happened.
What followed still seemed to Zee more like posthypnotic suggestion than real life. Not only had Michael easily agreed that Zee was the perfect girl for him, heâd never even seemed to question it. And exactly one year after their first date, a period of time most probably deemed respectable by Mattei, Michael had proposed.
Zee had been grateful when Mattei chose to hire her. She had just received her masterâs and was working on her Ph.D. when Mattei invited her to join her practice, giving her some group sessions to moderate and mentoring her as she went. By the time sheâd earned the title of doctor, Zee had ended up in a corner office with a view of the Charles and a patient list that would have taken her years to develop on her own.
The phrase âcase closedâ was one of Matteiâs biggest jokes. Though patients almost always got better under her care, they were never cured. There was no such thing as case closed. Not in modern American society anyway, Mattei insisted. Not in a country that planted the most fertile ground for both mania and the resultant depressive episodes, the country that had invented the corporate marketing machine that left people never feeling good enough unless they were overextending their credit, buying that next big fix. Not that Mattei minded the corporate marketing machine. That machine had made her rich. But there was definitely no such thing as case closed. Case closed was decidedly un-American.
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W HEN L ILLY B RAEDON CAME ALONG, Mattei quickly handed her off to Zee.
In the past year, Lilly had developed the most crippling case of panic disorder. Sheâd been to local doctors, who had ruled out all probable physical explanations: thyroid, anemia, lupus, et cetera. Then, after watching an episode of The View, something he swore heâd never done before, her husband, who in his own words âloved Lilly more than life itselfâ (a quote that resonated on a very problematic level with both Zee and Mattei), went to the Spirit of â76 Bookstore in Marblehead to purchase Matteiâs book, only to find that they were sold out. He immediately ordered two copies, one for himself and another for his ailing wife.
But Lilly was too troubled to read. The only time she left the house in those days was in the late afternoon, when the shadows were longer and the bright summer light (another irrational fear) was dimmer. In the late afternoon, her husband said, Lilly often took long walks through the twisted streets of Marblehead and up through the graves of Old Burial Hill, to a precipice high above Marblehead Harbor, where she sometimes stayed until after sunset.
âSo technically she isnât agoraphobic,â Mattei said to the husband when she finished her initial patient analysis of Lilly. âShe does leave the house.â
âOnly for her walks,â her husband said. âShe says she does it to calm herself down.â
âInteresting,â Mattei said.
But Zee could tell she didnât mean it. The reason Zee was in attendance at Lillyâs session was that Mattei had already decided she was handing her off. Mattei wasnât interested in Lilly Braedon.
But Zee was very interested. From the first time she met her new patient, Zee suspected that there was much more to the story than Lilly was telling.
Every Tuesday, Zee had her own therapy session with Mattei. Mostly they talked about her patients, or at least the ones who required meds, which was most of them. If patients with panic attacks werenât on meds these days, you could be pretty sure there was a reason. Perhaps they were in some kind of twelve-step program, usually for alcohol or drugs, or else they had the kind of paranoia that kept them from taking any medication at all.
This morning Zee had gone through âthe usual suspects,â as Mattei called her list of patients. This one had improved, that one was self-medicating with bourbon and