A. Homes - In A Country Of Mothers

“Do you know that when they made The Graduate, ” Jody said, “Dustin Hoffman was thirty and Anne Bancroft was only thirty-seven. Isn’t that amazing?”

“You’ll do very well,” Barbara said. “You really don’t need me anymore. You know who you are, what you need. You’re grown up.” She paused. “I have a friend in New York who’s very nice. She’s a therapist. I can give you her number if you feel you might need it. She’s in the Village. Isn’t that where you’ll be living?”

“I thought I was graduating,” Jody said.

“You’ll be fine, but if you want a name?”

Jody shook her head. “I’d have to start all over again, and I’d never be able to convince a stranger that I’m not really crazy.”

Barbara smiled. “I can just give you the number. You don’t have to use it.” She went to her desk, which was covered with things her children had made — they hadn’t even been born when Jody started seeing Barbara, and now one was almost six years old.

Sometimes Jody thought she was special, not in the usual sense, but like the young women in television movies — girls whose tormented pasts keep them from living normal lives until they meet the good doctor who knows just how to fix them, schizophrenics who end up being only slightly learning-disabled, cripples who become concert pianists.

Barbara wrote the name and phone number on a piece of scratch paper and handed it to Jody, who immediately jammed it deep into her pocket. For more than a year she’d kept it in her wallet like a condom, in case of emergency.

“Thanks,” Jody had said to Barbara, putting her coat on without even thinking if the hour was up or not. It didn’t matter.

“Stay in touch,” Barbara said.

“Thanks a lot,” Jody said. “Really, thanks a lot.”

Barbara smiled again and moved towards her, and for a second Jody thought Barbara might hug her. If Barbara hugged her, she’d die. Barbara put her hand out and quickly Jody did the same. They shook.

“Goodbye,” Barbara said.

“Yeah, see you later,” Jody said, thinking about what she’d do after this last session. McDonald’s, she figured — for lunch, not a career.

And now, what seemed like a hundred years later, at two in the morning, Jody was sitting on the floor of her apartment — in Greenwich Village, in New York City, two hundred and fifty miles from Barbara, from her mother, from everyone — eating brownies. Why had she gone to see Claire — was she an idiot? Jody had graduated. She’d done it. She was proud of herself. Until she’d picked up the phone and called Claire Roth, she’d thought of herself as the strongest person alive.

D uring her afternoon break, Claire sat on Bob Rosenblatt’s extra chair. She didn’t lie on the couch because, as she saw it, she wasn’t a patient. She’d paid her therapy dues long ago. No, she was coming to a respected colleague for advice. Rosenblatt was older, wiser, a professor at Columbia who had Oriental rugs and good art in his office, all qualities Claire admired in a psychiatrist.

The problem was her relationship with Jake. She was angry. She resented his sluggishness, which she was afraid might be the core of his personality. It had occurred to Claire that it might be best to ignore him and just assume that one day he’d become a highly motivated genius. At the same time she thought of sending him away to school — something regimented, perhaps agricultural in nature, where he’d be forced to work. Even if it didn’t help, at least she wouldn’t have to see him languishing on the sofa. The third possibility was that this period of absolute inertia was merely a resting place, the last quiet moment before his body was filled with the hormonal rush of adolescence.

“Describe yourself as a child,” Rosenblatt said.

Claire closed her eyes and tried to give Bob what she thought he wanted. “My mother was very fussy, everything had its place. In the living room there was a bookcase filled with china figurines. Our house was a sanctuary, a place where my father came to relax after work. Maintaining calm was the focus. My younger sister was the good one. They used to say I was filled with the devil. I left home when I was eighteen and a half.”

“So,” Rosenblatt said, quickly, definitely, “you were a difficult child, a hell-raiser?”

Claire was shocked. Hadn’t he heard what she said? God, what a lousy shrink. Why was he supposed to be so great? “Hardly,” she said, trying not to overreact. “Just because they thought I was wild doesn’t mean that I was.”

Rosenblatt nodded. “You described how your parents saw you, but not what you were like.”

“What was I like?” Claire said. “I tried hard.” She was so annoyed it was hard to think. She thought she’d made it clear on the phone that she wanted to talk about Jake. Five more minutes, that’s all he was getting.

“So, what were you like?”

“Frustrated, just like I am now,” she said, figuring there wasn’t much to lose. If she got into a huge fight with Rosenblatt, she’d go to fewer shrink parties, spend more time at home with Jake. Maybe that’s what he needed, anyway: his mother to bust his ass and drive him nuts.

Rosenblatt laughed. “Just like you are now, exactly! Why?”

“Because you don’t understand what I just told you five minutes ago.”

“Good,” he said.

Claire didn’t get it. She felt like a child, a dog being patted on the head. She didn’t have a clue where he was leading her. She looked around Rosenblatt’s office, bigger than hers, with more windows and a better view. It marked the difference between psychiatrists and psychologists. Money.

“Do you think your son is frustrated?”

“No,” Claire said. “I think he’s brain dead.”

“Let’s get back to your family.”

“I’ve made myself a life they can’t imagine.”

“What do you mean, ‘they can’t imagine’?”

“I live in New York City. I married a man who makes a living defending criminals and likes it. I have a career and two children and my parents still act as though I’m a failure, as though I’ll come running home any minute now. They live in a split-level house in northern Virginia with a two-car garage, and every Sunday morning my sister, her husband, and their three daughters pick them up, take them to church, and then out to lunch.”

“Church?” Rosenblatt asked.

Claire nodded. She knew what he was getting at but wasn’t about to give it to him. It came up everywhere — Adam’s preschool, whether to send Jake to Hebrew school — and affected the way people perceived her, how they acted. There was never a way around it.

“Are you Jewish?” Rosenblatt asked. He meant, aren’t you? But this way, he thought he was being tactful.

“By marriage,” Claire said.

“Aha,” Rosenblatt said softly.

You bet. Claire wondered exactly what it meant to him. Was she a whole new person, the blond shiksa, simultaneously despised and worshiped? Did Rosenblatt look at her and think everything came easily, that she was as simple, clean, and easily digested as white bread and mayonnaise?

Rosenblatt flashed her a condescending smile: I’m the shrink, you’re the shrinkee. I’m the Jew, you’re the goy. I’m a medical doctor, you’re a Ph.D. You’re the girl, I’m the boy. I win. He shifted his weight around in the chair and crossed his legs.

“My sister, Laura, the good one, got married when she was nineteen. She works with ‘special children’ because it’s the right thing to do. It doesn’t threaten her family or her husband. She manages her life as if it was a retarded child. We speak twice a year.”

“Is that a loss? Do you wish you were closer?”