“Do me a favor,” my mother continued. “Don’t tell Nanette about Barry and me. She’ll find out soon enough and I’d like a few days of peace and quiet before she begins haranguing me.”
“What if she asks me?”
“What if she asks you what?”
“About you and Mr. Rogers?”
“She won’t ask. You know she never asks about me. She doesn’t even think about me.”
“Well, if she does ask, what should I say? Do you want me to lie?”
“Believe me, James,” my mother said. “She won’t ask.”
Later that night I was sitting on the couch in the living room with Miró trying to complete the
New York Times
crossword puzzle that my mother had left three-quarters finished, but since it was Friday and basically impossible I wasn’t making much progress. My mother had gone to bed. About eleven o’clock Gillian and Herr Schultz came in from seeing some stupid movie. I don’t understand how supposedly intelligent people—say a professor at Columbia University and a student at Barnard College—can go see a movie like
Pirates of the Caribbean
. Gillian went into the kitchen and came out with a bottle of Peroni beer for her and a diet, caffeine-free Coke for Rainer Maria. “Do you want a beer?” Gillian asked, but she waited until she had come into the room and sat down before asking this question, which implied I should say no.
I did (say no).
“How was the movie?” I asked.
“It was great,” said Gillian. “At least the part we saw. But somebody started a fire in the theater, so we had to leave. They gave us free passes.”
“I don’t know why you would go see a movie like that on Friday night in New York,” I said. “It’s like going to hell.”
“Get a life, James,” said Gillian.
“Children, don’t bicker,” said Herr Schultz. “I get enough of that at home.” Rainer Maria was married and had several alarmingly blond children. His wife, Kirsten, taught Scandinavian languages at Columbia (I’m sure there was huge demand for that) and wrote a series of mystery novels featuring a Swedish transsexual detective (female → male). Kirsten was having an affair with her former therapist. She and Rainer Maria had an “open” marriage. (I know all this because Gillian told me.)
“Guess what?” I said to Gillian.
“What?” she said.
“Dad’s having plastic surgery this weekend.”
“Cool. What’s he getting done?”
“He’s having the bags under his eyes removed.”
“It’s about time,” said Gillian. “He’s beginning to look like Walter Matthau. So that means he won’t be at the house this weekend?”
“Yes,” I said.
She turned to Rainer Maria. “Do you want to go to the beach tomorrow, sweetie?”
“No,” he said. “I hate the beach. And please don’t call me sweetie.”
“Are you going out there?” Gillian asked me.
“No,” I said. “I’m going to see Nanette tomorrow.”
“You’re so weird.”
“Fuck you,” I said.
“Children, children,” said Rainer Maria.
“Well, don’t you think it’s weird?” Gillian asked Rainer Maria. “An eighteen-year-old boy who visits his grandmother?”
“No,” said Rainer Maria. “You Americans have so little family feeling. In Germany, it is different. We love our grandparents.”
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t love them,” said Gillian. “I just think visiting them is weird. It will be so good for you to go away to school, James. You really have to get out of this house.”
“I’ve decided I’m not going to college,” I said.
“What? Since when?”
“Today.”
“What do you mean, you’re not going to college? What are you going to do?”
“I’m thinking about moving to the Midwest.”
“The Midwest? The Midwest of what?”
“The United States,” I said. “The prairie states.”
“The
prairie
states? I think you’ve read
My Ántonia
one too many times.”
“Hush, Gillian. I think this is a very good plan for you, James,” said Rainer Maria. “The college experience in the United States is a farce.”
“Hello!” said Gillian. “You teach in a college.”
“My dear Gillian, if everyone had to believe in the work he did, not much would get done in the world,” said Rainer Maria.
“Have you told Mom about this?”
“I mentioned it to her.”
“What do you mean, mentioned it? How can you mention you’re not going to college a month before you’re set to go?”
“I mentioned it. I think she thought I was joking.”
“I’m sure she did. What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you want to go to college?”
“I think it would be a waste of time, and I wouldn’t like the people. I don’t want to live with people like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you.”
