The Faces of Strangers

by Pia Padukone

  Between her nine and ten-fifteen appointments, she took a few minutes to unwind in her office. On her desk was the old black notebook that Nico had given her, though at the time he had been Nicholas. She had filled it up completely, but kept it on her desk as a constant reminder of how hard she had struggled in those early days. The notebook was next to a pile of the same issue of New York magazine. She grabbed a pair of scissors and cut the article out of one of the copies and folded it into an envelope to send to Paavo. The article was titled “Speak into the Dark” and reported Nora’s evolution in creating SafeSpace in a wry but unchallenging tone.

  She credited Paavo with her success. Talking through her fears had helped her realize her interests and motivations. If it hadn’t been for his suggestion to take a few psych classes, she would have ended up a sad philosophy major with no direction, no employment opportunities and a rather unhealthy obsession with wanting to talk about Kierkegaard at dinner parties. Those few psychology classes had transformed her completely. In those final months when Paavo was living with the Grands, Nora was no closer to being able to identify faces than she was when she was first released from the hospital. But she could see one thing extremely clearly: her future in psychology. It had been from learning and studying herself that she’d felt herself transitioning toward the desire to study others. Her prosopagnosia morphed from a crutch to a catalyst.

  Now, with her schedule book overflowing with new patients, she knew she’d made the right choice. It was clear that she wasn’t alone in her fear of talking to complete strangers, and in her case, even friends and family. At its core, the inherent beauty of therapy was sharing your most intimate thoughts with a stranger, one who didn’t know your background or what might be best for you in the long run. But the added benefit of SafeSpace was that you were truly talking to a stranger—someone who didn’t even have to lay eyes upon you if you didn’t want them to.

  SafeSpace was opening up two more centers across the country; Nora’s lab mate Stephan was the head of one of them in Chicago. He’d scorned her research at first, but ultimately came around when he saw the immediate results she received from participants who were previously unwilling to talk about their pasts. And she’d received interest from a psychiatrist in Lincoln, Nebraska, whose patient population consisted mostly of geriatrics, a group of baby boomers that seemed morally opposed to the idea of telling a stranger anything at all. She visited each of these offices, ensuring that the screens were within her standards, that the soundproofing had been installed, and felt pretty darned smug about her life’s work thus far.

  There was a knock at her office door and her new secretary poked her head in. “You have a new patient. Should I send her in?”

  “Give me three minutes, Sari,” Nora said, gathering a sheaf of fresh papers and scribbling with one of her pens to make sure it worked. She clicked her glow light on and off so she could see her notes while in the session. “Fresh tape? We ran out just before lunch.”

  “Installed it before I stepped out.”

  “Background?”

  “Just emailed it to you.”

  “Let me see.” Nora double-clicked on the email. “No name?”

  “Opted out. She’s F78A for the files.” Nora smiled. This secretary was already a good investment.

  “Okay. Give me five instead. Thanks.” A long, loping scrawl filled the screen. Nora preferred Sari to scan in the files directly so she could glean additional information from patients’ handwriting. So much of therapy was based on body language and facial cues and tics; if she had to cut those out in order to provide SafeSpace, she needed as much insight as she could get. She scanned the paragraph, jotting down tidbits and buzzwords that she could refer to if conversation ran dry during their time together, but silence was rare. While this new patient had written quite a bit, it was all fluff; there didn’t appear to be much background to her story. Nora frowned. The patient was a career woman whose past was coming back to haunt her and she needed guidance to move forward. Well, if that wasn’t vague... Hopefully the woman would say all she needed to say during her session. Nora made sure the red light above her door was on, indicating that her patient was in place and that the session was already being recorded so that Nora could refer to it along with her notes when she debriefed in the evening. She gathered her pad, pen and glow light and pushed gently on the hidden door.

  She blinked; it always took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dark, but the track lighting she’d installed helped guide her to her chair. She could sense a body on the other side of the screen; the patient was seated and was jiggling her leg up and down. Nora settled into her chair. She extended her glow light. Her fingers holding the pen cast a long, eerie shadow against her pad.

  She slid the listening screen open and leaned forward. “Hi. I’m Dr. Grand. I’m listening.” The jiggling stopped, and Nora could hear knuckles cracking like slow popping corn, one after the other.

  “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice,” the woman said. She sounded husky yet lyrical, as though she had been singing all night in a smoky club. Nora almost expected her to begin to snap her fingers to the rhythm of her voice, which had a subtle accent. Polish? Swiss? Maybe even Dutch. “I know your office has been overextended since the publication of the article. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you,” Nora said, twirling her pen. She knew this was a bad habit, as she wasn’t adept at it, and the pen had often gone hurtling into the darkness. Nora had to clamber onto her hands and knees in the pitch black, her glow light too soft to extend into the corners of the room.

  The jerking movements of the woman’s leg, which she had started jiggling again, punctuated her speech but she made no attempt to quiet it. “I wanted to see you, particularly you, because I think you can help me.”

  “I’ll do the best I can. But you know, I can’t help you. I can only help you figure out how to help yourself.” Nora felt herself roll her own eyes as she ministered the mantra, but it was imperative to ensure that patients understood her role in therapy. She was no Band-Aid.

