A. Homes: In A Country Of Mothers

“She’s taking over my life,” Jody told her mother. “Invading my privacy, driving me over the edge.”

“You’re afraid to let her really know you,” her mother said. “You don’t like anyone to know anything about you. Your father and I always used to wonder what in the world you were thinking.”

“Mom!” Jody bellowed.

“You always were very private. Remember how nervous you used to get before I’d go in for those parent/teacher conferences? You hated anyone talking about you.”

“I caught her coming out of my building,” Jody said. “I have it on tape.”

“It was probably someone who looks like her. You always think you’re seeing people. In the hospital you kept saying Aunt Sally was in the room next door — and she’d been dead for seven years.”

“I had a fever of one hundred and four, Mom. I’m here now, feverless, in New York, and I’m telling you Claire Roth was in my building doing strange things. I told you — I have it on tape!”

Jody started crying. She didn’t mean to, it just happened.

“You know,” her mother said, “sometimes when people don’t feel well, it makes them a little crabby, a little suspicious.”

“I’m not paranoid. This is real!” Jody howled, sure the neighbors could hear her.

“Well, no one ever said you had to see her. It was your choice, Jody.”

“You’re not hearing me. She’s going to kill me. One way or another I’m going to end up dead.”

“Come on, honey, I really don’t—”

Jody slammed the phone down and tried to remember Harry Birenbaum’s number. Harry would understand. She dialed his number and got his machine. “It’s Jody. Jody Goodman.” She stopped. “Are you there?” She paused again. “There’s something I need to talk to you about. Call me.”

At the newsstand on the corner a headline announced an article called “Firing Your Shrink: Sixteen Steps to Getting Out Alive.” She bought the magazine, ran home to read the piece, then noticed that according to the bio it had been written by a “prominent psychotherapist and NYU professor.”

Going to a therapist to talk about therapy. No one would believe.

“Come in, come in,” the shrink said the next afternoon as Jody stepped into his office.

He had a beard, wire-rimmed glasses, and a hooked nose. His office was cold, dark, and small, with one chair — the doctor’s — and a sofa that smelled moist. Jody perched uneasily on the edge.

“On the telephone,” he said, “you mentioned having some questions about therapy.”

“I’ve been seeing this woman. She used to be amazing, but now she’s driving me crazy. She’s making me want to kill myself.”

“Ah, you’re a lesbian.”

“No. My shrink. I’m talking about my shrink.”

“So you’re seeing another therapist,” he said. “Does he know you’re here?”

“It’s a she, and no — she doesn’t.” Jody thought maybe he needed a hearing aid.

“Well, you’ll have to tell him.”

“The reason I came to see you is that I need to get some distance, perspective. As I mentioned on the phone, I read your article and thought maybe you could help. The woman I’m seeing — my shrink — she calls me all the time, invites me to dinner, makes me go ice skating with her family.” Jody took a breath. “She came into into my building and stole my mail.”

“So, your fantasy is that she invites you … and then what happens?”

“It’s not my fantasy. It’s real.”

“I can assure you that I would never invite you anywhere or call you at home except to change an appointment.”

The session had hardly begun and already Jody wanted out. Claire was a genius compared to this guy, so what if she was torturing Jody? At least it wasn’t like being in a Three Stooges movie.

“It’s becoming very destructive. I feel like I’m being forced to do something drastic.”

“Do you dream about her?”

When Jody didn’t answer, he started in on a long discussion, more like a presentation, on the peculiar and sometimes perverse ways in which women relate. It was all too interesting to him — something that would make a great paper, another article for the magazine, or maybe even a book. As the clock ticked, Jody became more and more alarmed, convinced that she was sinking into something that she’d never be able to escape. She felt as though she were in a room where insanity divided exponentially and suddenly there was nothing left.

A bell went off, startling her. The shrink pointed to an egg timer on his desk and Jody realized that for the past twenty-five minutes she’d just been sitting there, daydreaming. “We’re out of time,” the shrink said. “I suggest you come back on Thursday.”

“I’ll check my schedule,” Jody said, going for the door. “I’ll call you.”

• • •

“Okay, you really want to know why you won’t help yourself?” Ellen asked. “It’s because you don’t think you’re worth it. You think you’re shit because some people have failed you. You’re looking for the perfect this, the perfect that — family, mother, whatever. The thing is, you’re never going to find it. It doesn’t exist.”

Jody didn’t respond. She gazed out the window and thought about hanging up the phone.

“You’re unrealistic. Instead of being happy with what you’ve got, you go to someone else, a substitute, a shrink. Fine, except your shrink’s crazy.” Ellen paused. “You have to learn to be what you need; to love yourself more than anyone else would ever love you. You’re the only one who really knows what you want.”

“And you’ve been reading too many new-age books. Discover your inner self and blah, blah, blah.”

“I’m telling you the truth and you don’t like it.”

“So, what if you’re right?”

“I have to put you on hold,” Ellen said.

Jody heard the week in weather, the forecast for Dallas-Fort Worth, and the Eagles song “Hotel California.” She fingered the pack of matches on her desk. Self-punishment. As if the whole thing were her fault from beginning to end. Every time Jody went to Claire’s office, she wore the marks of a new self-inflicted injury. It had taken Claire an unbelievably long time to catch on. The other day, when Jody went in with her face, arms, and neck covered with thin, bloody razor lines, Claire innocently asked what had happened.

“Nothing happened,” Jody said flatly. She knew it was crazy. It made no sense and still she did it. She did it again and again, as if externalizing her pain, literally painting it across her body, would either make it go away or get someone to notice.

“I don’t get it,” Claire said.

“Obviously.”

There was no way she could demonstrate her need any louder without sawing herself in half.

“You’re an idiot,” she had told Claire near the end of the session. “A total fucking idiot.” She rolled up her sleeves and flashed a thick, fleshy burn. “How do you think this happened? You did it. You did it to me and I did it to myself. I wish I’d never met you.”

Then she had pulled a pack of matches out of her pocket, lit one, and pressed it into her arm, extinguishing the flame on her flesh. She felt like a bad actress in a bad movie.

“Stop it,” Claire had said, slapping at the matches. “Stop it!”

There’s millions of matches in this world, millions of fires to set, Jody had thought as she slipped the matches back into her pocket.

“What you need,” Ellen said, coming back on the line, “is to get away from her, extricate. You didn’t come all this way to kill yourself, that’s for sure. Gotta go, I’ll talk to you later.”

The war escalated — over the phone, in Claire’s office, on the streets of New York. “How could you act like this after all I’ve done?” Claire screamed at Jody. “How could you even think of hurting yourself when someone cares about you as much as I do?” She threw her hands up in the air as if raising the question to the gods.