The Thanatos Syndrome

what?” she replies equably.
    â€œHow have you been?”
    â€œOh, fine,” she says, and falls silent. “How about you?” Yes, she is being ironic.
    â€œI’m all right.”
    â€œI see”—and again falls silent, but equably and with no sense of being at a loss.
    â€œDo you wish to resume therapy?”
    She shakes her head but goes on smiling.
    â€œIt was you who called me, Donna.”
    â€œI know.”
    I wait for her to start up. She doesn’t. I decide to wait her out.
    Finally she says, “I knew you were back.”
    â€œAnd you wanted to wish me well.”
    â€œI saw you in the store.”
    â€œI see.” Something stirs in the back of my head.
    â€œI often see your wife in the store.”
    â€œIs that right?”
    â€œShe’s your second wife, isn’t she?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œShe is often with that famous scientist, or is he a bridge player, anyway a close friend, I’m sure.” Again the lively look. Again the stirring just above my hairline.
    â€œDonna, I’m sure you didn’t come here to tell me you saw my second wife at the store.” “No.” She opens her mouth and closes it.
    When patients get stuck, you usually get them off dead center by asking standard questions, as if you were seeing them for the first time.
    â€œAre you still working at the clinic?”
    â€œYes”—neutrally. Again she falls silent, but without a trace of the old unease or hostility.
    â€œHow does it go?”
    â€œOh, fine.”
    As we gaze at each other, the stirring at the back of my head comes up front. I have the same nutty idea.
    â€œWhere do you live now, Donna?”
    â€œIn Cut Off, Louisiana.” Her reply is as prompt and triumphant as if I had at last hit on the right question.
    â€œI see. Where is Cut Off, Donna?”
    Her eyes move up a little as if she were consulting a map over my head. “Cut Off, Louisiana, is sixty-one miles southwest of New Orleans.” There is no map over my head.
    â€œVery good, Donna. Donna, where is Arkansas?”
    Again the eyes going up into her eyebrows. “Arkansas is bounded on the north by—”
    â€œThat’s fine, Donna, I see that you know. Give me your hand, Donna.”
    She gives me her right hand across the desk. I had thought she was right-handed, but needed to be sure. I look at it, the broad thumb, the short nail. I remember dreaming of her once, making much in the dream of a certain stubbiness of hand and foot. Her foot does in fact have an exaggerated arch, like a dancer’s. A broad quick little hoofed mare of a girl she was in the dream.
    I look into her eyes, which are dilated and dark with pupil. Again she reminds me of Degas girls, with their big black eye dots.
    â€œAre you taking any medicine, Donna?”
    She shakes her head quickly. How do I know, as certainly as if she were a four-year-old, that she is telling the truth?
    â€œDonna, make a circle with your thumb and forefinger like this and look at me through it, like so.”
    She does. She looks at me through the circle with her left eye. Ordinarily in a right-handed person, the right eye is dominant.
    I am musing but rouse myself. I’ll muse later.
    â€œDonna, is there anything I can do for you?” She shakes her head, almost merrily.
    â€œDonna, why did you come to see me? What do you want?” Although I had not yet got onto this peculiar business, I already knew—with her as well as with Mickey LaFaye—that I could ask her any question in any context.
    Her eyes are focused above me. She nods toward something. “That.”
    I turn around in my chair. There in the bookshelf, in a space between two bookends, squats a little pre-Columbian figurine, a mud-colored, sausage-shaped woman with a large abdomen. A patient with mystical expectations from a trip to Mexico and some Mayan ruins had given it to me. Her mystical Mexican expectations didn’t pan out. They seldom do.
    â€œYou like that?” I ask Donna.
    She nods.
    â€œWould you like to have it?”
    She nods eagerly, the same quick assent of a four-year-old.
    â€œWhy?” I am curious. Is it because it is fat and fertile? Because it is mine? Because it is Mexican? Does she have the Mexican itch?
    â€œSomething I need.”
    â€œIt is something you need?”
    â€œYes, I need.”
    I need? A curious expression. I get up to get it to give it to