By Blood A Novel

31.


The patient fell silent, and then doctor and client shifted in their seats, as if returning to the present. A thin shaft of light from under our adjoining door sent a ray across the carpet of my dark office; and every time Dr. Schussler crossed her legs, as she was doing now, she cast jagged shadows across the floor. The silence, the play of shadows, went on for some long seconds; when suddenly the patient said:

Are you … possibly … Jewish?

The doctor took in a breath.

I know … it’s not usual … but … the patient tried again. Mother told me, and suddenly I need to know who I’m talking to. What do they think about Jews? Like my grandfather. Hating Jews. And Mother, who thinks it’s so vile that she has to hide it from the neighbors and the ladies at the club. Or maybe someone I’m talking to is Jewish. So I don’t have to worry about being hated.

I could all but see the standard therapeutic expression installing itself on Dr. Schussler’s face, the slightly shy, apologetic, but altogether forbidding smile that says unequivocally: I am not going to tell you.

You’re German, the patient said, or at least you speak German. It meant nothing to me before: where you came from, even who you were—are. But now. With all this. So you’re German. And if you’re not Jewish …

That smile: I could feel the steel of it through the wall.

It would help if you were Jewish, the patient said.

The jagged shadows played across the floor.

You see, I don’t know any Jewish people, the patient pressed on. I’ve met Jews, of course, but I’ve never been close to one. I have no idea what it means to say, I’m a Jew.

From the Hotel Palace across the way came the forlorn wail of the doorman’s taxi whistle.

It would help if I could talk to you about what it means to be Jewish.

Dr. Schussler fell back against the cushion of her chair.

Ach! she breathed. Who I am is not important. We are here to discuss who you are.

The doctor stood.

Oh, God, said the patient. It’s time for me to go, isn’t it?

(Well past time, I saw by the glow of my watch dial.)

The patient remained seated. I don’t want to go out there.

The taxi whistle called again.

She laughed. Please don’t make me go.

She withdrew a tissue from the box.

Call me if you need to, the therapist said.

The patient stood. Then she paused in the doorway. There was a rustle of fabric.

Please don’t hug me, she said. What is this hugging thing you’ve gotten into? It’s weird, this hugging.

Then she left, slamming the door behind her.

Dr. Schussler immediately lit a cigarette, picked up the phone, dialed. This is Dr. Schussler again, she said after a time. Have you given Dr. Gurevitch my last message? Yes. I see. But—I understand. Please say it is urgent. Yes, the same message. Patient three.





32.


Now came disaster. All through the patient’s session, something had teased at the back of my throat. By evening, it was a hot scratch. Whatever it was then invaded my nasal passages—a mere cold, I hoped. But the next night I awoke shivering: a hundred and two, said the thermometer I always kept with me when traveling (one never knows when affliction will come upon one). An hour later, the bed was soaked, and again I lay shivering under my wet sheets. One hundred and three, said the thermometer.

Morning found me aching in every joint. The San Francisco Chronicle (which I stole from my neighbor’s doorstep) said some dreaded Asian flu had descended upon the population. And it was clear that I had been claimed as one of its victims.

Five days remained before the patient’s next session: I was determined to attend, no matter how ill I might be. But then came sneezing, then coughing; and along with these symptoms—noisy, irrepressible symptoms!—came panic. The sound machine was no match for such explosive sneezes, such exclamatory coughs. If I should go to the office—at any hour—I would be discovered.

Wednesday came, and I was desolate. The flu had not relented; my cough was thunderous. There was no recourse but to stay home, in my miserable cottage, watching the rain that dripped daily from a soaked, leaden sky. There I thought of nothing but the patient, the convoluted emotions she must be experiencing, the torments of being cast into one identity—Catholic! Father hates Catholics!—then another—Jewish! Grandfather hates Jews! (What relief I felt that I myself had not succumbed to my own family’s suspicion of Jews!) The utter cruelty of the Catholic Church, stealing the Jewish babies it had taken under its protection. Then the double-dealing of her grandfather, his prejudices, his despicable desire for a “pure Aryan” child. The patient as an Oedipal object traded between father and son. At every turn, someone to reject her, hate her, abandon her. And only two sessions remaining before the Christmas break—two castrated, fifty-minute hours—and nothing but the therapist’s skills to rescue the patient from the landslide that had fallen upon her.

Then, no sooner did I think of the therapist’s skills than a frightening thought threaded its way through my consciousness. I could not stop hearing the end of the session—or rather, what had happened after the session’s official closing. I recalled Dr. Schussler’s haste in reaching for the telephone, her words rushing forth, a quaver in her voice, so uncharacteristic of her usual Teutonic control. Gurevitch: She was trying to reach that Dr. Gurevitch. It was “urgent,” she said. And, in a terrifying instant, the other moments in which I had heard “Gurevitch” stood before me, each a signpost marking the next step to hell.

For I knew in that moment that Schussler was seeking “consultation.” Each call had been made after a difficult session with the patient; each was more insistent than the last. The doctor was in trouble. She could not handle the patient who lay before her, heart open on the table. She could not guide my dear patient’s journey, and she knew it. Consultation. But it doesn’t matter what those therapists, analysts, counselors, doctors, psychiatrists call it; they need some other doctor to save them from the mess they have created for themselves. What they are seeking is help.

