BRAUNSTEIN INTERCEPTED ME A FEW HOURS LATER ON my way home from work. I’d been avoiding my mother’s doctor for days because I didn’t want to hear how it was all my fault that she had tried to kill herself. I also didn’t know what kind of lies she had been telling him in her therapy sessions, and I didn’t want to get our stories crossed. That said, my real reason for avoiding Dr. Braunstein was less complex: I was afraid of psychiatrists. To me, they were like brain police who could look into your head and see your darkest secrets. And for a guy whose life was built on a foundation of lies, that kind of scrutiny was terrifying. Growing up, the worst thing about moving around so much was visiting the school psychiatrist every time I enrolled in a new district. At first, I made up all kinds of crazy stories like how I was part Navajo and that my father was killed in Iraq. But this strategy backfired big time, and I was rewarded for my creativity with even more trips to the school psychiatrist.
