Duane's Depressed

by Larry McMurtry

  “If only Karla hadn’t smacked into that milk truck,” Bobby Lee said. “It’s times like this when I need a shoulder to cry on.”

  “I doubt she’d lend you a shoulder to cry on if she knew you’d started proposing to girls you meet in filling stations,” Duane said. “She might take the view that you’ve always ignored her advice anyway.”

  “Ruth’s right,” Bobby said.

  “Right about what?” Duane asked.

  “About you getting cynical,” Bobby said. “Ruth thinks it’s all because of that psychiatrist you want to sleep with, only she’s gay.”

  “That first plan of yours sounds better to me all the time,” Duane said.

  “Which plan?”

  “The one where you drive off a cliff,” Duane said.

  19

  ON THE WAY TO HIS APPOINTMENT WITH HONOR CARMICHAEL, Duane got butterflies in his stomach. He felt the same almost sick anticipation he had begun to feel after his first session or two. He knew that his time with the doctor would be too brief—it would be like the mother’s kiss, in the first volume of Proust, a pleasure so brief that one would begin to dread its absence even before it happened. But the sight of her house, once he turned into the street, with its nice lawn and nice flowers, soothed him a little. It was a house that bespoke peace of mind. He tried to get a little better control of his feelings. He needed to calm down and let the doctor do her work.

  Honor was wearing a dark blue blouse and a necklace of rough amber. She had cut her hair—her new hairdo was sporty, made her seem younger.

  She smiled at him and shook his hand when he came in, hesitating a moment as she considered the couch versus the chair.

  “Hmm,” she said. “As I remember you had just graduated to the couch when your wife had the accident. Do you want to go right back on the couch, or would you prefer to sit in the chair and sort of ease back into this?”

  “Let’s ease back into it, if you don’t mind,” Duane said.

  In fact he just wanted to look at her, which he would not get to do if he lay on the couch.

  “How’s the garden?” she asked.

  “Well, it’s been drier this year,” he said. “It’s done okay.”

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “I guess I’m getting a little tired of that garden,” he admitted. “People have made it into something it wasn’t intended to be.

  “Seems like I spend half my time growing it and the rest of the time explaining it,” he added. “I never meant it to be such a big deal. It was just a garden for the neighbors—particularly the ones who are needy.”

  Honor Carmichael folded her long fingers, put her chin on them, and looked at him.

  “Noble efforts always produce complications,” she said. “I guess it’s more or less true that no good deeds go unpunished. Humans are just so pesky. They don’t want to let a good thing alone, to be what it is. I’m not surprised that you find that annoying.”

  “I may not do it next year,” he said. “The people I did it for are scared to come there, because of all the publicity.”

  Duane shrugged.

  “I felt good about it last year,” he said. “I don’t feel so good about it this year.”

  “I meant to come back, but my friend’s a pill,” she said. “You’d think we crossed the Sahara, to hear her describe that trip.”

  Duane didn’t say anything. The doctor unfolded her fingers and put her hands in her lap.

  “I was a little surprised that you made this appointment,” she said, looking up suddenly and meeting his eye. “I didn’t expect to see you here again.”

  She paused, considering her words.

  “I thought you’d back off,” she said.

  Duane was startled. Back off from what? His therapy?

  “No, I always meant to come back,” he said. “I thought you were helping me. But then Karla got killed. You told me to read that book. You said it would take a year, and it did.”

  “I’m glad you kept on with it,” Honor said. “It’s a great book but I know it’s not everybody’s cup of tea. When did you finish it?”

  “A few days ago,” he said. “I don’t think I got much out of it.”

  “You need to let it soak in,” she said. “You may find that it’s left something with you, even if you can’t quite put your finger on what it is.”

  She looked directly at him, frowning a little, as if in perplexity. Duane had no idea what to do or say, but he was glad he had come.

  “I’ve had a thought that’s rather unprofessional,” she said. “You’re my patient and I should leave it at that. But you’re not the average patient, so I’m tempted.”

  Though she had just said what he had hoped to hear, Duane was a little shocked. Tempted to what?

