The Uses of Enchantment Page 7

  “I don’t see how your capacity to understand my exhaustion is of any relevance whatsoever,” Mum said through an exhalation.

  Roz rewarded the room with a powerful smile.

  “Mrs. Veal,” Roz said. “I understand—I do—I understand your resistance to traumatize what must feel like a healed wound. But Dr. Flood and myself have come to speak with you today because we think that Dr. Hammer has behaved…ignobly toward your daughter.”

  This caught her mother’s attention.

  “He took liberties,” Roz said. “With her story, and for all we know…Well, let’s not jump to any conclusions, shall we?”

  Her mother drew on her cigarette so forcefully that her lips disappeared inside her mouth. Mary found herself the receipient of an unabashedly nasty look. She took a deep breath, intending to defend herself—then remembered her mother’s request.

  “I imagine you’re dying to elaborate,” Mum said.

  Roz retrieved a file folder.

  “I have it documented here in my report to the board,” she said, flipping through the contents. “Dr. Hammer behaved in an unprofessional manner. To be specific: I saw Dr. Hammer and your daughter in his office wearing nothing but their underwear.”

  Her mother closed her eyes and pressed the palm of her hand, the one holding the cigarette, against her forehead. The lit end of the cigarette hovered dangerously near her hair.

  Dr. Flood positioned herself on the edge of the couch, hands shaking. Her words shot out of her mouth as an anxious, pent-up jabber.

  “Dr. Hammer claims this ‘incident’ occurred on the day of a big blizzard don’t forget about the blizzard Roz.”

  “So for an hour my daughter sat on a couch with a man while the two of them were wearing underwear,” Mum said. “And then he billed me.”

  “To be totally accurate he was wearing ski pants and Mary was wearing long johns so the word underwear is perhaps…”

  “Regardless of who did what to whom,” Roz interrupted, “it is unacceptable to counsel a patient in anything less than professional work attire.”

  Dr. Flood returned her jittery attention to the fireplace.

  “Elizabeth and I agreed that Mary would be more comfortably able to tell us the truth if she knew the stress Elizabeth has lived under,” Roz said. “Which is why I’ve brought her along. Elizabeth was abused by men from all corners. Professionally. Domestically. Much as Mary was abused from all corners. Also like Mary, Elizabeth has spent a lifetime being told by men what to think. Exactly what you hate most, am I right, Mary? Being told what to think? Like Elizabeth, you’ve never been able to take charge of telling your own story.”

  “Dr. Hammer helped Mary come to terms with what she’d done,” Mum said.

  “And what, exactly, Mrs. Veal, did Mary do?” Roz asked.

  “Read the book, Dr. Biedelman,” Mum said acidly.

  “Exactly. According to the book, Mary was never abducted. According to the book, Mary made the whole thing up. But according to Mary, what really happened?”

  “She made it up,” her mother said.

  “But not without some help,” Roz said, retrieving a second folder from the carpet. “You should look at this.”

  Roz opened the folder on the coffee table.

  “The highlighted sections are from Dr. Hammer’s book. The page numbers in the margins correspond to a very famous book written by Dr. Sigmund Freud called Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria. I imagine you’re familiar with this book,” she said, turning to Mary.

  Mary shrugged.

  “In fact, I know that you’re familiar with this book. I learned from a Mrs.”—Roz rummaged through a second folder—“sorry, a Ms. Wilkes, that your English class studied Dora during the fall of your junior year. A month before you disappeared. Although you told Dr. Hammer during one of your sessions—highlighted there, Mrs. Veal—that you’d never read Dora, according to Ms. Wilkes’s grade book, you received a B on the essay you wrote. That’s a very high grade to receive for an essay on a book you’ve never read.”

  Mary glanced at her mother, a newly lit cigarette hanging between her first two fingers, her Pappagallo flats brushing back and forth on the carpet. The pile flashed dark, then silver, dark, then silver.

  “We’re particularly interested in how so many of the responses Mary supplied to Dr. Hammer’s questions bear an uncanny resemblance to Dora’s responses to Dr. Freud.”

