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Story by Budd E. Wilkins
Fearful Symmetry
The Berenson Clinic - set with a jeweler's
precision within a paradoxically treeless office park just off
the interstate - is one of those postmodern architectural train
wrecks, its façade a gallery of mirrored plate glass.
It is a speculum in which you watch yourself arriving, parking
in the biased spaces limned in yellow paint, exiting your vehicle,
moving with feigned ease toward the double doors with their silver
crescent- moon handles.
The foyer exists merely as decoration, set off from the larger
area of the waiting room by the difference between its Danby
marble slabs, inlaid with a mosaic depicting the Hippocratic
caduceus, and the beige thick-pile carpet underlying the rest
of the space. Tasteful, inoffensive art - a predominance of landscapes
and still lives - adorns the walls. There is a small plashing
fountain with colored lights playing over it. Bird sounds are
piped in through hidden speakers. The couches are low and plush.
Wingback chairs with big brass studs down their armrests stand
in the corners like silent sentinels. It has all been painstakingly
calculated to lull the eye and tame the jangled nerve.
The hallways at either end of the room, passages into the depths
of the Clinic, are, you take the time to notice, painted a therapeutic
shade of green: somewhere between lime and myrtle. The receptionist
behind her walnut desk takes your name, checks it off the day's
log, and informs you that someone will be with you shortly.
You settle into one of the deep chairs, take up this month's
issue of the National Geographic from the glass-topped
table before you, and attempt to pass the time by turning the
pages, staring uneasily at the photos of Papuan women with their
breasts dangling to their waists. Glancing away, you note that
the waiting room is practically empty; one older fellow, his
lined face topped by a silver thatch of tousled hair, sits nervously
drumming his fingers against the wooden arm of a couch; otherwise,
the only other human presence is the receptionist.
After some time, a young woman wearing a nurse's white peaked
cap, with an air of efficiency about her, comes along one of
the hallways and calls your name. You stand up, sweeping randomly
at your black slacks, as if wiping away imagined crumbs, adjust
the knot in your paisley tie, and move forward to shake her hand,
meeting her compassionate smile with one of your own that, you
hope, conveys all the necessary fortitude and clarity of purpose.
"Come with me," she says back over one shoulder, already
moving off at a hurried clip, "and I'll give you the Grand
Tour." The Clinic, she informs you, is shaped more or less
like a baseball diamond. You have just been standing on home
plate; the two main hallways lead to first and third base, respectively.
But you know this is a feint, a prefabrication for the guided
tour, serving only to mask the actual state of affairs. The true
size and shape of the place, you are somehow certain, more closely
resembles an abdominal cavity.
First base, which you now enter, is a wide bright room, filled
with a warren of cubicles and the clacking of keyboards. Low,
in an almost inaudible basso, massing eventually into
one indistinct rumble like distant thunderclouds, comes a multitude
of plaintive voices. Your guide, whose name tag, you now notice,
reads BEATRICE in small, neat, bold letters, lets you know that
this is the Transcription Room, where an array of secretaries
enter the sessions that Dr Berenson and his associates have recorded
the previous day into an electronic database. At the sound of
Beatrice's voice, heads rear up over cubicle walls like gophers
from their holes. All patient sessions are both video- and audio-taped,
she tells you; the redundancy serves a dual purpose: to prevent
any discrepancies or errors in transcription, and to maintain
the patients' safety and wellbeing. "As you may have heard,
the nature of the treatment here is, well, rather unconventional…"
she says.
"Yes," you begin, "about that…I was wondering…"
"In due time, all in due time," Beatrice cuts you off,
waving away your inquiry with the bright red nails of her left
hand.
The two of you move on. In the stretch to second base, the hallways
have been whitewashed; there are no paintings or other adornment.