  “I belong to a little reading group,” the doctor said. “There are six or seven of us. Proust is who we’ve been reading. We’ve been working through him for the past six months. I’m tempted to ask you to join the group—it’s informal. We’re meeting here tomorrow night. I’ll make a salad or something. It might help the soaking-in process if you came to a meeting or two.”

  “Will your friend Angie be here?” he asked.

  The doctor looked startled, as if the thought were too odd to contemplate. Then she laughed.

  “Oh lord no, Angie’s in Oyster Bay,” she said. “Angie can’t tolerate literature. Having to listen to people talk about Proust would infuriate her—it would be worse than a trip to Thalia.”

  She giggled.

  “We only meet at my house when she’s safely out of the way,” she said.

  Then she seemed to become slightly apprehensive.

  “Of course, that’s just an invitation—it’s not a command,” she said. “You may not want to come, or you may feel it’s not wise. After all, you’re the patient. It’s only because you’ve just finished your reading that I thought you might want to come.”

  There was a pause.

  “If you prefer you can remain a pure patient,” she said. “Proust will soak in, if you give him time. You might want to read it again, after a while. The second time around you notice a lot of things you miss the first time.”

  Duane could not imagine reading the book again, but he didn’t say so.

  “Do I have to talk, if I come to the meeting?” he asked. “I’ve never studied French. I wouldn’t even know how to pronounce the names.”

  “No, you don’t have to talk, you can be a silent observer,” the doctor said. “I suspect that’s what you are in real life anyway—a silent observer.”

  “I was until I grew this public garden,” Duane said. “Now I have to talk all the time, explaining it to anyone who stops by.”

  Dr. Carmichael pushed back her chair and stood up. Duane was startled—surely the hour wasn’t up. He had only been there thirty minutes.

  “I know—I’m rushing you off,” she said. “I’m not going to charge you for this session, because it really wasn’t a session. We’ve just been catching up. If you do decide that you want to go on with your therapy, then from now on I want you on the couch. Do you understand why?”

  “No,” Duane said. “I don’t mind, though, if that’s what you prefer.”

  “It is,” she said crisply. “I want you to talk to me, not look at me. And I want to listen to you, not look at you.”

  There was a moment of silence. Dr. Carmichael was gazing out the window.

  “I’m going to put in a greenhouse,” she said. “I want to grow orchids. Do you know anything about orchids?”

  He remembered that he had bought Jacy an orchid corsage when he had taken her to the senior prom. It had been the flower all the girls wanted. Though he had gulped at the expense, he had bought her the orchid.

  “I don’t know a thing about them,” he said.

  “They’re beautiful but rather sinister, like some of the people in Proust—or like Angie, for that matter,” she said.

  Then she sighed and rubbed a pencil agains
t her upper lip.

  “The reading group meets at seven,” she said. “Do you think you might like to come, at least this once?”

  “I would like to,” Duane said. “Do I have to dress up?”

  Honor shook her head, as if the very notion of people dressing up irritated her.

  “Any peppers in your garden?” she asked. “I don’t mean bell peppers. I mean the hot kind.”

  “Oh sure—I have plenty of peppers,” Duane said.

  “Bring me a few,” she said. “I’ve changed my mind about the salad. I think I’ll just make salsa. Come about ten till seven. I’ll start the salsa and then just chop in the peppers.”

  “I’ll be here,” Duane said.

  20

  THE NEXT EVENING Duane showed up right on time at Honor Carmichael’s door. It was ten minutes until seven. He carried a small bag of peppers, and felt extremely silly. Though he had biked over, he wore no biking clothes, except his helmet. He felt like a fool for agreeing to come to the reading group anyway. He knew he was going to look out of place, feel out of place—indeed, be out of place—and he didn’t want to add to his embarrassment by showing up in biking garb.

  When he knocked a skinny girl in shorts with very short hair and a wide mouth let him in.

  “Hi, I’m Nina, I guess you’re Duane,” she said. “I’m glad you’re prompt—Honor needs those peppers.”

  He followed the girl down the hall to a pleasant kitchen. The kitchen opened onto a tiled patio. Honor was chopping scallions. She too was in shorts, and wore a sleeveless blouse that left her shoulders bare.

