Session Three
I fumble into her office, a mess of movement and sounds, struggling to shove a newspaper into my backpack without hurting my camera. Dr. Lopez stares up at me with the same brown eyes and raises her eyebrow over her glasses.
"You're twenty minutes late." She mutters, placing the papers she had been toying with onto her desk and looking up at me. I sigh, slump into the chair and shake my head.
"I got up late, had to take a later train." My answer is short. To the point. No need for fluff here. She nods and looks at me with something that's not quite confusion. Not quite contemplation.
"Well, I want to talk about something specific today." Her voice states quietly. Those chocolate hands fold in front of me and I lean back. Awaiting. "I want to talk about your family, Mark."
No. No, those walls are up, those doors are locked and she's getting nothing out of me. I don't reply, just sit silently.
"Can you do that?"
"My friends are my family as far as I'm concerned, Dr. Lopez." I don't want to be speaking. I've got that familiar 'fly' emotion and I notice that my hands are tapping against the side of the chair. I silence them.
"Well, I'd like to talk about whoever you lived with from birth to age eighteen, then." Again, she plays with her words so I can adapt, so I'm forced to tell her the story. I've recounted it in my head, told the abridged version to Roger when I was twelve, but he saw it all first hand. She continues to speak through my contemplative silence.
"Who did you live with, Mark?" She's getting direct now. I decide to just answer the given questions.
"My mother. My sister Cindy is five years older than me and my other sister Melissa was born when I was ten." I mutter automatically, not thinking, just spewing out fact.
"How about a father figure?"
I realize I left out that minor detail. I shrug. "Yeah, he lived there too."
"You're reluctant to talk about him." She begins, tipping her head again. "Why?" I shrug.
"He's not my favorite person." Responding is a chore. I have to drag out each word.
"What was your relationship with him like?" Her pen attacks the paper with fervor and I wince.
"Non-existent."
"Why?"
"Because I didn't get along with him."
"Why?"
"No one did."
"Why?"
I cringe at her last repetitive question. The woman can press me until I break and I don't know whether to admire or hate her for her talent. She wants to know why, so what can I do but tell her?
"Because he was a drunk!" I stutter. "He was a malicious person with no ability to convey any emotion but...rage...whatsoever. He was...just...a big roadblock in our family."
"In what way?"
I explode. "In the way that nothing was good enough for him! B's should be A's, A's should be A+'s. I should have a knack for math instead of English, Cindy should be dating different boys, and I should be dating in general, don't make noise, don't breathe too deep, you'll wake him up, don't tell him that you're going out later, just go, stop being so scared of everything and just do it."
"What was your family like as a whole?" She interrupts my tirade, knowing it's riling me up.
"A war zone. The dinner table was the battlefield. Dad was always the most heavily armed." I mutter quietly.
"Tell me about it."
I blink at her. "What do you want to know?"
"What happened? Why were things the way they were?"
I shrug at her and she taps her nails. "There must have been something, Mark. Some sort of pattern."
"We'd sit down at dinner, mom would worry it wasn't good enough. Dad would have something to drink. Jack Daniels, usually. Beer if that wasn't around. We didn't talk. We were spoken to, the four of us, never protested. It was one of the rules. You never talked back without expecting consequences. There was no affection except from my mother. She was smothering to a point, overbearing and concerned. But always at the wrong times. Whenever he'd get angry she'd shut right up and play obedient housewife. Mom was always an actress." I let out a sarcastic grin and Dr. Lopez nods, wanting to know more. I inhale and continue. "She told us to...just deal with it. That's what she did so why should it be harder for us? She'd never say a word against him, he was a lawyer, he had contacts in all the right places. He knew what strings to pull if there was any inkling that things weren't right in the Cohen household. That and she knew what he'd do to her if she told. We knew what he'd do to her if we told. That kept us in our place. The fact that if we did something extreme enough--like say a word to anyone else, a teacher, an aunt a family friend--he'd take it out on her. I wouldn't have cared if I had to suffer my own consequences, but he didn't believe in that. He was unfair. He was...hypocritical. He'd go to work and put these disgusting, scummy people in jail. And he'd come home and prove to us that he worked with his own kind."
She nods and I assume that I've told her enough. But the questions continue.
"What sort of things would he do to punish you?"
"What do you mean?" I ask, my hands resuming pattering against the chair again.
"You keep referring to them as 'consequences'. What were they?" I shrug and shake my head.
"Just that. Forms of punishment."
"Like?"
I don't want to spew out that sob story again.
"Did he ground you? Yell at you? Hit you?" I must make some sort of physical response to that last one, because she stops. "What would happen?"
I still don't respond. She sighs at me.
"Were you angry with him, Mark? Were your sisters?"
"Cindy denies it, defends him...Melissa just dealt with it. Never said anything."
"Like you?" Brown eyes bare into me and I shake them away.
"This isn't going to get you anywhere, so I don't see why you want to bother with it, Dr. Lopez. I don't tell anyone about this and I'm certainly not going to just recount it to you because you ask nicely."
She lets a little smile curl on the sides of her mouth. "Fine, Mark. You want to do things this way, I'm more than happy. I'll see you next week." She sits back and opens a folder.
"My time's not up."
"You won't be charged for it. I'll see you next week."
I'm out of the door before she can pick up her pen.
