Intensive Therapy Part 3

"Since when did you become the expert on my love life? Besides, you never asked what I felt about your getting married."

"What?" Eddie reacted sharply. "What are you saying?"

Jonas bit his lip hard. "That I had feelings about whether you were ready to get married; but I was your kid brother whose opinion wasn't worth two cents. Admit it, you still think of me that way."

"What? That's not true. Where is this coming from?" Eddie said. "I'm sorry, Jo. I didn't mean to upset you."

"Have a good weekend," Jonas sulked.

"You, too. I worry about you sometimes, Jonas. This is one of them. Margo and I love you."

"I know, I know," Jonas said, but Eddie's gibe felt like one of Dr. Fowler's tongue-las.h.i.+ngs. "We'll talk later," he said, knowing that later wouldn't be for a while. He glanced at the portrait of his father atop the table on which he replaced the telephone. w.i.l.l.y Speller's eyes looked pained.

Spending more time at his closet than usual, Jonas fussed over what to wear that evening. Something about Miss Abington's dress stuck with him. He finished dressing hurriedly, wondering what she was doing that very moment.

7.

Tuesday, September 22, 1981

The day after Miss Abington's second session dawned clear and crisp. Jonas awakened from a series of dreams overlaid and intertwined like a Bach fugue. In the most vivid, he was playing first violin in a Philadelphia Orchestra performance of Invitation to the Dance, Dr. Fowler conducting. Jonas's father appeared and s.n.a.t.c.hed away the baton, berating Dr. Fowler for being musically obtuse, whereupon Jonas's gut-wrenching grief transformed into sublime joy, the pianissimo of the cello's concluding notes enfolding him like the farewell embrace he longed to have shared with his father before he died. Jonas awoke feeling incredibly sad, and incredibly peaceful.

Enveloped in the afterglow of the dream, Jonas drove to a.n.a.lysis hearing the melody.

The Inst.i.tute of the Pennsylvania Hospital in West Philadelphia, where Dr. Fowler practiced, had seen better days. The fenced-in property was ringed by graying, cracked pavement that looked like aged scrimshaw. The first-floor offices had identical, room-wide windows reaching from radiator to ceiling. To protect patient ident.i.ty, the exterior was guarded by a row of boxwood hedges, silent witnesses to the hourly drone of murderous dreams and incestuous fantasies confessed on the couches within by Philadelphia's finest and brightest.

Jonas lay down at 9:10 AM.

"Wasn't the Tchaikovsky inspiring?" he began, hoping for the umpteenth time to extract a dram of affirmation from his a.n.a.lyst. "I loved it, but ..." He fell silent, replaying his morning dream.

"What's happening?" Dr. Fowler inquired.

Jonas had attended the concert alone. Mrs. Paquette found a seat in the parterre. At intermission, he and Dr. Fowler had made eye contact briefly. As Jonas lay on the couch that morning, he saw his future flash before his eyes: a Dr. Fowler clone. It felt awful. Next, Jonas imagined looking through the telescopic sight of a high-powered rifle, panning the faces of the concertgoers until he pinpointed Dr. Fowler in the crosshair.

Ready. Aim. Fire.

"This isn't what I want anymore," Jonas said. "Lying here day after day, acting out a part scripted by a self-aggrandizing p.r.i.c.k who doesn't get who I am or what I'm about. You know I hate it when you ignore me at concerts, but you do it anyway. Outside this room, I don't exist to you, do I?"

"I didn't ignore you. I didn't acknowledge you the way you wanted," Dr. Fowler said. "What does that mean to you?"

"I'll tell you what it means. It means you put your bulls.h.i.+t ideology ahead of basic human kindness. What a wonderful role model! Thank G.o.d I have Stan Amernick to talk with," Jonas said, thinking of his favorite supervisor, a man who encouraged Jonas to follow his instincts, instead of spouting old-school psychoa.n.a.lytic dogma.

