Сэмуэль Шэм - Mount Misery

"And you drank because?"

"Because I'm a drunk." She clasped her hands in her lap, over a bright red sash with tiny bells. Berry always said that if you look hard, you can see, in anyone, a touch of the Divinity. Berry! My heart twisted on its spindle, in pain. Geneva sat quietly for a few seconds. Then, in a firm, soft voice, as if she were placing each word like a seed in a row, right spacing, right depth, she went on, "Perhaps it would have been better if I had not gone blind. And yet, at some point, through my blindness I saw that seeking the easy and comfortable way was no longer my path. I've come to understand that one way to live is to run hard shouting against some fact of your life, and that another way is to surrender to the life force, to opening up, to learning the value of the situation in which you find yourself. The ego is insatiable, and will fight tooth and nail against surrender, against its own limits. Which is what makes surrender so valuable. Remarkable, is it not?"

"I… I guess I'm all out of 'remarkable' for today."

"Good for you!" she cried excitedly, clapping her hands like a child.

"Good?"

"Perhaps you're ready for something new!" She stroked Yoman, who responded with that happy "Hooray" whimper that dog owners love. "Feel free, here, to do as much or as little as you wish. I shall be most curious, given how you've been treated this year, to hear what you see."

"Thanks," I said, getting up, not knowing whether to shake her hand.

"Thank you!" she said enthusiastically, holding out her hand I extended mine. She clasped it solidly, as if our hands were all of us, yet so much beyond us as to be small, almost comic or incidental parts of everything larger.

"For what?"

"For hearing me into speech. Good-bye." I said good-bye and walked to the door, but just as I opened it she said, "One more thing?"

"Yes?"

"Have fun!"

"Fun in Misery would be radical."

"Wonderful word, 'radical,' is it not?"

"Maybe," I said gloomily, not wanting to go along with all this hope. "Look-I'm really suspicious of religion, okay?"

"AA isn't religious, it's spiritual."

"What's the difference?"

"Authority." She pointed to the wall, where a framed photo hung. "See that photo?" A mob of Indians in turbans were being mowed down by rifle fire from a line of British troops in pith helmets. The commander of the British troops stood at attention, arms crossed over his chest, his face curious, as if he were judging a race.

"Yes?"

"The soldiers, firing, take no responsibility, for they are just following orders. The officer, having given the order, takes no responsibility for the actual killing. In a power-over system, violence is the inevitable result. But listen to me," she chided herself, "I'm telling you what I just told you no one can tell you. Good luck."

I walked out into the living room. Something big smashed into me.

"Outta da fuckin' way, Jack," someone shouted in my face, "don't ever get between a man and his beer." Stench, of sweat and beer breath. A bloated flesh balloon with yellowing skin and puffy red slits for eyes. A drunk, wearing a T-shirt that proclaimed: GOD MADE THE IRISH NUMBER ONE. He walked away.

I realized why I had been so reluctant, with Geneva, to go along with all this smarmy hope, this AA propaganda. In my medical training, drunks and addicts were the worst. I'd learned to hate them. They were admitted deathly ill. We fought tooth and nail to take care of them. When they were better they said "Fuck you!" and went out to drink and drug again. Drug addicts, in addition to being unreachable, had learned a hundred ways to dupe you, to get drugs out of you, one scam after another. The feeling is that you are working flat out using all your years of education and all your mental discipline and manual dexterity to help people who will not help themselves, who in fact seem hell-bent on destroying themselves and making you and their families suffer in the process. Eighty-five percent of violent crime is committed by people on alcohol or drugs. Every morning's newspaper tells another horrific tale. Ask any doctor: these are not human beings; these are monsters.

Watching this cretin assault the coffee, I was filled with

loathing. I drank too, and I'd taken some phenobarb, but I had stopped. / wasn't driving boozed up full-speed down the interstate the wrong way, smashing into good folk doing everything right, killing whole innocent families like the Bumblefucks and walking away with a few scratches, soon to drink and drive and kill again. If I could control it, why couldn't they? Because I had some moral fiber, and because they were the scum of the earth. So don't give me this "I've got a disease" bullshit You're still responsible. Me, help them? You must be joking. Where was the touch of the Divine in this shitbag?

I fled, driving down the hill with the windows open to the chill daffodil breeze, directly to The Misery. My detox from the phenobarb had left me feeling shaky, and two vodka tonics in the comfortable "morning in a barroom" ambience put me right I bought some sugarless breath mints and drove back up the hill to Misery to see my patient Zoe.

WHO DID NOT show. I sat there waiting, sucking one mint after another, staring out the window down to the tennis court Finally, with only a few minutes left, Zoe arrived.

Ever since she had shown up that night at my house, she had avoided meeting with me. Now I saw her with new eyes: tall, slender, straight-nosed, light brown hair cut short-all tending toward boyish. She looked like a young Lily Putnam. She was dressed in rumpled jeans and a bulky sweater. She was embarrassed to be there.

We spoke like slight acquaintances, about the weather, about her concern for Thorny, who seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth. "It's hard to see me again," I said, "is it?"

"Uh-huh."

"Can we talk about it?"

"Not much time left."

"I can stay later."

"Oh great" she said sarcastically. "That's how Schlomo started out too. Gave me extra time one night. Because I was 'special.' Puke City. Look, I know that you think I should do something about him, but like it's not that easy. I'm a big girl. I can take responsibility for what I did."

"You were incredibly vulnerable, after what happened on

Thoreau. A. K. Lowell made us all vulnerable. For my part, well, I want to tell you that I'm sorry. I owe you an apology."

"Accepted. Time's up." She got up and went to the door. "Everybody makes mistakes," she said. "So Schlomo made one. Big deal."

"Not just one."

"What?"

"Since we talked, I've talked with another woman patient who told me that he sexually abused her." Zoe stared at me, her mouth open in a little O. "Will you meet with her?" I asked. "I'll be there, if you want."

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't believe you."

I took out a notebook in which I'd written down what Lily Putnam had said, and started to read. " 'Schlomo told me, "It's your WASP upbringing. This analysis will free you up. Affairs are good, a good good thing. Get in touch with your grief, your tsouris-" '

"Stop it!"

"Will you meet with her?"

"No way," she said. "If I can't feel even a little special, with a little self-respect, I might as well be dead."

She walked out. I sat there feeling defeated, staring at the tennis court covered with billowing curtains of rain. I glanced down at my junk mail:

Sanctuary of ISAAC and RACHEL for Above-Ground Burial

Act Before July 1 and Avoid the Price Increase

"If not now, when?"

Why wait to go shopping on the worst day of your life?

Shouts, screams, hangings outside my door. I ran out. Down the hall, Mr. Beef Telly and another Security man had cornered Solini's reggae man. He was huddled in a heap, one arm wrenched behind his back in a half nelson being tightened by Security. He screamed in pain.