Confidential(51)

Tears were dripping down my face. I looked around, but the cemetery was still. If anyone saw me from a distance, they’d think I was crying for what I’d lost when really, it was the opposite. I was crying because my own parents represented no loss at all.

They hadn’t abused me or even neglected me. Sure, they worked a lot, but they made sure I was taken care of, and when they were home, they paid me some degree of attention. They checked my homework. They let me participate in their conversations. It’s not like I was told to go to my room or that children were supposed to be seen and not heard. I was allowed to be part of their world.

They just weren’t part of mine.

“Did you know anything about me?” I waited, like they might come back with something, like it might be carried on the wind.

I’d begun to wonder who I might have been had I been raised by other people, people like, say, Dr. Michael—someone who cared how I felt and what I really thought. I might have become more imaginative or expressive. I might have been a different kind of worker and a different kind of lover. I might have been a mother by now, with a doting husband.

It was cheap to blame them for all my shortcomings, I knew that. But I still felt, just a little, like spitting on their graves.

How had I missed this for so many years? I had terrible parents, and now I was contemplating being one myself. But I was so limited. I could picture myself with a baby, because babies were so immediate, so raw in their needs, and the responses were so clear, so primal. Feed them, change their diapers, love them. But that was where the images ended. I couldn’t really see myself with a child at four or eight or thirteen. And even older, an adult who could come back and say, “Why didn’t you do a better job at loving me and turning me into someone who could love others? Why didn’t you and my father show me what it looked like?”

I had the strangest sensation. I wanted Dr. Michael beside me. He understood what I didn’t; he could fill in the gaps. Be what I couldn’t. Yin to my yang.

“I don’t miss you,” I said, “but I wish you were here. I wish I could ask you some questions. Like, why did you have me?”

The wind had no answer.

Hours later, I was telling Dr. Michael everything, except the part about wanting him there beside me. Wanting him, maybe for more than a sperm donor. Because the sperm donor part was outrageous enough. If I let on that I had these other thoughts and feelings, he’d think he was dealing with someone too unstable to have a child, certainly too unstable to have his child.

Besides, this wasn’t about him. I was talking about my parents.

I held it together pretty well as I told him the cemetery story, until I got to that final question I’d asked them, and then the pain of it struck me. I should have known why they had me. I should have known that they loved me.

“You deserved so much more,” Dr. Michael told me.

That’s when I lost it, crying with an abandon that was, well, childish. Dr. Michael moved to the couch next to me, and I wished he’d come closer, but he stayed on his side, placing the box of tissues between us. My sobs started to die down. I took a tissue and blew my nose noisily. It was a good way to avoid looking at him. I imagined his eyes were all lit up because he had finally done it. This was where he’d wanted me all along, and now he had me. Checkmate.

“Thank you,” he said softly.

I still couldn’t look at him.

“Thank you for trusting me. I feel really close to you.”

I almost smiled. It wasn’t checkmate; the match wasn’t over. We were still playing the game where I convinced him that I was the right mother for his child. Another mother of his child. There were probably others from twenty years ago. How had those kids turned out?

Not as well as ours would.





CHAPTER 40





LUCINDA


Since Dr. Baylor—Michael—held me in his office, things had moved so quickly that I almost couldn’t believe it was real, that I’d made it happen. Was it really just two weeks ago that I’d shown up there, and he’d seemed so somber when he said we needed to talk, and I thought, Oh no, this is it, no more pro bono, no more anything, I’m too fucked up to be his client even, let alone what I want to be to him, and instead . . . ?

Instead, we’d talked about the new rules. Vegas rules. What happened in session stayed in session, where he was still Dr. Baylor and he behaved entirely professionally. His domain was my psyche only. We were back to one session a week again, so I wouldn’t become “overwhelmed.” Then, late at night, we could have this other relationship, which was also therapeutic but carnal. “Have you ever heard of sex surrogates?” he asked. I said I hadn’t. He explained that they helped people take charge of their sexuality as a way to heal emotionally.

On Wednesdays, therapy proceeded as usual. It was almost like he was two different people: responsible therapist by day (well, early evening) and lover at night. He changed the lighting, added scented candles, and voilà. I wouldn’t have thought a few sensory cues could do that much heavy lifting, and yet, oddly, they did. He flipped a switch, lit a candle, and transformed from Dr. Baylor into Michael, though even as my lover, he was still concerned with my therapeutic goals. He wanted me to own my power in all arenas, including sexual, so I could realize how wonderful I was.

He didn’t just tell me, though; he showed me. To a casual observer, it would seem illicit, but it was actually beautiful. I was learning that sex wasn’t about one person being in charge. Love was sharing power and control, passing it back and forth.