Jonas heard papers rustling, the scratching of pen on paper. "What are you doing? Writing your shopping list?"

"What does it mean to you to hear me writing?"

"I'm done with that."

"Done with what?" Dr. Fowler said.

"Done with your 'What-does-that-mean-to-yous.' You say that so much, it's meaningless. I need a.n.a.lysis to get over my father so I can become a better man. I need a.n.a.lysis to understand my mind so I can become a better doctor. What happens here? I wind up with neither.

"So what if I have a sentimental streak. It's what makes me, me. So what if I had a dream about occupying the office next to you and having a door that connects us. It was a beautiful dream, and you spoiled it with all those interpretations about repressed h.o.m.os.e.xuality you ram down my throat. You know why I dream about airplane crashes? It's because their pilots don't know how to steer. Just like you. You have no clue where my a.n.a.lysis-or my life-is headed. If I keep going like I am, I'll be shredded through your a.n.a.lytic mill like tractor tires. I'll wind up recycled into another you. Enough of this; that's not going to happen. I won't let it."

"I'm honored by your oration," Dr. Fowler said. "As long as you're at it, is there anything else you'd like to say? I'm all ears."

"You f.u.c.king b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"Don't stop there. By all means, keep going."

"I don't care whether you believe this or not, but you apply your ideology to me the way internists pigeonhole patients into catchall diagnoses. It's time to update your thinking. That's what competent a.n.a.lysts do."

"I see."

"What exactly is it you see?"

Dr. Fowler said nothing. Thinking of when Victoria asked him his age, Jonas said, "I asked you a simple question."

"If it's so simple, Dr. Speller, enlighten me with the answer."

"This a.n.a.lysis has become a joke."

"I don't follow you."

"Of course you don't. That's the point. This whole thing is ludicrous."

Dr. Fowler's chair creaked. Jonas began to feel more sorry than angry. Sorry he hadn't taken better care of himself. Sorry he'd a.s.sumed Dr. Fowler would understand him better than Jonas could himself.

Neither man spoke for minutes.

Jonas said, "You must know by now that I don't tell you what's on my mind when I'm here. Or are you too arrogant to know that?"

"Oh," Dr. Fowler said, followed by a long silence during which Jonas heard Invitation to the Dance in his head.

He hummed the melody out loud: "Bawm bibawm b.u.m bah, dah diddle dada, dah diddle dada; bawm bibawm b.u.m bah, dah diddle dah daaah." Double stops in the violins on each attack. Then, the sweet violin melody: "Bawm 2, 3, 1 diddle dum. Bawm 2, 3, 1 diddle dum. Dum diddle dum, dum diddle dum, dum diddle dah-dah dum." The fingers of his left hand danced up and down the neck of an imaginary violin, his right wrist and arm bowing in synchrony.

"Can you put what's going on in your mind into words?" Dr. Fowler said.

"Sure, I can, but why should I?"

"Because you're supposed to say what's on your mind."

"You don't deserve it." Jonas sat up on the couch and faced Dr. Fowler, the first time in three years he looked the man in the eye. "I like my new patient. She's full of fire, like I used to be. If I let you, you'll puree my soul into mousse for your next before-the-concert dinner party. Do you know the name of the piece I was just humming?" Jonas persisted. More silence. "I asked for the name of that piece. I'm not going to stop until you answer." Dr. Fowler's chair creaked again, like the rusty door hinge of the Inst.i.tute Library-old and musty, like a mausoleum. "Don't be scared. I won't tell on you."

"It's Invitation to the Dance," Dr. Fowler said in an unfamiliar, wavering voice. But by that point, it didn't matter.

"I dreamt about it last night. I felt the music in a place you've never earned the right to enter, someplace sacred."

"I'd like to hear about it."

"It's too late for that."

"Too late?"

"Too late for us. We're done. You'll have four open hours once I'm gone. It's time you took a refresher course. That's the only way you'll be invited to my dance."

