Confidential(11)

Chenille departed, and I realized it wasn’t long before I’d need to head across the Bay Bridge. I lived in the city, so getting to Oakland to see Dr. Baylor—Michael, he’d told me to call him Michael—was a definite irritant. But privacy was an overriding factor, and I’d wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be running into my therapist out and about.

My therapist. Jesus.

No one knew I was seeing him, and I would never become one of those people who made casual references in conversation. I didn’t really like calling him Michael; I’d prefer Doctor. He didn’t call me a patient; he called me a client. Again, I preferred the formality of patient, with the sense that I was submitting to a necessary medical procedure, like getting a bunion removed. Six weeks of bed rest and good as new. I was hoping therapy could be that efficient. With forty looming, six weeks was about as much time as I wanted to devote to the decision-making process.

At the end of our last (and first) session, he asked me about my treatment goals. “What do you most want to accomplish here?”

I stared at him blankly.

“How will you feel; how will the world look? How will you know our work is done?”

More staring.

Those questions had haunted me all week. I wasn’t sure whether to tell him what I came up with: Our work would be done when he had cured my baby fever. When he’d made me stop wanting to hold my very own bundle of joy. When he’d gotten me to see that parental love wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be. No, not just see it. Feel it, deep down.

I wanted him to convince me that it was better not to grow in uncomfortable ways. That I didn’t have to spend my time reading the personal statements of prospective donors or use words like insemination. That I didn’t have to walk this path in order to become a mother because my life was great just as it was. I was fine already. More than fine. I was precisely who I should be.





CHAPTER 8





FLORA


This was how I remembered the first session:

Young had found Dr. Baylor. It was important to Young that we meet with a man. My theory was that a man was supposed to understand how a husband loses that loving feeling toward the woman he’s been with since college. Young was probably hoping that a man would set me straight, and I’d adapt to certain inevitable realities. Then we could live like roommates with a quickie a couple of times a month.

At first, I thought Young might get his wish. Dr. Baylor just seemed like such a nebbish, as my father would say in Yiddish. Unassuming, even a little hapless, Dr. Baylor let Young tell his side ad nauseam (literally, I was nauseated) and didn’t say anything about Young’s frequent interruptions when it was my chance to speak. For the first thirty minutes, it was The Young Show. I was seeing the two of us through Dr. Baylor’s eyes, and I didn’t like it. I was sure that couples therapists had an intuition about which ones were going to make it and which weren’t, and Young and I were going to fall on the wrong side of that ledger, and Dr. Baylor wasn’t man enough to do a thing about it.

Young was all I’d ever known. He was my first sex and my first love. I’d fought hard for those to be the same person, despite many temptations along the way and a whole lot of false rumors and innuendos. Our relationship wasn’t perfect, but I was proud of the rings on my finger and the man on my arm. As I saw it, divorce was not an option.

Then I sat in that session, and I listened. I really heard, perhaps for the first time, all Young’s excuses, rationalizations, and judgments (of me, not of himself). “I bring in two-thirds of the money, and I work seventy, eighty hours a week,” he said, “and still, she wants more—”

“I want closeness,” I interjected. Dr. Baylor didn’t even look up from the yellow legal pad where he was taking notes that I couldn’t read upside down.

“I want dinner.” Young turned to Dr. Baylor. “You know how women are always saying they’d want sex if their husbands would ever do housework? Well, I might want sex if Flora would ever cook dinner. It’s takeout every night.”

“That’s suffering? Oakland has incredible restaurants,” I said, also to Dr. Baylor, a referee who wouldn’t blow the whistle. “We can go a month without eating the same thing twice.”

“Expensive restaurants,” Young countered. “No wonder I have to work so much. But that’s not the point. The point is feeling taken care of by your spouse. Home cooking is about a home.”

Dr. Baylor’s gaze was suddenly leveled at Young with an intensity that I hadn’t seen coming. “Your wife wants to feel taken care of, too. She wants to feel full. She wants to feel sexy and desired and sated.”

Perhaps it was the element of surprise or the absolute authority in Dr. Baylor’s voice, but Young shut up.

“Flora, turn to him,” Dr. Baylor commanded. “Tell him what you want. No, what you need.”

Young was staring down at the floor sullenly.

“I can’t,” I said.

“Try.”

“It’s too embarrassing.”

“You’re a human being. Human beings have needs, and sex is among them. Love is among them. Do you feel loved?”

Out of nowhere, I was sobbing. I hadn’t known I ached like this, that I felt so bereft.

Young’s arms were around me, and he was telling me how much he loved me, how much he needed me, but when I looked up, Dr. Baylor—Michael—met my eyes, and the shake of his head was nearly imperceptible, subconscious maybe, but I caught it.