Mount Misery

by Samuel Shem

  She arrived with only fifteen minutes left to go, threw herself down in the chair and took off her Yankees cap, fluffing her short light brown hair. We chatted about the change in the weather, about our concern for the well-being of the missing Thorny. I felt a sense of sorrow for her, for what she had been put through this year in the name of psychiatric treatment. And I thought of Cherokee, how he too, lost and looking in good faith for some help, had found me, the wrong person at the wrong time, and it had killed him. If he had wandered into Malik’s office, maybe he’d still be alive.

  My sorrow deepened. I found myself seeing Zoe in a new way – seeing not just the words but something else, all around and in between, like on a farm on a summer’s day you can almost see the breeze, ruffling the wheat. When a technique or a theory would come to mind, I’d hear Malik’s voice crying, ‘Bullshit!’ and I’d let go of the idea and keep on listening. Concepts seemed stupid now, given the facts of her suffering – even though she was speaking cheerfully. As I listened, a strange thing happened: I felt her pain so deeply that even though she was not showing it, tears came to my eyes. I was doing more crying in the last three days than in the last thirty years.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘No, no,’ she said, shaking her head, moving her hand back and forth between us as if clearing away cobwebs. ‘What’s with you?’

  ‘I’m feeling a lot of sadness for how you’ve been treated this year.’

  ‘By Schlomo?’

  ‘And by me. I …’ I looked away. But then, remembering how Ike had avoided my eyes, I looked back at her. I saw her quizzical look and held it with my sorrow. Saw it soften to concern. My lip trembled, my throat felt cloggy. Wetness was on my cheeks. ‘I’m sorry, Zoe.’

  ‘Here.’ She handed me the Kleenex box. ‘What a switch, eh, Doc?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You’re like really hurting, aren’t you?’

  ‘Uh-huh. It’s terrible to see what you’ve gone through this year. I’ve tried my best to help you. I hope you know that?’

  ‘Yeah, I do. Oh shit.’ Tears overflowed her eyes too, and streamed down her cheek. ‘Pass me back the Kleenex, will you?’

  We cried, tears of sorrow and understanding and, yes, love. For the first time I saw that whatever helps people in psychotherapy has nothing to do with psychology, and everything to do with this, being human with, moving with another person as parts of a whole. Understand, and you love; love, and you understand. Love, understanding, and sorrow are different words for the same thing. ‘Healing,’ Malik had said, ‘is as little a matter of mind as is love.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Zoe said. ‘I’ve never felt this before in my life. It’s scary, I mean because it’s so real.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘OK. I’ll meet with that other woman. If she like agrees, we’ll do whatever we have to together, to get that little sonofabitch.’

  She left, and I called Lily Putnam. She agreed to see me again. I found her that night in the barn, ‘mucking out.’ The smell of horseshit was a kind of comfort, reminding me of lifting hay bales into carts under a full moon on a summer night in Columbia when I was in love with a farmer’s daughter.

  ‘Can we talk?’ I asked.

  ‘Got to finish this.’

  ‘Mind if I help?’

  She stared at me, wiping a lock of light brown hair from her eyes. ‘There are some boots over there. They were his. Do you mind?’

  ‘We’ll see.’ I put on Cherokee’s boots, and the rubbery contact they made with the barn floorboards and slippery horseshit felt familiar. We chatted as we mucked, about her children, her parents, about her life and mine, my parents – parent, rather, leading me to telling her of my father’s death. ‘It’s strange – I keep wondering where he is. I saw him in his coffin, but it’s as if he’s still here somehow.’

  ‘Lucky you. Cherokee made sure we’d have a closed-coffin affair. But I know what you mean. I still can’t believe that Cher’s not up in his office above us right now. Have you dreamed about your father?’

  ‘No. You? I mean of Cherokee?’

  ‘Some. He’s always young and wonderful.’ She stopped mucking. ‘All right. Bring her out here tomorrow at noon. What’s her name?’ I was astonished. I hadn’t mentioned a word about Zoe. Lily repeated, ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Zoe.’

  ‘See you and Zoe tomorrow about noon.’