I knew about such things. One of my own dear practitioners revealed to me that she had been seeking consultation on my case, explaining she had overidentified with me, her personal “issues” clouding “our work.” Her father also had committed suicide, she felt compelled to tell me. Thank you very much—bitch (I thought; I was twenty-five and still said such things). Why tell me? Why not just bear your own travails silently? I quit that therapist, but not before asking if she should not pay me for the insights I had given her.

Now I realized that Dr. Schussler could indeed be as incompetent as my former therapist—and what fear for my dear patient descended upon me! The patient’s passage (and mine) was made more perilous than ever, since we could not rely upon the person who made the desperate calls to Gurevitch. Once more I asked myself: Who was this Dr. Dora Schussler, this clinician who had presumed to force the issue of adoption and then found herself so unprepared for its aftermath?

Everything I thought I knew about Dr. Schussler suddenly vanished. The particular place in my mind in which I had carried her image all these months—empty. Most likely she was not sixty, not mature, not experienced. That limp: A person may develop a limp at any age. She could be thirty. That bun I had always presumed: a fantasy. She might have straight long hair, parted down the middle, playing over her shoulders, like many women today.

I was unmoored, for I was forced to revise my entire narrative—backward, a backward revision—which put in doubt all I had imagined to have come before. Must I now see all the therapy sessions with a different Dora Schussler; call her (in my mind) not “doctor” but “Dora”; see a short skirt barely covering those legs she crosses as she smokes? Could Dora be—this thought terrified me—could she be the sort I would have followed across Union Square?





33.


Dreams: I could not tell if I was waking or sleeping. The fever spiked and sweated down, spiked and sweated down, and the rest of the week I recall only as episodes of shaking chills and the misery of drenched, cold sheets that no one comes to change. I spent the dark hours floating on the rim of sleep and wandered through daylight in a haze, during which time I could not tell what was real—that knocking at my door right now: Was it my neighbor come to complain about the stolen newspaper? Or a phantom remnant of a dream, flotsam that had drifted by on the verge of sleep? The knocks came again. And again. They must be real, I thought. I dragged myself to the door. No one. The empty beach, the leaden sky, the restless back of the ocean, rising and falling like a great beast, from here to the rim of Asia—source of the scourge that had laid me low.

I played the radio. Day and night. It was my only contact with the world. The landlord had left behind an old, wooden, fabric-fronted radio, some of the fabric torn. The tuner often drifted between stations, so that everything I heard emerged out of static and returned into it, almost in rhythm with my fever, the static seeming to bury me under storms of snow just as the shaking chills grabbed hold of me. Talk shows, panel discussions, news—I tried to hear anything that was broadcast live, anything that chattered on. Even the stations full of shouted commercials: no matter, as long as it was a living announcer who did the promotion, reciting now, in this moment, if only to hear the yelp of humanity. Then the radio tuner would drift, and I would be cast off again into the emptiness of electronic noise.

Through the shivering curtains of static came whispers of strange reports, horrors and chaos, murders, women forced to watch their boyfriends knifed to death, then killed themselves by multiple knife thrusts, killed slowly, painfully, so that they had time to feel each assault and know they were going to die. Murders as trophies: random shootings of white people by black men in some bizarre organization where they earned “wings” for killing whites. Political murders: underground groups plotting bombings, assaults, robberies. The heiress Patty Hearst: kidnapped. I had been lost in my own wanderings since my arrival in San Francisco, not even pausing to glance at newspaper headlines. Were these emissions from my radio true events or figments of my fevers?

The radio reports faded in and out, so I could not learn who was speaking, and exactly of what. But their reality gained favor as similar stories drifted in over the hours: couples on lovers’ lane killed in their cars; the knife murder, the same woman, tied up and speared over and over again, as if the world could not get enough of her horror. Taunting letters sent to the local newspapers by the killer, daring the police to catch him, his name hidden in cryptograms still undeciphered, his signature a circle and cross: rifle crosshairs. The Zodiac, he was called. All this was transmitted to me in peripatetic fragments, blinking lights diffused in fog: the letters, the ciphers, the crosshairs, the count of the victims—thirty-seven, the killer claimed.

Also fluxing through the hiss, in single words and phrases, were speculations about the killer’s identity: Loner. Voyeur. Fear of women. Obsessional. Meticulous. Compulsive. Abused. Family history. Abuser. Mental illness. Dysfunction. Sexual. These words floated at me and hovered in the cold air. Then, in one stunning moment of transmission clarity, the static vanished and the speaker said: We believe he may be connected with a university, since the first attack happened near a college campus.

The breath froze in me. I shivered with a chill that did not come from my fever. Was this a description of … myself? In terror, I wondered if I was indeed the brutal killer; if in blacked-out hours I had committed such horrid crimes and then cleansed them from my memory; if I had indeed become what I had always feared my obsessions would make of me.

