Spin Doctor Read online

  “What’s a wake, Mom?”

  Alice pulled away and I hesitated for a second before responding to Ian’s question. “It’s like a party for someone who died, honey. It’s a big tradition among the Irish.”

  “Oh. How come we don’t have parties for people when they die?”

  “Because our name is Lederer. Jews don’t have wakes.”

  “Can we go see Alice in the play?”

  “Your father and I will certainly go support Alice’s career.”

  “But what about me? Can’t I go? You said it’s like a party.”

  I looked at Alice, hoping she might confirm my suspicion that the interactive production, while billed as a “family comedy,” was not quite appropriate for preteens. “From what I hear, it’s far too risqué for you, honey. Too many double entendres.”

  “What’s a double entahnder?”

  “Dirty words.”

  Ian continued his campaign. “You let me watch other things with dirty words. Like The Sopranos.”

  “Your father lets you watch The Sopranos. And if you want my opinion on the subject, which I know you don’t, I think he’s far too permissive.”

  “Daddy’s not permissive; he’s progressive,” Ian insisted.

  “Daddy’s” your classic Upper West Side Jewish liberal intellectual who lets our kids get away with far more than they should, completely devaluing my clout as an authority figure. “Yeah, Ian? Well, in one word: fuhgedaboutit!”

  Talia, having folded the last of her all-natural fiber dancewear, finally got ready to leave the room, struggling under the weight of her basket. I slipped into my de facto role as laundry room “cruise director.” “Alice, do you know Talia Shaw? She’s a new tenant—and a performer too.”

  “A dancer, I presume,” Alice said, eyeing the pristine pile of leotards.

  Talia nodded. “I’m with City Ballet. They let me to do a season as a guest artist with the Martha Graham company last year, but it didn’t work out. Got fired and served with divorce papers all within the same month.” She gave a little shrug and the insouciant bounce of her dark ponytail seemed a sharp contrast to her crisp, unemotional tone of voice. “At least it was in my contract with City that they had to take me back.”

  “And you heard that Alice has just gone into Grandma Finnegan’s Wake,” I said.

  Talia gave her a chilly little smile.

  “I guess it’s not exactly Giselle,” Alice said, descending into embarrassed self-deprecation.

  “I think it’s wonderful that we have working performers in the building,” I said cheerily, sensing the tension in the air. “It keeps the atmosphere vital.” If my performer clients didn’t have evening curtains to make, I’d give serious thought to conducting cocktail-hour therapy sessions down here instead. “By the way, Alice, have you ever read the book?”

  “Which book?”

  “Finnegan’s Wake.”

  “At eight hundred and something pages? Gee, Susan, it’s on my to-do list,” she joked.

  “You’ve never read it? Hmh! I spent an entire semester on it at Bennington.”

  Talia turned at the doorway to the laundry room. “I’ve never read it, but I think I wore it once.” Ian, Alice, and I regarded her as though she were an alien. Suddenly she became tremendously self-conscious: the shy woman who had confessed her discomfort with being verbal. “Why are you guys looking at me like that? When I was about four years old, after I saw The Nut-cracker on TV and told my mother I wanted to be a dancer, she laughed into her scotch glass and said that no klutz could grow up to be a ballerina. She said I had to learn balance and grace, and placed a hardcover copy of Finnegan’s Wake on my head and told me to walk around the house like that. From my bedroom to the basement, y’know? When I could finally manage three flights of stairs—up and down—without dropping the book—she agreed to let me begin ballet lessons. ’Bye.” She started once more to leave the room.

  “You forgot your soap,” Ian offered helpfully.

  “Thanks.” Talia fetched her soapbox—a brand of ecofriendly powder—from the table near the washers and balanced it on top of her basket of clothes. “Oops,” she said, setting the basket on the floor and running into the tiny bathroom.

  “What do you want to bet she’s taking diuretics?” Alice whispered to me. “I mean the woman has absolutely no body fat.” She regarded her own midriff, which was slender but far from skeletal. “I mean that should be illegal—the zero body fat, not the diuretics!”

