Eleanor Levine
The Lemon and the Therapist
My therapist will never read this. She does not believe in reading things that I write. I can read my stuff to her over the phone, which is how we conduct our sessions, but she won’t buy my books.
I had a therapist once who broke all “boundaries” and came to see me in the hospital and at my book launch. When he asked to attend my birthday dinner, I said no.
My current therapist, despite her denials about boundary crossings, gets into my shit the way cockroaches get into your shit if you live in Manhattan though you are proud of the fact that you are paying $3,502 in rent for a walk-in closet in the West Village where rats have more space than you do.
This week my therapist tried to coach me on how I should speak with the service people at the Audi car dealership in Toms River, NJ.
She wanted me to tell them, “Look, I paid $2,400 for car repairs three weeks ago—before I spent $5,000 in Vienna. Why is there an engine light blinking?” This is not how I normally handle my affairs, be they the landlord or the bank clerk—I’m usually as meek as a water bug. I can scream at my relatives and friends—but with business interactions, the water bug announces itself with unremitted guilt.
“Are you sure?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she replied. She gets aggressive. My treatment, or rather, her treatment method for me, is to exterminate all subtle moments. Say it like it is. Kill the omelet. Kill the toast. All you should have, in your immediate conversation, is gastric acid.
“I will not pay any more!” I yell at my therapist, as if she were the pretty boy who works as an Audi service clerk; if he were not attached to a wedding ring, he’d be on a dancing pole in a leather bar in Chelsea.
On the way toward the Audi dealership, I am “practicing” in the car.
“I will not pay more than $2,400,” I say aloud to my dashboard.
While I utter this, my car hiccups from 60 to 70 mph. There is also a light that reads, “Engine problem.”
People, such as my brother, ask, “Why would you pay $2,400?”
I do not know why. I know zilch about cars. I started driving at 47, after I failed the written test 3 times and the driving test 4 times. It was easier to get an MFA in Creative Writing reading Vladimir Nabokov’s Pnin than a driving license in Southwest Virginia.
Luckily, the woman who gave me the test, the one I finally passed, was originally from Long Island and did not see “Yankee” emblazoned on my forehead the way truly Southern-bred women, who regularly failed me, did.
“Goddamnit!” I yelled after the first Virginia DMV lady flunked me.
“Don’t say the Lord’s name in vain,” she moaned. They are serious about God. Almost as serious as Yankees fans are about baseball.
The women who kept denying me my license said, “Well, we can’t burn you anymore, but we can toast your ass when it comes to cars.” They didn’t actually say this, but you felt it permeate from their membranes to mine.
It was another Southerner (an offspring of a Baptist minister—a hard-ass dude named Dean) who advised me to leave the Roanoke area—where the natives showed uproarious disrespect when I entered their DMV. Dean urged me to travel to a town near North Carolina to take my test. “They don’t despise you Northerners there like they do in Roanoke,” he added.
The Garden State Parkway is not a safe place. Cars will go past you without hesitation. They are like the people who drive them—irascible and unpredictable. They make me nervous. At least in Virginia there was a little transubstantiation involving Jesus that prevented cars from ramming up your ass. It also didn’t hurt that the drivers near Roanoke drove as slowly as they spoke, compared with Northeasterners, you know, who put slices of Kraft cheese on their grits and call it “cheese and grits.” These Yankees are combat veterans on the parkway and the highway and even in the school zone where they want to run you over.
God, however, no matter where I am, protects me when I drive. Also, my friend Henrietta, a born-again Christian in Oklahoma—says a special prayer, “Dear Jesus, Please protect Veronica and other drivers from Veronica.”
I finally arrive at the Audi place, at around 8 am, with a certain amount of nervousness that eclipses my fake smile.
I don’t say “good morning.”
I see the same dudes who are always in the Audi service area—handsome boys who are devout Catholics. I go up to a guy who has a stye in his eye.
“You have a stye in your eye,” I announce.
“Thanks for telling everyone, Veronica,” he says. They all know me. I am their least informed customer.
I had purchased a $10,000 Audi.
I brought it in every three months. Sometimes I gave them donuts. Once I gave them $20.
I had spent $20,000 at this point.
“What can I do for you today?” Mr. Stye in the Eye asks.
“I paid $2,400 for car repairs. According to my therapist, I should not be charged for any more work.”
“Is your therapist a mechanic?” he asks, a look of exasperation on his face. “Does she understand transmission?”
“She’s a Freudian,” I grin.
He doesn’t think I am funny.
“Hey, listen, I’m really sorry—it’s just that my therapist told me to stand up for myself.”
“Just because you spend money on one thing does not mean it relates to another thing.” He is frustrated by me and my “lemon.”
“Look,” I stutter, “I’m really sorry. I don’t mean to offend you.” The old Veronica returns to the service station.
“It’s fine,” he blinks from his stye and charges me $300 for transmission, which is completely “unrelated to the $2,400 job.”
He has the mechanic fix it within the hour. I drive to Whole Foods and get some berries on sale after Mr. Stye in the Eye gives me directions.
I worry that my car will break down, especially when I crash into cars in the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through line. I also run over curves and it’s truly a miracle I don’t get flat tires. “But don’t worry,” the salesman, the dude who sold me the $10,000 Audi originally, says. He’s got a pot belly from donuts and believes in me as a driver. He also tells me stories about his daughter who lives in Italy though she misses the Jersey Shore. “Enjoy your car for the next six months,” he laughs, “since you spent so much on it.”
Eleanor Levine
Eleanor Levine’s writing has appeared in more than 130 publications, including New World Writing Quarterly, the Evergreen Review, The Hollins Critic, Gertrude, the Denver Quarterly, the Raleigh Review, Fiction, the Notre Dame Review, Monkeybicycle, Rougarou, and pacificREVIEW: A West Coast Arts Review Annual; forthcoming work in Litro, the Blue Lake Review, Bear Review, Thirteen Bridges Review, and StorySouth. Her poetry collection, Waitress at the Red Moon Pizzeria, was published by Unsolicited Press (Portland, Oregon). Her short story collection, Kissing a Tree Surgeon, was published by Guernica Editions (Toronto, Ontario, Canada).