Mount Misery

by Samuel Shem

  Blair assured us that once we got out all the Latent Negative in each borderline, we’d ride out the storm of rage, and the adjustment of borderline character to normal character would be profound. We’d sail off into a sunset of mental health, a sheaf of published papers under our arms, our patients safe and sound and married to appropriate OBJECTS and each secure in a healthy SELF. Like each of our own SELVES, yes.

  To drive this point home, Blair would often quote from the historical figure he revered above all others, the man he said was the beacon to which all men aspire, the greatest American of all, who else but Ralph Waldo Emerson:

  ‘Star by Star,

  world by world,

  system by system

  shall be crushed—

  but I shall live.’

  (Emphasis, Blair Heiler)

  Hearing this, how could you help but think of poor Ike White? Hadn’t Malik told me that Lloyal von Nott, Heiler’s mentor, had been ‘crushing’ him?

  The goddamn thing was that when you were with him, being scanned by that radar of bedroom-blue eyes, and blond forelock and Huck Finn grin, it all felt so right that it immediately brought up the idea that it was in fact so wrong you’d be a dickhead to buy it, all in all confusing as hell, as if you’d shown up for some pain-relieving but terrifying dental work only to find a sign on the office door reading ‘Dentist Dead.’

  Confusing, yes, for the harder I tried not to try it, the harder I seemed to be trying it. Or it me.

  Five

  SCHLOMO AND DIXIE Dove were the twin constellations in the New England Freudian firmament, a kind of Big and Little Dipper of neurosis. The Doves were almost public figures, so out front that everybody thought they knew them. They had been born of immigrant Jewish parents, and in both were nurtured the seeds of a cultural hunger to ‘make it,’ a hunger that blossomed to indulgence in him, denial in her. Trim and tight as a fighting fish, Dixie was called by him, in public and with all good humor and even a twinkly affection, ‘the Barracuda.’

  They’d met on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx and worked their way through college in Manhattan – he CCNY, she Hunter – and then on to Boston, where he made it in Tufts Medical and she at MIT, in astrophysics. Both were analyzed by men analyzed by Freud, he by the pathetic Nash (né Nischgedankberg), she by the bellicose Bebring. Nothing unusual in all this, I thought, driving up the hill to their mansion one afternoon in early October. Except for the psychoanalysis, they were much like my own parents, yes. But then something else had happened, something essential to the perverse self-promotion at the heart of the American Dream, and in a life-move of sheer implausibility, which in hindsight seemed inevitable, Schlomo parlayed his vulgar wit to a prodigal power. Without anyone knowing quite how he did it, everyone woke up one morning to find that the good Dr Dove had captured a share of the market on fixing up neurotic people with neurotic therapists. It was brilliant, for suddenly many of the therapists in the area were dependent on Schlomo for patients, and thus money. Schlomo was ballsy on money: you paid in advance, in cash only, a hundred fifty for twenty minutes – ‘Gratuity included,’ Schlomo would say, laughing – after which he’d guarantee you the right shrink. If you didn’t like the one he sent you to, he’d send you to another, and another, until you did. For no extra charge. He’d keep for himself the patients he wanted.

  They were an outrageous-appearing couple, Schlomo’s sloppiness countered by Dixie’s being a florid fashion rack, all colorful dresses and blouses and skirts and pants with tropical flowers, with her signature floppy hats, real flowers pinned amidst the fake. Notorious for never refusing an invitation, they went to all social functions and always seemed to have a good time, Schlomo’s laughter bouncing up from the center of the room, Dixie’s commentaries on Schlomo slashing in from the corners. Not that everything had always gone well. One reason, everyone said, for their good cheer and impulsive social functioning was the matter of the swimming pool. Growing up in the searing and cindery summers of the city, Schlomo and Dixie had always dreamed of having their own pool. Finally, with the money from his booming practice, they bought the mansion and dug the hole. And swam. Swam and swam. Swam for years, until one day their two-year-old son was found face down just below the surface, dead. It makes sense, I thought, parking under an elephantine copper beech. All this hyper humor is the frantic eruption of that immigrant hunger denied, the slow starvation of their outliving their only child. You had to feel for him, yes.