Jonas rose to leave. "I was wrong to say I got nothing from you. You saw me through my darkest hours and taught me to trust my unconscious mind. For that, I'll always be grateful. You tried. I know that."

He paused at the door. "I'll miss Friday afternoons here; they reminded me of how much I looked forward to Sat.u.r.days when I was a kid, singing in the children's chorus. We sang beautiful Christmas carols in four-part harmony. Maybe it was too much to hope you'd understand me. That's over now, like my childhood. I'm no kid anymore. It's time to take care of myself. That's what my father would have wanted. Not you. Not this. Thank G.o.d it's over."

8.

Friday, November 19, 2004

Victoria's thirty-second commute to work had advantages, but the biggest disadvantage was the lack of transition time. Like the stuffed prize in an arcade game, she felt plucked from her kitchen each morning and dropped into the legal mill downstairs.

Throughout the morning, Melinda was on Victoria's mind. Melinda, so angry with the world, was far prettier than Victoria had been when she was fourteen. So active that she needed her tennis racket restrung monthly, Melinda had not been to the pro shop since June. And despite growing two inches over the summer, she hadn't asked for new sneakers either. She was so much younger than Victoria was when she began to need therapy. Melinda couldn't be as distraught as Victoria had been back then. Could she?

For her first appointment of the day, Victoria met with Flora Arrestia. Schone and Braun had taken on Barlow v. Duke's as a favor to the Arrestias' accountant, who golfed with Martin Braun's father in Upper Merion. Although no one would be funding their retirement based on the outcome, the case reminded Victoria of a novel she read in college-a book that changed her life.

Flora Mrquez Arrestia was the heiress to Duke's, a family-owned restaurant chain founded by her father, Luis Jose Mrquez, a Cuban refugee who made omelets and sandwiches for years in West Chester. By 2004, his business had expanded to seven locations in the Philadelphia suburbs.

Donato Arrestia, an Italian tenor whose opera career went nowhere, settled down with Flora after years of affairs with his students. Donato a.s.sumed control of the restaurants when Luis retired. The Arrestias had one daughter.

Duke's was predominantly a cash business. When an audit revealed a three-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar discrepancy, Donato installed security cameras, which caught the operations manager, Horace Barlow, raiding cash registers at all seven branches. A private detective tailed Barlow to the Atlantic City casinos where he lost much more than he won. However, Barlow was never charged, because the security films were inconclusive and Duke's bank deposits didn't fully correspond with the missing loot.

Someone besides Horace-most likely Donato-was skimming, too, Victoria realized.

Barlow sued his former employers for lost wages, defamation of character, and age discrimination, retaining flamboyant lawyer Denise Mather. Martin and Victoria quickly realized that publicity-hound Mather-already a talking head on CNN-would relish having a bully pulpit from which to broadcast her indignation over ageism, her cause de jour. So the real agenda behind Schone-Braun's involvement was to muzzle Barlow and Mather and prevent a scandal that might expose Duke's dirty dealings and implicate the accountant.

"How can they think we're going to pay him?" Flora Arrestia asked Victoria. "We have it all on tape."

"The tapes are going to be a problem," Victoria counseled. "Barlow's attorney is very shrewd. She'll turn them against you-that's what I would do-alleging you hara.s.sed Barlow into quitting so you wouldn't have to pay his benefits and pension. We cannot have you acting outraged in front of the jury. That'll make you look worse in their eyes. Remember, we want the jury to believe how pained you were by Barlow's behavior, how hard it was to accept that someone you trusted would steal from you. It had to hurt, didn't it?"

Victoria saw something in Mrs. Arrestia's eyes. Had she and Horace been lovers? Did Horace blackmail Flora, taking the money as a payoff to keep him from telling Donato? Or was Barlow, whose arrest was splashed all over the newspapers, out for revenge against Donato, a tacit partner-in-crime who had ratted him out? No matter what, the case smelled.

