“We’ve been through this,” I said.
“And each week we become different people,” she said. “Sometimes different people with different answers. This time you said her name.”
“Without my depression,” I said. “The few times anxiety takes over. I shake. I can’t do anything. I walk till I’m exhausted. Even Mildred Pierce doesn’t help. I think… you know all this.”
“You would rather be depressed than anxious,” she said, continuing to work on my burnt offering.
“Is that a question or an observation?”
“Your choice.”
“Yes, I would rather be depressed,” I said.
“You owe it to Catherine to live depressed and guilty. You want to hide, not feel and slowly die, a hermit, a saint who does not deserve life.”
“I know.”
“I’m just recapitulating,” she said. “Do they have flavors other than chocolate?”
“Yes.”
“Next time if you remember, bring almond or something,” she said.
“I’ll do that.”
“Change is good, small stimulation from small changes. I just segued from my own taste to a metaphoric reference to your state of mind.”
“I noticed,” I said.
“You were meant to. You wouldn’t be one of my favorite clients if you couldn’t follow what I say.”
“I thought I was your favorite,” I said.
“You are part of an elite group.”
“Am I making progress?” I asked.
“Do you want to make progress?” she asked in return.
Good question.
“I don’t know.”
“You still seeing Sally?”
“Yes, tonight. Why?”
“You can turn in your blanket of depression for something else,” she said. “Like coming back to life with a real person.”
“I’m not giving up my wife,” I said.
“You said her name,” Ann said with a smile, pointing her finger at me. “Progress. I’m not asking you to give her up. I’m asking you to place her gently inside you where she belongs and go on with your life.”
I shook my head and said, “We keep saying the same things.”
“But in different ways and… tell me, Lewis, are you starting to feel different?”
“Yes,” I said.
“And it makes you anxious?”
“Angry.”
“At who? Who are you angry with?”
“You.”
“Say something about her,” Ann said, leaning back.
“What?”
“Your wife. Did she do anything that annoyed you?”
I closed my eyes, and shook my head “no.”
“She was perfect,” Ann said. “Nobody’s perfect. Remember the last line of Some Like It Hot? When Joe B. Brown finds out Jack Lemmon isn’t a woman? ‘Nobody’s perfect,’ he says.”
“She left doors and drawers open,” I said. “Medicine cabinet, kitchen cabinets, dresser drawers. All the time.”
“And what did you do?” Ann prompted.
“I closed them.”
“Never got irritated?”
“For a while. Then…”
“You liked her having little faults?”
“I guess,” I said. “I think I can remember everything in those cabinets and drawers.”
“Do you want to remember them?”
“No… yes. This isn’t fun.”
“It’s not supposed to be fun. You don’t know how to have fun yet.”
Ann stood up and jogged in place a few seconds.
“Knee tightens,” she said, sitting again. “You showed me her photograph. She was pretty.”
I nodded, seriously considering never coming back here again.
“Lewis, you are not pretty.”
“I know. We… she picked me. We had…”
“Fun?”
“A lot in common,” I said. “Movies, books. We found the same things funny. Monty Python, Thin Man movies, Rocky and Bullwinkle.”
“Moose and squirrel,” Ann said in a terrible imitation of either Natasha or Boris. “What?”
Something must have broken through. I bit my lower lip.
“Sometimes she called me Rocky,” I said. “If I was being particularly dense, she called me Bullwinkle. I… I called her… No more.”
Ann clapped her hands and rocked forward once.
“Perfect. Are you still going to the beach?”
“When I can.”
“And the gulls, do you still hear them speak?”
“Gulls don’t speak,” I said. “Sometimes their squawk… I’ve told you this… Sometimes their talk sounds like they’re saying, ‘It’s me.’”
“You like the gulls?”
“Yes.”
“And the pelicans?”
“And the pelicans who dive like clumsy-winged oafs into the Gulf literally going blind from the constant collision with the water in search of food.”
“You are getting very literary, very poetic,” said Ann.
“As my friend Flo would say, ‘Bullshit.’”
“You are the gull crying, ‘It’s me.’ You are the pelican going blind while it dives for food.”
“I’m literary. You’re cryptic.”
We went on like that for a while. I glanced at the clock on the wall over her desk. Five more minutes.
“You ever read Conrad Lonsberg?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Compelling, disturbing, elevating. Isn’t that what the reviews said? All true but there was a true despair behind those poems and stories. I met him once, briefly, here in Sarasota. I recognized him from the old photograph on the jacket of Fool’s Love. He was more than forty years older than the man in the photograph leaning against a tree with his hands in his pockets. But the eyes were the same. I remember. Our eyes met. It was at Demitrio’s on the Trail. Melvin and I were there. Lonsberg was with a young woman. Our eyes met for an instant and he knew I recognized him. I think I smiled to let him know his secret was safe and I would not bother him. I wonder if he has had any therapy. Judging from his books, I would say it would be a good idea as long as he didn’t go to one of the quacks with shingles. Why the interest in Conrad Lonsberg?”
“Remember Adele?”
“Vividly,” said Ann. “There is a connection between this evocation of Conrad Lonsberg and Adele? It is not a simple stream of consciousness, a seeming non sequitur?”
“No.”
“You want to tell me what you are talking about or, rather, what you want to ask me?”
