Francesca & Ruth
Nice surprise bumping into you last night,” said Ruth to Francesca as they settled into the matching red leather easy chairs facing each other, assuming their customary places in her office. The psychotherapist subtly maneuvered the little clock on the side table an inch so as to be able to discreetly track time.
“Nice? I felt pretty self-conscious, like I showed up for my final exam in a two-piece.”
“You’re funny, but all good, no worries.” The two of them had come so far over the years, was Francesca unconsciously implying at this late date that for her, therapy was a type of test? Ruth should pick up on this theme—but no, she determined, just move along. A cigar was sometimes just a cigar. She missed her cigarettes, but hated cigar smoke.
“Same here then,” said Francesca. “But I didn’t know how to relate to you in social circumstances. You know, like when you run into your high school teacher at the grocery store, and you analyze what’s in her basket—the milk, the bread, the six bottles of vodka. Awkward!” Nothing but a banal little joke, but Ruth was interested that school was being connected yet again to her therapy—a not insignificant connection for somebody like Francesca, who excelled as a student all the while feeling that she, the outsider, never belonged, was never truly worthy. Ruth was thinking now she would look for an opening to circle back to this subject. This particular cigar wasn’t just any old cigar.
“It would have been fine to chat, two people being civil, friendly at a bookstore opening. And what a wonderful job they did updating the store. Such a great addition to the neighborhood, people need a place like that after the old one shuttered.”
“My whole clan was there—well, Anthony’s clan, who are my people still. Colleen and Matty, whom we’ve talked about a lot. And the recent addition named Caitlin, my father-in-law’s new inamorata—that’s her store. She’s a sparkler, isn’t she? Pretty young, too. Anyway, the mighty Family Fitzgerald in full force in the house, except for Paddy, the patriarch, who showed up with his bodyguard, Jonesy, after you sneaked out.”
Bodyguard? That’s interesting. But Ruth would keep her touch light, not taking the bait after being accused of slipping away stealthily. “Stayed as long as I could remain on my feet. Five months along, as everyone can see. I get worn out before I know it.” That was true last evening, and today had been particularly taxing as well: six sessions, which was too many, but she was trying to fit in everybody for at least one session or two before she took her leave.
“Had you met them before? The Fitzgeralds?”
That could have been a borderline inappropriate query, but Ruth chose to ignore the possibly subterranean intention. “They have a huge reputation in town, of course. It feels like everybody knows them.”
“Father Philip was there, too. Anthony’s brother, who married us. Did you get a chance to meet and talk with him last night?”
Okay, antennae were now up. That might have been unremarkable with somebody else, but Francesca had never opened a session with so many directed, personal questions; Ruth would need to get this under control forthwith. “Can’t say I did have a conversation with him.” More to the point, and not surprisingly, when Philip’s name entered the conversation, a sense of heightened risk crept up on Ruth. Maybe this had to do with her being pregnant, but she had the premonition that unless she kept her emotional balance, she could lose her footing on the slick psychic ice.
“He’s so handsome, Philip, don’t you think?” said Francesca. “He and Anthony were close as can be, and of course Philip took his passing as hard as you can imagine.”
Ruth listened carefully and let the words settle into the middle of the room. Frankie seemed to be referencing something important and charged, something as of yet unspecified that would come out, if she were given a chance. “Let’s talk about you. How’s Frankie doing these days? Anything on your agenda?” Agenda: odd, atypical word choice for Ruth. Her hormones raging, she needed to take a break from work soon.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, and I’m probably projecting like crazy, but I had this glimpse that you and Philip seemed to have some chemistry across the room. Maybe I am being out of bounds, and he’s your client, or was.”
Certain clients indeed spring a trap like that, again perhaps unconsciously, crossing boundaries with their therapists; any good, professional, seasoned therapist—and Ruth certainly qualified—knew her way around the treacherous pathways of therapeutic transference. “Well, projection is an interesting concept. I don’t need to tell you it would be out of bounds for me to respond to that question. So my question for you is: Why do you ask?” If Francesca answered that last question honestly, Ruth would hope to run with it.
“I’m not sure. Philip—Father Philip—and I once were very close, too.”
