Jacques Giraud, long-legged and lanky, stumbled into Harry’s office and marched toward his chair (not the couch) like a man on a mission. Harry was fond of Jacques. In particular he was impressed with the young man’s intensity and how seriously he took the work they were doing together. He was pleased by the obvious influence he had with Jacques, how the young man struggled to absorb the lessons of therapy, which, although not always successful, revealed strong motivation. He liked Jacques’s character; he was not only intense, he was also deeply honest and good at heart. In a world of narcissistic men and women, self-involved and self-aggrandizing—the world that Harry’s profession compelled him to navigate—here was a different sort of human being.
Jacques sat upright in a leather chair opposite Harry. He was so tall his knees were virtually at the level of Harry’s eyes, perhaps partly accounted for by the fact that Harry rarely sat up straight. Jacques arrived with good news. He had just received notice of his promotion to associate professor and his tenure at Rutgers University. Harry offered his warm congratulations.
“You’ve worked hard for this, and you truly deserve it. Even though I know you had your worries, I never actually doubted that they would give you tenure. They were not going to let someone with your ability go.”
“I’m happy about it, of course, but you know, it’s not where I really want to be.”
Harry knew that Jacques had spent his undergraduate years at Harvard and his graduate years at Princeton, and he was motivated to reach higher. “I know that, Jacques, but it’s a significant achievement and a good omen for your future.”
“Well, it’s an achievement. I’ll call it a ‘significant achievement’ when I get to the kind of university I want to be at.”
Minimizing his success was an old, bad habit of Jacques’s, as Harry well knew. “Raining on your parade again? Only a week ago you were fearful of being passed over and having to leave without another position in hand.”
“That’s true. I am very relieved.”
“And Jacques, it’s not Podunk Community College; it’s a state university, and it’s your first tenured promotion. So how is it not significant? Congratulations, man, well done!”
Jacques smiled. “May I change the subject?” he asked.
“No, you may not. I want you to stay with the feeling, ‘Associate professor, tenure, yes!’ At least I’m going to celebrate it.”
“Okay, Harry, let’s open the champagne.”
“Small triumphs are important,” he told Jacques.
“Duly noted, and I do feel happy. But I’ve been thinking.”
How many times had Harry heard Jacques begin a sentence with those words? Harry wished the man would think less and feel more.
“About my relationships with women.”
“Yes?” Harry leaned back in his chair, the fingers of his hands laced together, as if preparing for a long slog.
“I’ve never been close to anyone, not once, not with my stepmothers or any of my girlfriends.”
“You never felt close to Barbara?”
“I suppose over two years there were times … but there was a hell of a lot more propinquity than intimacy. You pointed out how much she resembled my second stepmother, giving me the feeling that I wasn’t her priority, that work, friends, and whatever came before me. Why didn’t I see that? I wasted so much time. “
Harry listened and tried to read between the lines. What was the underlying message?
“Should I have been more direct with you?”
“Why are you always blaming yourself, Harry?”
Actually, he wasn’t. It was a question he could have directed to Jacques.
“No, it wasn’t your job to tell me how to live my life. I just kept right on ignoring what I was feeling, missing the handwriting on the wall, chasing a foolish fantasy that she would eventually come around. My head was up my ass and my brains followed.”
