Fun With Problems

by Robert Stone

  The lippy nun looked at Matthews for a moment and turned back to the psychologist.

  "That stuff is diabolical superstition," she declared. "It stands between the soul and Higher Power." The gray cat came back through the metal door to listen like a familiar. Unchallenged, the nun grew triumphalist. "Ha! Here she is," she said, nodding toward the psychologist, "supposed to be helping these kids!" She looked up and down the visiting area as though in search of a larger audience. "Tarot cards!" she cried. "Phooey!"

  An elderly prisoner with a push broom came out behind the cat.

  "We're fucking entitled," the old man said.

  "You just watch your language, Bobby," a passing guard told him.

  The young woman blushed. "They are entitled," she said. "They're entitled to any kind of therapy. And it does not interfere with Higher Power. Insight promotes it." The psychologist was pointing at the crucifix that still stood on the edge of the altar at the near end of the room. "What if I say that's superstition?" Addressing Matthews now, she startled the cat. "I bet it's unconstitutional. I mean, where's the wall of separation?"

  "Well," Sister said, outraged and gesturing at the psychologist's cards, "I better not find any of these magic doozies around the plant, because I'll get 'em lifted."

  "I'm sure you can do that, Sister," the red-headed psychologist said. "You serve the county instead of the inmates. You're a snitch."

  Everyone was horrified.

  "Did you hear her?" Sister Sophia asked the men. "Did you hear what she called me?"

  In fact, it was generally believed that Sister Sophia—though a good enough egg in her own way—had her own interpretations of the unwritten laws. And that there were certain things better left uncommitted to her discretion.

  "Maybe you should apologize to Sister Sophia," the hack said. "Ya went too far there."

  "Heat of argument," Matthews said.

  Sister Sophia gathered up the cat and fixed them each in turn with a dreadful wounded stare. She was a person completely of the jail, and the accusation was a mortal one. Matthews wondered how well the psychologist understood this. She seemed not to have been around for very long.

  Lights flashed. The amplified voice of the administration declared visitations concluded. The hack urged them out.

  "Let's go home, folks."

  Sister Sophia and Jackie, padding underfoot, retreated up the stone passageway.

  "After thirty years!" Sister Sophia said, following the big neutered tom up the dank stone hallway. "Thirty years in this crummy joint!"

  "Just a misunderstanding," Matthews said to the young woman. He extended a hand. "Pete Matthews." Her name was Amy Littlefield.

  They lingered in the severe dark-wood reception room.

  "You know," Matthews said, "your guy is threatening my client."

  "Oh," she said. "He's always boasting. He told me the test of a tough guy was to break someone's fingers." A guilty smile appeared on her face and faded immediately. "He's trying in his way to impress me."

  On Water Street, outside the jail, it was cold and cheerless. Fine hail rattled against the streetlights and the steps of the jail.

  "Impressed?"

  "He needs to take his antipsychotics. He doesn't belong in there. I mean," she said, "what can you do?"

  "I was wondering that. I'm worried about Georgie."

  "Really? Your client looks tough."

  "No," Matthews explained. "No. The last time he was in there," Matthews said, "he was underage. I got him out on habeas corpus. Now he thinks I'm a miracle worker."

  "Good luck," she said.

  They parted ways in the gathering sleet. Matthews took the river sidewalk with his shoulder to the force of the storm off the river. He followed the embankment to the edge of the downtown mill buildings. Then he suddenly turned back and went in the direction that Amy had gone. When she heard him coming up behind her, she stopped and moved back from the sidewalk.

  "What did you mean," Matthews asked, "he doesn't belong in there?"

  She laughed. "What did I mean? I meant he was crazy. He should be in a hospital."

  "Right."

  "Did you think I was taking his side? That I thought he was a nice guy?"

  "I wasn't sure. You're a social worker."

  She shook her head.

  He looked up and down the street and she watched. He thought she was about to ask him if he was looking for something.

  "So, Amy," he said, "would you like a drink?"

