Sol Stein - Other people

"To Dr. Koch's. He wasn't helpful. I was angry. He was the one who told me to see a lawyer. That's when Bill drove me home to my parents."

"You told your parents."

"More or less."

"What does that mean?"

"There's a limit to what you can tell your parents. I told my father because Dr. Koch suggested I see a lawyer."

"Let's stop a minute. Understand this: you are the only witness we have."

"I know."

"We'll have to come up with very strong corroboration from independent sources for a jury."

"What kind?"

"That's the problem."

"What about Dr. Koch?"

"What he knows, he heard it from you. That's hearsay. That's the same story, not corroboration. However, we have a little time. My date's not till seven. I want to hear about your relationship to Dr. Koch, why you went to him, what you discuss. I realize that's private, but you see, if we succeed in persuading the D.A. or anybody else to take any action against this man, it's going to come out that you are seeing an analyst. That means — to the average person — that you have emotional problems, that you're neurotic, that… now don't get jumpy, we have to face the facts, that you could have made up some of the elements of this story. Or all of it."

Francine, who did not usually cry, was fighting to control her tears.

"Go ahead if you have to," I said.

"I'm not crying," she sobbed as I offered her a Kleenex.

She was crying uncontrollably when I said, "That's good."

Blowing her nose, trying to stop her sobs, she said, "What the hell do you mean that's good!"

"It'll be useful on the witness stand." I handed her another Kleenex.

"You bastard. You wanted to see me cry."

"I needed to know if you could. It's part of my preparation." I put a hand on her shoulder. "I'm not a bastard," I said. "I'm a lawyer. Now tell me about Dr. Koch."

It was over a year ago when I went to see Dr. Koch, an event fraught with the possibilities of embarrassment for someone like myself. On the phone I had said to him, "This is Archibald Widmer. I'd like to make an appointment."

I hadn't expected him to recognize my name — we travel in very different circles — but it seemed to me that if a man with a cultivated voice asks a doctor for an appointment, it should be a matter of simply finding a mutually convenient date and hour.

"Mr. Widmer," Dr. Koch said in an accent I took to be German — I didn't learn till later that he was Viennese — "I am not sure I can take on another patient at the moment."

I set him straight at once. "I'm not a prospective patient," I told him. "I merely wanted a consultation about my daughter. One hour is all I'm asking. When it's convenient."

I don't see why we are so intimidated by doctors, particularly specialists, and most particularly psychoanalysts. I was tempted to say they are people like ourselves, but that would not be true. First of all, so many of them in the New York area, frankly, are Jews, as I'm almost certain Dr. Koch is, and, actually, I think one would find a preponderance of them — I mean Jewish psychoanalysts — in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles, perhaps even Boston. They get an hourly rate for their services, which sets a ceiling on their income in an economy like ours, but lawyers like myself do also, theoretically at least, though I would be the first to admit that when I undertake an issue with important commercial considerations, my firm's fee, while ostensibly based on time, is usually altered upwards to more nearly reflect a percentage of the client's interest. The sophisticated client knows it. But an analyst like Koch, so near the end of his working life, is probably getting something between forty and seventy-five dollars per hour, while a considerably younger lawyer might make nearly twice as much. Please don't jump to the easy conclusion that I wonder about the preponderance of Jewish analysts because it would seem to be in conflict with the ostensible zeal of so many Jews to amass fortunes, or that I consciously value a person's advice by his affluence. I suppose what I'm really saying is that it would have been my preference to consult an American-born psychiatrist who had done his undergraduate work at Yale or Williams or Princeton, the pronunciation of whose name was never in doubt, and who practiced on the East Side of Manhattan, not the West Side as Koch did, in a neighborhood that had once been predominantly new middle class and now suffered shops with Spanish-language signs in their windows.

"Who referred you, please?" Koch asked me.

"George Thomassy," I offered. "But he didn't exactly refer me."

"I cannot place Dr. Thomassy."

"No, no. He's a lawyer up in Westchester. Someone I've known for a very long time. He passed on to me a reprint of yours, Dr. Koch, about the three types of human personality. Thomassy thought it brilliant — he practices criminal law — and when I read it, I had to agree. In my corporate practice, understanding the psychology of clients, self-made businessmen in particular, has always been of special interest. I thought your speculation extraordinarily acute, and the daughter I wanted to consult you about is a very bright girl who has the ability to run rings around her elders. I was once told that a very bright person needed a very bright analyst."

"That is not necessarily true," said Koch.

I had hoped to flatter him. His voice sounded as if he hadn't even understood the compliment and was merely responding to what he thought was an incorrect assertion of mine.

"It would be a very great favor, Dr. Koch."

"Sir, it is not a question of favor, it is a question of time." Then he said, "Did you think of asking your physician for a name?"

"The truth is I gave my physician your name and asked him to look up your credentials. Which are excellent, of course."

"I do not make a specialty" — he pronounced the word the way the British do, as if it had five syllables — "of children."

"My daughter," I said, "is twenty-seven."

"What is the problem?"

"Insomnia."

"Well, we all have sleepless hours from time to time…"

"No, no, no. She gets desperate from lack of sleep many nights in a row. And…"

"Yes?"

"She's got a Seconal problem now, I'm afraid."

"Does your daughter know you are calling me?"

I thought Dr. Koch rude. In retrospect I can see that he was not being rude at all.

"No."

"Psychotherapy has to be a voluntary process."

"I'm sure she'll agree."

"You seem to know your daughter better than most fathers do, Mr. Widmer."

He must have written down my name to remember it.

Finally he said, "I will give you an hour next Tuesday at four. Is that convenient?"

"I will make it convenient," I said, relieved and immediately wondering what meetings I would have to reschedule.

Tuesday at four turned out to be very inconvenient. I had to ask one of my partners, Whitney Armitage, to sit in for me at a meeting with the head of a foreign shipbuilding firm who would have been insulted to have met only with an associate, though the associate knew the matter better than I did and Whitney would have to take notes in silence as he had never been involved in maritime work, much less the particular client company.

I pleaded a personal emergency.

"You haven't got cancer, Ned?" my partner asked with his usual directness. He and I had both lost a partner two years earlier who had several "personal" appointments that eventually led him to Columbia Presbyterian and death.

"No," I said, wishing a witticism had come to mind.

"I did something very indiscreet, Ned. I leaned over your lovely secretary's shoulder and saw your calendar has a Dr. K. on it. Is that a cover for a new mistress, Ned?"