Intensive Therapy

by Jeffrey Deitz

  Gil’s face relaxed into a glowing grin that couldn’t be faked.

  “Can I ask her name?”

  “Brandy.”

  “That’s a nice name. Do you smile back when you see her?”

  “I’m not sure if I’m supposed to. She’s a senior.”

  “Ah. An older woman. I like her already. She has good taste. Well if you want her to know your better, you can always ask in drama class if she wants to work one-on-one with you some time.”

  “I could do that.”

  “I bet she’ll say yes.”

  “And then what’ll I do?”

  “Be yourself and go with it. If what happens between you and Brandy makes you feel bad, then stop doing it. You’ll know if it stops being fun. If you’re not sure about how you’re feeling, I’m always here to talk about it.”

  “Supper’s ready,” Jennie called from the kitchen.

  “We’ll be there in a minute,” shouted Jonas, reconsidering his beach reading. “Brandy aside, Gil, how about this? I’ll read the play before vacation. Then, we can practice together: You play whoever you want; I’ll read the other parts.”

  Gil’s face brightened. “That’d be great, Dad. Really great.”

  “I’ll enjoy it, too. We’ll have fun.”

  55

  As the three of them sat down to dinner, Jonas’s twelve-year-old daughter Grace burst through the door and flung her backpack to the ground. Peeking into the kitchen, she said curtly, “Hi Mom. Hi Dad,” then disappeared into her room.

  “Dinner’s on, Gracie,” Jennie said.

  “I’ll be there in a minute,” Gracie yelled back. A minute turned into two, then three, then five. Jonas looked at Jennie, then Gil, then Jennie again. Jennie’s mushroom sauce had begun to solidify.

  “Shall we wait for her or not?” Jennie wondered aloud. Jennie looked at Jonas liked like she expected him to do something.

  Jonas, who felt hungry enough to eat gruel, said, “Let’s eat. She’ll be along soon enough.”

  “Someone knock on her door and tell her we’re waiting,” Jennie said.

  Gil said, “She probably ate already, but I’ll tell her if you want, Mom.”

  “Your father will get her,” Jennie said peevishly.

  Jonas said, “Let Gil do it. She’ll listen to him.”

  “Dad will take care of it,” Jennie resolved stridently while looking at Jonas. Jennie rarely argued in front of the family, but she shot him the same confrontational look from earlier.

  As he rose from the table, Jonas said in exasperation, “Get started with dinner while it’s hot. This may take a while.”

  When the telephone rang, Jennie bristled. “Who’s calling in the middle of dinner?”

  Jonas saw that the telephone cradle was empty. “Where’s the receiver?”

  “How should I know? Look for yourself.”

  Gil looked at his mother with an expression that said, “What gives?”

  Jonas said to Jennie, “I’d like to speak with you. Alone,” he added when she had barely moved. Jonas headed into the den, Jennie trailing behind slowly. “What’s going on with you?” he said.

  “It’s time for you to get involved with her, too. Everything can’t just be left to me. It’s not right.”

  “What’s been left to you?”

  “It wasn’t this way in my family. We all had to pitch in.”

  “What? I thought your mother wanted you to be her clone.”

  “You’re off saving the world and forging new frontiers in psychiatry and psychoanalysis. I’m the one who has to deal with her issues.”

  “Okay, Jen. Enough! I’m starving. I had a good talk with Gil. I want to do the same with Gracie, but I need to eat first and clear my head. There’s no way I’m going in there hungry and tired. Nothing good will come of it.

  “I suppose,” Jennie said dubiously.

  Gil was easy, Jonas thought. Gracie will be harder … much harder. Jonas saw the parallel between his and Victoria’s children.

  56

  After wolfing down dinner, Jonas grabbed a mug of coffee and disappeared into his den. He gazed at the bridges spanning the East River. Due east, a jetliner descended steeply toward LaGuardia Airport, about to make the hairpin turn over Shea Stadium that always scared him to death when he shuttled to Boston or Washington to testify or give a lecture.