What did too mean and to whom did it refer? Time for the therapist to shut up and wait and listen hard, and so she did.
“He and I became very close in the year after Anthony, but we drifted apart for strange reasons, and you know, maybe not so strange in the end. We’re trying to find our footing again, it’s been a while, and I have missed his company terribly, there, I said it.”
But what exactly did she mean? Ruth had to jump in. “He’s important to you, I get it, and this is the first I’m hearing about him—and your relationship.” Ruth castigated herself for saying something so inane, and with critical undertones. And critical of whom? Frankie? Philip? Herself? She needed to manage this potentially fraught moment much more carefully. She also had to ask herself how it was that Philip never once mentioned Frankie, not once. Amazing how the mention of Philip’s name in somebody else’s mouth could disarm her so swiftly. In addition, she worried she was talking too much, hardly ever a good thing for a therapist; better to sit with the unspoken, better to be patient for the client to point the way.
“There was a time, and maybe there’ll be a time again, I don’t know, when we’ll be close again. That would be—I don’t know the word for what it would be. Affirming, hopeful, comforting? Have you ever cared for somebody so much that you made mistakes, mistakes out of caring for them?”
As the silence gathered, and as Ruth elected not to answer yet another question, Francesca sensed a transformation in Ruth. She believed she was seeing into her therapist all over again. Before she was cognizant of hazarding this hunch, she could intuit that Philip had a place in her therapist’s life as a cherished client, or so she was speculating. She wouldn’t have ever guessed that Philip ever saw a therapist, not till this moment. That was a healthy sign, for him to go to therapy, because who doesn’t need therapy at some point, and Ruth was terrific for her for so long, so good for him. Francesca decided to risk telling the truth, and she knew this might be a mistake but she couldn’t avoid it.
“Might as well tell you this, Ruth. It’s been on my mind all over again, and I’ve never told anybody before, till right this minute.” She took an audible, deep breath, which struck her therapist as quasi-theatrical. “Philip and I had an affair, a brief affair. It happened, I can’t undo the past. I have never forgiven myself, on one level, and on another I needed him as much as he needed me, so maybe I haven’t forgiven him.” And then Francesca recalled a telling connection, which she decided to share. “You know, if he did become your client, patient, whatever, could be it was because of me.”
Ruth’s eyes widened and waited for Francesca to say more—and wished she wouldn’t.
“I remembered, the first night he and I slept together, I let on I was working with you, and how much I appreciated you, and he asked for your name, you know, for parishioner referrals. Of course, I’m not asking again if he’s your client.”
Ruth had been summarily presented a serious problem, an ethical conflict. But that was not the most serious aspect of this revelation. The feeling of being betrayed was building and building. Betrayal by Philip, betrayal by Frankie, a double betrayal of her. And yet rationally, she knew it was not a betrayal of her, and yet, irrationally, and convincingly, it was nothing but a betrayal. Things not said, experiences not referenced, could be every bit as wrenching, and jolting, as things that were spoken. It didn’t require a therapist to highlight that. Or a priest, for that matter. It took all Ruth’s powers to shove into the emotional background, for now, her feelings about Philip. She and he would need to talk this through, but then again, how to broach the subject? She could hardly raise the issue with him without breaking a confidence, not to mention without implicitly accusing him of bad faith. It was all too much for her to process in the moment, so as hard as it was to do, and this may have been the single most difficult moment in her therapist life, she willed her attention in the direction of dealing with the client seated across from her—for the next—she looked at the clock—for the next thirty-nine minutes.
