Panic Attack

fourteen

On Friday morning Adam decided that shooting Carlos Sanchez ten times had probably been a mistake. Shooting him the first two times had been necessary- he had no doubts about that- but he wished he could take back the other eight shots.

But, unfortunately, there was nothing he could do about that now. What was that Shakespeare quote, what was done can’t be undone? It was so true. And ruminating about it incessantly was just causing anxiety and stress, so why not just let go?

Adam was getting dressed to go to work when Dana sat up in bed and said, “I want to go to Florida.”

She had just woken up and her voice was deeper than normal, more gravelly.

“Come on,” Adam said, “you know we can’t do that right now.”

“We can do whatever we want. We’re not trapped here.”

Buttoning a red pinstriped shirt, Adam said, “Clements said he doesn’t want us to leave.”

“I want to talk to a lawyer today. We’re not criminals, for God’s sake, we’re not suspects in anything. We don’t have to stay around here, putting our lives at risk, because he wants us to stay.”

“I think you’re being a little melodramatic-”

“We can be available by telephone. We can be available by e-mail. We can teleconference with him. This is the twenty- first century, for God’s sake.”

Adam, sitting down in a chair, putting on his loafers, said, “If there was a reason to go to Florida I’d go.”

“Your life was threatened,” Dana said. “If that’s not a reason to go, what is?”

“Okay, just relax, take some deep breaths,” Adam said. “It’s very difficult to talk to you when you get like this.”

Adam was looking down at his shoes, but he knew exactly what Dana’s expression was- she was staring at him in mock exasperated disbelief.

“Fine, you do whatever you want to do,” she finally said. “But I’m leaving, and I’m taking Marissa with me. If you want to stay here that’s up to you.”

Adam stood back and checked himself out in the mirror. He didn’t look the best he’d ever looked. He appeared tired, worn, burnt- out-the stress of the past few days was getting to him. He could see Dana behind him, sitting at the edge of the bed. She didn’t look so terrific either.

“Let’s discuss this later when you’re calmer,” he said. “I have to get to the office.”

“I’ll let you know what hotel we’re staying at,” Dana said.

“Oh, come on, can you please just stop it with the posturing?”

“He’s using us as bait. I refuse to be bait.”

“There’s no one to bait us. The note was a prank.”

“It was a death threat, Adam.”

“It said nothing about killing me. It said, what, I don’t even remember. Oh, yeah, it said I was going to wish I was never born. Come on, that means nothing. It’s something a kid in a schoolyard would say.”

“I don’t understand why you’re not taking it seriously.”

“Not taking it seriously? Come on, I had Clements down here right away, I had cops outside all night. I think I’m taking it very seriously, but I still think it was a prank.”

“A kid from the neighborhood wouldn’t do something like that.”

“You don’t know that. It sounded like a kid, I mean the language.”

“It sounded like somebody who’s angry, who wants to hurt you.”

“Explain to me how that makes any sense. Please just try to explain it. Somebody who robbed our house would come here the next day and put a note under the door? Why? To scare me? If somebody’s angry, wants revenge, why leave a note? See, so if you think about it, logically, it doesn’t make any sense. It had to be a prank, maybe not a kid from the neighborhood but maybe some nut who read about me in the paper. I’m sure that happens all the time when somebody’s front- page news. That’s why, you noticed, Clements wasn’t very concerned. He probably sees this kind of thing happen all the time. If our number was listed I bet we would’ve been getting threats all night.”

Dana had a strange look. She was zoning out, looking like she was barely aware he was in the room.

“What’s wrong?” Adam asked.

She seemed far away for a while longer; then she focused and said, “Nothing.”

“You see my point now, don’t you?”

“Gabriela didn’t rob our house:” said she. She sounded oddly distant.

“What? What’re you talking about?”

“She wouldn’t do that,” she said. “I could see her getting desperate, wanting to help her father, but I can’t see her actually breaking into our house. That isn’t something she’d do.”

“I disagree,” Adam said. He glanced at the clock- 8:26. Damn, he had to get going. “She had a relationship with Sanchez, she made him copies of our keys and got him the code to the alarm. It makes sense that she broke in.”

“Then who killed her?” Dana asked.

Adam didn’t have an answer to this, so he said, “I agree there are some holes.”

“Oh, really,” she said sarcastically. “You’ve come to that conclusion, huh?”

Adam couldn’t remember- was his appointment with David Rothman at nine or ten? If it was at nine he’d never make it.

Turning on his BlackBerry to check, he said, “You have to give the police a little more time. Clements seemed confident last night that they’ll get a break in the case. I bet you they’ll make an arrest by the end of the day. Meanwhile, the cops are right outside.”

