Neutral

  Elizabeth’s looks were almost characterless.  She was of standard European descent, medium-sized, and solid. Her mind however was of rare design. Initially, she was raised by a secession of nannies. By the age of eight, she had failed to emotionally attach to any of them, or anyone else really. This inability to attach concerned her parents and so Elizabeth’s rearing was transferred from nannies to therapists.  

   Elizabeth’s institutional upbringing did not help to change her, but she did find her psychologist far more intriguing than her nannies. They labeled her as autistic for years, and later with attachment disorder. Finally, she was said to be an atypical schizoid, but they knew that none of these diagnoses were complete. In the end, they never understood her, but perhaps pathologically so, she didn’t really care.    

     Elizabeth was her parent’s only child. Her eyes vacantly scanned the carpet’s pattern as the team of therapists attempted to define for them their daughter’s deficit. Her mother said that she felt guilty over her problem and that she blamed herself. Elizabeth wondered why someone who experienced guilt, which she understood to feel something like implosion, wouldn’t be grateful that her child did not suffer such an emotion.   

     The psychologist tried to console Elizabeth’s parents with the news that their daughter was highly gifted, a savant in several areas. Elizabeth drifted away, distracted by her father’s off-centered tiepin. She regained focus when he stood up and blurted out, “So what you’re telling us is that our daughter is a very smart potted plant.”   

     After this meeting, Elizabeth had little more to do with them.  Her father’s potted plant analogy did stay with her though. She hadn’t processed it as an insult, but rather as another piece of therapeutic advice to employ. 

     Years before one of the nannies had taken her to some sort of religious service. She recalled the speaker quoting the apostle Paul. Paul was discussing a seed and the fruit of the spirit. There was also much talk of vines and vineyards. Remembering those images and her father’s words, she began to visualize herself as a plant. She found this image confronting.   

     When she felt afraid of loud noises she would sit very still and remind herself that trees don’t have ears. When the other children touched her, she would balance her weight between her big toes and heels, and then imagine that her feet were slowly sinking into cool damp soil. When she was twelve, she began looking for her special seed and speculating about what sort of fruit she would bear.      

By late adolescences, Elizabeth’s more standard emotions began to faintly materialize. There were many times during college when she had moments of feelings for another student. However, even positive interactions were painfully overwhelming for her. She would at times bravely attempt to take a step towards normalcy and friendship, but her jerky manner, flat-line voice, and complete lack of social skills made the other students reject her.  

     Finally, someone managed to make Elizabeth cry. She had approached a girl from her dorm in the cafeteria. The previous morning the girl had loaned Elizabeth her carpet sweeper and agreed with her that vacuums “make an obnoxious noise”. Elizabeth mistook this exchange as a great act of friendship. 

     Without looking up at them or speaking she decided to join the girl and a large group of her friends for lunch. When she tried to sit down, under the table, the girl shoved her chair away with her foot. Elizabeth fell. Everyone in the room was looking at her.   

     Elizabeth then continued trying to sit down as the childish joke was repeated several more times. She became so confused by the laughter and stares that she could only focus on successfully sitting. She just kept repeating her attempt until the girls realized that she was not a geek, but rather pathological. Sick enough that pushing the chair away wasn’t funny, but cruel. 

     When they stopped and Elizabeth finally sat, the cafeteria was entirely silent. The table of girls mumbled “sorry” and slowly got up and left. Everyone else in the room looked away from her.  Elizabeth considered the fact that all she had done was try and sit down near a friend and somehow had misinterpreted some social cue so badly that now a room of almost forty people had withdrawn.   

     The person who made Elizabeth cry however was not her believed to be friend, but rather a very confident freshman who left her friends to sit with her. 

     As she sat down next to Elizabeth she said, “Who cares what those girls think.  They are mean to everyone.” 

     It was then that Elizabeth began to cry. She was so confused that she was afraid to interpret even this as an act of friendship. She could not understand what she had done wrong, why everyone withdrew, or the intentions of the girl now sitting next to her. That was her final attempt to socialize in school. It had been confusing and harmful.   

     After this incident, she decided that her pain and isolation would not be without meaning.  She decided that emotionally retreating would serve to keep her pure. Being rejected by others would only preserve her untainted soil.  She made the decision to hang onto her distant place, not only out of comfort but now also vindication. She had faith that the result of her suffering would somehow elevate her above her peers and tormentors. 

