“Rosenstein, two for one p.m.,” I say, noting his slim waist, a neat snazzy waistcoat. Our usual table overlooks the miniature Zen garden, raked and pruned within an inch of its life. I enjoy our monthly Friday lunches. Unfortunately, we had to forgo it last month because Mohsin was giving a talk at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, something he is frequently asked to do and enjoys doing.
“Your guest is already here, sir.” The maître d’ smiles. “Please, follow me.”
Trailing the maître d’ past the heavy cherry silk kimono hanging at the entrance, I think about what I’ll order: the shishito peppers to start, followed by salmon teriyaki. Occasionally we share some snow crab rolls or rock shrimp, but today I intend on sticking to the two courses, painfully aware of my midlife waistline and its slow expansion. Saliva rises in my mouth and I begin envisioning the Pretty Freckled Waitress who usually serves us. Perhaps she’ll be here today, I think, aware of my choice of jacket, new and fitted.
Two waiters stand at opposite ends of the bar like bookends and nod politely. Between them, a flashy barman. The top of his Calvin Klein underwear showing. Fool, I curse, and then catch myself. Aware the ridiculous outburst of envy is tied up in feeling old—certainly older than my fifty-five years. Immediately I smile to myself and forgive the fool.
Scanning the crowded room for the Pretty Freckled Waitress, I hear Mohsin’s voice.
“Daniel!” He waves.
I wish he wouldn’t do that, shout and draw attention to himself that way. I give a small wave back in acknowledgment, still searching for the freckled one.
We embrace.
“Hey, good to see you. Nice jacket.”
“Thanks, it’s new,” I say.
“Very smart. At a guess, one might think you’re trying to impress a particular cute waitress.”
“Perceptive.”
“Monica will have your guts.”
“Monica will never know.”
The moment the words leave my lips, guilt tugs at my throat. A memory of my father and his lies still a constant source of pain.
Seated, I notice a small water fountain has been given a home in the Zen garden: a chubby Buddha made of gray stone, beaded jade necklace resting on top of his abundant tummy, rotund and satisfied. I look down and breathe in, loosening my shirt with a tug. I wonder how he can be so pleased with himself, carrying all that weight around, then look about the restaurant and see most of the guests mirroring our jolly fat friend.
Amused, Mohsin relaxes.
“How is Monica?” he asks. “You guys must be coming up to a year pretty soon.”
“September fifteenth.”
“Doing anything?”
“Monica’s made a list. I just have to choose one.”
“Romantic.” He laughs. “You guys still going to swing classes?”
“We haven’t been in a while,” I say, a bite of grief quickly upon me.
My Clara loved to dance.
In ’86, I met Clara at a beneficiary fund where she was helping raise money for the far-leaning left. She happened to be on a gap year from college but instead of backpacking in Europe or getting high on some East Asian island, opted for political fund-raising instead. At twenty-three years old she wasn’t green to organizing. A second-generation red-diaper baby and the daughter of parents sympathetic to the United States Communist Party, she’d been exposed to Castro from a young age, and Marx even younger. Fund-raising was second nature to Clara; excuses to not get involved were not. She was a fighter who was keen to do the right thing by the people. At night, I’d catch her reading, almost secretly and fevered, Mao’s pamphlets: “Combat Liberalism,” “On Protracted War,” “Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art.” Her strong legs tucked beneath her, a cigarette in hand. I could watch for hours, concentration pinned on important words, an occasional smile thrown my way like a bone.
The night we met she’d worn a cloud of red taffeta and matching lips.
It was love at first fight.
“Barely lukewarm” was how Clara described my relationship with politics, making it clear that were I to have any hope in hell of dating her, I would have to up my game. So I did, quickly, noisily, making sure she saw and learned of my joining the Young Communist League as commitment for a date. Six months later we moved in together; we were married the following year.
It was Mohsin who had encouraged me four years after Clara’s death to start thinking about dating. Warning me of the easy pitfalls of becoming too comfortable with solitude, as he often is. At first, I’d brushed off his advice, too hurt to even consider having sex with another woman. It felt wrong somehow, disloyal. And alien.
“I’m afraid it’s just a matter of time,” I had been told, in a calm bedside manner. The doctor avoiding my puffy eyes. Two weeks later the cancer snatched her away.
Alone and broken, I closed her dead eyes. Covered her limp body, turned skeletal. Riddled with pain.
Crippled with powerlessness, I’d felt hateful—of the doctors; the nurses; the man cleaning the ward’s pale linoleum floor that afternoon when she passed; the young woman who, while on her phone, crashed into me; the local shopkeeper who knew I was an alcoholic refusing the malt whiskey I wanted to drown my grief; the child who’d kicked a ball and laughed as I entered my front door; the front door and its awkward lock; the sound it made when it finally closed; the world; I hated the whole fucking world, and everyone and everything living in it.
Mohsin looks over his menu.
“So. How’s things? The new patient—Alexa?”
I nod. “Good. I’m still digesting our first session and the information she provided in the forms. There’s a lot to process.”
“Did anything unusual come up?”
I think for a moment. “She’s scared of balloons.”
“Globophobia.”
“There’s a name for it?”
“There’s a name for most things these days. What is it: thinking of them, or seeing them, or touching or popping them?”
“I’m not sure,” I say, bewildered. “She wrote it in her notes.”
“With most phobias, the symptoms depend on the roots of the fear.”
“Well, that would be her father.”
“I see.”
“I’m wondering what the most effective treatment might be, considering his abandonment of her,” I say.
“Boundaries and consistency.”
“And if she does have DID?” I ask.
“Then your task is to prevent her from losing time.”
“I thought you might say that.”
“Otherwise she could find herself checking out and in serious danger. That said, she may be losing time already, unable to remember her actions. You mentioned her limited memory.”
“That’s right.”
“Depending on how dissociated her mind is, the personalities can work so autonomously that the patient might not even know who’s running the body. Could be that Alexa, the host, checks out too.”
I nod, wondering about this. The fractured self. How one’s dissociation can be so effective that it prevents a person from feeling—or remembering, even—an alternate personality taking over, what shrinks term the ANP (apparently normal personality). But as one patient, Ruby, I seem to recall, pointed out: “There’s nothing ‘normal’ about a personality that doesn’t feel. It’s like having an avoidant autopilot to navigate your day.”