Dana said something, but Adam was distracted, looking at his BlackBerry. Shit, it was at nine. “Sorry,” he said, “what was that?”

“I said I think this is all about your ego. You think if you run away you’ll be admitting you did something wrong.”

Adam considered this, then said, “When I was in ju nior high and kids threatened to beat me up every day after school, I never had a problem at all running away from them. Trust me, if I believed I was in any danger at all right now, or you or Marissa was in any danger, I’d have no problem running away. But in this case I just don’t think that’s necessary.”

“Yeah? And what if you’re wrong?”

It was 8:28.

“I know you don’t like it when I leave in middiscussion, but I have no choice,” he said. He gave her his usual quick kiss good- bye and then said, “I’ll call you in a couple of hours, okay?” and left.

Adam arrived at his office at a few minutes past nine. David Rothman was in the waiting area, reading Newsweek. “Morning, David, I’ll be with you in one sec,” Adam said and went toward his office. He passed Lauren in the corridor; they exchanged good mornings, and he noticed that she didn’t seem quite as cold and distant as she had yesterday. Adam hadn’t bought a newspaper on the way to work, but he’d glanced at other people’s papers on the subway and knew that at least he wasn’t frontpage news again. Hopefully there were no mentions of him at all in today’s papers and the whole story was starting to fade.

Adam got settled in, refilled the water pitcher, and then reviewed his notes on his previous sessions with David. Things had been going well in David’s therapy lately. He had been seeing Adam for over ten weeks now with various issues, including some associated with middle age, as he had recently turned fifty. His wife had a drinking problem, and he had associated code penden cy issues, as well as difficulty expressing his anger, to his wife and in general. When he started seeing Adam, he’d been acting out by having a series of one- night stands with women he’d picked up at bars, and Adam felt he exhibited several telltale signs of sex addiction. They’d been working on techniques for expressing his anger, and, with Adam’s guidance, he had managed to convince his wife to go to AA. While he still expressed the desire to philander, they had been working on various behavior modification techniques, and David hadn’t cheated on his wife at all under Adam’s care.

Adam returned to the waiting room and said, “David, come on in.” David entered the office and settled on the couch, and he and Adam exchanged their usual small talk. David worked in advertising, and his company had a skybox at Madison Square Garden, so they discussed the Knicks for a minute or so. Adam was hoping the shooting wouldn’t come up, but those hopes were dashed when David said, “Oh, yeah, so I heard about what happened. Is everything okay with that?”

“Yes, thank you,” Adam said. “It was a difficult situation, but my family’s handling it.”

He was trying to sound professional and curt and not to be at all evasive, though he was eager to get on to another topic.

“That’s good,” David said. “I imagine stuff like that gets blown out of proportion in the news.”

“It does,” Adam said flatly. “So how’re you doing?”

David began by talking about an ongoing issue he had with a coworker he didn’t get along with, and Adam noticed that he seemed particularly agitated- shifting around a lot, crossing and uncrossing his legs. It was hard for Adam to be as attentive as he normally was during a session. He couldn’t help wondering if David’s agitation had to do with what he’d heard about the shooting or if it meant he didn’t feel comfortable with Adam as his therapist. Adam was mulling over whether to be assertive and ask David what was bothering him or to ignore the whole thing.

But then Adam realized he was way off base when David said, “So anyway, I, uh, met a woman the other night.”

Well, that explained the agitation; this was a major setback for David.

Wanting to keep his patient feeling reassured and at ease, Adam asked in a very normal, nonjudgmental tone, “Where did you meet her?”

“Online,” David said. He crossed his legs, then uncrossed them again. His forehead was glistening with sweat. “I mean, not online, I mean through an online service… Ashley Madison.”

Adam knew of Ashley Madison and other similar extramarital dating services. Several of his patients frequently met sex partners through these sites.

“Okay,” Adam said calmly, waiting for David to continue on his own.

David explained how he’d registered with Ashley Madison and then had arranged to meet a woman, Linda- who was married with two kids- at a hotel and had sex with her. When he described what had happened, and especially when he mentioned the sex and how “hot and raw” it was, David started talking faster and louder, and Adam could tell how exhilarating the whole experience had been for him. It was very similar to the way a drug addict would behave when describing the experience of doing drugs; in fact, in a previous session David had told Adam about the coke habit he’d kicked several years ago. This had hardly been surprising to Adam, since most sex addicts have other addictions and are frequently codependent. All in all, David was just about as textbook as they get.

