The Uses of Enchantment Read online

  She leered at Mary meaningfully.

  “I don’t think that,” Mary said.

  “This is the price I pay for enjoying myself,” said Miss Pym. “Did you know what I was doing when I met you today? I was enjoying myself. I like to walk the hallways during class. The girls think I’m trolling for truants. But the truth is I’m nearly brought to tears by the turbulent sensation of all that…potential.”

  Miss Pym’s eyes remained hard and dry.

  “You understand,” she said. “You were one of those girls once.”

  Mary froze.

  “I didn’t grow up here,” she offered hastily.

  “But you were once a girl of potential,” said Miss Pym wistfully. “Weren’t you?”

  Miss Pym unraveled the tissue from her cuff. She daubed her nose.

  “I forgot,” said Miss Pym. “Why did you say you were visiting Dr. Biedelman?”

  “I didn’t,” Mary said numbly.

  “Well. I don’t imagine you’ll find what you’re looking for here. Next time, however, be sure to sign in with Miss Vernon.”

  Miss Pym vanished through the office doors, leaving Mary alone in the hall. Through the floorboards she could feel the vibration of the cafeteria activity and hear the hiss of the steam heat from the school’s ancient radiators. Her arms began to sweat, her neck to itch. She fled through the front doors into the escalating cold. As she hurried over the flagstone walk, she experienced the unnerving sensation of being observed, a ribbony needle inserted between her shoulder blades. She glanced back at the school’s façade. Miss Pym’s dark ostrich shape watched her through the many-paned office window, her menacing figure seeming to Mary suddenly more frail and more transitory than the skeletal and half-frozen leaves that lined the walk. Mary raised a hand—a thank-you gesture, a regretful goodbye—but Miss Pym receded from the window without acknowledging her.

  Notes

  MARCH 4, 1986

  Mary was not my first patient to have attended Semmering Academy, an institution responsible for educating some of the area’s most exceptional women. It was famously said in the 1930s, “Behind every successful Bostonian stands a Semmering woman.” It has more recently been said that behind every Semmering woman stands its current headmaster, Miss Dorothy Pym.

  Thanks to the tireless efforts of Miss Pym, Semmering became known as one of the most rigorous girls preparatory academies in New England, a status that remained uncontested until the events of 1971–72. In the fall of 1971, sophomore Bettina Spencer and her friend, Melanie Clark, mysteriously “disappeared” from the school grounds, causing considerable uproar within the community; two weeks later, the girls materialized in the parking lot of the Boston commuter train. Bettina, who became my patient, admitted early in the course of our work together that she had been drugged and forced to commit involuntary sexual acts by a masked man who bore an exact resemblance to the school’s then field hockey coach.

  After consulting with my colleagues, I made the difficult decision to break my patient-doctor privilege and report my suspicions to the police. The field hockey coach was arrested, charged, and awaiting trial when a photograph, sent by an anonymous source, appeared at the police station. The photo showed Bettina and Melanie standing in front of a horse-drawn carriage in New York’s Central Park. Bettina smoked a cigarette while Melanie held up a New York Post and pointed to the date—October 29, four days after their so-called abduction by the field hockey coach. The field hockey coach was released and the exonerating photograph reprinted in the Boston paper. The girls were put through a rigorous drug therapy program and readmitted to Semmering. A month later, Bettina set fire to the school founder’s library, destroying not only thousands of books but many original papers and other irreplaceable memorabilia entrusted to the school by the Semmerings. When questioned, Bettina claimed she’d been put under the spell of a witch, who had assumed the form of Miss Pym. She was, she insisted, only obeying her headmaster’s instructions.

  As is often the case with ludicrous accusations, this one contained a shred of suspicion that easily adhered to Miss Pym and her academy full of intelligent, capable women, her new field house built with funds miraculously seduced from the community’s most notorious penny-pincher, its lobby adorned with a lurid mural commemorating the death of the Salem witches. The academy’s reputation suffered throughout the early eighties; a far higher occurrence of eating disorders and general mental distress was reported among the student population. Miss Pym was accused of ruining young women by foisting unrealistic expectations upon their shoulders. Monthly weigh-ins were scheduled to monitor and catch early anorexic or bulimic behavior. Despite (or because of) these measures, applications dropped to their lowest rate since the school’s inception in 1912, and had not yet fully recovered by the time Mary vanished in the fall of 1985.