No, I told myself. No! I had been accused of … not that, not yet, please God. But what would keep me from it? The university had forced me to take a leave while they investigated. How far had I gone? I swore: I had touched no one! But once the complaint was lodged, I understood the fear I had aroused—no, “aroused” is not the right word; the correct description is the fear I had “created.” For the object of my attentions had no reason to be afraid of me, had every reason to rely upon me as a trusted guide and advisor. And therefore there was no question of any “arousal.” There was only the terrible darkness within me, which he had seen and, rightly, feared.

Only the patient can save me, I thought. She is all that is still decent in me. She is my trial, my test. I will not harm her! As long as I can hear her voice; as long as she makes her way to Room 804 to tell her story; as long as I may be near to her; as long as I may know what happens to her—I will be all right, she will be all right. We have nothing to fear.

Wednesday came again, the patient’s last session before the holiday break. If I did not go to the office I would not hear her voice again until the end of the holiday break. How I needed her! How I ached for her! Yet my fevers and coughs continued—I could not go. My damp bed was my prison.

I turned off the radio. But the night did not give me rest. Again I skimmed the rim of sleep, tortured by images that grew more violent by the hour.

When Thursday morning came, I knew I could stay home no longer. I could not remain alone with my crows circling me, with their taunting call, Her! Her! Her! I resolved to go to the office. The sound machine would play; its whir would hide my stifled coughs. The patient would be gone, but still there was my dear office—its polished marble, varnished fruitwoods, balustraded stairways—all I had to help me.





34.


I bundled myself in sweaters and rode the N Judah. I debarked at Market and New Montgomery Streets, and the gargoyles came into view. Soon the entry was before me, the whiteness of the lobby: a bleach against the stain of my dark thoughts.

But then there came a shock.

A guard was stationed in the lobby!

The marble reception desk had been empty all these months, and now suddenly there stood a tall, well-built black man, wearing a black suit and tie, no insignia on him, but his stance and demeanor leaving no doubt that he was a security officer.

He turned as I entered; he stared at me. His skin was dark brown and smooth, his face absurdly handsome: a doo-wop crooner’s face, a teenage-idol sort of man. At the same time, there was something menacing in his look, all the more frightful because I could not precisely locate the threatening feature in his almost-pretty face. Perhaps it came from his bearing, which was erect and muscular, or his powerful-looking hands, which he held clasped before him.

You will sign in, sir, he said to me in a commanding bass, indicating the sign on the desk that said, “All Visitors Must Check In at Reception.”

But I am not a visitor, I replied. I am the tenant in Room 807.

I pointed to my name on the building roster that hung behind him.

He turned to it, then back to me, his face absolutely impassive. And for several seconds we stood beneath the ogling cherubs, he towering above me, as he weighed my veracity.

May I have identification, sir? he said.

I was affronted, yet frightened. I retrieved my university identification card. He looked at it, at me, then finally handed back the card.

Go on, sir, he said, his face still showing no emotion, waving me toward the elevator that had just arrived, which I entered guiltily, as if I truly were an imposter invading the building for illicit purposes.

My hands shook as I performed the delicate act of opening my office. I could barely control my breathing as I took my customary seat at the desk. My haven, my welcoming lobby with its whiteness and goodness—assailed! A hostile force had arrived without warning. I would have to pass by the man every day, twice in and twice out, including the luncheon I normally took in a nearby cafe. Perhaps I could arrive very early and leave very late, and not go out for lunch. But what were his hours? Did he come on duty at four in the morning, five, six, seven? Leave at four, five, six? And for what reason had he been hired in the first place? Perhaps there had been an incident, a robbery, a shooting—a murder!

In this manner did I prosecute my madness, pursuing it vigorously, for the fearful stories that had emanated from my radio seemed to have followed me to the office, where, in my absence, a sudden need for security had apparently appeared: murderers circling us, bombers plotting, kidnappers tracking their prey. With only the fiercest self-control could I calm myself. I told myself that all downtown buildings of any size had guards or receptionists; ours had been the odd one; and now we were simply like everyone else.

No sooner did I still myself when there arose yet another impediment to my peace. The sound machine was whirring; above its rustle came the clicks and hushes of Dr. Schussler’s Germanic speech—but what image of her should I hold? Again I was horridly double-minded, as I had been with the patient. Was this Dora a young woman of little experience, or the woman of a certain age I had first envisioned? Was there a long skirt or a mini; flat shoes or heels; flowing hair or bun? The two visions, each the inverse of the other, flashed in my mind like those double neon signs lighting one set of words, then another. I would go insane, I thought, if I could not pick one image—or perhaps construct a third possibility—in any case be released from this migrainous flashing in my head.

The old one! I decided. Nylon stockings—young women no longer wear nylon stockings. The slish and slide were the evidence! As for the consultation she was seeking, that did not mean she was a beginner, a young woman starting her practice. A therapist can be incompetent at any age—I, of all people, should know that. And slowly the old Dora Schussler reestablished herself, from the shoes and stockings up: sensible heels, nylons, mid-length skirt, blouse, face of a decent-looking woman of sixty, gray hair, bun.

I passed the day in feverish reverie; the hours slipped away; darkness pressed against the windows. I looked at my watch: nearly eight o’clock. The guard was surely gone for the day. I heard Dr. Schussler’s seven o’clock patient leave, and, once the eight o’clock was safely installed, I planned to make my exit. So it was that I sat bundled in my sweaters, coat, scarf, and hat, despite the steam that clanged through the radiators.

