Renato's father's book, The Neuroses of Power, had been published the week before. It would make the bestseller list by the end of the week and would remain there for the next fourteen weeks. Already members of parliament were banding together to file their lawsuit of breach of patient/doctor contract. I had not yet picked up a copy, but I had read a review of it in the paper. In the name of research, Renato Sr. had studied the behavioral changes of a handful of his parliamentarian patients who were almost all having the same nightmare: they were having dinner with their family in an expensive restaurant when the police burst in, handcuffed them, and took them away, to the great shame of their family. Many were also suffering similar side effects: eye and nose twitching, sleeplessness, moodiness, depression, drastic changes in physical appearance, whether by growing a beard or removing facial hair, even new speech impediments.

I was very anxious to know how Renato's father's newfound celebrity had affected my psychiatrist's practice, but because Renato steered the conversation in another direction, I never did have a chance to ask her. She had put in a bright red wall-to-wall rug that matched the Rothko painting and taken off her wedding band. (Was she getting a divorce?) The sycamore trees outside her office windows were now in full bloom, and Renato finally had pulled the shades, so I could look out at the trees and the park across the street. It was strange to have a relationship with someone who knew everything about you, while you knew almost nothing about them. It made me invent all sorts of narratives about her life outside of our sessions. I imagined her passionately hurling dishware across the room in protest of her husband's indiscretions. Then, I thought, no, she would be married to a psychiatrist like herself, a tiny man, and they would discuss cases over the dinner table and only do it when they absolutely had to. No, she would stay single well into her thirties, growing more concerned about her biological clock, until one day taking a younger lover and shocking everyone by marrying him. Now, they were divorcing and he was trying to take her money. I did not think she was happy. I always felt there was a mixture of pain and regret in her eyes. Had she given up her one great love to pursue psychiatry? It could not be easy for a woman to be too analytical or intellectual.

“Have you been keeping your journal?” she asked.

“I have nothing to say. I start to write something, but then I don't really feel like I want to commit the thought to paper. Yeah, that's what it is. It just feels like too big of a commitment.”

“Are you still having nightmares?”

“Not exactly, no. They've changed recently. I dream about Occham's Razor. Last night I dreamed the ceiling tiles in Occham's Razor were falling on us, and I had to get everyone out before the roof caved in.”

“So, you've become more at ease with Luca's memory?”

At times she felt like a disembodied voice to me. I mean, I knew I was looking at a woman, and that this woman had a body, but her style of psychoanalysis, the large office, the fiery red carpets, and the cold, orderly furnishings, she reminded me of the opposite of the girl who had wanted a job at Occham's Razor yesterday, the girl who was full of plans, desires and schemes and who was recognizable to me and threatening, too. I think what set me off most about my meetings with Renato was her perfunctory tone, as if she were doing a job, adding the comment at the appropriate moment, but not really there. What was the point of telling her how I was feeling? There were other ways to dispose of our disposable income.

“I don't mean this to sound insulting, but I feel like I'm not getting anywhere.”

“I think you're making headway. When you first came to me, you were only sleeping three to four hours a night, and you were having nightmares. Now you sleep through the night, and your nightmares are less frequent and no longer about your uncle. It's up to you what you want to do, but I think you would be making a mistake to quit now.”

“Renato, I have to tell you I'm sick to death of explaining.”

She looked at me as if waiting to hear more. No, I thought, that is it, that is all I've got. I knew I was behaving like an ass, but I also wanted her to do a better job, to ask better questions. I was fed up with detachment. How many days and nights are taken up with explanations, articulations and extrapolations, and to what end? I could feel very well in the moment, but no longer saw the point of unpacking stale old feelings and examining them.

She looked me in the eyes again. I saw the curve of a smile cross her face.

“I'm interested in exploring why you feel the need to make this relationship more like your other intimate relationships.”

