“I know,” I said. But I didn’t know where to turn. If it wasn’t my parents, if it wasn’t Freud, if it wasn’t her, I was stuck, I was trapped and alone.

“Thanks for listening,” I said. “I’m going to figure that out.” I faked a yawn. “I’m going to go to bed.”

“Hey, are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’m exhausted.” I was desperate to leave. “If you need help with it, I’m here,” she said, and I nodded and stood and left the room.

Up in my bedroom, I lay with my computer propped up against my knees and opened up a browser window. I stared at the cursor, blinking in the search bar. Maybe you should see someone… I was so tired. Maybe I should just see a therapist like my parents—one of their colleagues, even. It had worked for Olivia, hadn’t it? Based on our conversation, they might even help me pay for it—but the thought of this made me want to throw my laptop across the room. Instead, without even thinking, I typed “Freud laying of hands.”

It was ridiculous. But I moved through the search results as if possessed, page after page. There was his face, his penetrating gaze. I touched my fingertip to the screen. Hi. Yes, that was him. Not the painter. Freud. And another page, and another—and, finally, there it was. Freud hadn’t come to his technique recommendations immediately. Of course he hadn’t. In the beginning, when he was inventing a discipline from whole cloth, he had tried everything. He had tried hypnosis. And—yes, I bit my fingernail to keep myself from crying out with relief—he had tried something called the “pressure technique.” In order to unearth repressed memories, Freud would place his hands on patients’ heads and press down, calling to their unconscious through his touch.

He was across the table from me, his eyes boring into mine.

I said, “Can I hold your hand?”

His hands were folded before him, and now he unfolded them: a blooming. He moved his open palms toward me and I slipped my fingers inside. With my thumbs I stroked his fingers, one by one. His eyes still bore into mine.

“Can I touch your arms?”

He stretched them across the table and I traced my fingernails along the soft skin, underneath the cuffs of his jacket, then over his sleeves, all the way up to the creases inside his elbows. His eyelids became heavy, but still, he looked into my eyes.