  I was at Schlomo’s house for a supervisory session. I knocked, went into the kitchen of the mansion, and was face-to-face with Dixie, in a housedress that could have passed for an advertisement for a cruise up the Congo. ‘Wrong door,’ she said. ‘He’s in the carriage house.’

  ‘Sorry. I’m Roy Basch, how are you today?’

  ‘You should be,’ she said. ‘It’s diagnostic.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘How the hell do I know? When he finds you a therapist, you’ll find out.’

  ‘No, no, I’m not a patient, I’m on the opposing team, the doctors?’

  ‘Big deal. Carriage house. He’s there.’

  Since my one talk with Schlomo about Cherokee, I hadn’t gone to see him again. I knew that my avoiding him had something to do with my loyalty to my patient Cherokee. Schlomo had taken over from Ike White as Director of Residency Training, and he seemed to be everywhere at once around Misery, constantly running outpatient groups, giving lectures, eating those bananas, wandering the grounds as if he had all the time in the world. He saw most of his private patients here at his home office, starting with Lily Putnam at six in the morning. I’d often come upon him schmoozing with one of what he referred to as ‘the Great Unwashed,’ sometimes Buildings and Grounds, more often, as he noshed on some horrible dish, Cafeteria. Solini and I had nicknamed him ‘the Oily Schmoozer of Misery.’

  Ike White’s colossal lie, his suicide and its colossal denial, had cracked open something cynical in me, leaving me with a deep sense that you couldn’t believe much of anything you were told at Misery. While I had settled into a healthy respect for just how possible it was that a shrink could be screwing his patients, every time I would run into Schlomo in the flesh it seemed absurd. Blair Heiler, with those long fingers and boyish smiles, yes. Schlomo no. Schlomo had noticed my avoiding him, and whenever I’d run into him, he would badger me to come see him for supervision. ‘You never call,’ he’d say, mimicking a Jewish grandmother, ‘you never write, not even a postal cart!’ Finally one day he’d cornered me at the vending machines in the tunnels. ‘Look, I got duties too, as Residency director. Make nice. We’ll meet outside this goyish country club. Come to the house.’ He reached into a horrible inner pocket and handed me a map. We set a time.

  I walked down the path to the carriage house and sat in the waiting room. An obese man dressed in a light gray jumpsuit came ponderously down the stairs and into the room, weeping as if his heart would crack. He clomped past me, cowlike, and out the door. Schlomo yelled for me to come up.

  The second floor of the carriage house was a large open room under a mansard roof, one whole side of which was skylight. In the light Schlomo looked worse, in shirtsleeves, baggy slacks, his chin grizzled, and his eyes, deep in there, red-edged as if from lack of sleep. As in his office at Misery, here was a leather couch and in back of it a leather chair, and a tidy desk and other chairs. The decor was fragrant plants and bananas in all stages of ripeness. Here at home the cigar in his mouth was lit. He puffed happily. In his hand was that yellow plastic watering can with the penile spout.

  ‘“Enter to Grow in Wisdom!”’ he shouted joyously. ‘Inscription over the Harvard Gate.’

  ‘Throw that in my lap again,’ I said, ‘and I’ll kill you.’

  ‘Deal. Sit, sit. Sit.’ He gestured me to a chair in front of a desk. ‘Y’look good. Things agreeing?’

  ‘Fine, fine,’ I said, realizing that suddenly my mind was spinning with questions and fantasies about his patient Lily Putnam.
>
  ‘Good, good. So why don’t you ever come to see Schlomo for supervision?’

  ‘Just because you’re now director of training doesn’t mean I have to subject myself to you.’

  ‘Training’s for horses or seals, boychik, not for persons. Why so nasty?’

  ‘So what do you want?’

  ‘Schmooze. Just to schmooze. Outrage, remember? I got it, you got it, the goys don’t got it. So how’s it goin’? Tell Schlomo.’

  He waited, smiling, puffing. I thought of the drowned kid. Finally I told him something of what I’d been going through, with Heiler.

  ‘Oy gevalt!’ he said. ‘That’s it! That’s why you’re so nasty lately – you’ve been Heilerized! All that borderline crap. Little Blairey Heiler! The putz. Yeah, he’s like you. Never came to Schlomo, never analyzed. Anger? Oy!’