  I winced, recalling too well my own punishing bout with them, and how grateful I am to have recovered, physically and psychologically, from the devastation of an eating disorder.

  A couple of minutes later Talia exited the water closet wearing a frown. “They took down the mirror over the sink.”

  Faith swanned into the laundry room. “I believe I left a knit top down here yesterday. This color,” she said, indicating the orchid-colored scarf at her throat.

  “I know you,” Alice said to her. “You used to be a friend of my grandmother: Irene Finnegan.”

  “Yes, yes of course,” Faith said. “And you have my deepest condolences. They don’t make them like Irene anymore. We used to go to the opera together from time to time, after Ben—my husband—died. Irene was a very special lady. With a huge heart. After Ben passed away, it was your grandmother who taught me how to balance my checkbook. Can you imagine,” she said with a throaty laugh, “I’d never paid a bill on my own!” Faith peered into each dryer, looking for her missing garment. “Ah, well, maybe I never even washed it to begin with,” she sighed, heading out the door. “At my age, the mind tends to become a rather porous organ.”

  Ian, without being asked, was folding our dried clothes into piles based on which family member owned them.

  “Is there such a thing as Stepford children?” Alice asked incredulously. “How old are you?”

  “Eleven,” Ian replied.

  “He’s a really good kid,” I said, realizing that I couldn’t make the same boastful claim about Molly, and counting my blessings that fifty percent of my children had turned out terrific.

  “I’ve never gone for younger men, but I think in your case I might make an exception. Do you mind waiting until you’ve graduated from college so we can get married?”

  Ian blushed and coyly turned his head away. “Mom, I have to go to school now.”

  I checked my watch. His first class started in twenty-one minutes. “Okay. I’ll walk you over there.”

  “You’re so protective. I can do it myself. It’s only two blocks.”

  “I like to think of it as cautious. It’s only two blocks but it’s still Manhattan and you’re only in sixth grade. Besides, there was an almost kidnapping on Sixty-fourth Street last week.”

  “An almost kidnapping, Mom. You worry too much.”

  “I’m a mother; it’s part of the job description. If I didn’t worry, you’d be taken away by Social Services. And I’d prefer that you got to school this morning safely, rather than almost got there. So suck it up: you’re getting a chaperone.”

  I turned to Alice, who was watching the row of machines launder her grandmother’s garments for the final time. Her face was a mask of sorrow. “Hey,” I murmured, placing my hands gently on her shoulders, “if you want to make an appointment to talk to me, to set up some counseling sessions, I’m here. You shouldn’t have to go through the grieving process alone.”

  “Thanks,” Alice said, blinking back tears. “My parents are in Florida, I don’t even have a boyfriend—although a while back I did meet a really cute guy who paid a house call to repair a piece of old furniture—and it’s not right to dump on my two best friends all the time. They have enough of their own problems. But I’m not making a lot of money Off-Broadway, you know. ‘Heigh-ho the glamorous life’ and all that, but my paycheck doesn’t leave me with much in the way of disposable income.”

  “I don’t charge anything for my laundry room sessions. And they’re very unintimidating; j
ust think of them as a weekly fifty-minute gabfest with a girlfriend who happens to have a psych Ph.D. I hold private counseling sessions down here every morning except Sunday from seven to eight A.M., and I’ve got one day open, so if you feel that you need some help getting through this bump in your road, I’m here to listen.”

  “Wow.” Alice blinked back a grateful tear and surveyed the row of aging washing machines. “Who knew I could come down here and shrink my clothes and my head at the same time!”

  AMY

  I can’t remember when I’ve ever seen a young woman so angry. Amy walked in with such a chip on her shoulder that I admit I found it hard to like her—something I’ve never experienced with a laundry room client. In situations like that, I have to focus even harder so as not to betray my bias through my body language or nonverbal responses.

