The Metropolitan Opera House rose shimmering into the twilit sky. There were its five arches. In the dark of impending night, a chandelier shone through the center pane; on the edges, in the arches that made up the building’s pinkie and thumb, two bold tapestries beamed out into the evening. At once, the fountain in front of the building shot upward, a sharp jubilant spray of light. In my memory, a little girl stood silhouetted before it, her feet planted wide, her arms thrown into a V, the black lines of her small body making a snow angel in the expansive summer night.

“Is that what you wanted to do?” Freud said.

“Yes,” I said, and in the moment the word took shape, I felt a stunned certainty that the little girl had never existed. There she had always been in my memory—her silhouette, bold and free, as I walked beside my parents. But—

“I have this strange feeling I’ve imagined her,” I said to Freud.

“Why?” He shifted behind me, but his hands remained in place. I pushed my head into them; he pushed back, holding me in.

“Because that’s exactly what I wanted to do.”

I wanted to run up to the fountain and throw my arms wide, holler into the air. The centers of my palms itched with anticipation and I made fists, scratching my palms with my fingernails, trying to contain myself. My shoes clicked on the concrete. My parents, walking right next to me, felt far away. Let me go! I thought. Let me explode! I wished to grab their hands and have them swing me back and forth, back and forth, like that boy on the sidewalk, then shoot me like a catapult over the bursting white fountain and right into the palm of the building, beckoning me toward it, waiting to catch me.

“And what would that have meant?” Freud asked. “To be caught—to be held?”

For reasons I didn’t understand, tears sprang to my eyes. I shook my head briskly, trying to make him release me, but his hands remained.

“Fuck this,” I said. “Let me go.”

But he didn’t. He smoothed his thumbs over my eyebrows, a tenderness that caused me to flush.

“You can cry,” he said.

I shook my head, then shoved my head backward into his hands like an angry mare, as if to hurt him. He traced my eyebrows again, refusing.

“I’m scared,” I said.

“What are you afraid of?” he said.

I didn’t answer. Instead, in response to his gentle tone, my mind returned to the scene. I took a series of steady breaths, and once I was certain I would not cry, I spoke.