Ballad of the Black and Blue Mind (11 page)

Dr. H. thought: Sane people believe that God gave his son to the ordeal of crucifixion for the salvation of mankind. They believe that a baby can be born without a human father and that angels are singing in heaven above and that we are more than flesh and bone and will live in the clouds forever. Sane people are no test of sanity.

Del's father said, My son despises me.

The trains had moved across the continent under the usual constellations that revealed no heavenly secrets. The trains had been packed with disappointments, debts, plans, affections, sores, hunger pangs, soiled clothes, imperfect loves, sexual dreams, memories of music, math, misdeeds, cruelties large and small traveling all night with them to the chambers where the gas blew from spigots in the ceilings and God had not stopped them and it is reasonable to wonder why not and to find a reason that spares God from judgment (if it is not his fault it must be ours) and keeps his presence among the Jews, sacred and central so that chaos is banished and order restored.

God did not disappear in the Shoah. He was punishing his errant people. The rabbi explained this to Del's father. And Del's father did not accept the explanation. His voice had almost failed him. It came out thin and whiny. He had said to the rabbi, little children, babies, people who had harmed no one, Your God did this?

Dr. Berman had a dream that she told no one. In it Paris appeared with a golden apple and he gave it to her. She was walking in Central Park and she was wearing her black suit with a Herm
è
s scarf and the gold pin that sat like a fist on her lapel. Paris said to her, You are the woman I have been waiting for. And she said to him, in her dream, I know. When she woke she remembered her dream. That morning when she looked in the mirror she saw the marks of age, the slip of skin, the drape of chin, the loss of rose and dew, and she saw the tight pull at the edges of her mouth where the lust of her youth had drained away. She considered that in her dream Paris might have been standing in for her plastic surgeon.

Dr. H. said, So the Holocaust is your fault. Perhaps you caused the genocide in Cambodia or the droughts in Africa. Those little children in Mali with big eyes and round bellies dying in refugee camps, you must have done it. Maybe it was that last ham sandwich you had.

Del's father felt irritated. I'm serious. That rabbi really believes that.

You must be angry, said Dr. H.

At least your son has a family, said Dr. H.

Not mine, said Del's father, who was also Avram's father whether he liked it or not.

I could kill him, said Del's father.

We'll talk about that, said Dr. H.

And they did.

Dr. H. said to Dr. Z., I can't believe I said bullshit twice in a session today.

Was it bullshit? asked Dr. Z.

Yes, said Dr. H.

No harm done then, said Dr. Z.

 

 

seven

Dr. Z. said to his patient Ruth Glassberg, who was sitting opposite him white faced cracking her knuckles one after another, I understand.

No you don't, said his patient, in a whisper. He waited. I feel so ashamed, she said. I can't tell anybody.

You'll have to tell Will, he said.

I sent him an email, she said. He hasn't called. He's probably been in meetings all morning.

Do you believe your daughter has become less of a gift to you and Will since you opened the mail at 9:30?

Of course not, said his patient.

Do you find her less worthy today than yesterday? he added.

Of course not, but—, and the tears began again. I'll have to tell my sister. She'll ask. She knows the letter came this morning. She had one of the partners in her firm write a letter for us. She said he had given so much at the benefit auction we were certain to be accepted.

Dr. Z. said, In this matter there are no certainties.

Planes fall from the skies. Tornados sweep across counties tearing down walls and crashing into bridges. Tsunamis come out of the ocean and little children who have not received spectacular scores on their ERBs are drowned among the debris of floating beach chairs.

Dr. Z. did his residency on the pediatric cancer ward of Sloan Kettering. Dr. Z.'s mother had survived the war as a refugee in Singapore and had never gone to kindergarten. She was literate in three languages nevertheless.

You don't understand, said his patient again. I feel judged. I feel as if everyone is pointing at me. She's not smart enough or maybe the damned nursery school wrote a better recommendation for that fat little girl, Clare Lang, who practices the piano two hours every day. It's not fair.

Dr. Z. sighed. It wasn't fair. His patient's daughter was surely as lovely and as reading-ready as the little girl whose mother was right now rejoicing and calling every distant relative she could think of to report her success.

I feel, said his patient, as if my daughter is damaged, tarnished, and less graced by fortune than she was before. Now there will always be a beforehand and an after. Her birthday party is next week. How can I have a birthday party?

