MAX
HERE TO SERVE YOU!
When Arnie motioned to the other end of the couch, I sat down.
Arnie sat in a yellow leather armchair and crossed his legs.
Bartholomew, the yellow room is a word fortress. Whatever words you let free in the yellow room stay in the yellow room. So feel free to speak freely. You are safe here. And in return, I must ask you to be a knight of confidence. A keeper of secrets. A sacred chalice for the truths Max may confide in you. And we shall be your word chalices. Can you help defend our castle, Bartholomew? Can you be a knight of confidence?”
What the fuck, hey?” Max whispered before I could answer. When I looked over at him, he was shaking his head.
Max, would you like to express something?”
This ain’t a fucking castle, Arnie. Give us a fucking break, hey.”
Okay, Max. Why don’t you give Bartholomew an introduction? Welcome—”
Introduction? Fuck that!” Max said.
You will find that while Max has a gruff exterior, he’s really a sweet man underneath of it all, which is why we’ve decided to match you two up.”
I must have raised my eyebrows or something because Arnie said, “You look confused.”
What do we do here?” I said. “Is it like talking with Wendy?”
Good question,” Max said. “Great fucking question.” He nodded like he meant it and wasn’t making fun of me at all.
Yes,” Arnie said. “The yellow room is for talking. You are free to speak your mind. But the goal here tonight is to partner the two of you up, so that you might support each other through the grieving process.”
Max blew air out between his lips.
Max, would you please tell Bartholomew why you are grieving?”
Max blew even more air out between his lips.
Max?”
Max looked up at the ceiling for a good fifteen seconds or so and squeezed his knees with his hands before he said, “Alice was my best friend, and now she’s fucking gone.”
Yes, she is, Max. I’m very sorry about that.”
Did you fucking kill her, hey?”
No, I did not,” Arnie said.
Then what the fuck are you sorry about?”
I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sorry that you have to go through this grieving process. I’m sorry that Alice is no longer providing you with the comforts that you once had, and I hope that you will find a way to move on.”
I haven’t missed any work, hey.”
Maybe you should take a few days off.”
Fuck that.”
Bartholomew, would you tell us please why you are grieving?”
My mother died of cancer.”
Cancer?” Max said. He turned and faced me, eyes wide.
Brain cancer. The doctors described it like a squid with tentacles, and—”
Fuck cancer! That’s what got my Alice too, hey. Fuck cancer. Fuck.”
Arnie said, “How do you feel about cancer, Bartholomew?”
Um . . . I don’t know. I don’t like cancer. It killed my mother,” I said.
The yellow room is a safe room,” Arnie said. “You can speak more forcefully about your feelings if you wish. You don’t have to be polite, like you do outside of the yellow room, in the real world. Remember, this is a word fortress.”
Fuck cancer!” Max said.
I nodded in agreement.
How’s it been for you, Bartholomew? Since your mother died?” Arnie said.
It’s fucking hell, right?” Max said. “Fucking hell.”
Um . . . it’s been an adjustment. I loved Mom. She was a good friend in addition to being my mother. But she wasn’t right at the end. She changed.”
My Alice changed too,” Max said. “She started to piss on everything. The bed. My clothes. The couch. Everywhere she was fucking pissing, which is how I knew she wasn’t right. It was like she lost her fucking mind, hey.”
Mom was like that too. She had to wear a diaper.”
Fuck cancer.”
Yes,” I said.
Max, would you like to tell Bartholomew what you miss most about Alice?”
He looked at the ceiling, and I actually thought Max was going to cry.
Finally, he blew out another lungful of air between his teeth, like a leaky tire, pushed his clunky brown glasses up his nose, and then said, “I fucking miss having someone greet me when I come home from work after the late movie ends and my sister is fucking sleeping. Alice always waited up for me. Fucking always. I miss Alice sitting on my lap when I watched television. I miss the way she fucking purred when I scratched behind her fucking ears. I miss how she sat in the window all day, just enjoying the fucking sun.”
Wait . . . I don’t understand,” I said.
What don’t you understand?” Arnie said.
Who are you talking about, Max?”
Fucking Alice!”
What relation was she to you?” I asked.
She was my fucking everything. For fifteen fucking years.”
So she was . . . your wife?”
