Сэмуэль Шэм - Mount Misery

"But we need to get in touch, to make love."

"You know making love is how I get in touch."

"Can't you just talk to me a little first?" she asked.

Right then, this seemed like asking me to climb Mount Everest a little first. I had that same "I'm a cold fish" feeling I'd had with my outpatient Christine, and, tensely, I said, "Please, please don't spoil it."

"I'm spoiling it? All I'm asking is-"

"Damnit, lay off!" I shouted. She flinched, and her hands protected her breasts. Then, slowly, she sat back and stared at

me, fear in her eyes. A rush of shame. Why the hell was I yelling at her? I felt horrible. "I'm sorry. I'm really tight."

"I'll say."

'This stuff is so weird. During my medical internship I'd blow up ten times a day, but when I got home I was okay. Now, no matter what happens, I have to bottle it up, not show any feelings-and I get home and explode."

"But I want your intensity, Roy."

"I know, but right now I want to get away from it. It's too much."

"You think that as a therapist you shouldn't let on what you feel?"

"If I do, people like Schlomo Dove tell me I'm sick and that I should be in therapy."

"You're not sick. But maybe it would be a good idea."

"Right. I'll go see Schlomo, he'll make me a match, with that oh-so-special analyst, just for me. 'Tell Schlomo,' " I said gooily. " 'Tell Schlomo about sad and lonely.' "

She laughed, I laughed with her, and the glass wall between us broke. We embraced, and like horny angels together we made that downstream journey where at best the notion of "Me, Roy, you, Berry" goes under, tumbling along under the death-defying notion of "us."

Four

DEAR BASCH,

We started out well enough in Tuscany but it soon turned into the vacation from hell. Lily left last week to go back home, saying she needed some "space." I accused her of needing to see you know who! She said I was pazzo- crazy-and that everything was bravo-fine. Tuscany felt tainted so the girls and I are doing Amalfi. It's beautiful but not when the woman you love can't share the beauty. Hope and little Kissy and I are having good fun, but there are moments-times when we're in the most breathtaking spots, like this 'Terrace of the Infinite" in Villa Cimbrone, Ravello-when I sense them missing their mom so much my heart breaks. At times like that I try to joke. Citta Fiasco. Failure City. We'll keep on doing the tourist thing. I'll call you after Labor Day.

Ciao, Putnam

He had mailed a postcard in an express letter. The postcard showed a curved railing edging a sheer drop to the Mediterranean. The view south toward the boot was infinite: mountains, clouds, sea easing into sky. I had been in that exact same spot, with Berry. One step off, you're dead.

I was relieved that he was in touch with me, but worried about him. If there was one thing he could be sure of, it was that Schlomo Dove would not be seeing his wife while he was vacationing on Cape Cod. In much the same way that the august Pope was sacred to Catholics, the August Cape was sacred to Freudians. Having spent eleven months of the year

in vicious gossip about each other and their patients, Schlomo and the other Freudian yentas had been spending the month in vicious gossip about each other and their patients while lying next to each other in floppy hats and baggy swimsuits on the bluntly narcissistic beaches of what Viv called "Misery East." Schlomo was said to be into nude sunbathing, airing those pits, those girlish tits, that pendulous belly, to the trade winds. Reading poor Cherokee's card, I worried again about his sanity, and hoped he'd call soon.

It was the day after Labor Day, and I was sitting in Malik's rounds chair on Emerson 1, awaiting the arrival of Dr. Blair Heiler. The day before, Malik had left to do Advanced Child Pathology in the Public Sector, the first of several third-year resident rotations that would take him away from Misery. His first rotation would be on the Children's Unit at Candlewood State Hospital, down the hill and across the swamp. His wife Bronia, the tough Israeli whose name was accompanied by an eye-roll, would be his boss.

The Emersons were in good shape. In my month with Malik, my work with patients had gone pretty much as he had predicted: to the extent that I had been able to stop acting like a psychiatrist and be a person to them-starting by discarding my suit and tie for shirt, slacks, and running shoes-they had responded not as patients but as people. For a month the ward secretary had presented Malik with piles of pink message slips from insurance companies. He always said he would get to them after a carrot or a run or tennis, and most of them went into the garbage. "Mental hospitals are hazardous to your mental health," he'd say. As their insurance ran out, those Emersonians who were ready were discharged, often in buddy pairs to the growing outpatient LAMBS system, which Malik called "my retirement." For us first-year residents, empty beds meant an easier time.

If a patient needed to stay, Malik would dazzle or threaten the insurance company into paying. Thorny and Zoe were on the runway, revving for takeoff. Mary Megan, recovering slowly from the single blast of Placedon, still twitched and shouted, but was talking to Hannah. Malik had always stressed just how sick sick people are, and it had taken all of our efforts to help the Emersonians deal with Ike White's

suicide and get them back to a sense of basic safety, trusting that we their doctors would not kill ourselves too.

On his last day, offering us fresh packets of Stim-U-Dents, Malik had proclaimed, "The rip in the fabric, from Ike White's suicide, has been healed. Beware of Blair Heiler, and do more sportsl"

That morning, as I was waiting to begin rounds, Heiler returned from his vacation in Stockholm. Given his reputation for terror, I was on guard.

Six feet five, with light blond hair, eyes the silvery blue of mica, a Roman nose and a movie-star chin, walking onto the ward in an airy summer suit and Liberty of London tie, Blair was a stunning sight, an image so clear and sharp that, set against the bizarre background of Emerson 2, for a second it seemed to fool the eye, and I found myself thinking: This guy can't be real. It was as if you'd been sitting in your living room expecting Jack the Ripper, and in walked the Boy Next Door. An alluring male cologne completed the package. Blair's manner was relaxed, modest and friendly. He had a charming habit of tossing his head to flick a blond forelock back out of his eyes, and then patting it down with long slender fingers. His eye contact was unwavering, and while his looking down at me was disconcerting, his easy laughter was disarming.

Blair was forty-two, happily married to an heiress of one of the major convenience store chains, and the father of a three-year-old boy. He had been born on an army base in Alaska, where his father was on the rise toward major general, and his education had been typical of military children-many different schools in many different cities and countries. As a young man he had gotten used to transience, to seemingly impulsive swings in and out of school systems and playgrounds. He had grown familiar with a life of unstable personal relationships and fear of abandonment, and had learned to handle the powerful mood swings and emptiness associated with repeated hellos and abrupt good-byes. In a sense, he had lived with the Krotkey Factors a long time. Now, Blair too was a guy on the rise, a happy, healthy member of the Misery family. Already an Associate Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, his high-powered research on borderlines was

rumored to be about to lift him a rung higher on the academic ladder, to Assistant Associate Professor of Psychiatry. I stopped him on his way into his office and introduced myself.

His face lit up and he shook my hand warmly. "I've heard a lot about you, Roy-Rhodes scholar and all. The chief says you're a star."