We Can Build You (30 page)

I said haltingly, “You wouldn’t—”

“Kid you? Mislead you? Try it, Louis, and find out.” Her
face, now, was deeply serious. “The only way you’ll know is to have the courage to go ahead.”

Turning, she walked rapidly away from me.

“FU see you,” she said over her shoulder. “Maybe.” A last cool, cheerful, self-possessed grin and she was gone; other people moved in between us, people going in to eat at the cafeteria.

I trust you, I said to myself.

After dinner that day I ran into Doctor Shedd in the hall. He did not object when I told him I’d like a moment of his time.

“What’s on your mind, Rosen?”

“Doctor, when I get up to take my fugues I sort of feel like hanging back. I’m not sure I’m getting anything out of them anymore.”

“How’s that again?” Doctor Shedd said, frowning.

I repeated what I had said. He listened with great attention. “And I don’t find my fantasy sex-partner convincing anymore,” I added this time. “I know she’s just a projection of my subconscious; she’s not the real Pris Frauenzimmer.”

Doctor Shedd said, “This is interesting.”

“What does it mean, what I’ve said just now … does it indicate I’m getting worse or better?”

“I honestly don’t know. We’ll see at the next fugue session; I’ll know more when I can observe your behavior during it.” Nodding goodbye to me he continued on down the corridor.

At my next controlled fugue I found myself meandering through a supermarket with Pris; we were doing our weekly grocery shopping.

She was much older now, but still Pris, still the same attractive, firm, clear-eyed woman I had always loved. Our boy ran ahead of us, finding items for his weekend camping trip which he was about to enjoy with his scout troop in Charles Tilden park in the Oakland hills.

“You’re certainly quiet for a change,” Pris said to me.

“Thinking.”

“Worrying, you mean. I know you; I can tell.”

“Pris, is this real?” I said. “Is this enough, what we have here?”

“No more,” she said. “I can’t stand your eternal philosophizing; either accept your life or kill yourself but stop babbling about it.”

“Okay,” I said. “And in exchange I want you to stop giving me your constant derogatory opinions about me. I’m tired of it.”

“You’re just afraid of hearing them—” she began.

Before I knew what I was doing I had reached back and slapped her in the face; she tumbled and half-fell, leaped away and stood with her hand pressed to her cheek, staring at me in bewilderment and pain.

“Goddam you,” she said in a broken voice. “I’ll never forgive you.”

“I just can’t stand your derogatory opinions anymore.”

She stared at me, and then spun and hurried off down the aisle of the supermarket without looking back; she grabbed up Charles and went on.

All at once I realized that Doctor Shedd stood beside me. “I think we’ve had enough for today, Rosen.” The aisle, with its shelves of cartons and packages, wavered and faded away.

“Did I do wrong?” I had done it without thinking, without any plan in mind. Had I upset everything? “That’s the first time in my life I ever hit a woman,” I said to Doctor Shedd.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, preoccupied with his notebook. He nodded to the nurses. “Let him up. And we’ll cancel the group therapy session for today, I think; have him go back to his room where he can be by himself.” To me he said suddenly, “Rosen, there’s something peculiar about your behavior that I don’t understand. It’s not like you at all.”

I said nothing; I merely hung my head.

“I’d almost say,” Dr. Shedd said slowly, “that you’re malingering.”

“No, not at all,” I protested. “I’m really sick; I would have died if I hadn’t come here.”

“I think I’ll have you come up to my office tomorrow; I’d like to give you the Benjamin Proverb Test and the Vigotsky-Luria Block Test myself. It’s more who gives the test than the test itself.”

“I agree with that,” I said, feeling apprehensive and nervous.

The next day at one in the afternoon I successfully passed both the Benjamin Proverb Test and the Vigotsky-Luria Block Test. According to the McHeston Act I was legally free; I could go home.

“I wonder if you ever should have been here at Kasanin,” Dr. Shedd said. “With people waiting all over the country and the staff overworked—” He signed my release and handed it to me. “I don’t know what you were trying to get out of by coming here, but you’ll have to go back and face your life once more, and without pleading the pretext of a mental illness which I doubt you have or ever have had.”

On that brusque note I was formally expelled from the Federal Government’s Kasanin Clinic at Kansas City, Missouri.

“There’s a girl here I’d like to see before I leave.” I asked Doctor Shedd, “Is it all right to talk to her for a moment? Her name is Miss Rock.” Cautiously I added, “I don’t know her first name.”

Doctor Shedd touched a button on his desk. “Let Mr. Rosen see a Miss Rock for a period of no more than ten minutes. And then take him to the main gate and put him outside; his time here is over with.”

The husky male attendant brought me to the room which Pris shared with six other girls in the women’s dorm. I found her seated on her bed, using an orange stick on her nails. As I entered she barely glanced up.

“Hi, Louis,” she murmured.

“Pris, I had the courage; I went and told him what you said to say.” I bent to touch her. “I’m free. They discharged me. I can go home.”

“Then go.”

At first I did not understand. “What about you?”

Pris said calmly, “I changed my mind. I didn’t apply for a release from here; I feel like staying a few months longer. I like it right now—I’m learning how to weave, I’m weaving a rug out of black sheep wool, virgin wool.” And then all at once she whispered bleakly, “I lied to you, Louis. I’m not up for release; I’m much too sick. I have to stay here a long time more, maybe forever. I’m sorry I told you I was getting out. Forgive me.” She took hold of my hand briefly, then let it go.

I could say nothing.

A moment later the attendant led me through the halls of the clinic to the gate and left me standing outside on the public sidewalk with fifty dollars in my pocket, courtesy of the Federal Government. Kasanin Clinic was behind me, no longer a part of my life; it had gone into the past and would, I hoped, never reappear again.

I’m well, I said to myself. Once more I test out perfectly, as I did when I was a child in school. I can go back to Boise, to my brother Chester and my father, Maury and my business; the Government healed me.

I have everything but Pris.

Somewhere inside the great buildings of Kasanin Clinic Pris Frauenzimmer sat carding and weaving virgin black sheep’s wool, utterly involved, without a thought for me or for any other thing.