Сэмуэль Шэм - Mount Misery

even use the bananas--It got so I felt I was his therapist,

imagine?" I nodded. Again she sighed. "Now, it seems like he had me in a trance, as if he somehow, without my knowing it, hypnotized me. When I would say I was ashamed, he would analyze it as my 'tight-ass WASP hang-up, a transference to your father. Tell Schlomo.' I would cry, and he would listen. Seemed to listen, anyway."

"And after Cherokee died?"

Pain came to her eyes. "I… I said to Schlomo that I wanted

to stop. But he… more or less forced me--He really got

into it."

"And then you said you were going to report him?"

She nodded. "I don't know if I meant it, really. But that same day I got a call from your patient Christine telling me about Cherokee and her, and about how obsessed he had become, with Schlomo and me. That hit me hard, hi a way, it motivated me to try to get clearer. I was sitting at the kitchen table, writing out a list of what to do about all this, and the next thing I knew that madman Dr. Cabot was there banging around the place shouting at me and waving a pink paper, and then I refused to leave and he injected me with something and I didn't really wake up until you got that sweet old man to teach me how to tongue the pills and you led me out." Her hand ruffled her short, light brown hair. "Thanks so much."

We sat in silence, together. Occasionally she would glance up at me, and I would hold her eyes for a second, and glance away. It was hard to face her. Not so much for her shame, as for mine. The horses snorted and stomped.

"Schlomo said that he had never done this before, with a patient, that I was the only one. He said that I was special to him."

I thought of A.K., making me feel special, to her. "I understand, Lily, how good that feels. But I have something to tell you."

"Yes?"

"You were not the only one."

She stared at me. "I… I don't believe that"

"I'm sure of it. There's one other woman he was abusing. At least one."

"I refuse to believe that."

"The things he told you-'the warmth of the sun' line, the 'keeping what you say and do in therapy secret'-I've heard the same things from her."

"What else? That I haven't already told you?''

"That he made you buy the condoms? To learn to take responsibility.' That he kept the condoms in a Ziploc bag hidden in the head of the couch?" Her jaw dropped. "Would you meet with the other victim? To see about taking action

against him? I'll be there with you, or, if you would prefer, not?"

"No, I couldn't do that. I… I've had enough. As have the children. I'm quite exhausted. Barely hanging on, as is. I just want to pretend it never happened."

"Will you think about it?"

"Yes. No. No, I want it to go away, to not be."

"That's the mistake we both made, with Cherokee."

She got up and walked around her dead husband's office. Her body seemed slight and frail. Night birds chirped outside. The sophisticated horses kicked and whinnied under our feet, the aloof soft sounds a comfort. The silence was that expectant, big silence of night in woods on mountains.

"There are no pictures of me here in Cher's office," she said. "One day I noticed that, that he'd torn up every picture of me, even pictures which contained me, in his office. I never said anything to him about that." She stared at a picture of Cherokee in midair on a horse sailing over a fence. "Schlomo was my fault. I did it, of my own free will."

"No way."

"What?"

"Schlomo raped you."

"That last time, but not at the start. I wanted him to… to 'fuck' me."

"His words, right? 'Deep down you want Poppa Schlomo to fuck you'?"

She blushed, and nodded. "But I felt chosen. It got so I couldn't wait for morning-I'd dress up, put on perfume- don't you see? — I liked it."

"Yes, I do see. But being a therapist, I know how much power we have, how easy it would be. Will you think about meeting the other woman?"

"I can't very well not think about it now, can I? But I have to think of the children too. How could I put them through that? No."

I got up to go. "You okay, though? No suicidal thoughts?"

"No. I'm not one of those who walk out on their lives. Good night."

"YOU'VE HAD A difficult time here this year, haven't you?"

This question was asked me by Malik's friend, Dr. Geneva Hooevens, the blind woman analyst who had spoken up at the meeting to ask about Ike White's killing himself. Now, her question surprised me. It was the first time it had ever been asked me that whole year, with the exception of Malik, who seemed always to be asking me, one way or another. Malik. Where was he? Bronia, back from Israel, had called me, asking if I knew where he was. Worrisome.

Geneva Hooevens was temporarily in charge of Heidelberg East, the Alcohol and Drug Recovery Unit, where I would spend the rest of my first year. We were sitting in her office off the nursing station, which, Geneva told me, had once been the kitchen of the stone mansion built in 1812 as the home for the "Keeper" of the lunatics of the Mount Misery Asylum. Remnants could still be seen: labeled bells for ringing the servants, gaslight fittings. The large living room now served as a common room for the drunks and addicts who were the "clients."

I felt awkward with Geneva. I had not spent much time with blind people, and seeing her while unseen by her, I felt I had to be more aware of my movements, my sounds, even my glances, for I sensed myself being attuned to more acutely by her other senses. My doctor's eyes told me that this was not a blindness from birth, but one more recent and gradual: her skin, the truth-teller, was mottled and scarred from recurrent infection, the nails pale, suggesting a circulatory failure of the small vessels, most likely severe diabetes. She wore glasses tinted that same amber as Malik's, and her seeing-eye dog Yoman and her cane seemed naturally part of her. I found myself staring into Yoman's alert, patient eyes, as if they were hers, thinking, Thank God, Win and Errol never got this one. The cane leaned on her chair akimbo, as if needing a cane itself.

"Yes," I answered, "it's been a nightmare."

"Oh dear," she said, with what sounded like genuine concern, although I had so often heard similar "genuine concern" from the shrinks at Misery-"genuine concern" that turned out to be the opposite, either "phony" concern or "genuine" attack-that despite myself I was suspicious. "What happened?"

"I went into psychiatry to learn how to be with people in a

real, human way. I thought psychiatrists did that. But what I've seen here is the most inhumane treatment of people ever. It's worse than medicine. My father was a dentist and I'd always feared becoming a dentist. This may even be worse than dentistry."

"Yes, I know. Much of what I've seen here is perverse. Most large institutions evolve to perversity, to power-over systems, where someone always has power over you, and you have power over someone else. But here we do things differently. It's a whole new model of disease and recovery." "How's it differentr "Ever been to an AA meeting?" "No. I don't know much about self-help programs." "AA's more a 'mutual'-help program, in fact. A power-with program. The best way to learn is to spend time on the unit, working with the staff-most of them are recovering alcoholics and addicts. They have to be at least two years sober." "And they'll tell me?"

"Show you. One tells a person some bits of knowledge; one shows a person something that leads to understanding. Remember organic chemistry, the premed course?" I nodded, realized she couldn't see me nod, but she seemed to sense it, and went on, "Do you remember much of your organic chemistry?"

I drew a blank, seeing vaguely a toy model of a carbon ring that could flip two ways like an umbrella in the wind, the two forms named… blank and blank. I had busted my ass to make an A in organic because they said if you made an A in organic at the Best College you were sure of admission to the Best Medical School. How crucial it had seemed, how hard I'd worked, and how worthless organic had proved in medicine. What a waste of that dazzling young energy, to memorize all that crap. And would all this training prove a waste too, looking back? "Nothing," I said. "I don't remember a thing." "Nor do I, of mine. A waste. You forget knowledge. You never forget what you understand." She smiled, a Stevie Wonder smile directed up and out beyond us, yet to ourselves. "I'm a recovering alcoholic, eight years sober. My blindness came on gradually, from diabetes, exacerbated by my drinking."