Lunar Park

6. the shrinks

Since I was late I drove instead of walking over to the building housing the practices of Dr. Kim and our couples counselor, Dr. Faheida. Unfolding my dream I raced into the lobby and bumped into a woman exiting the elevator. I was staring at my dream, feeling like a child about to be tested, when she stepped aside and said, “Hello, Bret.” I looked up and stared into the woman’s face: gaunt, midforties, vaguely Spanish, dark wispy hair, a crooked smile. Holding an armful of folders and books, she stood there patiently as I squinted at her, assessing who she was.

It took a moment before I realized.

“Ah, Dr. Fajita. How are you?” I said, relieved.

She paused slightly. “It’s Dr. Fe-hay-da.”

“Dr. Fe-hay-da,” I mimicked. “Yes, and how are you?”

“I’m fine. Will I be seeing you and your wife next week?”

“Yes, and this time we’ll both be there,” I promised.

“That’s good. See you then.” She slowly shuffled off as I hopped into the elevator.

The couples counseling had started due to the lack of sex in our marriage. This was, admittedly, my problem, and the guilt I felt led me to follow Jayne to Dr. Faheida. Even when I first arrived in July we were having sex only once a week, though Jayne kept trying to initiate it more regularly. But she was being turned down so often that she soon quit trying. And I couldn’t figure out where this lack of interest on my part was coming from. Jayne—whom I was once so highly attracted to that she’d complained about the frequency of sex—resembled something new to me now, something other than the hot girlfriend. She was the wife, the mother, my savior. But how did that begin to constitute a celibate relationship? (“Ah yes, how indeed?” the dark voice in the back of my mind whispered frequently.) I simply blamed it on whatever convenient lie I came up with when we were lying in the massive bed in the darkened bedroom, the door locked, the curtains drawn, my softened penis lying immobile against my thigh: exhaustion, stress, the novel, the natural ebb and flow of desire, the antidepressants I was on; I even hinted about sexual scars from my childhood. She kept checking her resentment. I held in my shame but not enough to make her feel guiltless about questioning my manhood, to the point where she felt bad about forcing the issue. She kept asking if I still found her attractive—which I did, I kept assuring her. I was proud to have Jayne Dennis as my wife. Millions of men found her image magnetically sexual. She was a young and popular movie star. Yet, mysteriously, sex had become mundane and increasingly rare between us. I no longer had the hard-on for her that I once did, and tried to soothe her with vague generalities I’d picked up on Oprah. “Is sex more important than our kids or our careers, Jayne?” I asked one night. “I think we have it pretty good.” She sighed in the darkness. “Just because the sex isn’t here now doesn’t mean you aren’t,” I said gently (that was the first night I slept in the guest room). And so in counseling with our “marriage educator,” theories were tossed around. Maybe it was the deterioration of my testosterone levels. But I was tested and the levels were normal. I started taking daily herbal supplements. We opted out on Viagra since I had a mitral valve prolapse—a slight heart condition that the drug could agitate. Other options included Levitra and Cialis—But I’m not impotent! I wanted to scream. However I was “value neutral.” I couldn’t grasp “shared commitment.” I was the master of “negative communication.” I had helped create an “unstable union.” I needed to develop “collaborative alliances.” I only offered “counterproposals.” I was accused of “cutting deals.” (Jayne was the one intent on “separation avoidance,” even though she admitted to having a problem with “self-differentiation.”) We were told to get a babysitter, leave provocative notes for each other, pretend we were still dating, check into a hotel, plan for intimacy, schedule intercourse. But by the end of September our sexual relationship was in major gridlock, and that was when I realized why. The thing that was causing it now had a name: Aimee Light. According to Jayne, the “most amazingly sad aspect” of our marriage was that she still loved me.

I breathed in deeply and walked into Dr. Kim’s office. Her door was open and she was scanning the New York Review of Books while waiting for me. She looked up—her small, brown, inquiring face creased with a tight smile.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” I said, closing the door behind me, flopping into the armchair across from her. That the office was serenely anonymous always helped me relax before we began the sessions, but today she jumped right in, and her increasing worry about my “abuse problems” was soon dominating the conversation. This probably due to the Kleenex I kept reaching for and the bloody ropes of snot I kept blowing from my sore and damaged nose. Then she wanted to talk about Robby and if I was still resentful of him, and next it lurched to Jayne and exactly what I was aiming for with her, and soon my patience expired and I had to interrupt what now resembled an interrogation. She balanced a legal pad on her lap and furiously kept writing notes.

“Look, I’m only here because I promised my wife I would try and get help and so I’m here and trying to get help and I don’t need another lecture about how I’m wasting everybody’s time, ‘kay?” I reached for another Kleenex and blew my nose. The tissue came away red and glistening.

“So why are you here, Mr. Ellis?”

“Well, I have anxiety and these, y’know, anxiety disorders.”

“About what?”

“Um . . . plane crashes . . . the terrorists . . .” I paused and then added genuinely, “Those missing boys.”

She sat up. “Mr. Ellis, I much more concerned about cirrhosis of liver than plane crash for you.” She sighed and marked something down, then immediately segued into: “So, any fresh dreams?”

“Yes, a major one,” I said, trying to hide my reluctance as I handed her the printed-out sheet.

Dr. Kim looked over the words typed hastily earlier this afternoon and got to a particular sentence where she blanched and then stared at me from where she was sitting. I was casually admiring a small cactus on a shelf, humming mindlessly to myself as I waited.

“This dream seems very, very fake to me, Mr. Ellis.” She glared at me suspiciously. “I think you make this dream up.”

“How dare you!” I sat up indignantly—a posture I realized that I adopted quite often in her office.

“You expect me to believe this dream?” She glanced back at the page. “Large-mouthed bass chase you into pond where you escape onto floating airplane and then are flying business class—a plane that has your father’s name on side of it?”

“This is my unconscious, Dr. Kim.” I shrugged. “These just may be legitimate concerns.” I sighed and gave up.

“You have not told your wife that you are using drugs again,” she said.

“No.” I sighed once more and looked away. “But she knows. She knows.”

“And are you still sleeping on the couch?”

“It’s the guest room! I’m in the fucking guest room! You can’t sleep on our fucking couch.”

“Mr. Ellis, you do not need to shout.”

“Look.” I sighed. “It’s been really hard fitting into this whole world, and all these pressures about being the man of the house or whatever you wanna call it are getting to me, as well as the fact that, yeah, I’m using again—but only a little—and drinking again—but only a little—and yeah, okay, Jayne and I aren’t having sex and I’ve been flirting with this girl at the college and I think another student’s pretending to be a character from one of my novels and Jayne’s little girl is, I think, really messed up and she thinks that her doll’s alive and attacking her plus she keeps calling me ‘Daddy’ and Harrison Ford wants me to write this script for him and I’m getting these weird e-mails from L.A. that have something to do with my father, I think, and all those missing boys are scaring the hell out of me and it’s all causing enormous conflicts within my psyche.” I paused, mid-rant. “Oh, and our golden retriever hates my guts.” I let out a huge sigh. “So, I’ve got a lot on my plate—chill out.” And then I reached for the page she was holding and said, “Give me that.”

She kept a firm grip, glaring at me. I kept pulling. She wouldn’t let go. Our eyes locked. I finally sat back, panting.

She waited patiently. “Mr. Ellis, the main reason you are here is to find ways to get to know your son. That is essential. That is necessary. That you connect with your son.”

There was nothing to say except “I’m getting a grip on that situation.”

“I don’t think you are.”

“Why not?”

“Because you haven’t mentioned him once since you’ve been here.”