Bittersweet Dreams (25 page)

“I hope you take this seriously, Mayfair,” he said. “Or at least give it a chance.”

I didn't respond. Maybe I did need therapy. Maybe he was right after all. I mean, didn't I push Joy into going into therapy? This might be one of those “Physician, heal thyself” sorts of things. Even therapists needed therapy.

Later, in school, I suddenly became a little paranoid about it, however. There were other clues. It seemed to me the bitches of
Macbeth
weren't ignoring me anymore. In the halls, in classrooms, and in the cafeteria, they were looking my way, smiling and whispering. Maybe they had overheard some of my teachers talking about me, or maybe Mr. Martin's secretary gossiped about our meeting and my behavior. Another very likely possibility was that Julie had discussed me with Joyce Brooker's mother, perhaps even telling her that I was going to see a therapist. Joyce Brooker's mother might even be the therapist's client.

If that was true, these girls could tell everyone how right they were about me. “See? She really is crazy. We told you so.”

Something more was definitely going on. I could sense it. Carlton James wore a look of deep self-satisfaction. He, too, whispered to his buddies and looked at me while doing so. Then he strutted with pride and threw me a condescending smile that said, “You should have accepted my invitation, bitch. Now look at where you are.”

Even Joy looked at me differently. Her “Are you all right?” now seemed planted.

“If you ask me that one more time, I won't talk to you again, understand?”

She nodded.

“Don't,” I said, as she started to explain herself. “Just forget it.”

She bit down on her lower lip and followed me around in silence. I thought I saw her talking with Cora, one of the bitches, between classes. Why would any of them give her the time of day? Maybe she was promised something, like an invitation to a party, if she spied on me and got them some juicy gossip to spread. My paranoia was exploding. I had to get hold of myself.

However, by two o'clock, I told myself it didn't matter that I was paranoid. I was convinced Joseph Heller's famous quote from
Catch-22
that “Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you” was true, especially for me. All that I believed was happening was really happening. My stepmother, Julie, had sabotaged me at school. Whether it was true or not, I convinced myself that it was at minimum a credible theory.

I saw Allison in the hallway and pulled her away from her friends.

“Did your mother know you overheard the conversation with me in the living room yesterday?” I asked her. “Well?”

She nodded.

“Did she tell you not to say anything in school or to any of your friends?”

“No,” she said. “I only told . . .”

“Don't tell me. It doesn't matter,” I said, and left her.

In a way, Julie had done me a favor. My self-pity turned into raw rage. By the time I got into the car to go to Dr. Burns's office, my strategy was formed. I was tired of being the victim here. My old self was returning. I could feel the surge of energy and glee.

I'll show my father's new wife how to play this game
, I thought.

Dr. Burns had a small but very comfortable and bright office. There was a large bay window in his lobby that faced the ocean, so the afternoon sun beamed through the translucent curtains and tinted windows. There were two dark brown leather settees that faced each other, with a glass table between them. Everything was immaculate and neat, including the artificial flowers that were strategically placed to supplement the brightness and warmth. The light blue walls had framed prints of country scenes, fields, rivers, and mountains. Everything was designed to make someone feel relaxed and safe, including the elevator music piped in but kept so low it was almost subliminal.

His secretary sat in a small inner office with a window facing the lobby. I could see the file cabinets, copy machine, fax, and printer behind her. She had a name plaque that read “Sylvia Jones.” I thought she was about Julie's age but less plastic-looking. She was even permitting some gray strands to infiltrate her neatly styled dark brown hair.

“I'm Mayfair Cummings,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, smiling with that superficial warmth surely designed to let the doctor's clients feel relaxed and calm about the fact that they were here to see a therapist, that they were admitting something wasn't right with them. “I'll let Dr. Burns known you're here. He's just finishing up a phone call.”

“Don't I have to fill out anything?”

“No, dear. Everything's been done.”

Probably by Julie, I thought. Maybe even a year ago.

I went to sit, but before I could, the second inner office door opened, and Dr. Burns called to me.

“Hi there,” he said.

If a director were looking to cast an actor for the role of a modern-day psychotherapist in a play, he'd have chosen Dr. Burns. It reinforced a theory of mine that people often grew to look just like people expected them to look. Dr. Burns, who probably was no more than forty, was the new hip psychotherapist, with long black hair, wearing jeans and a light blue long-sleeved denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up to suggest he was going to get down to real work. He even had a small diamond stud earring.

In honor of Dr. Freud, maybe, he had a neatly trimmed goatee and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses that rested on the bridge of his nose. He looked to be about my father's height but much slimmer in build. I thought he had almost feminine hands. He extended his right hand, and I took it to shake, but he held on to mine and stepped back to have me enter his office, not letting go until I walked in and he could close the door. Maybe he was afraid that after taking one look at him, I'd turn and run. Perhaps he had potential clients who had done just that.

I gazed around. He had a large, dark-cherrywood desk, a window that also looked out on the ocean, and another behind his desk with the drapes drawn closed. There was an oversize chair in front of his desk, walls of filled bookshelves, and only one picture, a print of the famous
Christina's World
by Andrew Wyeth. It showed a young woman lying in a field and looking like she's crawling or wants to start crawling toward a gray house on the horizon.

Dr. Burns saw that I was looking at it. “All my clients love that painting,” he said. “Everyone has a different interpretation about who she is, why she's lying in the field, what's in the house.”

“And you use that to analyze them?”