  Jonas moved onto the couch, where words and sentences began forming. “Jennie is my wife. Stan is my father-in-law; sometimes I wonder if Gil and Gracie are even mine,” he said as if he were with Dr. Frantz. “Ah. I see. This thing about Gil and Gracie is about belonging.”

  Jonas went to his bookshelf and picked out his copy of Moses Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed. He hadn’t touched it in nearly a quarter of a century. A familiar smell tickled his nose and called to mind the conversation he had with his father a month before he died.

  “What do you want to do after medical school?” Jonas’s father asked.

  “I’m not sure. It really doesn’t matter where I’m going, I just see myself driving a used Volkswagen Beetle.”

  Willy Speller said, “I hope you get where you want to go. That car may have to last longer than you think. When I got my first car, I had no idea I’d use it to drive my first child home from the hospital.”

  “You mean Eddie?”

  “No, we were going to name him after the first man in our family who settled in America, Jacob Spielmann; Jake for short. But the baby died before the Brith. Crib death, they called it.”

  “You mean I had another brother? Eddie never told me.”

  “He doesn’t know.”

  “‘SIDS,’ they call it now. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Some people think it runs in families. I’m sure to be asked about it when I have children.”

  “I didn’t know you were considering it.”

  “I haven’t gotten that far in my plans yet, Dad.”

  “You’ll get there.”

  “Having children scares me. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready,” Jonas told his father.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll make a great father when the time comes. I hope you’ll be blessed to have children that give you as much pleasure as you and your brother have given me.”

  Jonas returned to the present and clapped his hands in glee. “I get it!”

  “You get what?” Jennie said through the closed door.

  “Later,” Jonas replied.

  For the first time, something made sense. Children giving their parents pleasure, like that was all there was to parenthood. Jonas cringed at his naïveté—at the times he had distanced himself from Gil and Gracie when they weren’t such a pleasure. And the connection to Victoria’s children. The crisis with her children forced him to realize how vulnerable all children are. That they may be gone at any moment—like Jacob, the brother he never knew. It was so much easier to focus on Melinda’s and Gregory’s vulnerability than to feel it about Gil and Grace.

  His hesitation was about adoption, he realized, but not in the way he thought. The real fear was that if the birth parents reappeared to claim their offspring, Gil and Grace would desert him in a moment. He hadn’t appreciated that they would become his over time, the way Victoria and Jonas had become parts of each other’s lives by being involved with each other’s conflicts. That’s why he had had to be there for Victoria on Thanksgiving night; because he belonged. Being involved: such a simple phrase with such far-reaching consequences. Conflicts are important, Jonas acknowledged. Just because Dr. Fowler sucked at dealing with them doesn’t mean I can ignore my own. Biological and psychological parenthood are far from the same, Jonas realized.

  It was closing in on 10:00 PM. Jonas rose and left the room. Jennie was nestled comfortably on the living room couch.

  “I’ll explain later,” he told her on the way to Gracie’s room. Halfway down the hall he turned around. “You know, it’s really late, Jen. What I have to say will keep until tomorrow. Besides, I want to sleep on it.”
r />   57

  At 4:00 PM the next afternoon, a new patient entered Jonas’s office. Stewart Collier was a middle-aged, well-put-together man in an expensive business suit; he worked for a Wall Street investment bank.

  After introducing himself, Jonas said, “So, Mr. Collier. What are you hoping we can do here?”

  “I need something for depression,” Mr. Collier said as if he were ordering lunch. “My divorce has been dragging on longer than I ever expected. I’ve tried everything, but nothing works for more than a few months.”

  “Who’s been prescribing?” Jonas asked.

  “Different doctors over the past few years. They all blend together in my mind. I have a psychopharmacologist, but my internist said you were good with medications. I guess you could call this a second opinion.”