“I think you make a lot of sense, James,” said Rainer Maria.
Gillian hit him. “What do you mean? He just said he didn’t want to live with people like me.”
“I mean about it being a waste of time, and I don’t think James would like the people, and that’s no reflection on you, my dear.”
Gillian finished her beer and stood up. “I’m hungry,” she said. “Let’s go get something to eat.”
“All right,” said Rainer Maria. “But someplace quiet. And cheap.”
“Let’s go to Primo.”
“Primo is neither quiet nor cheap,” said R.M.
I stood up. “I’m going to bed.”
“Yes, you better rest up,” said Gillian. “You have a big day tomorrow.”
“Will you take Miró out?”
“No,” said Gillian. “I walked him twice today, and he pooped both times.”
“I will walk the dog!” said Rainer Maria. “When I return, you will have thought of an appropriate restaurant, Gillian. Good night, James.”
“Good night, Rainer Maria.” I did not say good night to Gillian, and she did not say good night to me.
May 2003
FOR A FEW WEEKS AFTER MY DISASTROUS RETURN FROM THE American Classroom, very little was said about the incident. Because the police had been involved, my school was notified, and my guidance counselor, a woman with the unfortunate name of Ms. Kuntz (pronounced “Koontz”) called me into her office and asked me if I wanted to talk about what had happened. I of course said no, which I could tell relieved her, and she said that since The American Classroom was an extracurricular activity not associated with the school, she saw no reason why the information should be included in my transcript or passed on to Brown. “We’ll just pretend the whole thing never happened,” she told me, and I said that was fine with me.
For a while it appeared as though my parents were going to take the same tactic, for neither of them mentioned it, but I knew they were probably just deciding how to deal with it. Ever since my parents divorced there has been this delayed response to Gillian’s and my transgressions, for they must get together and agree on what to do, and since they don’t like to get together and rarely agree, time invariably passes.
And then one night in May, my mother came into my bedroom and said, “I want to talk to you.”
I was sitting at my computer and I said, “So talk.”
“No,” she said. “Shut that off. Or at least turn around and look at me.”
I swiveled around so I was facing her. She was sitting on my bed. She looked at me appraisingly for a moment as if I might be an impostor, and then said, “I had lunch with your father today.”
I said nothing. I wasn’t quite sure where this was going, but I couldn’t imagine it going anywhere pleasant, so I saw no point in advancing the conversation.
My mother waited a moment and then said, “We had a little talk about you.”
“Little?” I said. “A chat perhaps? A tête-à-tête?”
“I am just going to ignore your tiresome remarks, James. We had a little talk about you.”
“What is there to talk about me?”
“What is there not to talk about would be the better question. We are both worried about you. We talked about that.”
“Why are you worried about me?”
“Why are we worried? James, you don’t have any friends, you rarely speak, you apparently had some sort of psychotic episode at The American Classroom that caused you to act both irresponsibly and dangerously. That is what worries us.”
“Well, as long as I’m happy, why should you worry?”
My mother leaned toward me. “Are you happy? Are you happy, James?” She asked these questions almost fiercely, with a disturbing vehement anguish. It scared me. I realized she was worried. Because my parents have often acted so irresponsibly, I forget that they do feel responsible for me and Gillian. Perhaps because they see their divorce as failing us in some way (which of course it did), they feel even more responsible, but I think it is a Sisyphean task, the thought of which both exhausts and immobilizes them, and so they avoid it as long as possible, and then at the last moment switch into this alarming über-parent mode. My mother was all buggy-eyed and a vein in her temple throbbed.
“No,” I said, after a moment. “I’m not happy.”
“That is why we are worried about you,” my mother said gently. “We are worried because you are not happy. We want you to be happy.” She sat back.
“Well, who’s happy?” I said. “I don’t think anyone is happy. How can anyone be happy in the world we—”
“Stop it, James,” my mother said. “People are happy. Sometimes. Or they are not unhappy in the way that you are unhappy.”
