Free Ballad of the Black and Blue Mind by Anne Roiphe Page A

papers and the dusty whisper they seemed to make if you listened carefully, Dr. H. felt like a garage mechanic, a psychoanalytic garage mechanic, outside his little cell, shoes with spike heels cost as much as a racehorse, and money, the flow of it, the feel of it, the terror of losing it, fueled the motors of the real world, a world in which bundling did not mean cuddling and deals were cut with very sharp scissors. In that world his office, the little office of Dr. H. was of no importance at all.
    Far away from Mount Eden, the cemetery where Lourdes was buried, sat the golden statues in the Vatican storehouse as well as the Picassos, the Matisses, the Andy Warhols that were hung on the walls of the princes of Wall Street. Yes, dreams were the royal road to the unconscious, but the unconscious, even under the analyst’s keen eye, was not an item you could buy or sell. Dr. H. regretted that he lived in relative poverty. He regretted that money and its rewards had passed him by. No, he didn’t regret that. What he minded was that all he held dear was less valued than it had been. Insight, thought, nature itself, affection, all seemed like fourth prizes in a contest he had not chosen to enter, but was in nevertheless. The devil stole away Mike Wilson’s child and stuck his finger in Dr. H.’s eye.
    Dr. H. did not accept his own dark thoughts as the complete truth. Perhaps they were a product of some shame of his own. He believed in personal responsibility.
    He believed in choice and he believed that Ivan might not be lost forever because you never know, not really, what might happen, unlikely as it seems, Ivan could return and redeem his days. Psychoanalysts are not seers or prophets, not judges, not makers or shakers. If all goes well they may be able to work like sheep dogs and round up a few strays and press them back into the herd.
    There was a day when Mike Wilson thought while eating a stale croissant at Starbucks, I lost my wife and my son but I have Dr. H. As long as I can pay for him, I have Dr. H. And by now he knew that Dr. H. was also a stand-in for his own father, brother, son, wife, mother, and something of a shape-shifter inhabiting his imagination while still knowing exactly how long forty-five minutes lasted, while knowing exactly the many ways Mike Wilson had to deceive himself and knowing how much regret a man could bear without breaking into fragments that could never be put back together again.
    At least Mike Wilson hoped that was so. Perhaps it wasn’t.
    Are you hoping that your son will contact you one day when he feels enough time has gone by? said Dr. H.
    It has been six years, said Mike Wilson. I call his old friends from high school. I call his college roommate every six months. I call his old girlfriend who hangs up on me. If this were a movie, I’d find a clue. A phone call would come at three in the morning with a stranger whispering a country name, an address into the air. I would open an unmarked envelope and find a blank page and then notice the stamp, the country of origin. But I am not hoping.
    Dr. H. said, Hope will not harm you.
    Mike Wilson sat in the leather chair opposite Dr. H. and wanted to tell him, wanted to tell someone, about the volcano that sat in his breast sending fire and ash up into his brain. The lava that flowed down from that volcano, the lava that was the dark hot stuff of his love for his child, his child who had done a criminal thing, his child whom he would never see again.
    You are angry at him, said Dr. H.
    Yes, said Mike Wilson, who actually was exhausted, bone-achingly exhausted from loss. How angry can an exhausted man get?
    I’m too old, said Mike Wilson, to have another child.
    Not too old, said Dr. H., to have another wife.
    I don’t want another wife, said Mike Wilson. The idea of another woman made him want to smash his head into the wall, the one with Dr. H.’s poster of the Sistine Chapel that he had picked up at an