Dr. Z. had an impulse that was unworthy of his training, his discipline. He suppressed it. Instead he said, One day you'll laugh about this little letter from the world-famous school that can read the future no better than the average fortune-teller at the county fair. The place your child will one day take or the college she may attend or the man she will love or the work she will do or the children of her own she will have are not changed because of this admissions director you tell me is so famous, or her cracked crystal ball. What old wound has this opened?

His patient sat still.

I don't know, she said.

I have a headache, she added.

I have no doubt, said Dr. Z.

He had one too.

Have you ever seen a patient with hysterical paralysis? asked Dr. H.

No, said Dr. Z. Vienna had dozens of patients who went blind or deaf or couldn't walk, because of buried thoughts they couldn't think. It doesn't happen now. Not in New York City.

It would be better if it did, said Dr. H.

Everyone is on to the game, said Dr. Z. Our patients know enough about the unconscious to be almost always conscious. We've lost the power of the surprise. They read Freud in high school. They don't hide away memories in a deep vault. They tweet them. So they go on walking and seeing but remain miserable.

And not so easy to help, said Dr. Z.

We do have pharmaceuticals, said Dr. H.

Thank God, said Dr. Z.

If only they worked better, said Dr. H.

If only, said Dr. Z.

Narcissism, said Dr. H.

Borderline personality disorder, said Dr. Z.

Bipolar depression, said Dr. H.

Wonder what Freud would have made of LSD? said Dr. Z.

Blown his brains out, I'm sure, said Dr. H.

Leaving Dr. Z.'s office, his patient walked along Amsterdam Avenue. She saw the latest fashions, the sweaters that hung to the knees, the leathers with fur collars tempting in the small store windows, but her attention was elsewhere. There was just one other school to hear from, by the end of the week she would know if her daughter could compete with everyone else or had been exiled. Exiled to what? She felt transparent, as if the people walking past her could tell that she was injured.

That wasn't a new feeling.

It didn't arise because of the school letter. She often felt that her clothes were wrong. Her opinion on the issues of the day wanting. She often suspected that she was a lacking a dimension. For no reason at all she felt afraid, afraid that she was less, lesser, least. In whose eyes? In her own eyes, Dr. Z. had said. There were millions of souls in the city, all kinds and colors and shapes, but sometimes she believed that if she vanished the tabloids wouldn't scream out her disappearance in bold type and someone else would take her place in her bed and Will might not notice and only her daughter, the rejection letter daughter, would ask about her for a month or so.

A woman ahead of her stood at the crossing waiting for the light to change. There were no cars coming. Move, thought Dr. Z.'s patient. And then she had a vision, a dream fragment that broke through the barrier of reason into the daylight. In her vision she pushed the woman at the curb with all her strength, just as a car turned the corner, and the woman was tossed in the air and her scream rolled along Amsterdam, past the Tasti D-lite, past the vegan pizza restaurant, past the jewelry store with the little gold and turquoise earrings in the window, and everyone stood still and stared.

She would never push anyone into the street.

She told herself, as her beating heart slowly returned to its normal rhythm, that she would tell Dr. Z. about this waking dream. It wasn't so bad to think of harming someone as long as you didn't do it and she would never.

Then as the light changed it came to her that someone else might have the same thought, someone right at that moment might be thinking of pushing her into the street. She looked over her shoulder. An old man, using a cane, was right there. What was he thinking?

Was it the interview? Had Laura been too quiet? Had she not wanted to draw a picture, had she remembered to use many colors? Had she sucked her thumb? She knew better than to do that but maybe if she was scared or feeling shy . . . but should a child be banned from a school for acting like a child? Had that prissy retarded teacher who thought Laura wasn't getting enough sleep said that in her reference?

Shame embraced her. Shame filled every crevice of her mind. And fury. Her child, God how could anyone not see the wonder of her child, the sweet smell of her hair, the long lashes like her father's, the small perfect ears, how could anyone not see her beauty, outside, inside. It was, in some way that she couldn't have explained, her fault. Her failure, her shame, her shame alone.

Maybe it was because they weren't hedge fund people and would never be able to do much more than staff the bake sale. Maybe it was because she had not gone to an Ivy League college herself, but Will was a journalist. He was a journalist people talked about, wrote comments about online. Maybe it was because they weren't interesting enough, just white folks from Long Island. Some Indian computer genius's daughter, some British rock star, a Chinese diplomat's twins, a Bosnian Moslem with the World Bank, a black professor of economics, their children would have been given a place and Laura, Laura was rejected.