Why hadn’t Francesca mentioned before now that what she was clearly signaling constituted such a major experience—and the corollary, every bit as significant, what else of major import had she not disclosed? Ruth felt nothing so much as deceived. Surely, she might have brought up this affair at some point, an affair with her own brother-in-law. She had previously talked through so much of psychological and emotional consequence: her one-night stands, her professional struggles, her widowed depression, her troubles with regard to Catholicism, her unresolved relationship with her underworld-associated father, her internal conflicts about her wealth, her mixed feelings about her own success, her questions about Tommy and their future, her free-floating anxiety, her high school boyfriends and her fear of dogs. Had her client been operating in bad faith all along? Exactly as Philip was? Even if the two of them were not exactly conspiring to withhold information from her? So what else was she keeping to herself? Ruth would be tempted to believe Francesca was being strategic, that she had deliberately decided not to tell her about Philip till today, but to what end? Because more important, yet again, why was she telling her now? But then beyond all that, more pragmatically, how could she, given her own relationship with Philip, continue to treat Francesca a minute more? She had no confidence she wouldn’t be affected by this intimate new revelation regarding Philip. She was a practiced clinician, true, but clinical had limits. She would have to take up this subject with her own therapist, to determine if she could ethically relate to her client, and to figure out if she could manage the risks of counter-transference. She was pretty certain the verdict would be either no or hell no. But in the meantime, she went here, buying time, and simultaneously wishing not to discover the truth: “What was it like for you, being sexually involved with your late husband’s brother?” She came this close to retracting the brutal, harshly phrased question, which made it almost sound like she was accusing Francesca of incest, but couldn’t, and she let the question stand.
“I only know I will never deny its importance.”
No one had ever asked her to deny its importance, because she had testified she had never told anybody else, unless she was referring to denying the significance to herself. Ruth was an expert in conducting her own internal dialogue while at the same time discussing matters with a client, proceeding along parallel tracks, but this moment posed an altogether tougher, more complex, in a sense triangulating challenge, so maybe it would be advisable to shut down the session immediately. Of course, if she did that, it might be injurious to her client, and theoretically irresponsible to Francesca, who would feel plausibly bewildered and rejected.
“Let’s back up a second,” said Ruth. “Why do you suppose you have you been probing me for information about him?” She knew it was not the perfect launch point, but couldn’t resist.
There was heat in the room. “Am I? Probing you? Why do you say that?” Frankie wasn’t probing into Ruth, she felt, she was probing into herself, and if anybody else, Philip.
“You seem quite concerned as to whether or not Father Philip and I know each other. What would be the difference one way or the other—what would be the difference to you in your therapy, I mean?” Of course, that was also the issue she was grappling with herself.
“Honestly, I’m not sure what’s going on, Ruth, right now between you and me.”
The moment of truth loomed on the horizon. “Are you jealous I have other clients I care for?” She started to correct herself, but didn’t: Whom I care about. “And I’m not declaring he is my client.”
“But if he were your client, he might have mentioned…I don’t know, me.”
“Again, confidential.” Secrets were multiplying, the way they have a tendency to do once one secret sharer blunders into the clearing.
“But Ruth, you would have to imagine that that information would be noteworthy to me. And even if you couldn’t tell me, then you would know something about me that I didn’t know you knew about me, which seems like dirty pool on your part.”
To Frankie, that perfectly captured the irrationality she was embracing, and wishing she wasn’t. To Ruth, Frankie was describing her therapist’s soul, and wishing she wasn’t.
“Bad faith? Are you accusing me of betraying you, Frankie?” A real question on the swept-off table.
Francesca shot forward in her chair. “Don’t put words in my mouth.”
She was justified to push back, but Ruth continued on this tack. “Let’s try again. If such information is crucial to you, what is stopping you from reaching out to him, to Philip, to discuss whatever you find important…like his therapy or his possible association with me and including whatever happened between you two, about which I could not possibly know anything?” With that last loaded utterance, she said too much, she realized.
“He’s a priest, for one, and that means there is no possibility of a long-term romantic relationship.”
“He was a priest then as well—I presume.” Ruth asked herself how she could lift herself out of this conversational tar pit. “Not to mention the family complications with the Fitzgeralds.”
“It’s simple. I was in mourning, and I was out of my mind.”
“Matters of the heart and loss can be inscrutable. But are you suggesting he took advantage of you in a vulnerable state?” Saying that, Ruth crossed another line. For one thing, she was aware that in this session she had spoken more than she ever had with Frankie. For another, she was now investing her imagination in Philip and his relationship with Frankie, and not Frankie and her relationship with Philip. It was all over now for Ruth as Frankie’s therapist. Her mood darkened further. She helplessly imagined Frankie in bed with Philip. She could see it, she could see her, she could see him, she could see them. Much as she hated to do so, she saw Frankie in a new light—and Philip, as well. She ought to run out of her office right now, let her client lock up.
