Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel

by Peter Cameron

  I felt we were getting off the track, which often happens with my grandmother, so I said, “But did you think your four years at Radcliffe were valuable?”

  “Well, if I hadn’t gone to Radcliffe I wouldn’t have met your grandfather, and that would have been a shame. And I wouldn’t have gone into show business because you see my parents forbad me to perform in public until I got a master’s degree, thinking I was too stupid or too lazy to get a master’s degree. So yes, I suppose going to college was a good thing for me.”

  “I didn’t know you had a master’s degree.”

  “Oh yes,” my grandmother said.

  “What’s it in?”

  “Oh, I forget,” she said. “Something harmless like sociology. Or maybe anthropology.”

  “Did you make good friends there?”

  “Goodness, no. Only serious girls went to Radcliffe back then. Serious, booky girls with glasses and woolen stockings. A very unappealing bunch. I always wished I’d gone to Sweet Briar College like my sister Geraldine. The girls there were gay and lovely and never seemed to look at a book. They could keep their horses in the dormitory. But, James, this is all so long ago. Colleges are very different now. You should ask Gillian about this, not me.”

  My grandmother took two cups and two saucers out of the cabinet and put them on the kitchen table and then got the milk out of the refrigerator and poured it into a creamer and then unplugged the coffeepot and poured coffee into each cup. She returned the coffeepot to the counter and plugged it back in and then opened a drawer and found two small linen napkins, which she brought over to the table. She asked me if I wanted a cookie and I said no and then she sat down.

  She put milk in her coffee and stirred it and pushed the creamer and sugar toward me and then said, “What’s this all about? Are you thinking of not going to college, James?”

  “Yes,” I said. “How did you know?”

  “Perhaps I am clairvoyant after all,” she said.

  “Well, do you think I should go to college?”

  “I suppose I’d have to know what you would do if you didn’t, but I hardly see why what I thought would be of any interest to you.”

  “Well, I am interested. I wouldn’t ask you if I weren’t.”

  “Why don’t you want to go to college?”

  She was the third person who had asked me that question in as many days, and I felt I was getting worse instead of better at answering it. My grandmother waited patiently for my answer. She pretended there were crumbs on the table that needed brushing off.

  After a moment I said, “It’s hard for me to explain why I don’t want to go. All I can say is there’s nothing about going that appeals to me. I don’t want to be in that kind of social environment, I’ve been with people my own age all my life and I don’t really like them or seem to have much in common with them, and I feel that anything I want to know I can learn from reading books—basically that’s what you do in college anyway—and I feel I can do that on my own and not waste all that money on something I don’t think I need or want. I think I could do other things with the money that would be better for me than going to college.”

  “Such as?” my grandmother asked.

  I didn’t answer because it was suddenly clear to me, for a second or two, that part of this not wanting to go to college was simply a desire not to move forward, for I loved where I was at the moment, and felt that so surely and keenly: sitting there, in my grandmother’s kitchen, drinking her freshly percolated coffee from coffee cups and not from cardboard cups with sippy lids, sitting in her perfectly ordered kitchen with the back door open so a bit of a breeze moved through the house, and the electric clock above the sink humming quietly all night and all day, and the linoleum floor worn down from so many years of washing and scrubbing it was as smooth as leather, and my grandmother sitting across from me in her dress she had probably bought forty years ago and worn a thousand times since then, listening to me, seeming to accept me in a way that no one else did, and the safe summer Saturday occurring outside, all around us, the world not yet totally violated by stupidity and intolerance and hate.

  “What is it you’d like to do?” my grandmother asked.

  “I’d like to buy a house,” I said. “A nice house, in some small town in the Midwest, a house like this house, an old house, with things like this—” and I reached out and touched the small metal door that opened into a sort of safe built into the wall that had a matching door outside, where the milkman (when there were still milkmen) would deposit glass bottles of milk or cream and take away the empty bottles, so early in the morning the fresh milk would be there, waiting in the walls of your house.

  “And what would you do in this house?”

  “I would read. I would read a lot, all the books I’ve wanted to read but haven’t been able to because of school, and find some job, like working in a library or as a night watchman or something like that, and I’d learn a craft, like bookbinding or weaving or carpentry, and make things, nice things, and take care of the house and the garden and the yard.” I found the idea of being a librarian very appealing—working in a place where people had to whisper and only speak when necessary. If only the world were like that!

  “But wouldn’t you be lonely? Moving so far away? Living amongst strangers?”

  “I don’t mind being lonely,” I said. “I am lonely now, here, living in New York. It makes it worse in New York because you see people interacting everywhere you go, all the time. Constantly.”

  “Just because people interact doesn’t mean they aren’t lonely.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “If I were you, I’d take the money and travel. Go to Mexico. Go to Europe. Go to Timbuktu.”

  “I don’t believe in traveling. I don’t think it’s natural. I think it’s too easy to travel now. I don’t want to go anywhere I can’t walk to.”

  “So you’re going to walk to Kansas?”