The next patient arrived. I stood. I went to the door and was about to take the door knob in my hand, when suddenly the sound machine fell silent. And a deep alto voice said:

Thank you for seeing me tonight.





35.


My dear patient!

I am glad you could come on such short notice, said the doctor.

(And there I stood before the door, bundled up for the cold!)

Sorry about yesterday, the patient said.

(What had happened yesterday while I lay in my sickbed?)

The doctor made a reassuring sound.

(The door was still open; they stood so near me, naked to the corridor.)

Of course I’ll pay, said the patient with a laugh.

(Had she run off again in midsession?)

I’m a little drunk, she said.

Dr. Schussler did not immediately step back from the doorway.

We went out for drinks after work, she went on. One too many, that’s all.

The doctor remained standing at the opened door.

If not for the coming break, she said, I would ask you to leave right now.

Oh, yeah, the patient said a little sloppily.

Are you all right? asked Dr. Schussler.

Oh, yeah, said the patient. I’m fine, great, terrifically all right.

Two or three seconds passed.

Come in, the doctor said.





36.


Dr. Schussler closed the door, and the patient fell into her chair with a great sigh of the leather cushion.

What is happening? asked the doctor.

The patient seemed to shuffle her feet on the carpet. A driver in the street below leaned on his horn.

Shit! said the patient. What the hell’s wrong with that guy?

The horn went on.

Really. What the f*ck is wrong with him?

The horn continued; then stopped.

I have something to tell you, said the patient.

Yes?

You won’t believe it.

Yes?

Last Friday night … I went to this Jewish—what do they call it? Temple.

She stopped; again shuffled her feet against the carpet.

Oh, my, said the therapist. And how was that?

I was late. I took a seat on a back pew—pews! What a surprise. Didn’t expect that. Not sure what I’d thought Jews would sit on—benches?—but there were pews, like church.

She paused.

And of course there was no bleeding Jesus. But otherwise … Big domed building. Ladies dressed up in mink coats. Organ. Playing hymns! Same old chorus of middle-aged women with their vibratos wobbling from here to the next county. Except for the tiny bits of Hebrew—transliterated, so you don’t even have to know it—ba-ruch something something bow-ray pa-ree—that can’t be right, paree, like Paris. Except for those Hebrew bits, Mother would have felt right at home. I could just see her taking the coffee and tea afterward—no milk, though. Something about kosher. But what could be not kosher about milk I have no idea. Coffee-Mate. Terrible stuff !

You stayed afterward for coffee? asked Dr. Schussler.

Why not?

Did you meet—?

No one. No one talked to me. Except to say good shabbose—is that how you say it—sha-BOSE? Mother. Right at home. But my grandfather—she gave a laugh—I don’t even know him, never met him, but couldn’t stop thinking about what Mother told me. How much he would’ve hated the place. Too well lit. Too much light on the subject. Needed his mysterium tremendum. Mass in Latin murmured in the dark, misted by incense. Everyone kneeling before the crucifix, Jesus hanging over them, suffering, sacrificed, bleeding his dark red human blood, blood they drink in communion—how primitive is that! Body of Christ, body of Christ. Corpus Christi. CORPUS. The scum group that took me in then bounced me out. Banished me, like they banished Father.

Then she fell silent. For some thirty seconds, there were only the honking horns in the street, the cough of the radiators.

I don’t want to be a f*cking Jew, the patient said at last.

Jewish, said Dr. Schussler. Somehow it is better to call someone Jewish than a Jew.

All right. I don’t want to be f*cking Jewish. Happy now?

Dr. Schussler sighed. It is very difficult for us to do our work if you come here after drinking.

Oh, I know.

We can’t—

I know, I know. We were having fun, is all. That last round. That’s the one I shouldn’t … I know.

The radiators clanged.

What am I going to do? the patient went on. I don’t want to be Jewish, but I don’t even know what that means. Like I said, I’ve never even known a Jew—f*ck! A Jewish person. Is this going to be some PC thing, like we can’t say gay anymore but only gay-lesbian-bisexual?

I am not familiar with that stricture, said Dr. Schussler, so I cannot reply to your question.

No. Really. Are you going to correct me every time I say Jew?

You can say Jew whenever you like.

All right. Good! There. One thing a little easier. So I’ll say it again: Jew. I’ve never been close to a f*cking Jew.

The therapist shifted in her chair, crossed and recrossed her legs.

Well, of course you went to a boarding school, she said finally, but perhaps there were Jewish children in your neighborhood?

Oh, no, said the patient. Our neighborhood had covenants.

Covenants—as in the ark of the?

The patient laughed. Obviously you haven’t lived anywhere with a homeowners’ association. Conditions, covenants, and restrictions—C, C, and Rs. Rules of the association.

I do not—

No Jews.

Ah.

No Jews, no blacks, no Hindus, no Mexicans. Not even Catholics were allowed.

I see.

Even by the time the covenants became illegal—

There was history, supplied the therapist.

Yes. Right. History. People lived where they lived.

A fait accompli, said Dr. Schussler. And what about college? she went on. You went to a big university.