“Sometimes,” he said, smiling. “Should we use it for you?”

“Won't work. I know the history of that painting. Wyeth saw a young woman with a paralyzed lower body crawling and was inspired to do the painting. He used his wife as a model for the girl's torso, even though she was much older than the girl depicted.”

“You can still find some meaning in it, can't you?” he said, indicating that I should sit in the large chair as he moved behind his desk.

“I just told you what it was.”

“You're very literal. Please, sit,” he said when I continued to stand.

“What?” I said, looking around. “No couch?”

He laughed. “That chair has a lever on the side, and you can sit all the way back with your feet up. How's that?”

“Perfect.” I sat and tried the lever.

“Don't fall asleep on me. I've had that happen more times than I care to admit.”

“Then don't bore me,” I said, sitting up again.

He smiled, but not as widely or as deeply as he had the first time. “Okay. Let's see if I can avoid that.” He said, looked at a file on his desk. “Mayfair Cummings, nearly seventeen years old, with quite a remarkable school history. You're in very good physical health, I see.”

“How long have you had all that information?”

“Oh, a little while. Preparation is important, right?”

“That's not preparation. That's anticipation. Maybe even a little plotting.”

He laughed and sat back. “Okay. Let's not go through the mental fencing. I have no illusions about being subtle with you. I know how intelligent you are. You might know as much about my work as I do. Your parents are concerned that you've hit a wall of unhappiness with yourself, and we're here to see if we can understand the cause and do something about it.”

“Father,” I said.

“Pardon?”

“My father is concerned. His new wife, Julie, has her own agenda.”

“Oh? Which is . . . ?”

“She couldn't care less about my academic achievements. She wants me to fall in line, be what she calls normal, so I don't corrupt her daughter with independent thinking or distract my father too much from paying attention to her.”

“I see.”

“No, you don't. You haven't heard enough, and you haven't asked the right questions yet.”

“Okay. Let me try. What makes her think you're not normal?”

“I don't dwell on my appearance, my clothes, my hair. She tried desperately to get me to do that, to be more like her. For a while, I tried it, but I felt like a phony. So in her mind, I'm not normal. I don't have a boyfriend or go to parties, and I'm still a virgin.” I thought I'd add “still a virgin,” even though it was no longer true. It was important to my strategy.

Dr. Burns looked sufficiently shocked. “She doesn't want you to be a virgin?”

“Let's say she wants me to be more interested in sex than I am,” I said. “It's clearly very important to her, and anyone who is not as interested in it as she is would be abnormal in her way of thinking.”

“What has she done or said to get you to believe this?”

“She's tried to get me to look sexier, wear low-cut blouses, shorter skirts, push-up bras, more makeup. She's even tried to get me to enjoy orgasms.”

He stared and sat forward. “I don't understand. How did she do that?”

“Told me how she enjoys sex, masturbation, and then . . .”

“Then what?”

“Bought me a vibrator.”

“She bought it for you?”

“Yes. My father doesn't know about it. I haven't used it yet. She keeps asking.”

I saw his look move from skepticism to thoughtfulness. Then he wrote some notes and nodded. “Well, let's go back a little. How do you feel about the boys at your school?”

I smiled to myself.
He's buying it
, I thought. “There are some I think are good-looking, but they haven't shown interest in me. I suppose I'm a little shy. Julie makes me feel bad about that. Sometimes I wish I could please her just to get her off my back. She's tried giving me hints about how to be more enticing, how to flirt, stuff like that. I feel funny about it, but I can't tell my father these things, so I feel a little trapped. I suppose this has all been weighing on my mind lately, gotten me depressed. I didn't want to worry my father, but I just haven't figured out how to explain it to him. He's so devoted to her.”

“I see.”

“Yes, now you might have enough to begin to see,” I said.

“Maybe you should consider psychology as a career.”

I shrugged. “Maybe,” I said. “I have been thinking about that, but let's see how well you do with me first.”

He laughed and leaned forward. “Tell me more about this pressure your stepmother is putting on you,” he said. “I notice you don't call her that. You said”—he looked at his notes—“your father's new wife, but haven't they been married for years?”

“Well, she'll always be new in my eyes. He was married before.”

“And your mother died. You resented Julie right from the start, then?”

“Classic. Of course. Any child doesn't want to see her mother completely replaced, forgotten. I think I handled it as well as could be expected. I'm not troubled by that anymore. My father made a decision he thought was best for us both, and that's that. It's just that . . .”

“Yes?”

“With all this concentration on boys and sex, she seems more like an older sister to me or an older girlfriend.”

“Go on about that,” he said, nodding.

I continued, elaborating on the details I had planned to describe as vividly as I could, describing evenings when she came to my room to tell me about her own sexual exploits, explaining how it would make me stronger to have such experiences and help me decide when it came time to settle on one person.

“She said it wasn't fair that boys were expected to have many girlfriends, many sexual experiences, but girls who did the same were frowned upon, labeled with nasty names.”

He nodded and took lots of notes, scribbling away for practically the entire session.

It was going just as I had planned.

“Well?” my father asked. “How did it go with Dr. Burns?”

He had come to my bedroom. I was lying on my bed and reading
The Art of Persuasion
. I was surprised at just how many techniques had come to me instinctively when I was in Dr. Burns's office. Ironically, I thought, my father would be very proud of me under any other circumstances. I was in his world of advertising and persuasion, a world where the truth was easily twisted or completely buried.