  ‘But why? What happened?’

  ‘You pitched in and helped.’

  ‘Mucking?’

  ‘That too. There are moments in life when you either do it or you miss it. Cherokee missed it. You’re giving me another chance. Tomorrow at noon. The children will be at school. I’ll make a light lunch.’

  So, I thought, struggling to take off his boots without smearing horseshit all over me, it’s not what’s said, it’s what is. The word is not the thing. The description is not the described.

  The next day, seeing the two women together, I was astonished at how alike they looked! Each was tall and slender, with the same shade of light brown hair cut in the same short style.

  Their eyes were the same light green and their noses were the same shape, that delicate straight line that must have provoked in Schlomo, given his ugly honker, ‘nose envy.’ As they took in the fact of their resemblance – not only in physical appearance but in culture and background – I could almost sense their feelings, as the memories of the abuse freshened. It was as if Schlomo’s perversion were on view, as if I were seeing his victims through his eyes, as if he were saying, ‘This is the kind of girl that turns me on. When one of these dolls comes to me to find her a therapist, I keep her for myself.’

  ‘The hardest thing for me,’ Zoe said, ‘is finding out that there is another victim.’

  ‘For me too,’ Lily said. ‘And knowing that there must be others.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Which, for me,’ Lily went on, ‘is the purpose of our meeting?’

  ‘One of the purpses,’ Zoe said, ‘yeah.’

  They began to compare notes. Schlomo’s pattern was almost exactly the same with each of them, though it had been going on much longer with Lily. Each had thought that his words to her were unique, and it turned out that his words were almost exactly the same, as if he had practiced and perfected his seduction technique. They started to get into the details, and then stopped. Lily asked me, ‘Would you mind greatly if we talk alone?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said, and left, thinking it might be half an hour.

  Three hours later Lily woke me up. Zoe was standing beside her. Their arms were around each other’s waist. Like mother and daughter. Their eyes were puffy with crying, their faces flushed with relief.

  ‘We’ve decided to take action,’ Lily said.

  ‘Together,’ Zoe said. ‘And with your help.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘We’ve composed a letter.’

  Schlomo Dove:

  You have sexually abused both of us in psychotherapy. Our testimony and that of Dr Roy G. Basch, who witnessed an episode of sexual abuse with one of us (Zoe), will stand as powerful evidence in a court of law. You have done much damage, and we are repairing this, in our own ways.

  At this point, for the sake of ourselves and our families, we are not making our abuse public. We demand that you give up your medical license, resign from the Freudian Institute and Mount Misery staff, and stop seeing patients. We also ask that you meet with us, either individually or together, to try to heal the wounds.

  Stop voluntarily, or we will take action in the press and courts to stop you.

  ‘Terrific,’ I said, ‘except for one thing.’

  ‘Yes?’ Lily asked.

  ‘If Schlomo’s lawyers find out that you two know each other and have talked, they can discredit your testimony. You have to write him separately. Different letters.’

  ‘Fine,’ Lily said.

  ‘And this meeting between
the three of us,’ I went on, ‘never took place.’

  ‘Like what meeting, Doc?’ Zoe said. ‘I don’t see any meeting.’

  Schlomo replied immediately. He sent each of the women the same letter:

  Professor Schlomo Dove is shocked and deeply hurt at your fantasies of what went on in his consulting chamber. This is an erotic transference – a psychotic erotic transference. You are crazy.

  Schlomo Dove knows, as do you, that nothing of the kind ever happened. You are out of touch with reality. Schlomo never touched you physically, except for an occasional handshake on Christmas or the 4th of July.

  Schlomo Dove will fight tooth and nail in any arena including a court of law to protect his professional honor against this smear campaign. When Schlomo Dove’s word is put up against your word – a borderline woman with a history of psychopathology and hospitalization whose detailed record Schlomo has on file, and the word of a first-year psychiatric resident who is known to be unstable and a troublemaker – you don’t stand a chance.

  Drop this, or Schlomo Dove will sue you to the wall. Nash Michaels, Counsel to Misery, has been retained, and Dr Lloyal von Nott alerted.