  Amy was pissed off that she hadn’t lost her baby weight six months after giving birth, particularly since her two older sisters had done so after only forty-five days postpartum; she was frustrated that her newly altered lifestyle often lacked the rosy optimistic glow of an infomercial for motherhood; she was perennially livid with her lawyer husband for never being around to help her with their new son, apart from holding him aloft right after his bris for the entire congregation of Temple Beth Israel to sigh approvingly over, and for retreating into their guest room for lengthy phone calls with colleagues and clients every time she asked for his assistance, even if it was only to hold a fretting Isaac while she took a bath.

  “Is it right to want to strangle Eric every time I look at him?” she asked me. It was our first session and invective poured from her like lava. Obviously, we’d have our work cut out for us. “I’m only half kidding, you know.” She looked down at her hands; her fingers were bent and tensed like claws. “I swear to God, there are days when I just want to put my hands around his throat and…squeeze.” Her pantomimed demonstration made me flinch. “But then again, he’s never home long enough for me to grab him, so I guess you won’t be reading about me in the papers anytime soon.”

  “I know what you mean. My husband hasn’t been home for dinner in days. It sounds like a lot of your anger is stemming from the fact that you feel like you’re doing everything yourself. What I’m hearing is that you need someone to pick up the slack and look after Isaac so you can at least take that well-deserved bubble bath. Given his position, I would imagine that Eric’s income would enable—” I began.

  “Definitely,” Amy interrupted. “He’s a corporate lawyer.” I thought about Carol Lerner again. What is it about that profession that morphs people who probably began life as mensches into monsters? “I was a lawyer too, until I was in my eighth month,” Amy continued. “We both worked at Newter & Spade—well, Eric still does. He just made partner, so he’s working harder than ever to prove he now deserves to be there—after seven years of slaving away just to get there in the first place.”

  “So…have you ever considered getting some help?” I asked Amy.

  “Oh, we have a housekeeper. Meriel is a rock—I would never have gotten all our unpacking done after the move if it hadn’t been for her, even though I don’t think she likes dogs very much, and I’m certainly not about to get rid of Hector. My Chihuahua. I’ve had Hector since before I had Eric. But I would never have someone take care of my child. I even wash Isaacs’s things myself. His onesies, his blankie…all that. Even his dirty didies. I won’t put any plastic products anywhere near my baby’s privates, so it’s strictly cloth diapers for Isaac. Meriel cleans the house and walks Hector and does my laundry and Eric’s, but I never understood why people have children just to foist them off on someone else. Besides, my mother won’t hear of it. She says that particularly at the very youngest stages, a baby is so impressionable that it should never be left in the care of anyone other than a parent or a grandparent.”

  “Well, then, what about asking your mother to help you out? It sounds like you could really use some downtime.”

  Amy wrinkled her nose. “My mother hates the smell of poop.”

  Progress Notes

  Faith Nesbit: Major breakthrough in accepting husband Ben’s permanent absence by sleeping on “his side” of the conjugal bed. Encouraged her to continue to take steps—at her own pace—toward living for herself, rather than continuing (à la Queen Victoria) to live the existence she believes her late husband would have wished her to. Reminded client that Ben would have been pleased to see her treating herself well. While Faith characteristically tends to play it safe, rarely takes risks and typically resists change, she seemed open to the suggestion this time.

  Talia Shaw: Breakthrough in her therapy when she serendipitously discovered that dancing during her session enabled her to open up in a way she’d never been able to do previous to this session. I took a leaf from Bradford Keeney’s playbook and encouraged this creative, nontraditional approach, which I anticipated would be particularly effective with artists who thrive under that kind of stimulus. The effect on Talia was stunning and immediate. We need to work steadily on client’s self-esteem issues, though, and explore abandonment issues as they relate to her recent divorce, termination from the Martha Graham company, and fear of losing her job at City Ballet. Must steer discussion toward mother’s damaging negativity and help Talia recognize and accept that her mother lacks the tools in her bag of tricks to ever make Talia feel worthy, and to encourage client to accept that this is her mother’s bundle of issues, not client’s.

