Bittersweet Dreams Read online

  Dr. Burns saw that I was looking at it. “All my clients love that painting,” he said. “Everyone has a different interpretation about who she is, why she’s lying in the field, what’s in the house.”

  “And you use that to analyze them?”

  “Sometimes,” he said, smiling. “Should we use it for you?”

  “Won’t work. I know the history of that painting. Wyeth saw a young woman with a paralyzed lower body crawling and was inspired to do the painting. He used his wife as a model for the girl’s torso, even though she was much older than the girl depicted.”

  “You can still find some meaning in it, can’t you?” he said, indicating that I should sit in the large chair as he moved behind his desk.

  “I just told you what it was.”

  “You’re very literal. Please, sit,” he said when I continued to stand.

  “What?” I said, looking around. “No couch?”

  He laughed. “That chair has a lever on the side, and you can sit all the way back with your feet up. How’s that?”

  “Perfect.” I sat and tried the lever.

  “Don’t fall asleep on me. I’ve had that happen more times than I care to admit.”

  “Then don’t bore me,” I said, sitting up again.

  He smiled, but not as widely or as deeply as he had the first time. “Okay. Let’s see if I can avoid that.” He said, looked at a file on his desk. “Mayfair Cummings, nearly seventeen years old, with quite a remarkable school history. You’re in very good physical health, I see.”

  “How long have you had all that information?”

  “Oh, a little while. Preparation is important, right?”

  “That’s not preparation. That’s anticipation. Maybe even a little plotting.”

  He laughed and sat back. “Okay. Let’s not go through the mental fencing. I have no illusions about being subtle with you. I know how intelligent you are. You might know as much about my work as I do. Your parents are concerned that you’ve hit a wall of unhappiness with yourself, and we’re here to see if we can understand the cause and do something about it.”

  “Father,” I said.

  “Pardon?”

  “My father is concerned. His new wife, Julie, has her own agenda.”

  “Oh? Which is . . . ?”

  “She couldn’t care less about my academic achievements. She wants me to fall in line, be what she calls normal, so I don’t corrupt her daughter with independent thinking or distract my father too much from paying attention to her.”

  “I see.”

  “No, you don’t. You haven’t heard enough, and you haven’t asked the right questions yet.”

  “Okay. Let me try. What makes her think you’re not normal?”

  “I don’t dwell on my appearance, my clothes, my hair. She tried desperately to get me to do that, to be more like her. For a while, I tried it, but I felt like a phony. So in her mind, I’m not normal. I don’t have a boyfriend or go to parties, and I’m still a virgin.” I thought I’d add “still a virgin,” even though it was no longer true. It was important to my strategy.

  Dr. Burns looked sufficiently shocked. “She doesn’t want you to be a virgin?”

  “Let’s say she wants me to be more interested in sex than I am,” I said. “It’s clearly very important to her, and anyone who is not as interested in it as she is would be abnormal in her way of thinking.”

  “What has she done or said to get you to believe this?”

  “She’s tried to get me to look sexier, wear low-cut blouses, shorter skirts, push-up bras, more makeup. She’s even tried to get me to enjoy orgasms.”

  He stared and sat forward. “I don’t understand. How did she do that?”

  “Told me how she enjoys sex, masturbation, and then . . .”

  “Then what?”

  “Bought me a vibrator.”

  “She bought it for you?”

  “Yes. My father doesn’t know about it. I haven’t used it yet. She keeps asking.”

  I saw his look move from skepticism to thoughtfulness. Then he wrote some notes and nodded. “Well, let’s go back a little. How do you feel about the boys at your school?”

  I smiled to myself. He’s buying it, I thought. “There are some I think are good-looking, but they haven’t shown interest in me. I suppose I’m a little shy. Julie makes me feel bad about that. Sometimes I wish I could please her just to get her off my back. She’s tried giving me hints about how to be more enticing, how to flirt, stuff like that. I feel funny about it, but I can’t tell my father these things, so I feel a little trapped. I suppose this has all been weighing on my mind lately, gotten me depressed. I didn’t want to worry my father, but I just haven’t figured out how to explain it to him. He’s so devoted to her.”

  “I see.”

  “Yes, now you might have enough to begin to see,” I said.

  “Maybe you should consider psychology as a career.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe,” I said. “I have been thinking about that, but let’s see how well you do with me first.”

  He laughed and leaned forward. “Tell me more about this pressure your stepmother is putting on you,” he said. “I notice you don’t call her that. You said”—he looked at his notes—“your father’s new wife, but haven’t they been married for years?”

  “Well, she’ll always be new in my eyes. He was married before.”

  “And your mother died. You resented Julie right from the start, then?”

  “Classic. Of course. Any child doesn’t want to see her mother completely replaced, forgotten. I think I handled it as well as could be expected. I’m not troubled by that anymore. My father made a decision he thought was best for us both, and that’s that. It’s just that . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “With all this concentration on boys and sex, she seems more like an older sister to me or an older girlfriend.”

  “Go on about that,” he said, nodding.