A sorority.

And I might suppose no—

No Jews. Right. F*ck! No Jewish women. It wasn’t a rule—

Just history.

Yes. Right. History.

Then graduate school, said Dr. Schussler. Your Wharton M.B.A.

Many, many, many, many Jews, said the patient. Goldbergs and Cohens and Levines and Steins from here to kingdom come. A sea of men with black hair, big noses, and eyeglasses. I had no idea, when I decided to go into business, that I would be joining a Jewish club.

The doctor gasped.

Something wrong?

Dr. Schussler coughed. No. Something in my throat.

You’re sure?

The doctor coughed again. A little bronchitis, she said.

It’s the “Jewish club” business you’re reacting to, isn’t it? It’s like I said there’s a Jewish cabal, right?

What is your opinion?

Shit! Here we go again!

Dr. Schussler said nothing.

Dammit, won’t you tell me what you think! Well, who gives a shit what you think. Goddamn PC business in the lesbian world about who’s working-class and who’s not. Can’t even say what you think. It was a goddamn club. All that talk of being a mensch, all those holidays they took off, everyone knew all about them but me. High holy days. Passover. The one where they eat outside in a—what? Soo-kah? Those little beanies they wore. Kippah. Yarmulke—do you have any idea what the difference is between a kippah and a yarmulke? I moved out west to get away from it. I may not be in the center of the markets anymore. I may have to get up at five a.m. to watch the tickers. But at least I’m away from all that.

The therapist took a breath, then released it. But did you not tell me, she said, in this very room, that you came out to San Francisco to meet women?

I—

To be part of—

Well—

The sexual revolution, the gay revolution.

Yes, said the patient.

Yes.

So? asked the patient.

So perhaps you are doing a bit of backward revisionism. You are startled by the news your mother gave you. You are having trouble assimilating it. And so you are trying to reject it, in whole cloth, by revising your history, trying to see it as a rejection of Judaism itself.

Humph, the patient said.

Rich Jews, brainy Jews, large noses, eyeglasses, Jews running the business world, said the doctor. These are stereotypes, as I am certain you know. Dangerous stereotypes.

I told you I didn’t really know any Jews. Stereotypes—that’s all I have.

Do you really want to rest with these ideas? asked the doctor. Do you not wish me to challenge them?

And I didn’t like Jewish women any better than I liked the Jewish men of Wall Street. Charlotte used to drag me to all those meetings. Noisy, pushy Jewish girls, shouting slogans.

Noisy, pushy: These are more stereotypes, said Dr. Schussler.

Stereotypes usually exist for a reason, you know.

The doctor sat back and heaved a great, defeated sigh.

But why are you doing this to yourself, dear?

The patient snorted. So what am I supposed to be doing to myself?

Making yourself out to be so hateful.

This gave the patient pause. When she replied, it was with a softened voice:

But I am hateful, don’t you see? I am full of hate. I was brought up to hate Catholics and Jews, and then I find out I may be Catholic, then no, it’s even worse than that—I’m a Jew! For godsakes, what am I supposed to feel?

The doctor waited for the patient to go on. After her client said nothing for several seconds, she said:

I am afraid you can only feel this bewilderment for now. I am afraid there is no recourse but for you to feel it.

Feel it, echoed the patient.

It seemed, for the moment at least, that the therapist was not doing such a bad job after all, for the patient now sighed heavily, balancing on the rim of her emotions, about to “feel it.”

When she suddenly exclaimed:

But what was that?





37.


I had coughed! A sudden, explosive cough had escaped my chest!

All that while I had been poised there, sweating in my outerwear, afraid to move a muscle, standing equally on each foot, so as not to creak a floorboard …

All that while, I had controlled my breathing, because I stood so close to our common door, and my labored breath might give me away …

All during that half hour I had allowed the sweat to roll uninhibited down my body, for fear even the rustle of my overcoat would be heard …

Only to be betrayed by my own chest! A tremendous cough! Which erupted out of me and barked once into the night like a tethered dog.

It was loud! said the patient. What was it?

My God, I don’t know, answered the therapist.

It sounded like it was right in this room, said the patient.

Why, yes it did, said Dr. Schussler.

They shifted in their seats.

Well, I don’t see anything, said the therapist.

(I shivered, my sweat ice-cold.)

And I don’t hear anything now, said the patient.

But it was odd, said the doctor. It did seem to be coming from right there.

(I could feel them looking at our thin door. I all but saw the doctor’s hand stretched out in my direction, her finger pointed at me.)

Seconds passed. Horns played in the street below.

(I must be quiet! I must stay hidden!)

The doctor sighed. In any case, she went on, shifting back around in her chair, I hope you understand the reasons for the hatred—the self-hatred—you have expressed.

Yes, said the patient. And then again no, I don’t.

(But still she stared at the door. I could feel her eyes on me. Oh, how I wanted her gaze! All the same, I begged her inside myself, Turn around, my dear patient. Forget I exist!)

But I still haven’t told you the worst thing, she went on, shifting back in her seat (at last).

She laughed.

Charlotte’s breaking up with me.





38.


Mein Gott! said the therapist. Why did you not say?

