"Are you alright?" "I made a terrible mistake." "I let Max use my computer." "I didn't realize I hadn't cleared the searches and just knew from his face exactly what he'd seen and he asked me if I was sick." "Maybe you can tell me some more about Kate's fiancee can you tell me what disturbs you most?" "Apart from the fact that he thinks he knows what's right for my kid?" "I think I'm beginning to understand how the dynamic between you and Gina developed, how was it you say she presented you in the novel?" "Childish, poor husband, deficient father?" "Is it possible that you convinced her that you were incapable?" "Why would I do that?" "What she told you was hard to hear." "Of course it was." "All this time going on and telling you about how traumatized my son was by his stepfather, and turns out he's in love with the guy." "He's in love with... it's a figure of speech, but it's basically what Rosie told me in so many words." "I mean," "Max and Steve spent the whole weekend together going to museums." "They draw together." "They..." "Steve brings him into the architecture studio, teaches him..." "I don't even know the terms... line drawing, drafting, whatever it's called, how to use a mechanical pencil." "Have you spoken to Max about this?" "I haven't spoken with Max about much of anything." "I was gonna sit him down as soon as he came back from Maryland and talk to him about what he found on my computer that night... you know, my Parkinson's research." "But since my conversation with Rosie," "I haven't been able to bring myself to do it." "What are you afraid to hear Max say?" "Are you... are you really gonna make me answer that?" "I mean, you..." "you saw perfectly what was happening last week more clearly than I saw it myself." "I'm sure you know the answer without me having to say it." "You think I know what you're going to say before you say it?" "I was getting my son to worry about me." "He won't tell me about Steve because he's trying to protect me." "I..." "I can't stop myself from wondering if, you know... if he'd actually be better off in Maryland." "With his mother and Steve." "It's hard for you to consider that." "They share this passion for drawing, for art." "And Steve feeds it." "I mean, how can I deny my son that?" "If I did, I'd be doing exactly what was done to me." "I'd be..." "I'd be dragging him away from his vibrant teenage years and taking him to a dreary, lifeless apartment with a sick parent." "Is that how you see your existence... as dreary and lifeless?" "I'm sure that's how Max sees it." "I wasn't asking about Max." "I really wish Rosie had never told me about the fucking twin drafting tables." "I really could have done without that detail." "Is that what gets to you most?" "It all gets to me..." "the whole picture." "And it's not just them either." "Just about everybody I know has some kind of passion." "Something or somebody drives them." "But not you." "Sometimes I..." "I try to pretend I do, yeah." "How do you do that?" "What does that mean, you pretend?" "Wendy... uh, my girlfriend... she stopped by the apartment at lunchtime today." "And she knows I have an hour and a half without any patients." "And..." "We... we haven't had sex for a while." "And..." "Since she can't stay over and I can't stay at her place because of Max..." "Max was away this weekend." "Right." "That's true." "I hadn't told her that." "But you saw her today." "She has this thing, you know... she... for some reason she's been wanting to have sex on the couch in my office." "So we did." "This was your attempt at being passionate about something." "I suppose you're right." "And?" "I was..." "I was distracted." "I was..." "I was..." "I was thinking about other things." "What were you thinking about?" "I don't know." "Not her." "I have this..." "I have this boat in my office." "And I just found myself staring... you know, staring at it after Wendy and I were finished." "It's a... a model, a sailboat." "It's about that big." "I used to have about 26 of them, different sizes, you know, schooners, sloops." "Do you like to sail?" "Never been." "Anyway, these..." "these boats are... actually, the boats are the closest I've ever come to a hobby." "And when Max was little, he really loved it." "We used to go searching at these antique stores." "Sometimes we'd build them from kits, you know." "And we'd give them each a name and we'd make up these stories about the places it had been and the places that it would go." "How come there's only one boat left?" "He lost interest." "Then when I moved up to Brooklyn," "I just left the rest of them behind." "They..." "I don't know, they just started to feel a bit pathetic... 22" reminders of all the places I'd never been and I would never get to." "The one that I saved..." "I keep it in my office." "I see it over my patients' shoulders." "So I sit and I listen to them talk, and every single one of them, they... no matter how sick or screwed up they are... they... they all have a real passion." "You find all your patients have something you don't, something you're missing?" "I do feel that way a lot, yeah." "Jesse... he loves photography." "He's got this fierce attachment to his camera." "And frances has her acting." "Although it's hard for her to admit, with all the guilt she has around it, there's no question of what it means to her." "Other people..." "Kate devoted to her clinic, now to Max's new father." "I mean, even Gina..." "suddenly a novelist." "As much as I fucking hate her for what she's written, she has found her... you know, her calling." "And there's..." "there's you." "Me?" "Why do you include me?" "What do you consider my passion to be?" "Well, isn't it this... your work, your patients?" "I mean, not that there aren't other things that you might feel strongly about, but from where I sit, you seem to be pretty engaged even in your cool detachment." "Am I engaged or detached?" "I'd..." "I'd say both." "But... but it is clear