“In what way am I unhappy?” I asked.
“In a way that concerns us,” said my mother. “A way that frightens us.”
“Oh,” I said. I couldn’t really think of what to say.
“And so we had lunch,” my mother continued, her voice sounding a bit more normal. “And we had a talk about you. And we thought that perhaps you might like to talk to someone.”
“Talk to someone? You just mentioned my disinclination to talk. Why would I want to talk to someone?”
“I don’t mean
someone
someone,” my mother said. “I mean someone a doctor. A therapist. A psychiatrist. A someone like that. Will you do this, James? For me? And your father. Just—just stop rejecting everything for a moment and go and talk to this woman.”
“She’s a woman?”
“Yes, she’s a woman.”
“Who picked her?”
“Your father did. I knew you would reject out of hand anybody I suggested.”
“Well, you have to admit your record with therapists isn’t very good.”
My mother said nothing.
“What’s her name?”
“Rowena Adler,” my mother said. “Dr. Rowena Adler. She’s a psychiatrist.”
“Rowena? You’re sending me to a shrink named Rowena?”
“What’s wrong with Rowena? It’s a perfectly fine name.”
“I suppose if you’re a character in a Wagnerian opera. But don’t you think it’s a tad Teutonic?”
“You’re being ridiculous, James. You cannot reject this doctor because of her heritage. Your father talked to several people and she is apparently very good.”
“Well, that’s reassuring. A shrink vetted by Dad’s insane colleagues.”
“Your father has connections. He can find the best divorce lawyer, so why shouldn’t he be able to find the best shrink? He put a lot of time and effort into this, and you know how unlike him that is. Dr. Adler comes highly recommended by people who know about these things. In fact, her specialty is …”
“What? What’s her specialty? Silent, unhappy eighteen-year-olds?”
“Yes,” said my mother. “In fact that is precisely her specialty. She works with disturbed adolescents.”
“Oh, so that’s what I am? It doesn’t sound very PC. Can’t they come up with something better? Can’t I be a special adolescent? Or a differently abled adolescent? Can’t—”
My mother reached out and put her hand over my mouth. “Stop,” she said. “Just stop.”
Her hand felt odd against my face. It felt weirdly intimate—I couldn’t remember when she had last touched me. She kept her hand there, covering my mouth, for a long moment. And then she took it away. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have—it’s just that—”
“No,” I said. “You’re right. It’s true.”
“What’s true?” my mother asked.
“I am disturbed,” I said. I thought about what the word meant, what it really means to be disturbed, like how a pond is disturbed when you throw a rock into it or how you disturb the peace. Or how you can be disturbed by a book or movie or the burning rain forest or the melting ice caps. Or the war in Iraq. It was one of those moments when you feel you have never heard the word before, and you cannot believe it means what it means, and you think how did this word come to mean that? It seemed like a bell or something, shining and pure,
disturbed, disturbed, disturbed,
I could hear it pealing with its true meaning, and I said, as if I had just realized it, “I am disturbed.”
I was disappointed with Rowena Adler’s office. I had imagined it would be in a Village brownstone, facing the garden perhaps, with Danish modern furniture and kilims on the parquet floor and tasteful abstract paintings on the walls, and she would sit in a big swively chair and I would sit across from her, or perhaps recline on a divan at her side, and maybe she would have a dog or a cat, an old dog or cat, quiet and tired, who slept at her feet, but I first met her in an office in a New York University Medical Center building on a godforsaken stretch of First Avenue. I had to wait in a windowless room lined with the rows of interconnected molded plastic seats you often see in bus terminals. There was also a watercooler, but it was empty. There is something inherently depressing about an empty watercooler—none of that is it half-full or half-empty, just empty—and I thought if I were a shrink and had a watercooler in my waiting room I would make sure it was always filled. This room obviously served as the waiting room for several other health practitioners, and I was a little alarmed to think that Dr. Adler couldn’t afford her own office, with a private entrance and a private waiting room. This was like going to the dentist, if you went to a dentist in a public health clinic in the Port Authority Bus Terminal.