I think I want to pretend it isn’t happening.

The patient sighed, and sat back.

Charlotte got me a surprise Christmas gift, she said.

Yes? said the therapist.

Yes, right. Not like her at all. Charlotte and her fear of being “bourgeois,” which seems to include anything with a bow. So, yes, very unexpected. She’d written “Merry Christmas!” and “Happy Birthday!” on an envelope—scrawled, in smudged pencil, but still, a gift. I opened it.

She laughed.

It was a confirmation for a one-week stay at this Russian River resort, she went on. Some cabins under the pines. A famous place for wim-min and wim-mine, spelled W-O-M-Y-N. Granola lesbians, whose greatest goal in life is to have a piece of land, a goat, and goat cheese. It’s all wim-min, wim-mine, and baby dykes—and just the sort of place Charlotte knows I hate.

(I stood holding my scarf over my mouth, to stifle any sound, and listened, fascinated, despite the patient’s distress. How interesting that a category as seemingly solid as “lesbian” could contain all these various admixtures! The “old-style girls” the patient had admired at the bar called A Little More: high heels, red lipstick, “breasts out to here,” she’d said. The “politicos”: politically active, short hair, flannel shirts, “stomping boots.” And now these new types, these “granola lesbians” with their goats; and what did she mean by “baby” dykes?)

Asked the doctor: And where would you like to go on holiday?

Somewhere warm, the patient replied. Charlotte knows this. I think it was the first thing I told her about myself. That I love swimming in the sea, tennis, golf, cocktails under the stars, my girlfriend and I naked under our silky dresses. The patient gave off a cynical laugh. Why in the world did she take up with me? Charlotte ridiculed me. You want to go to a third-world country, she said, where poor people in waiter’s jackets serve you piña coladas. You’re nothing but a Dinah Shore lesbian! she shouted at me.

(Yet another type! This one, she went on to explain, described a well-to-do lesbian who looks “straight,” has her nails done, and drives to the Dinah Shore Open women’s golf tournament in a Cadillac.)

Finally the doctor said: But let us return to the point. The question is not why she took up with you. The question is, Why did you take up with her?

The patient did not answer for some seconds. The sounds of the street filled the pause: the blare of car horns, the roar of a truck’s engine, the machine-gun rhythm of a jackhammer from some far sidewalk.

What is wrong? asked the therapist.

Charlotte gave me an ultimatum.

And? asked the therapist.

She said, either come with her or consider our relationship over.

There was a moment of silence, then:

How terrible of her! said Dr. Schussler.

You think she’s being terrible, too, don’t you?

Of course I do. I think it is very selfish of Charlotte not to consider your needs, after what you have been through emotionally.

That’s what I thought. How could she do this to me? Now, when she knows what happened with my family … now … no sympathy for me … called me anti-Semitic! When she knows how much I need … oh, God, a holiday … enjoy Christmas … as a Jew? And with all my work … she makes fun of that, too … all the hours … I’m so tired … Oh, God, how I need a rest.

And she succumbed to tears.

They were drunken cries at first, bleary and whiny, but still: At last she had found her way to her tears.

Dr. Schussler let her patient cry without interruption. In any case, there was no reversing the flow of those tears. All that the patient had kept bound up inside her: now pouring forth in uncontrollable wails and sobs. It was an awful sound to hear, like the roar of a deadly swollen river. So much loss and helplessness. Loneliness so much like my own. I imagined her cries resounding in the corridor, through the halls, down the elevator shaft, to the cherubs with their black, startled eyes.

I glanced at my watch; only ten minutes of the session remained. Dr. Schussler must not lose control of the clock again, I thought. She was performing rather well; her consultation with Dr. Gurevitch seemed to have had some good effect (against all my expectations). Yet she again seemed unable to manage the hour; her patient was sobbing uncontrollably—and she must not let the patient walk out into the cold of Christmas alone, raw. I could barely stand still. Perhaps I should move, I thought, make noise—cough—somehow shift the therapist’s attention, even at the risk of losing my position as a silent audience, even at the risk of losing the patient, my life’s blood. I loved her so much that I would do anything.

The therapist sat without moving; the patient wept quietly now. And then came our savior: With only minutes remaining, the church carillon played the three-quarter hour.

Dr. Schussler stood; walked over to the patient.

Here you are, she said. Here are more tissues.

The patient laughed. Thank you, she said, beginning to blow her nose, cough, inhale deeply—all the things people do to try to bring their endless sobbing to a temporary end.

What do you think I should do? the patient asked between gasps and hiccups. I mean about the vacation. Why do you think she’s doing this? I don’t understand.

The doctor sat quietly for a moment. I could hear the words she was not saying: Charlotte wanted to break up but was making the patient do it for her. The patient was not ready to hear this; how good of the doctor to keep this to herself.

Finally the doctor laughed. Well, she said, I can tell you without any hesitation that I do not believe you should go to that granola resort.

Ah, sighed the patient. Thank you.

You did not need my permission.

No, said the patient between ebbing sobs. But I need your help.

The therapist inhaled, exhaled. Do you want to stay home? she asked finally.

Home? the patient echoed.

A sob stabbed her.