I have been staring at her pointy knee caps for four months, but I have never seen her legs uncrossed. Only rarely, perhaps once or twice have I seen her smile or her jaw relax from its tight clenching. Did she have hips? The dull rust jacket she wore covered her midsection. Would she wear a two piece or a one piece bathing suit, and did she have hips? I felt as if these two questions were even more pressing than finding out how she felt about her father's book or about her failed marriage. A body is important, I thought. It roots us to the physical world. Denying the body ordetaching oneself from it is a danger, but in being so professional this is exactly what she was doing.

“Renato, I don't think you understand. Sometimes I feel like a darkness hangs over my life; it's hard for me to explain because I'm not even sure I understand it, but it's like a force, a negative force, pulling on me. I'll be 35 next month, and sometimes it's as if the past fifteen years of my existence have been blighted by this cloud. Do you know what that means? It's like a part of me is already dead. It troubles my sleep, makes me feel apart from other people.”

“Maybe you still haven't done enough mourning.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that, maybe it's something you have to make more public. Maybe you have to decide what you think happens to the dead, whether they can see you or hear you and how this fits in your own loss. Otherwise, you may always feel unresolved about things.”

“Renato, you don't know, you weren't there. I know Luca's death brought him no peace, but I also know that he spread that dark cloud to everyone else who touched him. Most people who knew him don't talk about it because they have to function, so they can't feel. But I sometimes think that, well, that all the darkness passes from spirit to spirit, and that, when Luca was murdered, something closed inside me, and I don't think I can open it again.”

“I detect a spiritual slant to your view today. Frankly, it surprises me. You were so skeptical about Sandy 's Catholic faith, so I had assumed you weren't a believer.”

The clock Renato had placed between us ticked. Her large and modern office wreaked of opulence. How can a person make such a comfortable living without producing anything? How can the posing of so many questions yield so much material comfort? She had followed in her father's footsteps, and that had made things easier. You're one of them now, I said to myself. You don't have to feel like the underdog anymore. You can let your resentments go. She pulled her hair behind her ears and clenched her jaw. Just as she is testing me, I am testing her, I thought. Did she also think of herself as a fraud? On bad days, maybe? I knew a place existed, and that place had taken my uncle. Since then I had felt bereft and temporary, but those who felt permanent, who were they?

“Renato, I'm not talking about the Catholic Church. I'm talking about a place beyond this life that still affects what happens in this life. Certain deaths—murders, suicides, and violent deaths—change the make-up of the physical world and the kharmic make-up of everyone who knew the person who died. We feel linked to that person and that has nothing to do with attending mass on Sundays or putting ten thousand lire in the hat being passed around.”

“I think you expect too much,” she said finally.

“Dr. Renato, have you ever thought you could fly?" Renato nodded. "When I was six, I was so sure I could fly I broke my arm trying. I jumped from the top of the monkey bars and crashed right onto my side. Even now I sometimes think I can fly above a situation and just watch it. Do you know what I mean? Dr Renato, am I really unlucky? I thought that Sandy would change my luck, but now I think she has just allowed me to cover up the wound, so that other people can't see it.”

“Luck is a figure of speech, Paolo. It's a way of explaining rising and falling fortunes, sickness, unhappiness, winning lottery tickets, but that is chance, not luck. Gamblers are not lucky, so much as skilled. You expect too much of psychiatry, and you're wrong to see it so cynically. You consider my professionalism a sign of lack of feeling, but while you're my client, I put my feelings aside, and try to use my training to understand where you want our sessions to go and whether that direction will ultimately be helpful to you.”

The buzzer on Renato's half-moon clock sounded. Renato stood up and offered me a hand. I looked down at the fiery red carpet and tried to imagine Renato cursing and trying to get the stain out of her Kelim rug; or at her father's book opening, giving her son a juice bottle; or pushing a stroller through a crowded grocery store in sweat pants and no make-up; or at a crap table, betting double or nothing, spitting into the die and tossing. The last image was the only one that I could only in grainy, unfocused black and white. In it Renato had no face.

home