“I know,” I said, because my father had communicated his pride to me in countless ways, though I wasn’t always listening as well as I should have been. But that day I couldn’t help hearing the subtext: I’m going to die sooner rather than later. We stood there, the two of us, hugging and crying as people passing by tried not to stare, because we both knew that this was the beginning of my father’s goodbye.
“As your eyes are opening, his are beginning to close,” Wendell says now, and I think about how bittersweet but true that is. My awakening is happening at an opportune moment.
“I’m so glad I have this time with him and that it can be so meaningful,” I say. “I wouldn’t want him to abruptly die one day and feel like it’s too late, that I waited too long for us to really see each other.”
Wendell nods, and I feel queasy. All of a sudden I remember that Wendell’s father had died ten years ago very unexpectedly. In my Google search, I’d come across his father’s obituary after I read the story of his death in his mother’s family interview. Apparently, Wendell’s father had been in seemingly perfect health when he’d collapsed at dinner. I wonder if my talking about my father this way might be painful for him. I also worry that if I say any more, I’ll give away how much I know. So I pull back, ignoring the fact that therapists are trained to listen for what patients aren’t saying.
A few weeks later, Wendell comments that for the past couple of sessions, I seem to have been editing myself—ever since, he adds, I sent him the Viktor Frankl quote and he’d mentioned his wife. He wonders (what would we therapists do without the word wonder to broach a sensitive topic?) how the mention of his wife has affected me.
“I haven’t really thought about that,” I say. It’s true—I’ve been focused on hiding my internet search.
I look at my feet, then at Wendell’s. Today’s socks are a blue chevron pattern. When I lift my head, I see that Wendell is looking at me with his right eyebrow raised.
And then I realize what Wendell is getting at. He thinks that I’m jealous of his wife, that I want him all to myself! This is called romantic transference, a common reaction patients have to their therapists. But the idea that I have a crush on Wendell strikes me as hilarious.
I look at Wendell, in his beige cardigan and khakis and funky socks, his green eyes staring back at me. For a second, I imagine what it must be like to be married to Wendell. In a photo I’d found of him and his wife, they were at a charity event, arm in arm and all dressed up, Wendell smiling at the camera and his wife looking at him adoringly. I remember feeling a twinge of envy when I saw that photo, not because I was envious of his wife but because they seemed to have the kind of relationship I wanted for myself—with someone else. But the more I deny the romantic transference, the less Wendell will believe me. The lady doth protest too much.
There are about twenty minutes left in the session—even as a patient, I can feel the rhythm of the hour—and I know that this façade can’t last forever. There’s only one thing to do.
“I Googled you,” I say, looking away. “I stopped stalking Boyfriend, and I ended up stalking you. When you mentioned your wife, I already knew all about her. And your mother.” I pause, especially mortified by this last part. “I read that long interview with your mom.”
I get ready for . . . I don’t know what. Something bad to happen. A tornado to enter the room and alter our connection in some intangible but irreparable way. I wait for everything to feel distant, different, changed between us. But instead, the opposite happens. It feels as though the storm came in, passed through the room, and left not ruins but a clearing in its wake.
I feel lighter, relieved of a burden. Sharing difficult truths might come with a cost—the need to face them—but there’s also a reward: freedom. The truth releases us from shame.
Wendell nods, and we sit there in a wordless conversation. Me: I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. That was so invasive. Him: It’s okay. I understand. It’s natural to be curious. Me: I’m happy for you—for the loving family that you have. Him: Thank you. I hope you will have this one day too.
And then we have a version of that conversation aloud. We also talk about my curiosity. Why I kept it a secret. What it was like to hold that secret and also know so much about him. What I imagined would happen between us if I revealed it—and how it feels now that I have. And because I’m a therapist—or maybe because I’m a patient and I just need to know—I ask him what it’s like to learn that I stalked him. Is there anything I found that he wishes I didn’t know? Does he feel different about me, about us?
Only one of his answers shocks me: He has never seen the interview with his mother! He didn’t know it existed online. He knew that his mother had done an interview for that organization, but he thought it was for their internal archives. I ask if he worries that other patients might come across it and he sits back and takes a breath. For the first time, I see his forehead scrunch up.
“I don’t know,” he says after a beat. “I’ll have to think about it.”
Frankl’s quote pops into my mind again. He’s making space between stimulus and response in order to choose his freedom.
Our time is up, so Wendell gives his legs the usual two pats and stands. We head for the exit, but at the threshold, I stop.
“I’m sorry about your father,” I say. After all, the jig is up. He knows I know the whole story.
Wendell smiles. “Thank you.”
“Do you miss him?” I ask.
“Every day,” he says. “Not a day goes by that I don’t miss him.”
“Not a day will go by that I won’t miss my father either,” I say.
He nods, and we stand there, thinking about our fathers together. When he steps back to open the door for me, I see a hint of moisture in his eyes.
There’s so much more I want to ask him. Is he at peace with where things were left when his father collapsed? I think about the ways in which sons and fathers can get tangled up in expectations and yearnings for approval. Did his father ever tell him he was proud of him, not despite his rejecting the family business and carving out his own path but because of it?
I won’t learn more about Wendell’s father, but we’ll have many discussions in the coming weeks and months about mine. And through these discussions, it will become clear that by seeking a male therapist, I had hoped to get an objective opinion on the breakup, but instead, I got a version of my father.
Because my father, too, shows me how it feels to be exquisitely seen.
41
Integrity Versus Despair
Rita is sitting across from me in her smart slacks and sensible shoes giving a detailed commentary on why her life is hopeless. Her session, like most of her sessions, feels like a dirge, which is all the more confounding because between bouts of insisting that nothing will ever change, she has been making changes both minute and monumental.
Back when she and Myron were friends, pre-Randie, Myron had made Rita a website so that she could catalog her art online. This way, he said, she could keep her pieces organized and also share them with others. But Rita didn’t think she needed a website. “Who’s going to look at it?” she asked.