Victoria prompted Flora, "Horace Barlow wasn't an employee; he was family. The pain of being robbed by someone you trusted-this is what the jury has to see on your face." Victoria imagined supplying Flora with a bottle of fake tears. "We want the jury to feel your pain-the tapes, the detective; you did that because you didn't want to believe it."

Looking at Flora's face, Victoria wondered, Are you acting your part, too?

For the rest of the meeting, Victoria made notes about jury selection, the key as she saw it to settling the case before it deteriorated into a media circus.

She was still preoccupied with Melinda. What would her daughter do next?

The ten o'clock deposition at Attorney Buddinger's office was even worse. Geologist Jonathan Ramey presented diagram after diagram about the underpinnings of a newly constructed Bucks County outdoor amphitheater whose foundation was crumbling. To rebuild would cost a fortune. Everyone involved in the design and construction blamed each other. Schone and Braun represented the architects.

Victoria, who usually relished thinking on her feet, spent three grueling hours defusing Buddinger's attacks on her witness's qualifications, disrupting the flow of his intimidating questions by objecting every time Buddinger raised his voice. By the end she felt like a tenth grader expected to compare and contrast Elizabethan poets. Her mind wandered from Flora Arrestia to Martin's inconvenience taking Melinda to school. Did Donato and Flora have an understanding, an arrangement? Could the same be said of Martin and her?

Back at her desk after the deposition, flowers from Martin awaited, along with an invitation for a late lunch at Bookbinder's in Old City. "Meet me at 2:00 PM," the message said in Martin's handwriting, his signature above a Cupid's arrow. That's nice, Victoria thought, wondering if Martin had noticed the negligee and got his hopes up for a romantic evening. Although she really wanted to, her heart just wasn't in it.

Victoria tried to stay in the mood, but she couldn't. Soon she and Martin were squabbling over the Duke's case, from which Victoria was sure Schone and Braun would never receive a dime, seeing as the brouhaha in the papers had reduced Duke's business to a trickle, and the detectives, video surveillance experts, and forensic accountants had all but bankrupted the company.

"Why are we doing this stupid case?" Victoria asked over her tea.

"Because Dad's been very good to us, Vic," Martin said. "He could have cut me off years ago when I left Braun Brothers to become a lawyer. Instead, Dad gave us the money to start Schone and Braun."

"You're right. And I do want to help your father," Victoria said.

"If Barlow doesn't go quietly, everyone who had anything to do with Duke's will wind up under a microscope. The fallout could tarnish the reputation of Dad's most loyal friend. You know how touchy it is."

"That could happen anyway," Victoria said.

"True, Vic, very true, but Dad wouldn't have asked us to get involved unless he trusted us. I owe him a lot, Vic. This is the first time he's ever asked for our help." Martin took hold of Victoria's hands. "I love my father. I love him very much. He loves you, too. When I brought you home for the first time, Dad saw your sparkle-how you made me come alive. If it hadn't been for you, I might still be languis.h.i.+ng in the family business; I would have never have gone to law school, never made a life of my own. He saw how good we were for each other. Dad wanted us to be together-to have a family."

Some family, Victoria reflected silently, Melinda weighing heavily on her mind. For the moment, hers and Martin's courts.h.i.+p seemed like it belonged to someone else. She squeezed Martin's hand with as much affection as she could muster. "Even so," she said. "All this work for nothing."

"Is that what's really bothering you?"

"No, you're right, Martin. Melinda has me incredibly upset. If anything ever happened to Gregory ..." she paused to consider what she was saying, "or to Melinda. I don't know what I'd do. I have to speak with her when we get home."

"Are you sure you should to do that?"

"I'm not sure about anything Martin!" Victoria flared. "But I can't just sit by and let her destroy everything I've worked for."

"Destroy? Isn't that going too far? And what about me? I'm part of this family, too."