  “Okay, sure. However you want to work. I guess I’ll just tell you why I’m here.”

  Transcript of Patient F78A

  I did something nine years ago. It wasn’t a mistake and to this day, I don’t regret it. But I regret how I approached it. That’s partly why I’m here, to try to make things right. I’m at a point in my life where I’m ready to get serious with someone. I’ve dated a little bit, but I have finally met someone who makes me really happy, and my daughter likes him, too. She deserves a solid male figure in her life. Don’t get me wrong...we’ve done great, just the two of us. But I can’t move forward if I don’t address what happened. I should probably back up to where it first began.

  My career as a model started early. I remember having intellectual ambitions once. I don’t want to be ungrateful, or pretend that the facts aren’t the facts. I am beautiful. I’m lucky. I don’t know what it’s like to be overlooked or ignored because I’ve always stood apart. I’m sensitive about the fact that for some time, I also stood out for my brains. But once I was discovered, I started to travel down the modeling path, forgoing kohuke even though I loved it because it would give me cellulite and skipping cross-country skiing with my friends because it would accentuate all the wrong muscles.

  But before you start to feel too sorry for me, know that I haven’t lost out on everything. There’s so much I have received over the years because of my looks. I don’t think it’s fair, but that’s the way of the world. It surprised me that it’s not just a male thing. Women, too, would give me what I wanted, and I could get away with practically anything. I certainly haven’t suffered.

  When I first stated modeling, everyone I worked with said I was talented. That’s another common misconception, that just because you have a look, that you’ll be a good model. That’s just not so. You have to learn the trad
e as much as you do anything else. You have to make it into a career; it’s not just a side effect of your looks.

  For a few years, it really seemed like this was my future. But then suddenly, things seemed like they were drying up. It was like my feet were in wet cement, trying to make my mark, but it was drying faster than I could move forward. Every time I almost extricated myself, another model slipped ahead of me. There’s no explaining it. It’s not that I’m ugly or fat or my eyes are too wide apart. Casting agents just want a certain “look.” They can’t explain it. They know it when they see it, and apparently for months, mine wasn’t it. My agent and booker tried to get me jobs, but the Carmen Kass look was out for the time being. And while I know it’s irrational, as a seventeen-year-old, I couldn’t have felt less attractive. I needed to do something to pick myself up.

  All my friends in high school were dating and having sex, but contrary to what it may look like, I was stalled. Papa was always afraid that my modeling would catapult me into the next generation, that I would grow up too fast, and I’d miss out on my childhood. But as a model, I hadn’t had one date. All the male models were too beautiful, truly good-looking, but there was nothing sexual about them. They were sculptures to look at, not to touch. But in my very own house, there was this high school kid who was staying with us as part of a program. He was in my house for four months, no strings attached. While he tried to play cool around me, I could tell that I made him nervous. He blushed when I spoke to him and flirted with me, and I knew I could have him if I wanted. He was right downstairs. I didn’t even have to cross Toompuiestee.

  After it happened, and Mama took me to the doctor over the summer, I was naturally frantic. But then after some time, I realized it was my way out. I didn’t have to be in a situation where I had failed anymore, where I felt transparent and second-rate. With a baby, I had an excuse, but I also had a chance for reinvention. I couldn’t stay in Tallinn and sit back and watch all the girls with the right look surpass me. I had to go somewhere new, to the opportunity I’d been afforded before I got pregnant, where they could look upon me like a brand-new entity, exciting and fresh.

  I never thought Papa would be as supportive as he was. It was his idea that I go to Moscow. I had some savings from my jobs, but he gave me the bulk of my seed money and called some of his friends, who found me the apartment where I lived until Claudia was born. It was his dream to entice Ema there; that she would want to help me and be closer to her grandchild, so that eventually she would want to relocate to Moscow and leave Tallinn behind. And she did. But once I started on my own, I knew I had to continue on my own in order to prove my strength to myself.

  Before I got pregnant, I would see models that were also mothers in the hallways at casting calls and I’d look down on them, laughing inwardly at how pathetic they seemed. They seemed so much older than me, wearing more makeup than they really needed in order to hide the fact that they had ten years on the rest of us. Some of them even brought their kids into the casting calls because they had no other choice. Those were the ones I actually felt really sad for. I couldn’t help but go over and play with their children while they were auditioning. One time before I had Claudia I even botched an audition so I’d help their chances of getting the job. They never did, poor things, not when they were competing against teenagers who had the dewy, fresh skin of the young, and longer, lithe bodies that hadn’t held the fruit of a child. You can always make someone look older, but when you try to look younger, it’s always so obvious and so sad.

  When I first arrived in Moscow with that little seed in my belly, I realized with a jolt that I would have to be one of them. I imagined my days with horror, standing in those same dank hallways, clutching the sweaty hand of my small child, feeling terrible because I felt so embarrassed having to tote her around and feeling even worse for feeling embarrassed. That is, until I began to rely on Ginevre and Sasha and their friends and their extended network.