  “Good man, you’re on time,” she said, taking the sack from him.

  She shook the peppers into her hand, sniffed them, and immediately sneezed. A moment later her eyes watered.

  “Wow!” she said. “I wanted them hot but I didn’t know they’d be that hot.”

  “It’s just that one—that little haberno,” Duane said. “You have to watch that one. It’ll scorch you.”

  Before he had time to say more the rest of the reading group poured in. There was a prominent doctor named Jake Lawton, whom Duane had bumped into quite a few times over the years, at one civic event or another. His wife, Jacqueline, was a tiny woman wearing lots of makeup and an expensive-looking silk dress. Though Duane had met Jacqueline Lawton many times over the years he had never exchanged two words with her. Perhaps she was French. At least her name sounded French.

  The only other guests were a young couple named the Orensteins—they looked more like siblings than husband and wife. Reuben Orenstein wore a bow tie with dots on it, set off by seersucker pants. His wife, Joanie, wore seersucker shorts and a T-shirt that said Brandeis on it.

  “Hi, I’m Joanie Orenstein, I went to Brandeis, as I guess you can tell,” she said, shaking Duane’s hand.

  Her husband shook hands too.

  “I didn’t go to Brandeis but I might as well have because I have to hear about it every day,” he said.

  “Hello—are you doctors too?” Duane asked.

  “Reuben is,” Joanie said. “He’s a neuro-ophthalmologist. We live in Oklahoma City.”

  “Yep, they’re young and eager,” Honor said. “They drive four hours a month just to hear a little talk about Proust.”

  “No, just to hear a little talk about books!” Reuben insisted. “It isn’t always going to be Proust—in fact the sooner we get through with the long-winded little fag, the happier I’ll be. I’m waiting for Canetti. Now, there’s a writer worth driving from Oklahoma City to talk about.”

  “Who’s that, Reuben?” Dr. Lawton said. He winked at Duane and gave him a firm handshake. When Jake Lawton had been younger he had done a little team roping at local rodeos. He owned a small ranch and let it be used frequently for charity barbecues. He was a surgeon—the surgeon, in fact, who had relieved Bobby Lee of his cancerous ball.

  “I think he won a Nobel Prize, that’s about all I know about Mr. Canetti,” Honor said. “I don’t think I ought to put this little scorcher in my salsa, Duane. My nose is still stinging and all I did was sniff it.”

  “How’d you rope Duane into coming to this soiree?” Jake Lawton asked. “I’m used to seeing Duane at rodeos and auctions, not Proustathons.”

  “Nonetheless, he’s read the book,” Honor said, “and he also furnished the peppers for the salsa.”

  “It’s good he came, we need new blood,” Nina said. “Did you read it in French, or English?”

  “English,” Duane said.

  Honor still had to fling tears out of her eyes, from her incautious sniffing of the peppers, but the salsa she made was excellent. Duane noticed that Jacqueline Lawton had put away three gin and tonics before they even sat down on the patio.

  “Elias Canetti is a Bulgarian who wrote in German,” Reuben Orenstein informed the company. “His masterpieces are Crowds and Power and Auto-da-Fé, which is a novel. I move we read it next.”

  “Oh shut up, Reuben, you can’t move anything,” Nina said sharply. “Tell him to shut up, Joanie. This is not a business meeting, he’s not a director of anything.”

  “Shut up, Rube,” Joanie said dutifully. There was no heat in her voice, but there had been some heat in Nina’s.

  “Okay, but I’m not driving a four-hour round trip to talk about another faggy Frog,” Reuben said.

  Duane had not brought his book, but he noticed both the Lawtons and the Orensteins had the same silver-and-black paperbacks as he had. Honor and Nina, though, had skinny little paperbacks with tattered covers. Their paperbacks were in French.

  Honor caught him looking at her book. She smiled.

  “Nina and I are still trying to keep up our miserable French,” she said.

  “Speak for yourself, Honor,” Nina said immediately, with a touch of annoyance. “My French isn’t miserable. My French is excellent.”

  Honor ignored the annoyance. She was drinking gin and tonic, though more slowly than Jacqueline Lawton.

