Сэмуэль Шэм - Mount Misery

"Thanks," Jill said, her light eyes on mine, "I hardly felt a thing."

"It's nice to be able to do something right around here."

"It's a zoo," she said, "which is why Malik likes it, right, sport?"

"Spent half my childhood in the elephant pavilion of the Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago. Loved the smell of elephant shit. Always wanted to be a vet."

Jill left. Malik and Solini and I sat there. It felt cozy and safe.

"You did good in medicine, did you, Basch?" Malik asked intently.

"Yeah, but it wasn't enough, and-"

"Yeah, that's important, to do good in medicine, yeah."

Solini was on call, and got beeped out. Before I left I asked Malik, "Why don't my patients cooperate with me?"

"Because they're uncooperative."

"So then why are they in here? Don't they want to be?"

"They wanna wanna, but they can't."

"Why can't they? All they do is hassle me."

"That's why they're here."

'To hassle me?"

"What you call 'hassle' is your job."

"Psychiatry is hassle?"

"The hassle that drives their families and friends and lawyers and regular doctors bullshit Nobody knows what to do with 'em. Somebody's gotta, okay? We can't just walk away. That's what we get paid for."

'To deal with hassle?"

"Human suffering, yop. These people are in pain."

"I didn't go to school all these years to write orders for visits to department stores." Two borderlines had gone to Blooming-dale's that day, Heiler BPOs with BCCs-Bloomingdale's Charge Cards.

"Visits to department stores are important. Lotta hassles, shopping."

"But they all hate me."

"You want 'em to not be who they are? Like Lloyal and the rest of the dickheads running Misery want Dee White's suicide not to be a suicide?"

"You're not listening! I've got no idea what to do!"

"Good."

"Good?"

"Just don't terrorize 'em, okay? They're just human-more

like you and me than not. Trust your gut, your kishkees. Don't believe what anybody tells you."

"Not even that?" I asked.

"Sweetheart! You asked! There's hope!"

I took my suit coat and walked out onto the ward toward the door.

"Dickheads Go Home to Momma!"

Feeling a slow burn of fury, I ignored Thorny and left. But I was surprised to find that Malik had slipped out behind me. The heavy door clanked shut. He and I were alone on the wooded stairwell.

"Look, I figured out why I'm preaching to you today. I'm fucked over by Ike's bein' gone. He was real important… y'know, to me?" His eyes glittered behind the amber. "I got to show you what I know, okay?"

"Sure."

"And bring your racket tomorrow? A sport a day, okay?" I nodded. "By the way, have you ever done any psychiatry, I mean before now?"

"Nope. It wasn't required in med school when I was there."

"Ever been in therapy yourself?"

"Never felt the need. I tend to just jump into things, and think later. So I just jumped in here, to try to understand people, as a shrink." His eyes widened. "Bad, eh?"

"Hell no! Good-even great!"

"That I don't know anything about shrinking?"

"It's a giftl" he said, and disappeared back onto the ward.

Walking away, I felt a wave of exhaustion, an inner exhaustion, as if from a vague lack, say of oxygen to my brain. I'd been punched around above the neck, but from within, and not allowed to punch back. As I walked the shaded road up the hill, the oaks lining it, the oak leaves, the actuality of the leaves whether or not they were named "oak," even things you'd think of as vague such as the heat, the humidity, the exhausted sunshine itself-all were a starkly real and actual comfort, compared to the world of Misery. In the haze of the exquisite twilight, the leaves of the grand high oaks moving gently, light-greenly in the breeze, seemed rock solid.

As relieved as I was to get out of the nuthouse, and as real as the outer world seemed, I found I was carrying with me a suspicion about the people in it. My fellow bus riders were

subject to scrutiny. I studied their physical appearance-their body language, the barricades of their bus faces-and their overheard words for clues to their mental illness, realizing with alarm that I was making a running checklist of the Krotkey Factors for the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Organization, which Malik had said didn't exist.

At home, wiped out, I staggered to bed. As I started to fall out of exhaustion into sleep, I was horrified by the idea that I was killing myself to learn a profession that was supposed to keep people from killing themselves but that the world expert in how to do this had been shaking my hand at ten-thirty the night before and at eleven that same night that same hand was flipping enough pills into that world expert's mouth to kill himself, all of which was being denied by other world experts teaching me psychiatry. Having seen so much death in the world all last year I could understand how it was a helluva lot simpler to close down to this disaster rather than open up to it and the one guy who'd admitted the truth and cried about it had no explanation for it and while he seemed on the ball he was a definite flako a jock shrink of all things always jolting my mind telling me these slashed-up, suicidal patients were more like me than not, like the first time a baby stares out into space jolted by a first idea of a word or of a self which are maybe one and the same all the breathless red spices of summer, all in all so far except for Jill and her definite peach lace it was all so fuzzy you'd have to call it kind of crazy- and what the hell did those initials on Malik's tank top what was it what the hell was it oh yeah LAMBS what did they stand for anyway?

Christine! Shit.

I said I'd call tonight. Too tired. But what if she was sitting there waiting, what if my call might just make the difference in keeping her alive, like someone's promise to Dee White, unkept, had tipped him over? Or had my telling him my suspicion about Schlomo, his analyst, tipped him over? God. Christine might be sitting by the phone, pills in her hand. Was it too late? Midnight.

I picked up the phone. Dialed. Four rings. Answering machine, and Carly Simon's 'You're So Vain' came on. And then, Beep.

"This is Dr. Basch. Hoping things are all right and feel free

to call me in the morning. See you next week at the usual time and please call tomorrow to confirm."

Putting the receiver down, I found that my heart was pounding. My anxiety was bringing out in me my father's gentle dental conjunctions. Was Malik wrong, could she too be lying there dead? Should I go over?

I poured a knockout scotch and lay down, my mind reeling back and forth, back and forth, shuffling fears and hopes till it could no longer take credit or blame for anything living, and died.

Three

"WATCHIT, BASCH, YOU'RE jiggling the napoleons!"

It was seven the next night. Malik and I were climbing up the manicured hill to the Farben Building. I was carrying by a loop of green satin ribbon a box of French pastries from Gourmet Misere, a shop in the nearby mall. The napoleons were, according to Malik, the key to an easy night on call.

The day had sped by. While most of my Emerson 2 patients had deigned to speak with me, the sessions had had a surface-level, lacquered feel, which, compared to their hostility, was a relief. My main worry was still Christine, the Lady in Black. She hadn't returned my call, my several calls. Despite Malik's reassurance, I was scared for her. But what more could I do?

That morning I'd seen Cherokee. He'd called and said he needed an appointment right away. He seemed worse, eyes red from another night without sleep, collar wrinkled, the part down the middle of his scalp ragged, his light hair falling to and fro like wheat missed in a harvest. Our first session, he said, had made everything worse, opening him up, setting his mind reeling in the terror of jealousy. But talking about it with me again seemed to calm him, and we did manage to move from Schlomo-whom he imagined to be "tall dark and handsome, like you, Basch"-to his deep sense of being a failure in his life and his work.