that your work is very important to you." "Am I wrong about that?" "My work is important to me." "I'm just wondering why you say that, how you arrive at this impression." "I went online, you know, the other night." "It's become kind of a bad habit really." "And I found myself back at my desk, typing in this thing on Parkinson's/ olfactory symptoms." "And I..." "I just stopped." "I made myself stop." "And I..." "I just happened to type in your name instead." "Did you know there's another Adele Brouse, also a therapist, in Portland, Oregon?" "I wasn't aware of that." "Yeah, an m.S.W., not a psychiatrist, not nearly as prolific as you." "I mean, all this..." "a list of stuff comes up, all the articles that you've published over, you know... the amount of conferences that you've attended in Chicago," "Prague, Paris." "What did seeing that mean to you?" "Well, the last article that I wrote was in 1998." "Why have you stopped?" "Adele Saskia Brouse." "Is that Dutch?" "Wasn't Rembrandt's wife called Saskia?" "My mother's father was from Holland." "I don't believe it." "What?" "You just... you answered my question." "You still haven't answered mine." "Why have you stopped?" "Well, let's say that I... that I no longer share your professional drive." "My work does feel meaningful at times." "When I'm in the room with my patients," "I'm still interested mostly, but am I passionate?" "You mean in the way you think I am." "Were you ever?" "When I was your age, I published." "I still thought I could save people." "Do you ever think that now?" "Monday, for 40 minutes," "I had a flash of that feeling." "What happened monday?" "You remember Sunil." "I told you about him." "He took..." "he took a huge step." "I'd been trying to get him to express his anger." "And he'd been inching toward it." "So we were sitting in my office over tea and we were talk... you were talking over tea?" "It makes him feel like we're having more of a conversation than therapy." "You know, he's a guy who spends all his time feeling like an outsider in what he perceives to be this strange, aggressive country." "So he locks himself away in his room." "So sharing tea with me makes him... you know, draws him out of his shell." "Are you talking about him or you?" "I'm talking about him." "Last week you told me that you didn't want to be my supervisor." "Now you kind of sit there silently supervising." "It's kind of obvious what you think." "What do I think?" "He opened up to me." "He... he told me about this deeply passionate affair that he had at university... something he's never spoken of before to anybody and that's haunted him for years." "You should have seen how transformed he was when he spoke about this love affair." "It's like he... he came alive." "I mean, this man isn't..." "he's not old." "He felt passion at one point in his life." "And I thought, "why couldn't he have that again?" "Why couldn't he... ?"" "Why couldn't he...?" "I don't know." "It was... it was fleeting, what I saw in him, but a glimpse of somebody different, you know?" "Maybe I'm making too much of it." "This recent session with Sunil had a powerful effect on you." "You seem especially focused on his early love affair." "Well, it's a pretty powerful story, don't you think?" "Have you ever felt that passion romantic passion?" "My lunchtime session with Wendy doesn't qualify?" "Not according to you." "With Kate," "I suppose, when I fell in love with her all those years ago." "Even with Wendy last year, at the very beginning." "But now I..." "I'm beginning to realize I've got this pattern:" "I seek out people who have... who have... who have themselves a passion for life and I feed off them instead." "I allow them to... to feel for both of us." "You allowed both Wendy and Kate to do your feeling for you?" "Yeah, at least..." "at least in part." "Whatever emotion you do feel, do you openly express yourself at the time?" "Not entirely." "You hold yourself back?" "Is... is that what you think?" "Earlier, when you were talking about Sunil, you became engaged, excited, as you came alive yourself." "You spoke with energy." "You sat forward in your seat." "And then you stopped yourself." "It was striking." "Does that description seem accurate to you?" "Do you find you have passionate or excited impulses, but stop yourself from expressing them?" "I made a similar observation a couple of weeks ago about you holding yourself back, and you had a strong reaction." "Do you remember?" "What... what are you talking about?" "You told me about the beginning of your dream... running toward open gates along a wrought-iron fence, and then being dragged down, paralyzed." "I asked if you were stopping yourself and you got very angry at me." "You insisted it was your father who was stopping you." "It was my school." "I'm sorry?" "It was my school." "The fence..." "the iron fence ran around the outside of the boarding school I went to." "When was this?" "I..." "I was 12." " You were Max's age." " Yeah." "Lancaster royal grammar school in the north of england." "I wasn't there for very long, just a term and a half, but... well, my parents had already started to fight with each other." "And yeah, it was our last year in dublin." "And they sent me away to school." "Was that hard for you?" "No, not at all." "Most people talk about how miserable they are at boarding school, but I was really happy there." "But I was there for less than six months when my father got his position at union memorial in Baltimore." "Two weeks later we landed in... in America." "Well, I'm..." "I'm sure that's part of the dream that I'm, you know, reliving... being torn away from school by my father, from that feeling that I had... that great feeling of contentment that I'd found there." "Can you tell me what was so nice about the boarding school?" "The place was... was just filled with activity." "There were scores of clubs and things that you could do, teams you could sign up for... to play