Lily and the Octopus(39)

I hold the last of the cookie between my teeth, shake the crumbs off my hands, and take the card, turning it first left, then right. I haven’t quite figured out if I’m dealing with Old Jenny or New Jenny today, so I decide to just go along. I can practically see my imaginary better therapist encouraging me to participate.

What do you have to lose? he says.

What do I have to gain? I ask in return.

I study the card. Mostly it looks like an inkblot, but when I turn the card upside down I finally see it. “It’s the octopus,” I say with cookie still between my teeth, crumbs falling down my front. I’m reminded of something a friend who works at the White House once told me about the journalist Candy Crowley always having crumbs on her bosom from eating. I don’t know why I think of this other than that I feel like a reporter under rapid fire, doing my best to report what I see.

Jenny turns the card back around so that she can see it, too. “Most people say bat, or butterfly.”

I take the cookie out of my mouth. “Most people would be wrong, then. That’s the octopus. I mean, it’s sort of a view from above. What he looks like when you’re looking down on him, which is what I’m doing most of the time, because he’s on top of a dachshund, and dachshunds have short legs.”

Jenny looks at me skeptically to see if I’m putting her on. I can see that she wants to ask if I’m taking this exercise seriously. I think I need to put us both at ease.

“Did you know that Hermann Rorschach was hot?”

“Excuse me?” she asks.

“The inventor of this test.” My intent is to catch her off guard. Maybe turn the tables a bit.

Jenny sets the first card down on the table between us and sinks back into her chair. “No, I know who Hermann Rorschach is.”

“Oh. Well, he was hot. Like crazy next-level Brad Pitt kind of hot. I had to research him once for this writing project I was doing. Turns out he died at the age of thirty-seven. Of peritonitis.”

Jenny looks at me and jots down a few notes on her pad. Maybe my knowing this is more telling than what I saw in card number one. Maybe she’s writing down the word peritonitis to remind herself to look it up later. I mean, she probably knows what it means, but this is the problem when you have a name like Jenny. People like me tend to assume that you’re dumb.

“Anyway. You should Google him.” I reach into my bag for another cookie. Cinnamon sugar this time. Normally they’re not my favorite, but I’m in the mood for one today.

“Let’s just continue with the second card.” Jenny hands me a card similar to the first one, but with the addition of four red splotches. “What do you see?”

This time I don’t have to study it. I see it right away. “That’s the octopus. Four of his arms dripping in blood.”

Jenny purses her lips. “Where is the blood coming from?”

I refuse to answer this. Instead, I just shrug and brush excess cinnamon off my cookie and it gets on my shirt and I have a sudden sympathy for Candy Crowley. I can see peripherally that Jenny is scratching more notes on her pad. Maybe she’s deciding whether to press me for more. If she does, she won’t get anything.

“Try this one.” She hands me a third card; this one also has splotches of red.

“Cockroach.”

“Not octopus?”

“You can’t ask me leading questions like that. That’s tester projection.”

“I’m just making sure,” Jenny says.

“What I see is a cockroach.” I pause for a bite of cookie before adding, “Known in some circles as the octopus of the land.”

Jenny tosses her pad down in frustration and leans forward in her chair. She rests her chin in her hands and her pen makes a small blue mark on her cheek. “What circles would those be?”

“Some circles.” I really don’t know the answer. “Among entomologists, perhaps.”

Jenny sighs.

“Look. Let me save you some time.” I pick up the stack of remaining cards. “This is the octopus hang gliding. This is the octopus after I pry it free from Lily and sizzle its brains with an electric cattle prod. This is two Tinker Bells kissing.” I pause for a moment and pull the card close to my face, but sure enough, that’s what I see. This time it’s me who makes a mental note. That’s of some concern. The rest of the cards are in color. “That’s the octopus in the ocean pouncing on some unlucky prey, that’s the coral reef where I imagine the octopus lives, and that’s two seahorses holding up the Eiffel Tower.” I toss the cards down onto the table. “I may have missed one.”

Jenny doesn’t like it when I’m such a smartass, so I open my bag and hold it out for her. “Cookie?”

She glares at me for a moment, and then I see her face soften and she reaches into the bag and pulls out a chocolate chocolate chip. “What the hell.”

“C’mon, Jenny. You know as well as I do that this is pseudoscience.”

Jenny takes a bite of her cookie, then rests it in her lap. “These are good.” She reaches for the discarded stack of cards and puts them back in order. “Rorschach testing has been widely criticized for certain purposes, but it’s still a pretty good indicator of anxiety.” She looks me straight in the eyes. “And hostility.”