The floors are tiled in white linoleum. There is fluorescent
track lighting overhead. At a juncture, the hallway opens out
into a hexagonal room, with large wooden doors forming its facets,
each bearing a lettered bronze plaque. These are the Session
Rooms. Knocking once, Beatrice throws open the door to Room B.
It is empty. The room is perhaps ten feet by twelve.
Room B is dark; not because it is not well lit - there are several
floor and table lamps, as well as an old-fashioned fixture overhead
- but due to its being paneled in dark wood, which seems to soak
up the light. On the wall are archeological sketches, topographic
maps. There are artifacts in a glass curio cabinet: several varieties
of dagger, necklaces of bead and colored glass, a black wood
mask with horns and an exaggerated, toothy mouth. You lean in
to observe them closely; the exotic has always held a strong
fascination for you. Against the other wall stands a leather
couch with raised headrest: it is the archetypal analytic couch.
Behind the headrest, there is a leather chair and, between them,
a smoking stand with a tin of tobacco and several pipes. Room
B exudes a sort of professionally masculine musk.
"Is this typical," you ask, "or is each one of
these rooms themed?"
"Themed?" Beatrice echoes.
"This one is clearly done over in
early Freud. Maybe another one resembles a head shop, for your
worldlier clientele, with a hookah and bean bag chairs
and love beads covering the walls? Another an obstetrics ward,
where the analysand is invited to give birth to his or her own
trauma? I'm just guessing here…"
Beatrice laughs, one quick, derisive snort. She evidently finds
you a little bit silly. "No, they're all pretty much like
this one. I'd show you, but the rest, I believe, are currently
being used." Standing with her back to the door, she waves
you out. "Now, come along. We've got a lot more to see."
You will soon round third base, which is further than you'd ever
thought you could get with a girl like Beatrice. As she moves
ahead of you, sending back volleys of information that instantly
slip through the sieve of your mind, you watch her legs, the
trim ankles, the supple calves, the promise of bounty in the
wide, firm lower thigh. The hem of her starched white skirt,
however, thwarts any further speculation.
The third open space serves as an antechamber; the doctors' offices
line one wall. There are coat racks in the corners, vending machines,
a small table and chairs. It evidently doubles as a lounge or
dining area for the staff.
In the middle of the left-hand wall, between the coffee machine
and the sink, stands, incongruously, a heavy metal door with
a keypad alongside it. "That," Beatrice points out,
"you could say leads to the pitcher's mound."
"And that would be - ?"
"The Treatment Rooms. But I suspect Dr Berenson will want
to go over all that with you himself." And as if on cue,
one of the doors opens and out strides a short, stocky man wearing
a white doctor's coat, his right hand extended, a look of playful
curiosity twinkling in his wide, watery blue eyes. You shake
hands; his grip is lax, somewhat moist. He wears a little Van
Dyke beard, still nut brown in color, in distinction to the graying,
thinning crop on his head. His voice is low, musical, as he says
"Ah yes, of course, pleased to finally meet you, my friend"
and stands aside, allowing you to pass into his office.
You take a seat in a folding metal chair and he retreats behind
his desk, shuffling papers, picking one up now and then to examine
more closely. He clears his throat and murmurs "Aha, aha"
from time to time. Berenson's office is functional; it possesses
none of the elegance or curiosity-factor of the Session Rooms.
The middle of the room is taken up by a metal desk, equipped
with a phone and intercom system, piled high with manila folders:
what must be current patients' case histories. You can barely
make out the green blotter beneath them. One wall is filled by
filing cabinets: older case histories, treatments effected or
terminated. The other walls are lined by certificates and awards;
while you wait for Berenson to address you, you casually peruse
them.
At last, Berenson sits, spreads some papers before him, and fixes
you with his liquid gaze. "So, now, my friend. It seems
to me that we have the little problem here." His voice carries
a slight Old World inflection.
"We do. I mean I do."
"Seeing as how this is only our initial consultation, and
that we would ordinarily be accommodated more comfortably in
one of our Session Rooms, why don't we begin by my asking you
a few rather leading questions?"
