Treasure Island!!!

show of support he gave, for me here, for me now, there lurked a terrified refusal to acknowledge his own potential to grow. With each endearment, with each endorsement, he tried to make me slack. Did I buckle? Dear Reader, no. I saw his white-knuckled terror, his toes clenching the edge of a perceived abyss, even when he leaned over the garbage bag of clothes and planted a kiss on my head!!
     

CHAPTER 10
     
    A nd now for the secret autobiography, the chamber within the chamber, the revolving bookcase that spins into a red velvet study, the roomy compartment behind the false back of a tiny drawer.
    It is possible to think of my life, up to the age of twenty-five, as a series of therapists I successfully dodged.
    “A series of therapists!” you will exclaim.
    When I began this story, I had thought to keep my counseling history a secret, but the more I write, the more I think of my reader as a friend with whom I can lounge in even the sour-smelling rooms of the family manse. So here they are, all failures!
     
    1) Dee Bissell-Ivy: Wore her hair in a bun, kept dolls on her shelves
    2) Peter Johnson: hush-voiced, still in training, borrowed folding chairs
    3) Deborah Grady: red-faced, aggressive, hobby-oriented
    4) Jennifer Shaftal: Long-legged, deep tan; began each session by asking if I treated my body like a temple, then proceeded to confuse me with another patient whose parents had repeatedly locked her up in an RV
    5) Brenda Pickens: fluffy-haired, fluffy-sweatered, said all “her girls” were hindered by terrible self-esteem
     
    A haze descends when I try to recall the others’ names. I ran through every therapist available in that long college hall of Harris Center known as PERSONAL COUNSELING. You could have six free sessions with anyone, and then if dissatisfied, pick a new person and start counting towards your six free sessions again. I never paid for a seventh session with any of them.
     
    In my twenty-fifth year, I was happier and stronger than ever, done with therapists—
finis
!—and yet occasionally I craved a pill to calm my nerves. Where was I in this story proper? Oh yes, I was living with Lars. Notice how closely that sounds like living with lies. It sounds exactly like it, if you imagine yourself saying it with some kind of Eastern European accent. And I
was
living with lies when I was living with Lars. For reasons already apparent, I found myself happy to be rid of The Pet Library but unsteadied by the new arrangements. Now that Lars had gotten tight-fisted, we went to fewer restaurants, and rather than go shopping on weekdays, I spent long lugubrious hours at home, the vapors of which could be dispelled only by picking quarrels. Sometimes I fought lucidly, poignantly, my complaints so beautifully orchestrated I wished I could fight Lars for a living. Other times the quarrels left me confused rather than ennobled; that time I stood in my bathrobe with zit cream on my face and hollered, “Lars, I didn’t marry you so you could work at the computer support desk your whole life,” especially comes to mind.
    “What?” Lars said. “What? You didn’t marry me at all!”
    “I know. But what exactly are we doing here every night, cuddling up on the couch with a box of General Tsao’s chicken?”
    The truth was I felt as though I had married him. I’d forgotten that I had strong-armed my way into his apartment because I needed a place to live while I pursued the insights of
Treasure Island
.
    Did he want me to leave?
    “Maybe I do. Maybe I want a divorce,” he said ironically.

    Not long after that conversation, I dropped by my mother’s internist to get a prescription for a calming pill. My mother’s doctor, a half-retired guy named Dr. Rattner, refused to see me, but the secretary said she could squeeze me in to see his partner, Dr. Klug. I don’t know why, but when the rap came on the examination door, I was expecting Dr. Rattner’s wizened twin to walk in. Instead a chisel-cheeked, healthy, blonde woman, ten years my senior, stood at the foot of the table, ordering me to swing up my feet. I swung them (gladly).
    Chest, lung, nose, ears, throat. She smelled like rubbing alcohol and verbena. Why was she examining me, I wondered.
    “What do you want pills for?”
    “Anxious. Can’t sleep.”
    “You look well-rested. Something bothering you?”
    “Yes, no.”
    “Lie back, please. I don’t like to throw a person pills until they’ve tried other options. Lie back, please.