“So he was helpful?” Not helpful: the reminder this monologue is furnishing. The reminder of the fact that my mother and I, surface presentation, ability to recognize one’s own drinking problem, these things aside, my mother and I, we’re quite similar.
“Oh enormously.” That she went to a Freudian, this makes sense. Put my dating problem, temporarily, to the side. Know about my mother that she doesn’t think much of the middle ground. Very little imagination, great follow-through. “Though not quite in the way you might think.” She drained her gin and tonic and stood, went to the counter to fix herself another, shot me, on the way, a sly grin. I knew what I should do. I knew I should sit quietly and sip my lemonade and hope my mother’s pride prevented her from going on. But fine, I’ll admit it. I was curious.
“All right, Mom.” She was back at the table now, and she’d found a straw for her drink, metal, congratulations, Mom. “All right, I’ll bite. How did he help you?”
“Well.” With the metal straw my mother was working quickly. Already a third of her drink had disappeared. “The thing is. So in Freudian therapy you lay on a couch and the therapist sits behind you. I think he explained to me, early on, the point of the tradition, though I can’t quite remember now—and anyway, I liked it, not looking at him while he listened to me, it meant I wasn’t also trying to figure out what he was thinking of me, trying to read his facial expressions; it can be, you know, very inhibiting.”
“I’m sure.” My face quiet, eyes blinking.
“But so what this also meant was that I only saw him twice the whole session, once when I came in and then again when I left. So for the whole hour, well, for the whole fifty minutes, he was watching me. It was”—there was an inch of liquid left in her glass, less—“well, frankly it was—”
“Mom, you don’t have to—”
“What? It was erotic. You asked.” She rolled her eyes, finished her drink, got up to fix herself a third. “This was”—her back was to me now—“right around the time your grandmother got sick. And then when she died, well, without her working there was no more money for extravagances, and your grandfather considered therapy—analysis—an extravagance. So I told Robert—Rob—my analyst, I told him I would have to stop going to therapy. To analysis. He offered me a reduced rate, but I was barely working, picking up boom work on little films here and there, even at the fee he was suggesting, I just couldn’t afford it. Did I tell you—I didn’t, I should”—her head whipped around, her eyes, could they possibly have been twinkling—“how attractive he was? Square jaw, broad shoulders, thick, black hair, a mustache, I thought maybe he’d been in the army, gone to grad school on the GI bill, though I guess he could have just been”—she shrugged, turned back to her drink, squeezed a wedge of lime, carried the glass back to the table—“I mean it was all pretty standard issue, but it was his looks—how different he looked from what I assumed a therapist, an analyst, would look like, back then I thought all Freudians looked like, well, Freud, a thousand years old and pipe-smoking and bearded—plus the watching, how I’d held, sure, for a fee, but how I’d held his attention. And the fact that it was wrong, of course that helped, plus the power he had, I mean the power he had over me. He already knew all my secrets, the things you keep from boyfriends at first, and besides I knew he liked me, a woman always does, which always makes a man more attractive. So our last session, I get up off the couch, I turn around, and we shake hands, and he holds my hand maybe a second too long. And I look up at him and I ask him if we can, now that, you know, he’s no longer my therapist, my analyst”—she twirled the ice in her glass with the straw, took a long sip—“I ask him whether I can take him out for a drink. And he says no. Well, at first he says no. He puts his hands in his pockets and he says that while yes, of course he’d love to, he can’t. It just wouldn’t be—he says something about medical ethics. But I’m—you know at this point I’m twenty-three, and I have these long legs and I’m wearing a dress that’s maybe a little too low—”
“Mom.”
“What, I was wearing a low-cut dress, what’s wrong with that?” Another long sip. “And I say, I ask him if he couldn’t make, just this once, an exception.”
“You slept with him didn’t you.”
“Right there, on the couch. He missed his next appointment.”
“You’re—”
“Of course I’m kidding.” My mother’s tone was highest dudgeon. “Though honestly the fact that you might have thought we actually did—I mean what do you think of me, that you think I would—”
“But you did sleep with him.”
My mother smiled. “So, I ask him if he would consider, just this once, making an exception, and he, well, he makes this face, this face like he wants to say yes but he knows he shouldn’t and I take a step in and my breasts are just”—she drew out the word just, enjoying herself—“brushing the lapels of his suit jacket, and I say, One drink, and he says, Okay, one drink.”
“You slept with him.”
“I slept with him.” The smile triumphant. “And it was—I thought it then and I think it now. It was very therapeutic. One of the most helpful things about therapy, or analysis—they say one of the most helpful things is how the therapeutic relationship mirrors relationships in the real world, only it has these boundaries, in other words it’s kind of a”—her fingers sketched canted quotes—“safe space.”
“But he violated those boundaries.”
“No, I violated those boundaries. And it proved a larger point, that I could be totally emotionally open with someone, totally vulnerable, and he would still want to sleep with me.”
“I hope you reported him.”
“Of course I didn’t report him, god, you’re such a prude.” My mother rolled her eyes. “I mean it was my idea to—”
“And it was his responsibility.”
“The point is it worked. We went out for a drink and he took me back to his apartment and after that”—my mother’s hand sliced the air—“just like that. Cured. I was cured. I met your father a week later, and I would never have been open to him if I hadn’t had this experience with Rob, so whatever you think of it, you should also”—another long sip and her third gin and tonic was gone—“be grateful I did because if I hadn’t I would never have dated your father and if I hadn’t dated your father, well, where would you be?” My mother stood. “Whether or not you believe it was appropriate, whether or not you think it helped—the point is I think it helped. And if I think it helped, well then”—she waved the hand that wasn’t holding the glass—“it did. If only because I believe it did.”