"Sure, doc. Fire away." You shift in your seat, trying
for what little comfort you can manage.
"When did you first experience discomfort in the… commission,
shall we say, of this act?"
"It's hard to pinpoint. I was very young. Two or three,
maybe."
"No, no, my friend. You refer to what we head doctors term
the latent phase. I mean, in your adult life, how long
have you been left feeling perturbed upon the commission of this
act?"
"I see, well, it's been maybe two or three months."
"Describe to me your feelings."
"Well, when I feel it…coming on, I get
all sweaty, apprehensive. My throat dries out, I can hardly swallow.
My palms itch. Just going in there and looking at the toilet…I
want to scream."
"This is perfectly natural, my friend, especially when confronted
with the instrument, the very symbol, if you will, of your torture."
His face registers concern, empathy. "Perfectly natural.
And yet, you must know, as well as I do, that this is precisely
what must be done."
You nod, not quite so sure. "I guess so."
"You are an intelligent fellow; it says here," he taps
your case file, "that you have even read certain of my papers.
You are familiar, therefore, with what we do here, is this not
so?"
"No, I wouldn't say so. I mean I know what you do, more
or less, but not how you go about it. I know that, in
the treatment of any obsessive fear or phobia, there are two
principal techniques: one being a slow and gradual exposure to
the trigger of the fear."
"Yes, my friend. But this is the long and costly process.
Nor does it, perhaps, succeed quite so often as its proponents
might like to claim." Shaking his head, as if saddened by
this fact, he asks, "And the other?"
"The technique practiced here. Immersion therapy."
"Indeed, yes. So we both know this much. But what you want
to know, I should guess, is: how, precisely, does this
work?"
Again you nod.
"I think, at this juncture,"
Berenson says, "and because you are such a smart
and perceptive fellow, my friend, that I might give you the supplement
to what my lovely secretary, Beatrice, likes to term the Grand
Tour. I shall, as was done in the Frank Baum book, pull back
the curtain to reveal the true workings of the Wizard. How does
that sound?"
Quite frankly, the prospect sounds terrifying. Lacking any concrete
knowledge of just what, precisely, the hell is going on
here - beyond the little fact that somewhere, not fifty feet
from here, people are being forced to confront the secret springs
of their most crippling terror - you must admit to feeling a
little disinclined. But instead you gulp down a lungful of air,
hoping to inflate your courage, and say, "Sure, why not?"
Berenson comes around his desk, places a commiserative hand on
your shoulder and says, "Very good, my friend. I expect
nothing less." He leads you out.
At the touchpad he enters a six-digit code and the gunmetal gray
door, breaking its hermetic seal with a swish, slides aside long
enough for the two of you to pass through, and then, with a sickening
finality, hisses closed behind you.
The room on the other side is huge; it
must take up half the area of the Clinic. It is lined by a dozen
or more doors, the sort you would find in a penitentiary, had
you any inclination to visit one, complete with sliding panels
for ease of observation. Berenson lets you know that all these
Treatment Rooms have been soundproofed. Some of them are equipped
with closed circuit television cameras; you notice small viewing
monitors set into the walls beside a few of the doors.
As a sort of object lesson, one of the rooms is currently in
use. Another white-coated doctor, a younger man, with thick black
hair and a hard-set face, stands gazing in boredom at a monitor.
Its screen fills with a sickly green light - you are watching
an infrared camera, Berenson tells you - and reveals a figure
hunched in a corner, beating at the padded walls with its fists,
screaming terrible litanies of abuse at the doctor outside the
door, whose name is apparently Marbury.
Marbury yawns. "So now, Sabrina, how would you rate your
anxiety, on a scale of one to ten, one being little or none,
ten being crippling and nearly unbearable?"
The figures screams: "Ten! I'd rate it a ten, you goddamn
sadistic son of a bitch! Let me out of here! I can't stand this!
