Street Practice
Irelaxed a great deal after our weekend with my parents. Erica and I entered into a more harmonious stage of our relationship, although, in retrospect, I misjudged this as a new direction instead of the lull before the storm. Still, while it lasted, our attachment deepened.
The irony of the ensuing months is that, while Erica became almost obsessively involved in further educating herself about the world of healing, she became less proselytizing toward me and toward everyone else we met. She confined her beliefs to her growing base of patients, and this base was growing quickly. She moved away from the hospital toward a private, office-based practice, in a small space she rented in the Flatiron District. I don’t know what she charged for her services, but judging by sheer quantity, her practice was thriving.
I often visited Erica at her Flatiron office. While I waited for her, I would get glimpses of her patients, almost all of whom were upscale, welldressed professionals in their thirties and forties. They were devoted to Erica, lingering with her as they exited her office, wanting to absorb one last piece of wisdom before their sessions formally ended. I would catch disconnected phrases. “Just say the mantra.” “Breathe as we discussed.” “Balance your chakras.” “Bring the energy in.” On more than one occasion, I suppressed an uneasy belief that she was leveraging her social work license to transition her practice to a more mystical approach.
Then, we would have dinner nearby, and after a full day of treating patients, Erica—while always animated—had no pressing need to discuss her views. I am sure that client confidentiality played some role, but it also struck me that she needed her patients for an outlet of her beliefs as much as her patients needed her services.
This harmonious stage was punctuated by the occasional public intervention. Once, I convinced Erica to meet me at The Container Store, so that she could lend a “female” perspective to my purchasing decisions.
I found the sterile diversity of the store pleasing and hypnotic, while Erica was sullen and bored. In the light fixtures aisle, a disheveled middleaged lady began ranting. “There is a hidden danger in these fluorescent bulbs,” she spoke out. “They must all come off the shelves.” She then began to shovel all of the odd-looking, curly, fluorescent light bulbs off the shelves and into her cart. Store employees tried to calm and restrain her, but she was inconsolable. “Mercury! They all have mercury. What if the bulb cracks? Powerful waves of brain-damaging neurotoxins will sweep through the air.”
While the rest of us watched, Erica stepped forward and placed her hand on the woman’s shoulder. The startled woman whirled around. “Just a few milligrams are enough to contaminate thousands of gallons of water. Just a few milligrams!”
“I know,” Erica replied. “Mercury can impair cognitive ability, and it’s particularly damaging to children.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” the woman replied. “Help me! Help me now. Everyone is just standing around, doing nothing.”
“I want you to do something for me,” Erica said. “And then I very well may help you. I want you to close your eyes and say the word ‘Ha-Rem.’” The woman was quickly and surprisingly obedient and began repeating the word. Erica joined her. “Ha-Rem, Ha-Rem, Ha-Rem,” they both chanted. The woman then slumped down and sat on the floor, still with her eyes closed. Erica sat next to her, and their joint chanting began to trail off. Soon, they were both motionless and silent, while Erica held her hand.
This development was far more startling than the initial outburst. The unsettling feeling was that one of us had stepped forward to cross the divide, which meant that there were those among us who could inhabit both worlds. Then, just when we were orienting ourselves to this changed circumstance, the woman opened her eyes and softly but menacingly said to Erica, “That was a trick, wasn’t it?”
Erica was unoffended. “No, it was certainly not a trick.”
“That was a trick, and you know it.” The woman stood up and walked out of the store. Erica rejoined me in the line, and once again, I had the peculiar feeling that shoppers were staring at me. Erica was comfortable in her role, but my discomfort isolated me, highlighted me. Still, the conclusion lingering in the air, shared by everyone, was this: She succeeded. She diffused the situation. The lunatic was gone. Normalcy was restored.
Over time, I began to feel more comfortable in Erica’s presence when she engaged in her “street” practice. I can’t pinpoint the precise moment when I lost my sense of embarrassment. Perhaps it was when we were both traveling uptown on a First Avenue bus, and we were snarled in traffic on a hot day with no air-conditioning. The passengers on the bus were tense and vocal. Erica stood up, closed her eyes, and began moving her hands in symmetrical patterns, like a pantomime. She appeared to be pushing and rearranging objects, placing them in the proper order. She possessed a commanding serenity and seriousness of purpose. The voices quieted down to a murmur. No, the air-conditioning did not miraculously activate, but the traffic eased, and the air blowing through the open windows transformed our collective status to a tolerable setting. Erica sat down next to me, and I looked up with pride at the gawking passengers. What’s the problem? You’ve never seen the cosmological employment of energy channeling to calm tensions and ease traffic?
On another occasion, a child was bellowing in a contortion of rage and pathos as her mother pushed her in a carriage through Central Park. Erica asked the mother whether she could give her child a “healing,” which would not involve any touching. The mother enthusiastically agreed, which was surprising in itself. Before Erica “did” anything, the child fell silent and reached with both arms toward Erica, straining against the carriage straps. Erica kneeled down and asked the child to breathe in slowly through her nose and exhale through her mouth, slowly, three times. The child was delighted to comply and engaged in an exaggerated display of noisily sucking in air and blowing it out, with her lips pushed forward in an extravagant O shape. She began to laugh hysterically, and this by itself was endearing, although Erica seemed annoyed. The mother was thrilled, and Erica gave the mother her card. I wondered, not for the first time, whether Erica made daily jaunts through the city, approaching strife and discomfort in all of its various forms, lending her assistance and then proffering her business card. Ambulance chasing for the new age.