How did he feel after having the dream? Martin asked. Terrible, of course. Dan wondered why Martin had to ask. What child wouldn’t feel terrible on losing a mother? He wanted to ask if Martin had been glad to lose his.
Remembering his parents’ arguing wasn’t surprising, since that was the hallmark of their relationship, according to his Aunt Marge. She and her daughter Leyla were his only remaining relatives. He remembered the matronly Marge with fondness as the aunt who snuck him into the Empire Theatre for Saturday matinees and as the woman who raised him after his mother died. He thought guiltily of her now — she’d been in poor health for several years and he hadn’t seen her in some time. His cousin Leyla he recalled as the first person in his sexual landscape, a dimly lit mural of touch-and-feel one night when they were forced to share a bed. He’d been impressed by the size of her breasts. In the family, it had been touted that “Leyla failed grade eight because she went boy crazy.” He always smiled to think of it. He’d carried on the tradition, he supposed.
The receptionist stirred in her glass cubicle and glanced nervously about as though she sensed a seismic tremor coming down the hall. Dan looked at his watch. It was exactly seven. Martin opened the door and nodded.
“Come in, please, Daniel,” Martin said in the same spiritless tone he always used.
Dan followed Martin to an office almost obsessively devoid of personality. Eggshell walls and off-white trim enclosed a cream-coloured carpet with a glass table placed precisely in the centre. On a desk in the corner, a whirling screen-saver offered glimpses of what outer space might look like from the POV of someone heading resolutely away from earth. Not drowning — waving goodbye. A narrow window looked out onto the pitch of other rooflines. A Piet Mondrian reproduction — a quilt-like abstraction of crosshatches — offered the only colour in an otherwise almost obsessively bland room. It floated on the wall above Martin’s head like a cartoon image of the contents of his mind.
The client chair seemed purposely set at a lower angle than Martin’s. Dan sat and studied the thin face he couldn’t quite bring to mind outside this unremarkable room. “Invisible” didn’t begin to cover it. Even Martin’s wardrobe seemed designed for camouflage. An oatmeal vest covered an ecru shirt tucked into light-brown trousers with immaculate creases. Half the time in these sessions Dan spent wondering what made this man so indistinct he could disappear right before your eyes. The shrink who shrank. Maybe if Martin lost his temper or betrayed an emotion, he might give off some vital signs.
After the formality of offering Dan a glass of water, which he always refused, Martin sat back with his hands tented and eyed Dan over his fingers.
“So what brings you here today?”
As always, Dan was tempted to say it was a choice between seeing Martin and losing his job, and that he almost hadn’t come. Instead, he went into his preamble about his late-night talk with Steve Jenkins and his uncharitable neighbour, Glenda. Before he could get far, Martin cut him off.
“How do you feel about that?”
Dan wanted to say, “I think she’s a selfish cunt. The kind who makes living in this city even more unbearable.” Instead he said, “It’s not fair. Here’s this poor schmuck who loves his wife more than anything and she’s taking advantage of the situation.”
“So you feel a sense of injustice,” Martin said, with a flash that might have been interest kindling behind his eyes.
Dan nodded.
“Do you see how you’ve removed yourself from the emotion and put yourself at a distance?”
“How is that?” Dan said. He was unsure whether agreeing with Martin’s assessment might be a good thing. Surely feeling an emotion was better than observing it?
Thankfully, Martin was willing to enlighten him. “It’s a rational judgment you’re making about the situation. You’ve separated yourself from the emotion to view it with detachment. Whereas you might normally feel anger over a perceived injustice, you’ve distanced yourself. I think that’s good.”
Dan tried to look pleased.
“How are you feeling about life in general these days?” Martin said.
“Good. Fine. A little less irritable than usual.”
“Why is that?”
Dan reflected. “Bill and I are going away for the weekend. We’re going to a gay wedding.”
Dan had stopped hypothesizing on Martin’s sexuality and simply assumed he had none, though Martin always showed a keen interest in anything to do with Dan’s sex life. Sometimes Dan went on at length when Martin showed curiosity, feeding him tidbits of information to see how he would react, though he’d tired of the game quickly.
“This will be the first time we’ll be together for an entire weekend,” Dan continued.
“And you feel positive about this?”
“Yes,” Dan said, surprising himself.
“Is it a matter of feeling you have more control over the relationship?”
“Not really. Bill’s always been in control of the relationship — when we see each other, for how long, et cetera.”
Martin inclined his head. “I seem to recall you once said he was in control of every aspect of the relationship except for the bedroom….”
Dan leaned in. “Well, he calls the shots there too, more or less. What I meant was, he lets me be in control when we have sex.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“Obviously I’m willing to go along with it or I wouldn’t be with him.”
Martin waited.
Dan cleared his throat. “I’m learning to be patient,” he said.
“That’s good. Very good.” Martin nodded encouragingly, like a grade school teacher rewarding a student for a correct answer. “Have you had any difficult moments since you were here last?”
“Not really.”
“Not really or no?”
“No.”
Martin made a mark in his notebook. “Good,” he said. “No banging with your fists or yelling?”
Dan remembered the incident with the dog. It seemed funny in hindsight. Surely it was a sign he could laugh at himself. “I got a bit upset with the dog, but it was just the excitement. I didn’t mean to yell.”
Martin looked up from his notebook. “Isn’t that how you described the incident at work when you hit the filing cabinet? You said you yelled at your superior without meaning to.”
Dan shrugged. “Okay.”
“Would you say this is a common response you have in tense situations?”
“This wasn’t a tense situation. I was walking in my front door.”
Martin was rapt. “Tell me what happened. Does the dog have a name?”
Of course the fucking dog has a name, Dan thought. “It’s Ralph,” he said slowly.
“Ralph,” Martin repeated, making it sound like a foreign word. “Is Ralph a male? May I refer