I shouldn’t worry about my father because we are all brutes.
Potentially. Temporarily.
A long pause followed. The therapist shifted in her chair, again and again, as if uncomfortable in any position.
All right, Dr. Schussler, the patient said. You’ve proven to me that any decent person can become a brute. But are there any studies that show brutes becoming decent? Becoming heroes?
The doctor sighed and softly laughed.
Is there any evidence so far in your life that you are a brute?
Silence.
No, the patient answered finally. Of course I’ve been rude at times, insensitive, but no, there’s nothing particularly brutish about me. On the contrary, I think I’m too meek. That I don’t go up against things. That I haven’t seized life and turned it to my will. That I don’t even have a strong will.
Nonsense, said the doctor. You defied your parents when you went to Wharton. You defied convention by being a woman in the financial world. You have truly defied convention by being a lesbian. Gott, you have even resisted the norms of that demimonde! Do I have to recite any further risks you have taken? How much you have not conformed? How much internal bravery this implies?
(Bravo, Dr. Schussler!)
So if you are descended from a hero, the doctor went on, you have his bravery. Well and good. If from a rapist, you have certainly found a different way. As I said, What does it matter which one was your father?
The patient inhaled time and again, as if stopping herself from saying one thing or another. Then she said at last:
Yes. But you can’t help but thinking. Can’t help but wonder who he was.
Of course, said the therapist. You will always think about it and wonder over it. It is part of your history, and quite an unusual history at that. I imagine you will tell many stories about it as you meet people over the course of your life. But I don’t think you necessarily have to feel too much about it, if you understand my distinction.
I think I do.
It is an interesting and distinctive fact about you, but says nothing—
About who I am now.
Then good. We have done our hard work for the day. Of course I suppose we will have to go over this—
Over and over, said the patient with a laugh. Back and forth. Many times. Retreat and forward again. Yes, I think I’m now getting how all this works.
There was a long silence, then again came the patient’s laugh.
Ah! See? she said. I still have something left of my mysterious origins.
93.
Miraculous! The therapist had done her job! Dr. Schussler had separated the patient from her father—returned her to the mystery of her origins and the mysterious creation of herself! I nearly cried. I did not think Dr. Schussler had it in her, indeed that any therapist could be effective in this manner, and I instantly regretted that I had quit all those analysts, doctors, counselors, social workers—perhaps too soon?
The therapeutic discussion continued until the completion of the hour, but, with the climax of the session behind them, patient and doctor were languorous, like lovers after sex.
Yet I grew increasingly uneasy. I kept hearing her mother’s denial of Rosensaft’s paternity, a denial that seemed ever more absurd as I replayed the scene in my mind. Why had her mother dismissed it so very adamantly, so oddly (come to think of it)? Perhaps Michal did indeed believe that Rosensaft was the father, and she did not want the patient to seek him out—wanted to keep Rosensaft out of the patient’s life and her own.
But was any of this true?
If Rosensaft is her father, I thought, then the patient was right: She would have to look like him. But did the patient (as I thought I knew her) look like Yossele Rosensaft (as I had seen him in news photos)?
No, I answered myself. They looked nothing alike.
Then came another invasive thought: Had I ever seen the “real” patient? That lovely woman who emerged from the elevator the day my angelic guard detained me: Was that glowing vision truly she?
Which reopened the question of Rosensaft’s paternity: Perhaps the actual patient—whom I had never seen—had indeed inherited Yossele Rosensaft’s inner and outer substance.
All of which led back to the original question: Does it matter? Does anyone’s father, especially an absent father, make any difference at all in one’s life?
Then I knew I had not escaped my spider. For I found myself spinning like a wrapped fly, stuck in fruitless, circular, obsessive