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Perhaps I didn't have the most altruistic reasons to go into psychology, but I couldn't see myself doing anything else. If I had inherited anything. I thought, it was the desire to prove.
"It was supposed to be hard work." he continued. "What an incredibly unexpected reaction to it all. Like your new friends, some of my closer friends thought I was bizarre. 'Psychiatry is a good place for vou. Claude,' they would say. 'Eventually, you can treat yourself and send yourself the bill.'"
We both laughed at the idea. and then he turned to me, his face as serious as it had ever been.
"If we don't love what we do," he told me. "then we don't love who we are, and the worst fate of all is not liking yourself. Willow, being trapped in a body and behind a face you despise. You hate the sound of your own voice. You even come to hate your awn shadow. How can you ever hope to make anyone else happy-- wife, children, friends-- if you can't make yourself happy?
"It seems like such a simple truth, but it remains buried beneath so many lies and delusions for most people. I know now that won't happen to you," he said assuredly.
I sensed he was going to tell me more. but Miles appeared to tell him he had a phone call from the clinic.
"They say it's an emergency," he added.
The crisis involved a patient who had attempted suicide, The Doctor had to rush back to the clinic. He was very upset about it, and told me afterward that he thought he had been making some significant progress with the patient, who was a young man my age. Although he didn't show it often, my doctor father did take his work very personally.
"If you are serious about going into this field. Willow," he warned. The prepared for more defeat than victory, more failure than success. There is no more complicated thing than the human mind and trying to determine why people do what they do, want what they want, and hate what they hate. Unlike a medical doctor, your patients more often than not are unwilling to let you discover what is the cause of their illness. They are either afraid or unable to do so. Imagine a doctor's patient preventing the doctor from la-towing he or she has a fever, and refusing to let the doctor take his or her temperature, and then you will have a little better idea of what awaits you in the world of psychiatry."
"I understand," I said. "and I am not
discouraged."
He smiled, "Good," he said. He closed and opened his eyes. "That's very good."
I returned to finish my college semester. Allan and I continued seeing each other. I didn't want to fall in love so fast. The Doctor's words staved with me. More than ever now, I was very determined to develop a career first. During the summer. Allan went to Europe to study. and I didn't see him again until the start of the new semester. I thought we would drift apart and he would probably find someone else, but to my surprise and delight at the time, that wasn't so.
It was the Doctor's idea that I do some volunteer work at his clinic that summer. I think I learned more about psychology in those ten weeks than I did or would in four years of formal schooling. One thing that happened was my appreciation and respect for him grew. His reputation in the world of psychology had only grown over the years, and he was off as a guest speaker more often than ever.
My working there brought us even closer. We spent more time together after work as well, going to restaurants, taking walks on our grounds, or simply relaxing and watching some televison. I could feel his effort to get to know me more and to slowly lower the barriers that had been kept up between us for so many years. One of the East things that happened was I stopped thinking of him as the Doctor, and, finally, as my father. After all, he was the only father I had known. Whoever had made my real mother pregnant did not know I existed, much less cared, and if there was one thing I had learned from Scott Lawrence and his family, it was that relationships, not blood, mattered the most.
When I prepared to leave for college this time. I did not expect it would be as emotional for either of us. We were planning to have dinner at my father's favorite restaurant. He had made all the arrangements, and I sensed it was going to be a special night for us. Two days before, however, he received a phone call from the coordinator of the American Psychiatry Association, who informed him their schedule for the upcoming national conference had been revised because the feature speaker, set to greet everyone, had suffered a heart attack. They wanted my father, and since he would have a national forum from which he could reveal and discuss some of his innovative techniques at his clinic, he had to accept. With the work he had to complete before leaving, his free time was constricted.
"Don't worry," I told him. "We'll see each other very soon anyway. Remember, you promised to visit me on campus this semester so I could show you off," I said, and he laughed.
He was gone the day before I left for school. Alone in the big house, except for Miles and the maid who came by to clean twice a week. I wandered slowly through the big estate home and thought about my youth here. my Amou, and my AM. I felt guilty calling her that now, but it just seemed to came naturally to me.
So much of this house still seemed off-limits to me or still carried unhappy memories. It was here in the family room that Alberta came upon me one afternoon. I was pretending to be a mother and I was mothering two small dolls. I suppose I was imitating her too well, for she stood behind me quietly, listened, and then pounced.
She told me I was sick in the head to think such terrible things at my age, and she warned me if she ever caught me doing it again, she would put glue in my mouth and make my tongue stick to the roof of it. It was a terrifying image. I tried not to cry until she left because she hated that. It only made her angrier.
Because of that and a few other occasions when she spied upon me. I took to whispering my pretend, even when I was outside and there was no chance of her overhearing any of it.
The Doctor had kept her things in the bedroom for a long time after she died, mostly because he just didn't have the time to get around to doing anything about it. I thought. but I also thought it was because removing her clothing, her cosmetics, her brushes and all would be like closing the lid on her coffin, and it was just something he was avoiding for as long as he could.
Now, her naked vanity desk remained, a cold reminder of what had once been. Of course. I recalled the infamous time she caught me in her makeup and revealed the great secret of my birth and status. I could see myself sitting there as a little girl, enjoying my pretend. and I could see her in the doorway, furious.
The Doctor's office would always remain sacrosanct to me. His personality was there, in its order and neatness. Alberta never liked coming in here, I thought. It actually was threatening to her. Maybe that was why I enjoyed being in there so much. In our house, this office was like a sanctuary. Evil, nastiness, anger, and pain were not permitted within its doors. Here there was only calmness, reason, logic, concern.
Amou's room was now occupied by Miles, because it was much nicer than the room he had had when she was living here. Still, just walking down that corridor and looking at the door brought back so many, many memories of her. I was so attached to her. I loved just watching her work, whether it was in the kitchen or doing her needlepoint. Her voice was forever embedded in my mind-- those melodies. Portuguese folk
songs, children's songs, and her laughter, melodic, full of love and life. It still echoed in this hallway. It would never be gone.
I wandered to the rear door and stepped out on the patio. The sun was setting. This would be the last twilight here for me for a while. Despite the difficult childhood I had experienced growing up here, it was still home. I knew no other, and at least I had a home, a place to call my own, or as Robert Frost once wrote. "A place where when you go there, they have to take you in."
Even if it was no more than that, it was something. I had this great faith that, in the days and weeks, months and years to come. the Doctor-- my father-- and I would grow into a true father and daughter, and this house, these grounds would warm up considerably for me. There would be a time when we would truly just have each other, and that would be enough for both of us for a while.
I would get married and have a family of my own. I was very determined about that, too, as determined as I was to have a career. It was as if I thought I could get revenge for how I had been treated. My, child will drown in my love, I thought, There would never be a doubt as to whom his or her mother was. It made me laugh to think of myself that way, but there was something inside me that called for and demanded that.
Can we be forgiven for giving too much love?
