A. Homes - May We Be Forgiven

“I think I’d like to begin by asking, what kind of people do you typically work with?”

“Spans the gamut, from court-ordered counseling for boys who get into trouble, to anger-management issues with married men, a few middle-aged ladies who wished they’d done things differently, and a good number of teenage girls who want to be dead. What brings you here?”

“I’ve applied to be a foster parent and I need a psychiatric evaluation.” I hand him the form. “You were among those recommended by the Department of Social Services.”

He takes the form and looks at it as though he’s never seen one before.

“It would be a directed placement of a little boy with some learning problems who was recently orphaned.”

“Have you ever been arrested?”

“No.”

“Do you enjoy pornography?”

“Not especially,” I say. “But there is something,” I say, laying the groundwork. I tell him about George. He listens carefully, appearing never to have heard any of it before. Either he doesn’t read the papers or he’s very good at concealing what he knows.

“Let him cast the first stone …” the doctor says, when I come clean about my part in the domestic debacle. “And so, before all this, before last Thanks-giving, you led a conventional life, no affairs, no relationships outside the marriage?”

“A most conventional life,” I said.

“And the children?” he asks.

I tell him how I have come to know the children, how they are so much more interesting than I had expected, and that I love them. I share the details of our Williamsburg adventure.

“And are you in a sexual relationship now?” he asks.

“Yes, with a local girl, very nice family,” I say, as if bragging.

He shrugs as if to say, How would you know? “Okay, so this boy Ricardo that you want to foster …”

“He survived the accident, and the kids want to help, and the aunt who was left in charge has been struggling, and …”

“And what makes you think you’re qualified?”

“Good question,” I say.

He nods.

“I care about the kid. I was a teacher for many years. I have the time and energy to focus on figuring out what he needs and how to get that for him. I feel very bad about what happened and would like to see him through.”

“Would you send him to school?”

“Every day.”

“What if he needed to go to a special school?”

“I’d find the best one and fight to have it covered by the state education system, which is legally obligated to educate every child regardless of disability; and, depending on the outcome, I’d see what I could do.”

“Would you be doing this with an eye toward adoption?”

“The children would like me to adopt him. I’m not sure that’s what his family wants. But, yes, I’m doing it with an eye towards the long term; this isn’t something I take lightly.”

“And what is your work as a self-employed person?” He says “self-employed” slowly, like it’s a suspect notion.

“I was a professor of Nixon studies for many years, and as a Nixon scholar I am working on a book about him and also working with the Nixon family on a special project.”

“Interesting. What drew you to Nixon?”

“Nixon is like someone from another time: old-fashioned to the point of being a bit backward, inescapably ugly whether he knew it or not, bitter, self-spiting, insecure and overly confident simultaneously.”

The psychiatrist nods. “Not uncommon, to be both driven and conflicted.”

“I find it fascinating — his sweat, his paranoia, his emotional lability. Even as President of the United States he didn’t fit in.”

“Do you have a title for your book?”

“While We Were Sleeping: The American Dream Turned Nightmare — Richard Nixon, Vietnam, and Watergate: The Psychogenic Melting Point.”

“That’s a lot of title.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about the drug that is the American Dream as the American entitlement, which gave way to the American downfall. Without Kennedy’s assassination, we wouldn’t have had Johnson, who paved the way for Nixon. The seeds of Nixon’s ‘success’ were planted in a moment of failure — that hot, sweaty flop of a television debate and the lost election of 1960. Look at the Presidents all in a row and it makes sense: they are a psychological progression from one to another, all about the unspoken needs and desires and conflicts of the American people. I’m writing about Nixon as the container for all that was America at that moment in time and why we elected him and what we hoped he’d do. …” I’m digressing, and nearly aggressing, as I jump all over the place, hitting the highlights.

“You seem quite passionate on the subject,” Tuttle says. “But what’s your dream, what do you want for yourself?”

“Nothing,” I say.

“Really?” Tuttle seems surprised.

“Really, I can’t think of anything.”

“Is it self-punishing to not want anything in a society that’s all about desire?” Tuttle asks.

“Is it?” I ask.

“You have no desire?” he suggests.

“Limited,” I say.

“Depression?”

I shrug. “I don’t think so.”

“Then what is it?”

“Contentment? Satisfaction?” I suggest.

“Is there such a thing?” Dr. Tuttle asks.

“You tell me. Is contentment death? Does one need to want in order to live? Can one aspire to that which is not material?”

“It would seem wise to aspire to objects more real and less fleeting than a feeling state which you can’t bank on,” Tuttle says. “You may feel good now, but say something happens and you don’t feel so good later. In your model there’s no backup: you can’t say, ‘Well, I feel like crap but at least I have a really nice car and a big television set.’”

“Why not say, I may feel bad now but I felt good before and chances are I’ll feel good again?”

“Oh, that would be asking a lot of most people, a very lot,” he says, pressing back in his chair, tapping his fingers rhythmically against each other. He glances at the clock, an early digital model with tiny number flaps that tumble forward as each minute passes. When it’s quiet, you can hear the dull click as the digit drops.

“We’re running out of time for today,” he says. “Should we schedule another session?”

“I’m hoping you’ll be able to fill out the form for me,” I say, nodding towards the mint-green sheet of paper I gave him when I came in. “It’s the psychiatric report for the Department of Social Services, asking if I’m fit to parent.”

“Leave the form with me,” he says. “I should be able to complete it by the end of our next session.”

“So the total cost is seven hundred and fifty dollars to get the form filled out?”

“Is that a problem?” Tuttle asks.

“No, I just want to be sure I understand.”

Tuttle nods. “Same time next week?”

During the day, when I’m not doing something for the kids, visiting my mother, working on the Nixon story project in Manhattan, or sitting at George’s desk trying to finish the book, I see Amanda.

We meet in parking lots between errands. Amanda tells me what’s new in the grocery store — an expanded aisle of “ethnic” foods, more heat-and-eats, and that one of the checkout ladies has a heavy thumb on the produce scale. Amanda is a puzzle. I tell her that I wish I knew her better.

Amanda says nothing.

As I start to elaborate on my mother’s upcoming wedding, she cuts me off. “I’m really not interested in you as a person,” she says.

As hurtful as it sounds, I don’t take it personally. I think she’s lying.