As David finished telling the story, his lips started quivering, and then the tears came, flowing down his cheeks, and he said, “I don’t know why…” He was crying harder and had to get hold of himself. Finally he said, “I don’t know why I keep doing this. I don’t know… I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

David had cried before during sessions- he was a sympathy seeker- and Adam gave him tissues and reassured him, saying things like “It’s okay” and “I know how hard it is.” David, as usual, was blaming himself for his behavior, playing the victim, saying, “I feel like such a piece of shit. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing with my life anymore.” Adam advised him not to beat himself up about it too badly and reminded him that the Internet could be very tempting for anybody and that these things happened, using the same tactics he’d employ in any similar therapy session, trying to support and reassure his patient. All the time, though, he couldn’t help feeling like a total fraud. Who the hell was he to counsel anyone when his own life had been such a mess lately? And trying to treat David for philandering was the biggest joke of all, what with David sitting on the very couch where Adam had screwed Sharon Wasserman. Adam was telling David, “You don’t have to feel like you always have to be perfect,” and meanwhile he couldn’t help imaging Sharon on top of him, riding him, his hands on her breasts. Adam told David, “Just because you want to have sex with another woman doesn’t mean you have to actually do it,” remembering how he’d said Sharon’s name again and again when he came.

When the session ended, Adam felt guilty for charging David. Normally Adam was extremely attentive and used his instincts to anticipate where a session was headed and find the right openings to challenge his patients’ behavior, but he felt like he hadn’t helped David as much as he could’ve. For example, instead of letting David go on with his self- loathing, Adam should have been tougher and said something like “It sounds like you’re ready to leave your marriage.” Adam knew that David had no desire to get a divorce, but this could have helped David begin to acknowledge his reasons for philandering. But today Adam had been so distracted with his own thoughts and self- doubt that he’d felt off, out of sync, like he’d missed all of the obvious openings.

He had two more morning sessions and, as with David, Adam felt out of sorts, off his game. He had no doubt that the shooting and related issues were seriously affecti night.”

Well, that explained the agitation; this was a major setback for David.

Wanting to keep his patient feeling reassured and at ease, Adam asked in a very normal, nonjudgmental tone, “Where did you meet her?”

“Online,” David said. He crossed his legs, then uncrossed them again. His forehead was glistening with sweat. “I mean, not online, I mean through an online service… Ashley Madison.”

Adam knew of Ashley Madison and other similar extramarital dating services. Several of his patients frequently met sex partners through these sites.

“Okay,” Adam said calmly, waiting for David to continue on his own.

David explained how he’d registered with Ashley Madison and then had arranged to meet a woman, Linda- who was married with two kids- at a hotel and had sex with her. When he described what had happened, and especially when he mentioned the sex and how “hot and raw” it was, David started talking faster and louder, and Adam could tell how exhilarating the whole experience had been for him. It was very similar to the way a drug addict would behave when describing the experience of doing drugs; in fact, in a previous session David had told Adam about the coke habit he’d kicked several years ago. This had hardly been surprising to Adam, since most sex addicts have other addictions and are frequently codependent. All in all, David was just about as textbook as they get.

As David finished telling the story, his lips started quivering, and then the tears came, flowing down his cheeks, and he said, “I don’t know why…” He was crying harder and had to get hold of himself. Finally he said, “I don’t know why I keep doing this. I don’t know… I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

David had cried before during sessions- he was a sympathy seeker- and Adam gave him tissues and reassured him, saying things like “It’s okay” and “I know how hard it is.” David, as usual, was blaming himself for his behavior, playing the victim, saying, “I feel like such a piece of shit. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing with my life anymore.” Adam advised him not to beat himself up about it too badly and reminded him that the Internet could be very tempting for anybody and that these things happened, using the same tactics he’d employ in any similar therapy session, trying to support and reassure his patient. All the time, though, he couldn’t help feeling like a total fraud. Who the hell was he to counsel anyone when his own life had been such a mess lately? And trying to treat David for philandering was the biggest joke of all, what with David sitting on the very couch where Adam had screwed Sharon Wasserman. Adam was telling David, “You don’t have to feel like you always have to be perfect,” and meanwhile he couldn’t help imaging Sharon on top of him, riding him, his hands on her breasts. Adam told David, “Just because you want to have sex with another woman doesn’t mean you have to actually do it,” remembering how he’d said Sharon’s name again and again when he came.

When the session ended, Adam felt guilty for charging David. Normally Adam was extremely attentive and used his instincts to anticipate where a session was headed and find the right openings to challenge his patients’ behavior, but he felt like he hadn’t helped David as much as he could’ve. For example, instead of letting David go on with his self- loathing, Adam should have been tougher and said something like “It sounds like you’re ready to leave your marriage.” Adam knew that David had no desire to get a divorce, but this could have helped David begin to acknowledge his reasons for philandering. But today Adam had been so distracted with his own thoughts and self- doubt that he’d felt off, out of sync, like he’d missed all of the obvious openings.