  “I would like to. I think the only way to really know where you are is to walk there. Or at least stay on the ground—drive or take a train. But I think walking is the best. It gives you a true sense of distance.”

  “I don’t understand you, James. You’re so intent on making your life impossible. It doesn’t bode well. Life is difficult enough, you know.”

  “I know,” I said. “But I’m not … just because I don’t want to go to college, or don’t want to go to Mexico, doesn’t mean I’m making my life impossible.”

  “Well, you certainly aren’t making it easy.” My grandmother stood and took her empty cup of coffee to the sink. She rinsed the cup and saucer under the faucet and then dried them with the dish towel that hung from the refrigerator’s upraised arm. Then she put them carefully back in the cupboard, in the spaces allotted them. “Would you like more coffee?” she asked.

  “No, thank you,” I said.

  She unplugged the percolator and poured the hot coffee down the sink. Then she rinsed the sink and scoured it with a sponge and Comet.

  “Do you really think I’m making my life impossible?” I asked her. “Do you think I should forget all this and just go to college?”

  She put the sponge down and wiped her damp hands with the dish towel. She turned to me and looked at me for a moment. It was a hard look. I felt I had failed her, or disappointed her, in some way. Or that I had broken a rule of decorum I did not know existed.

  My grandmother hung the towel back up and said, “Let’s forget about the future for the nonce—it’s so dispiriting. It’s almost lunchtime, let’s think about that. How do you feel about egg salad?”

  I’ve always liked my grandmother’s egg salad. She adds chopped-up bread-and-butter pickles. Everyone else seems to think it’s disgusting, but we both like it.

  “I feel good about egg salad,” I said.

  “Good,” said my grandmother. “So do I.”

  7

  May 2003

  DR. ADLER’S DOWNTOWN OFFICE WAS A PLEASANTER PLACE than her space at the Med
ical Center, but it wasn’t the sun-filled haven I had imagined. It was a rather small dark office in a suite of what I assumed were several small dark offices on the ground floor of an old apartment building on Tenth Street. In addition to her desk and chair there was a divan, another chair, a ficus tree, and some folkloric-looking weavings on the wall. And a bookcase of dreary books. I could tell they were all nonfiction because they all had titles divided by colons: Blah Blah Blah: The Blah Blah Blah of Blah Blah Blah. There was one window that probably faced an airshaft because the rattan shade was lowered in a way that suggested it was never raised. The walls were painted a pale yellow, in an obvious (but unsuccessful) attempt to “brighten up” the room.

  Dr. Adler sat in her chair and indicated the other chair to me, which was a relief because I wasn’t about to lie on the couch. I’ve seen too many Woody Allen movies and New Yorker cartoons to do that.

  She looked different this time: less harum-scarum, more elegant, almost soignée. She had her hair up and was wearing a sleeveless summer dress that revealed her rather muscular arms. She must play tennis, I thought. Or shot-put.

  She crossed her legs and then joined her hands in her lap with her two forefingers raised together in a steeple. She smiled at me. “So,” she said. “Here we are again.”

  I was going to correct her because we were not here again, we were meeting again, but as our first meeting had been in a different place, we could hardly be here again. But I knew if I said that we would start to spar with each other as we had at the previous session, and I wasn’t in the mood for that. So I asked, “Why don’t you have any novels?”

  “What?” she asked.

  I nodded at the bookcase, which was behind her. “I notice you don’t have any fiction in your bookcase. I just wondered why.”

  She turned around and studied the books as if I might have been lying. Then she turned back to me. “Why do you ask?” she said.

  “Do you have to ask me that? Can’t you just answer the question?”

  “This is my office,” she said. “It’s the place where I work. I keep the books associated with my work here.”

  “And novels aren’t associated with your work?”

  “You are free to conclude that.”

  I didn’t say anything. I suddenly felt sad. I knew I was being belligerent, but I couldn’t stop.

  After a moment she said, “Actually, you’re wrong. I do have fiction here.” She swiveled around and bent to retrieve a volume from the bottom shelf, and then she swiveled back and showed it to me: it was an old Scribner’s paperback edition of The Age of Innocence. “I keep this here to read,” she said. “In case a patient doesn’t show up, or is late.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I felt somehow ashamed, and I still felt sad and hopeless.

  Dr. Adler put the book down on the floor beside her chair, as if she wanted to keep it visible, almost include it in our session. Then she folded her hands in her lap and looked at me.

  “Have you read Trollope?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Although I suppose I might have read something of his in college.”

  “What about Proust?”

  “No, I have not read Proust. Is that a problem for you?”

  “No,” I said. “I just wondered. I haven’t read Proust either. Someone told me not to read Proust until I had already fallen into and out of love.” (Actually this was John Webster. I was planning on reading Remembrance of Things Past, or In Search of Lost Time, or À la recherche du temps perdu all summer, but the first day I brought Swann’s Way into the gallery he took it away from me and said it was a crime to read Proust at my age. He made me promise I wouldn’t read it until I had both found and lost love. I have to admit I was sort of relieved because I had found it hard going, but I had only read about thirty pages.)

