The Analyst (26 page)

Dr. Lewis paused. “Seven. Good. And now comes time for the leap of faith, Ricky, does it not? The first moment where you really must make a decision.”

“I don’t know that I follow you.”

Dr. Lewis smiled wanly. “Up to this point, Ricky, it seems to me that you have been merely reacting to the horrendous situation you discover yourself trapped within. So many fires that need to be stamped on and extinguished. Your finances. Your professional reputation. Your current patients. Your career. Your relatives. Out of this mess, you have managed to come up with a single question for your tormentor, and this has provided you with a direction: a woman who created the child who has grown into the psychopath who wants you to kill yourself. But the leap you must make is this: Have you been told the truth?”

Ricky swallowed hard.

“I have to assume so.”

“Is this not a dangerous assumption?”

“Of course it is,” Ricky answered slightly angrily. “But what option do I have? If I think that Rumplestiltskin is steering me in some totally wrong direction, then I have no chance at all, do I?”

“Did it occur to you that maybe you are not supposed to have a chance?”

This was a statement so blunt and terrifying that he felt sweat break out on his neck. “If that’s the case, then I should just kill myself.”

“I suppose so. Or do nothing, live, and see what happens to someone else. Maybe it is all a bluff, you know. Perhaps nothing will happen. Maybe your patient, Zimmerman, did jump in front of that train-at an inopportune moment for you and an advantageous one for Rumplestiltskin. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Perhaps the game is: You have no chance. I am just wondering out loud, Ricky.”

“I can’t open that door to that possibility,” Ricky said.

“An interesting response for a psychoanalyst,” Dr. Lewis said briskly. “A door than cannot be opened. Goes against the grain of everything we stand for.”

“I mean I don’t have the time, do I?”

“Time is elastic. Maybe you do. Maybe you do not.”

Ricky shifted about uncomfortably. His face was flushed, and he felt a little like a teenager, with adult thoughts and adult feelings, who is still considered a child.

Dr. Lewis rubbed a hand across his chin, still thinking. “I do think your tormentor is a psychologist of sorts,” he said, almost idly, as if making an observation about the weather. “Or in a profession close to it.”

“I think I agree,” Ricky said. “But your reasoning-”

“The game, as defined by Rumplestiltskin, is like a session on the couch. It just lasts a little longer than fifty minutes. In any given psychoanalytic hour, you must sort your way through a dizzying series of truths and fictions.”

“I have to work with what I have.”

“Is that not always the issue? But our job is often to see what the patient
is not
saying.”

“True enough.”

“So…”

“Maybe it is all a lie. I’ll know in a week. Right before I kill myself, or buy another ad in the
Times
. One or the other.”

“It is an interesting idea.” The old doctor seemed to be musing. “He could achieve the same end and protect himself from ever being traced by a cop or some other authority simply by lying. No one could sort their way through, could they? And you would be dead or ruined. This is diabolical. And nifty, too, in its own way.”

“I don’t think this speculation is helping me,” Ricky said. “Seven women in treatment, one of whom mothered a monster. Which one?”

“Recall them for me,” Dr. Lewis said, gesturing slightly with his hand toward the outdoors and the night that seemed to enclose them tightly, as if he were trying to usher Ricky’s memory out of darkness, into the well-lit room.

Seven women.

Of the seven who sought him out at that time for treatment, two were married, three others were engaged or in steady relationships, and two were sexually adrift. They ranged in age from their early twenties to early thirties. All were what used to be called “career women” in that they were brokers, executive secretaries, lawyers, or businesswomen. There was an editor and a college professor in that mix, as well. As Ricky concentrated, he began to remember the array of neuroses that brought each of them to his door. As these illnesses began to formulate in his memory, so did the treatment.

Slowly, voices returned to him, words spoken in his office. Specific moments, breakthroughs, understandings, all forced themselves back into his consciousness, prodded by the simple, direct questioning of the old doctor perched crowlike on the edge of his chair. The night swept around the two physicians, closing off everything save the small room and Ricky Starks’s recollections. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed in the process, but he knew the hour was late. Ricky paused, almost in midrecall, suddenly staring at the man across from him. Dr. Lewis’s eyes still gleamed with an otherworldly energy, fueled, Ricky thought, in part by the black coffee, but more by the array of memory or perhaps something else, some other hidden source of eagerness.

Ricky felt a damp sweat on his neck. He attributed it to the humid air that had crept in through the open windows, promising a cooling shower, but not delivering the same.

“She is not there, is she, Ricky?” Dr. Lewis suddenly asked.

“These were the women in treatment,” he replied.

“And all treated more or less successfully, too, from what you say and what I recall your telling me in our own sessions. And, I will wager, all still living relatively productive lives. A detail, I might add, that a little bit of detective work would uncover.”

“But what…”

“And you remember every one. With precision and detail. And that is the flaw, is it not? Because the woman you seek in your memory is someone who does not stand out. Someone who is blocked from your powers of recollection and lost.”

Ricky started to stammer a reply, then stopped, because the truth of this statement was equally apparent to him.

“Can you not recall any failures, Ricky? Because that is where you must find your link to Rumplestiltskin. Not in successes.”

“I think I helped all those women sort their way through the various problems they were facing. I can’t remember anyone who left in turmoil.”

“Ah, a touch of hubris there, Ricky. Try harder. What did Mr. R. tell you in his clue?”

Ricky was startled slightly when the old analyst used the same abbreviation that Virgil liked to employ. He rapidly tried to remember whether he had used the phrase
Mr. R.
throughout the evening, but was unable to recall a single instance. But of this, he suddenly wasn’t certain. He thought he might have. Indecision, inability to be sure, loss of conviction, were like contrary winds within him. He felt buffeted, and dizzy, wondering where his ability to remember a simple detail had so precipitously disappeared. He shifted about in his seat, hoping that the alarm he felt within wasn’t visible on his face, or in his posture.