He had two more morning sessions and, as with David, Adam felt out of sorts, off his game. He had no doubt that the shooting and related issues were seriously affecting his performance at work. If this continued and he couldn’t work through it, he’d have to take some time off to clear his head, maybe go down to Florida after all.

During a break in his schedule, he went around the corner to the deli to get a cup of coffee and a muffin, and on his way back he checked his voice mail and saw that he had three messages and four missed calls from Dana. She had called and left a message on his work voice mail as well. Jesus Christ, what was going on now?

He called her, and she picked up during the first ring and said, “I’ve been calling you.”

“I’ve been with patients all morning, what’s going on?”

“She’s HIV positive.”

He thought she was talking about Marissa. Feeling like he might pass out, he managed to say, “What the hell’re you talking about?”

“Detective Clements just called and told me they found out Gabriela had HIV. They found her medicine or whatever in her apartment.”

“Jesus,”he said, catching his breath.“I thought you meant…”

“What?” Dana said.

“Never mind,” Adam said, still light- headed.

“Can you believe it?” Dana continued. “Clements said even her sister didn’t know. She might’ve been infected for years.”

Adam didn’t understand why Dana was calling him so urgently to tell him about this. “So is that it?” he asked.

“Aren’t you shocked?” Dana asked.

Actually Adam wasn’t shocked. Her boyfriend had had HIV, so why was it out of the realm of possibility that Gabriela had been infected?

“Oh, and that’s not all,” Dana went on. “They found out she was a drug addict, too, heroin, just like her boyfriend. Can you believe it? She was a junkie and had AIDS while she was working for us.”

“Let’s not start with that again,” Adam said. “That’s not how AIDS, HIV, is transmitted.”

“I’m talking about the deceit,” Dana said. “That woman lied to our fucking faces for years. I can’t tell you how furious I am.”

“You have a right to be furious,” Adam said.

“Aren’t you furious?”

“Of course I’m furious.”

“You don’t sound furious.”

“I’m standing on the corner of Fifty- eighth and Madison,” Adam said. “Sorry, but there’s a limit to the amount of furiousness I can express right now.”

Dana didn’t seem amused and said, “Well, it was nice talking to you too,” and hung up.

Several minutes later, as he rode in the elevator back up to his office, he decided that although hanging up on him had been melodramatic and childish, Dana had made a good point. Being so wrapped up in what was going on with the police and the media, and then, on top of everything, receiving that threatening note, maybe he hadn’t been expressing his anger very effectively lately, and this was likely contributing to all the symptoms of anxiety and self- doubt he’d been experiencing.

His one o’clock appointment, Helen, didn’t show up. Helen had never missed an appointment before, and Adam assumed that it was related to the shooting and that he had permanently lost another patient. His two o’clock, Patricia, a banker with panic disorder, showed up, but Adam felt he was as ineffec tive and off the mark as he’d been with his earlier patients. Patricia didn’t seem pleased at the end of the session either, and when Adam asked her if she wanted to make an appointment for her next session now, she said in a somewhat distant tone, “I’ll call you,” even though she normally made her appointments in person. Adam knew that something had to change fast, because at this rate either all his patients were going to stop coming to see him on their own or he was going to drive them away.

At four o’clock, Adam went down the hallway to Carol’s office for his session with her, and he felt like he seriously needed it. Carol, waiting in her chair, didn’t say hello, just “Come in.”

She was slim, in her late fifties, always wore her gray hair in a neat bun. She’d been a mentor to Adam and also a confidant. He often discussed patients with her, and she always had sound, rational advice. He was eager to talk to her about everything he’d been going though lately, but first he felt like he needed to express his feelings about her and his other coworkers, so he said, “Before we start, I just want you to know that I feel incredibly attacked and judged by all of you.”

Carol, holding her pad, was sitting calmly across from him. “Attacked?” she asked as if surprised. “Why do you feel attacked?”

The problem with being in therapy as a therapist was that Adam always felt one step ahead of Carol. He always knew exactly where she was going with her questioning, what types of feelings she was trying to elicit from him. It was like being a football coach who had access to the other team’s playbook. It was still worthwhile for him to see her- expressing how he felt was important in itself, and simply talking about his problems always helped him understand himself better- but he felt like he’d never be able to make true progress in therapy because he’d always be slightly guarded and would never open up fully. Right now, for instance, he knew that she knew exactly why he felt attacked, but she was asking the rhetorical question to get him to express his anger more fully. He knew what she was doing because it was the same tactic he would take with his own patients.

Going along with it, just to express himself for the sake of expressing himself, he said, “I just felt incredibly judged by everyone, like I was guilty till proven innocent. I felt uncomfortable just being here yesterday.”