“If anything, the other way around, I took advantage of him, I used him.”
She lifted up both her hands as if it were redundant to state the words: “Meaning what?”
“Meaning under other circumstances we might have had a chance, if I could have opened my heart to him, because he was available to me, the way I wished to be available to him. I know this must sound crazy to you, and dangerous, and absolutely irresponsible on my part, I know that, don’t remind me. I can hear what you are thinking, Ruth. Not my finest hour.”
This observation took Ruth’s breath away for a second, she wished she had never heard it. But she had to respond. “Are you asking if we, you and I, can help shape a new conversation with Philip? Father Philip?”
“You know, I think you have already.” The sadness overwhelmed Francesca. She was thinking of all she had lost, all she had left behind, all that had been taken away from her. While she would admit to feeling sorry for herself, another revelation loomed and she would soon have to act on it.
“How have I helped?” said Ruth, doubtful such a thing were possible.
“By making clear to me that your and my relationship is drawing to a close. We had another session scheduled for next week, I realize, but who knows, I mean…” She didn’t bother to finish the thought.
What Francesca did unmistakably convey to Ruth was her crisply enunciated anger, which stunned her, but after her stomach stopped churning, two solid minutes of silence later, she felt relieved, too. And that antagonism directed toward her therapist was deserved, even if she couldn’t pin down what her therapist was doing. A strong woman like Francesca, who had survived personally and professionally through turmoil, could grasp that Ruth was in some imprecise way not wholly on her side.
At the same time, within Ruth it also felt like a blow to her ego, as it always did when a client walked away, leaving her to feel as if she had failed—not only in her healing task but somehow in her entire life. But the matter before her was simpler and much murkier: she desired to know more, too, about Frankie and Philip. It wasn’t a matter of voyeurism or jealousy, either. Not exclusively, not entirely. It was richer and stranger than that. And more than anything, that signaled to her that she was now categorically out of her depth. Ruth had reached the point where Francesca’s life was not uppermost in her mind, as it should be; instead, it was Ruth’s own relationship with Philip. If she were not superhumanly vigilant, she would continue to exploit her for her own purposes—and this would amount to her most depressing hour as a therapist—and as a woman.
Francesca defended herself against what she construed to be the unspoken charge buried in her therapist’s extended silence. “I need to fix what I broke in the past and come to terms with the people in my past, talking about Philip, in order for me to have a chance to move into the present. All that staying-in-the-moment bullshit. And of course you’re going on leave soon to have your baby with your husband, and you’ll need to be with him and your baby, so the timing is right for me, for us, to make this change.”
The subject of the therapist’s supposedly married state had never come up before, but Ruth could sense that, as she herself was doing, Francesca was wandering around in a dark wood that was bizarre to her.
“This is abrupt. You upset with me, Frankie?”
“Yes, but I shouldn’t be. Are you disappointed in me, Ruth?”
“No, of course not, nothing discussed in therapy is disappointing.” Ruth was not truly speaking her mind, but she couldn’t defend herself, either.
As far as Francesca could sense, Ruth knew much more than she was willing to let on, but she revealed an inner disquiet and refusal she wasn’t going to describe, if she could, which she obviously couldn’t.
“We should stop, Ruth. You were a good therapist to me. I will have loving thoughts for you and your new family. I don’t see any baby pictures or any other family pictures in your office, which I never quite registered before, so I gather this is your first baby.”
At this juncture, with a different client and under far different circumstances, Ruth might have picked up on the rich subject of family pictures—rich because Francesca was seemingly invested in their absence—but all that seemed utterly moot. Here was one profound subject therapist and client had never specifically addressed: Frankie’s childlessness. Was this a concern she repressed, or was this a crucial issue indirectly expressed by her, which Ruth missed? It was reasonable to wonder whether or not Ruth’s pregnancy and her maternal leave had sideswiped Frankie. But Ruth had to ask herself whether or not framing it that way—as Frankie’s childlessness—said more about her than it did about her client. Were pregnant Ruth’s hormones getting the best of her? Solid chance, yes. She’d had clients who terminated pregnancies, clients who miscarried, and one client who recently gave birth to a stillborn child. It would be impossible, not to mention irresponsible, to generalize about the emotional state of these women, so various, so multidimensional in their pain.
