The artist perched on the crest of a dune, sketchpad in hand. He worked swiftly in pastel, racing to capture the scene before he lost his vision in twilight shadow.

The dunes undulated, a serpent wriggling its way round the coastline. A mild breeze blew in from the ocean, rustling the green scrub and rattling the yellow, white and blue wildflowers that burst in bright patches over the dun, sandy heights. A few gulls soared overhead. Their cries, the repetitious washing of surf on the shore, and the wind soughing through the sparse foliage were the only sounds heard in this remote place.

The artist stopped sketching. He set down his pad, pulled off his wire-rimmed glasses and rubbed his tired eyes. A ray cast by the dying sun slanted across his white-stubbled jaw, highlighting his hard, thin face like a moonbeam limning a carving on a headstone.

After a moment, he replaced his glasses, turned his head and looked to his right. There, he thought he saw someone approaching along the surf’s edge. As the image neared his vantage point, it appeared to be a woman in a loose-fitting white summer dress, her bare legs and feet kicking through foam, drifting seaweed and sand. They were alone — she did not appear to notice him. She paused, stooped to pick up a piece of driftwood and cast it off into the darkening waves. The artist stared at her; she seemed familiar.

The young woman turned and looked up at the dune. Raising her hand to shade her eyes against the setting sun, she spotted the artist. She smiled, waved and then ran toward the narrow trail that led from the beach to the summit. The woman soon reached the spot where the artist stood transfixed and expectant. But what was it he anticipated? He searched his memory the way you rummage through an old box stored in the back of a dark closet.  Try as he might, he could not find what he was looking for. He only stared in wonder at her youth, her vitality — her simple, natural beauty.  

“Oh Bob, I knew I’d find you here.” She said his name, and he knew the voice. But there was something vague and remote about the sound, like a recording playing at a distance. As she waited for his reply, the young woman reached down, shook the sand from her skirt and dusted her legs. Then she looked up at him and stared. “Well, cat got your tongue?”

 “I’m sorry, Ellen, I didn’t expect you.” Someone replied, but it wasn’t the old artist, though he recognized the voice. Then he saw a young man walk over to the girl and take her hand. As the scene played out, the artist stood fixed to the spot like a shackled prisoner, as though he were being forced to watch and listen. The young man had news; he was going to Barcelona on a scholarship.

“Barcelona?” the girl questioned. “In Spain?”

The young man laughed, and the artist detected cruelty in the laughter. “Well yes, in Spain, unless they’ve gone and moved it.”

 The young woman looked down at the sand. “That’s not funny.” No it wasn’t funny, the artist thought, although he wasn’t quite sure why it wasn’t funny. He tried to say something; he moved his lips, but the words were not his. They were the young man’s.

“It’s a great opportunity, Ellie. You wouldn’t want to hold me back, would you?”

The girl agreed — she didn’t want the young man to miss out on something so important. They talked for a while about their plans. He would be back in two years, or three at most. They would correspond frequently and regularly; she would save up for the fare and pay him a visit. That would be wonderful; he was sure she’d love Spain, and so forth.

All the while, the artist thought the young man insincere. The old man wanted to warn the girl — she shouldn’t wait, she shouldn’t trust, she shouldn’t grieve. The young man wasn’t worth it.

The couple stopped talking. They kissed, said good-bye and the girl walked away. The old artist sensed sadness in her expression, her gestures and the way she walked. She knew their relationship was over. The artist had learned how to read and draw emotions; that was his craft — and he had sacrificed much to acquire it. He could easily capture her mood in a sketch, a quick study. But he couldn’t see the young man’s face; only the back of his head. The artist decided to wipe the youth from his composition.

The old man turned and gazed after the woman. She walked down to the beach and up the shoreline until she rounded the headland and disappeared.

Night came; the dunes and sea glistened in moonlight, the wind stiffened. The artist shivered. He buttoned his jacket, closed his sketchpad and put away his pastels. Then, for an instant, he stared at the shadowy headland where the ghost-like figure had gone. “I knew her once,” he thought. “Does she belong in my picture?” But his memory failed him. His once keen perception had dulled like a worn old blade that resists the hone. “Too dark, too cold — too late,” he muttered.

The artist lifted himself slowly — aching muscles, sore joints, brittle bones. He turned his bent back on the beach and an obscure trail of footprints washing away in the tide. As he puffed up the steep incline, he wondered if he had enough strength left for the long walk home. LS

She says, “I am a sore jar, look here at my bruises, see how they’ve clouded up plum and charcoal?”

She is bones and blades now, with skin hanging loose as drapery.

