“My father has remarried and has a family in Connecticut; but I have never been there.”
“Possibly your father foresees difficulties. How long have your mother and father been divorced?”
“It was before I can remember. Ten years, I guess.”
“Well, let me tell you things out of my experience. Your mother is a beautiful woman, and doubtless many men have wished to marry her. Perhaps she has refused because she doesn't want to make you unhappy. Has she ever talked to you about such matters?”
“No, sir.”
“You have seen men in the company of your mother, of course.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You haven't liked it, perhaps?”
Lanny began to be disturbed. “I–I suppose I haven't liked it if they were with her too much,” he admitted.
Dr. Bauer-Siemans smiled, and told him that a psychoanalyst talked to hundreds of men and women, and they all had patterns of behavior which one learned to recognize. “Often they are ashamed of these,” he said, “and try to deny them, and we have to drag the truth out of them — for their own good, of course, since the first step toward rational behavior is to know our own selves. You understand what I am saying?”