John Irving - Until I Find You

“You don’t date your psychiatrist,” Dr. García said.

“Oh.”

“That’s a word you overuse,” Jack’s psychiatrist said.

The distinguished-looking older man in Dr. García’s family photographs had an air of detachment about him, as if he were withdrawing from a recurrent argument before it started. He seemed far removed from the clamor of the ever-present children in the photos; it was almost as if he couldn’t hear them. Maybe Dr. García had married a much older man, or a deaf one. Jack’s psychiatrist was such a strong woman, she was probably contemptuous of the convention of wedding rings.

Richard Gladstein had recommended Dr. García to Jack. “She knows actors,” Richard had told him. “You wouldn’t be her first movie star.”

At the time, this had been a comforting thought. Yet Jack hadn’t seen anyone famous in Dr. García’s waiting room; it made him wonder if she made house calls to the more famous movie stars among her patients. But to judge Dr. García by the waiting room outside her office was confusing. There were many young married women, and some of them came with their small children; there were toys and children’s books in a corner of the waiting room, which gave you the disquieting impression that you were seeing a pediatrician. The young married women who showed up with their children always brought friends or nannies with them; these other women looked after the kids when the young mothers went into Dr. García’s office for their therapy sessions.

“Are you here to see the doctor or to watch someone’s kid?” Jack asked one of the young women once; like Dr. García, she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

“Are you trying to pick me up or something?” the young woman said.

Jack almost asked her if she would be his date at the Academy Awards, but he stopped himself when he considered what Dr. García might have to say about that.

“Who should I take to the Academy Awards?” he’d asked his psychiatrist.

“Please don’t mistake me for a dating service, Jack.”

Thus Jack was on his own for the Academy Awards. In addition to his two nominations, Lucia Delvecchio had a nomination for Best Actress, Wild Bill Vanvleck had one for Best Director, and Richard Gladstein got a Best Picture nomination, too.

No one thought Lucia had a shot. She was up against some very big guns—Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore and Annette Bening—and besides, it was Hilary Swank’s year. (As an occasional cross-dresser, Jack was a big fan of Hilary in Boys Don’t Cry. ) And Richard Gladstein knew, going in, that The Slush-Pile Reader was a long shot for Best Picture. (It would go to American Beauty. )

William Vanvleck was just happy to be there. Not one review of The Slush-Pile Reader referred to Wild Bill as The Remake Monster; The Mad Dutchman had become almost acceptable. Not acceptable enough to win Best Director; there were some heavy hitters in the lineup that year. (Sam Mendes would win —American Beauty again.)

Nor did Jack realistically have a chance to win Best Supporting Actor—Michael Caine won. (Jack’s role as a nice-guy porn star was sympathetic, but not that sympathetic.)

Jack knew long before the night of the awards that the film’s best chance for an Oscar was in the Best Adapted Screenplay category —Emma’s screenplay, as he thought of it. How could he not look at it as Emma’s Oscar? It was her movie!

Yes, Jack had learned a little bit about screenwriting in the course of fine-tuning the script Emma had given him. But as a storyteller, he was learning more from his therapy with Dr. García. (Go easy on the foreshadowing; watch the interjections; keep it in chronological order.)

Miramax’s promotion of The Slush-Pile Reader was exhausting, and the lion’s share of it had fallen to Jack in February and March of 2000. Wild Bill Vanvleck was back in Amsterdam; his much younger girlfriend was an anchorwoman on Dutch television, and Wild Bill was completely taken with her. Besides, Vanvleck was a disaster at promoting his own picture—in this case. That pornography was such an issue in the United States offended The Mad Dutchman; nobody had a problem with pornography in the Netherlands. “It is only a problem in Puritan America, which is ruled by the Christian Right!” Vanvleck declared. (It was probably wise of Miramax to keep Wild Bill in Amsterdam, except for the film festivals.)

Following her tragic one-night error in Venice, Lucia Delvecchio had shunned Jack. She’d virtually turned her back on the film, too. Jack’s old friend Erica Steinberg was the Miramax publicist. Jack had been on the road with Erica—in print and on television—for The Slush-Pile Reader almost nonstop.

It was the night after Jack did Larry King Live that he called Leslie Oastler and asked her if she would be his date at the Academy Awards. ( Fuck the blonde, he thought.)

“I’m flattered you would think of me, Jack,” Mrs. Oastler began. “But how would that make Dolores feel? And I don’t know what I would wear. ”

“It’s Emma’s night, Leslie,” Jack said.

“No, it’s gonna be your night, Jack. Emma’s dead. Why don’t you go with Miss Wurtz?” Mrs. Oastler asked him.

“The Wurtz! Are you kidding?”

“An Oscar would be wasted on me, Jack. What would I want with a gold, bald, naked man holding what is alleged to be his sword?” Leslie Oastler had always had a particularly pointed way of seeing things.

The next morning Jack called Caroline Wurtz and popped the question. Would she consider coming to Los Angeles to attend the Academy Awards with him?

“I’ve heard so many terrible things about the drive-by shootings,” Miss Wurtz said. “But they don’t shoot people at the Oscars, do they?”

“No,” he told her. “They only wound you internally.”

“Well, I suppose I should go see the movie, shouldn’t I?” Caroline asked. “I’ve heard both wonderful and awful things from people who’ve seen it. As you know, your friend Emma was never one of my favorite writers.”

“I think it’s a pretty good film,” Jack said. There was a lengthy pause, as if Caroline was considering the invitation—or perhaps The Wurtz had forgotten that he’d invited her to anything. Jack was a little miffed that she hadn’t seen The Slush-Pile Reader. (The movie had five Oscar nominations! Everyone Jack knew had seen it.)

“Don’t you have anyone else to ask, Jack? I can’t be the best you can do,” Caroline said.

“For a couple of years, I’ve been seeing a psychiatrist,” he admitted to her. “I haven’t been in the best shape.”

“Goodness!” Miss Wurtz cried. “In that case, of course I’ll go with you! I’m sure if Mrs. McQuat were alive, she’d want to go with us, too!”

Well, there was a concept! At Mrs. McQuat’s urging, Jack had taken Miss Wurtz to that most memorable Toronto film festival—the one he went to with Claudia, when The Wurtz was convinced that the morons protesting the Godard film were outraged by the ritualistic suicide in the Mishima movie. Jack wondered what confusions awaited Miss Wurtz at the Shrine Civic Auditorium on the night of the Academy Awards. Whom might she mistake Billy Crystal for?

Jack explained to Caroline that he would arrange her air travel and all the rest of it. That Jack Burns was taking his third-grade teacher to the Oscars was a bonus bit of publicity; nor did it hurt that Emma Oastler had died and put him in charge of bringing her first and best novel to the screen. “The death connection,” Jack had called it; that turned out to be a bonus bit of publicity for both Miramax and Jack Burns.