“I hear you’re struggling to control your anger,” Tina began in a loud voice that shook, and gestured for her patient to enumerate.
The anger experienced by Tina’s client was directed at her husband and children. She was studying for her real estate license, and none of them could be bothered to pitch in just a little bit around the house. She would rant and rave when she came home from class to find dirty dishes left in the den and laundry molding in the washing machine. Things came to a head the night she shattered one of those dirty dishes and threatened her teenage son with a shard of porcelain. Her husband called the police, and the police referred them to a local psychiatrist who diagnosed her with rage attacks. Electroshock therapy hadn’t been helping.
Maybe I was imagining it, but Tina’s rash seemed to recede as the patient described her condition. My shoulders dropped, and the urge to flee from what seemed like Tina’s imminent humiliation vanished.
“Tell me,” Tina said in a commanding voice that still trembled on certain words, “do you ever feel anger toward people who are not your husband or children?”
“Oh, I’m angry all the time,” the woman said, which elicited plenty of laughs.
Tina looked out at the crowd and indulged them with a rueful smile. “Give me an example,” she said.
The patient mulled it over. “At the grocery store, for instance, when someone takes too long at the deli counter. Show some common courtesy. You can see all these people are waiting. You couldn’t have made up your mind about what you wanted before your number was called?”
“And do you ever yell and scream at those people?”
“Of course not. Never.”
“How come?”
The answer was so obvious the patient laughed. “Because they would think I was crazy.”
“And you don’t want them to think you’re crazy.”
“I do not.”
Tina stared off into the middle distance, organizing her thoughts. Someone coughed impatiently. I blushed on Tina’s behalf.
Tina focused her sights on the patient. “If you had to weigh your feelings of anger toward those people in the grocery store against those you have toward your children and husband, would you say that the anger you feel in the deli line is more or less intense than it is at home?”
“More,” the woman said without hesitation.
“And why is that?”
“Because the people at the grocery store are strangers to me. I don’t know any of their good qualities. I feel nothing toward them but anger.”
“And yet,” Tina pointed out, “you are able to control your anger with them, even though you experience it more intensely at the grocery store than you do at home.”
At this I dared a look around. Surely others must be as impressed as I was. I could see where this was going, and Tina’s logic was undeniably sound. But either people were listening with snide half smiles or they were dozing off.
The patient pursed her lower lip in concentration. “Yes. Clearly, I can keep ahold of myself if I want to.”
“So it’s actually inaccurate to say that you can’t control your anger.”
“I suppose it is, and I’ll give you that, I never stopped to think of it that way. But I don’t want to just control my anger. I want to get rid of it.”
“What if I told you that would not be my recommendation?”
“I don’t follow.”
Tina’s gaze swept the room as she delivered the diagnosis—not for the patient but for her audience. “I’d like to propose that anger in women is treated as a character disorder, as a problem to be solved, when oftentimes it is entirely appropriate, given the circumstances that trigger it.”
That incited a mild mutiny, everyone in the room crossing and recrossing their legs, adjusting pants legs and crotch seams, clearing contempt from their chests.
The patient scanned the crowd a little desperately, as though searching for a real doctor to come and save her. “You think breaking a dish in my child’s face is appropriate?”
Tina answered with a tolerant smile. “We don’t want you doing that. But I wouldn’t label that as excessive. You’re fed up and you’re exhausted, and no one is listening to your pleas for help. Anger in that case is very much appropriate.”
The patient sighed begrudgingly. “I don’t know that I agree, but say it’s true. I still don’t want to go around breaking things.”
“No,” Tina agreed, “that’s not a productive outlet for your anger, though it is one less dish to wash.” The patient let out a yip of involuntary laughter, and the man in front of me turned to his friend and inquired casually about lunch.
“I’ve heard The Stew Pot is good,” the other replied, so that I could only grasp pieces of Tina’s treatment plan. Something about shifting, accepting, but it was impossible to hear, not just over the two men discussing their lunch options but because the rest of the room had resumed conversation as well, at an insouciant, punishing volume.
“Shush,” I said, too timidly for anyone to mind me, as Tina returned to her seat. There were sweat stains beneath the seams of her bust and before she sat I could see them all down the length of her back too.
“That was about what I expected,” Tina muttered dryly. She lifted the hair at the nape of her neck, fanning her damp skin, and shot me a covert smile. “Let’s get very drunk after this.”
PAMELA
Aspen, 1978
Day 12
We missed our flight by ten minutes. Carl was planning on taking the next available one anyway so he could interview the waitress from The Stew Pot after her Saturday breakfast shift, but I was beside myself to learn that it wouldn’t depart until the following evening, with a three-hour layover in Denver. I’d arrive in Tallahassee at 5:19 Sunday morning, wearing the same shirt I’d been wearing since Friday morning, smelling like jail. I held back furious tears as the airline attendant took us through the rebooking process; I was thinking about everything I’d meant to do on Saturday to get The House ready for Sunday. Buy the ingredients for the cupcakes and have them in the oven by noon, which was when the locksmith was scheduled to arrive and fit the doors with the new combination locks. Brian had a brief window of free time in the afternoon during which he’d promised to come over and help me move around the furniture in the rec room so I could transform the space into a nest. I’d asked the alumna whose family ran the sporting goods warehouse on the outskirts of town if they would give me a discount on a bulk supply of sleeping bags. I wanted the first night back to feel like one big sleepover party, everyone burrowed in a warm puppy pile, eating junk food and staying up too late watching classic black-and-white movies. I wanted us to have fun again.
“It’s Friday night, so it’s not like you’re missing class,” Tina consoled me, when she saw how distraught I was about missing our flight. “Plus, I know a nice hotel. My treat, everyone.” Carl looked pretty relieved to hear that.
I put on a brave smile. Maybe Brian could meet the locksmith, and I could just buy the cupcakes. I was getting in early enough on Sunday to pull it off. I’d be wiped, but that was the easiest part to cheat.
The hotel was nicer than nice, the sort of place my mother would book. The staff wore smart navy uniforms with white piping, and the clientele was the sort who came to be seen in the latest skiwear fashions more than they did to take a run in them. Neon and fur, no duct tape holding their jackets together.
“Good evening, Ms. Cannon,” said the front-desk clerk. “Is this your first time staying with us?”
“It is not,” Tina said.
“Welcome back!”
Tina’s smile was thin. My stomach churned with unease. “Is this the hotel where—”
“Yes,” Tina said hastily.
Carl and I glanced at the lobby area where Caryn Campbell had sat five years ago, playing board games and combing through the magazines in the honeyed leather rack, finding none that interested her. Where she had sighed irritably, wondered aloud why there wasn’t any reading material for women, and told her fiancé she’d be gone only a minute.