JUNE 2009

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The Regulars
By Jaynel Attolini, Mar 12, 2009

Listen

I walk to his office twice a week. It’s easier than waiting on the shuttle, and I don’t drive much. In fact, I’ve never had a driver’s license. Just the permit, which was enough practice for me.

I sit in the same chair and read the same magazines. I look around the stale room. Why can’t someone sink some money into decorating? It takes every ounce of courage to show up in these places, and they use the Salvation Army as their interior designer. I bet Jennifer Aniston never has to sit on a futon couch or rusting folding chair when she goes to therapy.

I’ve been seeing my shrink, Dr. Carter, for two years, and still, nothing. I’m strong. I don’t call him between visits and I don’t chat past my allowed fifty minutes. I was never one to ask for charity.

And I don’t cry.

I’m in therapy because that’s what people in California do. We’re a culture of contradictions. We go to yoga while our cell phones go off like a technotronic musical in our jackets. We eat organic food to detox and purify our bodies, yet think nothing of swallowing anti-depressants by the truckload.

I see the same crazy people going to their appointments every week. They are crazy. I shouldn’t even be here, wasting my money. My problems are, of course, normal. Dating issues, work drama, the usual mind clutter.

For now, we are frequent strangers who, like quiet alcoholics, show up at the same bar at the same time and drink the same beer. We have time slots. We are regulars.

I sit in uncomfortable silence. I try not to look at them. I can’t help it. My eyes ping pong from their faces to the outdated magazines on my lap. I offer a sympathetic smile to hide what I’m really thinking: What’s. Wrong. With. You.

One of the regulars is a lady with bright green eye shadow and large gold hoops. She’s got big Farrah wings, and the rumor in my mind tells me that her husband walked out. With the secretary, or judging by the polyester housedress, the pool boy. She never recovered from the abandonment, or apparently, the ‘70s.

Another regular wears shorts, even in the winter. It’s so fitting that he wears a Seahawks jersey. The perpetual underdog. His words slur, and he walks with a cane. His overweight body barely fits into the waiting room chair, oozing over the sides. He’s overly friendly in the way that those kind of retarded people tend to be, and their grand gestures of happiness can make a person shrink. Remind you of how closed off you could be. That maybe you’re not a “hugger.”

Seahawk, as I like to call him, sees a mousy haired therapist who looks about thirteen. He jumps up at the sight of her. “Hello!” he grins. He reaches to give her a pat on the back, entangling himself in her personal space.

She greets him with disgust, a sort of contempt. “Let’s get started,” she says, enunciating her words loudly, “We don’t have time for idle chit chat.”

“Good luck in there,” I tell Seahawk. I shoot a glare at his therapist.

“Yooouu, too!” he laughs, like he’s about to go to a birthday party. “Have fun!” he throws in just before he escapes behind the heavy door of secrets. He gets it. I’m initiated. We’re in the same clique: The Regulars. We have signed the secret yearbook. Friends forever. Stay Sweet. Don’t Change. See ya next session.

I get the silent nod of approval from my therapist, as he ushers me into my own room of skeletons. The door sticks, I feel locked in. I sit in a leather chair and turn off my cell phone. I’m tired of talking to the State Congressman about sustainable energy legislature. The government is always asking me for favors, to pull strings. It’s not like I know anything. Maybe it’s time I ask him to investigate Seahawks mousy-haired thirteen-year old therapist. It’s the least I can do for Seahawk. I really don’t think she’s qualified, and the government should do something about it.

My scholarly looking psychiatrist stares, then says, “Something seems to be on your mind. Where should we begin?”

Wow, this guy is a psychic, too, I think. He’s got at least four diplomas from crackpot universities I’ve never heard of, not that I’ve ever been outside of sunny California. I don’t say much in the beginning. He’s the one with the fancypants degrees, and he’s asking me where we should start? It’s an Old Western standoff. The music plays in my mind. We wait for the draw.

He notices me leaning over the armchair, staring at the face of my digital watch that clocks the monotonous seconds.

“How do you think you’re responding to the new anti-depressant?” he asks, breaking the silence.

I clock the watch and it beeps three times. “Four minutes and nine seconds!” I report. “I win! Again! You’re getting better, but I definitely beat you. 0 for 38!” I sit back, proud of myself. It works every time. I’ve wasted a good chunk of time with this game.

“Yes, okay,” he says, unfazed. That’s the thing about these therapist people. They’re supposed to be “the caring doctors” but they’re clocking time like the rest of us.

