The Couch

Have you ever been through therapy? I’ve only been to one psychologist in my life, so I feel like I’ve had a very sheltered experience. I wonder if I should shop around for them, like I’m trying to get a good deal on a car or appliance. You know, check a few out, hop onto their couches, see if I like the office décor. But when you come right down to it, that takes much more time, money and energy than I’m willing to invest.

Mine doesn’t have a couch. There are large blue chairs that look comfortable from a distance, but always leave me feeling small and vulnerable. The first time I sat in one, I thought it was trying to swallow me whole. My knees were practically up to my chin as I sunk down into it. She sits across the room in a firm leather desk chair in a lovely shade of brown, next to a beautiful mahogany rolltop desk. It’s clearly an antique, and I fight the urge to go over and roll its top up and down, looking into its little drawers and hiding places. But instead, I sit in my blue chair, with my knees at my chin. Most of the time there’s silence.

I want her to ask probing and insightful questions that get to the root of my problems, as though we’ll one day have a breakthrough and I’ll be magically cured. Most of the time she asks questions that just feel nosy and intrusive. Right now I’m trying to see how long we can go in complete silence. I watch the second hand tick on the clock on the wall. She stares at me. I have to admit, she’s stronger than I am. I guess that’s why she’s the doctor and I’m the fucked-up patient. I resolve to tell her nothing about the pregnancy.

She’s taking notes, or maybe making her grocery list. It seems to me that her shopping list would feature such life necessities as merlot and brie. I should invite her to my apartment for a lovely meal of ramen noodles and tea. She would probably be horrified.

I grow bored with my game. “So,” I ask casually. “Any plans for Thanksgiving?”

She looks up from her notes and smiles. “I’ll be having dinner with my family,” she replies. I wonder if that means a husband and kids or parents and siblings. “And what about your family?” she asks. “Have you been in touch with anyone lately?”

I shrug and say nothing. Oh, what the hell, I might as well tell her about Susan. “My sister came to visit a few weeks ago.” I say it casually, as though she drops in every so often. She knows that this isn’t the case.

“Reallly.” She says it in such a way that the first half of the word seems twice as long as the second. And her intonation does not imply that it’s a question. More of an I-knew-it statement, as though she had been expecting me to say it. “Rrreeeally.”

She made a note in the margin of her notebook. Was it a note about me, or a reminder to pick up filet mignon?

“Yes, rrreeeally.” I tried to mimic her intonation. She made another note. I kicked myself for being sarcastic.

“And what, may I ask, prompted your sister to return to your life at this time?”

“My arm,” I lied. “I needed some money for medical expenses for my arm.”

“I seeee.” She let the word trail off. More notes.

Silence again. I stared at the framed certificates on her walls. They weren’t just diplomas. There were also certificates of achievement for running triathlons and marathons in cities all around the country. This woman just wasn’t normal. But I guess if you had to listen to people’s problems all day, you’d seek an outlet of some kind. I guess it was better that she was an athlete than an alcoholic. Although for all I knew, she might be both.

I thought about an alcoholic runner. Can you imagine running drunk? The mental image made my stomach churn. That was definitely not advisable. I hoped she was just an athlete.

“How did your sister’s visit go?” she said, interrupting my vision of vomiting distance runners with whiskey bottles in hand.

“Fine, thanks. It was good to see her again. Of course, it was slightly awkward, but it was good. She had to get back to her house and her husband, so she didn’t stay very long.”

“I see.” Still more notes.

“She’s going to have a baby,” I told her.

“How nice,” she replied. “How does that make you feel?”

“Fine, I suppose. I think there’s part of me that feels old. I find myself wondering how we got to be old enough to have kids.”

She cleared her throat. “I believe you are aware – I hope you are aware – that the female can begin to procreate at the onset of menses.”

“Oh for god’s sake, I’m not an idiot,” I said. “Of course I know you can get pregnant at 13, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t seem weird to have a full-grown, undeniably adult sister who’s married and pregnant.”

