Сэмуэль Шэм - Mount Misery

"Sorry if I'm not making sense," she said. "My brain isn't

working that well. I'm waiting for my period and I feel like a blimp. So what about you?" "I've been on an emotional roller coaster."

"Good!" "Good?"

"For some people that might be a problem, but not for you. So?"

I told her everything. When I finished, she said, "You were gonna kill yourself over this! Are you crazy?" "I guess I was."

"I'm glad you didn't because it would not have been very smart. Funny. I never picked up any 'killing yourself' signal from you. Fifteen minutes with a woman waiting in line to use a ladies' room and you know more about her than fifteen years with a guy. I feel sorry for guys actually." She took my arm, my triceps against: her breast. "But I can't get over it-you're so…" "What?"

'1 dunno, you're just so in it with me, now. Now, we could really get it on!" Her hand brushed my thigh. "But we can't, so keep talking." I told her about Schlomo. "Yeah," she said, "I know." "YouWw?"

"A lot of us who worked here know. He's been doin' it for years. Women go to him to find a therapist. The ones he wants to fuck, he keeps for himself, and the others he sends to somebody else. I went to him. He said he'd be my therapist, and I looked him up and down and said, 'Is this a joke?' "

"Why hasn't anyone tried to stop him?" She laughed. "What's so funny?"

"You. Look, you grew up thinking you had some clout, right? You were the privileged class. Me, and my people, we are the unprivileged class. We assume that these guys, the ones running things, are crooked, and perverts. A lot of us mental health workers knew about Schlomo. Patients would tell us, sometimes, and at first we'd tell our bosses-Heiler, Errol, A.K. They'd tell us that the patients were crazy. Where I come from, you go along to get along, or else. Forget it. You can't do nothin' about it." "You'll see."

"You're actually going to try?"

"You bet. Will you help us, give us names of other victims?"

"No way. I've seen what they can do to you if you mess with them."

We found ourselves in a clearing, staring at a trailer park. The house trailers were parked in neat rows, each with its propane tanks and those aluminum awnings you see on TV wrapped around palm trees when hurricanes hit Florida. A trailer park, in Misery? A fresh sign, in the Misery colors and with the Misery pine tree and moon and duck rampant, read:

AFFILIATED PSYCHIATRISTS

Underneath was a map, with a "You are here" cross and the paths to each of nine house trailers, with a list of names, including:

GENEVA HOOEVENS, M.D. MODULAR UNIT 7

"Mind if I look her up?" "No. I know her. She's great."

Yoman the seeing-eye dog lay on the steps of Modular 7 beneath a hand-lettered sign:

HERE AT MISERY

THE FLOGGING WILL CONTINUE

UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES.

I knocked. Geneva answered. I introduced Jill, whom she remembered.

"What's with the trailer park?" I asked.

"Misery's in money trouble. There's been a sudden drop in the census. Lloyal and Nash are trying to get rid of me and the other psychiatrists who still believe in talking with patients. It's all drugs now. In a few days they'll close up Heidelberg East for good."

"What? Why?"

"Empty beds. Insurance was only paying for a few days of detox. They'll close the building, add another DSM diagnosis to each patient, and send them all over to a new "Dual Diagnosis Unit," run by Errol Cabot. Errol's going to be putting all the drug addicts and alcoholics on drugs."

"Great. And what's with these house trailers?"

'These house trailers are not 'house trailers.' They are 'temporary Misery-quality modular office structures.' "

We laughed. I told her about Schlomo, and asked if she'd ever heard of him abusing other patients.

"Yes." She thought for a moment. "Could it be twenty years ago already? Yes. I still had my sight. I got a call from an internist who said a young woman patient of his had come to him claiming to have been sexually abused in therapy by Schlomo and would I see her. I met with the woman, and believed her. I was a member of the Freudian Institute. Assured of confidentiality, I filed a complaint. Schlomo was a rising star then. The institute said that unless the womarf came forward and made a public complaint, they could do nothing. And she couldn't do mat. Too vulnerable."

"Did anything happen?"

"Lots. Schlomo found out, and stopped referring patients to me. I was blacklisted. But it was good, in the end, to give up psychoanalysis. Forced me to learn new things. Like learning new ways to see."

"He's been abusing patients for twenty years?"

"At least twenty."

"Do you know any women who might talk?" I asked.

She thought for a while, but could not come up with anyone. I felt even more discouraged. "But it's such a rich afternoon!" she said happily. "Shall we walk a little, on the path through the woods?"

We started out. Geneva had one of her hands on the dog's harness and the other resting lightly on my arm, as if I were escorting a shy girlfriend to a dance. Having gone blind gradually, she'd been able to cultivate her other senses in synchrony with the decay of her eyes. This time of year, with all the plants and trees in bloom and the moisture of the air acting like a second blossoming, the scent was, as she said, "Heavenly, heavenly." We came to a clearing, a fork in the path where the daylight was made all the more dazzling by the wooded dark and the memory of rain. We stood in that moment's mist and sun. Jill said she had to go.

"See you soon," I said, putting my cheek to hers, my hand reflexively moving to the hillock of her belly, to the free edge of her marvelous breast.

"No you won't," she said, pressing my fingers to her, "I'm leaving tonight for the Amazon."

"The Amazon? Why?"

"Life's easy, if you're on the beam!"

With a hug that took my breath away, her breasts pliant against my chest so that I saw them again naked, half tanned, and swaying, she was gone.

Geneva and I and Yoman walked on slowly, talking.

"This training," I said, "this whole first year of training, has been unreal. I don't know if I can take two more. How can you stay here?"

"I shan't stay much longer. People like me don't stay long in places like this. The Lloyals and Hashes of the world stay, not I."

"It's like everything I've been taught here," I said, "goes against anything I've learned to be true. If I'm sitting there with patients thinking, I can't be with them. It's like 'I think, therefore I am not.' "

"Quite. It's not the method you use, but the person you are. Do you know, the older I get, the more it seems that what we're quote 'taught' is opposite to what really is. We're taught to avoid conflict because it will lead to violence, when in fact it's the very avoidance of conflict that will do so. We're taught that the way to avoid stereotypes is to not look at difference, when in truth it's only by seeing deeply into difference that stereotype is avoided. Even Freud's idea that therapy is a process of making the unconscious conscious? Perhaps we'd all be better off helping people make the conscious unconscious-getting all of our egos out of the way!"

We laughed together. The dog looked up at us, seeming to smile, as dogs do.

"Sounds like something Malik would say," I said.

Stillness. A bird cried, a blue jay. Malik.

Walking on in silence, we heard the thwap thwap of tennis balls being hit. Soon we were in view of the tennis court. There, in the cage of chain-link fencing, four people were playing doubles. Even from a distance the intensity of their game was evident. It was being played in hostile silence but for rare curses and complaints from one side of the net.

"Who are they?" Geneva asked.

"Let's see." I led her toward the court. We stopped under