And Dr. Z.'s patient felt helpless to protect her daughter, to shield her from harm, to secure for her the best that life could bring. Her love for her child could not be contained in her breast. She ached with it. She limped forward with it. She leaned against the side of a building hoping the force of it would abate.

Hours later, after Laura had her bath, had watched her half hour of TV and had listened to
Bread and Jam for Frances
for the thousandth time and curled up under her quilt with her thumb in her mouth, her mother and father opened a good bottle of wine, as useful in bad times as good.

We could move to back to Great Neck, Will said.

Never, she said.

And with that word came the first call to battle. It was a firm call, a not-to-be-resisted call: Something, she would do something. There has to be an end to wilting and a beginning of blooming. She would bloom and so would Laura. That is what she would tell Dr. Z. She loved Will and Laura and Dr. Z. Not necessarily in that order.

The nuns were right, said Dr. Z., who wasn't Catholic and therefore had great affection for nuns. It is pride—vanity—that makes us suffer.

Dr. H. shook his head. It's fear of invisibility.

Dr. Z. said, You mean of someone else's invisibility, someone with a cloak draped over his head so his enemies cannot see him following them down a dark alley?

Dr. H. said, Not fear of the robber, creeper, strangler, but fear of not being seen. What, said Dr. H., would happen if the mother came to the crib to pick up the child after the nap and the child was invisible and she couldn't hear the cry and the child had lost its sinew, its substance, and was there, calling for help, but the mother couldn't see or touch the infant body. What then?

Dr. Z. said, Absurd.

Dr. H. said, Not so absurd.

Dr. Z. said, I wouldn't put that in print.

Dr. H. said, I won't.

Dr. Berman spoke with her usual authority. She seemed enveloped in a cloak of royalty. She never said maybe, or I don't know, or I wonder if. She spoke in the affirmative, or the negative, clearly. Which is why none of her colleagues at the wine and cheese gathering after the presentation by the London analyst (who was likely suffering from jet lag) mentioned to her that she had left her purse in the auditorium. A student retrieved it and presented it to her as if it had just slipped to the floor.

But in the taxi crosstown it was clear that her mood was dark.

Once, she said, when I began, we were gods in this city. Now they think we're clowns. No one, then, no matter their bank account, their name in the society pages, their awards or reserved places at restaurants, no one was as respected and feared as our small band.

Perhaps, said Dr. Z., that was not so good. We began to have delusions that we actually were mind readers, holy priests. I'm surprised no one ever suggested a balloon of Freud for the Thanksgiving Day parade. We lost perspective on ourselves.

Dr. H. agreed.

Dr. Z. went on. All that hallelujah faith in pharmacological cures or self-help books, and TV gurus, steals our thunder. We might as well have tanks of leeches in our offices. We could do acupuncture as a sideline. Or maybe we should illustrate our papers with gold vines on the sides of the page and small ink portraits of our offices nestled under giant capital letters. And then we could be humble friars and revered for our piety until a new renaissance restores us to our pedestals.

Dr. H. laughed. Dr. Z. was a large man with big hands that could never have wielded a tiny brush with a drop of gold paint on its tip. I'm not holding my breath, he said, a psychoanalytic renaissance is beyond imagining.

I can imagine it, said Dr. Z.

Dr. Berman said, I can't.

I can imagine what Frederick Crews, the anti-Freud superhero, would say about your wrapping yourself in a brown burlap gown stained with gold leaf drips, said Dr. H.

Our critics are gleeful that the science of psychoanalysis, like all the other sciences, commits errors. But we too learn from error, move forward and backwards, acknowledge wrong paths, try others. What did they expect from us? Chemistry was not flawless at the beginning. The elements were named earth, air, water, and fire: no one gave up on chemistry. You have to start somewhere. Dr. Z. sighed.

We still have patients, said Dr. H.

Some, said Dr. Z, and students, not the ones looking for a Nobel Prize, but students nevertheless.

Not so many, said Dr. Berman.

Enough, said Dr. H.

Enough for what? said Dr. Z.

Bring back the glory days, said Dr. Berman.

Dr. Z. said, Not likely.

Dr. H. said, Maybe.

Dr. Z. said, Uh-huh.

Good night, said Dr. Berman. They had arrived at her corner.