John Haskell - American Purgatorio

So I went back in an hour, not to his house, but next door, to his small office. He greeted me and indicated that I should sit in a comfortable chair facing the window. He wheeled his wheelchair opposite me so that as I looked out, the window framed his head, and while he was talking he was asking me what I wanted him to talk about. I was going to tell him that I wanted him to talk about the unconscious part of my mind. I was going to tell him that I thought my unconscious mind might have something to tell me. I was going to tell him that I was afraid of the unconscious mind, afraid of the loss of consciousness, but he kept talking.

He was talking about something, very slowly, saying things that I was listening to, and hearing, and watching. The man’s head was shifting positions in front of the window and I began feeling my own head, not shifting, but wondering, was I moving my head becauses the man was, or was the man moving because I was. The window also seemed to be moving, or vibrating, and I was thinking about the silhouette of the man’s head touching the edges of the window, and also about the time, years ago, at a place called The Chuck Wagon.

I’d been with Anne, on a vacation. We’d gone to a theater or club above a restaurant called The Chuck Wagon, where a hypnotist named Dr. Dean put on a kind of show, an exhibition of hypnotic phenomena. Because I wanted to experience hypnosis, when Dr. Dean asked for volunteers, I went up on the stage with all the other people, sat in a chair in a row and I tried to see Anne in the audience, but it was dark and the lights were shining in my eyes. Dr. Dean began talking, not to the volunteers, but to the audience. He was facing the volunteers, moving his arms up and down, in his black suit, moving his arms and telling the audience what the people on stage were supposed to do, which was to breathe, which they all did. The people on stage began dropping off. He was telling them to go to sleep. And people were doing it. But I wasn’t doing it. I wanted to. Some part of me wanted to drop right off with the rest of them, to believe that I could, but it wasn’t happening. But I wanted it to happen. So what I did was fake it. I was good at pretending and so I pretended it happened. I relaxed my head like the man in front of me and let it fall to my chest. But because I wasn’t really sleeping I had to keep watching the man in front of me to see if I was doing whatever it was they were all doing, to see if I was doing it right. It was like looking in a mirror. I could see myself only when I was looking at myself. The minute I turned away …

Dr. Dean is saying, “Go down, down, all the way down.” And that’s what I am trying to do. I’m trying to do that but there’s a gulf between wanting and doing, and on one side are the cliffs of wanting and on the other side are the cliffs of doing, and I’m in the middle, I’m the river, except I’m not flowing, I’m just sitting there. I’m not bridging that gulf. And Dr. Dean knows that. He begins pointing to some of the volunteers, telling them to go back to their seats. “You and you and you.” And then he points to me. He pauses. “You almost made it.”

Then I heard the old man saying, “Open your eyes.”

I don’t know what he’s talking about. “They’re already open,” I tell him.

“Of course they are,” he says. “Any fool can see that.” He wheels his wheelchair over to the door and for some reason I think this is very funny. I can feel a huge grin forming on my face. And the man is smiling too, we’re both smiling, and it’s very funny. But I don’t know what it is. I know I’m smiling but I don’t know why. I try to think, Why am I smiling?

The man looks up from his wheelchair. “It’s easy to move your mouth in a certain way. It’s easy to do many things.” He looks toward the door, and still smiling, I stand up, I thank the man, and then I walk out the door.

The gas station in New Jersey. There we were. We’d been talking, happy and convivial. Anne was getting gas and I’d gone into the store to get some snacks for the trip. As I came out of the store she was waiting at the entrance, and I was just about to open the door of the car when that other car … I didn’t see it but I could hear the dark car, and the brakes of the dark car, as it collided with our little station wagon. Anne had parked, not in the road, because there wasn’t an actual road, but on the asphalt, and she was waiting, the car running, and I was just opening the door, just starting to get into the car, and that’s when I heard the brakes, looked up, and for a split second I saw the outline of darkness that was that other car colliding with our car, with the driver’s side of our car. I was all right but Anne was knocked forward into the window and the steering column and she wasn’t speaking. She was unconscious. The dark car sped off and I tried to see the license plates but I was more concerned with Anne. I went to her, held her head in my hands, and something was wrong. She was hurt, I told someone to call an ambulance. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to slap her and there was no doctor. I asked for a doctor but there were just the gas station attendants and they didn’t know anything. No one knew anything and I didn’t either. Was she dying? I didn’t know. She was breathing, and I could feel a pulse, but I couldn’t wake her up. When finally the ambulance came I was yelling at them, why it took so long, and they let me ride in the back, on a bench, and there was another man, a medic of some sort, and he’d made a bag of liquid that he attached to a tube that went into her arm. I wanted to look at her and see her but this man put a mask over her face, to help her breathe or make her breathe, and there were bumps on the road and the siren was going but I didn’t hear it. The man didn’t talk and I didn’t talk, not to him. I told Anne to be all right, to feel fine, and her eyes were closed except for a brief flash. She opened them, looked up, and I was there so she saw me. And then she didn’t. And we got to the hospital and they slid her out and wheeled her into the emergency part of the hospital and I was left outside a door. They took her through this door and I waited to see her. I wanted to be with her. I wanted to see her but I never did. Not alive. That brief look was all I got. And then she was dead. After that my Anne was dead.

So here I am. So okay. Man of adjustment and all that. So what do I do? There’s nothing I can do.

I look around.

I happen to be standing by a light pole, bleached by the sun, in a town (Gila Bend) that could hardly be called a town, and wouldn’t be except for the several gas stations and the bend in the road. I too am bleached, standing without sunblock, without direction, and also without the belief I’d spent so much time believing. If my world was one thing, and now that world is gone, there’s still a world, but it’s not my world anymore, and certainly not a world I care very much about. I still exist, still have what seems like existence, but the reason for moving is gone. So I’m not moving. I’m not hitchhiking, not walking, not watching the occasional passing car. I’m just standing there, between two nearly identical gas stations, one red, one green. And that’s when a white sedan pulls up along the shoulder on the road, ahead of where I’m standing. I don’t know if the car is stopping for me, or for some internal reason that has nothing to do with me, but when I walk to the car, the car doesn’t drive away. I look in the open window and there’s an old man, healthy but old, looking at me.

“Where are you going?” he says.