Mount Misery

by Samuel Shem

  ‘You won’t say his name?’ He stared at me. I could sense anger there, maybe even a borderlinelike rage, and felt that if I could just get to it with him, we could get to the reality, break open that narrowness of mind, yes. ‘What about her underwear?’

  His jaw clenched. ‘She had … a red garter belt.’

  ‘A red garter belt?’

  He looked at me suspiciously. ‘What the hell are you implying?’

  ‘You angry?’

  ‘No, I’m not angry, I’m wondering what you’re trying to do here.’

  ‘I’d be angry, if it were me.’

  We stared at each other, his beautiful blue eyes narrowing, as if looking out from a cottage into a sunset turned harsh. Then he abruptly got up and left.

  I felt Heiler holding me back, warning me not to blow it. I opened the door and looked down the hall. He was striding away, gesturing to himself. Suddenly he slammed the wall in fury with a clenched hand. What the hell had gotten into me? I was going to lose him! I took a step out into the hallway, feeling guilty that I had provoked him, that I’d driven him away, that he wouldn’t be back.

  PROVOCATION, Blair had chalked on the board the other day, = ENTICEMENT.

  Bullshit, I thought, but immediately came a second thought, that in fact a few simple questions from me had tilted us from pleasantries to connection, from well-bred niceties to rage and suspicion. He had gotten angry, and he was really there. Sadly, I sat back down. One or two tiny comments from me, and his paranoia and rage – all that Latent Negative Transference toward me – had blossomed. Maybe he was a BPO. BPO with GE – Gorgeous Eyes. The Borderline Theory said that soon Negative would turn Positive, and he would heal.

  ‘What’s that?’ Berry asked, grabbing me by both ears, so my head felt like a jug held by its handles. It was a few days later; and we were naked in my turret, making love.

  ‘What’s what?’

  ‘What you’re doing. Grunting like an animal, using dirty words.’

  ‘That’s Krotkey.’

  ‘Krotkey?’

  ‘Renaldo Krotkey, the borderline expert. Krotkey came out the other day in the Times saying we don’t use enough animal sounds and obscenities in sex.’

  ‘Are you crazy?’

  Berry and I had been having a rocky time. Our lives were so different, mine with sick adults, hers with happy kids. As I’d gotten more into Heiler, she’d gotten more guarded. Our flare-ups, for me, were provoked by her astonishing ineptitude with real objects – dropping things, losing things, things flying out of her hands. Berry had grown up with a terror of taking action in the physical realm and this had been transformed into a carelessness that had almost killed us several times as we’d traveled the world. Now her carelessness was merely irritating – she left dishes and coffee cups in the bathroom and piled up in the sink, keys and books and clothes everywhere; her cat, when he visited, habitually vomited in the turret at night, so that I’d sometimes get up and step in squishy cat vomit on my way to the bathroom. Things were rough. Yet we both knew that the rigors of ‘health care training’ didn’t last forever.

  The phone rang. It was my patient Zoe, calling me at home, again. True to Heiler’s prediction, I was paying for not being unlisted. She had gotten in the habit of calling me late at night, screaming at me and refusing to get off the line. This time I’d had it. Berry could overhear the conversation.

  ‘I’m feeling pretty desperate,’ Zoe said.

  ‘I told you not to call me at home.’

  ‘Oh, too good for me, are you?’

  ‘It’s not that—’

  ‘In the middle of something unusual? Like sex with your wife?’

  How do they do it? I asked myself. How do they know? I said, ‘Why are you calling me?’

  ‘Because I’m upset.’

  ‘But why are you calling me?’ She screamed and hung up.

  ‘What the hell were you doing?’ Berry asked.

  ‘It’s the only way to stop her.’

  ‘If you were in trouble, would you want to be treated like that?’

  ‘’Course not. I’d take responsibility for myself – I’m not a borderline. Day after day she’s on me. It’s good to get my anger out, OK?’

  ‘You’ve been getting a lot of it out lately. It’s like you’re angry all the time.’

  ‘And you don’t like it?’

  ‘If we can talk about it, yeah. But we haven’t been able to lately.’

  ‘I can, why can’t you?’

  ‘Goddamnit, because you’re so into yourself! It’s getting hard to take!’

