BY AMANDA OLIVER

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I’m using a dead psychologist’s pen in a dead psychologist’s house full of dead psychologist’s books and yes, it smells like an old man.

Or dead air, or cooked food aromas that have hung out in the rafters too long, or just a closed-up house at high elevation. It could be comforting, could be warm and familiar, if I knew him. But he is a stranger. But he is dead. But the house is free and his children are so generous to let me use it for two weeks. The floors are real wood and real rock and lush carpet. The bed has memory foam and the couch has a plaid pattern and there are glass roosters, of all sizes, everywhere (everywhere, everywhere). The bedroom has a bay window. The living room has a fireplace and massive television with surround sound. There are games in a closet, there are plush towels in a hope chest, there are family photos on the fridge, there are menorahs.

The ink of the dead man’s pen isn’t working. I’m carving lines into the pages of books I’m reading with it anyway. Hoping that leaves enough of an imprint that I can find it later when I need it.

His children have left this house like a shrine to him. In his den, among books like TREATMENT OF THE OBSESSIVE PERSONALITY and THE OBSESSIVE PERSONALITY and THE EGO AND ITS DEFENSES, is his checkbook. The last check he wrote was to the IRS for $1,079 on 3/20, year unmarked. The check before that was to AT&T for $43.65 on 3/17, year unmarked.

Can you invade a dead person’s privacy?

 

I am in the middle of writing a book. One that requires full sentences and a better version of myself that I do possess, but I possess it like a ghost, which is to say it feels like haunting, like lingering around too long in a place I maybe don’t belong, using words I’m not quite sure of.

Most houses are dead people’s houses, I guess.

This house does not feel haunted, but, somehow, my writing does.

My own psychologist’s name is Suzanne and she has worked with me for eight years. Says things like, “You deserve this” and “Do you think you could ever forgive your brother? Do you think you could ever forgive yourself?” and of course I do and of course I could, but will I?

I’m carving lines with the dead psychologist’s dead pen under words like “he craves a family, a neat nest of human bowls” and I wish that I could unwant anyone. I wish I knew how to satisfy a craving for a person who isn’t here anymore. Isn’t dead, but is still, incredibly, a ghost.

There are mugs full of pens, mugs that say things like ZABAR’S, a gourmet emporium in New York City with A Mezzanine that Has Everything For the Kitchen and Home and they remind me that the dead psychologist had a full and well-traveled life in addition to what seemed to be a successful therapy practice.

I don’t want to discover that none of the pens work, that all of the pens are dead, so I don’t try another one from the mugs.

On page 62 of the book I’m reading, the pen miraculously starts working again and I draw a blue arrow at the words: “The houseplants will appear to have chosen sides. Some will thrust stems at you like angry limbs. They will seem to caw like crows. Others will simply sag.” I have killed more houseplants than I can count on both of my hands. When I moved from D.C. to Southern California I tried to mail six plants in a package to myself. When they arrived, they were, inevitably, dead.

I am constantly doing this. Trying to make things live longer than they want to with me.

What would the dead psychologist say?

Which book would he read after meeting with me?

How much would he charge me for the favor of telling me what’s wrong?

Do we think the dead psychologist had a favorite patient?

I am always trying to be someone’s favorite. The dentist, the barista, the classmate, the coworker. I want everyone to like me. Tucked away in this house at 5,678 feet above sea level there is no one to make like me.

Two trucks pulled over outside of the house windows earlier and I heard a man and a woman yelling from their windows.

“Why can’t we just get lunch some time?”

“I have a husband.”

“What about everything I did for you?”

“I have a husband.”

I do not have a husband. I do not have a boyfriend or a suitor or a crush or an affair or a desire to let anyone touch me. I do not have the feelings of a significant other to worry about. I have freedom that some people would kill for and I’m not sure how much I want it.

If these walls could talk would they tell me I should let someone in for once? Can therapy occur through osmosis, like, if I sit in the psychologist’s office chair? Can therapy occur through death? If I touch and eat and sleep and write in one of the last places it was life?

On my fourth and fifth nights here my electric toothbrush turns on in the middle of night and wakes me up. I press the button to turn it off and it stays off for the rest of the night. This is not the thing I wanted to haunt me, or, I am totally unclear on what this message means and who it comes from. Is it the dead psychologist? Is he worried about my teeth?

Nightmares about losing your teeth are supposedly about feelings of powerlessness and loss of control. I have them all the time, but I haven’t had them here.

Have I gained back some power?

Is the dead psychologist trying to tell me to keep going?

I would like some answers, dead psychologist.

Do you have them?

Can I keep them?

 

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AMANDA OLIVER is a nonfiction MFA candidate at the University of California, Riverside. Her writing has appeared in Electric Literature, The Los Angeles Times, Vox, and more. She is currently at work on a book about being a librarian. She is @aelaineo across social media.