Ballad of the Black and Blue Mind (5 page)

Anna looked at her and waited. Dr. Berman said, Monkeys in cages are known to tear at their fur and pierce their skin and birds in cages can peck at their bodies until they bleed. What kind of a cage are you in? Anna said, I don't watch
Animal Planet
. Dr. Berman said, How long has this been going on? Since the month before I went to college, said Anna. Do you want it to stop? asked Dr. Berman. Yes, said Anna. This wasn't a very convincing yes, it wasn't a heartfelt yes, but it was a yes, nevertheless.

Beth was tired. Did she need a calcium supplement? Beth woke in the morning with a cramp in her leg. On her way to her eleven o'clock class Beth heard her cell phone ring and she was afraid, what now? It was the dry cleaners, they had found her missing gray blouse. There was a certain light that had left her eyes, Fritz noticed. Meyer who never paid any attention to his mother noticed. At dinner he complimented her blue jacket and he asked her if she wanted him to get her anything when he walked the dog. Her cell phone had an icon that glowed a radioactive green to illustrate how much power was left in its storage hold. Her own power she felt had drained below 20 percent and when it was all gone she would go blank. No people chargers existed. Fritz made excuses to stay out late. He was working at his office. He needed to go to Chicago to do some research for a few days.

Beth was like one of those clouds you notice when lying on your back at the beach, at first it has a shape, a donkey, a unicorn, a mountain with a tree on top, and then as the winds move on the shape changes and the cloud breaks up into several blurred pieces and you can't make out any form at all and your eye turns away. The cloud cannot sustain interest once it has come apart.

Would you like to be my research assistant for a few months? Fritz asked his daughter. She was silent. There are some letters in the library that a soldier wrote home to his sister and she saved them. I need to have them available while I'm writing. Anna looked down at her feet. She had no interest in letters from a long gone battlefield. A wave of boredom came over her, a wave so high, so forceful that it might have been a tsunami of boredom. She could drown in her own disinterest. She thought of her razor, its thin blade waiting for the early hours of dawn for her attention. She thought of her knee with the wide white scar from the time she fell on a rock in the park at the sixth-grade field day. She ran her fingers over her scar. I'm busy, she said to her father. Doing what? he asked in a tone that he had not meant to use and embarrassed him as it echoed in the room. Beth said, Leave her alone. Anna cast her mother a thank you look and Fritz seemed fascinated by a report on CNN from a faraway place where some young man had set himself on fire in protest over ever-present tyranny—lack of religious freedom, and an inability to feed his young child. The act disgusted Fritz. He could not take his eyes from the screen as the footage ran over and over again and the flames, starting small at the base of the man's legs, rose higher and brighter. The camera was held in the hand of someone standing on a distant balcony. Fritz could not see the burning man's features.

Anna had left the room. She lay down on her bed. She text messaged her roommate, What's up? NM, came back the answer. A circle had closed, excluding her. She had left and in leaving all conversations had been cut off as if a power surge had disabled her friendships.

Dr. Berman, she said the next Thursday, I have no friends. Did you ever have friends? Dr. Berman asked. I did, Anna said. Then you'll have them again, said Dr. Berman. When? said Anna. When you're ready, said Dr. Berman.

Tell me about your last boyfriend, said Dr. Berman.

I haven't had a boyfriend, said Anna.

No one you hoped would be your boyfriend? said Dr. Berman.

No, said Anna. She was lying.

Beth missed a lunch with the head of her department. Her graduate assistant was out sick and Beth had forgotten to look at her calendar. She spent time picking at the severe wound to her own pride. What was that pride? Had it been overweening, did she tempt the gods to humble her? She didn't believe in gods or God but she had no doubts about humbling. She had felt a condescending rush of pity when her friend Ellen's daughter had been sent to rehab in Minnesota. Now she pitied herself and was ashamed. In addition she was ashamed of being ashamed.

Would you like to go shopping with me this afternoon? Beth said to Anna.