  I continued, elaborating on the details I had planned to describe as vividly as I could, describing evenings when she came to my room to tell me about her own sexual exploits, explaining how it would make me stronger to have such experiences and help me decide when it came time to settle on one person.

  “She said it wasn’t fair that boys were expected to have many girlfriends, many sexual experiences, but girls who did the same were frowned upon, labeled with nasty names.”

  He nodded and took lots of notes, scribbling away for practically the entire session.

  It was going just as I had planned.

  14

  “Well?” my father asked. “How did it go with Dr. Burns?”

  He had come to my bedroom. I was lying on my bed and reading The Art of Persuasion. I was surprised at just how many techniques had come to me instinctively when I was in Dr. Burns’s office. Ironically, I thought, my father would be very proud of me under any other circumstances. I was in his world of advertising and persuasion, a world where the truth was easily twisted or completely buried.

  Julie wasn’t home when I returned. She had taken Allison to try on outfits for another party, so she couldn’t give my father a preliminary report concerning how I looked or acted after my therapy session. I had planned on giving her a little of her own medicine, phony smiles and sweetness.

  I lowered my book. “I like him,” I said. “He has a good sense of humor, and he’s not heavy.”

  “Heavy?”

  “I don’t mean his weight, Daddy. You know, too demanding, pushing, getting too quickly into your head.”

  “Oh, right. Well, what about progress? You think you can make some with him?”

  I nodded. “He helped me see some things. I won’t deny that it’s good to have someone who wants to listen to you, even if he gets paid to do it.”

  “Well, as I said, someone who is trained to help is important,” my father said. “As you always tell me, a little learning is a dangerous thing. Go whole hog.”

  He really couldn’t see how
unhappy I was about all this, I thought. It wasn’t that long ago when he could sense something was bothering me with just a look or a few words. I wasn’t inscrutable when it came to him. I wouldn’t even try to fool him back then. Maybe Julie was influencing me more than I would willingly credit her for. After all, I had a master of disguise right under my feet. Learn from your enemies, and distrust your friends enough not to be disappointed. That had become one of my new rules of life.

  “I couldn’t agree more. Amateur psychologists don’t do anyone any good.”

  He smiled with relief. “I’m not an amateur psychologist. I just don’t like to see you unhappy, Mayfair.”

  “I don’t like to be unhappy, Daddy,” I replied, and he laughed.

  “Maybe we’ll all go out to dinner Friday night, huh?”

  “Allison has another one of her socially important parties. Julie will want you to take her and pick her up.”

  “Oh, right. Well, we’ll figure it out,” he said.

  “I’m sure we will,” I replied. As long as it fits what Julie wants, I thought.

  He nodded, smiled, and left. I looked at the empty doorway and wondered for a moment if I was doing the right thing with Dr. Burns. I could lose my father completely. We were alienated enough from each other as it was without me adding to it, but it was too late. I had gone too far. I was confident of what would happen next, and sure enough, it did.

  Julie did not ask me anything about my therapy that night at dinner or the following morning on the way to school. It wasn’t that she was afraid to ask or didn’t want to know. I had a different sense of it. Something told me she was confident that she would know everything whenever she wanted.

  When I arrived at school, I continued to feel this new sense of energy that had been born out of my anger. I returned to the vigorous pursuit of my academics. I aced a math test, answered questions in social studies, and got into such a deep discussion with Mr. Feldman about Huckleberry Finn that it seemed as if there was no one else in the classroom but us. He was very happy, even exhilarated. He told me he felt like he was back in college, discussing great literature with his professor. Half of the class hadn’t even read the portions he had assigned.

  He said a nice thing to me. “For one bright moment, I remembered why I had gotten into teaching in the first place.”

  The result was electric. Before the day had ended, my teachers had reported my academic resurrection to Mr. Martin, and he was eager to show how effective he had been, even with someone like me. I knew he especially wanted to please my father. Before the day ended, he had obviously called Julie and reported to her. She commented about it when she came to pick up Allison and me.

  “I was pleased to hear you’ve returned to doing well in school again, Mayfair. I’m glad I recommended Dr. Burns to your father. Therapy can be helpful,” she said.

  “Yes, it can be. You should try it yourself,” I told her, and her look of self-satisfaction evaporated.

  The real result, however, my intended result, occurred after I had two more sessions with Dr. Burns, elaborating even more on what I had told him the first time, providing practically pornographic details.

  It was one of Julie’s girls’ nights out, and she had gone to dinner, which was supposed to be followed with a movie, but instead, she had come right home. She made quite a dramatic entrance.

  Allison rushed in to tell me. “My mother’s back early,” she said, gasping.

  “So?”

  “I was downstairs watching television, and she came home very upset, slamming the door and crying.”

  “Really? Think she had a fight with one of her vapid friends?”

  “What’s vapid?”

  “Ask your mother.”

  She looked at me strangely and then returned to her excited report. “I don’t know if she had a fight with anyone. She wouldn’t let me stay there with her and Daddy,” she said. “She told me to go up to my room, and Daddy agreed.”