  The mature approach would have been to schedule sessions with Dr Schlomo Dove to work through your psychotic-erotic-borderline-transference. Now it is too late. Schlomo Dove will no longer be available as your therapist, though he will refer you to a skilled psychoanalyst to work through your psychosis.

  The doctor will not be humiliated by his patient.

  Enclosed is a final bill. Prompt payment is expected. Have a nice life.

  More in sadness than anger,

  Schlomo Dove, M.D., F.R.A.P.S.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Zoe asked the next day in my office, with Lily on the speakerphone from her house.

  ‘We get a lawyer,’ Lily said. ‘Do you know any women lawyers, Roy?’

  I did. Henry and I had gotten in touch with Hannah in Wyoming, and she too had returned, to finish out the year and to try to help us deal with Schlomo. Hannah had been transformed, her hair and eyebrows back to their natural black, her figure back to full, and her mind back to a healthy remembrance of her first analyst, her eye roll-ups a comfort to her, and, in a funny way, to us. She had started therapy in Jackson Hole, with a showy Jungian rodeo gal who focused on the analysis of shadows and who had recently had a piece in People magazine on her ‘Inner Child of Your Past Lives’ approach. The most significant piece of Hannah’s transformation was Gilda Plotkin. At Hannah’s side when she showed up, Gilda was her former college roommate, who had played great viola to Hannah’s prodigal cello in their string quartet. Gilda had gone on to Yale Law School, and after almost a decade in law had bought a ranch out West and continued part-time lawyering, both criminal and civil, in Denver and Jackson Hole. Gilda was a large, robust woman with big hands and a wide-open, wind-burnished face glowing with health, with bright dark eyes and pink cheeks and a nose broken in the past and big strong lips and a prizefighter’s chin. She was a cowgirl without a trace of the blues, a brilliant, funny, rough-tough advocate, who seemed unafraid of anything, and was madly in love with Hannah. The two old friends were making beautiful music together as lovers.

  Gilda was getting bored, back East. She might welcome the chance to skewer an abuser like Schlomo. So I said to Lily and Zoe, ‘I sure do. We’ll need separate lawyers for each of you.’

  ‘Is it all right if I go first, Zoe?’ Lily asked. Zoe nodded. ‘Arrange a meeting as soon as possible, Roy, will you?’

  ‘With pleasure.’

  Malik worked the program intensely, and worked with his sponsor George and with me and Solini. Henry would hardly let Malik out of his sight.

  The night before Malik’s discharge, we went with him to the Misery Loves Company meeting in the Farben. They handed out key chains stamped with various lengths of time of sobriety. They called out, ‘Anybody with one week?’ and Malik walked slowly to the front. As people recognized him, he who had up until recently been a pillar of their community, there was a hush. ‘Go, Malik!’ someone shouted. Others took it up. Soon all were clapping. Malik took his key chain and raised it over his head. Then he doubled up coughing. Another hush. He walked back through the pall and sat between George and Henry.

  The next day his insurance ran out. He was going back to Bronia.

  ‘I couldn’t live with her,’ he’d said, ‘but maybe I can die with her.’

  Solini and I had finally gotten Malik to talk about his cancer. We’d encouraged him to go to the world experts, at the world’s best hospitals, down in Boston.

  ‘After what you’ve seen of the world experts here?’ he’d asked.

  ‘Cancer’s different,’ I’d said.

  ‘Right. You have a choice: either get poisoned first and die, or die. You see the paper today? They’re finally gonna regulate pesticides a little. Just in time, eh? The time frame of humanity is so stupid! Throw the shit on the lettuce, dump it in the water, and by the time they can prove it kills people, the fat cats who cashed in are retired to Florida. Shit.’