Anna did not answer.

We could go down to SoHo, said Beth.

Anna did not look up. She was wearing another of her father's shirts and a pair of old jeans and her sneakers.

I'm set, she said to her mother. I don't need anything.

Since when are clothes about need? said Beth.

Since now, said Anna.

If you stood on one side of the River Styx and looked across to the other you would see the shades milling about, going nowhere, sitting on rocks, standing under pale branches of emaciated trees. The shades were not so much ghosts of the living as imprints in space of bodies that had once pulsed with sinew and bone, fluids, waste, red blood, yellow urine, eyelashes, hair follicles, nails that grew and grew, teeth that sat in the gums until they didn't. Charon ferried the newly dead across the river to their eternal home. Fritz looked at Anna and saw that she was in her own boat, stranded in between the shores, floating in the river's current, but moving no closer to one shore or the other. She was a small figure far out in the waters. He had no boat. He waved, he signaled to her, row, row back toward me. She didn't hear him.

A new Woody Allen movie opened in the art theater on Broadway. Fritz asked Anna to go with him. No, she said. I don't like Woody Allen movies. How is that possible? said Fritz. On what planet are you living? he added. Not yours, she said and went into her room and closed the door.

3 a.m. It wasn't that Anna felt terrible. As she rinsed the towel she had used to blot the red blood that spurted from a particularly deep cut in her forearm, Anna noticed that she felt relief, peaceful, calm, ordinary, herself. It was as if she had vomited after a long nausea and now felt well again, her stomach settling back to its usual unannounced activities. It was odd, this peace that seemed to flow from her wounds, little wounds, almost pretend wounds, “just a game” wounds, but wounds.

Perhaps we should send her to one of those wilderness camps where they teach survival techniques if you're lost in the canyons or trapped in a landslide? he said to Beth. Fritz had looked them up online. He couldn't concentrate on his own research. He itched, he paced, he took quick naps, he worked out at the gym, he bought a new printer and then returned it. He reread T. S. Eliot. The poet was an anti-Semite and Fritz's anger rose, as new as the soft spot in a baby's head, as familiar as his own face in the mirror. And then he wrote an essay about the causes of anti-Semitism. He tore up his essay. He had nothing to say that hadn't been said a thousand times before. In the privacy of his office he considered that all the words he had written were washing away faster than he could write them. From dust to dust was not meant to refer to books, but how apt, how perfect a phrase, even if everything was digitized and the capacity of the machines was as large as the distance between earth and the sun or longer and wider, it wouldn't matter because the infinite collection of words, observations, pithy thoughts would soon become electronic waste, jumbled together, in long lines of zeros and ones, ignored by the living who would have other distractions, their own ones and zeros.

It was 11:15. The bell rang. Dr. Berman opened the door. The girl standing there looked familiar. She walked into the office and sat down in the patient's chair. She must be a patient, but who? The appointment book was across the room on her desk. Dr. Berman took her own chair and looked expectantly at the girl, waiting for her to begin. Her name would come to her. Everything would return. It usually did. She would not panic. She could manage this session. The name began with an A, Aster, Abigail, Alice. No, she thought, not that. B, Betsy, Barbara, Brenda?

Anna said, I had a dream last night that Meyer was waiting outside my door with a steak knife and he wanted to stab me in the heart.

Meyer was who?

Dr. Berman said, You must hate someone. Who is it you hate?

Anna smiled, a small smile. She took the word
hate
as a gift, as a treasure passed from mother to daughter, as a kindness on the part of her therapist. Hate, she said. I do, I do hate someone.

Everyone hates, said Dr. Berman.

Anna smiled again. She said, I'm good at hating. I'm really good at hating.

 

 

three

There was a long list in Dr. Z.'s head of things he didn't believe. It was far longer than the list of things he did believe. It began with the resurrection of Jesus, the power of prayer, the good intentions of the state, the possibility of political salvation, the kindness of strangers, and went on to the pathos of Santa Claus and his reindeer and along the way it swept up all but the pursuit of happiness. Dr. Z. did believe in the pursuit if not in the possession of happiness.

