Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud

Forty

When you first came to see me,” Dr. Susan Silverman said, “you said that you felt as if you lacked self-worth and purpose because Richie was about to marry someone else.”

“As I recall,” I said, “I did a lot of blubbering that day about the one whose name must not be mentioned.”

She smiled a smile that made Mona Lisa look as if she were in the midst of a laugh riot.

“Kathryn,” she said.

“Her,” I said.

It occurred to me I sounded like Frank Belson talking about his new boss Captain Glass.

“And if there has been one consistent thread since that time,” she said, “it has been your desire to understand both the depth and complexity of your feelings for Richie.”

She was right, of course. I had been trying to deal with that in this room, as well as the daddy issues that she had made me confront for the first time in my life. And was doing better with it all. I knew there were qualities, especially ones involving strength and confidence, that both Richie and Phil Randall shared. I knew that as quick and funny as Richie could be, my father was quicker, and funnier. I knew I relied on both for their strength and confidence, even as I felt that challenged my own confidence and made me feel weak, almost as if I were existing on a fault line.

Susan Silverman had once asked me what she said would sound like a simple question, and was not.

“Is Richie your type?” she said.

I told her I had never thought about it, what my type was. The best I could do that particular day, and in many of the days since, was admit that someone I considered the love of my life might only partially be my type. And that I hated his strength as much as I loved it.

At least I did far less blubbering these days.

So there was that.

She wore a white sweater today and a black leather skirt and her skin looked as flawless as ever, and so did her thick, gleaming black hair. Her necklace was a freshwater pearl with small gold bands crisscrossed in front of it. Her fingernails were crimson. Susan Silverman, as usual, made me think of an old David Letterman line: She looked like a million damn dollars.

I wore a gray Michael Kors sweater dress I had bought on sale, with shoes to match. I always dressed up for her, every single time, as if we weren’t just therapist and patient but having an ongoing fashion-off, even though I knew the competition existed only in my mind.

“We’ve come a long way since then,” she said.

“Have we?” I said.

She didn’t respond. She rarely did when I was the one asking a question. I had called her the day before upon returning from Providence and asked when her soonest opening was. It turned out to be late in the afternoon today. I had spent the hours between lunch with my father and my appointment trying in vain to find out anything about where Maria Cataldo had lived her life after leaving Boston, and had run into one dead end after another. The best I could do was her last residence, in Providence, not far from Federal Hill, the address listed on her death certificate. I had not yet been able to find out who owned the house because the tax assessor’s office in Providence had closed early today. But I planned to take a ride down there myself tomorrow and talk to her neighbors. You just keep poking around and hope that eventually something will fly up at you.

For now here the two of us were, in the office on Linnaean Street, with the last of the afternoon sun coming through the blinds behind her. There was the soft scent of perfume in the room, hers or mine, or both.

“On some basic, practical level, I know my father is right and Richie is right, and even the old gangsters are right, and I should let this go,” I said.

“But you remain resistant to the notion of quitting,” she said.

“It all started with Richie,” I said.

“It often does,” she said.

“Man of my dreams,” I said.

“Is it still about him, or has it become more about you?” she said.

She was completely still and self-contained, not taking notes in this moment. But as always, I still had the sense that she was in motion somehow and that I was trying to keep up with her. There were many times when I left this office feeling better than I had when I’d entered, but I often left feeling exhausted as well.

“There is a part of me pushing back against powerful men telling me to do something I myself have not chosen to do,” I said.

“The old men are powerful,” Susan said. “Your father has always held a position of power in your life. As has Richie.”

“This isn’t a me-too moment,” I said. “But they have no right to impose their will on mine.”

“Nor should they.”

“You want to know the truth?” I said.

There might have been another slight upturn to the corners of her mouth.

She said, “My experience is that the truth serves everyone best in here.”

“I get angry when they treat me like a little girl,” I said.

“Angry or less empowered.”

A statement of fact more than a question, as if she were answering for both of us.

“Both,” I said.

“But are you more empowered to solve the mystery,” she said, “or to prove a point that you will not be cowed or told to stand down, even by men who care about you?”

“Both,” I said again.

Her dark eyes were alive, alight, and completely focused on me.

“May I say something that might sound less than politically correct?”

“Of course.”

“I can’t let some old goombah threaten me,” I said.

She nodded.

“And I always have hated being told what to do,” I said.

“Only by the men in your life?”

“Not just them. But yes.”

“What about Richie?”

“We’ve discussed this,” I said. “This is my chance to protect him.”

“And in the past, you have always felt, especially when going to him for help, that he was protecting you.”

“Yes.”

“But you will allow your friend Spike to assist you, and even protect you if need be.”

“Spike asks nothing in return.”

“But Richie does?”

“He wants me in return.”

“Something you are unwilling to give.”

“At least not in total.”

“To go back to the beginning,” Susan Silverman said, “you were shattered when you thought you had lost him to another woman.”

“I felt my own sense of loss defining me,” I said. “Even consuming me.”

“And making you feel powerless.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Loss is a defining and consuming thing,” she said.

“Oh, baby,” I said.

Susan Silverman smiled fully now, eyes and face and teeth. A rare thing from her. It was as if one more light had suddenly been turned on in the room, or the sunlight outside her window.

“Oh, ha!” she said.

“‘Oh, ha’?” I said.

“It’s a combination of ‘oh, ho’ and ‘aha,’ she said, still smiling.

“Is that an expression you learned at Harvard?” I said.

“Actually,” Susan Silverman said, “I got it from the man of my dreams.”