     Once she made it through college, Elizabeth realized how she could adapt to her disorder and begin bearing fruit. She enrolled in graduate school to become a psychologist. After all, she had been raised by them.  Practicing psychology would also provide for her a way around social pain, but still allow her to meet her emotional needs with its distinct brand of controlled intimacy.  She could now clearly see that her seed was her suffering, and its fruit would be her practice.   

     On Elizabeth’s first day of grad school, a professor said to her class, “To be an honorable therapist you must be neutral.”  Elizabeth knew that she defined neutrality.  It wasn’t only her temperament that was perfect for this profession, but also her cognitions.  Having grown up in the culture of psychology she was incapable of judging.  Rather than making judgments she merely drew associations to interpret them.   

     Elizabeth was even more encouraged when a professor pointed out to her that she was gifted with an eidetic memory. This put all relevant research on file in her mind. Her photographic recall was so precise that she even kept a list in her mind of her favorite quotes, which she was able to mentally sort based on word count. She did make notes in a small black notebook though, but only to satisfy those who felt she wasn’t paying attention.

     Her odd combinations of strengths and atypical gifts, coupled with her lifelong indoctrination, had bred Elizabeth into a genius clinician. Her motivation was as pure as the gospel. She completed her program at the top of her class. 

     At the end of each client filled workday Elizabeth would arrive home by 7:15. She would prepare her nutritious meal. She would then do some light exercise, tend her garden, and sleep flat on her back until morning. 

     Each morning she would spend one and one-half hour caring for her fish tanks. She started out with one tank but had an aggressive banner wrasse and so set up a second tank to protect the others. Babies were born, and additional behavior problems developed. Eventually, she had nine large tanks, plus a small one in the kitchen.   

     On the occasional weekend, Elizabeth went to Clagett's to listen to music and have one drink.  Clagett’s was lit by small spotlights which were covered with thick green gels that made her white skin look green. The tables were a deep reddish faux wood with industrially consistent patterns in the grain. These elements appealed to Elizabeth, and so she never troubled herself to sample another pub, although the sound system at Clagett’s made her cluck her tongue in order to vent the anxiety its reverb caused her. 

     Elizabeth had defeated a major fear and came to sit with a group of women at Clagett’s.  They grew to be her closest friends although they did not know her last name and had never seen her home. They called her Doc, and she liked that bit of affection. However, that was the maximum bit of affection she could accept without feeling corrupted. 

     That was it. That’s all she was and all she did, but she had changed and even saved lives. She had spared so many people so much pain and, in the process, ended generational curses of family abuse and manipulation. She had taken desperate people whose minds were piles of tangled rope and methodically picked at the knots until her clients were free and well. She was unaware of her impact.

    After decades of practicing, Elizabeth could diagnosis sometimes just by looking at the client’s dress or listening to the quality of their voice. If she had more imagination, she would have become quite bored. At this point, she was only intrigued when she got a call from Philip.

Philip called from the overwhelmed mental health clinic to ask Elizabeth to take a court order client. She agreed because she liked Philip and had the certification to provide legal assessments. Philip had extremely symmetrical dreadlocks, as he called them, but she found nothing dreadful about them. Their symmetry was the reason she liked him and always agreed to do any favor he asked.

The client was named Brian. All six foot four of him leaned over Elizabeth as he slapped an envelope filled with 20,000 dollars in her lap and said, “Write my court letter like I say and there will be more where that came from”.

She knew Brian was a psychopath because of his hypo-responsive pupil dilation. She felt her breathing quicken and lactic acid in her forearms. Elizabeth was excited!

Like him, she was not prone to interpersonal empathy. Like him, she could be unemotional as needed. Brian poured himself a cup of black coffee and began telling her exactly what she should write.

Elizabeth tucked the money away in her handbag. She opened her laptop and filled in the required fields on the court’s form. Then as he sat impatiently tapping his foot, she wrote her assessment. Her introverted quiet made Brian uncomfortable. He stared at her, but she was unaffected. Finally, she hit send and assured him he would get the best possible legal outcome. She managed a smile.

Once Brian was found guilty, he was arrested again. Elizabeth had added in her assessment that not only was he guilty, but highly likely to be a repeat offender. Unlike him, she was a very moral person, but much less predictable.

Elizabeth waited for two weeks before placing the $20,000 in Philips's mailbox. When his wife found it, she ran inside and told Philip that it had happened again.