  ‘You’re saying that anger’s not important?’ I said angrily.

  ‘Fifty years ago he’d be gassing you and me and laughing. Never mind him, c’mon c’mon, let’s go deep. What’s doin’ in there? Tell Schlomo.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Oh boy!’ he said, delighted. ‘C’mon. Spill.’

  Those eyes waited, glittering dark crystals. I checked out the watering can, and then glanced away at the couch. Schlomo had been Ike’s analyst. Six years, Ike had lain on that couch. I could almost see him, stuttering there, hoping it would help. ‘You were Ike White’s analyst?’

  For a second he seemed startled. Then he sighed, puffed his cigar to a rose red, and said, ‘Yes. His first one. Poor Isaac.’

  I remembered that Ike’s ‘new’ analyst had been at his bedside when he died. ‘Why’d he need a second one? Didn’t the one with you take?’

  ‘You have feelings about him?’ That ugly face softened, the eyes kindled.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Tell Schlomo,’ he cooed, ‘tell Schlomo about sad and lonely.’

  ‘Nope. No feelings. Gone.’

  Schlomo nodded his head slowly and then abruptly threw the lit cigar into my lap. Sparks flew. I jumped up and threw it back at him, brushing my pants frantically. The ash had stained the fabric, bits were burning through.

  ‘Asshole!’ I screamed. ‘You ruined my suit! Three fifty in Oxford and you ruined my suit! Are you crazy? Are you a fucking imbecile?’

  ‘I know, I know, it’s terrible. Here—’ He was heading toward me with the watering can. ‘—hold still, I’ll put it out—’

  ‘No! Stay away, you jerk!’

  ‘Send the bill, send the bill.’ He sighed. ‘No feeling, eh?’

  I was enraged. But then something strange happened. All at once Schlomo seemed to crumple and half fall to the floor, where he sat cross-legged, as if at a dying campfire. He started crying softly.

  ‘What?’ I asked. That repulsive body shook. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Isaac, poor Isaac.’ He chanted a riff of Hebrew, then translated, ‘“Take your son, your favored one, Isaac, whom you love, and go to Mount Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering.”’ He sighed. ‘Six years. Good work. Boom. Dead. Suicide.’

  ‘Suicide?’

  ‘You believe these pinheaded goyim with eyes so close together you can’t get a pencil between? These Lloyals and Heilers who think their colons are filled with cologne?’ He fell silent, rocking a little, in grief.

  ‘I met with him the day he did it,’ I said. ‘It was the day Cherokee told me about his suspicion about you and his wife. I keep thinking that, maybe, just maybe, that was the final straw.’

  ‘Nah. I called Isaac later that day, after you came to see me. It was OK. You didn’t do it. Poor little guy.’

  ‘Why did he kill himself?’

  ‘Because of this,’ he said, looking up at me with a pitiable sorrow.

  ‘Because you were always throwing things into his crotch?’

  Schlomo sat up, even bounced. His eyes widened, black buttons in pink cloth. ‘And because he maybe never got as angry as you? See? You got it.’

  ‘Got what?’

  ‘Get more of it – make nice with Schlomo. Gimme a hand up.’ I did. His hand was damp. ‘So,’ he said, again cheerful, ‘come for supervision, come kibitz. Better yet, let Schlomo analyze you. I’ll give you such a deal!’

  ‘Me, analyzed by you? I don’t think so!’

  ‘Nu, so I won’t analyze. I’ll farm you out.’

  ‘I don’t want any part of you,’ I said. ‘Life’s too short for Schlomo.’

  ‘And Schlomo’s too short for life!’ He laughed. As I walked out, he called down the stairs after me, ‘Bye-bye, bye-bye. Don’t forget to write!’

  I walked up the flagstone path and stopped to see the damage to my pants in the slanting October light. Two burn holes. The fucker would get the bill. Looking up, I saw the pool, the blue not of water but of paint. It was empty. Shit. I walked on again to my car, and as I drove away on down the hill, I started to put the fragments together, as if my brain, unrolled, were rolling back up convolution by convolution, gyri and sulci snapping back into place to make some sense of this phantasmagorical shrink. The bizarre thing about Schlomo was that his outrageousness left no room for pretense. He seemed real, but it was a reality like everybody’s Uncle Irving, the schnorrer at the cousin’s wedding who was funny but turned out to have been embezzling from the business for thirty years. It was real, but was it true? Fuck Schlomo! Stay away. In the jungle of the Doves, you see a snake, you don’t grab it.

