People in Trouble

by Sarah Schulman

  Peter felt afraid from being so out of control. Then he felt furious. Something in what Robert had said reminded him of his loneliness. It reminded him of his helplessness. It told him he was alone. He was sad. He had no friends and no one to take care of him. He had no one to take care of him because he had been abandoned. He was abandoned and overprotected. He was given everything and nothing. It had ruined him. It had made him awkward. Now he was vulnerable as a result. He was lost. He was a lost boy who could not cry. He was hurt and soft. He was soft like a woman but he was not a woman. A woman left you when you were down. She had an affair when you were vulnerable. If he had not been vulnerable he would have had an affair too, but he was so he couldn’t.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Robert asked, trying not to look worried. ‘Do you need to take a walk outside in the air?’

  ‘You know, Robert,’ Peter said. ‘It’s not as easy to be a man as it once was. Actually it never was easy and now it’s worse than before. People blame you for everything. But all along you have to keep your perspective. You have to keep your balance.’

  Peter stood up and took a deep breath. He stretched out his muscular arms and touched his toes. He was in good shape.

  ‘This is New York City,’ he said. ‘The best thing is to focus on the big picture. Just take the long view and don’t get dragged down in temporary details. Do you see what I mean?’

  ‘No,’ Robert said. ‘I don’t see it that way at all.’

  30

  PETER

  It was clearly spring but there were still knives in the air when the rain came down too strong and cold and the wind whipped too fast. Peter felt the rain beating against his waterproof coat. He was protected. The sky was silver like the coat and the buildings.

  Heading downtown he passed a line of street people not being too rowdy. They were waiting to get into a soup kitchen set up by a local synagogue. He watched them closely. They were mostly black. They had survived the winter. Some seemed disoriented but he couldn’t tell if they were homeless because they were confused, like the TV said, or if being homeless had driven them insane, which seemed a lot more likely. But they didn’t all show very dramatic emotions. Some were just quietly down on their luck. A couple of the younger guys had a lot of energy and were either joking around or antagonizing one another. They danced by the older men who looked blank and rubbed huge hands over their entire heads and faces like they were oh so tired. No one was properly dressed. The few women were mostly quite thin, some with babies or younger children. None of whom looked older than eight. The moms were skinny and some had that junkie/crackhead zombie look with sunken or distracted eyes and missing teeth. Peter figured that the ones who were better organized probably still had somewhere to stay but not enough food, so they had to stand out in the rain with their kids. But he didn’t know for sure if that was true. There were also some traditional bag ladies who were overweight and wearing and carrying a lot of stuff. They spoke loudly and had a lot to say. The skinny ones just tried to keep their kids quiet.

  When he started looking at these people, Peter felt a deep, deep compassion. It drew him closer to them, this sense of injustice that they had been treated so badly. He crossed the street and was practically next to them, watching everyone file inside. Then he followed. Once through the door Peter discovered that these people had been waiting for soup and coffee and cheese and peanut butter and jelly on white bread sandwiches. Then he saw a whole table of elderly people, mostly white and black with two Chinese couples. They kept away from the drug addicts and winos and bag ladies and down-on-their-luck men. The elderly people liked to eat quietly and slowly. The other people ate fast, then sat back and stared.

  Peter stood against the back wall watching everything. He was the only one in the room with rain boots. He was the only blond. People drank their coffee very slowly out of Styrofoam cups, like they knew how to make a cup of coffee last an afternoon. That way it didn’t matter how quickly they ate their sandwiches. The smell in the room was overpoweringly bad. But it wasn’t the room itself, it was the people in it. The warmer the room became, the more he could smell rotting flesh and urine.

  When the meal was over, another group of people came into the room. They were all white, mostly aging, but well cared-for. The men wore a relaxed collection of suits while the women had black skirts of all styles with a variety of nice blouses. They lined up in three rows at the front of the room and a young gay rabbi spoke into the microphone.

  ‘Welcome ladies and gentlemen. Congregation Beth Shalom welcomes you to our community food program. Today we have a special program for you in honor of Passover, the Festival of Liberation. The temple’s resident Jewish Folk Chorus has offered to sing for you. Please welcome this wonderful group under the direction of Irv Jacobson.’

  Nobody applauded. Most people were still sitting over their coffee and didn’t pay any attention. The ones who appeared to be listening were actually just staring.

  Then Irv stepped up to conduct. He was wearing two hearing aids. He turned to face the audience.

  ‘Our first two songs are dear to the hearts of the … ’

  ‘Louder! Louder!’ yelled one of the bag ladies with three coats. But Irv didn’t hear.

  ‘Irv,’ the women in the front line of the chorus started to say under their breath. Then they got louder. ‘Irv! Irv!’

  They were tugging at his jacket, trying to get his attention.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They can’t hear you.’

  ‘They can’t hear me?’

  ‘Use the microphone.’

  So he walked over to the microphone and started talking.

  ‘This next song is dear to the hearts of the Jewish people.’

  The mike blinked out immediately but Irv couldn’t tell. He was too deaf and kept on talking.

  ‘Irv,’ the women in the first row of the chorus started again. ‘Irv, Irv, they can’t hear you. It’s not working.’

  ‘I thought it was working.’

  ‘Let’s just sing, Irv.’

  He raised his hands and they started to sing ‘Alle Menschen Sienen Brider’ and Irv had an expression of euphoria on his face.

  Peter looked around the room. With the exception of the bag lady who yelled, ‘Go, Irv,’ no one cared one way or the other about the Jewish Folk Chorus. The best you could say was that some of them didn’t mind. Except for the old people at the separate table. They were happy. They couldn’t sing along because they didn’t know the language but they realized that someone was going out of their way for them and Irv was in such rapture that some of the old people felt his pleasure vicariously. It made them remember something about their own songs which seemed very important right then.

  Peter stood there this whole time, rain dripping from his raincoat. Everyone else’s clothes were soaked through, but his were dry.

  How can you relieve suffering for even one moment? he thought. Here we are, the homeless, the old, the artists. The sadness is so overwhelming I can’t imagine what to do. Nothing in my life has prepared me for this.

  31

  PETER

  By five o’clock Kate still hadn’t come home, so he called her studio and got the recording. He sat at his desk working on the lighting plot until eleven and then called the studio again. Still a recording. So he decided to go over to the studio.

  It was really pouring and Peter wore his boots and raincoat and carried an umbrella. He liked to be well protected from the weather. He didn’t like to get wet and it was easy to stay dry if you just took the time to put on all the necessary accessories. In New Hampshire, when it snowed, the ground reflected the moonlight and everything was clearly illuminated, even without stars. Sometimes in the day it was so bright, it hurt your eyes. But Peter could start at the top of the hill and roll down the whole way without getting hurt because the snow was so deep and soft and people knew how to dress warmly up there.

  ‘Hey man, could you help me out?’

  Peter turned an
d saw a tall wiry black man wearing a ski hat pulled so low over his forehead it covered his eyebrows. The man looked him straight in the eye.

  ‘Sure,’ he said reaching into his pockets and handing the man fifty cents.

  ‘Thanks. Now I need help with this.’

  He held up his hand. It was so huge and scarred and dry that it had cracked open many times over a few years. There was a kind of green tinge that had overtaken much of it, except for a section obscured by a dirty bandage and tape. It looked a little bit like one of those monster hands kids buy at Woolworth’s for Halloween. The man was very upset. He was almost crying.

  ‘I went to Bellevue,’ he said, ‘and they wrapped it up. But then they gone and give me this.’

  He pulled out a wrinkled prescription from his back pocket. His pants were so thin Peter could see every muscle twitch underneath them.

  ‘They tell me to fill it, but they don’t tell me how. Now it’s late and everything is closed and I still didn’t get my medicine.’

  ‘Let me see.’

  Peter looked at the piece of paper. It looked legitimate. The guy seemed to be actually hurt. The whole thing was on the level.

  ‘Okay,’ Peter said. ‘Let’s find a pharmacy. I’ll show you how to fill a prescription and then the next time you need something you’ll know how to do it on your own.’

  They walked along at a fast pace. The guy was Peter’s age.

  That’s too old to be out on the street, he thought.

  ‘I don’t want to lose my hand,’ the guy said.

  ‘Is that what they told you at Bellevue?’

  ‘No, but I just got that feeling.’

  It’s really important that two men from different circumstances can communicate like this, Peter thought. Then he wondered if the guy was just laying it on thick, trying to get some money out of him.

  ‘Well, don’t worry,’ Peter said. ‘There’s a pharmacy right up the block.’

  But when they got there it was closed.

  ‘There’s another one about three blocks away. Can you make it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  They almost ran to that one, both of them sweating in the damp, wet night. They raced right up to the front door before accepting that it was locked.

  ‘Let me ask that cop,’ Peter said, wondering exactly what he had gotten himself into.

  ‘No, no cops,’ the man said, grabbing the paper out of Peter’s hand.

  ‘Okay,’ Peter said. His head was swimming. He felt trapped, like an outlaw. What should he do? Should he call a cab to take them to an all-night pharmacy? Should he just give the guy ten bucks? It was getting very late. Was this all a scam to get ten bucks out of him? Then he looked up and saw Molly walking down the street. She wasn’t wearing a raincoat. She didn’t have on boots or a rain hat or an umbrella. She wore her jacket collar up and hunched her shoulders against the rain.

  ‘Molly.’

  She looked up, acknowledged him, but definitely kept on walking.

  ‘Molly, help me, will you?’

  She stopped then and stepped in under his umbrella so that they were very close. The guy was standing under the awning of a deli, looking both ways at all times.

  ‘What’s the matter, Peter?’

  ‘This guy stopped me. He needs to get a prescription filled but all the pharmacies are closed and I’m not sure of what to do. Do you know of an open pharmacy?’

  She looked at the prescription.

  ‘Tylenol Three. That’s a painkiller. It has codeine.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said.

  Then she walked over to the guy standing under the awning.

  ‘Do you need a painkiller?’