  She laughed in a strangely embarrassed way. The quality of her embarrassment was somehow familiar to him.

  "I don't drink," she said gaily. As though the statement did not necessarily foreclose sociability.

  "Well," he said, "have an Apfel-schorle!"

  "I don't know what that is."

  "You've fallen into the right hands," Matthews said. The young psychologist stopped in her tracks. She shielded the lenses of her glasses from the icy rain with one hand and pulled her plaid scarf over her bright hair. Little hailstones clung to the russet strands like coral clusters, not melting.

  "Wait a minute," she said. "I haven't fallen into your hands."

  "No," Matthews said. "Of course not." He was wondering whether she thought him too old for her. She did not seem much over thirty-five.

  "Oh," she said. There was another slightly embarrassed laugh. Like the first, it made him hopeful.

  "I'm not surprised you're a psychologist, Amy."

  "Really?" she asked, as they hurried out of the weather. "Why?"

  He had only been mocking her. Matthews's life had become so solitary he had almost stopped caring what he said, or to whom.

  They went to the restaurant where, sober, Matthews had discovered Apfel-schorle, mixed apple juice and soda. The place was run by a German hippie who cooked and his American graduate-student wife. Its ambience was not at all gemütlich, but gray-black Euro-slick. The waitress was a stylish, somber German exchange student.

  "Funny," Amy said when they had ordered a schorle for her and a Scotch for Matthews, "that they'd still serve such a summer drink in the winter."

  Matthews agreed that it was funny.

  "Aren't you hungry?" he asked her.

  She cast the question off with her peculiar gaiety. Matthews tried to inspect her further without being spotted. Her red hair seemed natural: she had the right watery-blue eyes and freckled skin. In her strong lean face, the long-lashed, achromatic eyes looked wonderfully dramatic. Effects combined to make her seem sensitive, innocent and touchingly plain. Vulnerable.

  Across the table, he indulged in some brief speculation about her character and inner life. Her facing down fatuous Sister Sophia was admirable in a way, but it was also self-righteous and overwrought. Pretty ruthless, really, calling the poor woman a snitch. And Amy herself seemed not much smarter than the nun, all fiery bread and roses, the blushing champion of free thought with her fucking wall of separation.

  In fact, at that moment Matthews did not want to care what Amy was like. His life was lonely enough, but he was not shopping for a friend or a comrade in the service of the poor. His attraction to her was sensual, sexual and mean, which was how he wanted it. Spite had taught him detachment. The trick was to carry on indifferent to his own feelings and without pity for things like Amy's ditsy vagueness or the neediness she was beginning to display.

  "Sure you won't have something stronger?"

  She shook her head. Now, he observed, she was all reticence and demurrals—no drink, no dinner, no nothing. Yet, on a certain level, he thought, she acted like someone who wanted to play.

  "I liked your standing up to Sister Sophia," Matthews told her when he had his second drink in hand.

  She did not seem entirely pleased by his compliment. For a few seconds, she only looked at him without speaking.

  "I felt kind of sorry afterward. I shouldn't have called her a snitch."

  "I wouldn't worry about it. She's a bully." He watched her fidget unhappily on her big wooden ch
air. To make any progress it would be necessary to cheer her up. Win her over. "And she really is a snitch."

  "Oh, God," said Amy. "That makes it worse."

  "Yes, it does," Matthews said. He laughed at her in spite of himself. "Sorry."

  "So," she said, "I was being stupid."

  "No, no. I admired what you did." He felt a little ashamed of the contrived flattery. He had underestimated her.

  "I was being pompous pious."

  "You were fine," he said. "I don't think you did anything inappropriate."

  "Inappropriate" had become such a useful word, he thought, so redolent of the spirit of the times. Everyone had dumb, disastrous moments and behaved inappropriately. Inappropriate anger led to attacks of bad judgment. Misplaced idealism was also inappropriate. And almost everyone had a little no matter how clean they were.

  "Really?" she asked.