I can't see, I can't see a goddamn thing! I've had enough for
one day!"
"Now, now, my dear. You know perfectly well there is no
'enough for one day' with us. You must confront your fear, you
must face it without hesitation. You must master it, my dear
Sabrina, overcome it and tame it, or you will be doomed
to a lifetime of abject terror. Life is hard enough, you know.
You can do without hobbling yourself any further."
Sabrina, who seems more concerned with her attempts to scrabble
up the wall of the cell, responds to this solicitous soliloquy
with little more than animal wails and fractured shards of obscenity.
Marbury looks at you and smiles, gives you a thumbs up; all is
apparently going as planned; the seeming torture of a hapless
individual, however shocking to you, however merciless it appears,
is essential and, furthermore, very minor, comparatively-speaking.
"Nyctophobia," glosses Dr Berenson. "Fear
of the dark. The room remains pitch black until the young patient
comes through on the other side of her torment."
"Is this typical?" you ask Berenson.
"Well, I would say it is representative, if not precisely
typical; not all of our patients are quite so gifted in the art
of invective."
"I bet," you say.
Berenson, warming to his role of MC, gestures broadly, taking
in the entire room. "Feel free, my friend," he says,
"to look in on some more of our humble efforts. I believe
there are three or four other patients currently battling, brave
as Achilles, against their own minds."
This is the case, you soon discover: strolling around with all
the aplomb of a visitor at the zoo, looking in on several cells,
where treatments are in progress. In one, a woman holds up a
clown doll, soiled and in tatters, bringing it very close to
her face, as though about to plant a kiss on its rubicund lips,
and then thrusts it away at arm's length, weeping the whole while,
to judge by the quaking of her shoulders, though you cannot hear
any sound. A young female therapist sits on a stool in the corner,
nodding approvingly.
In another cell, a man, cross-legged on the floor, thumbs through
a series of oversized flash cards, each one portraying a different
species of spider. A few feet away, in a glass cage, three or
four huge, hairy specimens climb over each other in a tangle
of legs. A middle-aged therapist stands ready to lift one out,
whenever the patient gives the good word.
The next cell, whose door stands open, brings you up short. In
the middle of it stands a sparkling white toilet, apparently
unplumbed to any sewage system, silently waiting. Only then does
it strike you that you have been feeling an ever-growing, and
now quite pressing, need. It must be that some associative
mechanism in your cortex has fired on sight of the toilet.
You step into the cell, hesitant, feeling the low thrum of fear
behind your eyes. In the near corner, Beatrice sits on a white
wooden stool, tapping with a ballpoint pen on a clipboard settled
across her knees.
"I see you made it," she says, enthusiastically.
The door clangs shut behind you. You turn and see a rheumy blue
eye pressed to the Judas hole, blinking rapidly. Static comes
through a speaker mounted over the door and a voice says, "Best
of luck, my friend. I am quite sure that it will all come out
well in the end…"
Beatrice laughs at this.
You turn on her. "I thought the Doc said you were his secretary…"
She shakes her head. "No such luck, I'm afraid. Merely a
cover story. I am, in fact, your designated Immersion Therapist."
You feel the bottom drop out of your gut. Everything turns greasy,
waxen. You need to sit down, to catch your breath, but there
is nowhere else to sit, other than on the crapper in the middle
of the room. Without even lifting the lid, you plop down on it,
exasperated, filling with a hatred for this demure young woman
staring at you now with such clinical detachment.
"So," she says, "shall we begin?"
Another pang of pressure besets you; you are feeling distinctly
unwell. An acrid metal taste races up your gullet. Your heart
beats, syncopated.
"You may, perhaps, have noticed the rather…clammy
nature of Dr Berenson's handshake?"
"Uh," you groan.
"Yes, I can see by your face that you did. Very perceptive
of you. Well, it may interest you to know that this is not a
natural condition, and was in fact due to one of these."