  Amy Baum: New client. Needs to focus on letting go of her anger. Session helpful in that she acknowledged that she could use some domestic relief to help reduce the stress of caring for a newborn. I need to work with her on helping to find solutions to this dilemma, rather than looking to assign blame for her predicament.

  Me: I should speak to Eli about his forgetting our anniversary instead of imploding about it. Ditto his increasing absence from the dinner table and two A.M. arrivals home. As much as I found Amy Baum’s anger somewhat off-putting, I can relate to her situation perhaps more than I can to my other laundry room clients’ presenting complaints, except perhaps for Talia, in that she’s a dancer—enjoying a degree of success in the field I had to forego.

  I empathize with the eating disorder issues as well. Last week a health center client asked me point-blank why I became a psychotherapist. While my first response had something to do with wanting to make the world a better place, my client actually challenged me and said, “No—really.” I told her about my experiences as a dance student in college, the related body image issues that led to my bulimia; and how, when I switched from a dance major into the psych program, I faced and overcame my fears of science classes—the frightening specters of courses like neurophysiology and biochem. I wanted to understand and then make sense of the emotional and psychological causes and effects of my illness.

  But back to my issues with Eli: rather than dealing with the issue head-on, I’m stewing in resentment over his behavior and letting it affect my mood, my appetite, and my sleep, as well as my sessions on occasion (for example when there’s an emotional trigger, such as when Faith came right out and said Eli should pamper me.)

  Also must focus on better management of my time, so Ian doesn’t arrive late to his auditions. That’s potentially sabotaging my son. What’s that about?

  Consider taking dog to vet for incontinence problem. Or is he acting out too? While I’m an obvious proponent of psychotherapy, I think pet shrinks are as faddish as pet rocks. Perhaps Sigmund just needs a refresher course from the obedience trainer.

  Consider sending Molly for obedience training if she doesn’t stop cutting classes.

  Progress? If progress is a measure of success, I’m not a very shining example these days. In fact, I feel more like a hamster on a wheel. Do hamsters ever wish they could actually go somewhere?

  BRIGHT COLORS

  3

  MERIEL

  “I don’t like de sound of daht cold, Susie. A summah cold is a bad ting,” Meriel
said in the lilting Jamaican cadences that always make me crave a mai-tai. I adore the music of her voice. It has a way of relaxing and warming me like the sun on an early spring morning. “I studied nursing, you know, back in Jamaica, but sick people make me unhappy; too much for de emotions, you know. I don’t have de tick skin you need to be a nurse. Did you try my remedy?”

  “You mean the warmed rum, honey, and whole cloves?”

  “Daht’s de one,” smiled Meriel proudly. “An old fahmily recipe. Guarantee to knock out anyting!”

  “It knocked out me! “I told her. “I drank a cup of it at around nine P.M., and the next thing I knew Ian was telling me he needed a permission slip signed before he left for school that morning. And I’ve still got the cold.”

  “Ahhh…but when it knock you out, you get de rest you need, so you can get bettah!”

  “But enough about me,” I kidded. “Let’s talk about what’s bothering you today.”

  Meriel checked her watch. “Mrs. Amy always wonder why I stay down here with de wash instead of coming upstairs to do de dusting in the meantime. I tell her I worry someone else take her clothes out and leave them on de dirty table if I am not here when de light goes out.” She rose from the couch. “I don’t feel so bahd about sitting down here now and talking wit’ you, now daht dere’s one less machine. I have to watch more closely in case someone else want a machine dis early. She so busy wit’ Isaac she don’t remember de room’s not open for business now.”

  There was some truth to Meriel’s claims about the machines, though. We were now down to five from half a dozen. The washer with Ian’s “boggart” in it had died the following day, but remained in the laundry room with a length of yellow tape stretched across it, as though the defunct unit were part of a crime scene.