them. Ted Williams was at the end of his career when I became a fan.”
“Jesus, you’re ooold, Doc. My guy was Yaz.” She turned in her chair. “I just loved Yaz. Even though he was dumb as dirt.”
“Can I ask you seriously, how much does the religion stuff mess you up? Because we can work on that, you know. It doesn’t have to be that painful forever.”
“How do you know?” Norah demanded.
“I just know.”
“Don’t they teach you not to lie?”
“I’m not lying.”
“But you can’t know. Maybe you actually believe this, but you can’t know.”
“OK, you’re right. I can’t know. But I do believe it with all my heart and soul.”
“OK, mister, tell me, how many fucked-up Catholics like me have you cured of all the shit we went through?”
“I’m just getting started, but others have done it.”
Norah shook her head “Don’t they teach you not to give false hope? This shit is incurable.”
“Norah, give it a chance. You can change. I know you can.”
She let out a long whistle. “Tooo earnest, Doc. You gotta tone it down. Makes me nervous.”
Once again, she was schooling me. I felt bad that she had to make do with such a rookie.
“OK, you’re right, I take it back. I guess what I was saying is I believe pretty much any painful memory or experience can have the poison taken out of it.”
“How, with a pill?” she asked. “I doubt it. With a kiss, maybe. Maybe with a kiss.”
I laughed. “You’d have to kiss a lot of frogs before you found that prince,” I said.
“Well, you just go out and find me that one, Doc, OK?”
67.
It was a different Norah at our appointment four days later. “I’m not meant for this world,” she said upon my arrival, with her head in her arms on the table.
“What happened, Norah?”
“What do you think?” she asked in a resigned way.
“I don’t know.”
“A boy happened, what else?” she said, her head still hidden.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s still the same old story, a tale of love and glory.”
“Casablanca. Great movie.”
“But a lousy life,” Norah said. “I’m so tired of it. And I’m only twenty-two. Don’t think I’ll see twenty-three.”
“What happened? You weren’t like this the last time we talked.”
She kept her head down. “Yeah, that was a fun conversation, Doc. You really got me going, din’cha? Good job. Took my mind off my issues.”
“I thought those were your issues, what we were talking about.”
“I wish all I had to worry about was my Catholic guilt. Millions of people live with that without feeling like I do, you know? This just sucks. I’m so done with it.”
“What else do you have to worry about?”
Long pause. “You.”
“What do you mean, me?”
“Don’t you see? My whole life is worrying about other people. I could be happy if I only had to worry about myself.” She let out a long sigh.
I sat in silence until, to my surprise, she started to sing, barely audibly, head still on the table, the opening lines of “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered.”
Then she sat up. “You know that song, Doc? You will the minute I sing the next part.” She continued with more of the song. She had a beautiful soprano voice. I wanted to tell her, but didn’t, that that song took me straight back to my childhood because Duckie loved it and Uncle Jimmy hated it. Duckie would play Ella Fitzgerald singing it so often that Uncle Jimmy hid the record in the well of the grandfather clock in the living room and almost fired Mrs. Forgeron when she fo
und it while dusting the clock and put it back with the other records. Instead I said, “You have a beautiful voice.”
“Thanks. You mind if I finish the song?”
“Please do.”
Finally standing up, she took center stage and sang the rest in a full and beautiful voice.
The song completed, she held her hands up to her face and started to cry. “Do you want to know why I know that song so well? It’s because I starred in a production of Pal Joey and of course I had to fall in love with one of the stagehands. He was strong and handsome, a truly beautiful boy, and of course I loved him right away. I should have known he’d turn—don’t they all?—but I didn’t care. All I care is to have a man make me feel that way and make him feel that way even though one of these days it’s gonna kill me.”
“I don’t understand, Norah. You haven’t left the hospital, have you? Did you see someone?”
“Did you like my singing, Doc? Do you think I have a pretty voice?”
“Yes, I told you that.”
“Men pay me compliments all the time, but that’s ’cuz they want what all men want.”
“You haven’t told me what happened. Why were you so sad when I came in?”
“No, I haven’t, have I?” She took a strand of her blond hair and drew it across her lips, then let it go. “Why is anyone sad?” she asked.
“There are lots of reasons,” I said, as usual, flying by the seat of my pants. One part of my brain was trying to imagine what Dr. Benaron or Dr. Gutheil would advise me to say, while another part of my brain was trying to be real and in the moment, to empathize and understand.
“I’m tired of living,” said Norah.
“And scared of dying?” I asked, taking the chance she was referring to the song.
“You’re sweet, you know that, my nice new doctor? You’re right, I’m tired of livin’ and scared of dyin’, just like Joe in ‘Ol’ Man River.’ ”
We were now both sitting at the table. Confused, I did what I was told to do when I don’t know what I’m doing with a patient: I kept my big mouth shut.
“They call you Ned, don’t they? That’s cute. Are you gonna cure me, Ned?”
“I’m gonna try to help us both understand what’s going on,” I said. “Like right now, I’m curious as to what happened since the last time we met that made you so sad.”
“I’m not really sad,” Norah said. “Sad would actually be better. I’m just in a why-bother place. Really, why bother? Every time I do, shit happens. Can you cure me of my love of men?”
68.
“Tell me what happened.” Dr. Benaron tapped her finger on the desk. I sat next to the desk, she sat in front of it: we were catty-corner from each other. “What did she say, exactly?”
“I can’t remember. I asked her what she was worried about, but I can’t remember what she said.”
“In the future, after the session write down as much as you can. They’re called process notes, and they can be helpful when you want to see what’s going on underneath.”
“Then, the funniest thing, she started to sing.”