  "Really," he told her. "Have a drink." Somehow the suggestion turned her around this time. Her state of agitated regret seemed to visibly depart. The look he saw in her pale eyes was suddenly challenging and flirtatious.

  "No, I don't think so," she said firmly. The firmness had a pretended note.

  The mournful fráulein desired them to stop fiddle-fucking, order dinner or go away. Matthews set her pouting with another drinks order. Apfel-schorle for the little lady, another Scotch for himself. Amy went to the Ladies.

  When the drinks came, Matthews was reminded of the celebrations at a wedding he had attended the previous weekend. Someone had proposed the toast "l'chaim"—"to life." There and then Matthews had decided it was a toast he would never, ever, willingly drink again. Not, of course, that he would make a scene about it. Returned, Amy thoughtfully considered her glass of juice.

  "I've quit drinking for a while," she announced. Matthews thought she might be getting admirable again. In fact, he realized, she was offering him a wedge. How much might he pry?

  "I think you should make an exception this evening. Really," he said. "You've been fighting the good fight." The words were ill chosen, he knew that. It was hard to stop making fun of her. The devil drove him. He labored to recoup. "I mean, you want to forget all that, right?"

  "Well," she said, in the manner of one about to explain thoroughly, "see, I've been doing a play."

  "A play?"

  Amy told him about her second career. "I went to New York for a year," she said. "I did some off-off-Broadway. I almost got Shakespeare in the Park."

  "No kidding?"

  "No kidding. It would have been fun."

  "Shakespeare in the Park? Sounds like fun."

  "But it was almost, right? No cigar."

  A different Amy. Animation. Still, though, tinged with regret. "Anyway," Amy said, "I did some great stuff. Odets. Do you know Clifford Odets?"

  "Sure. Waiting for Lefty."

  "We didn't do that. We did two minor short plays. And we did a dramatic reading of John Brown's Body"

  "Really? Who were you?"

  "Don't tease me," she said. "Don't tease me about my year in New York."

  "I wouldn't," Matthews said, because he had not been. "I think it's great."

  "Well, not so great," she said, "because it's over and I have to make a living. And clinical psych is what I do."

  "You do it very effectively."

  "Yeah, sure," she said. It turned out she was not drinking because she thought alcohol interfered with remembering her lines. "I blank. I go up. You know, forget the cue and the line."

  "I see."

  "Drinking gives you these glitches," she said. For a moment, she put the tip of her tongue to her upper lip and looked around the place. There was one other occupied table. Two youngish faculty couples were finishing their chocolate cake. "I don't know, maybe it's just a superstition."

  "I bet it is. What play are you doing?"

  "Cymbeline. It's Shakespeare."

  "I'm not very familiar with it."

  "No, it's not often performed. It's kind of ridiculous on the level of plot. But it has its moments."

  "Why don't you join me," Matthews said. "Have a drink. And we'll have something to eat."

  "Do I have to?" she asked.

  Afterward, he would have to ask himself why he had pressed her so hard. As though it were the senior prom and she were a high school virgin he wanted to addle with fruit wine. Asking him that way, she had seemed so gravely passive, supine, absurd. Asking for it. She would drink if he made her. So he did.

  "Definitely."

  "And what shall I drink?"

  "What do you like?"

  "I like margaritas," she said.

  So they ordered her Teutonic margaritas, of which she consumed quite a few, straight up with salt, and a weight fell, finally, from her pretty shoulders. She told him about Cymbeline, which, on the level of plot, did sound ridiculous. They laughed about that. But when she professed to discover the other levels, they grew properly serious. She had plainly thought a lot about it, and about her character, named Imogen, an apparently ridiculous figure.

  "And what's strange," she said, "is to come from rehearsal, to come from Shakespeare to the life of all these young community males in the jail."

  For a moment, he did not know what she was talking about. "Don't say things like 'young community males,'" he told her. "Don't use jargon."

  She got huffy, blushed, and withdrew for a while. Ironic, because it was one thing said to her in friendship.

  She lived in Hampton's old downtown, in what had been an office building but was now living space for a variety of the place's ambiguously connected people. "Nontraditional households" was how she would have put it.