  Mary, unlike her myriad unhappy classmates, appeared to have been an averagely happy Semmering student; her marks were decent, she’d never been disciplined, there were no signs of physical distress noticed by the school nurse during her monthly weigh-in. Still, I found Mary’s past hard to reconcile with her present self; the volatile young woman I’d met in very few ways resembled the invisible, obedient, and ultimately unremarkable girl evoked by her teachers and her report cards. This timid and inconsequential Mary (who also claimed to have been put under a spell) had effortlessly convinced Dr. Hicks-Flevill and the local police that there was no reason to believe her disappearance was in any way connected to the faked abduction masterminded by Bettina Spencer—which was precisely why I thought the connection worthy of deeper scrutiny.

  Mary arrived at her third appointment in low spirits, her hair unwashed, her clothing clean yet rumpled. She moved with a manic brusqueness around my office, refusing to sit either in my office chair or on the couch.

  Sit down, I said.

  Mary did not sit.

  I’m not going to strip for you this time, she announced. That was cruel of me. Regina said that was cruel of me to remind you that you’re an old, old man and besides it’s probably bad for your health.

  How old do you think I am, I said.

  Old is old, she said. Doesn’t matter by how much.

  She made direct eye contact with me—a confusing sign of ego defiance that did not coincide with the earlier abuse theory. Typically when a patient lashes out at her doctor, she does so without the ability to make concurrent eye contact; to do so would mean taking responsibility for her actions. But Mary suffered no shame; in fact she appeared exultant.

  You seem to enjoy trying to offend me, I said.

  I wasn’t trying to offend you, she said. I was stating a fact.

  You were co-opting me into a familiar and unresolved dynamic that means something to you but nothing to me. I need your help understanding this dynamic.

  OK, Mary said dubiously.

  Do you know what transference is? I asked.

  Mary scowled. All I said was old is old and here you go turning it into some sick twisted thing.

  Transference is neither sick nor twisted, I said. It’s a natural by-product of the useful intimacy achieved between a patient and her doctor.

  I thought that was called semen, she said.

  I didn’t respond.

  She smiled.

  I’m kidding, she said.

  An implied sexual advance is no joking matter, I said.

  She picked at her thighs through her wool tights. She withdrew her compact and checked her complexion, then resumed her unconscious habit of swirling her finger around the compact’s interior.

  I decided to take a more direct approach.

  Was K old, I said.

  K, she puzzled. Who’s K?

  K was the man in your dream. The man who didn’t care about saving your jewel case.

  I have no idea what you’re talking about, she said. You must have me confused with another patient.

  She stood and faced my bookshelf.

  Have you read all these books? she asked
.

  Mary, I said.

  She didn’t respond.

  Ida, I said.

  She coughed.

  Is it hot in here? she asked. I’m really burning up.

  Mary pretended to be entranced by my bookshelves. I wondered if she suffered from “true amnesia”—gaps into which not only very old memories have fallen but recent events as well. Often “paramnesias” form to fill these gaps—stories that take the place of memory, memories which can conveniently disappear at the point a patient tries to put them into words. Often this disappearance is due to subverted shame—meaning that Mary’s seemingly disingenuous forgetting could be the result of a force exerted by her unconscious.

  Mary coughed again. So? she pressed. Have you read these books?

  Most of them, I said. Do you not remember our conversation from last Tuesday?

  It wasn’t so memorable, she said. She removed a book from the bookcase. She turned the cover toward me, astonished.

  She held in her hand my copy of The Abduction and Captivity of Dorcas Hobbs by the Malygnant Savages of the Kenebek.

  I cannot believe you have this book, she said.

  She opened the front cover.

  “For Beaton,” she read. Who’s Beaton?

  That copy was purchased at a used bookstore, I said.

  “For Beaton,” she read, “congrats on your (finally!) graduation from BU.”

  Mary cast an eye toward the wall above my desk where my diplomas hung.

