Odelia's Case Fiction: Part II

Herewith the continuation of Odelia’s case fiction. I posted the first part last Friday.

Odelia saw herself as accursed. She hated her job. She hated working for her father. And yet, she did not feel that she could just pick up and leave. 

Overtaken by feelings of impotence, Odelia saw herself as accursed. Percival saw that if the problem had an easy solution, she would have found it herself.

So he began broaching Odelia’s dilemma by asking her what options she had considered. He added that she must have discussed the problem with friends, perhaps even with one or another of the therapists she had consulted. Had any of her friends from LA, even her sponsor, offered a clarifying insight. 

Odelia took care to answer clearly, though what she said was largely predictable. Some of her friends and erstwhile therapists had recommended that she fight the good fight for women’s liberation. Her friend Morgana-- a tireless crusader for women’s rights-- suggested that Odelia punish any man who did not respect her. 

Odelia had chosen not to follow this advice. She felt that confrontation would produce dissension in the ranks and make the business more difficult to run. Moreover, she needed her contractors more than they needed her.

Two other friends, Roderick and Corinne,  had taken the opposite position. They were concerned that the abuse was numbing her sensibility and provoking a general distaste for male companionship. So they thought that she should simply walk away from it all. Unfortunately, that solution would betray her father’s trust. It would feel like a defeat. 

Percival shifted the focus to the person whose will was at issue-- Odelia’s father. While he understood Odelia’s pride in being her father’s favorite, he also knew that she could not simply accept his dictate without a discussion. The man was clearly a bully, a petty tyrant. So Percival asked whether she had discussed what was happening with him.

Odelia offered a ready-made answer: “No one sits down and has a chat with my father. I do not think that I ever had a real conversation with him. He makes pronouncements and gives orders. My brothers rebelled, but I did not. Perhaps because I was the girl and the favorite, I did not challenge him. My brothers did and were punished for talking back.”

Percival replied that somehow or other someone needed to improve the father/daughter relationship. Yet, the man had wrapped his tyranny in the mantle of cultural revolution. He certainly did not want to hear that he had hurt the one person he loves the most in this world. He had chosen Odelia because she would never threaten his position.

She continued: “You know, any time I talk to my father he thinks I’m talking back to him. It has to be ‘Yes, Daddy,’ ‘Of course, Daddy.’"

Evidently, Odelia was terrified of her father. And yet, the only way to deal with fear, as we all know, is to face it. And yet, Odelia’s conversational repertoire seemed to comprise two extremes: obscenities for her brothers, sheepish deference for her father. She was sorely in need of other ways of negotiating with men.

Perhaps if her father recognized that his way of treating did not enhance her ability to assume a managerial or leadership role, he would lighten up on the abuse.

Odelia was not impressed by his analysis. Yet, when she came to her next session she announced that she had made an appointment to have lunch with her father. Frankly, she did not expect very much and Percival agreed that she should tone down her expectations. 

Percival thought it might be a good idea to rehearse the lunch meeting. Odelia did not think so. Thus, he dropped the issue.

So, Percival began to query Odelia about her mother. In many ways this woman was a cipher in Odelia’s family. She seemed to be almost a non-player in the drama. 

The young woman quietly explained that her mother had made a career of being a homemaker and bringing up her children. She did some occasional charity work, but kept a safe distance from her husband’s business. She had never been very close to her daughter, but devoted herself to protecting her sons from their bully of a father. The more she showered them with tenderness and compassion, the more her husband thought that they were weak and ineffectual.

Odelia’s mother would have preferred that her sons not join her husband’s business. Unfortunately, their spotty academic records and generally bad character offered little hope for career success elsewhere. Seeing her youngest son go out on his own had been one of the abiding successes in her life. 

Percival started encouraging Odelia to try to get closer to her mother. He wanted her to open a line of communication with this woman. He did not want to examine childhood traumas or even childhood neglect. Given the young woman’s urgent need for a family ally, dredging up instances of inadequate mothering would have been counterproductive.

Was it still possible to reconcile mother and daughter? Percival did not know. Would Odelia discover that she had suffered from her mother’s neglect? Percival feared that she would. Yet, he had few alternatives to modify the family dynamic. 

Percival suggested that this woman had also been oppressed by her husband. She had not abandoned her child, but had had her daughter taken from her.

As for the upcoming lunch with her father, Percival recommended that Odelia take the path of least resistance. She should not confront her father or suggest that he had done anything wrong. If there were problems she ought to blame herself. She had been stressed and perhaps was working too hard.

And Odelia could hint that overwork was making it impossible for her to develop a life outside of the office. Her father might understand the point, but he might also prefer that she not fall into another love addiction. 

Percival articulated his idea thusly: “Think of it as an opening offer in a long and protracted negotiation. Clearly, your father is not going to change because you feel fatigued. He will need to believe that he has changed his own mind. You need to state your dissatisfaction and then act accordingly. You will slow down your own activities. And you might consider giving your brothers more responsibility. In other circumstances you might have a claim of sexual harassment, but such an accusation would surely destroy your family. And this is not a solution.”

Finally, Odelia had her lunch. It did not go well. Her father was unable to hear his daughter’s distress. Or else, if he did hear it, he did not take it seriously. It smacked of weakness, a quality he despised in his sons and that he had thought his daughter had overcome. 

Besides, she had a plethora of outside activities, from exercise classes to concerts and LA meetings. It was no wonder that she was tired. Her father believed that she was overextended. He had no interest in relieving her of the burdens that went along with her job. 

Odelia was discouraged. Percival was not. The issues had been put on the table. It was an opening gambit, but surely not the final move in the game. 

So, Percival changed the subject. He asked her whether she had had any time to spend with her mother. On that score things had gone better.

Odelia had offered to help her mother prepare Thanksgiving dinner. And while the men were watching the football game, she had taken the opportunity to have a pleasant conversation.

Finally, Odelia averred that she was pleased with Percival. He was not nearly as horrid as she had heard. He seems to have given her more of a sense of being in the game, of making her own moves, of taking initiatives. 

And then she put the rest of their plan into action. During the next few weeks she left work early several times, complaining that she was not feeling well. She asked her brother Anderson to become more active in managing two buildings the company had just started leasing.

Naturally, her father noticed. His warm encouragement had yielded to a surly indifference. In time he began to distance himself from the person he loved most in the world, and who was fast becoming a disappointment. 

Doubtless he imagined that withdrawing would cause her to come to her senses. In fact, he was punishing her disobedience. Even though her brothers had started acting better toward her, the most striking change was her relationships with her mother.

The two women seem to have found a new camaraderie. They shared intimacies and confided in each other. In some ways the connection was superficial, but it was more real than what had been.

Obviously, Odelia was suffering from her father’s indifference. So she needed and received Percival’s support. She began to feel increasingly vulnerable to male attention. She began imagining that some man would come along and sweep her off her feet and take her to Bali. 

Her libidinal energies seemed to be coming back. But, she was afraid that she would fall off the wagon and fall for Mr. Wrong.

Her father had sucked the marrow from her soul for so long that she wanted desperately to escape his influence. And yet, his influence had kept her from unfortunate love affairs. 

To Percival the problem was her transition. Would he have enough time to build up Odelia’s self-confidence before some man swept her into an ill-advised love affair? After all, she could not rely on her judgment or her instincts, and that meant, she was courting, not just a man, but danger.

He was soon to have his answer.

To be continued.

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