John Irving - Until I Find You

Ditto the penis-holding. Most surprising in Jack’s case, in Dr. García’s experience, was how this didn’t necessarily lead to having sex. Then there was the closeness he’d felt to his mom as a child, but how swiftly and absolutely they had grown estranged; it was almost as if Jack knew that Alice’s lies were lies before he actually found out.

Dr. García was further puzzled by the Emma relationship, which stood in contrast (but bore certain similarities) to Jack’s relationship with Leslie Oastler. Did he still want to sleep with Leslie? Dr. García wanted to know. If so, why? If not, why not?

Dr. García was a stickler for thoroughness. “I think I’m done with the St. Hilda’s part,” Jack had told her on several occasions.

“Oh, no—you’re not,” Dr. García had said. “A boy with looks like yours in an all-girls’ school? Are you kidding? You’re not only not done with St. Hilda’s, Jack—you may never be done with it!”

Jack got tired of all the contradictions—his inglorious return to the North Sea, especially. But not Dr. García; there couldn’t be too many contradictions for her. “How long’s it been since you thought about dressing as a girl?” she asked him. “I don’t mean in a movie !” (He must have hesitated.) “You see?” she said. “Give me more contradictions—give me all you’ve got, Jack.”

Jack sometimes felt he wasn’t seeing a psychiatrist—it was more like taking a creative writing class, but with nothing on paper to show for it. And when Dr. García gave him an actual writing assignment, he almost stopped the therapy altogether. She wanted him to write letters to Michele Maher—not to send to Michele, but to read out loud at their therapy sessions.

“There’s no way I can explain myself to Michele,” Jack told his psychiatrist. At the time, it had been more than a year—closer to two years—since Michele had written him. He still hadn’t answered her letter.

“But explaining yourself to Michele is what you want to do, isn’t it?” Dr. García asked him. He couldn’t deny that.

It was further unnerving that Dr. García’s office was on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica, within walking distance of that breakfast place where he’d first met Myra Ascheim—another older woman who had changed his life.

“Fascinating,” Dr. García said. “But don’t tell me about it now. Please keep everything in chronological order, Jack.”

In 2000, when Jack won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, Dr. García found it “illuminating” that he referred to the award (and the statuette itself) as Emma’s Oscar. But Dr. García wouldn’t allow him to tell her his feelings. Even the Oscar had to be rendered in chronological order.

And Dr. García disapproved of his first actual communication with Michele Maher, for several reasons. In the first place, Jack hadn’t shown the doctor the letter he wrote Michele before he mailed it; in the second place, it was a ridiculous letter to have sent Michele after almost eighteen years of nothing between them.

But when Jack was nominated for two Academy Awards (one for Best Supporting Actor and the other for the screenplay), he felt he had a golden opportunity to make contact with Michele Maher—while at the same time sounding casual about getting together.

Dear Michele,

I don’t know if you’re married, or otherwise attached to someone, but—if you’re not—would you be my date at the Academy Awards? This would mean coming to Los Angeles—Sunday, March 26. Naturally, I would take care of your travel expenses and hotel accommodations.

Yours truly,

Jack Burns

What was wrong with that ? Wasn’t it polite, and to the point? (Michele’s answer, which was prompt, was a little wishy-washy.)

Dear Jack,

Gosh, I would love to! But I have a boyfriend, sort of. I don’t live with anyone, but I’m seeing someone—as they say. Of course I’m very flattered that you thought of me—after all these years! I’ll make a point of actually staying up to watch the awards this year, and I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.

Best regards,

Michele

“It’s hard to tell if she really wanted to go, isn’t it?” Jack asked Dr. García, which prompted his psychiatrist’s third reason for disapproving of his letter to Michele.

“Jack, you are very fortunate that Michele turned you down,” Dr. García said. “What a wreck you would have been if she’d said yes ! If she’d been your date, you would have blown it.”

Jack didn’t think this was fair. He could have had a ball with the media—just telling them that his date for the Academy Awards was his dermatologist ! But Dr. García was not amused; she considered his faux pas of inviting Michele Maher to the Oscars to be “in the denial category.” Dr. García said that Jack was completely unaware of how far removed he was from the normal world, of normal people and normal relationships.

“But what about her ?” he cried. (Jack meant Michele Maher.) “What’s she mean that she has a boyfriend, sort of ? Is that normal ?”

“You’re not ready to make contact with Michele Maher, Jack,” Dr. García said. “You have heaped so many unrealistic expectations upon a relationship that, as I understand it, never developed in the first place—well, I don’t want to hear another word about this now ! To me, you’re still a four-year-old in the North Sea. Speaking strictly professionally, you’ve not recovered from your sea of girls—and I need to know much more about Emma and your older-woman thing. Keep it in chronological order. Is that understood?”

It was. He had a bitch psychiatrist, or so it seemed to Jack, but he had to admit that her therapy had noticeably cut down his tendency to shout and burst into tears—and his inclination to wake up weeping in the middle of the night, which became habitual after he came back from the North Sea the second time. So Jack stuck with her, and the unfinished telling of his life story went on and on. Jack had become what Emma said he could be—a writer, albeit one given to melancholic logorrhea. A storyteller, if only out loud. (Jack’s actual writing was limited to those un mailed letters to Michele Maher.)

Dr. García was a heavyset but attractive Mexican-American. She appeared to be in her late forties. From the photographs in her office, she either came from a large family or had a large family of her own. Jack didn’t ask her, and—from the photos—he couldn’t tell.

Of the children in the many pictures, he couldn’t recognize Dr. García as a child—so perhaps they were her children. Yet the older-looking man in the photographs seemed more like a father to her than a husband; he was always well dressed, to the point of fastidiousness, and his pencil-thin mustache and perfectly trimmed sideburns suggested a character actor of a bygone era. (A cross between Clifton Webb and Gilbert Roland, Jack thought.)

Dr. García didn’t wear any rings; she wore no jewelry to speak of. Either she was married with more children than Jack could count in her office photos, or she’d come from such an overlarge family that this had persuaded her to never marry and have children of her own.

In a doomed effort to solve this mystery, Jack cleverly said: “Maybe you should be my date for the Academy Awards, Dr. García. At a stressful event like that, a psychiatrist would probably come in handier than a dermatologist—don’t you think?”