Сэмуэль Шэм - Mount Misery

I stood on the civilian side of the Cyclone-fence swinging gate, looking into the driveway which, given how small the preschoolers were, was big enough, with a slash of grass on either side, to function as their playground. To the left of the driveway were the jungle gym and swings and a tire suspended from three chains, which the kids could swing on and rotate around while other kids pushed. To the right, the sandbox and mud pile and a kids' plastic kitchen set were next to the stairs of the old house that functioned as the school.

As I waited, the "threes" and "fours" were being picked up by their parents, thirty-two splashes of bright kid colors zipping here and there until each got linked up, each little hand finding a big one, attached to a grown-up more drably dressed. Seeing those little hands in those bigger ones, sensing the flutter of big people's love even if clouded by irritation at little people's dirt on pants or failure to wear a hat in the chill of the day, these hands and this flutter had a strangely deep effect on me, as if my heart, so dry as to be brittle, was drinking in some of it, and softening.

A lull. No more kids. I waited. Berry.

She looked older, more substantial, in a way, maybe because of all the small kids. She was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with the nursery school logo on the front, a kid's drawing of a sun, simple round black circle filled in with yellow, and with black sun rays streaming out. The yellow sun was a face, with a smile. She looked like she had gained weight

When she saw me, she stopped still. Then without a word she walked to the gate and stared into my eyes.

"Hi," I said.

"What happened to you?" Berry asked.

"You mean where was I?"

"No, no, I mean now. What happened?"

"Why? What do you see?"

"Your eyes are filled with light. What happened?"

"C'mon. I'll tell you." She hesitated. "I know, I know," I said, "it's crazy, to just show up like this. But I've got to talk to you. If you'll just give me an hour, that's all-"

"That's all? You show up out of the blue, your eyes all funny, and you're just going to give me an hour?"

"You want more?'

"Still afraid of that?'

"No, I mean not right now. I need to show you something, at my place. Okay?" She nodded. "C'mon."

As we drove along I told her about my night in the hospital, my morning on the beach, and as I told it I heard it as simple, clear, like when you tell someone your home address. We parked at my house.

"On your face?" she asked. "Really on your face?"

"Very much so."

"In the sand?"

"Still got some grit, in my teeth."

"Roy, that's wonderful!"

"You think?'

"I know." She hesitated. "Shit."

"What?"

"It's just that-I don't know-I was starting to get over your being gone…."

"And?"

"And you're here, you creep. I mean you're really here."

"Like I wasn't, that day on the beach."

"And when I tried to get to you that day, you kept saying, 'But I am here, damnit! What's wrong with you? You're too damn sensitive.' " She sighed. "Creep."

"I'm sorry. Really sorry." I took her hand, looked into her eyes, and was filled with a sense of our history together; our care and concern-more-filled with a curiosity of who she was right now, for I saw that despite our years together I didn't really know who this woman was, and I wanted to, desperately. "I love you, you know. I've never stopped."

She said nothing, and looked away, out her window.

"Will you come in?" I asked. "Got something I need to show you." She nodded. I started to get out of the car. She touched my shoulder. I turned back to her.

"It's foolish for me to tell you this, Roy, but me neither."

Now we looked into each other's eyes without shying away-for me as if for the first time, that scary sacred time when I a boy first looked into her a girl's eyes without shying away-and I saw her eyes soften from a woman's to a girl's, and glow a little with tears, as did mine. We were too scared to touch each other.

We got out and I led her upstairs to the turret bedroom and opened the top drawer of the dresser and took out the small IV bottle of normal saline and the polyethylene tubing with the stopcock and butterfly needle and the bottle of phenobarb. She asked, "What's all that for?"

'To kill myself."

She gasped. "No way!" She snatched it all up and held it to her chest. "Do you have any more pills?"

"No."

"I'm getting rid of all this." She flushed the pills down the toilet and wrapped the IV bottle in a towel and smashed it with a hammer and sliced up the tubing into macaroni and bent the butterfly with a pair of pliers. I led her back to the turret and dimmed the chandelier and went around to the five windows and pulled the shades. We faced each other across the bed, our eyes gradually getting used to the darkness, sight coming back in stages, first the outline of her body, then the contour of her face, then her eyes.

For the longest time we said nothing. The bed was a barrier and a link. I sensed the energies flowing back and forth between us as if made of fine filament, say silk, that light that strong, the energies as bright and clear and usual as the ones we as babies possess before they get normalized out of us, and I saw then that this was what she might call "mutual" and I might call "being with" and Malik might call "soul" and we all might call "spirit."

I whispered, "I'm asking you for help."

"I'm here," she whispered back. I heard her crying. She bowed her head, and put her face in her hands. I stood there with my hands at my sides and cried too, not only for her but

for my father, who died before I could live with him with any compassion, and before he could see any of my children.

Crying together softened us, lightened us.

I asked, "How can I help you?"

"Just by that, by asking. It works both ways."

"What are you crying about?"

"I'm crying for us."

"Us?"

"And I'm pissed as hell at you."

"I know."

"No you don't. Thanks to you, you creep, I gained eight pounds."

THE NEXT MORNING I stood outside Malik's door, knocking, to no answer. He was still refusing to go to any meetings, refusing to talk to his sponsor or to me. I opened the door and went in. The window shade was drawn against the morning. Light seeped in, in three widening slats.

Malik was lying on his side of the bed, curled up, head bowed, hands tucked into his chest, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt of which the visible portion read "-OREST." I stood, watching. He coughed, once, twice, clutched himself tighter to himself, and settled again.

I walked to the edge of his bed and sat down.

He stirred, sat up, staring at me with puzzlement, and then curiosity.

"How are you?" I asked.

"What's with you?"

"I want to hear about you-"

"No, no," he said, waving me away, "go on."

"I'm not here to talk about me, Malik."

"It's all the same," he said insistently. 'Talk."

I stared at him for a moment, reluctant to go along with his deflection of attention from himself to me. He stared back, his eyes steady, suspicious. Deft, he'd always said, you gotta be deft. Don't go at suspicion head-on. I started to tell him about where I was. Things I'd kept secret: my seeing Schlomo screwing Zoe, my preparations for suicide, Zoe coming to my apartment.

"Schlomo!" he said. "The shit!"

"And there's another victim." I told him about Lily Putnam.

"What have you done about it?"

"I can't get either of them to report him, or allow me to. I need help."

"We'll get to that. Go on."

I told him about my emergency room shift. My walk on the beach. "I've been doing a lot of crying," I said, "for my father, for Berry, for all the dead patients this year. I don't know why this is all happening, but it is."