She holds up a palm in an Indian greeting, to reveal a small
white disc. "It contains a fast-acting, highly potent laxative
that is absorbed directly through your skin; takes maybe ten
minutes to fully take effect." She checks her wristwatch.
"Any time now, I would say."
You reiterate the groan, prolong it; it expands into an aria
of suffering; the room swims before your eyes, tilting at crazy
Expressionist angles. Your innards heave up another rung of the
digestive ladder.
"According to our analysis…Oh, but I should probably
explain a thing or two first. We are not what you would call
a traditional psychiatric practice. As you may have noticed.
We take a rather more proactive approach to mental health.
Your family contacted us about your problem weeks ago; they were
kind enough to provide us with all the necessary background information.
We, in turn, gave them very precise instructions concerning how
to persuade you to join us here today. It didn't take much prodding,
did it?"
Without waiting for an answer, she proceeds: "Good thing
too. You're suffering from a rather severe case of coprophobia.
'An irrational, debilitating fear of passing bodily wastes,'
as our good Doctor has defined it, in a certain paper of his;
generally speaking, this condition arises from repressed feelings
of hostility toward one's parents, stemming from degradations
real or imagined suffered during toilet training. In those early
days, you must understand, the child, who functions with regard
to his own body like a sort of blind, malevolent demiurge, is
convinced that even his waste products, especially the solid
matter, comprise an essential part of himself. He is loath
to pass them and, when he does, as eventually he must, he feels
that they are a precious gift, for him to bestow on those in
his favor. It is most certainly not some obscene thing,
something foul and contaminate, to be simply flushed away, and
banished to oblivion."
"Uhn," you say, rather wittily. Your entire gastrointestinal
tract is about to make a break for it, you feel; the pain is
almost exquisite. You must fight for breath.
"So," Dr Beatrice continues, "the question is
this: what has caused your 'difficulty' to rear its ugly head?
Here, now. Why should you choose to manifest precisely these
symptoms? For the answer to this, we have only to consult your
psychobiography." She takes out a rimless pair of spectacles,
settles them on her nose, flips your dossier open to a certain
page.
"Let's see now: in the last year your wife left you for
a semi-professional foosball player, you got fired from your
job as a systems analyst for crashing the company's intranet,
were forced by financial constraints to move back in with your
parents, and on top of all this you've had absolutely no success
with your Match.com profile," Dr Beatrice ticks off, as
though checking items on a laundry list. She looks up, her face
professionally deadpan, though your distress must by now be quite
evident.
"You are overcome with a compulsion to control situations
and people, to feel once again omnipotent and invulnerable. You
do this, first, by an infantile regression, a reactivation of
the childish whim, withholding your waste, your precious essence,
as you think of it. Secondly, you belabor all those around you
- in this case, your poor parents - with your 'problem' - ransoming
their sympathy and forcing all their attention on yourself."
The pressure is too much. Your every resistance has been overcome.
You jump to your feet, drop your trousers and underwear in a
bunch around your ankles, lift the toilet lid and fall into place,
giving out a strange strangled cry, expressing at once sheer
anguish and deep contentment.
You grunt and groan as your need explosively relieves itself.
Dr Beatrice's voice drones on: "This cure, which we have
forced upon you here today, in a very literal sense will not
quiet your fears. We have but compelled you to confront the product
of your anxieties. You must look upon it, face to face, and no
longer be content to view it as in a glass, darkly. This is the
wellspring of all wisdom."
Drained, sweating profusely, feeling bereft, unburdened, as though
you'd just given birth, you stumble to your feet and, creature
of habit that you are, turn to dutifully flush. And there, cradled
in its porcelain chalice, lies the sum of all your fears.
You stare at it, aghast. This is far worse than you had expected,
a manifestation of every aberrance and freak you've ever nurtured
within. The misshapen thing resembles some hideous seed pod,
or gestating insectile larva, perhaps. Yes, that's it, now that
you come to think of it: a quivering birth sac, which might soon
burst open. But unleashing what unknown creature, what mindless
shrieking horror?
