Сэмуэль Шэм - Mount Misery

"Lily Putnam wants to talk to me. Cherokee's wife. I'm worried about Cherokee. He left today's session ten minutes early."

"Wait," A.K. said. The receiver clunked down on something. I heard a key unlock something. A.K. was back. 'Tell me about the session."

I told her. I heard the scritch scritch of her pencil, doing the crossword in the ledger as I talked. When I finished, A.K. said, 'Tell his wife to call her analyst."

"Schlomo Dove?"

"We can't all be lucky."

"What?" I said, thinking, This is a strange way to talk about your former analyst. "What do you mean by that?" Silence. "But you think Cherokee is okay?"

"Work it out on the couch."

"You mean in another phantom session, if he doesn't come back?"

"Not him, you. In your analysis."

"With Poppa Doc?"

Scritch scritch. "Who?"

"Never mind."

I hung up and called Viv. I told her to tell Lily Putnam to call her analyst, Schlomo Dove. I felt bad, but I knew that I'd done the right thing by calling my supervisor, and I was relieved now that A.K. was taking responsibility for deciding that Cherokee was basically okay. I couldn't wait until the next afternoon, to tell Poppa Doc the news.

JILL WAS HAVING a party that night, in her new apartment on top of a converted factory. One wall was all window, offering a panoramic view of the sky, perfect for sighting UFOs. She had invited friends who were into aliens. The lights were off inside, so that everyone could see outside. Interesting reversal of psychoanalysis. The talk was about the latest news from Fyffe, Alabama, of cattle mutilations. The

cows had been found dead, parts surgically removed as if by a laser beam, with no signs of trauma, struggle, or blood.

Each conversation felt slightly askew, for the eyes of the UFO-watcher were continually moving in a nystagmus-flicking from me to the night sky, from the sky back to me- the kind of eye wobble I'd seen at parties where real stars were present and people were always looking past you at them.

"Great party," I said to Jill after everyone had left, as she stood at the sink washing the last dishes. I put my arms around her and stroked her tummy. Since that night on-call when my dick had "done a Cherokee," we hadn't made love, but now I felt ready. "I'm dying to make love to you!"

"Uh-huh. C'mon: " She wiped her soapy hands and took my hand. We lay down on her bed facing the wide milky night. "Talk to me, 'kay?"

I found that I was blocking.

She rose on an elbow and stared into my eyes. "Don't you understand? Talk to me, and you will get laid great. I will fuck your brains out, 'kay?"

"I thought Eduardo was interesting." Eduardo was a handsome young man from Ecuador who was a guide for tours to the Galapagos.

"Yeah? How?"

"It was interesting how his interest in plants and animals was an identification with his mother."

Jill stared at me anxiously. "He thought you were weird. He asked me, 'Are all psychiatrists so weird?' "

"Only the unanalyzed think we're weird."

"Y'know, when people find out I work at Misery, they ask me that same question. I used to say, 'Some are a little weird, and go into it to understand themselves'-which is weird when you come to think of it since you should go into it to help people-'and some want to stand back and observe people'-which is also weird, since that doesn't help anyone either. But now, I just agree with them. Eduardo said that his last tour group was all doctors-about twenty of them. And six of them were really strange. Like quiet? Scrunched up, faces all scrunched up? Into themselves more than into the Galapagos? Guess what? He found out five were shrinks, and one was a pathologist."

"Interesting."

"Roy, come on!"

"You're getting upset."

"You're damn right I'm getting upset! And you're going to listen!"

"I am listening."

"Well, then respond! If you don't respond to me right now I'm going to rip your eyes out!"

I was blocking even worse. She stared at me as if I were a giant lizard of the Galapagos, and then she got up, went to the window, and scanned.

"See any?"

"Look," she said, turning to face me, "I've stuck with you all year, through the Heiler bullshit and the crap on Toshiba, but this is the worst. You are so weird! There's no 'now' for you now-you're either fantasizing about the future or remembering the past-five minutes ahead or five years behind-you are never here anymore! I have no idea what's going on with you, in the rest of your life! And I get the feeling there's lots. You back with Berry?"

"No way. I'm free."

"So why aren't you here? I stuck around for the first three rotations, but I don't know if I can take the fourth! I have no idea who I'm dealing with!"

"Don't worry. I'm done with surprises. Psychoanalysis is it."

"Roy. I've worked at Misery a lot longer than you-I've seen what it does to people. Being a shrink is a very unnatural act! Humans aren't designed for it! Please-there's still time-this is it, right now-you can't wait for it to change, or for something different to happen tomorrow, because I'm going to feel this way tomorrow too. Don't go blind on me."

She was right in my face. I felt overwhelmed with dread. She sighed.

"God save me from a guy who sees me as his mother. Maybe the only sensible position to take is that guys are aliens. I mean if you start there, you don't expect them to change-you can't expect to change a dog into a cat, right? You stop trying. There are a few mutants-I thought you might be one, that first day you walked onto the ward the wrong way-you seemed wild, rebellious-but now-"

"Psychoanalysis is rebellious."

She stared at me in disbelief. "Maybe there are mutants and I'm just not meeting them? Some guys you can have bridge conversations with, at first. But sooner or later you find yourself beating your head against a wall. Know what I've learned, from all these guys?"

"Yes?"

"You have a lot of energy when you break up with them, because you stop trying to make a dog into a cat. I mean you reach a point-like now with you-where everything stops, like when you're pedaling along on a bicycle and the chain slips off and all of a sudden you're pedaling air, too fast, and alone, and going nowhere. That's us now."

"You have some feelings about 'us now'?"

"Go home. With you gone, I'm gonna feel like incredibly depressed, but I won't feel as alone." She stared. "You didn't even loosen your tie."

I got up and started out.

"Roy? I can't stand you right now. But I still probably love you?"

Boom. I thought of telling her that my dad had died and that I needed to cry and that I loved her for her straight unleashed humanness but then I was a child standing at the top of our stairs in Columbia my mother at the bottom and I was bored stiff stuck inside on a sunny day hearing myself asking my mother, "WhadamI gonna do now! WhadamI gonna do now?" as if she knew and suddenly I felt wetness in my eyes. Jill saw it and came and hugged me and there were tears in her own eyes as she asked:

"What? Can you tell me?"

Everything hi me wanted to tell her but the harsh chorus in my head turned my tongue to stone-stone tongue stone mouth stone teeth teeth teeth-and I felt my heart if not break then attack a little like my pop's and I shook my head and two more tears popped out and feeling her squeeze my hand really hard I just left.

CONSTANT FOUL-SMELLING RAIN was driving people crazy, but my inner world was warm and dry. I awoke before the light that next morning, a Sunday. Feeling an early-morning chaos of loneliness, I decided to go hi to Thoreau and read some Freud. The Family Unit was now deserted. All the

patients had left Against Medical Advice. It was just after seven when I walked upstairs to the office I was using next to A.K.'s, unlocked my door and went in. The empty rooms in the magnificent old building, the unambivalent woodwork and brick, and the silence were a comfort. I sat free-associating, and then took down one of my crisp new robin's-egg-blue volumes of The Collected Works and turned to "Totem and Taboo."