The Wicked Flea

you, too.”
    The girls just stared at me.
    “Did my dog scare you?”
    Still no response.
    “Well if she did, I’m sorry, and she is, too. Her name is Kimi, and she didn’t mean to scare you. Now, let’s get you some more food. What did you have? Or what would you like?” These kids just had to speak English! The adults did! “French fries?” I prompted. “Hamburgers? Ice cream?”
    As the smaller girl seemed about to speak, the father cut in. “They don’t take presents from strangers.” As if I were luring them into a car with the promise of candy!
    “Of course,” I told him. “But, look, please let me make this right. I’ll get whatever you want, or I can just pay whatever the food cost.”
    To my surprise, the woman intervened. Addressing the younger man, she said, ‘Tim, let her. It was a stupid idea to begin with. So just let her. The kids are hungry.”
    “I can feed my kids, Brianna!” he hollered. “Give me credit for that.”
    “That’s not what I meant!” she protested. “And you know it! This is all your fault! You and your bright ideas!”
    The older man spoke. ‘Tim, shut up. It wasn’t what she meant.” To me, he said, “Look, it was an accident. Forget it. We’ve got a dog, too. Dogs’ll be dogs.”
    I smiled at him. “Yes, they will. Thank you.” I renewed the offer to make good, and the family finally accepted. To my relief, I didn’t have to hang around ordering food. The older man told me the amount of the bill, and I persuaded him to take a few extra dollars for dessert. The second I handed over the money, I bolted. Kimi never even got to the pet exercise area. Not that she deserved punishment. I’d been inattentive. She’d been a dog. And it wasn’t her fault that the family was poor.
    “It was unsettling,” I told Dr. Foote. “Oddly unsettling. It really got to me. The little girls, I could understand. A big dog jumped up and startled them and ate their dinner, although I must say that they didn’t act afraid of Kimi. I can always tell when someone’s scared of dogs. The body language gives it away, and there’s an anti-life aura about those people. Not that I believe in auras, exactly, but there’s a kind of global emotional constriction. Just take my word for it. The girls weren’t phobic. And the grandfather, I guess that’s what he was, said they had a dog. Even aside from that, the kids’ reaction was understandable. The kids looked malnourished and undernourished. Both. And they were about to eat. Then the food was gone. So they started crying. That makes sense. But the adults were weird. They were angry and upset all out of proportion to what happened, even after I offered to get more food, pay, do anything. Maybe it was just what the woman said, that everything always goes wrong for them. I felt so sorry for them. They just looked so down and out. There was no resilience. A little incident was more than they could handle. Most of the time, I manage not to think that people live like that. And then I met them. It was very unsettling.”
    “What’s been stolen from you recently?” Dr. Foote asked.
    “Nothing.Nothing, really. Nothing of any value.”
    “Nothing of value?” She gave me one of those therapist looks. They’re familiar to me. Rita is always casting them hither and yon.
    “You mean Steve Delaney. Anita jumped in and... well, I guess you could say that Anita... Anita didn’t exactly steal him, you know.” Silence hung. “I get it. Anita staged a raid. She stole... resources. Nourishment. And no one paid. And now...”
    “Poverty,” she said. “And now you are reordering. Reordering your life, that is.”
    “Except,” I said, “that fast food is replaceable. Steve isn’t.” I thought about Rita’s probable response to my objection. “This is what therapists call resistance, isn’t it?”
    Dr. Foote smiled. “Is it?”
    “Yes,” I said, “it is.”
     

Chapter 18
     
Winter, Holly
Perseveration a consequence of the head trauma? This wretched countertransference! Pt. goes on and on, anxiety rises, she picks up on it, it escalates! Tried commonsense approach: asked her to focus on people in her life. She replied, “Dogs are people!” Re her loneliness, she vigorously resists my suggestion of square dancing in favor of (imaginary?) organized dances for dogs!
Saw dear old Dr. S. for a consult. Suggests systematic desensitization, but it’s not as if I have to confront the object themselves. What are objects,