John Irving - Until I Find You

“You’re not going home, Anna-Elisabeth?” he asked.

She covered her face with her hands again; for such a serious (and such a beautiful) woman, it was a curiously girlish gesture.

“What is it?” he asked her.

“It’s not my business—you have a psychiatrist,” she said.

“Please tell me what you’re thinking,” Jack said to her.

“I’m thinking that you should finish this chronological-order therapy,” she told him, “and when you do finish, you should ask your doctor about a little something she might give you. You just wouldn’t want to take this while you were still trying to put everything in chronological order.”

“You mean a pill?” he asked her.

“Yes, a pill,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe said. “It’s not unlike what we give your father, but it’s newer and a little different from Zoloft or Seropram. It’s Cipralex; it’s like the Seropram we give William, but this one has a new agent in it, escitalopram. You get a more rapid onset of action—a week compared to two or three weeks—and because of the higher potency, a normal dosage would be ten milligrams instead of twenty.”

“It’s an antidepressant?” Jack asked.

“Of course it is,” she said. “I think the brand name is Lexapro in the States, but Dr. García would know. With escitalopram, there were supposed to be fewer side effects. But not all studies have shown that this is true. You might not like the loss of libido, possible impotence, or prolonged ejaculation.” Dr. Krauer-Poppe paused to smile at him. “You definitely wouldn’t like what it might do to your ability to tell the story of your life in chronological order, Jack. So first finish what you’re telling Dr. García. Then try it.”

“Do you think I’m depressed, Anna-Elisabeth?”

“What a question!” she said, laughing. “If you’re putting in chronological order everything that ever made you laugh, or made you cry, or made you feel angry—and if you are truly leaving nothing out—then of course you’re depressed! I’m surprised you’re not in a place like the Sanatorium Kilchberg yourself, Jack. I don’t mean as a visitor. ”

“But how will I know when I’m finished? It just goes on and on,” he said to her.

“You’ll know when you’re finished, Jack,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe said. “It ends when you feel like thanking Dr. García for listening to you. It ends when there’s someone else you feel like telling everything to—someone who isn’t a psychiatrist.”

“Oh.”

“ Gott! ” she said. “Who would have thought the way someone said, ‘Oh,’ could be genetic?”

Dr. Krauer-Poppe shook Jack’s hand; walking away, with her high heels somewhat unsteadily navigating the cobblestones, she called over her shoulder. “I’ll meet you right where you’re standing in the morning, Jack. I’ll take you to the church. William will come with Dr. Horvath.”

“ Bis morgen! ” he called to her. Then he went into the hotel and called his sister.

On the little pad of paper for messages—on the night table, next to the telephone—Jack recognized his handwriting in the morning.

Cipralex, 10 mg

(Lexapro in the States?)

Ask Dr. García

What had Professor Ritter said? “Your father has suffered losses. ” The losses alone were enough to make anyone feel cold; maybe William’s tattoos had nothing to do with it.

The conversation with Heather had gone well; even though Jack woke her up, she was happy that he called.

“Well, I finally met him. It took long enough! I’ve been with him for several hours,” Jack began. “Dr. von Rohr and Dr. Krauer-Poppe and I took him out to dinner at the Kronenhalle. I met Hugo, of course—and all the others.”

“Just say it!” his sister yelled.

“I love him,” he told her quickly.

“That’s all you have to say, Jack,” she said; she started to cry.

“I love him and every inch of his skin,” Jack told her.

“My God—you didn’t say the word skin, did you?” she asked him.

“In the context of telling him I loved him, I got away with it,” Jack said. “He thought I had balls for saying it.”

“ I’ll say you have balls!” Heather cried.

“There were just a few episodes—nothing too terrible,” he explained.

“There will always be episodes, Jack. I don’t need to hear about them.”

“Are you okay about the prostitutes?” he asked her.

“Are you okay about them, Jack?”

Jack told her that he was, all things considered. “He can’t get in trouble if Hugo’s with him,” was how he put it.

They talked about whether or not Jack should tell Miss Wurtz about the prostitutes. Jack was eager to call Caroline and tell her everything. (“Maybe not everything, Jack,” Heather had cautioned him. “Maybe save the prostitutes for a later conversation?”)

They asked themselves if Hugo—having lost part of one ear to a dog in a nightclub—could have conceivably done anything more preposterous than dangle a gold earring from his remaining earlobe. “Do you think Hugo wants to draw attention to the earlobe the dog bit off?” Heather asked Jack.

“He could have put the earring in the top part of the damaged ear, and not worn anything in the good one,” Jack suggested.

Heather wondered if Jack might meet the particular prostitutes their dad was in the habit of visiting—that is, if Hugo would introduce him. “Just to see if they’re nice, and to ask them to be nice to him,” Jack’s sister said.

“He has very little privacy as it is,” Jack said. They agreed that you have to give the people you love a little privacy, even if you’re afraid for their lives.

“Don’t you love them all?” she asked him. “I mean his doctors—even Professor Ritter.”

“Ah, well …” Jack started to say. “Of course I do!” he told her.

“Will you call me every day?” his sister asked.

“Of course I will! If I forget, you can call me collect,” he said.

She was crying again. “I think you’ve bought me, Jack. I’ve completely sold myself to you!” she cried.

“I love you, Heather.”

“I love you and every inch of your skin,” she said.

Jack told Heather how their dad had thrown a tantrum over how expensive Zurich was, and that the issue of his children buying a house there had struck him as crazy. (This objection from a man who had no idea how expensive the Sanatorium Kilchberg was—or that the money had run out to pay for his care, which was why Heather had contacted Jack in the first place!)

Jack and his sister also talked about mundane things—those things Jack had imagined he would never talk to anyone about. The specific details of the house they were going to share in Zurich, for example: the number of rooms they needed; how many bathrooms, for Christ’s sake. (Exactly as William would have said it.)

It seemed too obvious to put into words, but Jack realized that when you’re happy—especially when it’s the first time in your life—you think of things that would never have occurred to you when you were un happy.

What a morning it was! First the light streaming into his room at the Storchen, then having coffee and a little breakfast in the café on the Limmat. Simple things had never seemed so complex, or was it the other way around? Jack was as powerless to stop what would happen next as he had been that fateful day William Burns impregnated Alice Stronach.

And standing in front of the Hotel zum Storchen—on the same cobblestones where Jack had stood when he’d called, “ Bis morgen! ” to her, in the Weinplatz—was that supermodel of medication, Dr. Anna-Elisabeth Krauer-Poppe. Once again, she was wearing something smashing; Jack could understand why she wore the lab coat in Kilchberg, just to tone herself down.