“He told me,” Ricky said coldly, “that the woman I was searching for was dead. And that I promised her something that I could not deliver.”

“Well, focus on that second part. Were there any women whom you declined to treat, who came to you in this time frame? Perhaps briefly, a dozen or so sessions, then dropping out? You continue to want to examine the women who were the start of your private practice. Perhaps someone in the clinic where you worked?”

“I’m sure that’s possible, but how would I-”

“This other group of patients, they were somehow lesser, in your mind, were they not? Less affluent? Less accomplished? Less educated? And perhaps they did not register quite as firmly on the young Doctor Starks’s radar screen.”

Ricky bit back any answer, because he could see both truth and prejudice in what the old physician was saying.

“Is it not more or less the essence of a promise when a patient enters the door and begins to speak? To unburden themselves. You, as analyst, are you not simultaneously making a claim? And subsequently a promise? You hold out the hope for improvement, for adjustment, for relief from torment, just like any other doctor.”

“Of course, but…”

“Who came, but stopped coming?”

“I don’t know…”

“Who did you see for fifteen sessions, Ricky?” The old analyst’s voice was suddenly demanding and insistent.

“Fifteen? Why fifteen?”

“How many days did Rumplestiltskin give you to uncover his identity?”

“Fifteen.”

“A fortnight plus one. An unusual and antique construction of time. I think you might have been more sensitive to the number, because there is the connection. And what is it he wants you to do?”

“Kill myself.”

“So, Ricky, who saw you for fifteen sessions and then killed herself?”

Ricky reeled, shifting about, his head suddenly aching. I should have seen it, he thought to himself. I should have seen it because it is so obvious.

“I don’t know,” he stammered again.

“You do know,” the old analyst said, a little anger in his voice. “You just do not want to know. There is a substantial difference.”

Dr. Lewis rose then. “It is late and I am disappointed. I have had the guest bedroom made up for you. Up the stairs and to the right. I have a few remaining items of a peripheral nature that I am obligated to deal with this evening. Perhaps in the morning, after you have done some additional reflection, we can make some legitimate progress.”

“I think I need more help,” Ricky said weakly.

“You have been helped,” Dr. Lewis replied. He pointed toward the stairwell.

The bedroom was tidy, well appointed, with a sterile, hotel-room quality to it that made Ricky think instantly that it was infrequently used. There was a bath off the hallway with a similar feel. Neither space provided much window on Dr. Lewis or his life. No vials of medicines in the bathroom cabinet, no magazines stacked by the bed, no books cluttering a shelf, no pictures of family on the walls. Ricky stripped to his underwear and threw himself into the bed, after a single glance at his watch showed him that it was well past midnight. He was exhausted and in need of sleep, but he did not feel safe, his mind churning, and so sleep initially eluded him. The country sounds of crickets and the occasional moth or june bug bumping up against the window screen were twice the racket that the city created. As he lay in the bed in the dark, he slowly filtered noise away and could just make out the distant telltale sound of Dr. Lewis’s voice. Ricky tried to concentrate, determining after a moment that the old analyst was angry about something, that his tone, so even and modulated in the hours spent with Ricky, was now raised in tempo and tenor. Ricky strained against the other noises to make out the words, but was unable. Then he heard the unmistakable clattering of the phone being forcefully slammed into its cradle. A few seconds later he heard the old doctor’s steps on the stairs, and then a door opening and closing rapidly.

His eyes battled to remain open to the dark. Fifteen sessions and then death, he thought. Who was it?

He was not aware when he plunged into sleep, but he awakened to shafts of bright sunlight slicing through the window and striking his face. The summer morning might have seemed perfect, but Ricky dragged with the weight of memory and disappointment. He had hoped that the old physician would have been able to steer him directly to a name, and instead, he felt as adrift in the wild sea of recollection as ever before. This sense of failure was like a hangover, pounding at his temples. He pulled on his slacks, shoes, and shirt, grabbed his jacket, and after dashing water on his face and running his fingers through his hair to try to make himself mildly presentable, headed downstairs. He paced with a singleness of purpose, thinking that the only thing he would focus on was the elusive name of Rumplestiltskin’s mother. He was armed with the sensation that Dr. Lewis’s observation, connecting days and sessions, was accurate. What remained hidden, Ricky realized, was the context that the woman existed within. He told himself that he had far too quickly and arrogantly dismissed the less well heeled women he’d seen in the psychiatric clinic, preferring to center upon the women who became his first analysands. He thought to himself that he had seen the woman right at the moment that he had himself been making choices: about his career path, about becoming an analyst, about falling in love and marrying. It was a time when he was looking directly ahead in a single path, and his failure had taken place in a world he wanted to dismiss.

That was why he was so blocked, he thought. His step down the stairs was energized by the idea that he could assault these memories like some World War II dam buster; simply lob a big enough explosion at the concrete of repressed history and it will all burst through. He was confident that with Dr. Lewis’s help he could perform this attack.

The country sunlight and warmth infiltrating the house seemed to dispel all the doubts and questions that he might have had about the old analyst. The unsettling aspects of their prior conversation dissipated in the morning brightness. Ricky poked his head into the study area, searching for his host, but saw the room was empty. He walked down the center corridor of the old farmhouse toward the kitchen, where he could smell the aroma of coffee.

Dr. Lewis wasn’t there.

Ricky tried a “hello?” out loud, but there was no response. He looked at the coffeemaker and saw that a fresh pot was warming on the hot plate, and that a single cup had been left out for him. A folded piece of paper was propped up, with his name written in pencil on the outside. Ricky poured himself a cup of coffee and opened up the note as he sipped at the bitter, hot liquid. He read: