“I think Phil deserves to be dean of the graduate school more than anyone,” Berry said with a sudden affected humility. “He sure worked for it.”
Jay Berry, what a bastard, that sorry sackashit that pulled pranks on me, pranks he would never admit to, even after he finished his doctorate. Yeah, of course, there’s his yes-man, Albert, still blowing smoke up his own tired old ass and everyone else’s.
Berry leaned over to whisper into Scott’s ear. “I’m surprised they didn’t ask Mr. Self-Esteem over there if he didn’t want the position.”
Dorothy was distracted by the crowd, smiling and saying hello to people. But Crawford was looking carefully at his two old rivals, wondering what nasty remarks they were making about him.
“Crawford?” Scott said softly to Berry. “He doesn’t have time to be dean. He’s got a new book and appearances to make. Now he’s going after the children’s market. A busy man he is.”
“Yes, I understand he’s putting out an exercise video,” Berry added with a snicker.
Crawford was imagining what they were saying. He also knew he couldn’t stop their mockery from bothering him, which bothered him even more.
They laughed quietly to themselves, looking up at Crawford, feigning to have just seen him, or he thought so anyway.
“Jim,” Berry said. “How the hell are you? Long time, no see.”
Crawford decided to go ahead and put on airs. It was more insulting. “Great. Jay. Good to see you. Albert, how are you?”
“Fine, Jim.”
Dorothy joined her husband, standing obediently at his side.
“Dorothy, you look as lovely as ever.”
“Thank you, Dr. Scott. Congratulations on your new research grant.”
He was surprised, or acted like he was. “Thank you so much, Dorothy. But how would you know about that?”
Crawford thought his response was almost paranoid.
“Oh, a little birdie told me,” she said.
“Well, thank you, dear.”
Berry chimed in, “But we were just talking about your latest success, Jim.”
“Congratulations on your new book,” Dr. Scott added.
Crawford was clearly uncomfortable. “Thanks, gentlemen. I appreciate it.”
Then there was an awkward silence. This was the real insult — saying congratulations and nothing more.
Scott lifted his martini and looked directly at Crawford. “Can I get you folks something?” Berry grinned. “Oh, I forgot,” Scott said quickly. “You no longer imbibe.”
“No,” Crawford said with a forced smile.
Then Scott turned to Dorothy. “Can I get you something?”
“No, thank you. Will you excuse us a moment?” Dorothy said, leading Crawford into the main hall.
“Those jackasses. They don’t think I know they talk behind my back? What idiots.”
Crawford turned again to give them a hateful look and Dorothy directed him away. “Ignore them, dear. If they talk behind your back they’re just jealous of your success, that’s all.”
“Jealous?” Crawford tried to laugh. “They’re downright hateful. They think I’m getting too much attention, too much money. They want fame and fortune more than I do.”
“That’s jealousy. And why do you care what they think?” Dorothy said, in a motherly voice. “My God, do I have to keep giving you your own advice?”
“No you don’t,” he said, before taking a breath and calming himself. His discomfort, he theorized, came from conceding that his former doctoral classmates were right, that he was a fraud and a bad joke.
The Crawfords walked in through the main entrance, down the aisle, then up the stairs that lead to the long table that sat at the front of the hall. “Just think of all the things you tell other people,” Dorothy said, pointing to their assigned seats. “Follow your own advice. It works.”
“Does it?”
Crawford looked down at his name written on a folded card in front of their seats just to the left of the podium. “Dr. James and Dorothy Crawford.” Crawford particularly took note of the “Dr.” in front of his name. It was ambiguous — a Doctor of Philosophy, a PhD, or a doctor that supposedly heals the sick. Either will do. Take your pick. You just couldn’t pick both.
I need a doctor, he thought.
Or a drink.
Crawford frequently thought about his own advice — the same advice that had made him a fortune — but he only believed it while he was making it up, and probably not even then. Stop negative behavior and face life on its own terms and live a happy life forever and ever. Uh huh.
But the content hadn’t changed much over the years, only the way it was composed. Since the completion of his second book, Self-Worth, Crawford began to notice an odd relationship between his writing and his behavior. Increasingly, the writing of these feel-good books made him feel bad, creating a depression that would last for weeks, sometimes months. It was starting to impede the writing process until Crawford ultimately worked out a deal with himself. He had to “postpone” the disparaging thoughts and depression until after the work was completed, bribing himself with the promise of a nice long bender once it was done.
It took writing Self-Respect before Crawford became comfortable with this arrangement. Perhaps he just learned to live with it, but it also made the drinking binge that followed much longer and more extreme.
Then he began to believe that the awareness of this pattern was going to drive him mad. Each book was more successful than the last, creating high expectations for the next in the series. And after each book was published, the drinking relapse was markedly worse, making the hole deeper and deeper. So he rationalized the situation, telling himself that his experiences fed his “art.” He would dry out and talk to his wife about “calling the muse,” even though the drunkenness came after the fact. Eventually he would get sober and write a book about how to get happy and feel good. And after that he would be disgustingly drunk again.
“Any writer who says he writes 12 hours a day is full of shit,” he told his editor, Martha Ginsberg, on the phone one night, just after falling off the wagon the day before.
“Not necessarily,” she said. “It certainly isn’t impossible.”
“You know what I mean, Martha.”
Martha had edited all four Self Series books with such remarkable speed and independence that Crawford often wondered why she didn’t write her own self-help books. She almost never called Crawford, even to discuss changes she was making to his manuscript. She just did them. Both Crawford and Lee liked it this way. It was very easy. No politics, no problems, no complaints — just great work.
But Martha was a professional. She didn’t like discussing the nuts and bolts of composition, especially with Jim, especially when he was drunk. It was just a job to her, not nearly as fun as working in her garden at home.
And Crawford, being aware of Martha’s temperament and skill, couldn’t shake the contradictions their relationship presented. She was the normal one. She was the happy one. She was the one who should be telling people how to improve their lives, Crawford knew. But Martha Ginsberg was uninterested in any of that. She was merely a book editor. Her problems were too few to give a damn about the rest of the fucked up world.
“You’re so much better than I am,” Crawford once told her after she called him to question the context of a phrase, finding him completely inebriated.
“Better off, perhaps,” she said, and changed the subject.
That response would stick with Crawford for a long time. Strangely, he only remembered it when he was alone and drunk. Or out in public wishing he was alone and drunk.
Even with intermittent TV appearances over the previous ten years, Crawford could still get nervous when it came to speaking in public, especially at social gatherings, and especially with academics. He kept telling himself that the little ceremony they were having in honor of Peters becoming dean and receiving a fellowship wasn’t exactly a social gathering, and it was bare
ly academic.
And what difference did it make?
Crawford kept looking over at Peters, trying to distract himself from the audience in front of him that was now a mass of ghostly silhouettes. Crawford hoped the sight of Peters would help his jitters, but it didn’t.
Peters sat quietly on the opposite side of the podium from Dorothy, smiling as Crawford delivered his introduction. What a perfect example of a legitimate scientist in the field of Behavioral Psychology, Crawford thought. If there is such a person. With his neatly trimmed beard and spectacles, Peters almost looked like Freud — without the dog, the cocaine addiction and the ridiculous ambition of explaining the human mind.
“I can’t think of anyone who deserves the honor of being dean of the graduate school more than Dr. Phillip Peters.”
Mediocre remark.
As the audience applauded, Crawford realized he’d just said what he’d overheard Berry say half an hour before, almost verbatim. But strangely he started to relax a bit.
Nothing’s original. Keep going.
“Phil and I have known each other for over seventeen years now, and I know of no one more dedicated to the field of psychology than he is.” Crawford hoped that was sufficient. “Ladies and Gentlemen, the new dean of graduate studies in psychology here at our marvelous university, and this year’s recipient of the Helmut Vogel Fellowship. Dr. Phillip Peters.”
The audience broke into applause, but after a few seconds Crawford didn’t hear it. His thoughts about Peters drowned out the noise. His thoughts were a cruel mother pointing to an example of the person he should be. He stood to the side and shook his old friend’s hand then saw the audience stand and applaud. He walked over to his assigned seat and waited for the audience to sit down so he could do the same.
Peters awkwardly pushed his mouth toward the microphone and said thank you. Crawford thought of how humble he was in the face of such admiration. No ego, no attempt to impress.
That’s why he’s the best.
“Thank you so much,” Peters said nodding. “The University. The members of our department. Thank you all. It’s certainly a pleasure to see an old doctoral comrade of mine who’s gone on to bigger and better things,” he said smiling at Crawford.
The audience clapped again, but not so loud.
“I guess he had the self-esteem and I didn’t.”
The room filled with vociferous laughter. Crawford didn’t appreciate the remark, even though he knew Peters didn’t mean to be cruel. Nevertheless, he now felt more uncomfortable.
And this damn crotch is killing me.
During his brief speech, Peters never mentioned Crawford again. He thanked his colleagues in the department. He thanked the members of the administration for their appointment. He thanked the board at the Vogel Fellowship for believing in his research. He seemed to thank everyone but Crawford.
By the end of the event, Dorothy, seeing that her husband’s insecurities had been aggravated by the experience, was especially attentive. “Are you okay, dear? Did something bother you tonight?”
“Can we just go now? I’ll feel much better when we’re on our way home. Let’s just go. Right now.”
They both walked to the lobby, with Crawford two steps ahead as Dorothy continued to smile and say hello to others.
“That means tonight, sweetheart,” he said under his breath, periodically nodding to the other guests.
“Okay, okay,” Dorothy said before grabbing her husband’s arm. “Let me just say hello to Joanne Brady over there,” she said, tiptoeing away with her just-one-minute finger in the air.
I’ll never get her out of here, he thought.
