Half a Life: A Memoir Read Free Page B

blushing to the edge of tears. “Sure, I guess.”
    The Shrink—“Let’s do it!”—smacked the arms of his chair. And he sought, with quick vanity, the reflection in a big mirror opposite him. Just as fast he turned away. He appeared to have reached that situation of health where vanity meant you didn’t risk your face in the mirror.
    “Hey, come on now, Darin—you only guess ? How about if I told you we’re going to go in my Porsche?”
    I swear this is what he said.
    West Shore Road follows the turns of the Long Island Sound like a tag-along sister. This Tuesday a.m. it had the dispiriting vibe of all empty beachfronts in the rain.Canadian geese bummed around the median where my own car, pretty much a few moments before, had slid to its stop. Where I’d stood and performed for those girls with their what-have-we-here faces.
    “Let me show you,” the Shrink was saying about his Porsche, “what this baby can do zero-to-sixty, in awesome time.” (This really was his method, but I’m not sure what it says about the profession—whether this is psychotherapy or just Long Island psychotherapy, where all problems can be extenuated by making good time on the L.I.E.)
    He stepped hard on the gas. The rain kept on as gentle drizzle, making an occasional plonk against the windshield. The Shrink ignored the street to focus his somewhat buggy eyes on me. He’d studied Judd Hirsch in Ordinary People , and was trying to be the hearty Jewish man to rescue me. West Shore Road offers two lanes in each direction. Maybe my Ordinary People foreboding was just that I’d seen the movie, and so was on guard for any resonances. In any case, it felt less like my moment than a pop culture remake I wanted to avoid. The drops on his windshield—the Porsche really was aerodynamic—had reversed field; they were traveling up , shivering in little broken dashes. But the Shrink didn’t flick on his wipers. He futzed with the tape player, still eyeing me. His hair had Bozo-grade kinks at the temples. Let’s just say he failed to come off doctorially. His car, I couldn’t help noticing—I am Long Island born and bred—wasn’t the splashy 911 model that the frequent automotive name-dropping had led me to expect. Rather,it was a 944, what I knew to be the “Starter Porsche.” This model used Volkswagen parts. My hands were stuck in my jeans pockets, up to my thin sweaty wrists. Here I was, nipping along with a man who meant to save me in a souped-up Beetle. Cockeyed is maybe more accurate than buggy-eyed. But any man who tries to push into an emotional conversation—and to lead it to a very specific payoff—while entertaining the pleasures of driving really fast and dreamily on a wet road will of necessity seem bug-eyed. His stereo played “Let’s Hear It for the Boy,” from the Footloose soundtrack. It was obvious the Shrink felt a large and human pride in his purring German go-getter. He pronounced the brand properly, with the vocal pirouette of a sha at the end.
    He decelerated—“Here?” he said. “Is this where?”—and even I noticed how smartly the eager little machine gunned down to lawful speeds.
    I followed the pointer of his finger. “Um,” I said. “Not sure.”
    If I’d tried to go beyond those short words, my voice would have guttered. I had already shared too much of what I felt and knew; I longed to feel and know more . “Maybe?” I said.
    The sky had dropped a curtain on the sun. I remember the fast-passing median and its luscious grass. I can still see the boring road. The Shrink slowed us even more. Some geese poked along the median, each in its own way. I went nauseous. The day had become grim, irreparable.
    “Okay, so?” he said, a wink of the profession in his voice. “How do you feel?”
    What could I possibly have offered as an answer?
    Then the sky bailed me out.
    “Hey, look at that ,” said the Shrink. A long leg of sunlight kicked down through the fog.
    Miraculously, I could perform all