“Do you feel uncomfortable today?”

“Yes, I do. To a slightly lesser extent, but I feel like I’m… I don’t know… an outcast.”

Adam knew that probably sounded very whiney- like his own patients sometimes sounded- but he already felt better, just from verbalizing how he was feeling.

“Well, I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable,” Carol said. “That certainly wasn’t my intention.”

She was backing off, giving him space to continue to vent. She also wanted to reestablish trust in the therapist- patient relationship, to make him feel safe and relaxed.

“As you can imagine, this hasn’t been an easy situation for me to be in,” he said.

“I’ll bet,” she said. “It’s probably bringing up a lot of issues for you.”

He was surprised she was taking the session in this direction so quickly.

“What kind of issues?” he asked.

“Issues of control or lack of control,” she said. “Issues with your family- your current family and your parents. You grew up in the same house you live in now, didn’t you?”

“You’re right.” He hadn’t thought much about this connection to his past that now seemed so obvious. “It is bringing up issues with my parents. It’s a very familiar feeling of being blamed, of being judged.”

“And it’s making you feel like the victim again,” she added.

He’d told her in previous sessions that he was often picked on as a kid and was unpopu lar in elementary school and ju nior high, and they’d talked about how these experiences had scarred him. He remembered that just this morning, with Dana, he’d brought up running away from the bullies in school. There had to be some significance to this.

He told her all about the night of the shooting, mentioning that he had been having the recurring dream about the giant black rat who’d transformed from a female patient when Marissa woke him up. He was able to describe all the events in a very clear, matter- of- fact way, and it felt good to talk about it in a safe setting, where he didn’t feel threatened. It was much different than when he talked to the press and the police, when he felt like he had to choose his words carefully because everything was being scrutinized

He told her the police believed his maid, Gabriela, had been involved in the robbery, and he made sure that he expressed his anger about this properly. He didn’t just tell her he was angry in a detached way. He made sure that he felt the anger, that he was experiencing the anger.

“I can’t believe she was able to deceive all of us for so long,” he said. “I’m usually so perceptive, nothing gets past me. I feel so furious. I feel so wronged.”

This was good- he was expressing himself well, using “I” statements.

“You didn’t know,” Carol said.

“But I feel so hurt by what she did to me,” Adam said. “If I’d just caught on sooner, I could’ve fired her and prevented all of this. They say she was a drug addict, and I don’t know how she was able to keep that a secret. I can always tell when somebody’s lying to me. It’s my best skill.”

“Addicts can be very clever,” she said. He’d said the same thing many times to his own patients.

He went on, describing what had happened after the shooting- how he’d expected to be treated like a hero and was shocked when he saw the way he was being portrayed by the media.

“I know how ridiculous this sounds now,” he said, “but I thought I’d be famous because of this, famous in a good way. I mean, you can’t believe how caught up I got. I thought I’d be the next Dr. Phil. I thought they’d film a movie about my life.”

“It was an exciting feeling,” she said. “It made you feel confident.”

“Yes,” he said, “and my glossophobia subsided, which was a very exciting, seductive feeling, too. Also, I have to admit, I enjoyed the attention. I know that’s childish, that as an adult I should want respect, not attention, but it felt very seductive- and addictive, which is strange for me because I don’t have an addictive personality.”

“It’s easy to feel seduced by your emotions when your self- esteem is low, when you’re unhappy in other aspects of your life. You experienced a psychological high, it was a very powerful feeling. Do you think you don’t get enough respect in your life?”

He knew what she was trying to do. She was challenging him, trying to draw out a defensive response, but he went with it, saying, “Yeah, sometimes. As you know, this can be a thankless profession.”

“Well, your colleagues respect you.”

“I haven’t been so sure about that.”

“You can’t expect people not to feel a little awkward,” Carol said. “It was an unusual situation, and I think everyone handles these sorts of things in their own way.”

He could see her point.

“What about at home?” she asked. “Has your marriage been good lately? Do you feel respected and appreciated?”

He thought about his bickering with Dana and his problems with Marissa.

“No, I don’t,” he said, “and I know I probably haven’t been doing a lot to change that. What happened the other night certainly didn’t help.”

“You said you don’t feel like you did anything wrong that night.”

“I don’t. Well, except for shooting him so many times. I think that was a mistake.”

“Every decision you make can’t be the perfect one, Adam. You can only try to do your best.”

“I know, you’re right,” he said,“but…there’s something else.” He sipped some water, collecting his thoughts, then said, “There’s something… I didn’t tell anyone yet. I didn’t tell the police. I didn’t even tell Dana.”