  ‘Yes I do.’

  ‘How much does it hurt?’

  ‘It hurts. It aches. It’s sore. I need to stop the pain.’

  ‘Then what are you going to do?’ she asked him, not sympathetically, but with a challenge in her voice, like she expected to hear the correct answer to that question.

  She’s so aggressive, Peter thought. You’d think she’d have a little more heart for a guy in trouble. It’s probably because he’s a man.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Look, we’ll get you something now, but you have to go back in the hospital tomorrow morning and tell them to look at it again. Do you have Medicaid?’

  ‘I don’t have a card.’

  ‘Wait here.’

  She walked into the deli, avoiding Peter, not discussing any of it with him. Then she came out with a bottle of Tylenol, a pack of Marlboros and two quarts of Budweiser.

  ‘Take six of these and drink these and you’ll numb out for a while.’

  The guy took everything and split. He ran away. He didn’t want to be around them anymore.

  Peter and Molly looked at each other. They had to.

  ‘How are you?’ Peter said.

  ‘I’ve been really busy,’ Molly said. ‘I’ve been doing a lot of organizing work.’

  ‘Oh really?’ Peter said. ‘Are you a secretary?’

  He saw her mouth open like she was going to say a specific thing, but then she decided to say something else instead.

  ‘You can only do so much for people you don’t love,’ she said. ‘There are a lot of deprived people in this city. You have to know where they stop and you begin.’

  ‘But maybe I should have taken him to Bellevue in a cab,’ Peter said, looking down the empty street. ‘Or I could have tried a few more places. There must be an all-night drugstore somewhere in Manhattan.’

  He watched the droplets of rain drip off her nose and down her neck. She didn’t even try to step out of it.

  ‘Well, you could have done that, but at some point you would have to say stop. You weren’t going to take him home with you and give him a pair of your pajamas, were you?’

  ‘I was just trying to help someone,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you’re a very nice person.’

  The rain was noisy. It smelled good. The next day would be fresh. There would be buds on the trees on Saint Mark’s Place.

  ‘My personal life is falling apart,’ Peter said. ‘I’m balding.’

  ‘Well, you could get a little tattoo, like a shooting star on your temple. It would fill in your hairline. Besides, people would be so busy looking at your tattoo they would forget that you were losing your hair.’

  He didn’t want her to leave.

  ‘When I first saw you I couldn’t understand why Kate would be attracted, but now that I’ve watched you moving around, I can see why she’s interested.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Molly said.

  ‘I know you think I’m a macho hetero,’ he said, feeling sort of masculine at that moment. ‘But I have a real problem with your separatism.’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Your separatism. You see, I think people are all the same. But you want to run around in gay-this and gay-that. You know, Molly, men are people too. People have rights even if they’re not gay.’

  ‘You can’t take anything that isn’t about you, can you?’

  ‘What?’ he said. He hadn’t heard her properly.

  ‘I understand what you’re saying,’ Molly answered, changing her body language, like she had got very tired all of a sudden. ‘I don’t agree, but I know exactly where you’re coming from and I understand precisely what you mean.’

  Peter was so happy right then that he grabbed both of her shoulders and kissed her on the mouth, pulling her body toward him. She barely stood there after that, didn’t even give him a full look, just turned and walked away too slowly, not noticing the rain at all. Not looking back.

  Peter was elated. He had made friends with his wife’s affair. Who could be more flexible and easygoing than that? He knew this would make Kate proud of him.

  Peter went directly to her studio. It was long after midnight. He stopped across the street and bought a bouquet of flowers from an all-night fruit stand. Tulips. Tulips in the middle of March. Were they in seaso
n? That was New York. You could buy a kiwi fruit at two in the morning any day of the year without going more than three blocks. He picked out deep purples and reds with black lines running through the petals. They were almost opened. He could picture Kate, white and fruity against the dark purple as she pressed the flowers to her face.

  ‘They look so much better when you hold them,’ he would say. Then he took out his copy of her keys and climbed the stairs.

  ‘What are you doing, Katie? It’s late.’

  She was sitting on the floor with long gray sheets of plastic in her lap. She was painting on them from a little glass jar.

  He came closer, but not too close, and knelt down reaching toward her with the top of his body only.

  ‘What are you painting on?’

  ‘Two kinds of X rays,’ she said, never looking up once. ‘These in my hand are plain films. For a tumor to be seen on plain film it must be big enough and it must be more dense than the surrounding normal tissue.’

  ‘And those?’

  ‘Those are contrast films. That’s when they inject dye into you. The contrast film relates to the paint differently than the plain film. It practically rejects it.’

  She looked up then. She stood, leaving Peter crouching underneath her. Then he stood up as well.

  ‘Aren’t you tired, Katie? Don’t you want to sleep some?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘This is the last piece. When I put this in, People in Trouble will be almost finished. I’ll just have to mount it on the wooden boards and polyurethane the sections and it will be ready for installation.’

  Then they held each other very tightly. But a close embrace is never the last moment between two people. The last moment is the release and so much more emotion shows then.