  Mr. Collier produced two typewritten pages. Jonas perused the impressive list of antidepressants, antipsychotics, and mood-stabilizers.

  “Did any of the medicines work better than others?”

  “I liked Paxil the best.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Because it took away the pain and the anxiety. And it worked fast.”

  “The pain?”

  “I was really hurting after my wife served me with divorce papers. I never thought Sandra would go through with it.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Two years.”

  “So the Paxil numbed your feelings?”

  “The relief was so welcome—I didn’t care much about anything. It kept me together enough so I could work.”

  “Psychic anesthesia we call it,” Jonas said. “Why did you stop taking it?”

  “Because I couldn’t have sex. I was trying to reconcile with Sandra. They tried me on Wellbutrin and Effexor, but nothing worked like the Paxil.”

  “You work where?”

  “Duane Capital. I manage their high-yield corporate bond fund.”

  “Lots of late nights?”

  Mr. Collier nodded wearily.

  “Traveling, too?”

  “Sometimes. I told Sandra that we’d only have to put up with it for a few more years. Then, we’d have enough, so I could quit and spend more time at home.”

  “How much is enough?” Jonas asked.

  Mr. Collier looked at the family pictures on Jonas’s desk. “No one ever asked me that question before.”

  “No one?” Jonas wrote the word “enough” in the margin of his note pad.

  “After she served the papers, I agreed to go into couples therapy. Sandra told the therapist she felt she was living in an emotional vacuum. By then, my primary doctor had me on Paxil, but the therapist said Paxil could blunt emotions and cause sexual side effects.”

  “That’s true,” Jonas said.

  “So the couples therapist referred me to a psychopharmacologist she knew. He said I would do better on Wellbutrin. But the depression got worse, so he added Effexor. Every few months, he would try me on something different or add something else.”

  “How often do you see the psychopharmacologist?”

  “Once a month in the beginning. Then, they stretched it out to two, then every three—sometimes even a different doctor.”

  “How long are your visits?”

  “Ten minutes or so. The doctor would ask about my symptoms. Then they’d type into the laptop.”

  “Ten minutes! How did he know how you were feeling?”

  “I filled out a symptom checklist before each session. The nurse put it in the chart. Then, the doctor would go over it with me and decide about my medicine. I was supposed to call the nurse if had any questions. They must have a lot of doctors in the practice. The waiting room was always packed.”

  “Can you remember the last time you felt well?” Jonas asked.

  Mr. Collier sighed. “Nobody who does what I do for a living feels well. Get up in time to catch the five twenty-five AM from New Canaan. Be at your desk by 7:00 AM to catch up on Europe. Wolf down lunch. Work until eight, nine, sometimes ten o’clock, depending on what happens.”

  “So why do you do it?”

  “We need the money. Our youngest boy has Down syndrome. Between Thomas’s therapeutic school and our daughter’s college tuition, it costs a fortune.”

  “Do you have therapy?”

  “We went to a local person for marriage counseling. I needed someone who could see us on Saturdays. Sandra stopped after six months. She said it was pointless, that nothing had changed. Mrs. Blackwell said I should come alone, so I began seeing her once a week in the beginning, then once every other week. Now I call her whenever I want to.”

  “So, what happens in therapy?”

  “We talk about how I’m feeling. About work. About the children. I like talking with Mrs. Blackwell. She says she’s preparing me for the next step. She thinks I’m stuck on Sandra and need to move on.”

  “What’s happening in the marriage now?”

  “I’m living in a one-bedroom in Stuyvesant town. Sandra’s still in the house in New Canaan. I really don’t want to be divorced.”

  “Do you have a sense of where Sandra is at emotionally?”

  “We see each other. It’s not exactly dating; I don’t know what to call it.”

  “She’s still looking for something from you,” Jonas observed.

  “I feel like she’s toying with me. Every time I think there’s hope, something happens. Once, I got a call from the divorce attorney. Another time, I said I’d like to meet her for dinner, but she balked like she had a date. I was down for weeks after that.”