  She sat naked on the edge of the bed, staring at me. I sat, braced, staring back, suddenly having that same incompetent feeling I’d had with Zoe and Christine. Berry, a BPO? With what? I used to think with ALOE – A Lot Of Empathy – but right now I wasn’t so sure.

  ‘Y’know,’ she was saying, ‘it’d make all the difference in the world if you’d just smile at me.’

  ‘I’m trying,’ I said, ‘I really am, but it’s not happening.’

  ‘’Kay. All I want, sweetie, is to be close to you. Feel you with me.’

  ‘I feel close. I’m just trying to focus more on myself.’

  ‘What?’ she said, eyes widening. ‘You, more self-centered? Are you joking?’

  ‘Heiler says it’s healthy.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ she said, trying to calm herself, her hands in front of her breasts moving back and forth, their palms pointing toward me. ‘I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Maybe there is something in SELF-psychology for you.’

  ‘But not for you? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Not for us. God!’ She gathered up her clothes. ‘I’m going home.’ I tried to stop her. ‘Fuck off,’ she said. As she turned she dropped a heavy necklace and a roll of panty hose. ‘I’ve tried hard enough to carry “us” for one night. It’s like moving heavy furniture. Without help.’

  I said I was sorry and tried to convince her to stay, but she left.

  The next morning she paged me, from the preschool. I was at the nursing station on Emerson, suturing up Thorny’s face. The Lady Who Ate Metal Objects, now officially a Heiler BPO, had tried to get at Thorny’s Rolex. A struggle had ensued. She’d coughed up a penknife and slashed him. Now, in the background, the kids were singing:

  ‘It’s cleanup time in the classroom,

  It’s time for girls and boys;

  To stop what they are doing,

  And put away their toys.’

  ‘Last night,’ she was shouting, over this sugary off-key din, ‘makes me think that things are more screwed up than they seem.’

  ‘No, no,’ I shouted back, trying to get Thorny to hold still, ‘it makes me think that things seem more screwed up than they are.’

  ‘Everything I say, lately, you immediately say no to.’

  ‘No I don’t.’

  ‘See?’

  We fought. The kids sang. I said we’d talk more on the weekend. She said she was busy on the weekend. We said goodbye.

  Busy? A hit of jealousy. I picked up the phone to call her back. But no, we’d just start arguing again. I put the receiver back down.

  That Friday, I came home from Misery feeling bad about facing a weekend without her. I got the mail – including a conjunction-filled letter from my father that I devoured at once.

  Hope you’re back in your relaxed routine and know you will be the best resident in your class. Mom and I argue alot and it is normal for retired Jews. Had an 86 with two three-putt greens and my game now is all set …

  Could this be BPO with HSD? High Speed Drill?

  I was taking in the garbage cans for my senescent retired woman doctor landlady when an old dark blue car drove by, stopped, and backed up. A woman looked at me and called my name. She looked like Jill the mental health worker, but couldn’t be because Jill had blond hair in braids down her back, and this woman had blond hair cut to a fuzz but for a cockscomb on top, a punk cut.

  ‘It’s me, J
ill.’

  ‘Oh, hi.’ I crossed the street to her, noticing the rusted-out rear parts of her blue Buick. She was wearing a sleeveless tank top and shorts. An open can of Bud was sweating cold between her thighs. ‘What happened to your hair?’

  ‘Cut it all off.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked, smelling beer on her breath.

  ‘Had to do something. I broke up with my boyfriend and had to move out and I lost my job – my other job, not the one at the nuthouse – and I lost my horse because the boyfriend owned the horse and I’ve got no money, and yesterday I cut off all my hair.’

  ‘Looks great,’ I said, stunned by her good cheer in the face of these catastrophes. ‘Must be cooler, right?’

  ‘And winter’s coming – figure that one out. I’m getting just a little tired of these “growth-promoting experiences,” know what I mean?’

  ‘Yeah. But what are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m living with friends for a while, up the street. You?’

  ‘I rent the top floor. Up there. With the turret.’

  She followed my gaze. ‘Bet it’s nice up there.’ I felt the sweat bead on my forehead, and thinking maybe I shouldn’t do this because of Berry, I said fuck that who knows what Berry’s doing, and so I asked Jill if she’d like to have dinner sometime. By coincidence she was free that very night.

