Confidential(9)

I knew it wasn’t the same as having an actual partner. I did want a boyfriend to make me tea after a hard day. But all the rest of it—the expectations, the demands, the emotional sharing, the sex—was daunting. A lot of the time, I just wanted to curl up with a book. I flipped back and forth between the dreamy pleasure of my own company and self-flagellation. What guy was going to want that?

But for fifty minutes a week, with Dr. Baylor, I was at my best. If only I could stretch it out. After our sessions, I’d step outside his building feeling like some kind of superhero. A few blocks later, I was me again.

I started paging through the magazines. Narcissistic personality disorder seemed to be all the rage. How to know if you have it. How to deal with a loved one who has it. When to leave. Why you’re not leaving. It sounded like narcissists often managed to find people with pathologies that clicked together with theirs, like a jigsaw puzzle. Dependent personalities.

His door opened, and a woman emerged. She was somewhere in her thirties, more put together than I’d ever been, with blow-dried hair and glossy lips. Her clothes had a sophisticated drape, and while they didn’t reveal her shape exactly, you just knew she was skinny under there. She radiated confidence. She was pretty enough and, I’d guess, successful. I wanted to know her diagnosis.

She was laughing and saying, “See you next week!” Her voice was gay. It was like she was exiting a very good party.

I was envious of the way she carried herself and that airy tone. Envious that she’d just spent an hour with Dr. Baylor.

And he’d just spent an hour with her. She was the tough act I had to follow every week. Usually, I raced in at the last minute and she was already gone. I’d never before seen my competition.

I reminded myself she was paying for her sessions and I wasn’t.

Of course, she could afford to pay for her sessions. She was probably about to meet her rich boyfriend for cocktails and small plates at à C?té. I was sure she would never think of me as competition.

All this flashed through my mind in the seconds before Dr. Baylor said, “Lucy! I’ll be right with you.”

He shut his door, and I was left with just one thought: I was utterly pathetic. Totally second-rate. That was without his even knowing the terrible things I’d done.

By the time he invited me in, I was in tears. I couldn’t even look at him. He sank down on his knees in front of me, and I took the tissue he offered. He didn’t say anything, just let his beatific energy wash over me. When I was ready, I stood up and followed him inside.

“Start wherever you’d like,” he said. “Or we can sit in silence for a while.”

I grabbed for the whole box of tissues from the end table beside the couch. I had absolutely no idea where to start, how far back to go, or should I be in the present? Should I just tell him that I might be in love with him, and I knew how stupid that was, and that nothing could ever happen between us, and that he would never feel that way about me, even if he’d met me under different circumstances?

He might say that we couldn’t work together anymore. I could lose what we did have. All I had.

Besides, I was being a narcissist, focusing on myself at a time like this. I needed to think of Adam. No, I should think about my mother.

“My stepfather has cancer,” I said.

Dr. Baylor didn’t respond in the way I would have expected. He didn’t say he was sorry. Instead, he nodded and waited.

“It’s stage four, and he doesn’t want to have chemo. My mother thinks I can convince him.”

“That’s a big responsibility. Why do you think she would put you in that position?” He was watching me compassionately but carefully. Again, not where I thought he’d go, but I trusted him. He knew better than I did.

“Adam listens to me. Or at least, she thinks he would.”

“He doesn’t listen to her?” When I was silent, Dr. Baylor did another nod, like something was coming into focus for him.

I was gripped with fear. He already knew. It was therapist telepathy, or maybe the precise ways I was fucked up matched the contours of what I’d done. I fit the profile.

“I guess he’s not listening to her about this,” I said.

“You’ve stopped crying,” he observed.

I hadn’t noticed.

“How do you feel about the prospect of Adam dying?”

“I believe in the right to die.”

“That’s a belief. It’s not a feeling.”

“I’m sad about it.”

But I couldn’t seem to conjure any tears. What I felt was afraid. Because Dr. Baylor was close to the third rail.

I explained that I hadn’t seen my mother in a long time and that this task was probably beyond me and I really didn’t want to let her down. It wasn’t untrue. But I knew that my affect didn’t match, that I was revealing myself in the discrepancy.

I hated keeping things from Dr. Baylor, but I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t lose his good opinion of me.

He knew there was more, but he left it at that. He was letting me keep my secret. He told me in our first session that I was in charge of what got shared and when. “This is your time,” he said, and I’d felt myself blushing.

“Adam hasn’t been in my life that long,” I said. “They got married when I was fifteen.”