In college, along with a band of other students, I would draw her, each pencil shaking like a seismographic needle.  How could they just sketch?  Didn’t they see her, know she was naked, know she was the most stunning woman in the world?  The teacher inspected my work with a twisted face, as if he’d smelled rotten egg salad, and asked if I was sure I belonged in the class.  “It’s a new art form,” I said, “in the way that pointillism was new one day.”

She’s fresh out of the shower.  Her pubic bone pokes out like a helmet.  Before she can grab her robe, I take her wrists in my hands and tell her to look at herself in the mirror.  “I know,” she says, “I’m a fat, ugly cow.”

She dresses.  She puts on three pair of legging and heavy flannel trousers, pads her blouse with several underpinnings, uses garish makeup in hopes of distracting our therapist from her sunken cheeks.

At the appointment she laughs and flirts with the doctor.  She leads and lies.  A machete goes to work on my rib cage.

“See,” she says when we’re done, “that was easy.”

We go to The Ivy for dinner.  Ben Afflect is there with his movie star wife.  Their kid is throwing  cheese crackers at patrons and squalling.

The waiter brings a radicchio salad and I watch my wife rearrange lettuce leafs and red onion rims as if she is creating a pastiche art piece.

Eat something, I think but do not say.  My pleading only backfires.   I order more wine, a bottle this time.  Her eyes arch.  I don’t care.

At home her cell rings.  They want her for the Spring show.  I hear her squeal.  Her heels clatter on the floor.  She says to the caller, “Of course not.  I’ve actually dropped more weight.  Yeah, yeah, I knew you’d be happy.”

When she hangs up she runs into me for a hug.  She is bones.  I can’t even find cartilage.

I want to ask if it’s worth it, but I could ask that same question of myself.  Why do I stay with her?

She pulls away, tears streaking down the sharp ridge of her cheeks, but she’s grinning.  “Let’s do something crazy,” she says.

“Like what?” I ask.

“Let’s make a bowl of popcorn, and eat the whole thing.” LS

So you're wondering, aren't I supposed to be falling in love with this therapist, or is it just that I'm supposed to see her as my mother or father, but my mother and father are the last people to talk about any of this, in fact they're always worrying about what I might be saying on the couch, so what do you talk about, they say casually on the phone.

But maybe they don't believe in transference any more, wasn't that Freud, or was it someone else, but the idea of transference makes you think of unloading a burden and transferring it to someone else and that sounds pretty good to you, even though you know that's not the definition.  You wish you were lying on a couch, but you're not, you guess they don't do that any more either.  Meanwhile the therapist is telling you to be good to yourself for the millionth time and you're wondering if they just say that to everybody, including psychopaths and murderers and is that always a good thing, to be good to yourself, and so what's she going to say next, embrace your inner child. The therapist does a lot of talking in fact and you're getting kind of tired of her advice, not unlike your mother's, kind of bossy and irrelevant, and is that transference, finding the therapist annoying like your mother.   

She's kind of insecure, the therapist, always asking is this helpful and you don't know what to say because she isn't exactly helping but you don't want her to feel bad and you've got your own insecurities so you know what that feels like and you want to say, be good to yourself, because why not, it's not like the therapist is a psychopath or a murderer or anything.  You're wondering when you can end this because it's kind of like a love affair that never got off the ground and you want to break up but you're looking for the right moment and so maybe that's the transference, the analogy to the love affair, just not a very good one.

Be good to yourself you'll say and she'll say be good to yourself, and you'll shake hands and maybe both get a little teary-eyed, because after all you sought her help and she was trying to help, or are yours just tears of relief that you're escaping this annoying advice, too bad that you can't escape your mother's too, and hers just tears of regret that she's losing that weekly income and will have to find someone else to fill your slot.  Be good to yourself, she'll say to her, maybe even forgetting that it's not you because her problems aren't so different after all and maybe the new patient will be thinking, am I supposed to be falling in love with this therapist or something, or is that just a myth?

But for now you're still sitting in the therapist's office, looking at the box of Kleenex on the table between you, and the discreetly positioned clock, and you're thinking that the time's not up yet, and also that it's not the right time to break up, and what if I did it through email, would that be passive aggressive or something.  And when you try to break up, don't therapists always say that's something we need to talk about, this hostility is a phase of the therapy, not unlike old boyfriends you've had, the ones who say you don't really mean that when you try to break up, when you really do mean that, but breaking up is hard to do. 

So now you're thinking in clichés like the therapist, it's apparently contagious, and maybe thinking in clichés is a therapeutic goal, a kind of normalcy.  People bond all the time by trading clichés, your mother for example, and now you're back to your mother, something to talk about for the rest of the hour, which still isn't up yet.  In fact the therapist is beginning to seem more and more like your mother, so maybe you're achieving therapeutic transference after all.  LS