Сэмуэль Шэм - Mount Misery

Finally Zoe said, "Butler, you fucked me when we were kids."

Butler's hand went to his neck. "What?"

"You fucked me-first under the dock, and then all over. Don't deny it."

"You're crazy. You are nuts."

"What'd she say?" asked Father, who'd forgotten his hearing aid.

"Nothing, darling," said Mother. "Children? Quiet."

"Prick!" Zoe shouted. "You ruined my life! There's a child buried in our backyard up in the Adirondacks! Dr. Basch? Tell them!"

All eyes were on me. Pressured to speak, I was terribly conscious of the great Krotkey and the awesome Pensilena and the rest of the team watching from behind the mirror. I glanced at A.K. She was glaring at me, sending a clear message to me: Don't Say Anything. I gritted my teeth and crossed my legs.

"What's wrong with you? You never stick up for me anymore? You prick!"

"What'd she say?" the father asked. No one said what she'd said. "Dr. Lowell?" he said, turning slowly toward A.K. "Might you not give us some advice, on the method to best handle her, at this time?"

"She won't say anything, Daddy," Zoe said. "She's the biggest prick around!"

A. K. Lowell cleared her throat. I glanced at the clock: eight seconds to go!

"And is it not possible that Zoe's rage at you is your rage at herT

"What?" the father asked. "I didn't hear. Could you repeat th-"

Bong bong bong bong bong bong bong bong bong bong.

I followed A.K. out. Zoe screamed, "Cocksuckers! Assholes!"

"What?" Father asked, and then, louder and louder, "What what whatT

I felt good about my not saying anything, and about A.K.'s saying only one thing. I sat next to A.K. in the conference room, expecting to be showered with Krotkey's praise. Sure enough, the little fire hydrant rose immediately, his face red. He shouted:

"What the hell were you two doing in there?"

My heart went ga-thunk. I looked to A.K. Her face was ashen.

"You have to intervene with these people, you have to interpret everything, at every juncture. You can't let them get away with that kind of aggression. Gott in himmel!"

"They are here," A.K. said, voice trembling, "to listen to each other-"

"The hell they are! They are here to listen to you. Like you are here to listen to me. You can bet that Professor Blair Heiler wouldn't have sat there like a… a…" Krotkey's eyes went back and forth between us, and then settling on my own eyes, he said, "like a weich putz\ Blair Heiler would have confronted them, gotten all that anger out sooner, worked it through better!"

"Are you telling me," A.K. said angrily, "that there are empathic breaks in my therapy?"

"You betcha!" Krotkey seemed to have only one volume setting: high.

"Have you been talking to my ex-husband?" A.K. said.

"Cunt," Krotkey averred. One of his famous crudities. He handed his spent Gitane in its holder to Pensilena Teiche for reloading.

Others now joined in. To my surprise there was no talk of the Oscillator but a lot of talk about our failure to confront the aggression. Heiler Theory of Confrontation was held up as a model of what we should have done.

"Dr. Krotkey?" It was Malik, standing up. Krotkey swiveled his bowling ball head, like the turret of a tank. "I wanted to ask you about the abuse?"

"Speak!" Krotkey shouted, rising to his feet.

"Zoe says she was sexually abused by her brother. In private, her sister has corroborated this to me-she witnessed it, and the sisters talked about it years ago. Studies by Judy Herman, Diana Russell, and others show that over seventy percent of female inpatients have been sexually and/or physically abused."

"So?"

"So what do you make of this?"

" 'I make nothing of this,'" he shouted. "To quote Frau Kernberg, private communication."

There were gasps of admiration-Krotkey communicates with Frau Kembergl

Malik went on, "Are you saying, as Freud said, that this is not reality, but fantasy?"

"Freud said," Krotkey shouted," 'If in the case of girls who produce such an event (seduction) in the story of their child-

hood their father figures fairly regularly as the seducer, there can be no doubt either of the imaginary nature of the accusation or of the motive that has led to it…. We have not succeeded in pointing to any difference in the consequences, whether fantasy or reality has had the great share in these events of childhood.'"

"You're saying that it doesn 't matter whether it happened or didn't?"

"What matters is how the girl negotiates the Oedipus conflict."

"It does matter," Malik said heatedly. He coughed. "It matters profoundly to the girl, and to her treatment when she-"

"The girl? Girls don't even know they have a vagina till they're twelve!"

"How do you know that?"

"I am &physician\ I am publishing a book-'A Newer Psychology of Women.' That's how, cocksucker! Hasta la vista, motherfuckers!" He started barreling through the crowd toward the door but became entangled in one of our tricky NASA folding chairs. Cursing in German, he tried to extricate himself from its Space Age hinges. Pensilena Teiche, the woman with the leather breasts, tried to help. Malik said something, but too softly to hear. Krotkey leaned toward him and screamed, "What?" Malik repeated it, but so softly that Krotkey had to lean even farther toward him. "What?"

"You really hurt people," Malik said quietly.

"It takes balls to stand up to all these girls claiming abuse! Try it!"

"I work for FEMS," Pensilena said, "False External Memory Syndrome. Most memories of abuse are concocted. Quote: 'We cannot logically assume that memories of childhood sexual abuse can be repressed.' Reference citation, Harrison Pope and James Hudson, McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School."

Throwing chairs and cursing like what he'd told us we needed to do while fucking, Renaldo Krotkey, and then his amanuensis, crashed out.

In silence, A.K. and I walked upstairs toward our offices together. As I turned down the hall I heard a familiar voice call out:

"Hey, asshole."

I turned. A skinhead stood there. He was pointing a gun atA.K.

Oly Joe Olaf. His ponytail was gone, his head was completely shaven. His T-shirt read "No Fear." His hand was shaking. His eyes were wild.

Paralyzed, I stood there watching. A.K. froze too. Then she said:

"Yes, and how does that gun feel to you, Oly Joe?"

"Fuck feel. I'm gonna blow you away."

"Yes, and you have some thoughts about that gun, Oly Joe?"

Oly Joe cocked the trigger, and paused. Then he threw the gun down on the floor. It bounced, as if it were made of plastic. Oly Joe ran out, his combat boots echoing down one flight to his room.

A.K. stared at the gun, and at me. I picked up the gun.

"It's not real!" I said. "Did you know that?"

"Biting the breast. I'm discharging him. For acting out."

"Even though it wasn't real?"

"Biting that breast was real."

I left for my analyst's home office.

Fascinating session. Poppa Doc nodded me onto the couch. As usual I associated freely without his saying a word. As was unusual, he didn't snore. In fact I hardly heard him breathing. Impressive. When I left I glanced at him in the dim half-light, and he didn't look too happy. I figured this was his empathic response to my being deeply deeply depressed.

By the time I got back to Thoreau, Zoe had signed out of the Family Unit, AMA-Against Medical Advice.

"CHRISTINE BROKE UP with me. She said I'd failed to live up to my potential. I still can't get it up, but she said that had nothing to do with it, that it wasn't my dick, it was me! Which is even worse! Not only did you take the starch out of my cock, you took away my… my… my potential! And my wife too! What the fuck is wrong with you? I am a total failure. Fuck!"

It was the next afternoon, and Cherokee Putnam was finally curling up in the chair in my office in Toshiba, knees clasped in his hands, rocking, heavily into what I knew, with relief, to be his Oral Stage rage.