Richard Powers - Generosity

“Please sit,” she says, and waves at a stuffed chair. She sits in another, angled toward him. A shaded reading lamp stands between them. A half-height bookshelf hugs the wall behind her, filled with books on healthy living. He recognizes one of the happiness encyclopedias he’s been poring over these last weeks. On the wall above the bookshelf hangs the azure dream of Hopper’s Lee Shore . The room is an aggressively cozy corner of a furniture showroom. They sit together, home again after a long day, trying to decide on pizza versus sushi. Grace, wild Grace, domestically tranquil at last.

“How can I help you?” she asks, her face a cheerful blank. It’s no one he’s ever met.

He tilts his head and grimaces as warmly as he can. “I’m not here for myself, really. I’m concerned about one of my students.”

She recoils an inch. For just an instant, he’s unreadable. Like he’s grabbed her by the elbow and started cackling. Then she smiles and says, “That’s fine. Tell me.”

Weld thought: This man has recently been shocked to discover that he still has a future. He sat in her stuffed chair, his eyes panning like a security camera, his chest so cupped that she twitched a little when he claimed to have come about someone else.

Four weeks earlier, yet another besieged student had erupted and shot up yet another school, this one in Wisconsin, only three hundred miles away. It happened every other semester, like some natural cycle, and every time, in the wake of the tragedy, a wave of concerned Mesquakie instructors flooded the counseling center. When those waves hit, the counselors were cautioned to work doubly hard at treating each case as if it were unique.

Candace Weld started the consultation with all the set protocols: Has the student made any direct or implied threats? Does the student display violent, erratic, or aggressive behavior? The questions just baffled the visiting instructor. Does the student display behavior that might require immediate medical attention? His each no was increasingly agitated.

Early on in every consultation, Weld liked to give her clients vivid shorthand names. She often tagged her art students after artists- Munch , a photography MFA candidate badly in need of lorazepam. Botero , a pale girl who planned to eat her way into her mother’s heart. Morandi , a sandy glass-bottle freshman reconciled to his gray still life. But Russell Stone was a writer, or, as he explained, “At least I play one in the classroom.” Fyodor , she decided, penning the name at the upper right of her fresh spiral pad: Fyodor, feverish with beliefs.

In what way did he find the student’s behavior troubling?

He laid out the whole story, which Candace Weld noted in detail. Document everything . The stranger the tale, the more important the paper trail. She leaned forward into his accounts, as if some scrap might otherwise fall between them. As he launched into his exposition-Algeria, murder, exile-she had to remind herself to stop listening and keep writing.

He wandered deep into backstory. She tried to guide him, but he seemed trapped inside a thick volume, and all the pace and cadence of her profession were powerless to extract him.

She asked: Are you worried Ms. Amzwar might be suffering some kind of breakdown?

Her transcript has him answering: “I’m worried that she is excessively happy, in a way that can’t possibly be right.”

Why not?

“Because she’s an Algerian civil war orphan refugee.”

Why couldn’t an Algerian refugee be happy?

But at that question, Fyodor just slumped and shrugged.

She asked if he’d consulted with anyone at the college-any of Ms. Amzwar’s other teachers.

“One or two of the other students ”

Seeking another opinion had clearly never occurred to him.

Had Ms. Amzwar ever approached him in distress?

Fyodor: “I’m not sure she’s capable of distress.”

Then why, exactly, was he so concerned?

“From what I understand, if she’s truly hyperthymic, then she doesn’t need anything from anyone. But if she has hypomania, she’s in trouble. All that elation is just waiting to crash.”

She breathed in and transcribed his words, not for the first time in her counseling career silently cursing Wikipedia. Out loud, she said, “She’d have to make an appointment for me to do a complete assessment.”

He shut his eyes, then opened them. “Of course. I just don’t know how I can ask her to do that without ”

“Without asking her to see a psychological counselor?”

He nodded, defeated.

“I understand,” she said. “Tough to tell someone, ‘Get help. You’re too happy.’ ”

He nodded again, his lip half curling. Fyodor smiled .

“You should consult with her other instructors. See if any of them are also concerned.”

“Okay,” he said, not even pretending that he might.

Obeying the protocols, Candace Weld bit down and started again. Would he say that Thassadit Amzwar was sociable?

The question amused him. “Every single person she meets is a long-lost friend.”

Did Thassadit race or free-associate when she talked?

“Just the opposite. She brings everyone back down to a reasonable pace.”

Did she fidget or jiggle or bite her nails?

“She sits beaming for the whole class period.”

Did she ever seem cryptic or allusive or grandiose?

“My God, no.”

Was she ever edgy or aggressive?

He twisted his lips and shook his head, the question too ludicrous to humor.

What did she eat? How much did she sleep? He answered the best he could. Something heartbreakingly amateur clung to him. But he wasn’t the subject of the consultation.

The psychologist set down her pen. She steepled her fingers to her lips. “Maybe someone should get a urine sample from this woman?”

He took his time answering. She admired that.

“If I knew a drug that produced sustained, intense, level, loving well-being without any trace of stupor or edge, I’d take it myself.”

She cocked her head and twisted her lips. “You’d have to. Everyone else would already be on it.”

He laughed then, a sharp little bark of alarm. She caught her hand smoothing her cheek and dropped it into her lap. “You’ve never seen her get irritable?”

He waited a beat, but only out of respect. “I’ve watched her for almost two months, and I’ve never seen her even grimace.”

She flipped through her notes for a hidden explanation. “Obviously, I can’t say anything without seeing her in person. This isn’t a diagnosis. I’d never say you have no cause for concern. But you aren’t really describing mania, from what I can tell.”

He couldn’t even pretend composure. She liked that in him. “What am I describing?”

“We can talk more, if you’d like. About why she disturbs you. You could make another appointment.”

For a moment, Fyodor fumbled. Then all the visiting instructor wanted was to get away.

For her doctoral thesis, Candace Weld had studied 480 cases and analyzed the various ways that clients ended their treatments. Some reached a satisfying stopping place. Some terminated prematurely, when they were almost home. Others spent years going nowhere before finally throwing in the towel. This one, she knew from the moment he walked into her office, was destined to terminate before therapy even began.

But waiting was her art, and her medium, the blind confusion of others. “Come talk whenever you like,” she told him. “I’m here, if anything changes.”

She sits in the chair next to him, Grace poised on the South Rim. He fights to keep from lapsing into old, private patois. He answers her professional questions, hearing himself stutter as if on tape delay. She gives him nothing but her guarded opinion that Thassa is probably not about to hurt herself. He’s come to the wrong place. This woman is a licensed counselor. He needs a positive psychologist. He wants to apologize for wasting her time. He’s long ago written off his own.