The two therapists were exceptionally close because they had been in training together, a time when the disclosures and hardships put a lot of pressure on people, drawing them together. They met as often as they could to share experiences, continuing the work they had begun. Sometimes they had a troublesome problem to solve, not so much about the clients as about their own emotions and standards.
After sharing a movie, they were lucky to find a café with old-fashioned booths, high-backed wooden paneling that felt safe and confidential, whether or not they really were. Anyway, they had grown so aware that all people everywhere were pretty much alike, that they only guarded against breaking client confidentiality. But this was about a movie anyway. The place had set its air conditioning on high, so they had their cardigans over their shoulders.
"How real do you think this film was? Since it was supposed to be drawn from the fellow's life, his book." Her face showed real concern.
"It was shocking to see the violence of his father acted out, but you and I know it's real and happens more often than anyone suspects."
"Were you shocked by the language?"
Her friend laughed. "I didn't even hear the swearing after the first dozen 'fucks.' Mostly intensifiers, not depictions." She poked the ice cream floating in her root beer soda to let it melt faster.
"Actually, I didn't think the whipping by the father was the key, though it was a powerful clue. I was much more interested in the women and the fight between them to control the boy. One was so fancy and the other was so plain."
"I agree, although it's almost a cliché that a woman would hate her mother-in-law. In this case it wasn't just that one was sophisticated and educated from high class society but also the mother had never really known any other world and was terrified of the actual world, though her sisters were not and were able to make conventional achieving lives. She was a failure in her own birth family."
"Do you think the two variables, that the mother had gotten pregnant out of wedlock and that the mother-in-law was crippled, in a wheelchair, made a difference?"
"They were certainly intensifiers. Both were desperate for control and clinging to their only sources of income, the men."
"Nothing was said about alcoholism, but it was certainly acted out. The actors were rarely without a glass of something. Or a bottle."
They were silent for a few minutes, partly considering their luck at being self-sustaining, partly wondering what it would be like to have a marriage.
Finally the brunette mused, "I think that the father's violence put a cap on the actions of the two women -- in the end the fight was really over keeping him and they didn't want to drive him off. Maybe he liked the fight because it kept the women paying attention to each other instead of joining up to go after him. That gave him some freedom to escape. After all, he was the most violent of an alcoholic group, the most obvious and dangerous because it made him violent."
"And then the boy got pulled in as a witness, though all concerned wanted him, wanted to own him even by pleasing him, praising him, giving him things. But there was no consensus. I was moved that when he finally asked for help, his cover was the infidelity of his father, an immoral but society-known fault."
"The weights on his shoulders pulled his developing identity in every direction."
"The aunts intervened, trying to help, but they were mostly a little over-the-top. They did give him respites, hours when they showed him bookstores and movies, trips and parties, even adult ones."
"It seemed like adults were his real friends -- not his peers. Certainly his sister was not bonded to him. Some relatives seemed so stoic, so focused on work that they were almost missing."
"At the same time one of the strongest factors in the boy's development was that seducing cousin, four years older."
"A little more age difference than I'm comfortable with."
"A gap big enough to qualify for legal definition in some places."
"That's what's so confusing about the whole thing -- assumptions and legal standards are entirely different in different places. Regardless of what the law says, enforcement is so different -- beyond the ordinary differences of status, stigma, wealth and so on."
Moisture had gathered on the table because of the sweating milkshake glasses. They saw that they were both drawing in the water with their forefingers and laughed, then stopped, slightly embarrassed at being childish, but also feeling the pressure of sadness at the fate of a child.
The more blonde woman lifted her long hair off the back of her neck where it had stuck and gave her sweater a shake to loosen it. "If only he hadn't been like most humans, repeating the patterns he had learned in childhood without consciousness that he was doing it."
The brunette pulled a tissue out of her bag and wiped down her side of the table. "I was reading a study of serotonin, the blood hormone, that suggested that a strong supply of the stuff would tilt an aggressive person towards protection of others, a desire to help them."
"He definitely had that desire. Just a sort of unconventional way of doing it. And he chose carefully who could accept his help."
"That's what saved him in the end."
"So what movie will we see next? I don't much like what's playing on the screens around town. I wish they'd bring back drive-ins -- it's summertime!"
"I agree. Maybe we should just have a private film festival on my screened porch. Each bring a video. I'll pop corn."
"Done deal."
________________________
Somewhere between short stories and poems are other forms, like this vignette. It's part of a recurring sequence meant to be markers for myself to help digest and keep track of reading I do in the field of psych, particularly the neuro-research that is so striking and particular now.
The most familiar kind of sequential writing is the diary or journal, but blogging really lends itself to related pieces spread out over time but on the same subject. I've avoided being too specific by assigning each woman to a different school of thought or even telling too much about them. Maybe that's a mistake.
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