  Now, Solini and I sat with Malik out on the porch of Heidelberg East, waiting for Bronia to come pick him up. Malik was physically weak, and subdued. Dazed, even foggy. With the year ending, and Solini leaving Misery, we tried to talk with Malik about the horrors we’d seen all year long, and about what more we could do about Schlomo. We wanted advice, but Malik gave none; sitting quietly, he only listened. We lapsed into what felt to me an uncomfortable and uneasy silence. It was a relief when Bronia drove up in the old VW bus, its license plate now one of maximum irony:

  BREATHE

  We walked out together, a piece of his luggage in each of our hands. Malik walked slowly, on wobbly legs, arms around our shoulders, leaning on us both.

  ‘That sunlight feels terrific!’ Malik said, blinking in the glare. It was the first hot day of the year. ‘You guys should see that forsythia through these amber lenses – I mean it is wild!’

  ‘Cool,’ Henry said, looking at this wildness and sneezing paroxysmally.

  We helped hoist Malik up into the passenger seat.

  Through the window I asked, ‘Do you pray to God, Malik?’

  ‘I don’t know about God,’ he said. ‘All I know is that I’m not God, and I’m asking for help from something else, outside me. Step Three.’ He sighed and looked around. ‘I pray to whatever doesn’t exclude others, but includes them. To the flower in the compost, the compost in the flower. I ask for help from this.’ His eyes swept the landscape, and ours followed. Suddenly I saw the hills like waves and the fields like tides, and the dark green pines hiking up the mountains to crest in white snowcaps like breakers on stone, the light green new maples and indomitable grasses flowing back down into the valleys, the hollows, the glitter of water seeking ocean, then sky, then rain. ‘From the Divine intelligence behind all this.’

  ‘Omain!’ Bronia said, mashing the gears, letting out the raspy clutch.

  ‘Wait!’ Henry cried out. Bronia waited. ‘Where will you be?’

  ‘Around, awhile,’ Malik said. Then he smiled, and got that ‘I’m your coach and I’m callin’ the play’ look in his eye, and said, ‘You listenin’ up?’ Henry and I said we were listening up. ‘Good. Live your understanding, right now, or it’ll destroy you. Got it?’

  ‘Cool,’ Solini said, ‘but what if you don’t have all that much?’

  Malik chuckled. ‘Live what you have. And remember: never go to a doctor you see on TV. So long.’

  My turmoil that night was intense. Berry was asleep.

  Awake, my mind was going over and over my failures as a shrink, a lover, a son, brother, uncle, person, human – even, staring at Berry’s cat staring icily at me, as a failed friend to cats.

  In the static of all these failures I heard Malik’s voice saying, ‘If you ain’t close to God anymore, who moved?’

  I got up out of bed and went to a linty corner of my turret. I got down on my knees. The floorboards hurt my kneecaps. The ac
tion felt embarrassing. Closing my eyes, in a churlish whisper I said:

  ‘Please help me? Thanks a lot.’ It was all I could do not to add, ‘You big dickhead.’

  Whom was I asking for help?

  ‘The Heroic Saga of Roy G. Basch, Great American’ was providing all kinds of images: Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments with God in white beard and bathrobe in the puffy clouds, or the vengeful God of widowed Rabbi Ritvo our tenant on the other side of the wall of our two-family in Columbia who at night screamed in Yiddish at his two spinster daughters.

  I was not asking for help from that God. That God was merely my mind. I was not asking for help from myself.

  Could I have been asking for help from the eternal disconnections, and the eternal connections that held even them?

  Twenty

  SOLINI, HANNAH, AND I, as the damp sun of May turned into the flatiron sun of June, began to take action around Misery.

  We became extraordinarily curious about the money our patients were spending to stay at Misery. We let them know that it was over twelve hundred dollars a day. Somehow their insurance companies found out that the patients were being labeled with not one but two or three DSM diagnoses solely to keep them in Misery longer, so that the hospital and their doctors could make more nice green money. One day Solini and I were strolling past Emerson. Seeing once again the sign DISSOCIATIVE HOUSE, we felt it our duty to send individual letters to the major insurance companies letting them know that ever since they’d stopped paying for ‘Borderline Personality Disorder’ and started paying for ‘Dissociative Disorder,’ Blair Heiler had switched diagnoses. Wasn’t it funny how, in the hard science of psychiatry, diagnoses could be so soft?