Сэмуэль Шэм - Mount Misery

to an entire family at once. Her famous paper was entitled: "The Freudian Family Driven by a Projective/Intrqjective Identification Oedipal Oscillator." The Oscillator was so abstruse a concept that it was said that if anyone other than A.K. understood it-and it was commonly doubted that A.K. did, entirely-it was the magical analyst whom Blair Heiler worshiped, Renaldo Krotkey. It was also said that Krotkey, struggling with the Oscillator, had said, "The only person who can understand this shit is Frau Kernberg." Frau Kern-berg, a mythical figure in the analytic canon (said to have once met Freud), was old and wheelchair-bound in a continuous care facility called Conquistador, in Boca Raton, Florida. Only Krotkey, her disciple, was granted admission to her nursing home chamber.

Now, with Malik, I asked, "What is it, this Oscillator?"

"What is it? It's horseshit, is what it is. Horseshit. It's A.K.'s reach for fame. Shrinks specialize in their defects. A.K.'s is empathy."

"You've got to be joking."

"You're not laughing. Primo and Viv told me all about A.K. Listen up."

It turned out that A. K. Lowell had grown up as Aliyah K. Lowenschteiner, the daughter of fine, upstanding kosher butchers in Queens. She'd been a terrific young woman of immense promise and even, in Viv's words, "that certain something," until midway through her first year of psych residency here at Misery when she had gone under analysis with the head of the Freudian Institute-one Dr. Schlomo Dove. Aliyah and Ike White had both been analyzed by Schlomo. In fact they had been in the same class in the institute, and the best of friends. During her years on the couch with Schlomo, Aliyah had been transformed totally: Loe-wenschteiner became Lowell, Jew became Episcopal, hooked nose became straight, long dark hair became lightened to chestnut-brown and cut short; she divorced her Jewish gastroenterologist husband and put her son under child Freudian analysis. "And she changed her personality," Malik said, "from-according to Viv-terrific, to this. Now she does it to others."

I wondered about this. Compared to the imbecilic DSM

revolving door of Toshiba, A.K. didn't seem that bad. At least she was trying to understand people, in long-term therapy.

"You're thinking, after Toshiba, she doesn't seem all that bad, right?"

"Jesus Christ, Malik! How the hell do you do that?"

"Easy. / don't." He winked. "She's the worst. Wanna play H-O-R-S-E?"

We started shooting baskets in the deserted century-old gym, where the yellow pine floor and walls stirred images of women in black bathing costumes and men in curled moustaches throwing medicine balls. We eased into that fluid ballet permitted to men in the presence of a hoop, and the whap whap of the ball on-the hardwood echoed down through my adolescence of glory to the loneliness of my childhood and that first day of winter running up and up out into the crisp air toward the gym feeling light and free, free from the dusty sad rooms of my family, free to find a life with others, as buddies, on teams.

After a while Malik called it quits. He was sneezing, out of breath. "Chest cold," he said as we sat on the floor cooling down. "The NASA grant-which, by the way, has CIA written all over it-lets teenagers get admitted to the Family Unit for free. The CIA must be trying to figure out how to crush the violence and drugs or something. Those bozos think Freud can help. Imagine! They oughta stick with psychics. Anyways, our job is to help these kids learn to live, play sports. Get that Oly Joe out for some hoop. Rough 'im up under those boards. So how y'doin, kid?"

"Bad."

"That good, eh? What's up?"

I told him about Berry and Jill, and he listened in that electric way that made me feel, Okay, it's just part of the human condition and you'll walk through it and maybe learn, but when I went on to talk about my dilemma with Cherokee and Lily and Schlomo, he wasn't so reassuring.

"Why didn't you tell me about this before?" he asked.

"You've been away. And he's been doing okay, up till now."

"This is bad," he said. "Maybe real bad."

"Is it possible?"

" 'Course it is. Studies show that at least ten percent of shrinks are currently fucking their patients."

"A pig wouldn't fuck Schlomo."

"But Schlomo might fuck a pig. Never underestimate the power of ugliness."

"Do you know him well?"

"No. Funny, about me and Schlomo. I've always kept my distance, and so has he. Like we both know it'd be bad news. There's no way of knowin' the truth yet. So we have to keep our eyes peeled, keep tryin' to get him and his wife to meet with you again. But all you can do is try 'n' help him, Cherokee."

"But I'm not getting anywhere! I feel stuck. I can't move him from his obsession-I don't know how therapy works."

"Therapy's like life, therapy works like life works-no road maps, no instruction manuals. What moves therapy along is what moves good friends along: you like each other, feel understood by each other, know each other better. You can do more things because you feel your friend with you, and you want to see each other more. That warm feeling you carry, even when you're apart. Zesty, y'know?"

"Like now?"

"Yop. Want me to see Cherokee?"

"No," I said quickly.

"Oh," he said, nodding his head, sensing my protectiveness. "I get it. Maybe you and I see him together?"

"No, not right now." I felt that Malik was so, I don't know, so immense, I didn't want to be, in comparison, diminished. "Maybe sometime."

" 'Kay. But be careful. With a guy like this, you never know. Let's keep talking about him. And don't go pawing around in his past, his childhood."

"Isn't the past important?"

"Only if it's so present you can taste it," he said bitterly. "The past is self. The past is an excuse. The past is why I can read you like a book." He sighed. "Not my strong suit, humility. But listen up." He fixed me with his eyes. "Any obsession is a turning away from really living your life."

"So?"

"So in therapy you gotta look at the life, not the obsession. If you're really into living your life, in connection with others, living your life to the hilt-hey, you can't obsess. Whatever the obsession, it starts to look foolish, irrelevant, like when

you're totally in love, talkin' on the phone all the time, the phone bill's irrelevant. Think of your own obsessions, okay?"

What came to mind first was Berry losing Berry losing Berry, but then it was Jill and her satiny underwear. I was wondering how this could be "a turning away from really living my life" when suddenly I felt strong arms lock around my neck and a searing pain on the top of my head.

Malik had jumped me from behind, grabbed my head, and was grinding his fist into my scalp, making it burn. I struggled to get away, but his arms were like steel bars, and he hung on, grinding harder. My scalp felt on fire. We fought, hard, until I was sweating and he was sneezing and he let go, laughing, sneezing, coughing, laughing.

"What the hell are you doing, you jerk?"

"Giving you a noogie. Remember noogies?"

"Yeah, but why are you giving me a noogie?"

"To get you in tune with the kids here. You did good today, you played a sport! The key concept, these three months, is: we stick together. Say it."

"I'm not gonna-don't!"

He was lunging at me again. "Say it."

"We stick together."

" 'Cause the risk, now, with old A.K., is immense."

"FASCINATING CASE, YOUR CHEROKEE."

She was talking? A.K. was talking!

It was later that afternoon in her office high up under the skylight in the dome of Thoreau. I was in supervision with her. As I'd talked about my work with Cherokee, up until that moment she had said nothing. A.K. was the kind of woman who, given the choice between being true to her gender or being true to her ambition, had jumped wholeheartedly into her ambition. She had outmanned men in a man's world. She had learned the power of silence. Backed by her power over me and by the emblems of Freud placed strategically around her office-much as the CEO of a corporation might be backed by the company logo and slogan and sound byte and web site and, out the window behind the desk, the smokestacks-A.K. held silence like a stick. As in one of those grade-school games where you try to outstare the other guy, trying to make him bunk first, she outsilenced me. Her