  At seven I picked her up and we went to a fish restaurant nearby and ordered martinis. We talked hilariously about Misery being so weird and we maybe ate our fish. I invited her back to the top floor and then, showing her my loft when we got to the bedroom in the turret, as easily as a fish in water with another watery fish I kissed her and she me, opening her mouth, and then, lingering as if in sad parting, all scented with cherry blossoms and suntan oil, she said, ‘Your lips are so soft!’ I started to caress her. She said, ‘Wait.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s gonna happen eventually,’ she said, pulling away and crossing her hands over her chest and grasping the bottom of her tank top. ‘So let’s get it over with, OK?’

  ‘O-K!’ I turned down the dimmer of the chandelier. She stood there in just her bra and jeans, the bands of pink satin alternating with bands of nothing, forming complex whorls on the roundnesses of her breasts like on seashells. I shivered. With straightforward innocence she stared at me and pursed her lips. I got aroused but somehow I didn’t dare move because the moment was sacred in the way when you’re drunk so many things seem sacred and you have a dim sense that the chandelier in your head is so dim that you might not recall much the next day. As if in prayer, she brought her hands together at her sternum, and like a curtain opening her breasts fell away, jouncing a little, the bra hanging down lacily, as if it had disintegrated into pink ribbons. Her tan highlighted the white of her skin, and popping out on the white roundnesses, her nipples were, of all shades, lavender. She stretched, so tall that her fingertips wiggled the chandelier. I started toward her.

  She said, ‘Wait a sec.’

  She brought her hands down to her jeans and undid the metal button and slowly unzipped the metal zipper and then carefully, so as not to disturb her panties, rolled back the denim edge and carefully pulled them down her thighs. Stepping out of her jeans, she turned to throw them on a chair, her thong bikini straining in and up against her buns. The chair tipped under the weight, then righted itself. Turning back, she peeled the bulging white lace triangle down, revealing her untanned pudenda frosted with a lace of light brown hair.

  ‘Now,’ she said, smiling mischievously, ‘you.’

  Next thing I knew she was on top of me, but all at once I felt whirly from booze and thought of Berry and felt a killer guilt. Things stopped dead.

  Into my head floated a phrase from my father’s letter:

  Hope you are being conscientious and know you will soon be on top …

  Silence, a silence of Uh-oh.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she whispered. ‘Am I too wet?’

  ‘No, I’m just a little nervous.’

  ‘How sweet! How really sweet!’

  ‘Maybe it’s the booze.’

  ‘Sweet!’ She bent and kissed me as she had that first time, all cherry-blossomed and suntan-oiled and with the sweet sorrow of lovers parting, and then she drew slowly away and led my hands to her breasts, and I caressed the tips with my fingers and then my lips and lay back again sighing. She sighed and said with hearty appreciation, ‘God your lips feel so good!’ and that did it and we did it and it was wild and hot and blond and wet and fantastic.

  Walking her back to her house up the street in the moist dark of a moonless night, I felt so appreciative of her, of her frankness and suffering and not needing to psychologize it and of her passion and of the way the pungent wet lace of light brown hair when it dried had fluffed up like the punk cut on the crown of her head, well, it felt a little like love. We parted with another tender kiss, soft as a baby’s cheek, a baby’s tongue.

  ‘I never had a martini before,’ she said sleepily, boozily.

  ‘I love that whirling underwear,’ I replied boozily, sleepily.

  Each into our healthy SELFs, sex-OBJECTs to each other, we parted.

  The next Monday afternoon she and I met on Emerson, and she had a few questions: Was I married or engaged or in a relationship? I hesitated. ‘Hide it and you’re dead,’ she said. So I answered the questions about my relationship with Berry. ‘You gonna tell her?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Guilt rushed up, spilled all over. I thought to myself that I’d better not see Jill again, and if so why should I even think of telling Berry? I’d loved Berry for a long time and with a terrific intensity and depth. Things were rocky, but they would smooth out, as they had in a small way in a phone call the night before, at the end of the weekend, although we’d both avoided asking the terrifying question, what we’d each been ‘busy’ with. Jill was new. The sex had been great, our selves big and hot and able to move wetly hard against each other. The love was new, shallow, with little momentum, and could be stopped now with little loss. I said, ‘I haven’t thought about it.’

