We sat that way for many moments. My heart thudded, loud and muddled, in my ears. My teeth were chattering, like my body didn’t know what to do with the story I had just unleashed, and I’d spontaneously fallen ill.

“What does that story mean?” I said.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know…“

“You say you knew your father did not like to be touched,” Freud said. “Why do you think you tried—again—to touch him?”

“You’re blaming me?” I said. “Me? For my father hitting me?” My father had never mentioned it again. I tried to remember whether he’d ever hit me again, yet oddly, I could not. It didn’t matter: what had seared itself into my mind was not just the spanking but the knowledge that the capacity for it was inside him. The capacity and the desire. That and the expression on his face, those narrowed eyes, full of rage. The next day, I remembered, he had been different: cautious in a way I found alarming, as though he were afraid of me.

“Blaming?” Freud said. “Do you hear me blaming—or do you hear me asking a question?”

“Blaming,” I said, though I didn’t even know if I meant it.

“Do you think it’s possible,” he said, “that you wanted your father to touch you so badly that you would do anything?”

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

The session had ended so abruptly I felt drugged, my whole body humming like a tuning fork. I blinked into the outside light. The city looked strange, the way it does when you come back from vacation. Spots that had faded into invisibility stood out to me once more: the potted plants guarding the entrance to the bar; the brownstones across the street, families sandwiched inside; the tree sprouting out of the sidewalk. Its base was ringed by a quartet of leafy plants—how had I never noticed them before? A cat crept underneath the cars. He heard me moving and froze, fixed me with his bright eyes. Did he know what had just unfolded? It seemed unreal that only the night before, I had found Freud on this very corner, smoking in the hazy glow of the streetlamp, looking sublime. That only yesterday, he had come back into my life.

I was suddenly starving. Aside from the protein bar, I hadn’t eaten all day. I thought of the burrito place, with its two lone tables, its green-and-yellow color scheme. It had always repulsed me, but now it seemed like the only thing that would fill me up.