Free The Bird’s Nest by Shirley Jackson

Had I at this moment remembered her stricture upon “embarrassing” questions, I might not have been so blunt; at any rate, she subsided sullenly into her chair and did not answer. Regretting immediately my sharp words, I fell silent for a moment, so that my self-annoyance might not find utterance in remarks which might seem to be taking out on Miss R. my own irritation. So silent we sat both, and then at last, fetching a deep sigh, I smiled at myself and said frankly, “I do not ordinarily become angry with my patients; perhaps, my dear Miss R., you will do
me
good.”
    I had, without realizing it, found a way of procedure; Miss R. looked at me, and almost laughed. “I won’t make you angry again,” she promised.
    â€œIndeed I believe you will, and it may be good for a stern fellow who tends to think of his patients as problems rather than as people. By all means, whenever you find me regarding you as a problem in arithmetic—” (or in sewage, I might have said; O unfortunate analogy!) “—do at once bring me sharply up by an appeal to my temper. You shall never find me wanting in anger, my dear.”
    We gazed amiably upon one another, quite as though Miss R. were already the person she might someday become, and I verily believe that in the brief moment of anger, and my graceless apology, we came closer together than we had been before. In any case, the unkind question of treatment, brought up of necessity once more, found Miss R. less inclined to flat refusal, and it must suffice to say that she was once again brought to submit herself to hypnosis. “But no embarrassing questions, please?” she asked, blushing as though ashamed of this insistence and yet constrained to make it, as a patient will ask a dentist over and over again not to let the extraction hurt. Since I had at this time no slightest notion of what might seem to Miss R.’s tender sensibilities an embarrassing question, I could only agree helplessly, like the dentist, and promise myself privately to fulfill the obligation as nearly as possible; I had at the same time a notion that Miss R.’s reading of embarrassing questions might be wholly different from my own; I had a conviction that my own assumption, in a like case, of what might constitute an “embarrassment” would be a line of questioning tending toward the point of stoppage in the pipe, but I strongly suspected that what Miss R. meant by “embarrassing” was precisely what any untutored young girl might mean by the word: i.e., anything she would be ashamed to discuss before me, any secrets the poor girl might possess, although these need not be—indeed, very probably were not—the secret I was in search of; I thought tolerantly of love letters and such, and resolved roundly that Miss R.’s maiden sentiments should remain her own still, untampered with by me.
    As Miss R. slipped softly into the trance state, I was anxious to meet again the pleasant girl I had spoken with before, and welcomed the amiable face with the delight of one greeting a charming acquaintance; I had decided that it would be most proper and practical to initiate the little series of questions I had first asked as a formal beginning for all hypnotic questioning, establishing, as it were, a little ritual of introduction, and I hoped that after a short time it might have the double effect of reassuring Miss R. in the first moments of trance, and in addition, perhaps, serve as a complementary trance-inducement; that is, when Miss R., falling asleep, heard my familiar pattern, she would be confirmed in the hypnotic state. So, I began again, “What is your name?”
    â€œElizabeth R.”
    She again told me where she lived, and assured me that she had no fear of me. When I asked her if she remembered what she had told me upon her previous visit, R 2 smiled and said she did, that she had told me she was not afraid of me, and she was not. I