  "There's nothing to drink," she told him. "I don't keep it."

  So they made a detour to the package store in the square to get Scotch, tequila and cheap margarita mix.

  Her apartment had high ceilings and many windows adorned with plants. He thought that in the daytime it must have lots of light. On one wall there were theater posters and a few photographs of Amy in costume. He inspected them while, staggering ever so slightly, she went to change clothes.

  In the kitchen, he worked loose her ice trays and made sloppy, overboozy drinks. She came back in gray-green tights with a sort of short, hooded burnous a shade lighter. Her glasses had lightly tinted lenses; she had let her hair down. They sat one cushion apart on an outsized brown leather sofa that looked as though it had come from some dean's office at the local college.

  Settled on the sofa, she did a little snug wiggle.

  "Oh, I like leather." She leaned her head back happily, then turned to him. "But it makes you sweat."

  That should have been the moment, but he was distracted by drink. He got anecdotal, told some favorite jailhouse horror stories at which they could laugh comradely progressive laughter. Not too many. The subject was too depressing, and he did not want to spoil things. Amy began to tell stories about some other place, a place she did not identify. A hospital? He paid closer attention.

  "So there was a woman at this place where I was."

  "What place?"

  "A woman at this place," Amy went on, "but it wasn't a woman at this place."

  "No?"

  "No," Amy said. "It was me. It was"—she corrected herself with a humorous theatrical flourish. "It was I. It was a spa, right? A really expensive health spa. Ever been to one?" she asked him.

  "Yes. Once."

  She laughed at him, in the bag, unstoppable.

  "I'm not talking about a drunk farm. Although I've been to those too, I have to tell you."

  "I have to tell you," he said, "I have too."

  "But this," Amy said, "the setting of our story, was a very fancy desert health spa." She stopped and looked at him as if making sure she was among friends. Matthews did his best. "I was going to tell this as somebody else's story. But it was me."

  "I see."

  "Well," Amy said, "at this really expensive health spa there was a clairvoyant? The clairvoyant picked me. Me, right? He read my
thoughts—that was the number."

  His instinct was to stop her. A lawyerly impulse. A human one? He didn't.

  "And the clairvoyant revealed to me, and to everybody in the fancy spa, around the beautiful fire in the evening, the clairvoyant revealed to me that there were two men in my life. And that was right. It was God's truth. I had a husband who was not a very nice man. And I had a lover who, it turned out, was not so absolutely great either. As it turned out."

  Her free hand, the one not holding the drink, began to tremble a little. As much as he wanted to, Matthews did not put out his own hand to steady it.

  "So, when I went home, the spa gave me a record of my session with the clairvoyant. A recording—a tape, a CD, I don't know. And would you believe I forgot all about it? I forgot it utterly. Until—"

  It was Amy's guessing game. She teased, grinning, tears beginning.

  "Until your old man found it," Matthews said.

  She pointed her index finger, bingo, at him.

  "Until he found it. The prick. Excuse me. Until he found it. Whereupon he divorced me."

  "I see."

  "And in fact I began to drink. And in fact I later went to ... the other sort of place you mean." She looked closely at him again. "I might have known you there."

  "Yes, you might," he said, "but actually no."

  "By then, my friend—" She stopped herself. "Ah, we're talking me, aren't we? Not my made-up friend."

  "We're talking first-person."

  "After the divorce, I needed a hospital, not a health spa. Get it?"

  "Yes," he said. "I understand. I've been there."

  "Of course," she said, "you've been there."

  "Twice," Matthews said. "For varying lengths of stay."

  "You and me," Amy said. "It might even have been the same place."

  "That it might."

  Amy stood up and leaned on the arm of her leather sofa.

  "Drinking makes me want to smoke," she said. He looked up at her; leaning, she had cocked a hip in a kind of Attic stance, lifting the hem of the top she wore, turned away from him, searching for all the cigarettes in the world to smoke at once. Turned away but, as it were, presenting.