  Roz enumerated Mary’s offenses. The fact that her captor and presumed abuser was named “K.” Her claimed “disinclination” for food. Her claim that her father had attempted to commit suicide in the woods, but was in fact having sex with his mistress who, along with her husband, was a close friend of the family.

  “My husband doesn’t have a mistress,” her mother said.

  “Exactly my point,” said Roz.

  She continued with her list. Mary’s coughing fits, and the fact that they were caused by a sensation she likened to a feather tickling the back of her throat. The obsessive swirling of her index finger inside her makeup compact. The fact that she’d read, or claimed to have read, Mantegazza’s Physiology of Love. Her dream about the burning house and the jewel case. Her response, J’appelle un chat un chat. Her later use of a second French term, pour faire une omelette il faut casser des oeufs. Her claim that she had decided to cease therapy “a fortnight” before she announced she was quitting. Her purported seduction by the husband of her father’s mistress in his office building, in an empty file room with one window. The failure of the family to believe the story of this seduction. The fact that Mary reappeared on December 31, the same day that Dora terminated her treatment with Dr. Freud.

  “Most damning, of course, is the fact that Mary claimed, while ‘under a spell,’ to have been given the name Ida. Dora, of course, was a pseudonym used by Freud. The real name of his patient was Ida Bauer.”

  Her mother stood. Ash from her cigarette landed on the carpet, on the plaid-upholstered wingback in which she’d been sitting. She claimed she had a headache and needed to lie down.

  “Mrs. Veal,” Roz said. “How familiar are you with the Dora case?”

  “More familiar than I’ve ever been,” Mum said, left thumb pressed into her left temple, eyes winnowed.

  “What I mean is—how familiar are you with the critical response to Dora’s case?”

  “Dr. Biedelman,” Mum said, “I actually do have a headache.”

  “Dora claimed she was molested by an adult male, and Dr. Freud didn’t believe her. Why? Because he had his ‘theories’ to prove. According to him, Dora fantasized about an incident of abuse to express her own long-repressed sexual desire. But recent feminist scholarship suggest Dora was not fantasizing—”

  “That’s lovely,” her mother said. “Do you need directions back to the highway?”

  “Mrs. Veal,” Roz persisted. “Do you think it’s a coincidence that your daughter would choose to speak using the words of a girl whose own trauma had been discounted as fantasy by her male doctor?”

  Her mother smiled, a sweet, tuned-out smile.

  “I appreciate your coming here to inform us, or rather, me, that my daughter is not only a liar but a liar without a particularly good imagination. I thank you very much for this enlightening news, and now you both can go.” Dr. Flood stood. Mary, hoping this meant the meeting was adjourned, also stood.

  Roz remained seated.

  “So I don’t suppose you’d care to be reminded that we’re not just talking about an abuse of narrative,” Roz said quietly. “Mary’s medical exam revealed the possibility that sexual abuse—”

  “Dr. Biedelman,” her mother said sharply. “You can go, now.”

  Nobody moved. Her mother stared at the two invaders to her house, weirdly powerless to rid herself of them.

  “And if you refuse to go, then I will.”

  Her mother left the living room. The hallway stairs creaked irregularly as she made her pained way to her bedroom.

  Roz refre
shed her own coffee.

  Mary checked her watch.

  “I understand, Mary, why you’d feel the need to pretend your story was invented. If I had a mother like yours, I’d say anything to put her mind at ease. Please. Sit,” Roz said.

  Mary sat. Dr. Flood sat, too, but not in any way that indicated commitment. She balanced her pelvis on the couch arm and cast repeated glances toward the staircase.

  “I should warn you that there’s going to be an investigation into Dr. Hammer’s book. He fabricated exchanges so that his own theories about a condition he invented—‘hyper radiance,’ which frankly is just the sexual drive theory and the Oedipus complex repackaged—were supported. He led you to incorrect conclusions. Worse still, he ignored your evident emotional distress. It’s clear to many experts who have read his book that he misdiagnosed you, and in doing so is encouraging the misdiagnosis of many more girls like you.”