“What?” Dr. Benaron said, surprised. “How did that happen?”
“She just started to sing, softly at first, but then she stood up and sang the whole song. It was ‘Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered’ from Pal Joey. She knew the song because she’d been in the play and had fallen in love with a stagehand.”
“She sang you the whole song?” Now halfway through a cigarette, Dr. Benaron was getting excited.
“Well, she sang the song, I don’t know that she sang me the song.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“What do you mean? I’m just confused. I don’t know what’s going on with her.”
“You Americans,” Dr. Benaron said with a bit of a sneer, “you are so prudish and conventional. Well, you are in wrong field if you want to be prudish and conventional.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t want to understand. A broken leg is so much easier to deal with.”
“I’m sorry, I really am confused.”
Dr. Benaron exhaled, then set to work. “If an attractive young woman stands up in a room with just the two of you there and sings you a love song, just exactly what do you think that means?”
“You don’t mean— No, she wasn’t singing the song to me.”
“Then who was she singing it to, the king of Sweden? Of course she was singing to you! She was serenading you! She might as well have been doing the dance of the seven veils.”
“But that makes no sense. She doesn’t know me.”
“Don’t you understand, Dr. Hallowell, the unconscious is blind? The unconscious is stupid. The unconscious could care less about good manners. Do you want to help this woman or not? Then you have to loosen up and get into it with her.”
“She is attractive.”
“Good! I’m glad you can admit that. We are making progress now. Just because you are attracted to each other doesn’t mean you have to run off into the bushes together. But it does give you an opportunity. Can you see what that is?”
“I guess to talk about what happens when these feelings come up?” I asked, feeling truly stupid.
“Yes, of course. Whatever comes up between the two of you probably comes up in the outside world, too. It’s what we call grist for the mill.” She paused for a moment. “Try to remember what she said when you asked her what she was worried about.”
“Now I do remember what she said,” I admitted. “I blocked it out because it took me aback when she said it. At the start of our meeting I asked her what she was worried about, and she said, ‘You,’ meaning me.”
“You see how this game works with the unconscious? You’re right, she doesn’t know you, but we have to take advantage of the fact that her unconscious tricks her into thinking she does. She does it with every man she meets. She is turning you into whoever she needs for you to be. She is turning you into someone who can give her what she didn’t get. It has nothing to do with reality. You are not going to go on a date. All you are going to do is talk. So let it happen. Remember, it is not you she’s talking about but the person who she’s turned you into, and it is not you who is going to help her but the process, if you allow it to.”
Why couldn’t other people make it so clear? Maybe because they didn’t know what it’s like to be crazy.
“But where are you blocked?” she asked. “Why did you not want to hear this?”
“Well, because almost the first day we got here people were telling us about boundaries and the one unpardonable sin is to get sexually involved with a patient. So I guess I was afraid of that.”
“I think it’s more than that. Am I wrong?”
I started to run my fingers through my hair, a habit I have when I get anxious. “It must be more than that, because I know I won’t get sexually involved with her, and yet the whole scene makes me nervous.”
“What’s ‘it’?” Dr. Benaron asked.
“The idea that she was serenading me, like you suggested. It makes me really anxious.”
“Of course, part of it is just what you said, you have to be careful with boundaries, and she’s a pretty woman and you’re a handsome man. Do you know what Ives Hendrick advised male residents to do with female patients like this? Masturbate before you see them.” She laughed. “It might have worked, I don’t know.”
“Who’s Ives Hendrick?”
“He was a supervisor here for many years. He was jealous of Semrad because everyone loved Semrad and Hendrick was an angry, paranoid man. He once accosted Elvin in the hallway and bellowed at him, ‘I’m a bull and you’re a cow!’ Made a total fool of himself. But he was a smart man and an excellent teacher in spite of himself. That’s true for many of us,” she said with a self-effacing chuckle.
I had the feeling she was giving me a rest.
But not for long. “So what is it about this woman serenading you that makes you so anxious?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where do you feel it in your body?”
“In my chest. Like being short of breath.”
“And yet you’re in no danger here. What comes to your mind as we talk about it?”
“I’m embarrassed to say.”
“Well, we can leave it at that,” Dr. Benaron said. “It’s not good to go too fast.”
“No,” I said, “this is good. What comes to my mind is my mother, because that song is exactly the kind of song she loved.”
“Yes,” Dr. Benaron said, as if she’d known this all along. “Your mother was seductive with you?”
“Yes, she was. She didn’t mean to be, it just came naturally to her.”
“So now, with this attractive patient you don’t know what to do with the feelings that come up.”
“I guess not.”
“But now they’re not forbidden. They’re as natural as rain.”
“So, without meaning to, I unconsciously confuse the patient with my mother, get all anxious, and want to deny what’s happening?”
“Of course. It’s the most understandable thing in the world. We all do it. Part of your training is to get used to it.”
“Will knowing this help me deal with it better?”
“What do you think?”
“I think so,” I said. “But it makes me feel weird. It just seems like I’m such a cliché.”
“We are all clichés, if by that you mean simple in many basic ways. And you feel weird only because you’ve never talked about it before. That’s why we meet. To make what feels weird feel familiar. To remove these roadblocks. You’re a good-looking man, female patients are going to fall in love with you, or their version of you, for a little while, and you don’t want to have to get nervous and dissociate every time.”
“Dissociate?” I said. “That means—”
“You pretend you’re not there. Mentally, you leave the scene. It’s what your mind does when it needs to escape but your body has to remain where it is.”
“I guess that’s what I did.” I looked at the floor, needing reassurance. “Is it OK that I told you that about my mother?”
Because I Come from a Crazy Family Page 30