On the other hand there were days, hours, long periods of time when he was happy. What that meant when he questioned himself was that he felt no need to be anywhere other than where he was. He had brought his desires for greater recognition, more public acclaim, more love, and more wealth to heel. His long face, his balding head seemed just the right one for his big body. He believed that the beast that was man would never change for the better but could always be worse than expected. This thought did not make him grieve. It was calming in its way. He expected no miracles and accepted the bloodlust of nature and the raw devouring needs of selves, his own included. However he suffered when his children were disappointed. He suffered when his wife was threatened with mutating cells in her left breast. He suffered when his patients felt hopeless or alone. He would have said this suffering was a sign of life. Without it he would have been a walking corpse. He was not a walking corpse. This was proved when a beautiful young woman walked past him on her way to another table in a restaurant and his loins jumped up and a flush came to his face and he moved his napkin over the offending organ.

She will have one, said Dr. H.

It's the third time, said Dr. Z.

Not unusual, said Dr. H.

She's afraid it will never happen, said Dr. Z.

I'm sorry, said Dr. H.

The loss of a baby is—, said Dr. Z.

Not a baby, said Dr. H.

Not yet, said Dr. Z.

I'm sorry, said Dr. H.

Ronit told me not to come over, said Dr. Z.

Just for now, said Dr. H.

She'll try again, said Dr. Z.

It will happen, said Dr. H.

Dr. H. was expecting a new patient. He was not nervous but he was alert as if the curtain in a theater was about to rise, the audience was settling down. The lights were slowly dimming. And he, ready, focused on the stage, hopeful. Left open on his computer screen on his desk, facing away from the patient's chair, was a recipe for Mediterranean lamb stew. Dr. H. cooked for his wife, for his friends, for the sheer pleasure of taste and smell and pride in his offerings. Dr. H. read recipes the way other men read the sports pages. Joy, it gave him joy. His children had learned to eat oysters and eel and turned up their small noses at things like pasta and cheese without a sprinkling of parsley or a portion of spicy sausage.

The patient was an older man, a widower, referred by his internist, who had, after many costly tests, found nothing to explain the man's stomach ailments, his headaches, and his lethargy.

In the first moments after he opened the door there would be an awkwardness, shyness on the part of physician and his patient, who was not yet his patient, was just a man in an office with a stranger who might become more than a stranger or might not. Dr. H. knew, because the internist had told him, that the man, Mike Wilson (Wilson changed from Winofsky), age seventy-two, had been a CBS journalist and then the producer of the nightly news on a cable channel and had also published four books for children. He had retired two years ago just after his wife had died.

As Dr. H. waited for the bell to ring he straightened his tie. A disheveled analyst might alarm an already disheveled patient.

And then he was there, in the soft chair, his umbrella in the basket outside the door, his white hair still thick and somewhat long. His face, his ruined face, bony and sad, marked by a bang on the chin from a fall from a tree in a distant Brooklyn boyhood. He looked at Dr. H. and swiveled his head. Like a camera scanning from left to right, he observed all the colors, all the objects, all the shelves of books, the rocking chair in the corner, the box of children's toys on a low chest.

I understand, said Dr. H., you haven't been feeling so well.

No, said his new patient. I haven't.

A woman, thought Dr. H., would now begin to speak. A man would wait to see if it was safe. A man would make sure the other man in the room would not be dangerous. A man would stay on his side of the wall until he could not any longer. Dr. H. said, I understand that you lost your wife.

Mike Wilson said, Her name was Lourdes. We were colleagues. We met in Buenos Aires.