A woman sat across from me eating a grossly overstuffed tuna salad sandwich. There was so much tuna salad in this woman’s sandwich that it was oozing out of the roll onto the waxed paper she had spread on her lap, and she reached down and picked up clumps of it with her fingers and fed them to herself. I could tell she was trying to do this daintily, but of course the inherent piggishness of the activity made that impossible.
A woman appeared in the doorway. Although there was only me and the tuna sandwich lady, she looked around the room as if it were full of people and said, “James? James Sveck?”
“Yes,” I said. I stood up and approached her.
She held out her hand and I shook it. It felt very cool and slender. “I’m Dr. Adler,” she said. “Why don’t you come with me?”
I followed her down a depressing hallway into a tiny windowless office that might have housed an accountant. In fact it reminded me a bit of Myron Axel’s closet, filled with piles of paper waiting to be filed, week-old cups of coffee turned into science experiments, and a litter of broken umbrellas nesting beneath the desk.
I must have looked as surprised as I felt when I entered her office, for Rowena Adler looked at the utilitarian clutter about her and said, “I’m sorry about this mess. I’m so used to it. I forget how it looks.” Then she sat down and said, “It’s nice to meet you, James.”
I said, “Thank you,” as if she had paid me a compliment. I wasn’t about to say it was nice to meet her, too. I hate saying anything expected like that, that kind of dead, meaningless language.
“Why don’t you sit down there,” she said, indicating an uncomfortable-looking metal folding chair. It was the only other chair in the room, but she said it as if there were many and she had selected this one especially for me. She was sitting in a tweed-covered office chair on casters that was turned away from her desk. The room was so small our knees almost touched. She leaned back, ostensibly to be more comfortable, but I could tell it was really to move away from me. “I usually see patients in my office downtown, but on Thursdays I can’t get away from here, and I wanted to see you as soon as I could.”
I didn’t like the way she called me a patient, or implied I was a patient, although since she was a doctor and I was consulting her I’m not sure what else I could be. A client sounded too businesslike, but she could have just said “people,” but then I thought I was wrong to be offended: there is nothing shameful about being a patient, one does not bring sickness upon oneself, it is an unelected characteristic—cancer and tuberculosis are not indications of people’s character (I had read Susan Sontag’s
Illness as Metaphor
in my modern morals class last spring), but then I thought, Well, maybe with psychiatry it’s different, because if you’re manic-depressive or paranoid or sexually compulsive it is rather indicative of your character, or at least inextricably linked with your character, and these things must be bad, otherwise they would not be treated, so being a patient in these circumstances
was
an indication of some sort of personal failure or—
“So, James,” I suddenly heard her saying, “what brings you here?”
This seemed a stupid question to me. If you go to a dentist you can say “I have a toothache,” or you go into a jeweler’s and ask to have a new battery installed in your watch, but what could you possibly say to a psychiatrist?
“What brings me here?” I repeated the question, hoping she would rephrase it more intelligibly.
“Yes.” She smiled, pointedly ignoring my tone. “What brings you here?”
“I suppose if I knew what brought me here, I wouldn’t be here,” I said.
“Where would you be?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know,” I said.
“You’re afraid?”
I realized that she was one of those annoying people who take everything you say literally. “I misspoke,” I said. “I’m not afraid. I just don’t know.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure of what? That I don’t know or that I’m not afraid?”
“Which do you think I mean?”
“Please don’t do that,” I said.
“Please don’t do what?”
I thought that at the rate we were repeating each other’s words we wouldn’t get very far in forty-five minutes. “Please don’t answer a question with a question in that therapy way.”
Without any reaction or hesitation she said, “What do you think about therapy?”
I felt like we were in some contest to see who could unnerve the other first. This did not seem very therapeutic to me, but I was intent upon winning. “I think therapy is a rather misguided notion of capitalist societies whereby the self-indulgent examination of one’s life supersedes the actual living of said life.” I had no idea where this came from—perhaps I had read it or heard it in a movie?