  “Anyway, those fat little English books are too heavy,” she said. “My hand gets tired.”

  “Jake tears his in two,” Jacqueline revealed. It was the only time she spoke, during the entire evening.

  Everyone looked at Jake Lawton’s paperback, which was not torn in two. He looked mildly annoyed, at having been exposed as a book tearer.

  “Well, they are heavy,” he said. “I keep a half of one in the pickup, in case I want to dip in when I’m out at the ranch, relaxing.”

  “We’ve been looking at a ranchette,” Joanie Orenstein said. “Rube works so hard. I think it would be good for him to get out in the country once in a while.

  “Maybe we could fish,” she added, without much conviction.

  “Let’s get started,” Reuben said. “This is excellent salsa, Honor. You can’t get salsa this good in Oklahoma City and Joanie can’t make salsa this good.”

  “Rube, I’m just learning,” Joanie said. “Give me a break.”

  “I hate the Guermantes,” Reuben said. “If the man was going to be obsessed with aristocrats all his life you’d think he’d have found some better ones—or made up some better ones, or something.

  “They’re coarse,” he added. “They’re just like the oil millionaires, and yet they’re from families that have been around for thousands of years.”

  “Hundreds,” Nina corrected. “Even France isn’t that old. Nobody’s been there for thousands of years.”

  “Oh shut up, Nina—you know what I mean,” Reuben said.

  Nina whirled on the little man with the dots on his bow tie.

  “Don’t tell me to shut up, you pipsqueak!” she said. “Is it wrong to ask for a little precision? Isn’t that what Proust is all about, precision? Nobody’s been there for thousands of years.”

  “Calm down,” Honor said. “Reuben’s got a point, even if he exaggerated. The Guermantes are pretty awful.”

  “Oh, they weren’t that bad,” Jake Lawton said. “At least they know what they want, which is more than you ca
n say for a lot of these characters. Swann’s the one that bored me. He could barely figure out if he wanted to kiss a girl.”

  “So? Maybe he’s gender challenged,” Nina said. “He doesn’t just run off and fuck every woman in sight.”

  “Well, the prostitutes . . .,” Joanie said vaguely. She didn’t finish the sentence.

  “Can’t you even finish a sentence?” her husband said at once. He looked around the company in mock despair.

  “She never finishes her sentences,” he said. “She talks in phrases. Sometimes clauses. But never sentences. You’d think Brandeis would have at least taught her to finish her sentences.”

  “I do finish them, if you don’t make me defensive,” Joanie said, flushing. “That was a complete sentence, wasn’t it, Rube? Wasn’t it?”

  “If nobody’s going to say a kind word for the Guermantes, I will,” Honor said. “They’re blunt, which is more than you can say for anybody else in Proust. They’re not as hypocritical as the rest.”

  “No, but that’s the point,” Reuben said. “They’re aristocrats—they’re secure. They don’t have to bother to be hypocritical.”

  “Swann is the modern man,” Nina said, ignoring the fact that everybody else was talking about the Guermantes. “Swann is ambivalence, doubt, paranoia. He’s the reason the book seems so modern. He embodies the dilemma of the sensitive man in a crass age.”

  “Still bores me shitless,” Jake Lawton said, getting up to refresh his wife’s drink. Jacqueline Lawton sat on the edge of a footstool, swaying slightly. The late sunlight shone on her silk dress, creating an effect of iridescence. She was too drunk to speak, or even to sit up straight, but her husband kept refilling her drink. Jake Lawton had once taken Duane into his house, during a lawn party for some charity. He was a hunter—he had killed everything from Kodiak bears to lions. The house was like a natural history museum, filled with mounted heads and whole stuffed animals. A stuffed wolverine glared down at you when you entered the main trophy room.

  “I think the fact that the Guermantes didn’t quite exhibit the graces we like to think of aristocrats as having was an interesting element in the book,” Honor said. “You rather feel that Proust was disappointed in them too. I think he had expected them to have these graces but when he looked closely at them he had to admit they didn’t. He didn’t want to admit that great aristocrats were as selfish as anybody else, but then he did admit it.”