Erich Segal - Oliver's Story

'Police?' I asked of Jo, who suddenly was at my side.

'They're never in the neighborhood.' She smiled. 'It's much too dangerous. No, it's Godzilla from upstairs. His real name's Temple and he's anti-life.'

'Open up!!'

I looked around. There were some twenty of us, yet the orchestra seemed cowed. This guy Godzilla must be pretty dangerous. Anyway, Lou Stein unbolted.

'Goddamn hell, you s.o.b.s, I tell you every freakin' Sunday — cut the noise!'

This he said while looming over Mr Stein. 'Godzilla' was indeed quite apt. He was a huge and hairy creature.

'But, Mr Temple,' Mr Stein replied, 'we always end our Sunday sessions right at ten.'

'Shit!' the monster snorted.

'Yes, I noticed you had left that out,' said Mr Stein.

Temple glared at him. 'Don't push me, creep. I've reached the boilin' point with you!' Hatred smoldered in Godzilla's tones. I sensed his goal in life was to aggress; his neighbor Mr Stein. And now he was about to make a dream come true.

Stein's two sons, though clearly frightened, moved to join their father.

Temple ranted on. And now, with Mrs Stein already by her husband's side, Joanna slipped away from me and headed for the door. (To fight? To bind the wounds?) It all was happening so fast.

And coming to a head.

'Goddammit, don't you lousy bastards know that it's against the law disturbin' other people's peace.'

'Excuse me, Mr Temple, I think you're the one who's violating people's rights.'

I just spoke those words! Before I even realized I was going to pronounce them. And, what surprised me more, I had risen and begun approaching the unwanted visitor. Who now turned to me.

'What's your problem, blondie?' said the animal.

I noticed he was several inches taller and had forty pounds (at least) on me. But hopefully not all of it was muscle.

I motioned to the Steins to let me handle this. But they remained.

'Mr Temple,' I continued, 'have you ever heard of section forty of the Criminal Code? That's trespassing. Or section seventeen — that's threatening bodily harm? Or section — '

' Whatta you — a cop?' he grunted. Clearly he had known a few.

'Just a lawyer,' I replied, 'but I could send you up the river for a lengthy rest.'

'You're bluffin',' Temple said.

'No. But if you're anxious to resolve this issue sooner, there's another process.'

'Yeah, you fruit?'

He flexed his looming muscles. Behind me I could sense the orchestra's anxiety. And inside, a scintilla of my own. But still I calmly took my jacket off, and spoke sotto voce with extreme politeness.

'Mr Temple, if you don't evaporate, I'll simply have to slowly — as one intellectual to another — beat your Silly Putty brains out.'

After the intruder's quite precipitous departure, Mr Stein broke out champagne ('imported straight from California'). The orchestra then voted to perform the loudest piece they knew, a very spirited rendition of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. In which I even played an instrument: the cannon (empty ash can).

Several hours later — all too soon — the party ended.

'Come again,' said Mrs Stein.

'Of course he will,' said Mr Stein.

'What makes you so sure?' she asked.

'He loves us,' Louis Stein replied.

And that was that.

No one had to tell me that my duty was to take Joanna home. Although the hour was late, she still insisted that we take the number-five bus that goes down Riverside and ultimately snakes across to Fifth. She was sort of tired from her hours of work. And yet: her mood was up.

'God, you were fantastic, Oliver,' she said. And put her hand on mine.

I tried to ask myself just what I felt about her touch.

And couldn't get an answer.

Joanna still was bubbly.

'Temple won't dare show his mug again!' she said.

'Hey, listen, Jo — it doesn't take much brains to call a bully's bluff.'

I'd used my hands to gesture and they now were disengaged from hers. (Relief?)

'But still … '

She didn't finish. Maybe it began to puzzle her the way I kept insisting I was just a stupid jock.

My only purpose was to let her know I wasn't really worth her time. I mean she was so nice. And kind of pretty. Well, at least z. normal guy with normal feelings would have found her so.

She had a fourth-floor walk-up near the hospital. As we stood outside her door, I noticed she was shorter than she'd seemed at first. I mean she had to look straight up at me to talk.

I also noticed that my breath was kind of short. It couldn't be from climbing stairs (I run a lot, remember). And I began to feel the vaguest sense of panic as I talked to this intelligent and gentle doctor lady.

Maybe she'd imagine that I liked her more than just platonically. What if maybe —

'Oliver,' Joanna said, 'I'd like to ask you in. But I go on at six a.m.'

'Another time,' I said. And suddenly could feel more oxygen within my lungs.

'I hope so, Oliver.'

She kissed me. On the cheek. (They were a bunch of touchers, her whole family.)

'Good night,' she said.

'I'll call you,' I replied.

'I had a lovely evening.'

'I did too.'

And yet I was ineffably unhappy.

Walking back that night, I came to the conclusion that I needed a psychiatrist.

'Let's begin by leaving out King Oedipus completely.'

Thus began my well-prepared self-introduction to the doctor. Finding a reliable psychiatrist involves a simple set of moves. First you call up friends who are physicians and you tell them that a friend of yours could use some help. Then they recommend a doctor for this troubled person.

Finally, you walk around the phone two hundred times, you dial, and make your first appointment.

'Look,' I rambled on, 'I've had the courses and I know the jargon we could toss around. How we could label my behavior with my father when I married Jenny. I mean all the things that Freud would say is not the stuff I want to hear.'

Dr Edwin London, though 'extremely fine', according to the guy who recommended him, was not, however, too inclined to lengthy sentences.

'Why are you here?' he asked without expression.

Then I got scared. My opening remarks had gone okay, but here we were already in the cross-examination.

Why exactly was I there? What did I want to hear? I swallowed and replied so softly that the words were barely audible to me.

'Why I can't feel.'

He waited silently.

'Since Jenny died, I just can't feel a thing. Yeah, now and then a twinge of hunger. TV dinners take quick care of that. But otherwise … for eighteen months … I have felt absolutely nothing.'

He listened as I struggled to dredge up my thoughts. They poured out helter-skelter in a stream of hurt. I feel so terrible. Correction, I feel nothing. Which is worse. I'm lost without her. Philip helps.

No, Phil can't realty help. Although he tries. Feel nothing. Almost two whole years. I can't respond to normal human beings.

Now silence. I was sweating.

'Sexual desire?' asked the doctor.

'None,' I said. And then to make it even clearer, 'Absolutely nothing.'

No immediate reply. Was London shocked? I couldn't read his face. So then, because it was so obvious to both of us, I said:

'No one has to tell me that it's guilt.'

Then Dr Edwin London spoke his longest sentence of the day.

'Do you feel … responsible for Jenny's death?'

Did I feel responsible for Jenny's death? I thought immediately of my compulsive wish to die the day that Jenny did. But that was transient. I know I didn't give my wife, lukemia. And yet …