You notice, too, that there is no handle. The toilet is, in fact,
as you had feared, a dummy, merely a prop. There is no getting
away from it. If the thing were to split open like some sickening
carnal flower, or come scuttling on spiky insect legs out of
the toilet bowl, seeking its procreator, its parthenogenic father,
you would be entirely helpless to prevent it.
It is all you can manage to remain conscious. You look to the
corner; Dr Beatrice stifles a giggle, shakes her head sadly.
She gets up, strides to the door, raps upon it in a sort of Morse
code and is let out. Your guide has abandoned you. You are completely
alone.
The lights go out.
When you come to, you are lying on a cot
in Dr Berenson's office: it is a sort of day-bed for malingerers.
Beatrice mops the sweat from your brow with a little monogrammed
kerchief. The good doctor, slumped behind his desk, hustles Ben
Wa balls in his palm, their metallic jangle matching your frazzled
nerve ends'. When he notices you are awake, he hurriedly secrets
them in a small ivory box and drops it into a drawer in his desk.
He wags a monitory finger at you.
"Ah, my friend," he says. "You are back among
us." He shakes his head sadly. "But you did not do
so well, alas. You blacked out. You could not face your terror's
epicenter. Your mind, with its reactionary subconscious,
refused to proceed any further along the royal road to recovery."
"And you were doing so well," puts in Beatrice, the
front of her white nurse's shirt teasingly close to your face.
"You were almost home."
Berenson gets up, brings over to you a small black rectangle
in a white cardboard sheath. It is a VHS tape, a recording of
your session. "You should endeavor to spend an hour or two,"
he says, "every day, mind you, reviewing your session.
There are a great many lessons yet to learn, my friend."
Beatrice helps you to your feet, one arm draped over her shoulder,
and aims you at the door. When you have left his office, Berenson
comes out into the lounge, stroking his little beard contemplatively.
He offers you his hand again. What kind of dermal patch, you
wonder, has he got on this time?
Nevertheless, you shake his hand.
"Well, after all, my friend," he says, by way of parting,
returning to the consolations of his office, "Rome was not
built in the one day, now was it?"
And, with that, he closes the door on you.
By the time you reach the receptionist's desk, you are stable
enough to propel yourself. Beatrice does not offer her hand;
she looks you up and down, her face a mask of disappointment.
"So close," she laments.
"Put him down for next Thursday," she tells the receptionist.
The waiting area seems smaller - less ornate - to you now. You
do not hear birds singing. The water in the fountain does not
plash so much as trickle, torturously, drop by single drop. The
receptionist hands you a reminder card, which you absently stuff
into your shirt pocket.
Outside, the sky is leaden gray, lowering.
A vast ocean of asphalt threatens to drown you, until you reach
the life preserver that is your car. Or perhaps it is your deserted
island? You are in no mood for extended metaphors, at any rate.
The blank, impassive face of the Berenson Clinic stares you down
as you fumble for your keys.
It offers a mute challenge. You must accept.
You will be back.
© Budd E. Wilkins
All rights reserved
Budd E. Wilkins is a writer,
film and music critic, and amateur photographer. He specializes
in short stories and describes his aesthetic ideal as "stunningly
bonkers" - a piece that combines dark humor with the surreal
and the macabre.
Mr. Wilkins attended Pennsylvania
State University and holds a bachelor's degree in Religious Studies
from UNC-Greensboro. His interests include comparative literature,
mythology and symbolism, old-time and bluegrass music, art history,
documentary film, and collecting books, comics and graphic novels.
He lives in Greensboro, North Carolina with his wife, Tina and
their calico cat, Scamper. His web site is http://www.buddwilkins.com
and his blog can be found at http://www.buddsview.com,
part of the Blogsboro.com collective.
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