Ocean State

Transference

57 Transference The first patient of the day was eight-year-old Isabel. Isabel brought her doll, which sat in the chair opposite his. The patient sat against the wall and told him he could look at her if he took off his glasses or looked with one eye. The doll, made of cloth, with a head but no face, was a blabbermouth, and Isabel asked him to slap her face, and if he didn’t, she’d slap his. Why would you slap my face? he asked. Because I want to, she’d say, and with that, the ritual greeting was accomplished. Isabel’s five-year-old sister, Evelyn, was run over by a car while the family was traveling in Italy. Isabel had tossed the doll into the road because her sister had insisted on holding its free hand, and mother was threatening to take the doll away if Isabel continued so selfish. The marriage hadn’t survived the trauma. Father wasn’t present on the day of the accident. He was conducting business from the hotel, business he’d promised to forego for the week away, but a looming worry had become a crisis. His wife knew the matter could have waited till their return, and she proved right, as the father had explained to Dr. Broad in an early session arranged just for him. He was the one who’d gotten the referral for Isabel. The children were a handful 58 transference and the trip had been a series of battles between the sisters, each egged on by a partial parent, because Isabel was her mother in miniature, while Evelyn was the image of her father’s favorite sister: quiet, industrious, and easily hurt. The family was already fractured when the father lost his child through his wife’s negligence . The surviving child’s symptoms were described differently by each parent, but coincided on the point that Isabel had shown no remorse for the recklessness that had killed her sister. Dr. Broad had been seeing Isabel for six months, four days a week, in the hour before school started. The parents had tried to separate her from the infamous doll, which the younger sister had reached and was clutching when struck. Some bystander had retrieved it and Isabel reclaimed it on the spot. It wasn’t until late that night, leaving the hospital, that the shattered couple noticed the bloody rag. Isabel produced it for their eyes from her backpack, although the mother had been sedated and the father scarcely took it in. He’d already consigned this child to oblivion. He’d only wanted one and that one came second and was now lost to him forever. Dr. Broad was grateful for the chance to study the doll, having heard its singular role in the family history. It had a soft head and tube body with floppy limbs. Its hair, though, was the slick, spongy stuff of a Barbie. The doctor had a hard time attaching a name to it, although it came strangely to life when sitting in the room. Isabel called it Ann Marie. She made its clothes out of scraps from her mother’s dressmaking shop, after stripping the gingham dress sewn to its body. The doll had a dress for each of the four days that Dr. Broad saw them. “Does she go to school?” he asked, the day they met. “She goes,” Isabel said, “but she won’t learn.” 59 Transference “Do you learn?” he said, turning his head to address the child, although Isabel had warned him not to make that mistake or be fined. “I don’t have a dollar on me,” he said. “Well, make it ten.” “Just remind me, Isabel,” he said, “or turn your chair in the other direction.” The child shook her head. “No way, and you know why?” “Why?” “Because you’d look and how would I know? I want you to keep your fat eyes off me.” The patient’s face reminded him of a drawing made by another child patient. The picture had a hard crayon outline, and the surface had been rubbed with a tissue to make it shine. Isabel ’s face was dark with glossy, black eyes, a strong nose, and round cheeks. She was missing front teeth and spoke with her lips close together. Her smile, though, was brilliant and made her seem like a different...