What would it be like for Ruth to be a therapist after having a child herself? Would she be better, wiser, more grounded, smarter? Or would she be distracted, milk-stained, sleep-deprived? The only thing she knew was that she would be one day a mother herself. Some female clients of hers were physically unable to have children, for one reason or another. And not all women wanted to be mothers, and some of those who did should have never been. Some women struggled to get pregnant. And some adopted or decided against that option. But for all them, for each and every one of them, it was a subject somewhere top of mind, and heart, at some stage in their lives.
But these concerns did not seem to affect Francesca. For her, either the questions didn’t occur, or if they did, she had no answers nor any desire to pursue them. Or perhaps this was not a subject for her to take up with her therapist. But if so, then, would it be taken up with anybody else? Was it ever taken up with herself, and how could it not be?
And Ruth was now more upset than ever about her client. She didn’t know Frankie at all. She was in dangerous territory; she was this close to sitting in judgment of her.
“You’re welcome back, whenever you want to resume the work.” Ruth was holding on, wishing never to see Francesca again and simultaneously desperate to hear more about her relationship with Philip. She wondered if she would have the courage not to mention Frankie to Philip. She could cleverly frame the disclosure, if she chose, so as not to forfeit her ethical obligations, but she was fooling herself—she was already in breach, both with her client and with the father of the child she was carrying. But she was also thankful and almost impressed that her client was behaving more ethically, more consciously, than her therapist.
“But I have to say what I am thinking. Something tells me that you know Philip very well.”
“Big jump, that very well, and let’s say that’s the case, why or how or to whom would that matter anyway?” If Frankie only knew.
“You’re not denying it.”
“Which I could not do even if I wanted to. I mean, even if it were true. And you’re angry with…? Whom? Me? Somebody, Philip, who you think I may know very well? More than anyone, angry with yourself?”
“You’re sounding glib, like Philip used to sound.”
“But you went to bed with that man, whom you loved, glib as he is. Or was. A man and a relationship you never mentioned before to me.” Ruth’s own therapist—she could visualize the outrage painted on her face as Ruth narrated what had taken place—Ruth’s own therapist listening to the report would be scathing.
“I never said I was in love with him, but you’re perceptive, as usual. And when he was around me, he was never glib, and what we had together no other two people ever shared with each other.”
To Ruth, Frankie sounded like a spurned adolescent lover. “If you were to stick around, or if you were to start up with another therapist, that’s where the real conversation would begin, with a lot more transparency on your part, with that recognition of loss, and disappointment, because that’s where you and I began, years ago. But you’re right, under the current conditions I may not be in the best position to treat you.” Finally, she was telling something akin to the truth.
This told Francesca everything—about Ruth, Philip, and herself.
“Goodbye, Ruth, and thank you.”
“Goodbye, and thank you, too.”
“You don’t mean that.”
Ruth had never seen that side of Francesca: the hurt, the anger. With another client, or in another lifetime, that would have amounted to a breakthrough. But it was nonetheless true what Francesca said, that Ruth did not mean to express gratitude. There was nothing to be gained by calling her out. “Our time seems to be up.”
“That’s true, Ruth. I may never get over Anthony, and that probably says more about me than it does about him, or our marriage. Truth is like death, which never seems to end, and it smacks you in the face over and over again when you least expect, don’t you find?”
Ruth leaned back heavily in her chair, exhausted, joined her hands across her belly, obeying some primal instinct to shield her baby—from what or whom, she could not say. Then she said, “That’s as good a note to end on as any. You take care, Francesca.”
“Francesca? So formal, Ruth, after so long. But fine, I get it. So you take care, too.”
Francesca would not let Ruth have the last word. If this counted as a victory, it was one not worth achieving. What neither of them knew at the time was they were not quite finished with each other.