  “Is it possible that that’s why you felt your medication stopped working? Because your hopes were crushed?”

  Mr. Collier removed his suit jacket and uncrossed his legs. “I never looked at it that way. You’re probably right. My depression got a lot worse when Sandra’s lawyer called in a forensic accountant.”

  “They think you’re hiding money?” Jonas said. Mr. Collier smiled nervously. “Are you?”

  “What I say is confidential, isn’t it?”

  “As long as no one’s life is in danger.”

  “I keep a couple hundred thousand in an offshore account. I thought I hid it well. But now I’m not so sure.”

  “So you’re hoping to get back together, but at the same time you’re deceiving her.”

  “I thought I was here to get medication,” Mr. Collier said harshly.

  Jonas wrote down the words “nasty streak.” “I don’t just prescribe medicines, Mr. Collier,” he said. “I treat patients with psychiatric disorders. To do that I have to get to know someone. Does Mrs. Blackwell know about the money?”

  “No one knows about the money.”

  “It’s only a matter of time until the accountant tracks it down. I see it all the time.”

  “I think Sandra’s having an affair. But then again, my thoughts are so screwed up I don’t know what to believe. Thomas is twelve. Neither of us wants to uproot him. When I come home, he throws his arms around me like he’s afraid I’ll disappear. He misses me.”

  “Do you have thoughts about death, dying, or killing yourself?”

  “I would never do that to the children.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  Mr. Collier reached for a tissue. “A lot of nights, I wish I would go to sleep and never wake up. Then everyone would be happy.”

  “No. It would tear your son to pieces.”

  “Please. Just give me something to get me through,” he cried. “Anything. I read about a new antidepressant with no sexual side effects. Maybe that’ll get me and Sandra back on track. You’re supposed to be good with medicines. Just tell me what I need.”

  Jonas took off his glasses and faced his patient eye to eye. “Mr. Collier, you need a lot more than a pill. Sure; there are other medicines we can try. No one should have to put up with intolerable side effects from their medication. But what you really need is a different attitude. Deception has a nasty way of inveigling itself into every aspect of a relations
hip.”

  Mr. Collier nodded. “She’s probably just as suspicious about me and the money as I am about her cheating, although I give her everything she wants.”

  “If she says she’s living in an emotional vacuum, then what she wants is not a thing. What with you and your son, the stakes are high. Are you serious about working it out with Sandra?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then that means coming clean about the money. And confronting how your work-life affects your family. You have to put everything on the line. Monetarily and emotionally.”

  Jonas and Mr. Collier discussed his mixed feelings about Sandra, whom he pressed to have the second child even though she was in her forties—a known risk factor for Down syndrome. After Thomas was born he more-than-partly blamed her for Thomas’s condition.

  “We can work with the medicine, Mr. Collier,” Jonas said, summing up. “But to really stop the bleeding you need to see the world through your family’s eyes. Not that you have to agree with it. But you do have to see it. What they feel. What they need.”

  “Do you understand what it’s like living with a child with Down syndrome? They’re so full of love. It’s more than love; it’s adoration. It’s so hard to live up to.”

  “It has to be that way for Sandra, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s at the crux of her feelings. Working all hours is a good excuse for avoiding your feelings. If you get working on that in therapy, you and Sandra might be able to talk it out. I can work with you on you as long as you, me, and Mrs. Blackwell are on the same page.”

  When Mr. Collier left the office, Jonas reflected on the session and what was awaiting him at home that evening. He thought about Gil and Gracie. Every child has special needs, he realized. Including his.

  58

  When Jonas entered Grade’s room after dinner, she was lying on her stomach reading Teen People. Grace Speller had the lithe build of a jockey and the face of a budding country-music star. She had just begun wearing makeup. Gracie had covered her walls with large nature scenes, mounted and matted in color-coordinated tones.

  She looked up at her father and said in a distant voice, “Oh. Hello there. Do you want something?”