Dr. H. saw that his patient's hands had lifted as if to hide his face and then lowered to his lap as the gesture was suppressed. Dr. H. asked if his patient was having trouble sleeping. He spoke in his softest voice. It had the quality of a dust-speckled moonbeam floating through the room. The voice said: safe, quiet, private, not like the park, not like a restaurant, not like your friend's living room, but something else, a hiding place, without noise, a place where thought was sacred and an attempt would be made, a valiant attempt (be brave, patient, or would-be patient, of mine) to speak the truth, to rush after the truth, to force it from its hiding places.

Mike Wilson said, I would be willing to die now. I've had a full life. I don't need more. This was a statement. It was not dramatic. It was said the way a person speaks of the rain and mentions that he has forgotten his umbrella.

Dr. H. nodded, Often, after a great loss people find it hard to continue.

Silence.

Dr. H. said into the silence, Tell me about your wife.

Mike Wilson's internist had referred him to both a male and a female doctor. He had chosen the male. Perhaps that was a mistake.

It had been a year, Mike Wilson explained that he was tired, tired by ten in the morning, but of course that was because he couldn't get to sleep until the sinking moon appeared outside his window and no sleeping aid seemed to work for more than a few days.

How did your wife die? asked Dr. H.

Mike Wilson answered swiftly, the way you respond to the customs officer on your return to the United States, no plants, no foods, no purchases over a few hundred dollars.

She died of lung cancer at home. We had excellent hospice care.

Only the drumming of fingers on the arm of the chair indicated that there was more to say, much more to say, but Dr. H. knew that would come. Inside his own chest he felt a dull ache, a wish to spare himself, a desire to get out of his chair and pace the room. He said, Tell me how she died. Were you with her?

And Mike Wilson told him about his son and daughter-in-law and told him about his other son who had not been able to come to the funeral, reasons to be explained later. He told him about the bottles of oxygen and the last thing that Lourdes had said to him: something to do with a soccer goal she had scored in high school.

Melancholy, loss, mourning, pathological or not—was there really a “not”? Dr. H. knew more about the subject than he would tell his patient. He knew enough to say almost nothing. Mike Wilson fell into the silence and said, I've been in three war zones, I've seen people die before. You see it immediately, the skin turns pale, the body is empty of itself, you know it, no question.

That's true, said Dr. H., but there are still a lot of questions to ask.

I know all the answers, said Mike Wilson.

Dr. H. said, If you did you would be sleeping.

Mike Wilson said, I've lost my appetite: not just for food.

Dr. H., I think you might want something else before you die.

I'm seventy-two, said Mike Wilson. And I've had enough.

Are you a gambling man? Mike Wilson asked Dr. H.

Silence.

You want to make a bet I don't live to Thanksgiving?

What year? asked Dr. H.

This year, said Mike Wilson.

You know the odds? asked Dr. H.

Mike Wilson smiled. This was a good game.

I don't bet, said Dr. H., ending the game.

There are days and months and years ahead, not as many as there once were, but enough to appreciate. It could be good to be alive.

It won't, said Mike Wilson, but nevertheless he agreed to meet with Dr. H. and try. All he had to lose was time and money. He had nothing better to do with his time and the money he had in the bank. The trip he and Lourdes were planning to take to the Norwegian fjords, the trip they had postponed until it was too late, that trip would be transformed into visits with Dr. H. Also, there was that other money, the money he wouldn't touch, in the safety deposit box, not his exactly, deep in the steel vault, two stories down from the street, a secret he vowed to keep from Dr. H.

Mike Wilson wanted to die, but not quite yet.

Mike Wilson dreamt he was in the studio and they were on-air and suddenly the anchor, Rory Cane, a man with wide lips and weary black eyes, began to whisper, and his voice got lower and lower and no one could hear him and the technicians were rushing around and sparks were flying from the wires strung from klieg lights and then the anchor took off his jacket and there was blood on his shirt. Someone had shot him.

Who shot him? asked Dr. H.

I don't know, said Mike Wilson. He was a good guy. He hadn't said a word against Mohammad or expressed any opinion on any matter at all. He was known to cheat at poker and a few people held it against him but I doubt they would shoot him.

