“The key’s on my other ring. I just got a new fob and . . .”
“Jesus, Ruth-Anne.”
“Should I go back and get it?” Her voice was strangely high, like a mouse on a horse.
“By the time you get back here the session will be over.”
“You could work with her alone until I get back.”
“In the hallway? Just call her and cancel.”
It took her a moment to find my number in her phone.
“Straight to voice mail. She’s probably parking. I’m sure she’ll be up in a minute or two.”
My panting was hard to control and my nose was whistling. I should have gone farther down the hall but it was too risky to move now.
Dr. Broyard sighed. “This never really works out,” he said. It sounded like he was unwrapping a candy. Now something was clacking around in his mouth. “For one reason or another.”
“Rebirthing?”
“Just—these things you cook up so you can see me when I’m with my family.”
Ruth-Anne was silent. No one said anything for a long time; he started biting the candy.
“Is she even coming, or was this your plan, that we would stand in the hallway together and—what? Fuck? Is that what you want? Or you just want to blow me? Hump my leg like a dog?”
A confusing high-pitched noise seemed to descend from the vents, then broke into a mass of wet, convulsive gasps. Ruth-Anne was crying. “She’s coming, I promise. It’s a real session. It really is.”
He crunched his candy angrily.
I tucked my hair behind my ears and smoothed my eyebrows—it would be embarrassing for everyone but at least he would know she wasn’t a liar. I took a deep breath and stepped boldly around the corner.
“Did you—” Her crying was so violent that she could barely talk. “Did you say that because you want me to”—the last part came out in a shrill chirp—“blow you?”
My backward steps were silent and swift. No one had seen me.
“No, Ruth-Anne. That’s not why I said that.” He sighed again, louder this time.
“Because,” she said, “I might be willing to do that.” I could hear her attempt at a coy smile through her stuffy nose and running mascara.
In the very beginning she didn’t even like him. She could see his arrogance and his tendency to ignore what was inconvenient to him. The doctor was surprised, taken aback, when she pointed out these flaws. It made him want to have intercourse with her, just to put her in her place. But he was married and it wasn’t worth it. She wasn’t his physical ideal—a little too old, a little manly around the shoulders, horsey in the jaw. She knew this; it was as clear as if he had said, “You’re a little too old, a little manly around the shoulders, horsey in the jaw.” The insult kept her interested, this and the fact that he was married. Nothing inspired her like the thought of wifely Mrs. Broyard, obsessed with making dinner and the consistency of her children’s stools. Finally she broke him down. One night after rebirthing class he wept into his wineglass and admitted that he and his wife were going through a rough patch. It was on this night that she suggested the arrangement; she described it as a form of therapy. He said he trusted her and for the first few months this trust was the basis of their dynamic. She was his new receptionist but it was as though he was working for her. She guided him into each thing he did to her. It was sweet, and he actually loved her a little bit. She felt satisfied and at peace. Gradually he gained confidence and the game heated up. It was aerobic and exhilarating for him; in their finest moments he admired her athletic build and the broadness of her shoulders. A smaller woman would have been more quickly exhausted, but she had a brute endurance.
But eventually she wanted it more than he did, and this made her lower than him. There was no way to knock down a woman who was already lying on the ground. Their intercourse continued for a while, ritualistically, then dwindled to a pat on the rump in passing. And then finally nothing, for years now.
“Where are you going?” she sniffed.
He was walking straight toward me. His arm extended around the corner as he used the wall to stretch out his shoulder, one hand resting just a few inches from my forehead. I stared it down and it withdrew. He groaned and walked back to Ruth-Anne.
“Let me pay you a normal rate. My secretary in Amsterdam makes three times what you do.”
“But she’s a real secretary.”
“You’re a real secretary.”
Like a person slapped, she said nothing.
“How are you different from a real secretary? Tell me. It’s been years, Ruth-Anne. Years.”
The contract, I thought. Refer to the terms of the contract.
She was silent.
“If you won’t take a normal salary, then I’ll hire a secretary who will.”
Ruth-Anne cleared her throat. “Okay. Hire another secretary.” Now she sounded like herself again, calm and astute.
“Yes, I will. Thank you. I think it’s best for both of us,” he said. “Shall we go?”
“You go. I’ll wait a bit longer.”
Dr. Broyard laughed tiredly. He still didn’t believe I was coming. “Are you sure?”
She wasn’t at all sure, this was plain as day. She was giving him one last chance to choose her, to stay, stay forever, to honor all her complications and live with her in a new world of love and sexuality.
“Yeah, I’m sure.” I could hear the smile she was using. Last chance, it said. Last chance forever.
“Well, I might not see you before Helge and I take off. Let’s have a phone call when I’m back in Amsterdam, okay?”
Maybe she nodded. He walked to the elevator. He pressed the button and we both listened, my therapist and I, and waited for this part to be over—the part where he had already left but was still with us. We listened to the elevator rush upward, the doors opening and shutting, and then a long descent, which got fainter and fainter but never seemed to end. She slid to the floor, sobbing. Something in the building shut off, the heating or cooling; it became even quieter. I tried not to listen to her choking, wet gasps. After a while she blew her nose, hard and loud, gathered her purse, and left.
It was a wonderful feeling to be back in my warm car, driving home to Clee. I turned on the phone; there was one new message.
“Hi, Cheryl, it’s Ruth-Anne, it’s three forty on Saturday afternoon. You missed your three o’clock rebirthing appointment. Because you didn’t cancel twenty-four hours in advance you will have to pay in full. Please make the check payable to me. See you at our regular time on Tuesday. Be well.”
There was no way around it. I called back and made an emergency appointment. I would have to tell her what I had done and admit that I was struggling with my conception of her. She seemed pathetic and desperate to me now. Obsessed.
“Good, good,” she would probably say. “Keep going.” It would turn out that this was the key, witnessing this exchange between the primordial mother and the primordial father.
“But I eavesdropped!” I would cry.
“It was essential that you perform the role of a spy, a naughty child,” she would say, excited because for the first time in her twenty-year practice a patient had shifted the field—this was a psychiatric term, shifting the field. It meant everything could be exposed for what it really was, every question answered, total clarity for both doctor and patient, leading to a true friendship inaugurated by the therapist reimbursing all her fees in one lump sum. Dr. Broyard would now come out wearing a mask that was a crude drawing of his own face and it would be revealed that the entire exchange in the hallway was a farce—it was the rebirthing.
“You witnessed the reverse conception and survived it. That’s very powerful.”
“But how did you know I would be early?” I would say, incredulous, almost dubious.
“Look at your watch,” Dr. Broyard would say. My watch was one hour behind. Dr. Broyard would take off his mask, revealing a very similar face, then Ruth-Anne would pretend her face was a mask and because her skin was a little on the loose side it would look for a moment as if she really might be able to peel it off. But she couldn’t, luckily. We would all laugh and then laugh about how good it felt to laugh. A massage for the lungs, one of us would say.
Now I almost felt like I didn’t need to go to the emergency appointment, but I went anyway. I was curious if I would really get all my money back in one lump sum; it seemed unlikely, but if I had really shifted the field then I guessed it was only fair. If shifting the field was a real thing, which, as I sat on the leather couch, I remembered it wasn’t. I explained about arriving early and hearing their entire exchange.
Ruth-Anne’s eyes widened. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know. But do you think maybe it was important that I perform the role of a naughty”—I could see already that she didn’t—“child? A spy?”