Sol Stein - Other people

I remember the crazy delight we took in buying an electric orange juice squeezer — this was before the days of frozen juice — because I drink orange juice the way Americans drink Coca-Cola and it pained me to see Marta squeeze each orange half, the palm of her right hand turning it against the serrations of a glass squeezer that had cost twenty-five cents in Woolworth's when we were first married. For Kurt, when he was eight, we committed the ultimate extravagance. We bought him a new dress coat and a new lined jacket for playing street hockey, even though we knew he could wear them only one season before his limbs were too long.

These Saturday-morning escapades into department stores were our chief form of recreation. Never once in all those years did I think of patients during the time that Marta and I were out. Only when we came back home, exhilarated and exhausted eye-consumers, did I slump into my armchair, put my feet up on the ottoman, and think of my Worry Number One, Higgins, the only patient I had who could be a murderer in fact and not just in heart. Three times a week I would wait for his first words on the couch, wondering had something finally happened, had he been unable to control his desire to beat another human to death with his bare hands. Higgins was a strong man, capable, quick-tempered, a boss of truck drivers. Thank God he found a prostitute with well-padded buttocks who let him spank her with his hand till relief came. I told Higgins he should save the money he spent on me and just see that woman as often as he needed. When you think of the millions of aberrant and lonely persons over the course of human history who have found some release among prostitutes — those great actresses who understood human aberration long before Sacher-Masoch or Krafft-Ebing, we have cause to be grateful. It is possible that prostitution has done more than medicine for mankind, and with fewer mistakes that have converted a minor affliction into death by surgery and malpractice.

All right, I am meandering. Since Marta died, the Saturday shopping ritual continues without heart. What am I to buy, new carpeting when the old will outlive me? And so I buy light bulbs, Kleenex boxes, toilet tissue, soap, all with the excuse that it is very inconvenient to run out of such things, but what would another analyst make of my collection of such items? Of my need to pretend to shop when there is nothing I really have to buy? Why do I not go on weekends to visit my grandchild? Because our son Kurt married a young woman who had already had a needless hysterectomy, and I have asked was this to spite us, a willful attack, to deprive me of grandchildren?

The truth is that I have developed Worry Number Two, a patient who occupies my thoughts on weekends, not a murderer, not a suicide, but Francine Widmer, whose source of difficulty I now understand and am possibly postponing, dragging out her own understanding of the problem, because I do not want her to stop coming to me because I am infatuated with this baby of twenty-seven. Please understand, ever since Marta's passing, I go to dinner parties, pushed by friends to meet eligible widows, it doesn't work, it would be a housekeeping arrangement, I would constantly be making comparisons to Marta, whose shadows are still in every corner of my mind. But this young woman, Francine, is not in any way like Marta, and I have tried to tie off the waves of stimulation that flow from her without success. I daydream that I am licking the palm of her hand, it is a disgrace for a man my age, I must control this urge, I must arrange for her to see another analyst even though we are on the verge of success, I cannot give her up. I ask myself, does she know? Of course a person always knows. It would be easier for me to marry one of the widows than to act out my fantasies for this young woman.

I have a confession. Not too long ago — why do I say that? I remember the exact date of course! — I was at a matchmaking dinner contrived by my friend Herman, when he is called to the hospital — his wife says it always happens — to deliver another inconveniently timed baby, and when Herman stops talking, the dinner party died. I tried to keep the conversation flowing, and finally the widow says we had better say good night, would I drop her off, so we walk the few blocks to her apartment, and she says come up, so I go, and when we get there, without fuss, she takes me to her bed. The widow is an ordinary woman of her age, fifty-something, not too bad looking, a bit thin, she is on estrogen, full of hope, my testicles are as full as those of a stud bull whose farmer has closed the fence and thrown the key away. So I do what is asked, and all the time I am thinking of Francine, her face, what her body must look like, what it would feel to be doing this and that to her. The widow asks will I see her again, I am a careful lover, her face shines, I have provided her as well as myself with relief, and I promise to call, knowing I am not likely to call because the widow bores me and I am a poor actor who cannot sustain a role for too long.

Within a week, I am rumbling about the house, looking through old books read long ago, when I get a phone call after my last patient has said good night, and I think aha, it is the widow, but when I answer it is Francine, she is half talking, half sobbing, and she tells me that a man has violated the orifice I coveted. This is not what she tells me, of course, this is what I think, I try to reassure her, but my heart is pounding wildly as if she is telling me about a crime against myself. I ask her if she has gone to a hospital, I tell her to go, I ask her if she has called the police, I advise her to do so after the hospital, and to please call me afterward, I will wait for her call (what else do I have to do?). She asks me to go to the hospital and the police with her, she wants to come see me now, first, and I tell her, coward that I am, that I cannot, has she told her father, she says she can't, and then I think of that young man she has been dating — whom I despise out of sheer jealousy of his age — and she says in anger yes, that is what she will do, slamming down the phone.

Years ago I devised a quick remedy for when tension ties my insides into knots. On my desk I keep three well-balanced English darts in a holder. When I open the closet door in my study, hanging on the back is the same dart board I have been using as long as I can remember. When you pick up the darts and take aim, your concentration is one thing only, moving the right arm forward with a snap to release the dart headed for as close to the bull's-eye as you can. And then there is the second and the third. You see your score, and in a moment you are plucking the darts out to show yourself that you can improve the result. Darts are addictive. You never throw just one. And before you know it, you have recreated yourself. And there is not, as with other recreations, a mess to clean up afterwards; just to close the closet door, and put the three darts back in the holder on the desk.

This evening my throwing of the darts is not entirely successful, because as I throw I cannot put completely out of my mind a petition to the absent Francine. I don't want her to continue her anger at me. Long after I have put away the darts, the phone rings again. It is the young man calling for her, I agree to see her though it is very late. It is in this moment of crisis that the cause of her insomnia comes surging into her memory. I am delighted, even though the cost of the revelation is this hideous thing. It is out in the open, and what do I do? I find myself lecturing instead of soothing her. Is this a form of attack because of her unfaithfulness to me, with the boy Bill and with the rapist?

In the silence after she leaves, I sit in my bathrobe into the night, trying to define my worthlessness this evening. I am not her father, her lover, I am her therapist, I must help her, I hope I do not love her, she has become a sexual affliction for me, I am afraid I adore her unreasonably, I must give her up as a patient, I cannot give her up, I must have the help of the Deity now in exchange for whatever promises will buy surcease.