Home? You mean that place where I’ll be eating breakfast alone under Charlotte’s Holly Near posters? Where you can’t open the cupboards without getting buried in an avalanche of saved yogurt containers? And all the avocado pits. No avocado eaten in our house ever escaped the fate of getting speared all around with toothpicks and hung in jars like prisoners. In every windowsill: empty Hain’s sesame-butter jars breeding ugly, scraggly roots.

The therapist laughed. All right, what are Andie and Clarissa doing?

Going to Puerto Vallarta, the patient said between lingering gasps and sniffles.

Can you join them?

Andie’s college friend was supposed to go with them, but now she has the flu. Andie says I can have her room.

Perfect! said the therapist.

You think I should go with them?

It is a nice resort, yes?

Yes. Fancy. Balconies overlooking the ocean, pools with swim-up bars. She laughed. Poor people in white jackets serving piña coladas.

Then she began to weep gently again. But Charlotte …

Charlotte, said the therapist.

This means I’m leaving Charlotte, said the patient.

Perhaps yes, perhaps no. She may or may not mean what she said. You can find out after the holidays. The doctor was quiet for a moment. Then she said: But you must do what is best for you. I believe you need rest and the support of good friends like Andie and Clarissa.

Yes … but … I feel so alone.

And she softly wept.

The therapist spoke gently while her patient gently cried, counseling her patient to be careful, monitor her drinking, take no drugs, be mindful of whom she befriended.

I will be here for you, the doctor said in a firm voice. Any time, day or night, you may leave a telephone message for me. If it is an emergency, you must do so. Now you will promise—swear!—that you will call me if you come undone in any way.

The patient coughed, blew her nose, laughed. I swear, she said.

They stood. I heard the analyst walk over to the patient, then there was a rustle of fabric. Thank you again, the patient said, her voice slightly muffled, as if it came through whatever stuff covered the nook of Dr. Schussler’s shoulder.





39.


I waited. Dr. Schussler did not turn on the sound machine. It seemed an eternity before she gathered her things, turned off the lights, and went home. I stood all that while in my overcoat, sweating under my many layers, finally tumbling into the street. I coughed my way toward Market Street.

Puerto Vallarta. A small travel agency down the block from our building had a sign in the window: a five-night package, airfare and hotel included, the “luxury hotel” shown on the poster boasting “all balconies facing the ocean.” It was just as the patient desired: balconies, breezes, her silk dress fluttering across the sun-browned skin of her body. I had never noticed the agency’s existence; there was no reason I should have. But now: Puerto Vallarta.

Although it was nearly nine o’clock, a light showed from within. I stepped into the shop.

Its atmosphere could not have been more unlike the posters of bikini-clad models that covered the walls. At a piled-high desk sat a woman of about my age smoking a long cigarette that dangled from her lips. She and her desk comprised the whole agency, a tiny space into each surface of which had seeped the grime of the street and the reek of age-old cigarette smoke.

Help you? asked the woman, the cigarette remaining in her lips as she spoke.

I stood by her desk—the side chair was piled as high as her desk—and inquired about the package in the window.

Which one? she asked without looking up. I got lotsa packages.

I indicated the trip to Puerto Vallarta, in particular the hotel shown in the poster in the window.

Too late, she said, her cigarette dropping ashes as it dangled. Sold out.

Before that moment, I was certain I did not actually want to go to Puerto Vallarta. I had merely been inquiring, I thought; only wished to feel closer to the patient, know more about the details of her trip, perhaps even what she would spend, what she could afford, therefore the style and conduct of her life. But upon learning that this agent could not help me, the sweat began to boil on my skin; coughs suddenly wracked my chest. Her! Her! Her! sounded in my head, growing ever louder, so that my coughs seemed to come from far away, from deep underwater. I could barely hear my own voice when I said:

That is very wrong! Why is your sign still in the window? You should not advertise what you cannot deliver!

She looked up.

Mister, she said, Christmas is around the corner. Everyone knows you have to book in advance. I can get you to Mazatlán, if you want.

How dare she! I thought. What was this Mazatlán? Who is this hag to thwart me?

I do not want to go to Mazatlán—wherever that is, I said with a shout. I want to go to Puerto Vallarta, you liar!

The woman put down her cigarette, stood, one hand on her desk drawer.

You got a problem, mister?

I imagined there was a gun in that drawer. Could she hear the crows calling in my head?

Forgive me, madam, I said, as politely as possible—the cawing still sounding—but I resisted now. Resisted.

It is only my deep disappointment, I said, meanwhile concentrating on making my voice higher, friendlier. Of course it is not your fault, madam.

And I fled the shop.

The N Judah was nearly empty. I sat under the bright fixtures and saw but a few passing lights and my own reflection in the window, the look of which horrified me: hollow-eyed, slack-cheeked—the face of someone who could harm an aging travel agent?

By ones and twos, the other passengers disembarked, until I was alone with my face in the window. Never had the patient seemed so far away. Was her good halo banished so quickly, within a mere slip of time, between nine o’clock and nine fifteen? I stepped down at the Ocean Beach terminus; the doors closed behind me; the streetcar rattled off.





40.