  You went to BU, Mary said.

  For graduate school, I said.

  I suppose that’s just a coincidence, isn’t it, Beaton? I see you also attended Oberlin.

  It’s in Ohio.

  I know where Oberlin is, she said. All the hippie chicks who don’t score well on their SATs go to Oberlin and pretend that they’re really musical and Oberlin was their first choice when in fact they weren’t smart enough to get into Brown.

  She returned to the couch.

  This couch sucks, she said. I bet you’ve had this couch since Oberlin. Which means you’ve probably had sex on it.

  Do you always associate couches with sex, I asked her.

  Do you always associate couches with sex?

  Do you?

  I associate couches with vomit. Once my sister Regina threw up on our couch and was too scared to tell our parents. She flipped the cushion over and thought no one would notice.

  Mary extended her body over the length of the couch, her head hanging off the edge.

  Did you also hide things from your parents? I asked.

  Mary rumpled her left brow with her index finger, then smoothed it over. She repeated this action several times.

  Dumb question, she said, righting herself on the couch and folding her legs Indian-style.

  Did you hide things from your parents? she asked.

  I’m not so old that certain universal childhood tendencies don’t convey, I said.

  Did you ever hide something on purpose because you wanted them to find it?

  Hiding something because you want it to be found seems counterintuitive, I said.

  What is less counterintuitive, she said. Hiding in plain sight?

  Depends on how you define productive, I said. Do you want to be found, or don’t you?

  She didn’t answer my question. She tapped a finger on the front cover of Dorcas Hobbs.

  So, Beaton, have you read this or haven’t you?

  I didn’t respond.

  I wonder if you’ve read any of the books on your shelf, she said. Or maybe you’re just one of those people who buys books because they make him look smart and interesting. For example, she said, hopping up again. Have you read this book?

  She pulled Freud’s Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria from the shelf.

  Of course, I said. It’s a classic.

  A classic, she said, snapping the word off her tongue. When’s the last time you read it?

  Not since graduate school.

  How many centuries ago was that?

  I didn’t respond.

  Mary sighed.

  You’re a sad fellow, Beaton, she said, and not a very inspiring spokesperson for the benefits of emotional health. You should exercise more. That’s what my mother would tell you. She thinks fat people should be deported on wood pallets to the tropics where they can provide food for the parasites. I’m not saying you’re fat. Who gave this to you?

  She’d returned to the inscription on the title page of Dorcas Hobbs.

  As I said, it’s a used book. The inscription was there when I acquired it.

  Mary narrowed her eyes.

  I felt my face reddening.

  How am I supposed to trust you if you lie to me? she said. How can I be cured if I can’t trust you? I’m sensing we’re about to become victims of an ugly pointless circle, Beaton. We might as well terminate our relationship right now and save my parents the dough.

  A former patient gave it to me, I said.

  She sniffed, temporarily mollified. She dropped back onto the couch and paged roughly through Dorcas Hobbs, as though hoping to dislodge another scrap of information about me from its interior.

  I didn’t mean to pry, she said. It just seems unfair, you asking all these questions and I can’t even expect one honest answer out of you. What was her name? I’m assuming it’s a girl. Did you find her attractive? Is that why she gave you a present? To thank you for finding her attractive?

  It’s unethical for me to discuss my patients with you, I said.

  You mean it’s against your own best interests for you to discuss you. You’re not supposed to reveal anything about yourself because then I might use it against you.

  You must think I’m very paranoid, I said.

  I think therapists in general are paranoid, she said. But we could make this about you if you want.

  This isn’t a chess game in which tactical errors can be made, I said.

  No? she said. Then where’s the fun? You should raise the stakes don’t you think? Like in the witch-hunting days of Dorcas?

  If they’d had therapists in the days of Dorcas, the unexplored subconscious would have been outed as the true evil.

  Mary ignored me.

  If you fail to make someone convincingly better, you get burned at the stake, she said. If you fail to make me better you should be burned, don’t you think?

  I think that the chances of you getting better are entirely dependent upon you taking this enterprise more seriously, I said.

  Oh, she said, I do take it seriously. Pour fair une omelette il faut casser des oeufs.