  Roz put her elbows on her knees, hunching down so that she was below Mary’s eye level.

  “You’re a resilient girl, Mary. I can tell you have a gift for compartmentalizing, just as many intelligent women do. Take Elizabeth, for example. Elizabeth attended Radcliffe on a full scholarship at the age of sixteen; she triple-majored in psychology, French, and government and maintained a 4.0 average until her very public and very humiliating breakdown. And yet where did she put her childhood—a childhood rife with disturbances—as she succeeded in her daily life, seemingly undistressed? Where did she put her alcoholic father, her sexually abusive uncle? Where did she put these men?”

  Mary watched as Dr. Flood took a final drag from her cigarette and casually ground the filter into the center of her untouched coffee cake.

  “She put them in a drawer, Mary, a drawer deep inside her mind. But the drawer wasn’t locked, and eventually she stumbled upon this drawer amid the clutter and detritus—maybe she was cleaning house, as people unconsciously do, looking at old memories, making space for new memories—and she forgot what she’d put inside of that drawer. She opened that drawer, that Pandora’s box, and the evils of her past came surging out. The result? This brave woman, this brilliant and brave woman, was institutionalized for the better part of a year. This is what happens to women who compartmentalize. Instead of punishing the people who hurt them, they punish themselves. They deprive themselves of the full, happy life they deserve. And if you refuse to deal with it, Mary, it will deal with you. And deal with you and deal with you. Look at Elizabeth. A year in an institution wasn’t enough. She had to marry a narcissist, she had to further deprive herself of happiness before she finally, finally, shoved her past not into a drawer but out into the world. She has reclaimed her story and signed her name to it. It can’t do her any harm now.”

  Mary checked her watch again.

  “But regardless,” Roz said, collecting her various folders, “you’ll need to prepare yourself. When this investigation gets under way, you’re going to need an advocate, Mary.”

  Roz withdrew a business card from her vest.

  “This is my new office. You’ll call me, I hope, when you’re ready to talk about it.”

  Roz nodded at Dr. Flood. They rose from the couch, pausing in the hallway, while Mary retrieved their coats.

  Roz withdrew a book from her bag.

  “My little Dora,” she said, not without admiration. “I’ve inscribed it to you.”

  Finally, they left.

  In the kitchen, Mary fetched three aspirin and a glass of water. As painful as she presumed her mother’s headaches to be, they were also marvelously convenient. A cocktail party she didn’t want to attend? Her headache would arrive just as she was applying her lipstick. A parent conference with the Semmering headmaster to discuss Gaby’s pot smoking? Halfway to the car, she’d be seized with pain and return to her bed. A Wellesley alumnae luncheon where, as fund-raising chair, she was supposed to report on the delivery of the Christmas pecans she’d forgotten to order? Before the entrée was cleared, she’d be so afflicted that she’d need to be driven home by a friend.

  But sometimes the headaches arrived when her mother was happy or simply flatlining through her days. These headaches were the most unsettling; Mary preferred it when her pain could be linked to a specific cause, like a flu that can be traced to this-or-that person who visited last week. Without cause, her pain felt invisibly contagious, unavoidable. Any one of them could be felled by it, and possibly worse, any one of them could be the cause.

  Her parents’ bedroom was dark, the only sound the erratic cricking of the baseboard heater. Her mother lay on the bed beneath a mohair throw. Her absolute stillness was proof that she wasn’t asleep.

  Mary put the mug on the bedside table and left, shutting the bedroom door loudly, to indicate that she knew her mother was faking it.

  Downstairs, Mary bused the coffee tray into the kitchen and put the cups in the dishwasher. She left Dr. Flood’s plate on the counter, her cigarette filter protruding, bull’s-eye style, from the center of the concentric cinnamon rings. It seemed the cleanest, most uncomplicated way to communicate to her mother, who refused to let her talk and was feigning sleep and other unconvincing forms of denial: they were all about to get burned.