As a seasoned therapist who’d heard it all, nothing usually shocked Carol, but Adam noticed her growing concern. “Something about the shooting?” she asked.

“Yes,” Adam said.

She was waiting intently for him to continue.

“I didn’t lie to the police about anything,” Adam said. “Everything I told them was entirely truthful, exactly as I remembered it. But I… well, I omitted something.”

He paused again, wondering if he was doing the right thing, starting to tell Carol about this. He wasn’t concerned about her talking to the police- she wouldn’t, couldn’t violate their confidentiality- but he was afraid it could affect their professional relationship. Well, it was too late now, and if you couldn’t tell your therapist about these sorts of things, who could you tell?

“Before I shot the guy, Sanchez, he said something,” Adam said. “It all happened so fast, it was hard to pro cess it at that moment, but I remembered it afterward. He said… I think he said, ‘Please don’t.’ That’s all I heard, those two words. I still know I did the right thing, because even if he was saying Please don’t kill me or Please don’t shoot me or whatever, there was no way in that situation I should’ve believed him. I mean, I did see him reach for something. It might’ve been his flashlight, but it looked like a gun, and he could’ve shot me. He could’ve shot my whole family.”

“So what exactly do you feel guilty about?”

“I don’t know if guilt is the right word,” he said. “I feel… regret. I feel like I made a mistake.”

“You’ve made mistakes before, haven’t you?”

“None that involved killing somebody.”

“It happens every day, Adam. You think policemen and firemen don’t regret their decisions from time to time? You have to do the right thing and be forthcoming with the police, but you can’t blame yourself, and you can’t let it interfere with other aspects of your life. Besides, you said you thought he had a gun, right?”

“Right,” Adam said.

“So yes, you heard him say those two words, but it happened very quickly, and you don’t know for sure what he was trying to say or why he was saying it. It sounds to me like you’re making a lot of assumptions.”

He was aware that she was just supporting him, that she didn’t actually believe any of this. Still, the pro cess was helping.

“I feel shame about what I did,” he said. “I feel anger. I feel… foolish.”

“Everyone has regrets,” she said. “You don’t have to beat yourself up about it. You had a lot of unexpressed anger, and then an event happened, something beyond your control. Someone broke into your house and you had to make a fast decision, but it was the best decision you could’ve made at the time, under the circumstances.”

“I really need to reparent myself, don’t I?” Adam asked.

The need for reparenting had been a major issue in previous sessions. Carol knew all about his emotionally withholding parents and his related propensity towardself- loathing and self- blaming.

“I think it could be useful to use some of your reparenting techniques,” she said. “Just don’t be so hard on yourself. So maybe you made a mistake, or maybe you didn’t make a mistake. Remember, Adam- you’re allowed to make mistakes once in a while. Every decision you make doesn’t have to be perfect.”

Her advice was fairly generic and, almost verbatim, what he would have said to one of his own patients. Still, it had resonance for Adam and really seemed to hit home. He thought, Every decision you make doesn’t have to be perfect, every decision you make doesn’t have to be perfect, and he experienced a relaxed yet intense buzz, an emotional high he sometimes had after a particularly productive therapy session.

He had two more patients in the afternoon- he was supposed to have three more but had another no- show-and he felt much more effective than he had earlier in the day, much more like his usual self. Whenever any self- doubt crept in he’d think, Every decision you make doesn’t have to be perfect, and he’d feel instantly reassured.

But Adam knew that this was only a temporary ego boost, that he still had major issues to deal with if he wanted keep his self- esteem high. He had to be easier on himself, not criticize himself as much, and- this was key-he had to stop neglecting himself. He was such a people- pleaser, so focused on patients and helping others, that he hadn’t been paying nearly enough attention to his own needs. He had to start taking the advice he gave to his patients every day and apply it to his own life, and this started with his most important personal relationship- his marriage. He hadn’t been expressing himself well to Dana at all lately, and he’d let too much anger and resentment go unresolved.

At the end of the day, when the other therapists had left, he went into his office and closed the door and turned on classical music- Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos- very loud. Then he kneeled in front of the couch and started punching the couch cushion as hard as he could. Physical activity was a great way to vent and relieve stress, and he always suggested that his patients express anger in a safe way, like screaming or punching pillows. Imagining that the cushion was people who had done him wrong, like Gabriela, the reporters from the Post and News, and Grace Williams from New York Magazine, gave his punches some extra oomph.

After about five minutes of good cushion pounding, he felt much more relaxed and ready to do some actual problem solving. One area of his marriage that certainly needed improving was his and Dana’s sex life. They didn’t do it nearly enough, and if he were his own therapist, he would tell his patient to schedule time for sex, make it a priority, and be more creative sexually. So before Adam left the office he called Dana and told her he wanted to make love tonight at ten o’clock.