What the fuck, hey?” Max said. His face turned bright red, like I had thrown boiling water on it. “Do you think I’m some sort of twisted fucking fuck?”
It’s okay, Max,” Arnie said. “We never told Bartholomew that Alice was a cat.”
I said she sat in the fucking window, right?”
People can sit in windows,” I said.
Max dismissed my words with the wave of his hand and then said, “I fucking miss Alice and I’m not ashamed to say so—especially here in the yellow fucking room, where I’m supposed to fucking grieve openly, hey. She was a calico and more loyal than any fucking person has ever been to me—I don’t give a shit if she was a cat or not. Fuck! I miss her. And I’ll tell you what, hey!”
Tell us,” Arnie said. “Tell us everything. Let it out. We’re listening. This is a safe place.”
You don’t fucking care about my dead fucking cat! No one does!” Max said to me and then wiped his eyes. “What the fuck, hey?”
Richard Gere, you whispered in my ear—well, maybe I pretended you were whispering directly into my ear, thinking what would Richard Gere say and do?—Tell him you want to hear about his cat. Lessen his pain. Be compassionate. Remember the Dalai Lama’s teachings.
I remembered a line I read in the Dalai Lama’s book A Profound Mind. “It is important that we understand just how truly all-pervasive suffering is.” I remembered the Dalai Lama saying it is easy to feel sorry for an elderly beggar, but it is much harder to feel sorry for a young rich man. He also said that all “conditioned existence is characterized by pain.” And that all types of people are “enslaved” by “strong destructive emotions.”
And so, heeding your spiritual leader’s advice, I said to Max, “I’d like to hear about your cat. Alice. I really would.”
He examined my face for a second or two, probably trying to decide if I meant it, and then said, “Alice was the best fucking cat that ever lived.”
I began pretending again, and you, Richard Gere, in my imagination you whispered in my ear and said, Look how his muscles are relaxing. Note the slope of his shoulders. Relaxed. He needs to talk. Listen. Ease his suffering. Be compassionate. And compassion will come back to you. Heed the words of the Dalai Lama.
Max went on to talk about his cat for more than a half hour straight. He told me that he found her in a Dumpster in Worcester, Massachusetts, behind the movie theater where he used to work before he moved to Philadelphia to live with his sister. He was taking out the nightly trash when he heard a kitten crying. He had to tear open “a million fucking bags” before he found it. There were six other kittens inside but all of those were dead. “I wanted to kill the fucking scumbag who put kittens in a trash bag. What the fuck, hey? Who does that?” He was very worried that someone would find him standing next to the dead cats “with fucking trash and dead kittens all around my fucking feet” and accuse him of killing the cats, so he stuck the alive kitten into his coat and headed to the nearest convenience store so he could get some “fucking milk.” It was late at night and the woman working the convenience store behind “thick fucking plastic glass” saw the kitten and excitedly exited her glass box to pet it. She made such a big deal over the kitten and was so nice to Max, showing him where the cat food was and letting him feed the kitten in her store, that Max decided to name the kitten after that convenience store worker. “What the fuck, hey? I thought,” Max said. “So I asked what her fucking name was and she fucking said Alice. So that’s what I fucking named my cat.” Max went on to explain how—using a feather on a string and catnip—he trained his cat to meow on command and also run through an obstacle course full of hoops and mini-jumps “like what fucking horses jump, but smaller for baby cats.” And he said that as Alice became an adult cat, he taught her how to speak to him.
Really speak to you?” Arnie said. “Or were you only pretending Alice could speak with you? Like most people do when they talk to their pets.”
Yeah, like fucking that, hey. Pretending,” Max said.
I became very interested in Max at this point.
He talked a lot more about Alice, listing what types of food she liked—“Canned fucking tuna was her favorite!”—and how she liked to chase red dots of light that he projected onto the wall with “a fucking laser pointer” and how Alice “jumped and ran and pounced for fucking hours,” how they both enjoyed watching the library’s box-set DVDs of the original Doctor Who and how he thought about Alice whenever he was working, ripping “the fuck out of tickets” at the “fucking movies,” because that was “his fucking job”—being a “fucking ticket fucking taker” at the “fucking movies,” and it was “really fucking boring, hey!”