rugby, cross-country running, the school newspaper." "It's just all these things my father tore me away from." "Cross-country running..." "did you run at school?" "Well, I was going to join the team." "Did you play rugby, join the paper?" "Well, I was planning to." "I'm not sure what you're getting at." "The point I'm making is that I was happy there." "Actively engaged, content." "It's interesting to hear you speak of the school in this way, because in your dream you're running outside the gates." "When you told me the dream, you described a feeling of anticipation, of excitement, not of contentment." "To me that difference seems significant." "You say you planned to join the newspaper?" "Well, I hadn't been there that long." "A semester and a half?" "Surely that's enough time to join the paper if you'd wanted to." "No, I'm just saying that if I had stayed," "I would have thrived." "It was my father moving here that just took away that possibility." "And what did you find here instead?" "The move to Baltimore marked the end of my childhood." "My father walked out;" "My mother got sicker;" "And I was..." "I was forced to... to take care of her." "The beginning of a very difficult period." "And your father bears a great deal of the responsibility." "Yeah, who else?" "My mother... she was..." "she was ill." "I understand." "You mentioned more than once how strongly you identify with Sunil's alienation in this country, that you continue to feel it at times." "And I imagine you felt it when you first arrived." "Yes, I..." "I went from Lancaster royal grammar to p.S. 233, from beautiful gothic stone buildings and open green fields to brick and asphalt." "That's tough for rugby." "The kids played stickball." "And I remember watching them with such determination from the edge of the schoolyard." "Determination?" "What does that mean?" "I was..." "I was determined to decode them, you know, to figure them out... how to play their game, how to fit in." "Because everything about them was alien... the music that they listened to, the clothes that they wore, even their curse words." "And the girls..." "the girls... forget it." "They wouldn't even look in my direction." "You stayed on the edge of that schoolyard as well, outside the gates." "I was trying to join in." "I was trying to find my way." "And I just..." "I just didn't get a chance to." "You were pulled away again." "Mm-hmm, yeah." "How long was your family in America before your father walked out?" "18 months." "A year and a half." "Oh okay, I get the point you're trying to make... that I had time, like at boarding school, to join in." "But see, the thing is, my father was... he was working really long hours." "And my mother was already unwell." "You were expected to stay home with her." "Yes, I was." "And I did." "Yeah." "It was a terrible blow." "Was it?" "What do you mean?" "Was it a terrible blow or was it also a relief?" " I was trying to be a good son." " I understand it." " Is that so awful?" " Of course it's not awful." "What I'm saying is that it may have been easier than the alternative." "Do you think I wanted to spend my teenage years with my chronically ill mother?" "I mean..." "The first day I met you, you insisted that you and Gina had it all figured out, that your need to save people started with your mother's illness." "And does that seem far-fetched to you?" "It doesn't." "But I think caring for your mother was also a way of saving yourself." "It was miserable, yes, but it was also safe and familiar." "And it kept you from having to find any real connections elsewhere, from risking yourself in the outside world." "And it also had the convenience of allowing you to blame it all on your father." "And it's really not so different from what you do to this day, is it?" "You cloister yourself in your apartment or your burrow like office." "You convince yourself you're sick." "You accept a growing paralysis rather than taking a risk of finding where or towards whom your real passion lies." "Is it any wonder you haven't found what drives you yet?" "You're 57 years old." "At a certain point you have to move past the stories that you've assigned to your life, these steadfast explanations you've settled on years ago." "You have to look at yourself again for real answers." "You have to take that risk." "Well..." "You're so young and yet you're so confident." "About what?" "You just seem so certain that you're right." "You see everything clearly." "Do you think I see you clearly?" "Because I'd like to see you more clearly, but I find you're fairly expert at obscuring the view." "That's not the first time you've heard that, is it?" "In so many words." "I..." "I told you earlier that I was distracted when I was with Wendy." "And you asked me what I was thinking about." "And I said I didn't know." "You asked me if I hold myself back, and I didn't answer." "Well, I do hold myself back." "Do you know why?" "I was thinking about you." "I hear your voice a lot." "I admire your clarity, your... you see me." "I noticed that you don't wear a wedding ring." "And I've imagined that you might understand something of my life, my loneliness." "I know, I know... textbook transference." "I know it's ridiculous, a fantasy." "And it's my comeuppance for being on the receiving end of these sorts of feelings." "But you did ask." "I'm glad you answered." "You look... you look kind of shocked." "Why do you say that?" "Nothing." "Do you recognize what you're doing?" "You're holding yourself back again." "As soon as you express your feelings, you dismiss them immediately, call it ridiculous, offer an excuse." "What... what exactly are you saying?" "I'm saying that between now and next session you may want to think about why you do that." "Are you telling me...?" "Are you trying to say...?" "We have to stop." "Let's pick this up next week." "This will be an excellent place to start." "Okay." "We'll talk more next week." "Have a good weekend."