“Why?” she asked.

Adam wasn’t sure whether she meant why did he want to have sex with her or why at ten o’clock as opposed to eleven or midnight. Deciding to take a less confrontational approach, he said, “Because I love you very much and I miss being close with you.”

Okay, so maybe he was overdoing it a little, but he felt like he was communicating honestly, not apologizing for his emotions.

Later, on his way to the subway, Adam stopped off at a Ricky’s drugstore where he remembered seeing an adult section and bought a sexy cheerleader’s outfit in Dana’s size. Several times she had told him about a fantasy she had of making love while dressed as a cheerleader, but they’d never explored it because he’d never had a cheerleader fantasy himself. That had been selfish of him, to flat- out reject her fantasy. He certainly wasn’t opposed to her dressing as a cheerleader if it was a turn- on for her, and it was wrong of him to have stonewalled her like that.

At home, he noticed that Dana seemed to be in a much better mood than she’d been in this morning and the past couple of days. She was starting to believe that Gabriela had been the second intruder in their house the other night and that the threatening note had been left by some prankster. She was also encouraged by a new theory the police had, that Gabriela may have been killed by a drug dealer she was in debt to and who possibly had nothing to do with Carlos Sanchez.

“I thought she needed the money for her father,” Adam said.

“She did,” Dana said, “but her sister doesn’t think she would’ve robbed a house to pay for her father’s operation, and I don’t believe it either. I know she lied to us about a lot of things, but I can’t imagine her actually coming into our house to rob us unless she was hooked on drugs and needed to pay off a drug dealer.”

This logic made sense to Adam, and he hoped it was a sign that things were on their way to returning to normal.

Dana cooked a nice dinner- chicken cutlets, rice pilaf, a salad- and they ate at the dining room table, finishing the merlot from last night. Marissa was out with her friends in Manhattan, seeing some band, so they had the whole house to themselves. Adam actually couldn’t remember the last time he and Dana had a quiet, romantic dinner alone, and he made sure to ask her a lot of questions about her day and things that were going on with her in general, knowing that in the past she’d had the complaint that he didn’t take enough interest in her.

At one point Dana asked, “Why are you acting so nice?”

Her tone was vaguely accusing, but he answered honestly, “I know I haven’t been the greatest husband in the world lately. I want things to improve around here, that’s all. I’d like it if we made the marriage more of a priority.”

He was purposely trying to use I-statements so she couldn’t interpret anything he was saying as criticism. Her eyes started to tear, but he knew it was because she was so happy, realizing how much he meant to her. He reached across the table, held her hand gently, and said, “Remember our date tonight.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m a little tired.”

If she’d said this last week, he might’ve backed down, but instead he did what he would’ve instructed a patient to do in a similar situation-don’t be passive, be assertive; ask for what you want and you’ll get it- and he said, “I like it when we make love and we’re both tired. I think it’s sexy.”

That was perfect- rather than accusing her of not wanting to have sex, he’d expressed himself in a positive way without getting confrontational.

“Okay,” she said, “but I have to do the dishes first and clean up.”

“I’ll help,” he said eagerly.

He hardly ever helped her clean up after dinner- another common complaint of hers- and he could tell how much she appreciated him making the extra effort.

Later, he entered their bedroom, holding the bag with the cheerleader’s outfit behind his back. She was lying in bed in her bathrobe, reading some hardcover novel.

“I got something for you,” he said.

“What?” She seemed more worried than intrigued.

“You have to close your eyes,” he said.

She smiled as if she thought he was joking and went back to reading.

“I’m serious,” he said.

She looked at him again and asked, “What is it?”

“You have to close your eyes,” he said.

She breathed deeply, as if it would take an enormous effort, then finally shut her eyes.

“No peeking,” he said as he took the blue and gold outfit out of the bag. Then he said, “Okay, open up.”

Her reaction wasn’t exactly what he’d expected. She seemed, if not shocked, then slightly offended.

“What is that?” she asked.

“What does it look like?” he said, smiling, waiting for her to join in.

“You don’t expect me to wear that, do you?”

“What’s wrong? I remember you said you had a fantasy about this, right?”

“When did I tell you that? When I was twenty- five? Do you seriously think I’m going to put that thing on?”

She’d told him about her cheerleader fantasy a few years ago, okay, maybe five years ago tops, but he didn’t want to get into an argument about it. At the same time, he didn’t want to keep his resentful feelings to himself.

Trying to express himself in a nonthreatening way, he said, “I thought you’d be excited. But if you don’t feel comfortable about it I understand, though I thought you’d be… I don’t know… turned on by it.”