With the patient gone for the holidays, there was no recourse but to resume those of my activities one might designate as “normal.” I would go to the office, traveling to and fro at regular hours. I would keep myself among crowds. I would wear my gray suit and overcoat, put on the narrow-brimmed hat with the feather in the band that I had bought after Thanksgiving. So attired, perhaps my Furies would not recognize me; would see an average man walking on a public street.

Yet immediately I faced an obstacle. To arrive at the office at regular hours meant encountering the security guard, that blot upon the refuge that was my lobby. I was not ready to withstand his scrutiny; not yet able to face the menace I felt emanating from his pretty countenance. I therefore delayed my departure for the office, hoping to time my arrival with the comings and goings of the lunchtime throng, and thereby evade the gaze of Mr. Handsome (as I had taken to calling him in my mind). His face haunted me all during my ride on the streetcar, as I again tried to ascertain what it was particularly that gave him such an air of threat. Perhaps it was the perfect, too-square jaw, like that of a plastic action figure—it made him seem not quite real, a G.I. Joe, a fantasy of male power. Or the eyes, which were fixed and penetrating. Or the mouth, perhaps, almost a girl’s carved lips, absurdly full and curved for a man of his stature.

I waited outside the lobby doors, in an area where the guard could not see me unless he turned and craned his neck, and I peered through the glass to see if a crowd had assembled. I was fortunate. Many were waiting for the elevators, and then two cars arrived at once, creating a perfect traffic jam of people trying to get off jostling those trying to get on. I entered, pushed past the security guard in the midst of this confusion, and was the third person inside a waiting elevator car. The car began to fill around me.

Then the guard reached his hand inside.

Step out, please, sir, he said.

It was an order. Yet I answered:

But you know me!

I do not, sir, he said. Please step out.

He held the elevator door open. The eyes of all the other passengers fell upon me.

I stepped out.

Again the guard indicated the sign-in book.

But you know me! I repeated, once more showing him my name on the roster.

He scrutinized me as before, his lovely lips set in a firm line, only his eyes going back and forth, dark orbs like those of the cherubs. As time ticked on, I began to fear for my safety, for it came to me: He can see through me! He can hear the noise in my head! He knows the dark acts of which I may be capable!

I saw his brow narrow, just a hair’s width. Meanwhile his gaze remained set upon me. It was impossible to know what he was about to do. I saw that was the source of his power: His beauty mesmerized; one could not read his face; would a smile or a knife be the next thing one saw?

Go on, sir, he said at last, but noncommittally, as if to say, I will get you next time.

I do not know how I passed the day. Dr. Schussler’s office was quiet, no patients, no sound machine, and the emptiness of the adjoining room made my loneliness feel particularly acute. Finally night fell. The guard would be gone. I went down to Union Square to lose myself amongst the crowd.

A tall Christmas tree stood in the center of the square, as did a Jewish candelabrum, its eight lights already lit. I could only wonder what the patient felt as she gazed upon that Jewish symbol. Last year, it was probably no more to her than a civic show of ecumenical spirit. But now, while crossing the square, as she would have to do to negotiate the shopping district, did she find the candelabrum oppressive? Wish she could return it to its former irrelevance? Mexico offered the patient many opportunities for relaxation, I thought, not the least its relative shortage of Jews.

But I could not long retain these thoughts of the patient. All around me a sort of frenzy seemed to be in progress. Great convoys of shoppers went by in furious motion, sailing in noisy groups, as if something desperately needed to be purchased and the shops might close at any moment. The crowds were full of shouting young men. Heavy shopping bags kept clipping me behind the knee. I was pushed into the street by a raucous, half-drunken group; no sooner did I regain the sidewalk when I was pushed aside by another. A passing car spattered my pants leg with mud.

I fled the square and wandered in the now-dark business district, where I soon found myself before a grill with a long wooden counter, at which sat a row of gentlemen who were taking their dinner. As this seemed to be the sort of establishment where a man dining alone might feel comfortable, I went in, joined the gentlemen, and contentedly passed two hours listening to the banter between diners and waiters, who, it seemed, had acquaintanceships of long standing.

It was when I left the grill that something seemed to change in my very metabolism. It might have been the effect of the deserted business district, where the stoplights blinked their reds and yellows into empty streets. Or perhaps it was the faded frivolity of Union Square, where discarded wrappings were trapped in the shrubbery, and a large blown bow, like some horrid spider, skittered across the sidewalk. I only know that, before I knew what I was doing, I hailed a cab, settled in my seat, and asked the driver, Would you perhaps know a bar called A Little More?

The driver put his arm on the seatback and did a slow turn around to look at me.

Sir, are you sure you want to go there?

I was not sure of anything. My body seemed not to belong to me.

Yes, I said. Please take me there.

The driver said nothing as he drove us across Market Street, proceeded what seemed to me east and south for several blocks, then traveled under an elevated roadway. We came to a district I had never seen before, a wide boulevard lined with warehouses, now dark. Then we turned up a short street that dead-ended into a parking lot.

Are we there? I asked. Where are we?

The driver gestured toward the far side of the parking lot. Back that end, he said.

I paid the fare.

Want me to wait? the driver asked.

Why would I want you to wait?

Okay, sir. You know best.

And he drove away.