  Notes

  FEBRUARY 25, 1986

  Mary’s second visit occurred on the morning of a blizzard. The first flakes of snow began falling at 7 a.m., and by the time of Mary’s appointment, at 10:30 a.m., nearly a foot had accumulated over Boston and its suburbs. Despite the adverse traveling conditions, Mary arrived ten minutes early for her appointment escorted by her father, Clyde. I knew from Mary’s file that Clyde was a guidance counselor at the same prep school I attended as a boy. He and I spoke briefly about St. Hugh’s newly appointed and radically minded headmaster without either of us belying an opinion about the man. Like many of his generation, Clyde appeared to distrust mental health professionals, or he at least appeared to distrust me; his aloofness made me wonder what rumors he’d heard, Boston being little more than a small town after all and the pair of us doubtless sharing more than a few acquaintances.

  I gestured Mary into my office. Again, she sat in my office chair. This time I corrected her, and asked her to move to the couch. She complied.

  She said nothing. For ninety seconds, I waited for her to speak. She did not speak.

  I brought you some literature on hypnosis, I said to her. I handed her a pile of Xeroxed articles.

  She flipped through the pages without comment.

  Is there any particular place you’d like to begin today, I said.

  She shook her head.

  We don’t have to talk about you, I said. You can tell me something notable you’ve observed since we last met.

  No response.

  Sometimes what a person notices can say a lot about that person, I said.

  Mary rumpled her nose. Coughed.

  You have bowlegs, she said finally. If I were you, I wouldn’t wear tights. It calls attention to them.

  These are ski pants, I said. I cross-country skied to the office today.

  I wouldn’t wear them, she said. Ever again.

  Mary pulled harshly on a gold hoop earring, distending the lobe.

  They’d be nice legs if they were straight, she persisted. Did you ever wish for that? Did you ever think your whole life would improve if only your legs were straight? My jeans are wet.

  She stood and unbuttoned her fly, exposing the elastic waist of her long johns. Wriggling and kicking, she removed her jeans and slung the jeans over the radiator. She walked to the bookshelf—maybe interested in the books, possibly more interested in providing me with an adequate opportunity to examine her lower body. I attributed her exhibitionistic behavior to her relationship with her father; many girls who experience formal and unaffectionate relationships with their fathers—“rigid boundary respecters”—will often look to other paternal figures for a purely sexual validation that, in their minds, compensates for the emotional economizing they experience at home.

&
nbsp; Mary withdrew a layman’s 1948 book about psychiatry (You and Psychiatry, by William C. Menninger and Munro Leaf).

  How’s your appetite, I asked her.

  I have some disinclination for food, she said, opening the book.

  Disinclination, I said.

  Disinclination, she said. That means I’m not hungry, right?

  That’s what it means in this context, I said.

  Silence.

  Are you familiar with Mr. Leaf, I said.

  She was not familiar.

  He’s also the author of The Story of Ferdinand. It’s a famous children’s book about a bull.

  That explains why there are a lot of entries under sex, she said. Have you ever read Mantegazza’s Physiology of Love?

  Have you?

  K gave it to me, she said. She coughed.

  Who is K, I said.

  She coughed again.

  Can I get you some water?

  She shook her head, coughing into her palm.

  No, she croaked. I’m fine.

  I wrote K in my notebook. I underlined it four times.

  She pushed her fingers into her Adam’s apple, massaging it in small circles.

  “Sex, education about,” she read from the book’s index. “Sex, psychoanalytic meaning of.” Sex has a different meaning in psychoanalysis? “Sex, adjustments in marriage.”

  She raised her eyebrows, flipped to the referenced page, walked slowly back to the couch.

  “Successful marriage blah blah…Through the ignorance or selfishness of the husband or the shyness of the wife or both, the wife never achieves the satisfaction of a climax to sexual intercourse—an orgasm. Often neither partner knows that she should!”

  There really is an exclamation point, she said. I don’t want you to think I’m mocking your profession. “Another restraining force is the strong indoctrination of girls in childhood of the attitude that sex is naughty and dirty. Too many wives, intelligent ones, too, believe that sexual relations are part of their ‘marital duty’; they must give their husbands satisfaction, even though they feel that it is not ‘nice’ ”—quotes there—“for them to have comparable pleasure.”