“What is that thing, a size two? Even if I wanted to put it on, I’d have to use a shoehorn to get into it. Come on, what did you expect me to do, get up on the bed and do a cheer for you?”

Actually that was exactly what Adam had expected her to do, but he was starting to feel attacked, belittled, and he said, “I feel like you’re getting upset with me for no reason. I feel resentful toward you right now.”

“Can you please stop talking to me like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re one of your fucking patients. I’m not your therapist, I’m your wife.”

He knew this was just more of her stonewalling, her typical way of deflecting conflict.

Validating her rather than confronting her, he said, “I understand if you don’t want to wear it. I just want to work on ways for us to get closer in this marriage.”

“This is how you get closer?” she said. “We haven’t made love in I don’t know how long and then you come home with some outfit an anorexic sixteenyear- old would wear, talking to me like you’re lying on a couch?”

“I feel like you’re not being fair,” he said. “I feel like you’re purposely distorting everything I-”

“Oh, stop with that crap,” she said. “What if I came home, out of the blue, with some slinky Speedo and made you put it on?”

She was acting defensive again, but he remained calm and objective and said, “First of all, I’m not making you do anything. Second of all, if I’d told you I had a fantasy about wearing a Speedo, no, I wouldn’t be upset at all.”

“Fine,” she said, “I’ll get you a Speedo tomorrow and you can wear it. I’ll make sure it’s four sizes too small too.”

“Why do you always have to-” He caught himself using the word “always,” which was disrespectful. He took a couple of deep breaths to subdue his anger, not wanting to get sucked into an argument, then said, “If it’s something you feel uncomfortable with, I understand. I can return it, it’s no big deal.” He put the cheerleader’s outfit back into the bag and got into bed with her.

He started kissing her neck and under her chin. She was stiff, not reacting at all.

Finally she said, “Well, you really did a good job of setting the mood, didn’t you?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. He always told his patients to compliment their lovers, so he said, “You look so beautiful tonight.”

“You’re just saying that,” she said.

“No, honestly,” he said. “I know I haven’t been telling you that nearly enough lately, but it’s true, you look very beautiful.”

He started kissing her again, undoing her robe. During sex, he continued to kiss her and looked in her eyes as much as possible because in a marriage counseling session she’d said that it bothered her that he didn’t look into her eyes when they made love and that made her feel distant. Maybe he was overdoing it because she seemed uncomfortable and kept looking away.

“Is something wrong?” he asked assertively.

“You keep staring at me,” she said.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s just you’re so beautiful, I can’t stop looking at you.”

Finally, after they switched from the missionary to the woman- on- top positions several times, Dana seemed to have an orgasm. He was starting to lose his erection, which had been happening a lot the last few years, so he did what sometimes worked- he blurred his vision and imagined Dana was Sharon.

“Is everything okay?” Dana asked.

Adam didn’t know if she meant okay with his erection or if she’d noticed the weird look in his eyes.

“Fine,” he said and went back to imagining Sharon’s full, heavy breasts, the scent of her perfume. At one point he almost blurted out Sharon’s name, but he managed to restrain himself.

Adam lay in bed next to Dana, not touching her. She was sleeping soundly, snoring, but he was restless. Finally he went downstairs to get a snack and watch some TV.

It was past midnight, and Marissa wasn’t home yet. Now that Adam was on his way to fixing his marriage, he wanted to make it two for two and improve his relationship with his daughter. He was tired of Marissa and all of her acting out and attention- seeking behavior; it was time for some serious tough love. From now on, for as long as she was living in his house, he wasn’t going to let her come and go as she pleased. She was going to have to tell him where she was and who she was with and when she was coming home. He wasn’t going to allow any more drugs in the house- that bong was going in the garbage pronto, that was for sure- and he wasn’t going to let her parade strange boyfriends through the house anymore either. He was going to meet all her boyfriends first, and if she didn’t like it she could pack her things and move out.

He started falling asleep on the couch, so he went back upstairs. As soon as he lay down he heard voices from outside, Marissa and somebody else, a guy. He went to the window and looked out. From his angle, he couldn’t see them; they were probably right below him, near the front door. He couldn’t make out what they were saying either, and then for a little while he couldn’t hear them at all. The police car was still there, parked out in front, hopefully for the last night. Police protection seemed so unnecessary now.

Adam heard Marissa call out, “Good night,” and then he saw a guy he’d never seen before- longish hair, a leather jacket- heading away from the house toward the sidewalk. The guy didn’t exactly look like a doctor or a lawyer. God, where did she find these losers?

Adam heard Marissa’s footsteps on the stairs. He waited until he heard the door to her room close; then he went down to make sure she’d set the alarm properly.