“Hmm.” Scribble, scribble. “I sense some hostility.”

“Towards you, not her,” I said. “You treat me like an imbecile.”

“On the contrary,” she replied. “I treat you the way you ask to be treated.”

I resumed my silence. This was ridiculous. I wanted to kick myself every time I walked through that door. I didn’t know why I came, other than for renewals of my medications. And there were many days where I was fairly certain that I didn’t even want that anymore. Yet those moments would pass and I’d find myself with my large glass of water and a lineup of orange prescription bottles. I always took them in the same order, from left to right. Round, oval, oval, capsule, oval, round. I was so tired of it all. I wondered if I could possibly be any worse without them. I always wondered that. But it was fear that kept me tied to the medication.

“How is your OCD?” she asked.

“My what?” I hadn’t been paying attention.

“Your OCD. Your compulsive need to wash your hands. I can imagine that it’s particularly challenging when you have a cast to keep dry.” She smiled with an artificial sweetness. I think she was delighted to think that I was challenged by the cast. Although it’s possible that maybe I was just projecting these evil characteristics onto her, just because I hated her.

“I don’t wash my hands as much anymore,” I said, half-lying. I chose not to tell her about the antibacterial lotion.

“Good. So would you say that your symptoms are improving?”

“I guess so. Yeah.” Anyone who really knew me would know that this was not the case.

“Good,” she replied. “Let’s cut your Luvox down to 50mg and see what happens.”

“Let’s say for the sake of argument that ‘what happens’ is that I’m unable to live a normal life because I’m obsessed with hand washing,” I said. “What do we do then?”

“Then we’ll change it back at your next appointment,” she said.

“So I get to spend two months at the sink until our next appointment?”

“I doubt it will be that bad,” she said with that evil grin. No, stop it. She’s not evil. She’s really trying to help. I think. God, what if she is completely malicious?

“Words clearly spoken by someone who’s never had this problem,” I replied.

Silence again. This time I had no desire to speak at all. I thought about getting up and walking out, but I know from past experience that she won’t hand me my prescriptions until the hour is up. Since that’s the only reason I come here, I have no choice but to stay. I watch the clock again. Tick. Tick. Tick.

She sits patiently with her hands folded in her lap, giving me a hint of a smile. I notice that her lipstick is feathering slightly into the wrinkles around her lips. This pleases me. I like to know that even the well-educated among us don’t have the good sense not to wear bold lipstick colors when our skin begins to fail us. She reminded me of my grandmother, who always wore a too-bright shade of pink that feathered out of her lips and onto the surrounding skin. I wanted to give her a different, more respectable color of lipstick for her funeral, but the fact of the matter was that she just didn’t look the same without it. We applied the gaudy pink over the neutral rose.

Three minutes left to go. I wondered if I could tackle her and swipe the prescriptions from her hands. These were great visions to have. They made me feel like I had control over the situation for just a moment or two.

I could hear her next patient enter the waiting area outside the door. I wondered who it was. Was it a male or female? The footsteps sounded heavy, so I decided that it was a man. Was he old or young? Hmmm. Middle-aged, I’d guess. Not young enough to have a spring in his step, but not so old that his feet shuffled. I imagined thinning hair, a growing belly, and glasses that looked about a decade old. Yes, that was my guess. I couldn’t wait to go out and see how close I was to reality.

At exactly 2:00, she said, “Well, I hope that this session has been helpful for you. Here are your scrips. Would you like to go ahead and schedule your next session for two months from now?”

“Yes,” I said with resignation. “Two months.”

“Is 1:00 still good for you?”

“Yes, fine.” I wanted to get out and see the next patient.

She handed me an appointment card for January 11. I thanked her and opened the door.

There he sat, reading Scientific American. Male. Check. Middle-aged. Check. Belly. Check. Thinning hair? Hard to tell. He had it shaved, along with a goatee. Glasses? No. Damn. Well, I was pretty darned close.

I made eye contact with him, nodded my hello and made a break for the door. I needed to find a restroom so I could wash my hands.