  ‘You better.’ She sighed. ‘It’s tough for me too. But I’ve been through the ringer with men, and now with all this other stuff I don’t want to get hurt in the near future. I’m really attracted to you.’

  Despite my feelings about Berry, and realizing that if I wasn’t going on with this I’d better not rev it up, I revved it up with the truth, saying, ‘And I’m attracted to you. Like a damn magnet.’

  ‘Yeah. Guys make me feel so frisky about sex. But don’t hold your breath. It may never happen again.’

  ‘Who said it would?’

  She smiled, her eyes sparkling with mischief. Punching me playfully on the deltoid, but so hard that I winced, she said, ‘Me.’

  * * *

  Late one crisp afternoon in mid-October I sat in my cramped office up under the eaves of Toshiba with Christine, my blond Lady in Black. I would be on call all night long. That morning as I had driven the country road in my old Mustang convertible with the top down, under the pleached arbor of seared red sumac and blared yellow birch, acorns falling amidst the squashed squirrels, I felt angry that I couldn’t be out playing in this day so full of chilled hope and possibility but had to be locked up with 350 lunatics. Cherokee hadn’t called back, and I found myself thinking that this was not only OK but good, that his Latent Negative Transference toward me was maturing, and that he’d show up again when it was ripe, starting to turn to Latent Positive. Shimmering in and out of possibility was the helpfulness of the Borderline Theory. Not the clearly ridiculous stick figures, no, but rather the idea that, as with a spoiled child, you had to be cruel to be kind. Being nice to borderlines hadn’t worked; Heiler firmness had started to.

  Autumn was the debut of a series of international borderline meetings. Blair had flown off to Frankurt for a conference on the psychopathology of immigration into Germany, entitled ‘Borderline Germans and German Borderlines.’ He’d left Solini and me in charge
of Emerson. Before he left he had done stick figures for us and Hannah, figures and an equation: SELF = POWER. MORE SELF = MORE POWER. Looking down at Henry and me, Blair had said, ‘Don’t be pussies. Just Do It.’ Clearly Blair’s own power in Misery came from a pristine and relentless SELF-love.

  Since my first session with Christine, when she’d threatened suicide and I’d chased her to the tennis court and she’d said she’d rather talk to a mortician, things had gone well. Using Malik, I’d been more or less human with her. She’d stopped talking about suicide, dumped her boyfriend Rocco, and was taking tennis lessons. I’d asked her why she always dressed in black, as if in mourning.

  ‘I am in mourning. For my father, and for men in general.’

  ‘Men in general?’ I’d asked.

  ‘My problem is I see the potential in men. I never only see what’s there, I see what could be there. In every relationship, I try like hell to help men to fulfill that potential, and I’m always disappointed. Like with you.’

  By the time Malik had left, she had gotten a lot better, and since she was a lot better, her insurance had started to hassle me. I kept getting calls from a young-sounding woman – a girl, really – her ‘case manager’ in Tulsa who demanded to know increasingly personal details about Christine: Was she having sex with her boyfriend? If she was depressed, why wasn’t she on drugs? Couldn’t it all be PMS?

  On the basis of my answers, the teenybopper in Tulsa would authorize another two sessions at a time. It was infuriating. One day I said to her:

  ‘You’re making it impossible for me to do psychotherapy with her.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ the girl said, her chewing gum snapping loudly. ‘We don’t like to pay for psychiatrists to talk to people anymore.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We onny pay psychiatrists to hand out drugs.’

  ‘Well, who the hell are people supposed to talk to?’

  ‘Gotta putchu on hold.’

  I fought; the girl in Tulsa won. Christine’s insurance no longer paid for therapy. She paid Misery herself, a reduced fee. If patients knew how much their insurance companies knew about their personal lives – their spouses and children, their sex lives, their finances, everything really – and how all this data was just lying there on big computers available to millions of great Americans, would they allow it? Which is why, Malik said, lawyers never used their insurance to pay for their psychotherapy and insisted no record be kept of their visits – which, of course, was against the law.