“I asked you how you think you might be responding to your new anti-depressant,” he says, staring at his yellow legal pad.

I focus on his circular wire glasses and tweed jacket, “I dunno, I’m not like Kelly-Ripa-happy yet,” I tell him.

He shifts in his chair. He has an emotionless, stale face. It’s like they have a class for wannabe psychotherapists called Facial Expressions 101: The Art of Not Acting Human.

“How often would you say you are comparing yourself to celebrities?” he leads.

I ignore him. I’m not falling in that trap.

“So,” I pry, “Has Lindsay Lohan been in here, crying on your shoulder these days?”

He looks at me, bored. “Ms. Lohan lives in Los Angeles.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“No,” he says. “She’s not traveling for her sessions in Tinley Park, Illinois.”

Sometimes I think he has given up on me. He looks at me with eyes that are cataloging all of the things he needs to buy at the grocery store after we meet. Milk, strawberries, cereal, lettuce, basil. Milk, strawberries, cereal, lettuce, basil. He’s repeating it like one of his own obsessive-compulsive patients so he can actually get something done while he’s pretending to listen.

“Well,” he changes the subject, “Your medication could take time. You won’t feel the effects for a month or so.”

“A month?” I say. “What? Are you kidding me? I’ll be ready to drive off a cliff by then.”

My eyes fixate on the sterile white walls, the caging on the windows. I stare at his polished black shoes with stringy laces, lanky like his frame. I realize I don’t know anything about Dr. Carter. Is he married to a mail order bride? Does he take the meds recreationally instead of offering them as samples? Is he a cross-dresser? I don’t know. And worse, I don’t much care.

Truth is, Dr. Carter is only real to me in that chair twice a week. It’s like when you see people outside the gym in their regular clothes. They’re like other people, in costumes. Unrecognizable. Dr. Carter, in that chair, for one hundred minutes a week is the only reliable thing I have.

“We’ve been through this,” he says patiently, “You couldn’t drive off a cliff if you wanted to. You do not have a car.”

I nod my head to patronize him. “Just a figure of speech,” I say.

He forgets I could drive, if I wanted to. I wish he’d write this stuff down. He has such a bad memory for details. The guy has so many clients, and famous ones, too. So I don’t hold it against him.

I look down at my hands. Words struggle for my voice. Dr. Carter notices.

“Are you biting your nails again, Sarah? They look raw,” he says.

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” I say.

“What should I call you?”

“Kate,” I tell him for the millionth time.

He wraps up our session like a guy who is eager to make a getaway the morning after. "Well, okay then, our time is up.”

My digital watch agrees. It beeps four times slowly and then eight times quickly, as though a bomb may go off.

“Let’s pick up on Tuesday with more about the wreck, and Kate,” he says, “Your twin.”

He stands and ushers me to the door. Predictably, the doors swing open. I exit my session alongside the regulars.

Green eye shadow lady puts on her Jackie-O sunglasses to cover up her crying jag. Seahawk waddles with his cane and smiles big at me. I halfway smile at him. I don’t know what they’re giving him, but I suspect he got the good pills.

“Wanna ride?” I ask Seahawk.

“You drive?” he stammers.

“Wouldn’t ask if I didn’t,” I say.

“Nah,” he says, “I heard you killed a girl and that’s how you burned up your face,” he says loud and honest the way those kind of retarded people tend to do. Green eye shadow lady and mousy-haired thirteen-year old therapist overhear this bomb of information, this evacuation of truth. There is standstill between all of us, and a brief moment of silence before my wristwatch spontaneously chirps into an uncontrollable spasm.

I can see my reflection in the glass picture frame of the predictable grassy meadow with a sun that never goes down. In these pedestrian portraits, there is never a car accident, never a dead body, never a retard or junkie hitchhiking to the next town over.

Everything is as it should be. Nothing is out of place. There is no room for a blemish or mistake of any kind. It’s bad art.

If Sean Penn came to a session, they’d have real art for him.

Instead, in the glass reflection, I see the scars. I see my newly invented lips from other parts of my body. The missing ear. And despite the make-up that’s supposedly good enough for Julia Roberts, I see the deep cuts that scribble across my face, and down my neck.

I see what Seahawk sees—my fucked-up melted face.

Seahawk takes a step toward me with his worn out black dress shoes. The ones he always wears without socks in winter with his shorts and fat pasty legs. He says nothing. I stand in the landscape of my own reflection.

He leans in to give me one of his hugs.

I let him.