Yes, said Dr. H.

He did once put his arm around Lourdes when we were covering the convention in Anaheim.

And? said Dr. H.

I didn't mind, said Mike Wilson. I didn't own her.

Uh-huh, said Dr. H.

You want to prescribe something for me? asked Mike Wilson. I have no objection to mind-altering drugs.

How much are you drinking? asked Dr. H.

Not enough, said Mike Wilson, not as much as when I was in Kuwait.

I'll prescribe something, said Dr. H., but think of it as a thin blanket, hardly enough to keep out the frost, not enough to keep your heart pumping, just enough to let us talk.

All right, said Mike Wilson. But nothing was all right.

Lourdes wore her hair loose and long. It went down to the middle of her spine. It was dark brown and soft and her nose was too wide and too long but her eyesight was perfect and she missed nothing. She could get angry quickly and just as quickly her anger turned to lust or affection, or song. I could bring you a photograph, said Mike Wilson.

Just tell me, said Dr. H., I prefer your words.

Lourdes liked to frighten me by swimming too far out in the sea. She was a good swimmer but sometimes I could hardly see her and the waves were high and loud.

Lourdes ran every morning in the park. She often smelled of sweat and soap and her legs were strong enough to hold me down on the bed and no matter how I struggled she wouldn't let me up until I—. Mike Wilson stopped. This was not the sort of thing you talked about.

Dr. H. said, Tell me more about her.

Mike Wilson stopped talking. He felt a great pressure on his chest. Was he having a heart attack? He felt a hot flash on his face, a grief came over him and there were no words to describe it, no words that he could form in his throat, his non-cooperating tongue was still and he would have been weeping, if he was the sort of man who wept, instead he coughed, he shook his head from side to side, he seemed to have let out a sound, perhaps a sigh, but it was involuntary, and he rejected the sound he heard coming from his own body.

There was silence in the room. The analyst waited and the patient knew the analyst was waiting and he wished he could speak but he couldn't.

The analyst said, What would Lourdes have wanted for you after her death? Did you talk about it?

Mike Wilson said, She said she wanted me to be happy.

And did you believe her? asked Dr. H.

I don't know, said Mike Wilson.

It was six months later when Mike Wilson told Dr. H. that his second son, Ivan, had been out of touch with his parents for five years. He was out of the country, living under a different name, unable to call or write. He had done something ungodly, this son who went to a private school on the Upper West Side and had excellent grades, played tennis on the school team, went on to his second choice college which was fine enough in New England and was gifted, really gifted, Mike Wilson assured Dr. H., in math, and then he got a job with a firm downtown, a very prominent firm.

Ivan had a slight tic in his left eye, he had a love of jazz and he played the drums in a band he had formed with some friends. He was an ordinary boy, said Mike Wilson. He never took drugs or at least only the usual ones at parties. He didn't have a drinking problem, at least as far as we knew. He had a girlfriend from a rich family. They had a penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue and a house in Sag Harbor, maybe that was it, the boats in the bay, he loved her boats.

Dr. H. was beginning to be able to guess the end of this tale. He said nothing.

It was in the
New York Post
. It was in
The
New York Times
, at first just in the business section but then it moved on to the first page. Ivan was the youngest of those indicted. In telling the story Mike Wilson stopped himself from making the excuses he used with close friends, with Lourdes. It was the culture of greed, it was the opportunity that couldn't be resisted. Everyone was doing it. The excuses did not seem convincing in Dr. H.'s office. Ivan disappeared before the trial. He forfeited the bail his girlfriend had posted. In the following year Mike and Lourdes read that she was married to a prominent novelist and had moved to Wyoming.

Wherever he was, Mike said, he had missed his mother's funeral. He probably didn't know she had died. He probably didn't know how much she had hoped he would appear in the last weeks by her bedside.

So, said Dr. H., you have had two losses, not just one.