Dora: A Headcase by Lidia Yuknavitch Page A

him accidentally about some pearl earrings my dad showed me that he told me he was going to give to me, then ended up giving to Mrs. K. I know because I saw her with them on when we bumped into the Ks at a restaurant. I have no idea why I tell him that. It just sort of came out when I said “pearly drop.” Goddamn it.
    But you can’t just say things in the office. He leans way forward in his camel back chair and points his little black pen at me and goes, “Jewel drops. The gift of pearl earrings your father gave to his lover instead of you. The jewel drops are a sexual symbol for that which he has given her and not you – his affections.” Then jewel drops this and jewel drops that – jewel drops dripping all over the goddamn place.
    Finally I snap out of it and left jab with “Jeez Sig, can you even make a sentence without your own cock in it? Jewel drops ? Are you serious? When you’re walking around in the world and you see women with earrings on, is that what you are thinking? That their ear bling is dripping with … Eeeeewwwwwwww. Dude. That’s so boy teen cream dream! What are you, like seventeen?”
    He counters with, “Ida, your inability to admit your jealousy of your father’s lover creates a crisis in consciousness.” Oh. Score. That one gives me a bit of a fat lip. There is something about Mrs. K. Her ass is … unforgettable. So white. So big. Like the moon split. I sit silent for a second on the couch across from him. My father’s lover. Big white split moon ass.
    But no way is he gonna take this round. I give Sig the drop dead stare and part my legs just wide enough there on the couch to flash him some teen muff before I stand up and jet across the room. Panties on a need to wear basis only. You gotta have an ace in the hole.
    He drops his pen on the floor and coughs. Coughs. A lot.
Something sticks in his throat. He stares at his thighs and rubs them briskly. Careful not to set your pants on fire.
    Bring it, old man.
    I pace around his office touching things, watching his progressively more anxious reactions.
    “Hey Siggy,” I go, “Why are you so interested in my father’s ho, anyway? Do you read your notes to yourself at night and jimmy the pickle? Or are you writing it all down for a bestselling novel or something?”
    “Ida.” He’s using the chin down gravel voice. “These discussions are not the material for some … roman à clef.”
    I stop dead in my tracks. This could be interesting. “What the fuck is a roman à clef?” I go, and proceed to walk around and around his desk.
    He sighs like this is all annoying him. But I know better. He loves to answer my questions. “A roman à clef – literally translated, is a novel with a key. But what it means is a novel that is based on real people from the author’s life. With the names changed.”
    “Gimme an example,” I go.
    “Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre . Or Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield .”
    I stare at him with lockjaw, arms crossed over my chest. Unimpressed.
    “Each is a novel with a kind of … secret at its center. The secret is the author’s life, embedded in fiction.”
    I consider this. “Does On the Road count?”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    Tard. Please tell me with all these goddamned books lining the walls you know who Jack Kerouac is. “You know, Jack Kerouac?”
    “Ah. Well, yes I suppose. And to answer your earlier query, psychotherapy is not a novel.”
    “But you already told me you write … what are they called … case studies? What are those?”

    “Clinical recitations of patient pathologies.”
    “Right.” I click my heels together like Dorothy and close my eyes and recite, “There’s no place like home” a few times.
    I don’t know why. Just feel like it. I stop and open one eye and give him a stink eye for a second. “So you don’t take people’s lives and make them into books? With different names?”
    He coughs some more. He sounds a little asthmatic. I see my opening. I do