  Cherokee had canceled several times. Each time, he’d left a message, in pleasant tones, that he was too busy and things were going well. I felt bad, for I liked him and felt that in our two meetings when he was in crisis we’d really connected. I figured that given his WASPdom, where any opening up is followed by a more harsh closing down, he was ashamed to see me again and had, to use Zoc’s phrase, ‘gone back into his Happy Box.’ Later that week when he walked into my office all tan and fit and relaxed and aglow from having healthy horses under him all summer, I smiled, as did he. Like old friends catching up, we began chatting.

  Italy for him had been ‘transforming,’ bringing back childhood memories of living there from age seven to fourteen while his father was in the American diplomatic corps. His Italian had come back easily, the underpinning grammar snapping up the remembered words. The beauty had been overpowering.

  ‘One night in Tuscany we took a walk in a field, and suddenly there were fireflies! Hundreds of fireflies – lúcciole – like shooting stars in the dark field, just as in my childhood! It was so exquisitely beautiful!’ He sighed. ‘Where are they now? Did you see a single firefly this summer? Even one?’

  With surprise, I realized I had not. ‘No.’

  ‘No, they’re gone from here. Compared to Italy, we live in a dump.’

  He talked about his childhood in Rome, summering near Siena, his brilliant, reserved, diplomat father, whom he loved terrifically until his slow death a few years before; and his stern, crazed mother, whose life in Roman society circles had ended abruptly with the family’s transfer back to the States, now a recluse in Sun Valley, Idaho, never having seen her grandchildren.

  ‘Narrowness of mind,’ he said, ‘seems a Putnam family trait.’

  ‘Except for your name. Where’d it come from?’

  He lit up and with transforming animation told me that it came from a great-grandfather, Honor Putnam, a descendant of the brothers John and Thomas Putnam, two of the elite of Salem, Massachusetts, villains of the Salem witch trials. It turned out that Honor, having taken part in the massacre and resettlement of the Cherokees from their home in the Appalachians to the reservations in Oklahoma, had a vision of the hell he might face and named his next-born son Cherokee. ‘I’m actually Cherokee Putnam the third,’ he now said, ‘and for a while people called me “Trey.” Never met Honor, of course. Funny, I dream of him, sometimes.’

  He fell silent. There was a sense of peace in my small office under the eaves. Yet I was troubled. But for his enthusiasm for the firefli
es, there had been no feeling, no affect, in anything he’d said. It felt surface level, phony. The sense of peace turned to a sense of stalling, like when engines cut out on a small plane. Our time was almost up and there had been no mention of Lily.

  ‘So what’s going on with your wife?’

  ‘Oh, things are better now. I feel a bit sheepish, actually, getting so upset. I think we can stop these meetings. Thanks for all your good help.’ Pleasantly he talked about the resurrection of his sex life with Lily. The rift in Italy had provoked a cliff-edge despair in both of them that had led to the most romantic of reconciliations, a long weekend ‘sans enfants’ at a hotel called the Summerhouse in Nantucket, a weathered mansion overgrown with roses, fireplaces, and moonlight on the Indian summer pacific Atlantic, and lovemaking to the sunrise. ‘I just wanted to stop by and say so long and thanks.’

  You’d think I’d’ve been happy for him, and shaken his hand and said, Good work and good luck, but no. It all seemed too nice, especially given the vulgarity of Schlomo. After weeks of Heiler I could not help but hear, in his ‘things are better,’ the negative, and said, ‘So things are worse?’

  ‘No, no, Basch, I said things are better.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  He paused. ‘Yes, I’m sure. That first weekend in Nantucket she was hotter than she ever was with me before, and it’s kept on since. She’s been an animal. Almost like analysis with … with him has freed her up.’

  ‘Him?’

  A shifting in his seat, a chagrin on his face. ‘You know who.’