  “I see,” she said.

  I hate when people say “I see.” It doesn’t mean anything and I think it’s hostile. Whenever anyone tells me “I see” I think they’re really saying “Fuck you.” I was going to ask her what she saw, but I realized that wouldn’t get us anywhere, so I said nothing.

  After a moment of silence she said, “How are you feeling today?”

  I realized that being in a shrink’s office and having the shrink ask me how I felt made me sad, so I said, “I feel sad.” For some reason, I closed my eyes.

  “Do you?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  After a moment she asked, “Do you know why you feel sad?”

  I opened my eyes. Although it had only been a few seconds, I felt as if I had been away a long time, although everything was the same. Dr. Adler watched me patiently, in the way a psychiatrist would watch a patient, her face perfectly devoid of any expression except for a slight smear of concern. After a moment she said, “How long have you felt this way?”

  I know she meant generally but I couldn’t say “forever.” I couldn’t say how many days or months or years. It wasn’t like I woke up one morning and had a fever.

  “For quite some time,” I said.

  “Days?” she asked. “Weeks? Months?” She paused. “Years?”

  “Years,” I said.

  “I happen to know your parents are divorced. Do you think your sadness is connected to that?”

  “Well, it certainly didn’t help.”

  “So you were sad before then?”

  “Yes,” I said, “and I wish you would tell me what else you know about me. I assume you talked to my father.”

  “I did. Actually I spoke with both your parents. But only briefly.”

  “What did they tell you?”

  “They told me they were worried because you didn’t seem very happy. They told me you’re antisocial and seem lonely. They also mentioned the incident with the National Classroom last month.”

  “It was The American Classroom,” I said.

  She made a what’s-the-difference face.

  “What did they say about that?”

  “They said you had some problems dealing with a group dynamic and had an experience of panic.”

  “An experience of panic—is that what they called it?”

  “Those are probably my words. Would you express it differently?”

  “No,” I said, “that just about sums it up.”

  “Is there anything you would add?”

  “You mean are there other things wrong with me?”

  “Did you think that was a list of things wrong with you?”

  “You really can’t stop it, can you?”

  “Stop what?”

  “Answering questions with questions. You sound exactly like a therapist.”

  “I am a therapist, James. A psychiatrist, in fact. A doctor. I’m not here to chat with you in ways you deem are appropriate. I think you know that.”

  I said nothing, in a way I hoped didn’t seem sulky.

  “Do you know that?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I know that. It’s just that …”

  “What?”

  “When you do that, respond to me in that way, it seems so stupid to me. It’s so predictable. I mean, I could do it. I know exactly what you’re going to say. I could stay at home and have our conversation.”

  “Then why are you here? Why are you wasting your time? My time?”

  “I don’t know. I guess because my parents wanted me to come. This is their way of trying to help me, and I wanted to let them think that.”

  “Think what?”

  “That they were helping me.”

  “So you don’t think that this will help you?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I know. But you implied it. At least I think you did. That’s why I’m asking you.”

  I looked around her office. I know it sounds terrible, but I was discouraged by the ordinariness, the expectedness, of it. It was as if there was a catalog for therapists to order a complete office from: furniture, carpet, wall hangings, even the ficus tree seemed depressin
gly generic. Like one of those little paper pellets you put in water that puffs up and turns into a lotus blossom. This was like a puffed-up shrink’s office.

  “How should I know if this will help me? It’s like asking someone who’s swimming the English Channel if they will get across. There’s no way they can know.”

  “Yes, but they can believe they can swim across. Otherwise why would they set out? You wouldn’t begin to swim across the Channel if you were sure you couldn’t make it.”

  “You might,” I said.

  “Would you? Why?”

  “I can’t believe we’re talking about people swimming across the English Channel.”

  “It was an analogy that you made.”

  “I know. I just don’t think it deserves this kind of scrutiny.”

  She sort of squinted for a moment, and then said, “Why do you think you used that analogy?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well, think about it,” she said. “Why the English Channel?”

  “Because I see not feeling sad as a sort of Herculean task.”

  “Yes, but any number of tasks might be considered Herculean. In fact, Hercules performed seven tasks. Why do you think you chose swimming the English Channel?”

  I was fairly certain that Hercules performed more than seven tasks (I checked later and I was right: it was twelve), but I decided to let that pass. “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s sort of old-fashioned. People don’t really do it anymore. And I guess England and France seem so different to me, so totally different, like sadness and happiness.”

  “Which is sad and which is happy?”

  I thought this was a particularly stupid question, but I decided not to resist anymore. It seemed easier to just go along with her. “Well, I suppose England is sad, but only because I think of people swimming from England to France and not vice versa. But the French do seem to be happier, or at least I imagine they are, what with the better food and weather and fashion.”

  “Is that what makes people happy: food and fashion and weather?”