  They taught me how to work the system pretty quickly. Shortly after Claudia was born, I fired Viktor and hired an agent the girls recommended, who could practically guarantee magazine work. That’s where the money is. Everyone thinks it’s in runway, but the only perks of runway are that you get to keep the clothes. I had to pay her a much higher percentage, but it was worth it. I started small, modeling for book covers, bus wraps, food packaging. I graduated to makeup, shampoo ads; I was the face of a Russian national hair salon chain. The jobs kept pouring in; I was constantly working. I wasn’t picky at first; I took the work when I got it, because it was that income over those few years that kept Claudia and me going. I’m raising Claudia to try to be as self-sufficient as possible, but there’s a large part of me that wants to spoil the living hell out of her.

  The group was not only supportive; it was smart. We’d all finagle things so that we wouldn’t go after the same calls, so as not to incite rivalry and create division amongst ourselves. Some of us were taller, some shorter, some had a Eurasian look, some had an Anglo look, some were only being called in for legs, some for backs, some for runway, some for skin. But these women, these single mothers, we all became one another’s families when we had no other, or that we’d been ousted from, or in my case, when we wouldn’t allow ourselves to rely on them.

  Looking back, I can’t help but wonder if my behavior was cowardly. At seventeen, I thought it was the polar opposite. I thought I was being brave, by dealing with my problem myself. After Papa helped me secure the little bedsit three miles from Red Square, I refused any additional financial support from either of them. And while I wouldn’t allow Ema to move in like she would have liked to in those early days, they visited frequently and got to know their granddaughter.

  Even when I first saw Claudia, I was discouraged by how much she looked like her father. In fact, it infuriated me. I’d read that biologically, babies resemble their fathers so that they aren’t abandoned or eaten by them. Such a primordial notion, I’d thought to myself. I understood it, though. Because if he had had any inkling of where I was and what had happened to me after our one afternoon tryst, I feel fairly certain that he would have done the right thing by getting on the first plane to Moscow to be by our sides.

  I say fairly certain, because the truth is, I didn’t know him all that well. He was a guest in our home for a few months when I was a teenager. I didn’t really make an effort while he was staying with us. I always liked him though, even though I stayed on the periphery. Mostly I liked the idea of him—just like the exchange program he was participating in, I’d thought he would be good for the family like a pet or a color TV or a tree house we could all build together in the backyard. It was like he could be our reverse family project. Somehow I miraculously believed that he would cheer Papa up from his mopey citizenship issues. I thought he might help my brother start to stand on his own two feet by listening to him and showing him how to be brave. Maybe I knew him better than I thought, because ultimately he ended up accomplishing those things.

  And there’s what he did for me. He doesn’t know it, but he gave me hope that I could be more than just a body. Ironic, isn’t it? Because being pregnant is just that: you’re providing a body for another being to live in so that it can grow strong enough to come into this world. But he gave me what I needed when I was starting to doubt myself, and needed to feel alive. I’ve been forever grateful to him for comforting me that afternoon, for giving me Claudia, who has given me more joy than anyone could ever hope for.

  I feel silly even saying it, but just in case it’s not clear, I’ll say it out loud. It’s Nico. It was him all these years, and I have kept it a secret because truly, what was the point? We were both basically children, and I didn’t want to ruin his life with this information. Truth be told, I didn’t know whether or not I would ever be able to face Nico again until things got serious with my current boyfriend, Javier. I didn’t know whether or not I’d ever be forced to.

  And so I’
ve begun to prepare. I’ve actually rehearsed it, like I have for certain auditions where I have a line or two, replacing “Boys, come in for dinner,” with “Oh, what a surprise. It’s been years. In fact, your trip changed my life more than you could ever imagine. And here she is,” and with that, I imagine that I will push Claudia forward.

  In the interest of full disclosure, I’m not here because I want anything from him. I’m not seeking money or anything of the sort. Claudia and I are doing really well together. But she has a right to know who her father is, but not if he’s not willing to be in her life or at least play a role in it. I can’t subject her to that kind of pain at this point. Everyone should know the truth, including my partner, my daughter and her father. I think it’s only fair.

  I would have been happy to tell you this in the light, face-to-face, without any distractions. Not that I don’t love the concept of SafeSpace; in fact, I think it’s brilliant. The truth of the matter is, I didn’t need to speak to a therapist. I needed to speak to you. We’ve never met, but I need your help to approach Nico. You’re his sister. I need to know if it’s okay to tell him. How should I do it?

  I know this is a lot to handle, so I don’t want you to respond right now. I will make a follow-up appointment in two weeks, and maybe we can discuss the situation more together.

  * * *

  The next morning, Nora sat very still on the edge of her bed, wrapped in a towel still damp from her morning shower, the ends of her hair dripping down her back like tadpoles. She felt unhinged. She had grappled with this knowledge on her own for nearly twelve hours; longer than she had thought was humanly possible. She had sat through enough broken ethical code hearings in the wood-paneled room at U Michigan to know that was the last thing she wanted to do in her first few years of her own practice. The session had been shocking, but it was what had happened afterward that had succeeded in toppling her completely.