Crawford stood in the foyer with people nodding as they passed. It reminded him just how much he needed his wife. She was the backbone of the family. She’d always been the backbone of the family, keeping them together during the worst trouble, most of it from Crawford’s behavior. Then he pulled a rabbit out of a hat. He wrote Self-Confidence. But his pot of gold worsened his drinking, his womanizing, and everything else that gave Dorothy grief. After achieving some success, he told himself he had been acquitted of all charges. But he knew he would not have been able to pull it off without her. She suggested writing the book in the first place as a way of helping him through his recovery, and he lashed out at her. He was working on a novel. He was an artist. He couldn’t do something so unimaginative if he wanted to. He was wrong.
Crawford watched his wife and thought about how beautiful she was. She looked more beautiful now, actually. Brief moments of their 18-year marriage were flashing before him. What a bastard he’d been, and how impossibly unreasonable. And how wonderfully she’d dealt with it, with caring and diligence. And how had he paid her back for her years of loyalty and sacrifice? By grabbing a bottle at the first moment of fear or guilt, and by having childish affairs to placate his ego-driven longings. Crawford felt stings of guilt all over his body. Then his inner dialogue was interrupted.
“I think people need to be more aware of their own behavior, now more than ever,” she said with a slight southern drawl.
“Excuse me?” Crawford asked.
The woman — overweight and middle-aged with an ashen complexion — wore a lime-green dress that looked like it could glow in the dark, too ambitious for a woman her size.
She continued to speak as if Crawford had said nothing. “I think you’ve helped people do that more than anyone in a long time.”
“What’s that?” Crawford asked uncomfortably.
She was speaking too loud already. “I said,” she nodded, “people need to be more aware of their own behavior now more than ever. And I think you’ve helped people do that.”
“Well, thanks very much,” he said, trying to turn away.
The praise of an idiot is more insulting than opprobrium from a genius.
“I was amazed in your first book how much you thought about your own behavior. That’s commendable. Not many people can look at how they’re destroying themselves and the lives of others and be completely honest about it. That’s something you can pat yourself on the back for,” she said with a wink.
Thanks, bitch, Crawford thought.
“But your subsequent books don’t mention any of these personal problems at all. You’ve changed.”
What are you my mother? Go away, idiot.
“And I have a problem I’d like to discuss with you, James.”
She used his first name. Crawford wanted to tell this lard ass to go buy a mirror and get to know herself a little better, but he resisted. Boy he could use a drink. “Excuse me,” he said, stepping past her.
“But, James. I want you to take a look at my Self Series workbook.
Fuck your workbook, he thought walking away.
“But my workbook, James” she said with the whimper of a neglected child.
“That’s Dr. Crawford to you, not James,” Crawford said bluntly. “Where’s my wife?”
Dorothy looked like she was enjoying the conversation with her old friend, and Crawford wasn’t going to rush her. He motioned her to the side. “I’ve got to get out of here,” he said in her ear.
“I’m ready when you are,” she said.
“No. Take your time. I want you to,” Crawford said. “It’s turning into a counseling session here. I’ll wait for you at the side entrance. Take your time, dear.” He kissed her on the cheek. Crawford sneaked out the side door wishing he was drunk enough not to feel self-conscious about it.
Peters was sitting alone, smoking his pipe and appearing to stare into the ceiling of the light pollution that blocked the night sky. Crawford had so much respect for his old friend that his inclination was to leave him undisturbed, but he desperately wanted to talk.
“I thought you gave up smoking, Phil.”
“I did. About a million times,” he said smiling. “I know. That’s an old joke.”
Crawford sat next to Peters on a bench that was nothing more than a concrete slab. Even outside the staff entry, surrounde
d by crushed soda cans and cigarette butts, Peters still looked the venerable academic.
“It’s probably not a good thing for a dean to have such a common addiction,” Crawford said. “You need a more unusual one.”
“I think you’re quoting something I said to you about 10 or 11 years ago, pal,” he said, taking another puff off his pipe.
“But alcoholism,” Crawford said looking at the ground, “it’s a little more exotic than nicotine addiction. Supposed to be, anyway.”
As a rule, Peters was skillfully standoffish when it came to emotional matters, particularly outside the formal environment of his office. But speaking to Crawford was different. He had to ask him how things were, not just as a friend but also as a therapist. That’s how their relationship had been for years.
“How are you, Jim? Everything all right?”
Crawford answered that he was okay. He was afraid to look at Peters, like he was a child about to confess a transgression to his father. “I’m doing that stupid show next week — you know, to plug my new book.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah, I hate that shit.”
“What? Jan Hershey Live? That’s one of the top shows on TV. You don’t want to do it?”
“I look at what you’ve accomplished over the last decade and I just feel embarrassed. Four great, serious volumes of research, tons of articles. Now you’re head of the department. Me, I went off to become a snake oil salesman.”
Crawford gave Peters a small grin as if to say he was kidding, if just a little.
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