The Thanatos Syndrome

her house, afraid of nothing at all. There are names for her disorder, of course—agoraphobia, free-floating anxiety—but they don’t help much. What to do with herself? She did some painting, not very good, of swamps, cypresses, bayous, Spanish moss, egrets, and such. I thought of her as a housebound Emily Dickinson, but when I saw her on the couch in my office—she had made the supreme effort, gotten in her car, and driven to town—she looked more like Christina in Wyeth’s painting, facing the window, back turned to me, hip making an angle, thin arm raised in a gesture of longing, a yearning toward—toward what?
    In her case, the yearning was simple, deceptively simple. If only she could be back at her grandmother’s farm in Vermont, where as a young girl she had been happy.
    She had a recurring dream. Hardly a session went by without her mentioning it. It was worth working on. She was in the cellar of her grandmother’s farmhouse, where there was a certain smell which she associated with the “winter apples” stored there and a view through the high dusty windows of the green hills. Though she was always alone in the dream, there was the conviction that she was waiting for something. For what? A visitor. A visitor was coming and would tell her a secret. It was something to work with. What was she, her visitor-self, trying to tell her solitary cellar-bound self? What part of herself was the deep winter-apple-bound self? What part of herself was the deep winter-apple-smelling cellar? The green hills? She was not sure, but she felt better. She was able to leave the house, not to take up golf or bridge with the country-club ladies, but to go abroad to paint, to meadows and bayous. Her painting got better. Her egrets began to look less like Audubon’s elegant dead birds than like ghosts in the swamp.
    I contrived that it crossed her mind that her terror might not be altogether bad. What if it might be trying to tell her something, like the mysterious visitor in her dream? I seldom give anxious people drugs. If you do, they may feel better for a while, but they’ll never find out what the terror is trying to tell them. At any rate, it set her wondering and made her life more tolerable. She wasn’t afraid of being afraid. We were getting somewhere.
    Now here she is two years later, back in the hospital, again facing the window. But no yearning Christina she. More like a satisfied Duchess of Alba, full round arm lying along sumptuous curve of hip.
    â€œMickey,” I said.
    She turned to face me with a fond, unsurprised gaze, eyes not quite focused, not quite converging.
    â€œWell well well,” said Mickey. “My old pal Doc.”
    Never , not in a state of terror or out of it, would she have called me that. She was one of the few patients who called me Tom.
    â€œYou’re looking very well, Mickey.”
    I must have been leaning toward her, for my hand was propped on the edge of her bed. Her arm fell on my hand, the warm ventral flesh of her forearm imprisoning my fingers.
    â€œWell, yes.” She lay back, settling her body, giving the effect somehow of straddling a little under the covers.
    I remember registering disappointment. The flatness of her gaze gave the effect one senses in some women who have given up on the mystery of themselves and taken somebody else’s advice: Be bold, be assertive.
    â€œOld Doc.” Her chin settled into her full throat, luxuriating. “You really did it, didn’t you?”
    â€œDid what?”
    â€œBlew it.”
    â€œYou mean—”
    â€œDo you think people don’t know where you’ve been for two years?”
    It is not necessary to reply. She has already drifted, eyes unconverged, gazing past me.
    â€œMickey, did you want this consultation, or was it Dr. Comeaux’s idea?”
    â€œOld Doc.” My fingers are still imprisoned under her arm. “I was always on your side. I defended you.”
    â€œThank you.”
    â€œI’m just fine, Doc.”
    â€œYou mean you didn’t send for me?”
    â€œMickey’s glad to see you, Doc. Come by me.”
    â€œI’m by you.” Come by me. That’s Louisiana talk, not New England. “If you’re feeling fine, Mickey, what are you doing here?” I look at her chart. She’s not on medication.
    â€œI got it all, Doc. Did you know I was a rich bitch?”
    â€œYes, I knew