  Julie had insisted that Allison call my father Daddy, both as a way of killing any relationship she might still have with her real father and as a lesson to me, for I still refused to call her anything but Julie. Nevertheless, Allison was always a bit hesitant to do so when she was alone with me. She thought I might resent it, when, in fact, I was more unhappy for her father than for myself.

  “I never saw her so angry and upset, even when she had bad fights with my father,” she told me.

  “Well, I’m sure it’s nothing terribly serious. Women get hysterical over small things sometimes. It’s part of being a woman,” I said.

  “It is?”

  “According to most men,” I added. Allison was lost. I smiled to myself and returned to my computer.

  I was intrigued with some experiments being carried out at Oxford University involving the transplanting of human brain cells into monkeys to improve their intelligence. Out of the corner of my eye, however, I saw that Allison was quite shaken and didn’t want to leave my room. Julie must have gone quite over the top, I thought, frightening her own daughter with her antics.

  “You can stay here and watch television, if you want,” I told Allison. “Just keep the volume low.”

  “Okay.”

  She turned on my television and sat watching it. Fifteen minutes later, my father arrived. He asked her to leave us alone. She glanced at me and then turned off the television and hurried out.

  “You frightened her, Daddy,” I said. “She’s frightened enough as it is over how her mother apparently behaved. The child has enough damage from Julie’s bitter marriage and divorce. She should be the one seeing Dr. Burns. As a matter of fact, if—”

  “Forget Allison for the moment, Mayfair,” he replied sharply, and closed the door. He just stood there looking at me and shaking his head.

  “All right. What is it now?” I asked, and turned completely around in my computer desk chair.

  “Why did you make up all those lies about Julie?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The things you told Dr. Burns,” he said. “Absolutely crazy lies.”

  “How do you or anyone else know what went on between me and Dr. Burns? Are you telling me that Dr. Burns violated the confidentiality between himself and his client?”

  “I’m not interested in that, Mayfair.”

  “Well, I am. Do you think I would have been so forthcoming if I thought he would gossip about me? What did he do? Call you? Call Julie?”

  “How she found out isn’t important.”

  “Stop saying that. If anything, you should be on the phone with your attorney and not up here talking with me. He told one of her friends, didn’t he? What, is he having an affair with her?”

  He just stared at me.

  I smiled and nodded. “That’s it,” I said. “It makes sense. That’s why Julie was able to get me the instant appointment. Her friend’s having an affair with him. I can see it now. He revealed things about my therapy session while he was sleeping with her, and she couldn’t wait to tell Julie, right?”

  He sat, looking overwhelmed. “You’ve misinterpreted everything. Julie’s concern for your looks and your social happiness isn’t out of some mean motive. She’s beside herself. She was only trying to help you so you’d be happier and we’d all be happier. You know she’s gone through this terrible marriage and horrible divorce. Her former husband belittled her, had affairs, and even brought a woman into their home, into their very bed, while she was away. She’s trying so hard to have a happy marriage now, a happy family. I’m so disappointed in you, Mayfair.” He looked down and shook his head. “I really don’t know what else to do. A vibrator! To tell Dr. Burns she bought you a vibrator?”

  He sighed deeply and rose.

  “Needless to say, your therapy is over. Nothing will change until you want it to. That’s clear. I’ve forbidden Julie to make any more efforts.”

  He stood for a moment looking at me.

  “I don’t know you anymore,” he said, and walked out slowly.


  I had never seen such a look of disgust in my father’s face. She had played him well, I thought. She had him in her complete control now. Why wasn’t he angry about how she had manipulated me into this therapy session, where she knew she would find out everything about me and use it against me? It wasn’t right. I was being abused. Why wasn’t he defending me, outraged about what had happened to me? Why couldn’t he see that I had simply turned the tables on her?

  Maybe it was hopeless. If anything, I hated her more than ever. She was down there sobbing, and he had probably returned to her side, holding her and comforting her, when he should be up here comforting me. Maybe if he had done that, I would have told him more, told him about Alan Taylor, and the loving ties that were splintering between us would have grown stronger again.

  He’d be my father.

  I’d be his daughter.

  There was a tiny knock on my open door. Allison had returned, still looking very frightened. “What happened?” she asked. “Why was Daddy so angry? Are you in trouble? Is my mother still very upset?”

  “It was just what I told you. One of your mother’s friends said something unpleasant to her that upset her. She’ll be all right. Don’t worry about your mother. She’ll always be all right.”

  “I wish everyone thought I was grown-up enough to know about everything,” she said, sitting on my bed. “I know about a lot of stuff my mother doesn’t know I know about.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “When you’re not home yet and she can’t see me, I read some more in the book you gave me.”

  “Oh? Well, that’s good.”

  “If you’re going to fall in love, you’ve got to know about that stuff.”

  “That’s very adult of you, Allison. I thought you were old enough to appreciate it. That’s why I gave it to you and was disappointed when your mother took it away from you.”

  She beamed. I never realized how much my compliments meant to her. “Do you think someone my age could be in love?”

  “I don’t know if age has much to do with it. Why? Do you think you’re in love?”