  You don’t seem serious to me, I said. You’re behaving in a manner I’m describing in my notes as “flippant” and “dismissive.” Also, as a matter of factual accuracy, you should know that the witches weren’t burned in Salem. No witches were burned in the colonies. They were hung.

  Mary strived to look contrite. She continued to flip through Dorcas.

  So, she said, pretending to absently read a page. Tell me about Dora.

  Dora was a sexually repressed girl who lived in Vienna at the turn of the century who believed that her father’s friend, Herr—

  “Who is the one you chose to be your incubus?”

  Excuse me?

  It’s a question from the appendix, she said, holding up Dorcas Hobbs. “Questions to Be Asked of a Witch.” Originally printed in the Malleus Malefactorum.

  Do you still want to hear about Dora?

  Yes yes, she said.

  Dora believed that she had been sexually abused, but Freud discovered that this “abuse” was actually a shameful fantasy of what she wished had occurred between herself and Herr—

  What’s an incubus?

  Pardon?

  An incubus.

  An incubus is a male demon who was believed to have sexual intercourse with women while they slept. Figuratively speaking, it also refers to something that causes much worry or anxiety, such as a nightmare.

  Huh, she said. I’m sorry. I inte
rrupted you again.

  Dora terminated her treatment prematurely, before Freud could cure her of her hysterical symptoms. Some people believe that she left because he refused her literal explanations of what happened to her, namely that she was sexually abused.

  He sounds like a moron, said Mary. “What is the ointment with which you rub your broomstick?”

  These same people believe that Freud was overly interested in confirming his theories of repression—more so than in actually listening to the patient, I said.

  “How are you able to fly through the air?” “What do you make your plagues of pernicious creatures out of and how do you do it?” These questions are so leading. The people asking them weren’t much interested in the answers, I bet.

  As I said, if they’d known then what we know now about the subconscious—

  Did you know that the Malleus Malefactorum, which was published in the 1400s, was one of the first international best sellers? Did you know that Malleus Malefactorum means “Hammer of Witches”?

  She looked at me slyly.

  Are you a Hammer of Witches? she asked.

  Mary, I said.

  Oops, she said. I forgot. An implied sexual advance is no joking matter.

  She returned to the appendix. She stood and intoned in a deep voice “Who are the children on whom you have cast a spell?”

  Mary, I said.

  What, she said.

  You’re trying to derail this session by hiding behind that book.

  Mary placed the book on the floor beside the couch. Resuming her cross-legged position, she bunched the fabric around the holes in her tights, jamming the bunched bit between her big toe and the neighboring toe until her feet appeared cloven.

  I’m hiding in plain sight, Beaton, she said. Maybe a book is the best place to look.

  What Might Have Happened

  This is how the story might have ended: the man drove the girl home.

  But as the man started to drive the girl home he realized that he was too curious to drive the girl home. Intensely, even shamefully curious, curious to the point of feeling erotically charged by his curiosity. Not that he believed the girl’s insinuations that he had molested her—he didn’t believe them for one second, and why should he? He didn’t have amnesia—that lie had erupted from him because, well, he’d been accused of the same by the managing partner at his law firm who interviewed him for the purposes of “damage control.” “Amnesia won’t play well in this context,” the general counsel had said when he’d refused to speak to him about the matter, claiming he didn’t remember. But of course he remembered. He remembered peering down his nose in order to center the tip of his cigarette in the glowing bull’s-eye of his car lighter, the heat warming his upper lip. He remembered the sound the body made as it glanced off his car, as though someone had hurled a giant bag of wet trash at the passenger-side door. He’d taken his eyes off the road for a millisecond, a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of time. His first reaction, when in his rearview mirror he saw the man tumbling along the breakdown lane and striking, with the floppiness of a rolled carpet, the guardrail, was one of dumbfounded amazement. How has this never happened to me before? he remembered thinking. He’d peered down his nose to light a cigarette while driving five or six times a day for ten years, taking special pleasure in landing the cigarette in the dead center of the lighter’s concentric circles. He felt misled, cheated, as though he’d been seduced into casualness over a situation that required constant vigilance to prevent its turning tragic.