The Happy Treatment

by Teri Carter

(Continued)
     "Sure. You can have that. You can have whatever you want if you can tell me what’s bothering you."
     "Some stomach thing. Hey, if I knew what it was I wouldn’t need to be here, seeing you, now would I."
     "Oh, you know. Maybe it’s something you can’t admit, or can’t put into words. But deep down, you know." He pulled the sheet down to your waist, exposing you, and pressed his hand flat against your stomach to the side of your bellybutton. A handprint of fire. "Your anger is here. Not in your stomach, but in your liver. The liver is where we store our anger. It’s burning my hand. You can feel that, right?"
     Sure, you felt the heat of Ned’s hand, but you weren’t angry. You had a stomachache. He was way off. And that was when you first heard the footsteps. "Is that your wife?" you said, pointing at the ceiling.
     "Ex-wife. She got the house."
     "Must have been a good divorce...I mean...if she let you keep your office here." You were glad for the diversion, mindful of his hand, his hovering.
     "It works. I get to see my kids every day. I’m here when they have breakfast, before my first appointment, and I’m here when they get home from school. She gets a tax write-off."
     "Takes a big person. Big people."
     Ned swiped his hand from your stomach and gently lifted the sheet to cover you, as though tucking a child into bed. Next time—if there was a next time, you thought—you would wear a black bra and black panties. Full coverage. Nothing see-through. Ned sat down and opened a file – your file. "I’m going to have you take milkweed. It’s a liquid herb that repairs the liver. You can find it at any health food store. Ten drops in water, three times a day. And think about the anger, where it’s coming from. Otherwise we’re just treating the symptom. Come back in two weeks and we’ll see where we’re at."
     You drew the shades down over your eyes and, still feeling the fiery imprint of Ned’s hand, listened to the scratch of his pen.

     It had taken you awhile—three years, in fact—to get to Ned.
     After your first year as Jason’s stepmother, you met with a psychotherapist specializing in women’s issues. "We’re just not connecting," you told her.
     She ran off a list of invasive questions. You answered. She seemed satisfied. "You’re a healthy-enough person. He’s being a normal kid. Relax. He’ll come around."
     "I feel like a robot: do your homework, eat your dinner, go to bed. How do you build a relationship with someone out of that?"
     "Moms do it all the time."
     "But I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do. I mean, I never thought I’d be someone’s mother."
     "It’s pretty natural," she insisted. "You’ll figure it out."
     After two years, you had not figured it out.
     "You’re being too strict," your mother chimed in. "Take my word—you catch more flies with honey than vinegar!"
     "You’re not strict enough," your husband said. "Be firm. Kids want boundaries."
     "You have too many rules," your mother said. "Learn to have some fun. You always did take things too seriously."
     Still, you couldn’t make it work.
     You used to be proud of yourself, you thought. You used to travel the world. You went to important meetings, you made good money and took care of yourself. You talked mostly-male executives into spending millions of dollars on products they didn’t need. Now you couldn’t convince a little boy to eat a green bean, do his math homework, or wear a jacket with a hood in the pouring rain. Your husband – exasperated and, by now, completely buried in his Big Tobacco case and traveling three weeks out of every month – agreed to find a therapist for Jason. For the next few months, every Monday after school, you drove a brooding boy to his appointment and sat in the waiting room, stomach churning, wondering what the kid was saying about you. You watched fifty minutes tick by, one by one, on the round, white wall clock. You pretended to read, but were bored by, outdated, well-thumbed magazines. Family Fun. Fit Pregnancy. Kids’ World. Parenting Today. You smiled often at the receptionist, to prove your innocence. At the end of Jason’s last session, his therapist opened his door and invited you inside. "Here she is," the man said, waving a hand in your direction. "Tell her."
     Jason stared at his feet. "All she cares about is school. Everyday I get off the bus and all she ever says is ‘how was school?’" Then he mocked your voice: "How was school?"
     "But I mean ‘how are you?’ It’s the same thing." You leaned forward, tried to look him in the eye, but he just looked further away. "It’s like when your dad comes home from work and I say ‘how was work?’ I really mean ‘how are you?’"
     "Why don’t you just say what you mean, then?"
     The therapist crossed his arms, raised an eyebrow, nodded in agreement. He seemed to say, "See, that’s all there is to it. So simple!" and sent you both on your way.

     Now it is the week before Christmas, two weeks since your last appointment, and you are back in Ned’s office. There is a small, freshly-cut Christmas tree in the corner—in lieu of the space heater—and its colored bulbs twinkle and flash with blues and reds and greens. You take off your clothes. You lie down. You pull up the sheet. You wait.
     Since the last time you were here you’ve discovered your eleven-year-old surfing pornography on the Internet. You took away his computer. Then a neighbor accused Jason and his friends of bashing their mailbox with a baseball bat. He denied it, but you found the dented bat in the garage. You took away his television and video games. When Ned comes in, when he asks how you are, you imagine saying: "I’m lost! Lost in the land of parental punishments! Save me!"